Nanny-statism running riot among the pedagogical set. Teachers keep a watchful eye on children who have “best friends.” Such relationships, supposedly, lead to cliques, exclusion, and bullying. One would think that they would lead to trust and practice at (platonic) intimacy. Children may seek close bonds naturally, “[b]ut the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.” Lori Ziganto rightly takes these commissars of conformity and collectivism to task.

Gallup poll shows that conservatives still outnumber liberals by at least 2-1 in the U.S. This continues a trend from last year and is primarily the result of independents becoming increasingly conservative. The shift to the right may be partly cultural.  But there is also a considerable likelihood that some of the shift is a reaction against the excesses of the Obama administration’s left-liberalism.

More evidence that economic common sense actually is a good predictor of how humans generally react. As Medicare reimbursements decline, doctors take fewer Medicare patients. Shortages develop as government continues to distort the market further and more seniors enter the system. Oh, and as Obama/Reid/PelosiCare gain traction, more people will be thrown into similar government-administered programs.

Let’s see if the media give coverage to a Democrat contrasting “minorities and defectives” with “good, average Americans” with the same intensity and breadth as when a Republican says far less outrageous things.

In a similarly Orwellian vein, is the campaign by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (can one imagine the uproar if there were an “Organization of the Christian Conference) at the UN is trying to get the UN’s appalling “Human Rights Council” to investigate the imagined odious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry in the West. That lamp of religious tolerance, Egypt, wants “the council’s special investigator into religious freedom to look into such racism, ‘especially in western societies’ to ‘work closely with mass media organizations to ensure that they create and promote an atmosphere of respect and tolerance for religious and cultural diversity.’” Meanwhile, the rest of the article explains where the real religious intolerance in often deadly form lies and it isn’t the weak-willed and accommodationist West.

Continuing broadly with a theme, the “Nunsense” series reemerges to delight Off-Broadway musical aficionados yet again. I have no problem with spoofs of religion, done well. But, one wonders, would a bad critical review in the New York Times (and this did not get a bad review) be the only consequence were the musical a spoof of a different religion, say, one complete with even a representation of one of its key figures, a certain prophet? Or might there be a much more “explosive” critique? Just ask Danish cartoonists or South Park creators who draw spoofs of that prophet. For that matter, if anyone even shows a representation of this prophet, spoof or not.

Sarah Palin was right. Again. Canadian health care, soon to be emulated by the Obama administration: I have stage four colon cancer, and all I got was this lousy apology. From what some might call a “death panel.” Apology, but no treatment. Part (but not all) of the problem is a shortage of specialists. A government program produces shortages? You don’t say!

Bill Roggio’s excellent “Long War Journal” has an analysis of Predator drone attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. Beginning in 2008, the frequency and lethality of the strikes increased significantly.

Conservative student organizations are vilified and investigated for much less than the Muslim Students Union at UC Irvine has been able to do many years without repercussions. But their actions in interfering with a speech by the Israeli ambassador appears finally to have prodded the timid and lethargic UCI administration into some form of discplinary reaction.

Yet another reason why self-reliance, and the right to own firearms, are so important. One cannot rely on the police to be there when needed.

Newsbusters vets the President’s oil spill speech for inaccuracies and distortions and finds some polluted information. For example, “Moving forward, Obama also misrepresented the state of the oil industry itself. He claimed that Americans ‘consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s oil reserves. And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean - because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.’

There I was, minding my own business, watching some of the World Cup matches,
‘This howler,’ writes John Hinderaker at Power Line, ‘is a favorite canard of Democratic politicians. As is so often the case, they are relying on the public’s ignorance. Most people don’t realize that in the U.S., oil isn’t counted as part of our “reserves” unless it is legally available for drilling. Thus, ANWR, to take one of many examples, isn’t counted toward the total “reserves.” The U.S. government could cause our reserves to skyrocket overnight by opening new areas, on land and in shallow water, to drilling. But the U.S. is the only country in the world that has deliberately chosen not to develop its own energy resources. No one else is that dumb.’”

There I was, minding my own business, on a break from watching the World Cup, when I come across this. It seems that some leftist professor (I know, redundancy alert) has determined that what is keeping the toiling masses (i.e., everyone other than leftist professors who, like Platonic philosophers, have escaped the cave of shadows) chained to their horrible and meaningless existence is soccer. Without this “opiate of the masses” (his appellation borrowed from Marx and Engels, not mine), the promised earthly paradise of socialism would already be with us. Of course, in perfect leftist logic, he wants the game banned.

This discovery will raise the stakes in Afghanistan, but the U.S. probably won’t stick around to benefit. Advantage, China.

During the debate about Obama/Reid/PelosiCare, the President and Democrats in Congress crowed about how the plan would “bend the cost curve downward.” They recieved a scoring from the CBO that projected a slight savings over ten years compared to the existing system. Critics objected loudly that those projections were fantasy. One problem was that the plan included a 21% cut in Medicare payments to doctors, a step likely to produce even greater unwillingness on the part of doctors to see such patients, as some of my family members have found out personally. Those cuts went into effect on June 1. Predictably, just as has always happened before, Congress wants to cancel those cuts. That, of course, would put the lie to all of those promises the President and his allies made about cost containment. Indeed, given that the new health care law increases significantly the number of people who will end up on Medicare and other government programs, the cost is likely to be far higher under the new program than it would have been under the old system. So it is rather rich that Mr. Obama blames Republicans for wanting to hold him and the Democrats to the promises they made to ram the program down the American people’s throats.

