If you’ve been listening to any AM radio this week, you’ve probably heard the two new issue ads on energy, one focusing on Jeanne Shaheen and one on Carol Shea-Porter. Both are misleading.
The anti-Shaheen ad by the Associated General Contractors PAC claims that opposing all energy production other than wind or solar is “precisely” Jeanne Shaheen’s position. That’s not true. Shaheen supports other alternative energy options such as biofuels, and she claims to support domestic drilling in territory already leased by oil companies. Of course, the drilling on already leased land proposal is itself misleading because while Shaheen claims the scheme is key to lowering oil prices, it is well known that much of that leased land either doesn’t hold oil or is protecting reservoirs already being drilled. But technically speaking, the AGC ad is not accurate because Shaheen supports things other than windmills and solar power.
The Sierra Club’s ad asking voters to call Carol Shea-Porter and urge her to oppose the oil companies (which she already does) uses this misleading phrase, “crack down on the price gouging that’s keeping gas prices so high.” There is no evidence that “price gouging,” whatever that is, is behind the rise in oil and gas prices. In fact, last week the Commodities Futures Trading Commission released a report concluding that — surprise! — supply and demand was behind high oil prices (demand vastly exceeds supply) and that speculators were not to blame. But don’t expect environmental groups, Democrats, or most of the mainstream media to notice the report.
The National Republican Senatorial announced yesterday that it would match dollar for dollar the DSCC’s contributions in at least eight states, including New Hampshire.
Here are my top 5 choices for McCain’s running mate:
1. Clint Eastwood. Yes, he’s old. But this phrase alone sells him: “Do you feel lucky, Mahmoud? Well, do you?” He’s got political experience, good instincts, and, like McCain, he’s a straightforward, no-nonsense guy.
2. Rush Limbaugh. Come on, do I really need to explain this one?
3. Mr. T. I pity the fool who opposes the United States when Mr. T. is VP. He takes away some of the Obama mystique, and he probably could bench press Tim Kaine or anyone else Obama picks as running mate. As an added benefit, he could body slam any enemy until he agrees to our demands. He also looks awesome posing in front of a flag.
4. The Ghost of Milton Friedman. I know, it would accentuate the age issue. And he probably would scare Shaggy. But he has the economics bona fides that McCain lacks, and he would never have to hide in a secure, undisclosed location. He’d always be in an undisclosed location because you couldn’t see him. He’d shore up the fiscal conservative vote and the X-Files fan vote.
5. Phil Gramm. Quit whining and vote for McCain, you little jerks.
Rep. Carol Shea-Porter issued a statement today criticizing BP for earning a lot of money. I kid you not. The economic ignorance reflected in the press release is bad enough, but in the very first sentence she also had this gem: “Today, BP—one of the country’s major oil companies—announced a second-quarter profit of $9.47 billion.”
Trivia time. What does “BP” stand for? Yes, it’s British Petroleum. The company headquarters are in London. It’s as much an American company as InBev will be after its purchase of Budweiser is completed. Shea-Porter doesn’t even know that British Petroleum is a British company. Brilliant.
Shea-Porter is outraged that this British oil conglomerate is making so much money.
“It is appalling that the oil companies are pulling in record profits while Americans struggle with skyrocketing prices at the pump,” she said.
Really? BP’s profit was 7 percent of its revenues last year. So was Toyota’s. Are Toyota’s profits appalling? General Electric’s profits were 13 percent of revenues, almost double BP’s percentage. Are GE’s profits appalling? General Motors, maker of gas-guzzling SUVs, including the Hummer, lost $38.7 million last year? According to Shea-Porter’s logic, that’s a good thing. It wasn’t making appalling profits “while Americans struggle with skyrocketing prices at the pump.”
Her plan for reducing the global price of oil on the world market is to force companies to drill on land they already lease from the U.S. government, even though companies are already required to make their leases productive, and even though this proposal has been roundly criticized by experts for not making any sense whatsoever.
