Archive for July 12th, 2008
July 12th, 2008
To hear some people tell it, belief in global warming is a KIND OF RELIGION, one to be shunned as demonic and antithetical of all that is good in our world — like Hummers and snowmobiles.
If so, this weird denomination has an unlikely new member: Pope Benedict XVI.
The pontiff DECLARED today that he wants to “wake up consciences” about the challenges that climate change pose to humankind.
Said Benedict: “We have to give impulse to rediscovering our responsibility and to finding an ethical way to change our way of life.”
One wonders how the global-warming deniers will respond to this apostasy by the pope.
Will they seek to measure his carbon footprint and then mock him for it?
Will they renounce him as a tree-hugging enemy of free enterprise?
Will they tell him to stick to Catholicism and leave matters of climatology to the experts, like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter?
July 12th, 2008
Who is Barack Obama?
Well, depending on whom you ask, he’s the new George W. Bush. Or the new John Kerry. Or Al Gore. Or Bill Clinton. Or Bob Dole. Or George H. W. Bush. Or Michael Dukakis. Or Walter Mondale. Or Ronald Reagan. Or Jimmy Carter. Or Gerald Ford. Or Richard Nixon. Or George McGovern. Or Hubert Humphrey. Or Lyndon Johnson. Or Barry Goldwater. Or John Kennedy. Or Dwight Eisenhower. Or Adlai Stevenson. Or Harry Truman. Or Tom Dewey.
For links to all these theories on Obama’s true political identity, check HERE.
POSTSCRIPT: And then we have the QUESTION of whether John McCain is the new Bob Dole.
July 12th, 2008
Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who DIED THIS MORNING of cancer at the age of 53, had an ability I could never match: He could vouch for another person’s correctness in every political instance.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Every president of the United States has a right to have a public-relations front man, somebody who can represent the administration in the face of questions from the news media about the daily flow of political events.
It’s a talent I’ll never have, because there’s never been a politician with whom I could agree on all matters — and I probably couldn’t avoid revealing my disagreements.
Yes, in most cases I could perhaps explain the political positions of a president for whom I worked. But if the issue was something on which my attitude was profoundly different from the president’s — say, a matter of war and peace — the difference inevitably would come through.
A good press secretary — and Tony Snow was a pretty good one — can pull it off. As I say, it’s a talent.
