Longtime readers of Free Will may recall this blog's extensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Of the things that Bush screwed up, the one for which he was perhaps most widely criticized was the one that was legitimately not his doing. The police power, which provides for general safety issues like rescue work and evacuations, lies directly with the states, and Blanco was so fabulously irresponsible with that power that she not only rejected offers of evacuation help from Amtrak and other organizations with transportation resources at their disposal, but apparently had not even contemplated implementing the longstanding emergency evacuation plan until, by her own admission, Bush called her on the phone, wondering why she wasn't doing anything. Even when the evacuation did get started, it's as if nobody could find a surviving copy of the plan, so they just winged it.

Federal support ramped up in a few days, as Lousiana had been promised all along. All they had to do was hold down the fort until the cavalry arrived, but instead, New Orleans burned because the state of Louisiana's monolithic Democratic political establishment, rather than taking charge, expended every ounce of available effort pointing fingers in every possible outward direction, with Senator Landrieu even threatening to "punch" anyone who tried to suggest that they had performed with anything less than transcendent and shining genius. Blanco's non-performance was such a liability that rather than suffering the slings and arrows of a public which had seen nearly two thousand citizens die, she wisely chose not to run for another term, paving the way for voters to call a mulligan.

There's no doubt that FEMA's ultimate response was poorly coordinated, but no more so than would be expected from any agency which was picking up the slack from a number of other failed institutions, and trying to honor responsibilities that should have never been passed to it. There's also no doubt that Brownie did not, in fact, do a heck of a job, and Bush blundered in saying that he did. However, there's also little else the federal government could have been asked to do to alleviate the initial suffering or loss of life in New Orleans. That's what state and local agencies are there for, and Democrats who pretended otherwise, shielding Blanco from the public retaliation she so richly deserved, have never been properly held to account for it.

However, the media's narrative was already written, and, as too often happens, rather than fighting back, Republicans running for federal office raced to promise to fix problems that were outside of their jurisdiction to begin with. Democrats, of course, tripped all over themselves vowing to fix them even harder.

I bring this up because of this article, regarding Obama's apparent inability to round up the unicorns and sprinkle fairy dust over Haiti, something that, if the Democratic fury about Bush's handling of Katrina had any merit at all, should be a cakewalk for the Great One, since he cares and Bush didn't:

Anger built Saturday at Haiti's US-controlled main airport, where aid flights were still being turned away and poor coordination continued to hamper the relief effort four days on.

"Let's take over the runway," shouted one voice. "We need to send a message to Obama," cried another.

Control remained in the hands of US forces, who face criticism for the continued disarray at the overwhelmed airfield.

The crowd accused American forces, who were handed control of the airport by Haitian authorities, of monopolizing the airfield's single runway to evacuate their own citizens.

The disorder even appeared to cause diplomatic ripples, with French Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet telling reporters he had lodged a complaint with the United States over its handling of the Port-au-Prince airport.

"I have made an official protest to the Americans through the US embassy," he said at the Haitian airport after a French plane carrying a field hospital was turned away.

A spokesman for the French foreign ministry later denied France had registered protest, saying "Franco-US coordination in emergency aid for Haiti is being handled in the best way possible given the serious difficulties."

"The Haitians haven't been notified about the arrival of planes. And when they do land, there's no one to take charge and a large amount of goods are arriving without coordination," said Haitian government official Michel Chancy.

On Port-au-Prince's streets, the consequences of the coordination breakdown are clear, as traumatized and starving quake survivors approached passing foreigner and begged them for food.

Angry mobs, starving people wandering aimlessly, corpses piling up in the streets, international criticism, people shouting wild conspiracy theories about how the President doesn't really care about the victims? Cripes, is anybody ever going to get all of those poor people out of the Superdome?

Presidentin', as it turns out, is hard work, and the institutional failures in Haiti are killing people in real time. The very best efforts of a lot of good people, as it turns out, aren't nearly enough to overcome the obstacles in front of them. However, you can expect little media comment on the topic beyond this post on a Newsweek blog, because those obstacles are not really Obama's fault, anymore than they were Bush's. Disaster management is hard, especially when you're trying to do it in a place where the infrastructure and local institutions have utterly crumbled, or, in Haiti's case, where they barely existed in the first place.

Actually, some people would say that about Louisiana, too, but I digress.

When you look at it that way, it would only be fair if Obama were scapegoated just the same, wouldn't it? After all, Democrats claimed that it was unreasonable to blame local officials during Katrina because the disaster was just "too big" for them to handle, and the federal government should've been expected to take total responsibility. Putting aside that we now know Blanco explicitly blocked Bush's efforts to do just that, Democrats can hardly duck out of this one by simply claiming that Haiti's disaster is "too big" for the world's leading superpower. Even under Bush, we were supposed to be able to save everyone in New Orleans, so there's no good reason that Obama shouldn't be able to save everyone in Port-Au-Prince, is there? Can't he fly around the Earth in reverse and unwind the earthquake, like in Superman?

An obvious answer, of course, would be that it isn't our job to save Port au Prince, but why not? Democrats acted as if only gross Presidential incompetence could explain what we saw in Louisiana and, now, in Haiti. It's supposed to be easy to save a broken city, Americans are supposed to be able to show the rest of the world how disaster relief is done, and admitting that it's more complicated than that would ruin the Katrina narrative.

Obama should, if we're interested in fairness, be held to at least the same standard on his commitments in Haiti as Bush was held to in New Orleans.

It's that, or the Democrats and liberal journalists who tore Bush apart over Katrina are going to let this slide, reminding us how the double standard works and suggesting that those individuals are, in fact, the vile hypocrites and opportunists Republicans accused them of being at the time.

I fully expect the latter.

(In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I worked with Michelle Catalano of the late A Small Victory to organize a charity drive and bring a truckload of school supplies to displaced children who had been sent to Baton Rouge and Houston. Now, if you have anything to spare, I encourage you to give to Doctors Without Borders, which has 800 personnel in Haiti, currently working without facilities, providing the life-saving skills that are most needed there right now. (Of course, you could give to the American Red Cross, but it's entirely possible that you could swim to Haiti with the money in your teeth before it will do the same good.)

Update: Instapundit:

Dr. George Milonas writes: "If Obama thinks Bush is such an incredible incompetent, why did he send Bush to help rescue the Haitians? Does he hate black people that much that he is willing to inflict Bush on them?"

I think we're starting a meme.

