Communications And Mailing Lists

There's a bit of a kerfluffle right now being led by the left wing blogs about an interview at a fairly obscure magazine, Texas Monthly, with Dan Bartlett, fomer counselor to President Bush. The ruckus, such as it is, is about this quote:

-What about the blogs?

We had to set up a whole new apparatus to deal with the challenges they pose. Are they real journalists? The Washington Post, for example, has journalists who are now bloggers. Do you treat them as bloggers? Do they get credentials?

-Let’s think of it as a practical matter. If one of those journalists-turned-bloggers, Chris Cillizza, e-mails you to say he needs an interview, and at the same time one of the Post’s print reporters—say, Dan Balz—e-mails you and says he needs an interview, and you can do only one . . .

Balz.

-Because the print edition of the Post has more of an impact?

Because Balz is on multiple platforms. He’s booked more easily on television. He’s read by more people. He influences people a bit more. Now, the question might not be as much Chris versus Dan as maybe, “Is it Dan Balz or one of the guys at [the conservative blog] Power Line?”

-Yeah, or what if [conservative blogger] Hugh Hewitt called?

That’s when you start going, “Hmm . . .” Because they do reach people who are influential.

-Well, they reach the president’s base.

That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

I think Ed Morrisey hits this one quite well:

As far as regurgitation and efficiencies of communication, we all wish Bartlett would have succeeded as well as he apparently thinks he did. Most of us have begged for more interaction at the White House, and have received little more than e-mails with speech transcripts. On one occasion, when the White House wanted to make its case on executive privilege, they held a blogger conference call, which I live-blogged here. There may have been one more, but at the moment I don't recall it.

The only other contacts that I've ever received from the White House communication team have come when they disagreed with me. For a while, they would submit on-the-record responses to posts I had written to rebut some criticism. On a few occasions, their staffer would comment on a post, and on two occasions I posted their rebuttals to the main page and then rebutted the rebuttals. That's hardly regurgitation.

Kevin Drum, meanwhile, gloats about it:

What makes this especially precious is that it comes right before Bartlett argues that the Bush White House didn't really treat Fox News any better than any other news outlet. So the right-wing blogosphere now has a new motto: Even more credulous and slavish than Fox News. It's a proud moment for them.

Now, for the record, I have never - not once - been contacted by the White House communications people. But I would be forced to ask Kevin Drum if he was ever a member of Kos' Townhouse mailing list. Not that I expect an answer. One would just like to know.

The Light Fantastic

James Randerson, writing in The Guardian, describes a new initiative in Europe to use lasers to try to create a working fusion reactor.

It's a clean source of energy using fuel that can easily be extracted from sea water, and it isn't owned by Saudi Arabia. We're talking about fusion - and a multinational project led by British researchers that aims to use high-powered lasers to produce nuclear fusion, the same physical reaction powering the sun. If they succeed, they could solve the approaching world energy crisis without destroying the environment.

Although the team admits a commercial fusion reactor is still decades away, it believes using lasers to spark fusion shows great promise. The EU has agreed to fund the setup costs for a seven-year research project called HiPER (High Powered laser Energy Research) to build a working demonstration reactor. But preparing for that stage - requiring the collaboration of 11 nations including Germany, France, Canada and Russia - is expected to cost more than €50m (£35m). Building the reactor itself will cost more than €500m.

Money machine

Why such investment? Because if we can control a fusion generator, it will be self-powering, offering abundant excess energy (to convert in turn to electricity) from virtually unlimited fuel. On top of this, its waste products won't contribute to climate change or pose the long-term waste storage problem that fission - our present nuclear generation system - poses. And we desperately need new electricity sources.

But fusion is infamous for its grand claims, massive grant proposals and, so far, limited success. Physicists joke that they've been saying fusion power is 40 years away for the past 40 years. So far it's only been used in the H-bombs exploded in tests, but that was uncontrolled.

Up to now, most attention has been on so-called magnetic fusion (see panel), in which a powerful magnetic jacket brings two different isotopes of hydrogen at enormously high temperatures close enough to fuse. That releases huge amounts of energy. It's been done - but no reactor has been built large enough to generate more energy than is put in via the magnets.

