Looks Like We’ve Lost Alabama
And Tennessee. And Mississippi. And …

It turns out the Republican Party is responsible for the tornadoes that so ravaged large parts of the south. At least that’s what the leftwing Center for American Progress says:

“The congressional delegations of these states – Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky – overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous,” wrote CAP’s Brad Johnson. “They are deliberately ignoring the warning from scientists.”

Johnson’s justification is that climate scientist Kevin Trenberth warned the American Meteorological Society in January that “Given that global warming is unequivocal, the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warning rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”

It follows that if all weather events are caused by global warming, then any damage or deaths that result from any weather event are the fault of anyone who questions the hypothesis (and/or doubts the solutions proposed by the alarmists).

And of course, Obama’s head of FEMA is complicit too, since his reaction was: “Actually what we’re seeing is springtime.”

Note: Johnson later denied that he had blamed the Republicans, but I think the first sentence quoted above is pretty clear.

Academic Integrity: “Does It Really Matter That Much?
There have been two recent instances where highly-praised books that are frequently assigned as high school or college reading have been exposed as being factually fraudulent. The response of educators has been interesting – they don’t give a damn.

60 Minutes a few weeks ago ran an expose of Three Cups of Tea, supposedly a memoir detailing Greg Mortensen’s work in building girls’ schools in the Middle East. Except that much of it isn’t true, many of the schools were never built or aren’t operating, and most of the donations to Mortensen’s charity go into expenses (especially buying his books).

Three Cups of Tea was assigned to all incoming freshmen at Mississippi State University in 2010. Linda Morse, chair of the First-Year Reading Experience at MSU, would not say whether she believed students had been assigned a fraudulent book. But she did speak highly of the events and discussions that sprung from using the book in MSU’s reading program.

“We had our local (rabbi), we had a minister, and we had someone from the local mosque speak about what fasting means,” she said. “We used the themes in the book to help explore cultural themes that our students may not have been exposed to.”

One of the events featured Mortenson himself. Morse held a positive view of his visit, even in light of the recent controversy.

“I found him to be a passionate speaker and a very humble man,” Morse said. “I think our students were exposed to someone who had a very important message to talk about with them.”

Several other universities that assign Mortensen’s book take a similarly casual attitude toward truth. I like Lehigh’s comment: “Instructors can raise the issues of honesty in their classes, if they wish.” One can almost feel the shrug of disinterest.

John Steinbeck’s classic, Travels with Charley, a staple of reading lists for fifty years now, was also recently revealed to be mostly fiction, to which the response by one scholar was, “Does it really matter that much?”

What do Three Cups of Tea and Travels with Charley have in common? Both are chock full of liberal attitudes – PC to the max.

“Truth doesn’t matter as much as just getting the attitude ingrained in students by having them read this book,” Thorne said.

For Steigerwald, both students and scholars would be better served by applying some skepticism to the things they read.

“We should be on our guard, especially when you’re doing a book where you like everything you hear and see,” Steigerwald said. “The more you agree with it, the more it should raise the question in your mind, ‘Is it believable?’ ”

Wodehouse on Socialism
Speaking of books, my favorite writer is P.G. Wodehouse, and I am currently reading one of his lesser, early works, The Prince and Betty, written in 1912. I enjoyed this passage, describing the editor of the magazine, Peaceful Moments, leaving on vacation and giving instructions to his assistant:

“Well,” chirruped the holiday-maker – he was a little man with a long neck, and he always chirruped – “Well, I think that is all, Mr. Smith. Oh, ah, yes! The stenographer. You will need a new stenographer.”

The Peaceful Moments stenographer had resigned her position three days before, in order to get married.

“Unquestionably, Comrade Renshaw,” said Smith. “A blonde.”

Mr. Renshaw looked annoyed.

“I have told you before, Mr. Smith, I object to your addressing me as Comrade. It is not – it is not – er – fitting.”

Smith waved a deprecating hand.

“Say no more,” he said. “I will correct the habit. I have been studying the principles of Socialism somewhat deeply of late, and I came to the conclusion that I must join the cause. It looked good to me. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start in by swiping all you can and sitting on it. A noble scheme.”