Update: Greetings to all the Instapunditeers. Sadly, I don't have an RSS feed up for you to subscribe to, and have only recently resumed blogging after an extended hiatus, but if you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll make the site a part of your regular routine, as there's a lot more regular content coming.

Consider this article from attorney, former police officer, and gun rights activist Ed Stone:

A United States Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld the constitutionality of pointing a gun at any citizen daring to carry, lawfully, a concealed weapon in public....The case stems from a lawyer who sued a police officer after he was detained for lawfully carrying a concealed weapon while in possession of a license to carry concealed. According to the case opinion, the lawyer, Greg Schubert, had a pistol concealed under his suit coat, and Mr. Schubert was walking in what the court described as a "high crime area." At some point a police officer, J.B. Stern, who lived up to his last name, caught a glimpse of the attorney's pistol, and he leapt out of his patrol car "in a dynamic and explosive manner" with his gun drawn, pointing it at the attorney's face.

Officer Stern "executed a pat-frisk," and Mr. Schubert produced his license to carry a concealed weapon. He was disarmed and ordered to stand in front of the patrol car in the hot sun. At some point, the officer locked him in the back seat of the police car and delivered a lecture. Officer Stern "partially Mirandized Schubert, mentioned the possibility of a criminal charge, and told Schubert that he (Stern) was the only person allowed to carry a weapon on his beat."

The attorney sued in federal court, but the District Court threw out his suit, ruling that Officer Stern's behavior is the proper way to treat people who lawfully carry concealed pistols. Mr. Schubert appealed, and the First Circuit upheld the District Court's ruling.

...in light of this article from the Boston Globe's Daniel Rowinski:

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager's mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording. Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

"One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,'" Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, "my phone was seized, and I was arrested."

The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.

Jon Surmacz, 34, experienced a similar situation. Thinking that Boston police officers were unnecessarily rough while breaking up a holiday party in Brighton he was attending in December 2008, he took out his cellphone and began recording.

Police confronted Surmacz, a webmaster at Boston University. He was arrested and, like Glik, charged with illegal surveillance.

Fortunately, both of these cases were eventually dropped, but others have been upheld, one by the state's highest court, with the apparent distinction between whether the recording itself was considered a public act or a covert one. That's asinine, if you consider citizens to have any right to monitor their government at all, since officers inclined to abuse their power would also be inclined to tone it down when they know they're on camera.

Schubert, meanwhile, is going to appeal, again.

The message here appears to be that Massachusetts cops can harass you, handcuff you, and potentially brutalize you for lawfully exercising a right explicitly protected in the Constitution, that you may be arrested and charged with a felony for trying to document any of it, and that there's a pretty good chance that the courts will back them in the whole exercise, depending on how willing the officers are to lie about the manner in which you attempted to capture their conduct. You may very well spend years trying to clear your name.

Lovely. I can understand why some people just pack up and leave.

The latest episode of South Park nails the amusing euphoria of Obama supporters, and the apocalyptic woe of some McCain supporters. (Some of us already went through the stages of grief long ago.)

Meanwhile, everything is proceeding according to plan:

1) Democrats misinterpreting their mandate:

"This is a tectonic-plate election, one of those once-in-a-generation times where people not only define change, but define a new relationship with government," said New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the lead campaign strategist for Senate Democrats. He added that voters want a government that is "more activist, more involved" in the economy and their lives.

How many times have you heard this in the last two decades? This year, voters thought "change" meant a dramatic end to business as usual in Washington. Liberals think it means America has given the least popular Congress in history a blank check to implement the long-rejected progressive agenda. Schumer may as well be playing with matches in a fireworks factory.

2) Obama supporters already feeling let down:

"I want my money today! It's my money. I want it right now!" yelled one former campaign worker.

The large gathering of around 375 people prompted police to call in extra officers and set up temporary barricades....Eventually people did start getting paid, but some said they were missing hours and told to fill in paperwork making their claim and that eventually they would get a check in the mail.

"Still that's not right. I'm disappointed. I'm glad for the president, but I'm disappointed in this system," said Diane Jefferson.

Eerie, isn't it? Like looking into the future.

"Every generation," says Brian J. Noggle, "must live through its own 1970s."

Update: Iowahawk:

Although I have not always been the most outspoken advocate of President-Elect Barack Obama, today I would like to congratulate him and add my voice to the millions of fellow citizens who are celebrating his historic and frightening election victory.... It reminds us of how far we've come, and it's something everyone in our nation should celebrate in whatever little time we now have left.

Read the whole thing.

A Brief Summary of the Election

--- We're safe from a Senate Democratic supermajority. Upside: Nancy Pelosi's worst high crackpottery may be largely neutralized. Downside: Nancy Pelosi's worst high crackpottery may go largely unnoticed.

--- Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina? Thanks, Bob Barr! Of course, McCain had this coming. Somewhere between the amnesty and the bailout, enough conservatives realized that even if they had dinner on the table before he got home, McCain was never going to stop beating them. If only McCain had had a stronger showing, Barr could've cost him even more states.

--- On schedule, it's a manufactured international crisis! Wait, is it this one?

--- Newark, New Jersey's Democratic Mayor, Cory Booker, on MSNBC last night:

"I want to luxuriate in the racial deliciousness of our country!"

Bonus points when he's asked about the "problems" facing Newark, and is overcome with visible terror for a good thirty seconds. Apparently, there weren't supposed to be any questions about Newark.

--- Young voters remain incredibly unreliable and disinterested. The "historic" turnout? 1% higher than in 2004..

--- After surprising opposition from leaders like former Governor Jim Edgar, the Illinois Constitutional Convention referendum failed by a large margin. Northern Illinois University political science major Alex Hari explains:

"Every state has their own constitution. Voters in this election decided if they wanted changes to be made to the state constitution."

Thank you, John Madden. Thoughts on the challenges faced by the "yes" movement from "yes" movement leader Bruno Behrend.

--- If Philadelphia Republicans managed to dodge the Black Panthers "guarding" their polling places, they probably could've followed this gentleman's advice and voted "a couple times". CNN reporter's startled response: "I think that's against the law, but it's OK."

--- There's no denying the importance of Obama's historic moment last night and I have no intention of diminishing it, but while I'm no fashion guru, even I think that Michelle Obama has purchased the dress of the apocalypse.

--- "We're also smelling just a little bit of weed in the air. Haven't been to many political events where you smell that."

--- Rock the Vote, the New York Times, and the respective New York State and New York City Boards of Elections have joined forces to point fingers at each other in the bungling of tens of thousands of voter registrations. On their Blog, Rock the Vote promises to find the real killers.

--- Al Franken appears to have failed in his bid for the Senate, which is good news, because physicists have long suspected that Franken's presence in the Senate Chamber would rip the fabric of spacetime. Predictably, his campaign ended with him saying embarrassing things that remind everyone why he deserved to lose.

--- Actually, about Obama's speech last night:

Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

...and in the living room of William Ayers.

Hah!

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I'm still waiting for this guy to tell me where we're going.

I promise you - we as a people will get there.

No, seriously. Where are we going?

Over the last six months, professional obligations have caused me to miss a lot of opportunities to participate in the blogosphere, which has been depressing. I originally imagined I'd have the willpower to continue blogging at a normal pace, but being surrounded by this election cycle all day, every day, pretty much beat that out of me.

However, from the Democrats' embarrassing mistake in opposing offshore drilling to the comical spectacle that they billed as their convention, I missed out on opportunities to say some things that probably needed to be said. Still, I think what I've been working on will prove significant, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, to the extent that I might have my work vindicated. Even if we don't get what we wanted, we've done damage in places it needed to be done.

As for the Presidential race, I'll say the same things here that I've told others:

Barack Obama isn't going to win by the dramatic 10 and 12 percent margins some polls are suggesting, it's going to be more like 5. Still, we're losing this election. John McCain made huge mistakes, let down his base, and Obama had money, a willingness to shift to the right in his rhetoric, and an anti-incumbent, anti-Bush current running in his favor. McCain's powerful strategic choice in Sarah Palin turned out to be an epic tactical error, and his handling of the bailout was a disastrous miscue that all but ended the race for him.

The bailout package was, indeed, "bipartisan", but only in the sense that both parties were working together against us. It left me disgusted enough that I'm opposing anyone who voted for it, for any office, forever. With the Early Voting collapse of the "Write in Fred Thompson" suicide pact I'd made with friends, that leaves me forced to join them in voting for Bob Barr.

However, if McCain has failed conservatives, Obama is already preparing to fail America:

Barack Obama's senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week's election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, "so there's not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair".

Interesting. Who's fault would those ridiculous expectations be?

Maybe I'm being needlessly harsh, but it seems as if "hope" is a fallback for people who have trouble with economics. Consider this poor woman, who thinks that, somehow, under Obama, she "won't have to worry about putting gas in her car, won't have to worry about paying her mortgage".

What?

Democrats accuse Republicans of using "the politics of fear", while warning from the other side of their mouth that if they aren't elected to office, our children will never have a future and might even be killed in a natural disaster caused by carbon emissions. Feminist Erica Jong warns that "blood will run in the streets", and, in a dramatic overestimation of the commitment and small arms proficiency of Obama supporters, that an Obama loss will spark a "second American civil war".

We're told, live on major news networks, most dramatically by apparent rabies sufferer Keith Olbermann, that we're the ones somehow suppressing dissenting viewpoints, even as Barack Obama bans disapproving newspapers from his plane and blacklists stations that ask his running mate pressing questions, even as a left-liberal radio host wishes death on Joe the Plumber for defying "Him" and liberal Democrats try to reimpose the so-called "fairness doctrine" on conservative commentary.

Truly, as Mark Steyn has noted, satire is dead.

Still, no matter what you hear on your favorite cable news network, this is not the most important or contentious election in American history and the nation is certainly not "more divided than ever". It's another Presidential election between two perfectly fallible human beings who are ignorant of many things, and we do have these elections like clockwork. We will do it again in four years, and the media will doubtlessly describe that, too, as the most important election in our history, as if our very lives hinge on the outcome.

A certain percentage of voters believe that the sheer power of their faith in Obama will somehow grant him the power and the wisdom to solve all their problems, a fallacy that would quickly be dispelled by a good civics course. In truth, real reform and good governance requires constant vigilance from an informed electorate that realizes the Presidency is only one piece of the puzzle, not faith in "change" or "experience" or any other buzzword a campaign pays to place on television. If government is full of hypocrites or sell-outs, it's primarily because we don't pay enough attention to stop electing them.

Jeffrey Kuhner, writing for the Washington Times, fears the end of days for individual liberty and free markets.

New Deal-Great Society liberalism has put America on the path to creeping socialism. The Democrats are now on the verge of completing it. A socialist America will be a poorer, weaker America. More importantly, it will spell the end of American exceptionalism - the experiment of a free people in constitutional self-government.

Once that happens, there will be no turning back. There will be a conservative movement after an Obama victory. However, it will be one fighting a desperate, rear-guard action. Like the conservatives in Canada or Western Europe, the question will no longer be how to stop the statist juggernaut but how to manage it.

I don't believe that's likely to happen. Whether his promises are sincere or he's a closeted radical Marxist, there are going to be very practical limits to Barack Obama's political capital, because his party wants "change" that looks nothing like what voters are signing up for. He's going to be helpless to find a happy compromise, as there's clearly no mandate for socialist reforms: 84% of Americans prioritize economic growth over an "equitable" distribution of wealth. Democrats weren't elected to "give their ideas a chance", they were elected in the hopes that they might give the public's ideas a chance for once: right now, half of all Americans believe that this Congress, a Democrat-controlled Congress, is no better than a random sample from the phone book, and three quarters believe that their elected legislators don't even understand the bills they're passing.

To predict that the Democrats will massively overplay their hand in this environment is to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the next Pope will be a practicing Roman Catholic. They will confuse this for a mandate, and then they'll burn for it. The next few years are, ultimately, going to be about getting the GOP back on track.

This Must Have Been Done by Nazis, Soviets, Pol Pot

Illinois' "other" Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, in a remarkable moment of clarity:

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wishes he could blame Republicans for the mess and dysfunction paralyzing Illinois state government these days, but he knows he can't.

"This mess is our creation, Democratic creation, and there are no excuses for what has happened," Durbin, a Springfield resident and the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said in an interview Thursday with The State Journal-Register editorial board.

Durbin said he's tried to work more closely with Blagojevich on key issues, but doesn't get his phone calls returned regularly. He said he doesn't know what it will take to fix the problems or whether he or anyone else in Washington could help cut through the morass.

Don't worry: once we elect a product of the Chicago Democratic machine, shining beacon of good governance that it is, to the Presidency, everything will be puppies and unicorns in no time.