It's an interesting read, but I was a bit surprised at this passage:

Laser fusion involves some mind-numbing science. CLF's laser, called Vulcan, is the most powerful laser in the world: it can focus 500 joules of energy (about the same required to lift 50 apples by 10m) into a laser burst just 40 femtoseconds (40 x 10-15) long - equivalent to one second in a million years. During that period, it's applying 10,000 times more energy than the National Grid generates

I'm not sure how to square that claim with other information. The University of Rochester (New York) has been conducting laser fusion experiments since 1970. I've known about that place for decades, even though I do not follow fusion research closely. Their OMEGA facility is supposed to be operational this year and will be able to focus as much as 40,000 joules of energy from 60 lasers - which calcs out to slightly more than 666 joules per laser. Here's the website for the UofR's Laboratory for Laser Energetics which describes their facility. Unless I'm misreading something, the European project is far, far behind the one at Rochester.

Pssst. Wanna Buy A Hot Car?

Low mileage, light bar, siren, two-way radio. No charge for soot.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - A Greensboro police officer investigating a burglary found something else that was hot, his cruiser. Police said an officer responded to a reported burglary in progress around 2:15 a.m. Tuesday. They said the officer parked his vehicle and turned the headlights off.

But when he returned to his vehicle, the officer found it was totally engulfed in flames. Firefighters were called and they extinguished the fire.

They say it was leaves under the car. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have another theory entirely. We suspect that it was another flaming Kamikaze squirrel arsonist who took out the cruiser.

Terror In Omaha Mall

At least 9 people are dead in a shooting incident in an Omaha, Nebraska shopping mall. Thirteen people in all were shot and the gunman took his own life. Fox News is reporting 8 killed and 5 wounded. Police are reporting that a rifle was used in the shootings. This is ugly.

UPDATE: More information coming across now.

Witnesses said the gunman fired down on shoppers from a third-floor balcony of the Von Maur store.

The gunman was found dead on the third floor with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and his victims were discovered on the second and third floors, police said.

"My knees rocked. I didn't know what to do, so I just ran with everybody else," said Kevin Kleine, 29, who was shopping with her 4-year-old daughter at the Westroads Mall, in a prosperous neighborhood on the city's west side. She said she hid in a dressing room with four other shoppers and an employee.

Eight victims dead plus the shooter, five wounded, two in critical condition. There isn't much more yet, but Fox did report that Omaha police were called to remove a live hand grenade from the mall parking lot just a few days ago.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has a roundup of local news links. KETV-Omaha reports the shooter has been identified as 19-year old Robert A. Hawkins of Bellvue, Nebraska.

OMAHA, Neb. — The shooter at Westroads Mall was identified as Robert A. Hawkins of Bellevue, according to the Sarpy County Sheriff's Department, and a suicide note said he was going to be famous.

Hawkins, 19, had been arrested on a couple of misdemeanors in November and was due in court this month. One charge included minor in possession of alcohol. He was arrested on Nov. 24. He was due in court for an arraignment on Dec. 19.

Sarpy County deputies said they are getting a warrant to search Hawkins' home in the Quail Creek neighborhood in Bellevue.

The woman who owns that house at 4302 McCartey Drive, who only gave her first name of Debra, said Hawkins had a lot of emotional instability. She said she thought he was turning things around. She said he had just learned that he was fired from McDonald's.

The KETV coverage is very detailed.

Ugly For Huckabee

The story of Mike Huckabee's involvement in the Wayne Dumond case is a major problem for him. Huckabee lobbied for the release of the rapist who then went to Missouri and raped and murdered another victim. Dumond was attacked and castrated while waiting for trial and Huckabee apparently felt sorry for him. Byron York explains:

That’s where things stood when Huckabee took office on July 15, 1996. Last August, Huckabee told me he had his doubts about Dumond’s guilt, and also felt sorry for him over the castration attack. On September 20, just weeks after taking office, Huckabee announced that he intended to set Dumond free, saying that there were “serious questions as to the legitimacy of his guilt.” On October 31, Huckabee met with the parole board. Not long after, the board voted to free Dumond, but on the condition he move to another state. Huckabee was pleased, in part because — given that the board had voted to free Dumond — there was no need for Huckabee to commute the sentence or pardon him. So Huckabee denied Dumond’s now-irrelevant pardon application while at the same time congratulating him on his soon-to-come freedom. “Dear Wayne,” Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond. “My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place.”….