It’s also funny that she’s criticizing BP, which the U.S. Minerals Management Service has presented BP with its Conservation Award for Respecting the Environment and recognized BP America for “outstanding contributions in the development of innovative ideas and products that will help minimize debris and protect marine mammals and other fauna.” If she didn’t even know BP was British, I bet she didn’t know that, either.
I don’t know how you can be a member of Congress and not know that BP is British. Maybe Shea-Porter got carried away with Barack Obama’s one world speech in Berlin and has already started thinking of the entire planet as one big, happy country.
On its blog yesterday, The New York Times editorial board posted a misleading commentary about Sen. Judd Gregg in particular and New Hampshire in general. Following is my humble attempt at a response.
Under the condescending headline, “What’s the matter with New Hampshire?“, the editorial writers held forth the following:
“Sen. Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, set himself apart on Saturday — and not in a good way.
“He was the lone New England senator who voted to prevent consideration of a bill that would have released more than $2 billion for the low-income energy assistance program (LIHEAP) an estimated $27 million of which would have gone to help poor people in the Granite State.
“One oddity about his position is that Mr. Gregg was one of the bill’s original sponsors.
“The other odd thing about his vote is what it means for a group of cold, not especially well-off people: his own constituents.”
OK, stop right there. New Hampshire residents are “not especially well-off”? Since when? Last year New Hampshire ranked 7th in the nation in per-capita income.
The NY Times stereotypes rural America as poor America. It isn’t true. But at the Times editorial board, there’s no getting in the way of a good stereotype. Let’s continue.
“Most New Hampshire residents are concerned about the doubling of home heating oil prices in the last year, and for good reason. About 58 percent of the state’s households rely on oil heat to keep warm in the bone-chilling New Hampshire winters.”
Well, according to the state’s Office of Energy and Planning, the most recent figure is 55.3 percent. But who’s counting? I guess the Times simply assumed that since most NH households use home heating oil, “most New Hampshire residents are concerned about the doubling of home heating oil prices in the last year.” By the way, prices have almost doubled, but again, who’s counting?
“Unless prices fall significantly, they will pay nearly $1,000 to fill a tank of oil which might keep their homes warm for about a month during the coldest part of winter.”
How would prices fall significantly? By increasing supply. But The New York Times opposes Republican efforts to do that by letting oil companies drill offshore, even though offshore drilling has a 99.999 percent safety record.
“The energy-assistance bill failed 50-35, ten votes short of the 60 votes needed, after the White House threatened to veto the legislation and Republicans decided to use the issue to demand lifting the bans on offshore drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”
No, the bill didn’t fail. It’s still alive. The motion to vote on it immediately on Saturday, while the Senate Democrats’ own bill to crack down on commodity speculators was being considered, is what failed. And Republicans didn’t just decide to use the issue to demand more drilling. They offered to vote on LIHEAP if Majority Leader Harry Reid allowed votes on amendments to the speculation bill. Reid refused. He also refused to allow votes on amending the LIHEAP bill.
I wonder if the Times is aware that the LIHEAP bill was introduced 21 days before the speculation bill was introduced. Reid is the only senator empowered to bring bills up for a vote. Why did he wait a month to bring the LIHEAP bill up for a vote, and then do it during consideration of the speculation bill, which he had scheduled first?
He did it because he knew an unquestioning press would report that Republicans voted against LIHEAP expansion. And sure enough, The Times reports exactly that and does not question why Reid sat on the supposedly “emergency” LIHEAP bill for a month before bringing it up for a vote.
“No matter that additional drilling would do little to lower the price of gas at the pump or oil in the furnace, and certainly not in the short term.”
Again, not true. A large future boost in the energy supply would likely have an immediate and significant impact on prices. Such a large future boost in the energy supply would come from expanding offshore drilling and nuclear power. (More nuclear plants in the Northeast would reduce the need for home heating oil here. That is one of the amendments Republicans wanted to offer to the speculation bill.) But The Times doesn’t want to allow policies that would actually lower oil prices. Instead, it wants more federal subsidies. Go figure.
