Jill Greenberg, getting a taste of her own P-shop medicine:

(Via Doug Ross)

h/t: Vanderleun, who sees The Atlantic as more sinning than sinned-against; I'm not so sure in this particular case, leftward tilt and all.

More of Gerard, on Greenberg.

And yet more Greenberg at The American Digest. And this time, her husband comes to her defense; it isn't pretty, as Gerard fisks him pretty soundly.

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I thought we'd escape this one. Son of a bitch.

Now the Gang of Twenty will pass its own slightly less hoaxy but also pretty sucky bill in the Senate, and we'll be off to that energy-dependent future!

Charming.

Off to double-check the numbers, to see if a veto is possible. Of course, Bush would have to locate a pen for that . . . A the H suggests that I send him one, if necessary.

Just damn.

UPDATE: More here.

If Bush vetoes everything, will the clock still run out on the moratoria?

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Jim Manifold:

I submit that Sarah Palin is the most Heinleinian candidate for Vice-President of the United States in this countryÂ’s history (indeed, possibly the only one other than Truman in 1944).

Heinliein was so interesting: he was pulpy, libertarian, and fun.

Via Insty.

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1 Yes. She. Is. I caught that very soon after her candidacy was announced. To the degree that in some ways I've kept some of the best bits under my hat. Don't want to scare the "moderates" or anything. Though I have been mulling a post for the last couple of days where I pull out all the stops and lay it out: "Why I *Really* Want To Vote For Palin", and lay out all the juicy ways that she is so very much my candidate. Stuff that sends the Andy Sullivans of the world into snot-drooling hyperventilation.

Posted by: Desert Cat at September 17, 2008 03:05 PM (6go9w)

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The guy who pays his female staffers earn 83 cents on the male dollar, or the guy whose female staffers earn $1.04?

Anyone? Bueller?

h/t: American Digest.

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New York and New Jersey in play?

Thanks, Barry! And thank you, mainstream media!

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Again.

Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air:

The question . . . really isnÂ’t about reforming Wall Street, but instead reforming Washington. This crisis started because of government interference in lending markets, and it will repeat until government learns to stop dictating lending policy and avoid guaranteeing lenders.

Which campaign truly gets the problem? We probably wonÂ’t guess it from the spots they produce over the next few days, so McCain and Sarah Palin will have to make sure they make it part of their stump speeches. McCain got it right in his two . . . essays, and he needs to keep explaining it on the campaign trail.

John McCain on Fannie and Freddie:

Fannie and Freddie are the poster children for a lack of transparency and accountability. Fannie Mae employees deliberately manipulated financial reports to trigger bonuses for senior executives. Freddie Mac manipulated its earnings by $5-billion. They've misled us about their accounting, and now they are endangering financial markets. More than two years ago, I said: "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose." Fannie and Freddie's lobbyists succeeded; Congress failed to act. They've stayed in business, grown, and profited mightily by showering money on lobbyists and favors on the Washington establishment. Now the bill has come due.

What should be done? We are stuck with the reality that they have grown so large that we must support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the current rough spell. But if a dime of taxpayer money ends up being directly invested, the management and the board should immediately be replaced, multimillion dollar salaries should be cut, and bonuses and other compensation should be eliminated. They should cease all lobbying activities and drop all payments to outside lobbyists. And taxpayers should be first in line for any repayments.

Even with those terms, sticking Main Street Americans with Wall Street's bill is a shame on Washington. If elected, I'll continue my crusade for the right reform of the institutions: making them go away.

Zonker—the world needs grownups.

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Two of 'em just lead us back into economic quicksand:

1) The Pelosi House plan, 1434, which she is trying to ramrod through today. This would raise taxes, and effectively prevent any new drilling, via a) forcing oil companies to develop the leases they now have on non-productive land, and increase their losses therefrom, before they are permitted to drill in areas that have oil; b) setting the default for platforms and rigs at 100 miles offshore, where the oil isn't, and creating a dis-incentive for states to cut that in half, by denying them any share in revenue from said platforms and rigs; c) taking the Eastern Gulf of Mexico off the table. In addition, it contains an earmark for public transportation in the state of New York, which might or might not be a worthy cause, but certainly isn't being approached in anything like a democratic fashion. (Ah; after releasing the bill at 9:30 last night, they may allow three hours of debate on it today before attempting to railroad it again. Classy.)