……I asked about the “Dear Wayne” letter. Didn’t Huckabee want Dumond to go free? “I thought he would, you know, be clean,” Huckabee told me. “And he had a job, he had sponsors lined up, so at the time, I did not have this apprehension that something horrible like that would happen. I did want him to report in [to parole authorities], because I just didn’t know — you never know about a guy like that.”

As he talked, Huckabee looked down. “I hate it like crazy,” he said. “It’s one of the most horrible things ever that he went off and did what he did. It’s just terrible. There’s nothing you can say, but my gosh, it’s the thing you pray never happens. And it did.”

There is, unfortunately, more than adequate documentation that sexual predators are extremely prone to committing another crime when they get out. Bithead at BitsBlog calls it Huckabee's Willie Horton moment:

Look, Gang… Huckabee may be doing well out in Iowa, but this stuff is NOT going to play well in New Hampshire, once it takes hold. And lest we forget, Huckabee’s already in trouble up there. They remember very well up there, Willie Horton. For those of you who don’t recall the ‘88 election….

I tend to agree. The reason Horton sunk Dukakis is not - as the left would have it - that it was dirty campaigning. What sunk him was that people like Willie Horton - or Wayne Dumond - remind voters that who they elect makes a difference in whether or not the criminals are let out to commit more crimes. I think Huckbee's in trouble with this and I do not see him coming away with a win in Iowa. Or anywhere else.

A Load Of Bull

Well, okay, properly it should be 'a load of steer' but that doesn't sound right. The Telegraph is reporting on a very, very large steer in Britain. He already weighs 3,000 pounds and isn't even close to being full grown.

A six-year-old Charolais bullock called The Field Marshall is tipped to become the biggest in the country over the next 12 months.

He already weighs 3,000lbs and is set to pile on another 650lbs in the next year alone.

That will take him past the current record-holder, his former stablemate The Colonel. He stood 6ft 5ins tall and weighed 3,500lbs.

The Field Marshall will not be fully grown until he is eight and is still the bullock equivalent of a late teenager. But he is already heavier than a Mini Cooper car, which weighs 2,458lbs, and weighs nearly as much as a BMW 3 series (3,053lbs). The white steer was raised by farmer Arthur Duckett, 78, who bought him two years ago and decided to keep him as a pet.

Apparently, Duckett has a thing for gigantic cattle kept as pets. He's got another one as well. Although that one is a paltry 5ft 6in tall. A veritable miniature. (That is one big animal, they have a picture.)

They’re Watching Over You

The debacle of the lost data disks in Britain - where the revenue office lost two disks containing highly personal data of millions of Britons - just took a turn for the worse. A lot worse, in fact. It seems that the real names and new identities of up to 350 people in witness protection programs were part of the data lost.

The missing data discs are understood to contain both the real names and the new identities of up to 350 people who have had their identities changed after giving evidence against major criminals.

The development is one of the most serious so far in the missing data discs scandal, in which the child benefit records of 25 million people - including their names, addresses, birth dates, national insurance numbers and bank account details - were lost by HM Revenue and Customs.

The new identities of protected witnesses would be valuable property on the criminal market and, if they fell into the wrong hands, could place their lives and those of their families in jeopardy.

It will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds to provide the witnesses with yet another identity.

The British nanny state is watching over everyone. Unfortunately the nannies are not competent to locate their collective posteriors with both hands. Don't think it can't happen here - it already is:

It should come as no surprise that university’s in America, though bastions of academic learning and grassroots protest, aren’t exactly what one would call “privacy friendly”. In just the latest example Montclair State University (N.J.) is requiring their students purchase special GPS tracking cell phones, whether they already have a personal phone or not:

Two years ago, well before Virginia Tech, Montclair State made the cell phones mandatory for all first-year students living in dorms at the largely commuter school in suburban New York City. Now, all new full-time undergraduates - whether they live on campus or off - are required to buy them. About 6,000 students have them now.

