After blasting Pat Robertson's suggestion that a pact with the devil was responsible for this week's tragedy in Thursday's miscellany, I have to acknowledge actor Danny Glover's attempts to divine a relationship between global warming and earthquake activity: Mother Nature is not happy with what happened (or didn't happen) at the recent Copenhagen conference. No doubt this makes him a finalist in the Al Gore Scientist of the Year competition, but I bet he's really angling for a lead role in Al Gore's sequel, "An Inconvenient Truth II: I Can't See the Forest Because I Chose the Trees", or maybe writing the forward to Al Gore's investment primer: "How You, Too, Can Grow Rich From Green Power Hype".
On a side note: I have not personally reviewed the science underlying the global warming hypothesis; I do believe there is evidence of some climate change correlated with sunspot behavior, and I am skeptical about the material impact of man-made activities relative to natural factors and the predictive validity of current climate change models. I do think that Climategate raises serious questions about transparency in climate science; I do not like when scaremongering laymen like Gore make public apocalyptic predictions and assertions that go beyond the evidence, and relevant scientists, who seem to view Gore as a useful idiot, blurring the line between science and policy advocacy, protest in a nuanced, low-key, passive manner. More importantly, politicians without a research background are using science as a proxy for ideological conflict, including climate change legislation, with at best ineffectual, fuzzy goals/benefits and Draconian costs.
Obama and the Massachusetts US Senate Special Election
The race isn't going the way that Massachusetts Democrats planned it. The seat of late Senator Ted Kennedy was supposed to go to a Democrat fulfilling Kennedy's long-sought policy goal of expanding health care entitlements. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-to-1, with roughly half the voting public independent; Obama won the state by nearly 30 points in November 2008. Democratic nominee, Attorney General Coakley, won over 70% of the statewide vote in 2006 and initially had a huge lead over Scott Brown.
A strange thing happened on the way to Coakley's expected blowout victory. Martha Coakley went into a front-runner campaign mode, apparently underestimating Brown's ability to attract independent support. In fact, Brown has postured himself an independent conservative, accepting appearances by widely respected pragmatic Republicans like America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Governor Mitt Romney and has addressed key discontent with mainstream voters over the Democratic Party Health Care Bill by casting himself as the 41st Republican, forcing the White House to engage in genuine bipartisanship, and terrorism (e.g., Fort Hood and the underwear bomber). Coakley made some unforced errors, by claiming no terrorists in Afghanistan and mischaracterizing Brown's position in favor of conscientious objection for health care professionals in the administration of abortifacients in dealing with rape victims (Coakley appeared to suggest that pro-life medical professionals shouldn't work in emergency rooms).
Coakley's collapse in the polls is not unlike what happened to Scozzafava in NY-23. It shouldn't have caught her by surprise--after all, Virginia and New Jersey's governor seats went GOP for the first time in years, despite the fact Obama won both states in 2008 and actively supported the Dem candidates. Obama's good friend Governor Deval Patrick (remember: "Words? Just words?") is now around a 22% approval rating. Obama's approval ratings among moderates and independents have dropped with concerns over his legislative priorities and massive, ineffectual federal spending.
It looks like Obama is going to make a public appearance this weekend on behalf of Coakley, primarily because the Democratic Party Health Care Bill is thought to be at stake. (If Brown was to win, which would be viewed as a proxy against the health care plan, and the Democrats push ahead a partisan bill anyway, say with budget reconciliation, the election in 2010 might start looking worse than it does today for Democrats.) Whereas you have to respect the highly motivated Democratic Party machine in Massachusetts, no matter what poll you look at, the momentum is with Brown, and if Obama fails to boost Coakley to victory, it will change the dynamics in Washington DC, with moderate and conservative Democrats more likely to stand up against progressive agenda items. (There are also rumors Lieberman may endorse Brown this weekend.)
Political Cartoon
IBD cartoonist Michael Ramirez expertly points out the Obama Administration's ideological fixation on treating acts of terrorism as routine criminal activity with the defendant given certain American legal rights--including potentially compromising intelligence activities resulting in his arrest and hampering the usable intelligence gathering from a suspect as he lawyers up.
Musical Interlude: The First American Idol Original Song Hit
Kelly Clarkson, "A Moment Like This"
One can argue which AI singer was made the greatest impact; certainly, if you look at music awards, Carrie Underwood can make a strong case, with more US album sales than any AI alumnus; however, her success has mostly been in the country genre (8 #1 hits), not pop music (although her songs have had some crossover appeal, with 3 Top 10 singles). But it's hard to argue with Kelly Clarkson, the original American Idol, who has scored 8 Top 10 singles (plus 3 more on the US pop charts Top 10), by 2006 had at least one hit in the top 40 for 111 weeks, has earned two pop Grammies, and whose foreign album sales are as strong as her domestic album sales; Simon Cowell, the notoriously picky British judge, agrees that Kelly Clarkson has the best singing voice of the AI winners to date "by a mile". This was the first American Idol original hit and the first of Kelly's #1 hits:
