JERRY POURNELLE ON SHORT-TERM THINKING:

Five years ago we were told that increased refinery and oil pumping capability in the US would do no good because it would take five years for those to affect gas pump prices. Query: if we had greatly increased supply over the past five years, would not oil be at about $75/bbl, still high, but not headed to $200? And if we do nothing to increase supply now, where will oil go? . . . We are in a time of national emergency, but it does not affect the politicians, who continue business as usual.

My response to those who say that increased drilling is pointless because it won’t yield immediate results — like Arnold Schwarzenegger –is why worry about the greenhouse effect, then? Nothing we do will cool the planet immediately. Yet we’re told immediate action there is vital. In fact, we’re told that by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the very same speech.

UPDATE: TigerHawk: “One would have thought that this point was so obvious it would not have to be made at all.”

You can never be too obvious, it seems.

I’D SETTLE FOR SOME OF THE OLD KIND: Healthy eating is “the new patriotism.”

DAVID WARREN ON CANADA’S “HUMAN RIGHTS” KANGAROO COURTS:

The people are still sleeping, but some “blowback” has finally begun to occur. Given its very eccentric inquisitorial practices, which have been documented and publicized on the Internet, the CHRC is now under an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation, and there is a Parliamentary investigation pending. (As a public relations exercise, the CHRC has also hand-picked its own “independent” investigator to do what we can only assume will be a defensive whitewash, as usual at taxpayer expense.)

It is against this background the CHRC decided that the better part of valour is discretion, and that it truly did not need to be prosecuting such high-profile targets as the bestselling author, Mark Steyn, and the mainstream newsweekly, Maclean’s, at the present time. The CHRC can retrench, and return to its bread-and-butter business of destroying little people who command no publicity — biding their time until circumstances are propitious to “extend their mandate” again.

Vigilance is the price of liberty, and it is crucially important that we not take the heat off Canada’s HRCs when they retreat. Canadians need to know the whole truth about what these vile “human rights” investigators have been doing.

Yes, now is not the time to slack off. I also think it would be a good time for Canadians to flood the HRCs with complaints about racist and sexist speech from Muslim clerics, Womyn’s activists, and the like. God knows there’s plenty of material to work with.

RALPH PETERS: ” If current trend-lines continue, it may not be long before Baghdad is safer for Iraqi citizens than the Washington-Baltimore metroplex is for US citizens. Iraq’s government is working, its economy is booming – and its military has driven the concentrations of terrorists and militia from every one of Iraq’s major cities. And our troops are coming home. Where’s the failure?”

DARTMOUTH: A hostile environment — for learning how to write well.

A RECIPE for hummus. I used to make that all the time. May have to do it again, soon.

VIETNAM attempts to shore up drooping Dong.

A BIG HONKIN’ SUNFLOWER, from Les Jones.

BECAUSE IT’S NOT AS IF WE NEED MORE ENERGY: U.S. Halts Solar Projects Over Environment Fears.

Okay: Nukes are out, coal is filthy, wind power destroys Ted Kennedy’s view, and solar leads to “environment fears.” Do they just want us all to freeze in the dark? Pretty much, I’d say . . . .

(Via Sonic Frog). Seems like this would be a good campaign issue for somebody . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Robert Schwartz emails:

Whatever happened to the Democrats? It used to be that their sole criterion for evaluating proposals was how many blue collar jobs they would create. Oil drilling and nuclear power would have been no brainers as both activities require millions of man hours of labor, real blue collar, sweaty, dirty labor. These days Democrats seem to care more about beachfront property values than worker’s jobs.

Yes, the Democrats have become the party of the upper-crust now.

KNIFEBLOGGING FOLLOWUP: A big cutlery sale.

Earlier knifeblogging here here, here, and here.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: The Iraqification of Lebanon.

“SOMEONE IS GOING TO BE DISAPPOINTED.”

UPDATE: Corroded corruption?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yes we can!

MORE: Rage!

HEATH SHULER:

In surprisingly blunt language, U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler complained this week of “a lack of maturity” in the U.S. House.