2) Then, we have the "Gang of 20" Senate proposal co-sponsored by ten nominally GOP Senators (Dole [NC], Collins [ME], Graham [SC], Thune [SD], Corker [TN], Isakson [GA], Chambliss [GA], Sununu [NH], Warner [VA] and Coleman [MN]). This is slightly less crappy, in that it would permit some drilling 50 miles off off Florida's West Coast (in the Eastern Gulf), but still bans drilling off of the Pacific Coast. It allows states to share in the income from domestic fossil-fuel development, so that 100 miles could turn into 50 miles. But it still limits us to the Eastern Gulf and some parts of the Atlantic, so we'll still have shutdowns during hurricane season.

3) Then we have House and Senate versions of comprehensive energy reform, which are being blocked by Nancy "I Need a Big Jet" Pelosi, and Harry Reid, respectively.

And our legislators wonder why they collectively "enjoy" a 9% approval rating from their constituents.

If we can't do any better than (1) and (2), they shouldn't pass anything with the word "energy" in it at all. They should wait two more weeks, and let the clock run out on the existing moratoria. If the government has to shut down briefly, they should cite the embattled economy and the ongoing energy crisis, and point to the Democratic hijinks as the reason.

UPDATE: Margaret Thorning of the American Council for Capital Formation discusses the economic ramifications of energy development in a podcast here below.

She believes that that opening more areas for drilling would have send a signal to the market very quickly, and exert rapid downward pressure on oil prices. So we might get some immediate relief from a decent energy bill, and we would certainly be helping ourselves in the medium-term. (Long-term relief, of course, requires that the new technologies become viable—and they will. We have engineers working on electric, hybrid and flex-fuel vehicles now, and researching alcohol-based liquid fuels, better batteries, hydrogen possibilities, and the generation of cleaner electricity. This is all happening around the clock; it's just that we just don't know which alternatives will become most cost-effective, and when they will become practical. We need to let that race go on with as little interference as possible.)

h/t on the "Gang of 20" names: Double-Plus Undead, via Ace.

Here's the podcast:

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At least, straight women will, if you've got a statue outside of N.Z. Bear outside that PorkBusters Museum.

Not sure what his wife will think of it, though. 'Course, she'll probably disapprove more of the earmark than the attempt to immortalize her husband.

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Stacy's covering it.

I can guarantee you that more money would be going to the McCain campaign and its allies if it weren't for the unofficial blacklist against anyone right-of-center out here, and the ongoing effort to "out" anyone who might send any funds to anyone with an "R" after his/her name.

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". . . It didn't go down the way McCain says it did. My felony violation of the Logan Act unfolded in an entirely different fashion."

What a relief.

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They release it last night in the middle of the night; 270 pages or so. They're trying to force a vote on their faux energy bill in the House, while Pelosi continues to block a vote on the "all of the above" bill that might actually get something done on this issue (6566).

Rep Hastings from Washington state is talking about how not only does the fake bill effectively take most of the U.S. petro reserves off the table, but even as it subsidizes some renewables, it discriminates against hydro-power.

I love the fact that the opposition wants to establish timelines for inventions in regard to renewables, when in fact there is a race going on to make the breakthroughs necessary to make biofuels, solar, wind, geothermal and hydro-power cost-effective.

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Florida has spoken.

The dolphins and pelicans that swim just off Caladesi Island's linen-white sands along Florida's western coast help draw almost 80 million visitors and $57 billion to the ``Sunshine State'' each year.

As few as 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, energy companies say an even bigger prize waits to be taken from the seabed: oil and natural gas that might wean the U.S. off its costly dependence on resources from potentially unfriendly or unstable countries.

After opposing offshore drilling for a quarter century as a threat to their lucrative coastline, a majority of Floridians now favor it, polls show. Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline has hit voters' pocketbooks and psyches, even as the U.S. government says offshore drilling would have a negligible effect on oil supply and price.

At a Hess gas station on the mainland near Caladesi, Gerald Walker says he used to be against extracting oil off Florida, until prices soared. ``Drilling? At $3.64 a gallon, I'm all for it,'' says the 60-year-old accountant.

``Drill, baby, drill!'' is the Republican Party's rallying cry, and presidential hopeful Senator John McCain of Arizona is gaining traction with it, even in this coastal swing state. An increasing number of Floridians side with him when told he advocates expanded drilling to drive down prices, says Brad Coker of Washington-based Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc. Mason-Dixon's is one of several polls conducted this summer that showed at least 6 in 10 Floridians now support drilling.

National Security

``It's become a national-security issue because of wars in the Mideast and Russia's newfound bravado and aggression,'' Coker says.

McCain, 72, was 7 percentage points ahead of his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, 47, of Illinois, in a Florida poll released Sept. 11 by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Connecticut.

In the 2004 election, President George W. Bush beat Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts by 5 percentage points in Florida. Voters in Pinellas County, home to Caladesi and nearby St. Petersburg, split 50-50 between the two men.