A Tale of Two Recoveries
I’ll continue the book theme with that headline, but I promise to drop it for the rest of the post. John Lott writes of the first quarter GDP numbers:

Seven quarters into the Obama recovery, GDP growth has averaged an annual rate of only 2.8%. In contrast, since 1970, the first seven quarters of previous recoveries averaged 4.6%. The poor growth rate is especially surprising since the preceding recession was so severe, there should have been ample room for high growth as the unemployed returned to work. For example, the Reagan recovery followed a similarly high unemployment rate and saw the economy grow at an average annual growth rate of 7 percent.

A Quick Glimpse of Our Future
The inevitable result of any good being provided free (or at prices far below cost) by the government is that demand increases. If there is not an unlimited supply, the inevitable result of the increased demand is shortages and/or budget overruns. The only possible governmental response to those problems is rationing.

And it appears that is what’s happening in Britain as the government tries to rein in costs at the National Health Service:

The new investigation by GP, a trade journal, looked at the number of “individual patient funding requests” made by family doctors or hospital consultants in recent years. These are made when a clinician believes that their patient needs a particular procedure or drug, but managers at the local Primary Care Trust do not normally fund it even if it is recommended by Nice, the advisory body.

According to the results of responses to Freedom of Information requests by 103 PCTs, the number of requests rose from 53,000 to 62,000 between 2008-09 and 2010-11, an increase of 17 per cent.

At the same time, the proportion approved fell from 59 per cent to 46 per cent, a drop of 22 per cent.

Bloomberg Wants to Turn Detroit into a Concentration Camp for Immigrants
Well, okay, maybe that isn’t exactly what Mayor Nanny meant, but I don’t think it’s a wholly unreasonable interpretation of this:

And I’ll give you a good example of how you can fix some of the problems in America. Take a look at the big old industrial cities – Detroit, for example. Got a great mayor in Mayor Bing. But the population has left. You got to do something about that. And if I were the federal government, assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five or 10 years, start businesses, take jobs, whatever.

As Freeman Hunt said: “I’d comment on the Bloomberg comment, but it’s hard to type with my jaw sitting on the keyboard.”

The Weekly Mitch Pitch
Roll Call had an interesting character study on Mitch Daniels this past week, focusing on his early days as a staffer on Capitol Hill, and his legendary cheapitude. Not a lot of substance to it really, though I learned that Daniels was offered an appointment to the Senate to replace Dan Quayle, but turned it down. Still, it was a fun read. I particularly enjoyed the mental images engendered by this passage:

Daniels was also intensely loyal to his staff. One former colleague remembered calling him at 2 a.m. to ask him to come over to his place and help him exterminate a handful of rats who had eaten through the wall in his apartment. The duo trapped the rats, and while his colleague beat them with a racquetball racquet, Daniels stabbed the rodents with an ice pick.

Uh-oh – Daniels just lost the PETA endorsement.

Obama’s Tiny Bump
Sunday night, we had a few commenters saying that President Obama would get a lift in his approval ratings of epic proportions. One such:

Look at other major foreign/military events – Iraq War I, captuere of Saddam, September 11th, Pearl Harbor, fall of the Berlin Wall, etc. Get an average from those events, tack on a few, and I think you’d have what you’ll see here.

We were also hearing that the effect would be long-lasting and might guarantee an easy Obama win in 2012. More sober observers (self included) pointed out the ephemeral nature of such things in the past (Bush I and Churchill were cited) and suggested a much more modest and short-term gain for Obama. It may be early for the victory lap, but RCP is reporting an overall gain in approval of 4.5, while Rasmussen’s index has him up about five since the announcement, roughly matching an uptick that had preceded it.

He may still pick up a few more points, but clearly this has done little to improve voters’ overall perception of the president.

Update: Indy 500 Fires Trump

Donald Trump had been chosen to be the driver of the pace car at the Indy 500 later this month (why?), but he’s been dumped.

The Donald’s latest celebrity apprenticeship—as honorary pace car driver at the Indianapolis 500 centennial later this month—ran afoul of the sport’s faithful, a Democratic state representative and a group of Baptist ministers after the real estate mogul caused a national stir demanding President Obama produce a birth certificate to prove his citizenship.

One fan, Michael Wallack, started a Facebook page—We Don’t Want Donald Trip to Drive the Indy 500 Pace Car—on April 8. Today the page has more than 18,000 fans.

“He has no relationship to the track, to the race, to racing toIndianapolis,” Wallack told ESPN. “Then when he started going off on the birther stuff, that prompted me to do more and that’s when I started the page.”

Add your own miscellany in the comments.