Moonbat Shot Down

Apparently, NBC has finally noticed that frothing lunatic Keith Olbermann is not a professional journalist.

MSNBC is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as co-anchors of political night coverage with David Gregory, and will use the two newsmen as commentators.

Throughout the primaries and summer, MSNBC argued that Olbermann and Matthews could serve as dispassionate anchors on political news nights and that viewers would accept them in that role, but things fell apart during the conventions.

The tipping point appears to have come during the GOP convention when Olbermann criticized MSNBC for showing a Sept. 11-themed video prepared by the Republicans.

Personally, I think the tipping point came during the Democratic convention, when Olbermann angrily proclaimed, as part of his theoretically neutral coverage, that an Associated Press reporter should "look for a new job" after daring to criticize The Obama's speech. Even for Olbermann, who usually plays fast and loose with reality and fills America's living rooms with unhinged rants, that was over the line.

During her acceptance speech last week, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin talked about the "Washington elite" not accepting her qualifications for the job. Some delegates on the convention floor began chanting, "N-B-C, N-B-C."

Olbermann began to have difficulty keeping his opinions in check, or simply stopped trying.

He sarcastically dismissed GOP pundit Pat Buchanan on the air after Buchanan said the Republicans had been enlivened by the entrance of a conservative Republican.

"Those reading US Weekly with the picture of her and her youngest daughter with the word 'scandal' written across it won't be so happy," Olbermann said.

He expressed little sympathy at another point when GOP anger at rumors over the Internet about Palin were being discussed.

"We'll see if people feel sorry for unfounded rumors on the Internet," he said. "If that's the case, Senator Obama's probably standing up and cheering and waiting for people to feel sorry for him."

Perhaps most embarrassing, Joe Scarborough was discussing positive developments in John McCain's campaign at one point when Olbermann was heard on an offstage microphone saying: "Jesus, Joe, why don't you get a shovel?"

How MSNBC thought this was going to work is beyond me. Having Olbermann anchoring serious political coverage eliminates any appearance of impartiality that they might want to have. There's no escaping his persona, which is, to put it mildly, not generally associated with factual accuracy or intellectual honesty. It's like asking Bill O'Reilly to anchor the coverage. You can't do it without fostering a general sense that something untoward is going on. In Olbermann's case, it clearly was.

All the drama made MSNBC a punch line when top NBC anchor Brian Williams appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" last week. "Is there no control?" host Jon Stewart asked him. "'Is it 'Lord of the Flies?'"

A sheepish Williams said that every family has a dynamic of its own.

"But does MSNBC have to be the Lohans?" Stewart said.

When Jon Stewart, whose show, in his own words, is on after "muppets making crank phone calls", says your news organization is acting like a bunch of petulant, bloodthirsty children, you may have a legitimate problem. His perfectly valid analysis of the problems with Crossfire preceded the surprising death of the show by only a couple months.

Mr. Klein specifically cited the criticism that the comedian Jon Stewart leveled at "Crossfire" when he was a guest on the program during the presidential campaign. Mr. Stewart said that ranting partisan political shows on cable were "hurting America." Mr. Klein said last night, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise." He said he believed that especially after the terror attacks on 9/11, viewers are interested in information, not opinion.

...and yet, CNN, like the rest of the MSM, still fails to deliver, and their public trust continues to collapse, just like the rest of the MSM.

Palin FTW

Three weeks ago, I was sitting at a bar talking to a couple of friends about why Sarah Palin was a great, outside-the-box choice for McCain's running mate, but acknowledging that it would never happen. Imagine my surprise to find myself, a few days ago, explaining to another group of friends why Sarah Palin had been the best choice, from a strictly strategic point of view, that McCain could've possibly made. At this point, I'm pretty sure it's all been said all over the blogosphere already, but I'll lay it out anyway.

Put aside your partisan feelings for a second. Put aside that she's a moral authority on the most heated issue of this election cycle (oil production), put aside the question of whether women will come out in droves to vote for her (if just one in one hundred do, that's still a huge score; and many studies show women as more pro-life than men).

Instead, consider this:

1) The effective lines of attack available to the Democrats require them to burn down their own house in order to get to Palin. Accusing her of being too inexperienced to be Vice-President reminds the world that Barack Obama, someone who is, at the most generous, equally inexperienced, wants to be President. Mocking her for hunting and her teenage daughter for having a teenage boyfriend who, as rural teenage boys do, describes himself as a "redneck" only reminds the hundred million plus Americans who don't really see anything wrong with that they have nothing in common with national Democrats. One brilliant criticism even suggests that with a pregnant daughter and a child suffering from Down's Syndrome, Palin is too "distracted" to be Vice-President. To make that argument, you have to trash decades of feminist support for the idea that women can choose to blend a home life with a high-profile careers (which is already generating feminist backlash), assume that the wife is automatically the primary childcare provider, and quietly accuse single mothers and the disabled, both theoretically Democratic demographics, of being harmful burdens on their loved ones.

2) The Democrats, having anointed themselves the party of women, cannot allow the first woman in the White House to be a conservative, pro-life Republican. They must do anything and everything they can to stop it. Failure to do so would upset the decades-old balance that the Democrats depend on to remain a viable party.

Democrats should be trying to play this cool, but they can't control themselves. They have a rabid fear of Palin becoming President in 2016 and forever undermining the Democratic Party's reputation as the champion of women. They're forced to go nuclear, and every insane rumor imaginable has been vomited forth in just a few short days. Thousands of canned letters to the editor and blog comments spreading this transparent, goofy nonsense are popping up everywhere. The net result is that Sarah Palin is now more popular than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or John McCain. A majority of Americans, though slight, believe the media is conspiring against her. There's palpable desperation, becase the ideological left, lacking shared moral premises with mainstream America, can't understand why their attacks aren't just failing, but are blowing up in their face.

That's to be expected, because these are the same people who thought that accusing John McCain of being wealthy was an effective attack, unaware that Americans, as a rule, like seeing people get rich, and don't begrudge it to war heroes.

McCain held this for the ideal moment, waiting for Obama to pick a boring, formulaic running mate and to almost completely run out of steam, unable to generate significant results from either his ridiculous "European Tour" or the convention. Obama had said everything he had to say, repeatedly, and Americans were already tired of hearing it. It's then that McCain decided to do something unusual, to throw Obama's little checkerboard onto the ground and start setting up a chess set. It seems to be working.