The North Carolina Democrat accused some of his fellow lawmakers of thinking they’re “Hollywood stars” and said many of them spend more time playing politics than doing what’s best for the country.

“It’s quite embarrassing,” he said. “I mean, I wish all constituents could sit sometimes in the gallery and just see what goes on on the House floor.”

Indeed.

ZIGZAGGING ON IRAQ: “Recent reports and rumors have indicated that Senator Obama plans to aggressively move to the middle on Iraq in the coming months. This is a good political move for Obama, if only because he’s finally starting to recognize reality.”

Plus, Keith Olbermann will praise his “manly posture on Iraq.”

PHIL GRAMM: “They didn’t live up to what they promised to do. Power corrupted them. They spent lots of money and tried to buy votes. Republicans concluded that they could make voters love them by governing the way Democrats did.”

Plus this: “Why is America the richest country in the world? . . . It’s not because our people are more brilliant; it’s because we have a better free-market system. Why has Texas created 1.6 million jobs in the last 10 years whereas Michigan has lost 300,000 jobs and Ohio has lost 100,000 jobs? Because governance matters, taxes matter, regulation matters. Our opponents in this campaign are so dogmatic in their goal of having more government because they love the power it brings to them that they’re willing to let it impose costs on the working people that they say they want to help. I am not.”

AT VODKAPUNDIT, a Bill Clinton photo caption contest.

MORE GUN TALK over at Inside Higher Ed. Plus, Arming Obama.

Plus, Morton Grove ends its gun ban. “The Heller dominoes are falling.”

WELL, THIS IS CHEERY: “Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall ‘below zero’. Alarmist? Maybe, but I”m worried about inflation too.

SOME LINKS on the anti-aging conference at UCLA this weekend.

DON SURBER: Does tourism do more harm than offshore drilling?

TOM MAGUIRE: “The same folks who can read the Constitution and Bill of Rights and find an unassailable right to abortion and gay marriage can’t find a right to possession of a firearm.”

A BLOG REVIEW OF WALL-E.

IF YOU CRITICIZE MUGABE, you’re a racist.

THE AMERICAN NON-EMPIRE. If we were an empire, we’d be acting more like Putin’s Russia. And, as a consequence, getting better press. . . .

UPDATE: Related posts here and here, from Eric S. Raymond.

HOWARD KURTZ:

Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban.

Oh, I’m sorry. He didn’t change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement.

That, at least, is what his campaign is saying. The same campaign that tried to spin his flip-flop in rejecting public financing as embracing the spirit of reform, if not the actual position he had once promised to embrace.

Is this becoming a pattern? Wouldn’t it be better for Obama to say he had thought more about such-and-such an issue and simply changed his mind? Is that verboten in American politics? Is it better to engage in linguistic pretzel-twisting in an effort to prove that you didn’t change your mind?

Regardless of what you think of the merits of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling overturning the capital’s handgun law, it seems to me we’re entitled to a clear position by the presumed Democratic nominee.

Good luck with that. Kurtz even notes that Big Media is covering for Obama:

But even though the earlier Obama quote and the “inartful” comment have been bouncing around the Net for 24 hours, I’m not seeing any reference to them in the morning papers. Most do what the New York Times did: “Mr. Obama, who like Mr. McCain has been on record as supporting the individual-rights view, said the ruling would ‘provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.’ ”

Supporting the individual-rights view? Not in November. . . .

Even the Tribune–the very paper that the Obama camp told he supported the gun ban–makes no reference to the November interview. Instead: “Democrat Barack Obama offered a guarded response Thursday to the Supreme Court ruling striking down the District of Columbia’s prohibition on handguns and sidestepped providing a view on the 32-year-old local gun ban. Republican rival John McCain’s campaign accused him of an ‘incredible flip-flop’ on gun control.”

So McCain accuses Obama of a flip-flop, and the Trib can’t check the clips to tell readers whether there’s some basis in fact for the charge?

USA Today takes the same tack

The November view is down the memory hole. Apparently you have to go to the blogs to find people who can use Google.

Related: “Obama still doesn’t get YouTube, does he?”