Karen Pennington, vice president for campus life, said she and others on campus wanted to use the phones for instruction - letting professors take instant polls in class, for instance - and for safety as well.

Notice that the introduction of Orwellian surveillance tactics is being done in the name of safety. Funny how the left screeches that George Bush is ushering in a police state. It seems to me it is already here - starting with  heavily leftist academia.

AMT Follies

The Democrats rode to victory in the 2006 elections promising change. They have changed things. Unfortunately, the change is to make things worse. The latest debacle is the promised 'patch' for the Alternative Minimum Tax, imposed by Democrats years ago and now trapping more and more middle class taxpayers. Harry Reid flubbed getting anything done before the Thanksgiving break and millions of tax refunds will now be late. The follies continue, however. This time, support for a tax hike to offset the patch are the problem - and intense lobbying (read gobs and gobs of campaign cash) have killed any chance of getting that hike.

Both parties expressed doubt, however, that enough votes could be mustered to approve tax increases sizable enough to replace the revenue lost from the patch. Republican senators and a growing number of Democrats have been echoing Bush's preference for the AMT to be altered without offsetting tax increases.

Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he expected that the Senate would approve an AMT patch soon but that it would be free of offsetting tax increases. "The votes aren't there in the Senate for offsets," he said.

The top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, Jim McCrery of Louisiana, agreed: "We're going to end up doing a one-year patch with no offsets."

Since winning control of Congress, Democrats have repeatedly vowed to fix the AMT. They have also said they would adhere to new rules, approved by the Democratic majority, that require any new spending or tax reductions to be paid for with spending cuts or revenue increases. Those rules, however, can be waived if large enough majorities agree.

Last month, the House narrowly approved a 10-year, $73.8 billion measure that would protect middle-income households from the AMT in part by increasing taxes on wealthy Wall Street financiers. The legislation also extended for a single year some three dozen tax breaks due to expire at year's end, including deductions for tuition expenses and state and local sales tax payments.

But the Senate has yet to approve corresponding legislation. The leading version of the bill that Reid tried to bring to a vote yesterday would have patched the AMT without offsetting tax increases. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has said he doesn't think there are enough Senate votes to offset an AMT patch.

A major reason for that deficiency is the effectiveness of the Wall Street lobby. Private-equity firms, whose multibillion-dollar deals have created a class of super-wealthy investors and taken many large corporations private, hired dozens of lobbyists and stepped up campaign contributions this year. They were retained to protect a special tax rate paid by investment firm managers on their income under a long-accepted interpretation of tax law.

You bet it was effective. Expensive, too. $11.7 million dollars handed to campaigns in the past nine months. Notice where support for the tax hike is slipping: among Democrats. Wonder where that money is going? It has been widely reported before that the majority of campaign contributions from the investment firms are going to the Democrats. Yep, they changed things alright.

Who the checks are payable to.

Clumsy Attacks

Jay Cost over at Real Clear Politics has a good analysis of just how dangerous Hillary Clinton's sudden rash of clumsy attacks on fellow Democrats is - to Hillary Clinton.

The consensus seems to be that Hillary's negativity is a bad idea.

This is what MIT's Stephen Ansolabehere - who, along with Shanto Iyengar, wrote one of the best books on negative campaigning - told Time magazine.

Clinton's harsh new rhetoric has not won much support, either from pundits or other Democrats. "I could see the desire to raise the salience of personal traits — because her strengths are experience and strength of character," said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at MIT and author of the book Going Negative. "But her choice surprised me — she might be emphasizing the wrong thing. Given how close this is in the polls, especially a month out, this might be a very risky strategy for her."

There are few people in this country who know as much about electoral politics as Stephen Ansolabehere. If he is as wary as Time has made him out to be - the Clinton campaign should take a second look at its strategy.