The U.S. burns through about 21 million barrels of oil a day. Almost 60 percent is imported, mainly from Africa, the Persian Gulf and Latin America. Some of the sellers are openly hostile; Venezuela expelled the U.S. ambassador last week. Oil industries in other countries, including Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, have been targets of violence.

I don't think anyone wants drilling done off of either of Florida's coasts in that will diminish its beauty of have deleterious effects on its wildlife. But if I hear that figure one more time about how we have "only 3%" of the world's petroleum reserves, I think I'm going to scream, because 1) it isn't accurate [it's based on old surveys done with outdated technology], and 2) it's not a question of how much we have "in reserve," in the ground, but rather how much we are developing now during this critical 10-20-year period as we race to the finish line on nonrenewables. We just need to buy more time as we perfect biofuels, clean coal, electric/flex fuel cars, and make better use of natural gas.

Anyway, despite the drumbeat of "it won't help, it won't help" coming from the left, Florida seems to "get it," and McCain is ahead further now in the Sunshine State than G.W. was in 2004.

Three thoughts, Florida:

1) No matter what the media say, or whom they call it for, vote this November. I don't want anyone in the panhandle staying home because of anything they hear from the MSM;

2) Whenever you hear the phrase "50 miles," remember that it only takes 12-13 miles for an oil rig or platform to be invisible from shore. Instead of huge arbitrary miileage figures, it would be better to simply have all platforms and rigs kept out of sight of the beaches, and placed so that they do not interfere with boating, fishing, and diving industries, and do not have an adverse impact on marine life;

3) Hang tough. Every dollar we don't send to "our friends, the Saudis" buys us more time to get our renewables" act together. And it's one less dollar that might find its way to a suicide bomber with his or her eye on Orlando.

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. . . is rolling in the long green. Yippee!

I think that means there's hope for the rest of the undercapitalized blogosphere . . . . Coolness.

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It looks like if we can be especially frugal in our use of petroleum and natural gas for the next two weeks, we'll be in good shape.

Apparently there is a small amount of natural gas coming out of the Gulf, though most of those pipelines remain shut down.

Most refineries, of course, are concentrated in that region, so of course that will keep the gasoline supplies slow for a bit longer.

The good news is that there appears to be little or no actual damage to the existing oil rigs in the Gulf; apparently all the reconstruction/bracing that was conducted after Katrina/Rita was successful in further protecting the facilities there.

But I with so much of our petroleum supplies coming from the Gulf, I could really go for some OCS drilling right about now. Can I get an "amen" on that?

So, I'll be doing my part by walking to Ralph's for a bit longer . . .

Here's some footage from a news conference held by Red Cavaney, CEO and president of API, about the hurricaneÂ’s aftermath and industry efforts to recover:

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This doesn't make you look good, you know.

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Oh, please. Stop!

Yes: Hillary Clinton experienced sexism in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Yes: Sarah Palin experienced sexism (of a particularly vicious type) in the weeks after McCain named her as his running mate.

But: not every attack on Palin is a result of sexism; mostly, right now, it's driven by blind fear. If she were a young, good-looking fresh-faced man of any race (say, JFK), they'd still be looking into every expenditure, every per diem, every banned-book-that-wasn't-banned.

They tried to focus on biology, on the fact that she's either too feminine, or too masculine, or a tomboy, or an airhead, or whatever. Now it's just scattergun time, because the perception is that she's breathed new life into whathisface's—I mean, McCain's—campaign.

Carly: the Saturday Night Live skit was brilliant. The comedy wasn't about Sarah Palin, either. It was about Hillary Clinton, and feminine archetypes (call 'em stereotypes if you like).

Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression rested on the accent, and on making Palin into a bubblehead. But Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton got to do the heavy lifting, as she always does. Sure: she got to play the spurned, jealous woman. But she also got to play that person who is being goaded by a series of circumstances right to the edge of losing her temper, and barely keeping it under control. It was a thing of beauty.

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I'm not an economist; I got nothin'.

Except to get the government out of the way.

And maybe do some drillin'.*

There is the McCann-centric plan for fixing the economy, of course: hire yourselves a quality cartoon writer, or a terrific copyeditor/proofreader/fact-checker!

* And all the rest: flex-fuel cars, biofuels, clean coal, natural gas, some wind, a little solar. Some French-style nuclear power. But also . . . lots of drillin'.

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For some reason, Greenberg's Wikipedia entry is locked to new/unregistered users.

The one that got away.

Wonder what that's all about.

I hope she doesn't have any self-portraits online, or someone is liable to start P-shopping her. Only it might be elephant-poop raining down on her head, rather than the monkey-shit she photoshopped onto the picture of McCain. Or perhaps it'll be moose turds. Sky's the limit, really.