“A few years ago, in his book ‘What’s The Matter With Kansas?,’ Thomas Frank asked why the largely blue-collar voters of Kansas regularly voted for Republican elected officials who worked against their economic interests.”
Neither Frank nor the Times gets that blue-collar voters in places like Kansas understand that high-taxes and big government work against their interests, not for them.
“Now, the same question could be asked about New Hampshire. What are the state’s voters thinking, sending a Senator to Washington who is working to ensure that they or their neighbors won’t be able to afford to turn on the heat this winter?”
That’s just shockingly ignorant. Did Gregg really work “to ensure” that Granite Staters “won’t be able to afford to turn on the heat this winter?” Considering that A) he co-sponsored the bill to double LIHEAP funding, and B) his vote on Saturday was not to kill the bill, but to stick to Harry Reid’s original calendar, which had the LIHEAP bill going after the speculation bill, the answer is obviously “no.” The bill remains alive and can be brought back up for a vote. So, what, exactly, was Sen. Gregg’s sin, in the eyes of the Times editorial board?
Apparently it was voting against Harry Reid’s scheme to postpone indefinitely any vote that might result in higher domestic energy production and lower energy prices. (And that includes, by the way, votes on Democratic proposals to clamp down on oil speculators.)
The New York Times editorial board evidently hates, or at least has a low opinion of, New Hampshire. It continually writes ignorant and hostile pieces about this state. This is only the latest. It sure won’t be the last. It would be nice, though, if members of the board bothered to try to understand this state, its people, and its issues before writing about them. It would help, too, if they tried to understand legislation in Washington before writing about it.
Comment from Colin Principe in Manchester: It’s the height of irony that the Op-Ed editor of the MUL complains about a newspaper “continually writ[ing] ignorant and hostile pieces.” I imagine he thinks the screeds that routinely grace his pages to be the height of reasoned journalism.
John Bolton rips apart Barack Obama’s Berlin speech. Well worth a read. What is so useful about Bolton is his unrelenting, unpolished realism. In the world of diplomacy, where demeanor is often considered most important, Bolton candidly says the obvious.
In case you’re wondering whether The Dark Knight lives up to the hype, wonder no longer. It does.
Some reviewers just don’t get this film. Which is too bad because while imperfect, it is and will long remain one of the greatest superhero films ever made. I can think of none better.
I’ll resist the temptation to do a full review and run down some main reasons why this film is worth your $8.
1. Let’s get the most talked-about point out of the way first. Yes, Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker is a masterpiece. Let there be no doubt, he will win an Oscar. I say “an Oscar” instead of “Best Supporting Actor” because, seriously, you can make the case that he really was the lead in this film. What Ledger did is take one of the best-known villains in comic book and cinematic history, previously played by some great actors, including one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and turned it into something so stunningly original, so shockingly violent and so unsettlingly repulsive that you will henceforth remember this Joker as THE Joker, and all others as, well, jokes. (Already, on IMDB’s Joker photo page, Ledger has bumped out Jack Nicholson.)
Ledger had a very good script to work with. But he gave the character a depth of insanity and brutality that I’ve never seen in a cinematic portrayal of a comic book villain. And this leads to point No. 2.
2. The Dark Knight is an unendingly dark and serious film. That simultaneously keeps it true to the Batman comic books while giving us something fresh and original. And that is a superhero movie that treats crime, criminals, corruption, and good and evil — and hence treats the viewer — with respect and real thoughtfulness. This film will not insult your intelligence (well, except for one technological breakthrough that is hardly believable). The good guys don’t gleefully crack wise while the bad guys fall after one punch as their henchmen scatter. In this film, the thugs fight back, and they don’t always lose. Batman’s actions (as in the comic) put innocent people in danger, and some of them die. The story is full of unintended consequences brought about when good people have to figure out how to defeat true, unrelenting evil. Which leads to Point No. 3.