Now, there's still room for it to all go horribly wrong, for something truly bizarre to come out of the sky about Palin, for Obama's campaign to get their head together, but at least based on what's known, I think it's now entirely McCain's race to lose.

Update: Oh, and this stupid thing?


First, we all know how that ended. Second, Jesus had a real job: he was a carpenter. Third, apparently, some leftists still don't see that trying to compare Obama to Jesus makes Obama less popular, and makes his supporters seem like dangerous lunatics.

That's More Like It

The Hurricane hasn't even hit yet, and Louisiana officials, while they're clearly doing better this time, are still in traditional disarray.

With about 2,000 Louisiana National Guardsmen stationed in New Orleans, neighboring Jefferson Parish has seen few troops sent to help police so far despite repeated requests to the state, the parish's emergency planner said.

"I'm very frustrated that we've got twice the population to protect than New Orleans," said Deano Bonano, the emergency planner.

His comments come on the heels of a National Guard announcement that 300 soldiers in the 2nd Squadron, 108th Cavalry Regiment are departing Shreveport en route to Jefferson to bolster the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office ranks.

Bonano said he was unaware of the Guard's announcement and added that he was told troops aren't expected to arrive until tonight.

"We don't know who is coming or how many are coming," he said.

In fact, the Louisiana National Guard is barely sure who's coming.

Whether all 300 soldiers en route from Shreveport will be in Jefferson Parish is unclear. A National Guard press release says all of the soldiers will be in Jefferson helping the Sheriff's Office.

Spc. Qualan Jefferson, a squadron spokesman, said elements of his unit are going to the Morial Convention Center -- in New Orleans -- and to Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner.

Bonano he was told the troops will deploy to the Alario Center near Westwego, where the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office would dispatch them out for security missions.

This time around, though, when other states offered to help, Louisiana has actually bothered to respond. National Guard elements from Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, New York, and Missouri are already on their way.

It's Almost Like They're a Real State

New Orleans, prepare for glory.

With forecasters warning that Gustav could strengthen and slam into the Gulf Coast as a major hurricane, a New Orleans still recovering from Hurricane Katrina's devastating hit drew up evacuation plans.

Taking no chances, city officials began preliminary planning to evacuate and lock down the city in hopes of avoiding the catastrophe that followed the 2005 storm. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin left the Democratic National Convention in Denver to return home for the preparations. Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency to lay the groundwork for federal assistance, and put 3,000 National Guard troops on standby.

If a Category 3 or stronger hurricane comes within 60 hours of the city, New Orleans plans to institute a mandatory evacuation order. Unlike Katrina, there will be no massive shelter at the Superdome, a plan designed to encourage residents to leave. Instead, the state has arranged for buses and trains to take people to safety.

Evacuating? What a remarkable idea! Trains and buses? It's almost like they figured out who is responsible for emergencies.

At a suburban Lowe's store, employees said portable generators, gasoline cans, bottled water and batteries were selling briskly. Hotels across south Louisiana reported taking many reservations as coastal residents looked inland for possible refuge.

Also? Rifles.

Admitting He Has a Problem is the First Step

In the course of a confession you probably saw coming a mile away (and stop asking yourself "...if he's not the father and the affair ended two years ago, why was he at the hotel?"), a root cause is revealed:

"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic," Edwards said in trying to explain his behavior.

No! John Edwards, the Democratic Party's silky pony boy, the man who even the New York Times now calls a "Ken doll", narcissistic? Not this man!
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It's an Old Joke

Comparing Barack Obama to a vacuous celebrity bimbo, it turns out, is insulting to vacuous celebrity bimbos.

Sure, the reference in the ad is corny and awkward, but if you watch, it doesn't actually imply that there's anything wrong with Paris Hilton.

It doesn't need to.

Incandescents Didn't Start the Fire

When I wrote this post, I omitted references to the fire hazard created by compact fluorescent lightbulbs because, supposedly, there is no true fire hazard, and "heat and possibly a small amount of smoke" are actually a normal behavior when the bulb burns out. In practice, that seems to be a potentially significant problem, as Green Living reports:

However, a couple of weeks ago I noticed the typical acrid smell of an electric fire in the sitting room. I couldn't see any fire but the stench was getting stronger and it seemed to be particularly bad just under the light. I thought we must have some problem with the wiring. I turned the lights off, checked outside whether there was smoke coming out somewhere, even crawled up into the attic space - but I couldn't see anything unusual.

The following day I noticed that one of the light bulbs in the sitting room was "dead". When I tried to unscrew it, it cracked at the base, just where the glass goes into the plastic encasing - not good, given that CFLs contain nasty mercury. We quickly evacuated the kids, opened all the windows, I made sure the thing didn't break completely, carefully sealed it in a plastic bag and got rid of it.

Then last week I again noticed this awful smell, this time in the bedroom. I looked up and saw thick black smoke coming out of our ceiling light!...Two of the three CFLs in the lamp were partially blackened inside and there were signs that the plastic base had started to melt and burn.

Maybe I was just unlucky and this was simply a bad batch.

No, it's not a bad batch. According to National Geographic's Green Guide, this means they're working correctly, and the Democratic Congress, in their infinite and progressive wisdom, expects you to deal with it.

Meanwhile, James Lileks, commenting at Tim Blair's blog, has his own horrifying encounter with CFLs.

They finally brought out some dimmable CFLs, so I tried one. Eight dollars. Never mind the ghastly light, which would be fine if I wanted to shoot a movie scene that took place in a Soviet morgue, and never mind the way the bulb 'dimmed' by going from Much Light to No Light with little difference in between; never mind the palsied flicker that announced the bulb was on. What bothered me the most, I think, was the fact that it broke after one use. Died out of shame, perhaps.

Took it back to the store, and they offered to take it off my hands to handle the mercury. But that would cost another dollar.

It's little wonder this bill won't take effect for several years: Congressional Democrats get to act like they're helping, without facing angry voters. If the technology was truly ready for consumers, there'd be no need for the delay.

Kneel Before Obama

I wish I'd been the first to catch this.

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. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life. In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.

I am General Zod. Listen to me, people of the Earth! Today I bring a New Order to your planet! Each of you... each man, each woman, each child - all will march proudly together in this New Order! There is no longer a need for separate nations in this world, no need for petty squabbles between one group and another. All of you will work together, strive, produce, and sacrifice together - and all for a common goal! It is useless for you to resist as it is for me to annihilate you. You will only bring death and destruction upon yourselves, while I will lose the potential products of your labor. There is now one law, one order, one ruler who alone will determine your collective destiny! One force before which all of you shall kneel forever! In return for this submission you will have my generous protection! In other words - you will be allowed to live.