These dyed-in-the-wool Democrats? Experts at mobilizing the veterans' votes.

And some of the print media are impoloding. Average Americans can only be manipulated up to a point. After that, one has to step off the gravy train.

UPDATE: Gerard continues to follow and update this story. I think those of us who have worked in print publishing—particularly on high-end four-color monthly titles, for which the standards can be quite exacting, and the hours, long—have a special feeling of empathy for The Atlantic over this scandal. And though it will be linked in a lot of people's minds, this affair isn't really related to the Atlantic website's carrying of Andrew Sullivan's blog.

The Greenberg photography scandal has to do with the fact that The Atlantic's Editor, James Bennett; Deputy Editor, Scott Stossel; Art Director, Jason Treat; Publisher, David Bradley; Circulation Director, Dave Bergeman (whom I have worked with; he's a nice guy, and very honest)—and its entire art, production, editorial, advertising, online, and promotional staffs—were stabbed in the back by a vendor who betrayed their trust.

Jill Greenberg is the person who puts razor blades in apples on Halloween. She is the reason we dare not trust our neighbors, have trouble doing business on a handshake, and look behind ourselves when we're walking alone on city streets.

This is not a partisan issue—though it will be linked to media bias by many. This is, at the end of the day, a human decency issue.

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I know everyone's mad at Whoopi Goldberg for asking that question, but she was simply articulating a common fear that people have about strict constructionism, and it's a fear that right-wingers must address, particularly if we are going to assert that as a matter of law, it might be more appropriate if abortion were to be decided by the states, rather than by Federal overreach.

And it is a stickier issue than people like to admit.

What Whoopi is asking here:

is "how far do you want to turn back the hands of time?"

And whenever we talk about how we want the Constitution interpreted with the Founding Fathers' intentions factored in, we're going to get asked that question by the "living Constitution" crowd.

I think we should get asked that question by the "living Constitution" crowd.

Because the way I see is—as someone who has never set foot in a law school—the dirty little secret is that even strict constructionists wink at a certain kind of Federal "overreach," especially of the "Brown v. Board of Education" type. Because that same clique of crazy guys who wrote the original Constitution without spilling any of each other's blood managed to put together that "Declaration of Independence" thingie, which declared that "all men are created equal" [clearing the way for "all men and women are created equal," English being a Germanic language—and "man" being German for "one," the individual, gender aside: the "smallest minority"].

So strict constructionism has to do with intent, and we have a lot of supporting documentation on the Founding Fathers' intent—which was to create a new type of freedom for the individual, by limiting the power of the State. They had a vision, and it was a capitalist, individualistic vision.

The problem in comparing abortion "rights" with other types of rights is that in the particular case of abortion there are two individuals involved, and their rights/obligations have to be balanced against each other.

That is why abortion is problematic, and could well at some point be returned to the states to decide. It is also why gay marriage is inevitable, whether or not we go through a couple of decades of calling it "civil unions" or not. (Or, as I would prefer, call all legal unions "civil unions," and make them all legally equal. Then people could do the church part if they liked, and call 'em marriages if they liked. And no one would have to use the word "marriage" for anyone else's "civil union" if they didn't want to. And we could all stop arguing about that.)

Once one looks at the Constitution through the prism of the Declaration of Independence, it's easy to see that constructionism is not going to roll back civil rights (again—unless you see abortion as a civil right, which is all well and good, but you got there [and I am pro-choice] by rolling over the rights of the fetus).

This clip apparently upset a lot of people.* I thought it was fine; McCain came off very well, and in order to do that he didn't have to pretend not to be religious, or pretend that Constructionists didn't pose a danger to Roe v. Wade.

He just had to be himself, and he was funny. People always forget that McCain's funny, and it catches 'em off-guard.

* Including Allah, whose answer on abortion would be a Constitutional Amendment. Ouch. I'd much rather see that one determined by the states, if Roe v. Wade ever were ever to be overturned.

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. . . it would do something about this habit of rogue legislators, former Presidents, grievance-industry "activists," Presidential candidates, and Hollywood celebrities to go around attempting to make foreign policy on their own.

I mean, I do realize that foreign governments must meet with people like Pelosi (third in line for the Presidency) and Obama (one of two people who might become President this coming January). It would be rude of them not to. And presumably our actual ambassadors/the White House make it clear that they cannot speak for the Executive Branch when they go on these little rogue missions.

But why waster their time? Why go out of your way to make the U.S. look weak and fragmented? I know why: Pelosi and Obama—and all of them—were acting in their self-interest, rather than placing a high importance on U.S. security.

But it's a sad thing that people would undermine their own country in this way.

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