I can’t stand it. This is what we in California are saddled with as a “Senator.” Barbara “Please call me Senator” Boxer thinks that the greatest national security threat over the next twenty years is carbon emissions. To the extent she is talking about carbon dioxide when she exhales while speaking, I will agree. Otherwise, she has lived down to her name as one of the dimmest bulbs, if not the dimmest, in the Senate. One of the conceits of liberals is their conviction that they are so much smarter than conservatives. Uhhh, no. Via Hugh Hewitt.

Listening to the media, one gets the impression that the people of Gaza are suffering from a humanitarian disaster-in-the-making, with dire poverty and lack of water, basic foodstuffs, children’s toys, and building materials. Well, maybe not.  Here is more detail about the privations suffered by these poor people in bulging markets, well-stocked stores, Olympic-sized pools, and fancy restaurants.

Congratulations for the U.S. on its 1-1 tie with heavily favored England in the World Cup. Unless the Americans really come down in performance in their next two games, they should make it through to the elimination round. But for a far more technically beautiful game, there was Germany’s 4-0 over Australia.

Belmont Club’s Richard Fernandez on the wreckage of American-Israeli relations and the danger to peace caused by the blundering Obama administration’s feckless and ideologically-motivated posturing.

I don’t recall this practice being considered by Justice Kennedy during his investigation of comparative legal systems when the Supreme Court considered whether it was ever constitutional to execute by injection a 17-year old who had tied his victim with duct tape and drowned her after taunting her and laughingly telling his friends that he could get away with it because he was a minor.

Given the Republican winner, had Mickey Kaus won the Democratic Senate primary, I would have been voting Democrat in the fall.

But not for this Democrat.

What goes around, comes around. Israeli students work to send flotilla to Turkey with humanitarian aid for the Kurdish and Armenian minorities and to protest the occupation of Cyprus.

Now, what could possibly go wrong here? FTC pushes plans for government subsidies of newspapers to “reinvent” journalism. Ed Morrissey does an excellent job of fisking the economic illiteracy that underlies the FTC’s arguments. Private advertising is already a “subsidy,” according to the “economists” at the FTC? as Mark Tapscott writes, “W]hat they cannot deny is what is clearly written in the FTC document and what it reveals about the intention behind the initiative, which is to transform the news industry from an information product collected by private individuals and entrepreneurs as a service to private buyers, to a government-regulated public utility providing a “public good,” as defined and regulated by government.” The result of all this is obvious. It’s not to protect newspapers and the broad dissemination of information. That is already done through the internet, despite the FTC’s odd dismissal of it as failed experimentation. Rather, this, like the interest in reinstituting the “Fairness Doctrine” and in promoting “community-oriented” broadcast licensing, are means through which government wants to extend its control over the press. They want to havethe traditional media become even more like Chris Matthews and other administration lapdogs. What’s next? Attempts to regulate political speech by bloggers? Oh, wait.

Interesting new intelligence reports that are reviving an older speculation. Are Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other al Qaeda capos being given safe haven by the Iranian regime and permitted to exit for purposes of terror attacks planned while in Iran?

There has been a lethargy and lack of urgency in the Obama administration’s response to the BP oil spill, to the point that the president of BP has not been able to get through to the White House to have a discussion with Mr. Obama. Secretary of Interior Salazar and press secretary “Dilbert” Gibbs have been able to burnish the administration’s faux-Mussolini credentials with the “we-have-our-boot-on-the-neck-of-BP” declaration. This curiously detached approach would have been greeted with a drumbeat of condemnation from the first week, had this occurred during a Republican administration. Obama is only now getting some heat. But, it turns out, that there may have been a reason for the administration’s lackadaisical manner. The President has known all along that the spill would take months to contain. That disclosure would have underscored the limits of government, something that an incorrigible statist cannot get himself to admit.

Interesting election polling on trends for November. I’m pleased to note that my long-term predictions of Republican gains in the 30+ seat range for the House are echoed by Larry Sabato and CQ. I am rather conservative in these things, due to my faith in the GOP leadership to seize defeat from the jaws of victory, but, then, so are Sabato and CQ. Republican gains could be higher, and this post shows what Republicans need to. Also check out this link. Message to the Republicans: Stop talking about huge gains; instead, get to work as if you’re going to lose so that you can possibly make those gains happen.

Not usually a topic for this type of post, but, since it involves media hypocrisy and double standards plus the flailing Newsweek, why not? Lori Ziganto lampoons Newsweek’s fretting over a Right Wing News story (link here) about conservative hotties in “new media.” Newsweekfinds this sexist and condescending because women are ranked on their looks, not their political acumen. Truth about the latter aside, as Ziganto shows in her post, this is the same Newsweekwith the cover of Palin intended to dismiss her as a lightweight because of her appearance. Never mind that, as Ziganto points out, Palin had more executive experience than Obama and Biden combined, a shortfall for the latter two that is becoming painfully apparent.