Blasted Helmet

One of the problems my new schedule has caused is a backlog of stories that seemed important or particularly humorous, but are no longer current. Yet, going back through my archive of links allows me to see stories start to evolve into one of history's many hilarious spectacles. Consider, for example, these scenes from life at the site of the Democratic National Convention:

April 17th:

Protesters will not be confined to "cages" during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and the city wants to get away from the long lines of shoulder-to-shoulder, riot-gear-clad police that typified security at the national conventions in Boston and New York, Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown said today.

May 18th:

Fried foods are forbidden at the committee's 22 or so events, as is liquid served in individual plastic containers. Plates must be reusable, like china, recyclable or compostable. The food should be local, organic or both.

And caterers must provide foods in "at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white," garnishes not included, according to a Request for Proposals, or RFP, distributed last week.

"I think it's a great idea for our community and our environment. The question is, how practical is it?" asks Nick Agro, the owner of Whirled Peas Catering in Commerce City. "We all want to source locally, but we're in Colorado. The growing season is short. It's dry here."

June 25th:

The host committee for the Democratic National Convention wanted 15,000 fanny packs for volunteers. But they had to be made of organic cotton. By unionized labor. In the USA. Official merchandiser Bob DeMasse scoured the country. His weary conclusion: "That just doesn't exist."

Convention organizers hired the first-ever Director of Greening, longtime environmental activist Andrea Robinson. To test whether celebratory balloons advertised as biodegradable actually will decompose, Ms. Robinson buried samples in a steaming compost heap. She hired an Official Carbon Adviser, who will measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed. The Democrats hope to pay penance for those emissions by investing in renewable energy projects.

To police the four-day event Aug. 25-28, she's assembling (via paperless online signup) a trash brigade. Decked out in green shirts, 900 volunteers will hover at waste-disposal stations to make sure delegates put each scrap of trash in the proper bin. Lest a fork slip into the wrong container unnoticed, volunteers will paw through every bag before it is hauled away.

"That's the only way to make sure it's pure," Ms. Robinson says.

Coors Brewing Co., in Golden, Colo., will donate biofuel made from beer waste to power the convention's fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. A green star for the convention -- but it has rankled die-hard liberals, who boycotted Coors in the 1960s and '70s to protest hiring practices that they said discriminated against blacks, Latinos, women and gays.

July 22nd:

The committee hosting the Democratic National Convention has used the city's gas pumps to fill up and apparently avoided paying state and federal fuel taxes. The practice, which began four months ago, may have ended hours after its disclosure. An aide to Mayor John Hickenlooper released a statement Tuesday evening saying that Denver 2008 Host Committee members would pay market prices for fuel and would also be liable for all applicable taxes.

July 22nd:

"It's pure propaganda. The rush to pass these so-called 'dangerous weapons' ordinances have the sole purpose of manipulating the public into thinking that those conducting free speech during the DNC are going to beat cops with sticks and squirt them with urine," said Tom Mestnik, street puppet coordinator for Re-create 68.

July 23rd:

Denver firefighters have learned of a house full of urine being stored to throw at police.

July 28th:

One of the headlines projects in the DNCC's green initiative for the Denver Convention[, the Wray windmill,] has yet to produce any clean energy. But that didn't stop the DNCC from including it in its four projects that delegates can buy carbon offsets for.

The DNC also produced a movie about the Wray windmill project where their director of greening asked students in the town, "What does it feel like to live in Wray and know you are generating clean power?" [despite the fact it isn't generating any].

July 28th:

Mayor John Hickenlooper told radio host Mike Rosen, who writes a column for the Rocky, that Tent State University's plans for a sleepover [in City Park] for as many as 50,000 protesters are out of the question.

The mayor also told Rosen that the city might turn on the sprinklers if the protesters don't abide by Denver's 11 p.m. curfew.

July 28th:

The host committee is as much as $10 million short in fundraising, and financial difficulties have forced it to cancel two dozen parties for delegates. Denver officials are scrambling to deal with the logistical challenges of Barack Obama's acceptance speech being held at an outdoor stadium instead of in the arena where the rest of the convention will take place. Even special daisies that the city bred partly to show off for the convention are failing to sprout.

Criticism has been so harsh that this month the host committee felt compelled to issue a news release defending its much-mocked catering guidelines, which recommend organic produce and color-coordinated meals and discourage fried food.

[Mayor] Hickenlooper referred to the event as the "blasted convention" and compared it to a summer he spent painting a house for which he was never paid.

I can hardly wait. You can spot Mayor Hickenlooper in this photograph because, incredibly, he's the guy who has his helmet on backwards.

What He Hath Wrought

Dan Curry notes that the New Yorker has brought forth the most terrifying revelation of our age:

That year, [Obama] gained his first high-level experience in a statewide campaign when he advised the victorious gubernatorial candidate Rod Blagojevich, another politician with a funny name and a message of reform. Rahm Emanuel, a congressman from Chicago and a friend of Obama's, told me that he, Obama, David Wilhelm, who was Blagojevich's campaign co-chair, and another Blagojevich aide were the top strategists of Blagojevich's victory. He and Obama "participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor," Emanuel said. "We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two." A spokesman for Blagojevich confirmed Emanuel's account, although David Wilhelm, who now works for Obama, said that Emanuel had overstated Obama's role. "There was an advisory council that was inclusive of Rahm and Barack but not limited to them," Wilhelm said, and he disputed the notion that Obama was “an architect or one of the principal strategists."

In fairness to Obama, everything Blagojevich says is a lie, so it's entirely possible that, in fact, Obama merely once ate at the same restaurant where these meetings were being held. On the other hand, it's possible that the thousands of pages of evidence I've sorted through indicating that Illinois is governed by one of the most perfectly feckless career criminals in gubernatorial history, in fact, contain the clues that answer the riddle underlying every Obama controversy: "Is he really that bad, or is he just so incredibly dopey and naive that he had no idea what happened?"