Cost points out the double-edged nature of going negative in a campaign. It is well worth taking the time to read it all. His closing line, though may be the sharpest observation of all:

It's one thing for her to be perceived as the battle-tested fighter who can fight off the Republicans. It is another thing altogether if she is perceived to be trying to destroy the candidate of the party's future.

I pointed out once before that I did not see Barack Obama as being willing to take the Vice President slot. It would effectively end his aspirations for the top post. He has run strongly enough that he can look forward to another attempt in four or eight years even if he loses this time around. Cost may have nailed why Hillary's attacks on Obama may really work against her with that insight.

Cascades Of Hypocrisy

Holman Jenkins, Jr. of the Opinion Journal has noticed something I pointed out some time back. I posted about an article in the New York Times that discussed the "cascade effect" that had led to decades of faulty medical advice about high fat diets. The faulty information pushed by zealots caused doctors and scientists to jump on a bandwagon because their was "consensus." The problem was that the consensus was reached by counting heads of people who believed in the consensus, not by actual scientific fact. Jenkins today points out, as I did then, that a lot of the "consensus" on global warming is also a cascade reached by counting heads. What's more, the "consensus" is being milked for huge profit by mendacious people who know full well that they are scamming.

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

With politicians and lobbyists, of course, you are dealing with sophisticated people versed in the ways of public opinion whose very prosperity depends on positioning themselves via such cascades. Their reactions tend to be, for that reason, on a higher intellectual level.

Take John Dingell. He told an environmental publication last year that the "world . . . is great at having consensuses that are in great error." Yet he turned around a few months later and introduced a sweeping carbon tax bill, which would confront Congress more frontally than Congress cares to be confronted with a rational approach to climate change if Congress really believes human activity is responsible.

Mr. Dingell is no fool. Is he merely trying to embarrass those who offer fake cures for climate change at the expense of out-of-favor industries such as Mr. Dingell's beloved Detroit?

Take Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist working with Kleiner Perkins, a firm Mr. Gore joined last month to promote alternative energy investments. Mr. Khosla told a recent Senate hearing: "One does not need to believe in climate change to support climate change legislation. . . . Many executives would prefer to deal with known legislation even if unwarranted."

Mr. Khosla is no fool either. His argument is that the cascade itself is a reason that politicians can gain comfort by getting aboard his agenda.

As Jenkins points out, if 50% of all gasoline were to be replaced with "green" alternatives the effect on global emissions would be about a 4% reduction. But some people with investments in those "green" energy sources would get very rich, would they not? The average person in this country is going to pay an enormous cost in energy price increases - and that money will go to line the pockets of those pushing the bandwagon down the street. Those folks will fly off to Bali in their private jets and live the life of luxury while the people back home pay for it all and suffer a declining standard of living.

Cold Trail

Police in Tyler, Texas fear that the trail has gone cold on the missing Frosty the Snowman. The 42-foot inflatable figure was stolen from the Dixon Farms Christmas tree sales lot where it has been a fixture for some 24 years.

Tyler police are still looking for suspects in the Saturday morning kidnapping of "Frosty" the snowman.

The 42-foot tall, 250-pound cold-air balloon went missing from the Dixon Farms Christmas tree lot on South Loop 323.

In his 24-year career of bobbing and waving at customers driving along the Loop, Frosty was plotted against, stabbed and vandalized, but never stolen.

"To me it's like hearing someone from Tyler was kidnapped," Cheryl Tonjes said while picking out a Christmas tree with her family.

"I know it sounds crazy, but he's one of the things you look for. I'm mortified that anyone in Tyler, Texas would do that because it's a tradition," she said.

"It's like someone stealing the Statue of Liberty," her husband, Steve Tonjes, added.

Workers arriving to the lot early Saturday morning discovered the snowman's pen empty and contacted authorities.

Nearly four days later, the drag marks from where Frosty's body was pulled over a fence and off the property are still visible.

The owner of the Christmas tree lot, Royce Wisenbaker, has offered a $1,000 reward, but doesn't think it looks good for Frosty's return. Who knew there was a market for hot snowmen?