3. I give nothing away by noting that some of the incidents in this film deliberately call to mind 9/11 and the War on Terror. But happily, The Dark Knight does not preach some Hollywood, anti-Bush sermon. Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and D.A. Harvey Dent all struggle with the challenges posed by The Joker, and the film only once gives us the answer the director wants us to reach. The rest of the time, we are left to wonder what the right approach was. There is no clear moral choice. Every time we are led to believe there will be, the plot twists in an unexpected way. In the end, you can wonder what the outcome might have been had a character acted differently, but the director and writer don’t tell you. Sometimes brutality is the appropriate response. Sometimes it isn’t. There are lots of shades of gray (dark gray).
4. The Dark Knight is, finally, a superhero film for grownups. Actually, for thinking grownups. Christopher Nolan has done to the superhero genre what Martin Campbell did for the James Bond films with Casino Royale. He erased the campiness and gave us a realistic, tormented hero to whom adults could relate, and put him in a world of gray where the good guy must win, but the path to victory is fraught with moral dilemmas for everyone. By making the hero more human, his world more real, the villains more ruthless, Nolan and Campbell have given us grownups a reason to return to the action film genre. It’s about time.
Barack Obama began his Berlin speech with this line, “Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.”
You hear that phrase “citizen of the world” a lot from the left. But can you really be a citizen of the world? You can be a resident; we all are residents (except maybe Al Gore). But a citizen is someone entitled to the rights and protections afforded by the government under which he lives. There is no world government — yet — unless you count the U.N., and I don’t think it’s quite reached that level of control.
The left uses the phrase “citizen of the world” to diminish the idea of sovereign nation-states and promote the idea that we should all be governed by something more noble and altruistic than the primitive and self-interested nation-state. It’s pie-in-the sky fantasy stuff (as if a single world government wouldn’t be corrupt, self-interested, and controlling), but the phrase has spread into common usage and is uttered by people who really don’t know what it means. I think that was the case with Obama’s usage. Then again, maybe he wants to be president of the world some day.
Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot has a great column on the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s personal, and it’s highly informative.
Katherine Rizzo of CQ has a column in The Wall Street Journal in which she looks at the funding of the Shaheen-Sununu Senate race. Both races, she points out, are so far funded mostly by out-of-state donors.
“Donors with out-of-state addresses have given Mr. Sununu $1.8 million, versus a tad over $566,000 from Granite State contributors. That’s $3 and some change from donors elsewhere in America for every local dollar the campaign has reported. The Shaheen campaign also is getting more money from nonconstituents than from the people who actually will be represented by the race’s winner. The most recent breakdown of her contributions from individuals (as opposed to money from political action committees) is $1 million from outside New Hampshire and $428,000 from in-state addresses.”
Why is that? Because control of the Senate is up for grabs, and both parties desperately want it. Rizzo’s figures are for individual contributions. They show that donors and activists in both parties are being tapped to fund Senate races in a very aggressive effort to take the Senate this fall, and that donors are aware that this race is one of the top targets.
In ads, Barack Obama is taking credit for reducing welfare rolls in Illinois. He says in one ad that he “passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by 80 percent.”
Factcheck.org says that although Obama co-sponsored the bill, he can hardly take credit for passing the law, which was prompted by the federal welfare reform legislation that forced states to act. Nor can he take credit for the 80 percent reduction, which was partly caused by aggressive culling of the rolls by the state.
But more to the point, as Ryan Lizza reported in his New Yorker profile, Obama originally opposed the federal welfare reform law that prompted the state legislation he co-sponsored. At the time, he wrote “Last year, President Clinton signed a bill that, for the first time in 60 years, eliminates the federal guarantee of support for poor families and their children.”
So although he makes it sound like he backs welfare to work, he in fact opposed it at the time and said on the floor of the Illinois Senate that he probably would have voted against it. He only sponsored the state law because Washington forced the states to act. He said of his bill that he was “making lemonade out of lemons.” Now he takes credit for the results of policies he opposed at the time.