That defense didn't last long with Blagojevich, but recent video evidence of what happens when Obama's teleprompter goes on the fritz really does seem to point to the latter:

David Axelrod, the preeminent strategist in the state, declined to work for Blagojevich. "He had been my client and I had a very good relationship with him, but I didn't sign on to the governor's race," Axelrod said. "Obviously he won, but I had concerns about it. . . . I was concerned about whether he was ready for that. Not so much for the race but for governing. I was concerned about some of the folks - I was concerned about how the race was being approached." Axelrod's unease was warranted. Blagojevich and people close to him have been tied to a seemingly endless series of scandals. The trial of Tony Rezko revealed that Rezko used his influence in the Blagojevich administration to profit from companies seeking business with the state. There is speculation that Blagojevich will be the next governor to be indicted, and the Democratic Speaker of the Illinois House, Michael Madigan, has raised the issue of impeachment.

In fact, Blagojevich is such a disaster that his reign of terror has culminated both in a widespread demand for the addition of a recall provision to the state constitution and a call for the entire document to be scrapped and rewritten. He is the destroyer of worlds, a mini-Mugabe notable among modern history's failed leaders not just for the sheer scope of his incompetence and mismanagement but for the unanimous disrespect it has earned him.

Obama - He helped bring Illinois change you can believe in!

Bicyclist Attack

This blog, March 6th:

I've never trusted bicyclists.

In Seattle, Friday:

Seattle Police spokesman Mark Jamieson says that on Friday between 100 and 300 bicyclists were riding down a street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, blocking traffic on both lanes, when a man and a woman in a Subaru station wagon tried to pull out of a parking spot.

But some of the bicyclists blocked them, sat on the car and began banging on the vehicle. Words were exchanged between the male driver and the bicyclists.

The driver feared being assaulted and backed up, but bumped a biker and enraged the group. In response, some of the bikers smashed the windshield and rear window. He tried to drive away but hit another bicyclist.

The car stopped a block down and the bicyclists surrounded the car. One biker punched the driver through an open window and another used a knife to slash the tires.

When the driver got out of the car a male suspect struck him with an unknown object in the back of the head. The driver was later taken to the hospital.

Critical Mass is a typical "direct action" event held in cities around the world. "While the ride was originally founded with the idea of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to bicyclists," says Wikipedia, "the leaderless structure of Critical Mass makes it impossible to assign it any one specific goal." In practice, they use a number of deliberate tactics to deliberately block traffic, are reportedly often drinking, and this isn't the first outbreak of violence. In Chicago, they're often tailed and escorted by police to prevent this kind of incident, while other police forces have struggled to find effective tactics to deal with the rides.

At least one bicyclist claims that, in this case, they merely "nicely asked the guy to wait", when the motorist tried to back out anyway and ended up hitting at least two bicyclists. In the past, their deliberate obstruction of traffic has sparked drivers to initiate violence, so it's not impossible this guy did, too, but why the bicyclist thinks they have any kind of right to ask anyone to wait for them to finish breaking the law is beyond me. Their "mass" has no special standing of any kind, and if he did hit two people, it's the scene of an accident, not a justification for a violent riot.

It would seem that in practice, the event is really designed to prove how unfriendly and selfish hippies are toward people who actually use the streets for their intended, lawful purpose. Some communities have organized alternative events with named like "Courteous Mass" and "Critical Manners", for bicyclists who want to go on a nice group ride but want nothing to do with this crap. Concerned motorists should drive prepared, properly equipped to harsh a rampaging Critical Masser's mellow.

Update: Reader John, in comments, notes that in situations like the above, he prefers to depend on "a stick" to mace.

Let's compromise.

Obama's World Tour

It's entirely possible that there's a perfectly good explanation for this, but it looks bad:

1:42 p.m.: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. "Barack Obama will not be coming to us," a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. "I don't know why." Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.

4:49 p.m.: Obama enters the luxury Ritz Carlton hotel wearing a T-shirt, black sweatpants and white trainers -- apparantly to work out in the hotel's gym. He kept up the campaigning on the way there, smiling and waving at tourists and other onlookers.

If you're running for President of the United States, and already making yourself look just a tiny bit presumptuous...

"It is not going to be a political speech," said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. "When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally."

"But he is not president of the United States," a reporter reminded the adviser.

...you might want to avoid the appearance of skipping out on meeting wounded American soldiers to hit the treadmill.

Meanwhile, local foreign-person Bob Bennekers respectfully disagrees with Barack Obama's insistence that we should all learn foreign languages:

In Holland (where I come from) it was mandatory to learn three languages (English, French and German) at high school. This makes sense for Holland as a small country. It does not make sense for Americans, since English is a world language and Americans already speak it.

Because some Americans may visit Europe, should all Americans learn French? What about German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, etc.? French does not get you very far in Germany. It seems Obama wants Americans to learn a foreign language just to be "sophisticated."

Not so much that we'd be "sophisticated", but because he actually thinks it's "embarrassing" that most Americans learned languages that are not useful within thousands of miles of their homes and will probably never play a significant role in any part of their lives. That is to say, not that it would be an admirable goal, but that it would correct what he views as a fault.

Obama acts like Europeans learn English because they want to impress Americans, or because learning a foreign language is cool in Europe. That's ridiculous. Internationally, whether you're talking about Europe or India, learning multiple languages isn't some frivolous exercise to give you that "edge" on a resume, to make you feel better about yourself, or to impress foreigners. It's a practical part of life. That's why they aren't studying Swahili, they're studying English, the common language of science and commerce, and the languages of their neighbors, people they meet regularly. In America, our neighbors already speak English. There are no particular languages we can teach in schools that will ever have the kind of relevance English, German, and French have in the Netherlands - even Spanish meets that criteria in only a few parts of the country.

Now, that's not to say people shouldn't learn another language, if they want to or have a use for it, or that schools should not offer the courses. However, pushing widespread bilingualism through our public schools is a ridiculous and wasteful notion, because no teenager can reasonably be expected to decide which languages his future goals will require. Spending two years learning to find the bathroom in everyone's favorite dying language is a huge mistake when so many students can barely write a coherent paragraph in English. Teaching basic economics, programming languages, or some other practical skill would do a great deal more to improve a student's quality of life after graduation than studying beginner's German.

In my own life, I've learned enough French to read the general news, but when I set out to do that, I did it purely for sport and because I had the time to invest, not because I thought I simply "should" know a second language for the sake of being bilingual. I'll spend my time doing what's valuable to me, rather than something that's valuable to Barack Obama, but ultimately useless to the people who depend on me and irrelevant to my own happiness. When I have children in school, I'd also prefer it if the school system respected my son or daughter enough not to waste their time imposing language studies on them that won't actually help them accomplish their goals. There's nothing to be ashamed of in not knowing a second language, and that Obama thinks it's "embarrassing" that he himself does not know one speaks chiefly to the deluded egoists he apparently hangs out with, not the state of the nation.

Update: Ow.

Obama noted that in a break from his whirlwind schedule "we've got some down time tonight. What are you guys gonna do in Berlin? Huh? Huh? You guys got any big plans? ... I've never been to Berlin, so ... I would love to tour around a little bit."

Maybe he could've checked out the nightlife at Rammstein.

Technology > Sustainability

In recent years, Australia, much of Europe, and the United States have all passed upcoming bans on familiar incandescent light bulbs, even though the alternative, CFL, has some issues. They don't last nearly as long as advertised in ceiling fans, or in enclosed or recessed lighting, and can take several minutes to properly light up in cold, outdoor settings. More importantly, their lifespan is significantly reduced by being switched on and off frequently. This is fine in a commercial setting, where the lights are on all day, but in a residential setting, where people normally only use a few of their lights at a time, protecting the bulb's lifespan would mean leaving lights on instead of flipping them off before leaving the room.

Accordingly, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has noticed at least one community, Traer, Iowa, where a 1987 swap of 18,000 incandescents for CFLs (dubbed the "Great Light Bulb Exchange") resulted in an 8% increase in energy consumption. (Despite this, Traer Municipal Utilities was given an "Energy Innovator of the Year Award".) With the subsidies that low-income energy consumers already receive, in many areas the higher initial cost of installing CFL may mean that they lose more money than they save.

Finally, as you've probably heard by now, the bulbs contain mercury, leading to warnings that they should, if possible, not be disposed of in your regular garbage, that a drop-cloth should be put down when changing bulbs, and that if you break one, you should open the windows, shut off your climate control system, evacuate the room for at least fifteen minutes, then come back, put on rubber gloves, and, without using a vacuum cleaner, recover every possible scrap of the bulb and double-bag it. (Exactly what you should do if you live in a building where the windows don't open is unclear, and even unbroken bulbs must be double-bagged, in preparation for their inevitable breakage in the garbage truck.)

Used safely, they're the inconvenient low-flow shower heads of home lighting. Of course, most people won't use them safely.

However, as usual, markets and technology were already well on their way to answering the incandescent bulb question, and to making CFLs obsolete, without government intrusion:

Researchers at Purdue University have overcome a major obstacle in reducing the cost of "solid state lighting," a technology that could cut electricity consumption by 10 percent if widely adopted.

The technology, called light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, is about four times more efficient than conventional incandescent lights and more environmentally friendly than compact fluorescent bulbs. The LEDs also are expected to be far longer lasting than conventional lighting, lasting perhaps as long as 15 years before burning out.

But LED lights now on the market are prohibitively expensive, in part because they are created on a substrate, or first layer, of sapphire. The Purdue researchers have solved this problem by developing a technique to create LEDs on low-cost, metal-coated silicon wafers, said Mark H. Oliver, a graduate student in materials engineering who is working with Sands.

"When the cost of a white LED lamp comes down to about $5, LEDs will be in widespread use for general illumination," Sands said. "LEDs are still improving in efficiency, so they will surpass fluorescents. Everything looks favorable for LEDs, except for that initial cost, a problem that is likely to be solved soon."

So far, it's only been cost-effective to install LEDs in bulk, in large facilities such as grocery stores, where there's a lot of cash flow to cover the initial cost.

Migros expects to sink energy use 80%, including lower air conditioning costs due to the low waste heat generation of light emitting diodes....In addition to the waste reduction achieved by this long life-span, LEDs do not use harmful mercury nor lead. And there is one last, perhaps less obvious, advantage to LED lighting in a supermarket: LEDs emit no ultraviolet nor infrared light, minimizing spoilage of foodstuffs.

I would love to see someone challenge the Congressional ban on incandescent bulbs on Constitutional grounds.

Blackening the Name of Science

When they created Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, they kept the mold, and used it as the model for all hilarious stereotypes of leftists:

In a discussion among county commissioners Monday, Kenneth Mayfield (white) said a county office seems to have become a "black hole" for paperwork.

That prompted an "Excuse me!" from John Wiley Price (black), who declared the term racially loaded and offered "white hole" as an alternative. Justice of the Peace Thomas G. Jones (black) then joined in, demanding an apology from Mr. Mayfield (still white).

Mr. Mayfield refused, saying later, "Anybody who's offended by that statement needs serious psychiatric help."

I talked to Mr. Price on Thursday, and he's astounded that this has become such a big deal. He said it's unfortunate that Judge Jones escalated things by asking for an apology.

"It was never meant to be more than a five-second teachable moment," he said.

In that regard, Mr. Price isn't backing down from his initial comment. He said a racially sensitive person seeks to avoid using "black" in its many negative forms.

Except that it wasn't a teachable moment, unless Price meant for himself. It was a moment that made Price look laughably ignorant and over-sensitive. A black hole absorbs all matter and energy that comes within its event horizon, emitting (for all practical purposes) nothing. Since no visible light escapes, it appears black, just like a black coffee table, which absorbs the full spectrum of visible light and emits very little of it back to your eye. (This is also why someone wearing a black shirt on a summer day gets hotter than someone wearing a white one: the absorbed energy is turned into heat) It is, as Mayfield protested at the time, "a science term".

Because it essentially absorbs all things and gives nothing back, "a black hole" is an appropriate term for an incompetent government bureaucracy. Calling it "a black man", on the other hand, could be racist, but there is no relationship between the two terms. For it to be a "white hole", it would have to produce energy and matter endlessly, and consume nothing, which, if that were to occur in a government agency, would cause a paradox that would destroy the very fabric of spacetime.

It became a "big deal" because people love to laugh, in this case, at Price. What's worse, he couldn't just say "I was only kidding", he has to insist that he had a point:

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is sticking to his comments that the term "black hole," which a colleague used, is racist. Price also says language such as "angel food cake" and "devil's food cake" are also racially insensitive.

Everyone I know likes Devil's Food Cake better. Why is he racistly associating the inferior cake with white people? Why does the proverb warn that the white devil is worse than the black? Why do the evil undead have pale skin? Why is the villain in the The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe the "White Witch"? Why are atomic bombs associated with a "white flash"?

Why is everyone oppressing me?