The Barack Obama campaign has a new gimmick on its web site that strikes me as slightly creepy. It showcases how "Julia" fares under President Obama and President Romney. It begins when Julia is three years old:

Under President Obama: Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.

Under Mitt Romney: The Romney/Ryan budget could cut programs like Head Start by 20%, meaning the program would offer 200,000 fewer slots per year.

It goes on. How does President Obama do things when Julia is 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 37, 42 ... you get the point. He's even still the president when she's 65:

Under President Obama: Julia enrolls in Medicare, helping her to afford preventive care and the prescription drugs she needs.

Under Mitt Romney: Medicare could end as we know it, leaving Julia with nothing but a voucher to buy insurance coverage, which means $6,350 extra per year for a similar plan.

That's kind of weird, right?

"Daddy," my daughter said, "while you're resting for a couple of days, would you like to go to a Civil War Battlefield?"   After a solid month on the road, a few days of rest punctuated with an historical tour sounded like a splendid idea to me. Besides, neither one of us had been to this place and it would give my two-year old grandson a chance to run off some surplus energy.   So, after the little fellow and I watched his favorite movie, "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo," we loaded up a few provisions and set out for Pickett's Mill.  

History records that this was a battle which the Union lost.  Pressing quickly toward Atlanta in 1864, General Sherman decided to veer away from the heavily fortified and waiting Confederate forces of Confederate General Joseph Johnston at Altoona Pass, opting instead to steer due south from Marietta to Dallas, Georgia.  Searching for an adequate route, Sherman's forces encountered the forces of   Confederate General John Bell Hood, at New Hope.  Hood's forces stood their ground, surprising Sherman, who dispatched 14,000 of his men, under the command of Union General Oliver O. Howard to attack General Hood's forces from their right flank.  

On the morning of May 27th, 1864, while artillery rained down on Confederate forces at new Hope, General Howard ordered Brigadier General Thomas Wood to move his men to the right flank of the Confederates, a task that was easier said than done through the thick brush and lopsided North Georgia terrain.  General Wood's forces became disoriented, as their uncertain progress slowed considerably and allowed time for Confederate forces to shift in bulk toward the approaching Union soldiers.  

Advancing on the farm of Benjamin and Malachi Pickett, Union soldiers ran smack into forces of one of the best commanders of the Civil War, Confederate General Patrick Cleburn.  Venturing into what little open real estate there was, Union forces came under withering fire.  With support forces delayed by the nearly impassable terrain, the order to retreat was given and Union forces fell back.  Within the hour, a second attack by support forces was ordered, which attack met the same fate as the first.  That evening, at 10PM, Confederate forces went on offense, running Federal soldiers still further north.  It was a loss which set back General Sherman's plan to make a big bonfire of Atlanta by about a week, at the cost of approximately 1,600 Union and 500 Confederate casualties.  

I was standing outside the Information Center, trying to visualize the area engulfed in the thick smokey chaos of battle, with disparate orders being shouted simultaneously, the crack of tree limbs broken by incoming shots, primal cries of war mixed with cries of anguish, when through the tumult in my mind I heard, "Grandpa!"  It was my little grandson, Daniel, with my daughter, Christie.  "I got pinecone!" he bragged.  Happily uninformed of the savagery that once shook the ground where he stood, the little guy had mistaken our expedition for a pinecone inventory.  Picking them up can be a prickly experience though, so he instead would call one out and then kick it.  

The map showed three walking trails behind the Visitor Center, traced in white, blue, and red, with red being the longest at almost 2 miles and white being the shortest at one mile.  It looked like the red trail would bring us to an open battlefield before intersecting with the blue trail that would take us back to the Visitor Center.  So, after viewing a short video and looking at a few relics inside, we set out on a walking tour of the property. 

The last actual historical battlefield I had toured on American soil was Yorktown, and it was an unforgettable experience.  To see the trenches, to learn the tactics, the challenges, and get some insight into the incredible courage of the soldiers was a singular inspiration and I was anxious to soak it all in again.  The trail at Pickett's Mill consisted of a dirt path that varied in width.  It started out level enough, and wide enough for three of us to follow the painted red marks on the trees in front of us.  Our progress was slow as Daniel determined that there were many pinecones in need of kicking, but in time we were far enough down the trail that the Visitor Center was no longer in sight.  The trail narrowed significantly and the terrain became decidedly more difficult.  

Climbing a particularly steep hill, using exposed roots as steps, I was convinced that the top of the hill would open up to a vast field with defensive fighting positions, perhaps signs that explained what took place exactly where that fateful day in 1864, and a chance to catch our breath.  I was wrong.  The top of the hill revealed nothing more than the next hill.  The trail was now narrow enough for only a single file procession, and Daniel had to abandoned the pinecones after tripping and falling face first into the dirt.  But he's a tough customer.  He brushed himself off, saying, "Grandpa, I almost fall down!"  We decided it would be best if he held an adult's hand while we walked, which of course he resisted until my daughter told him that Grandpa needed his help.  So he took my hand and began mimicking every groan and grunt I made.   

Trudging up the next hill, I was eager to finally lay eyes on the battlefield and see for myself where the Federals ran into the cutting firepower of General Cleburn.  Perhaps there was a water fountain up there too, for old soldiers and their families to rehydrate for just a moment on this increasingly arduous trip.  The brush was thick over the trail, and I caught just the slightest scent of some sort of animal upwind.  This was more of an adventure than a tour, but the top of the hill was in sight and we knew from the map that there were some sort of buildings at the battlefield as well.  Finally, we crested the peak and beheld, …a steep descent into an area so overgrown with brush that it was difficult to see the trail.   Still there, were little red marks on a tree every 25 yards or so.  

Then came the bugs.  Some were dive bombing Christie, and making little bites.  Others were buzzing around my ears.  I could hear them but couldn't swat them away because I had a grandson in one hand and a backpack of grandson supplies in the other.   After a few more hills and ravines, our red trail finally joined with the blue one, giving us hope that the blue trail would double back toward the Visitor Center.  It didn't.  We crossed a creek of some sort, and then embarked on steep climb that no one with a small child should undertake.  Grandpa carried Daniel and Christie carried Daniel's supplies.  Evidently the union forces had needed a break at about that point as well, because there were two old park benches at the top of the hill.  Winded and tired, we sat down.  Daniel and Christie had chips and juice, and I began to worry.  We had already followed the trail to a dead end before realizing that it had branched the other way.  The thickness of the woods and winding hills made it nearly impossible to get one's bearings.  Using the compass on my smartphone, I had a general idea which direction the Visitor Center was, but the trail was proving increasingly difficult to determine and navigate.  

"I'll run up the trail just a little and see if there's anything there," Christie said.  I was too winded to argue.    A few minutes later, Daniel and I decided  she had been gone too long.  I've read too many headlines where someone runs ahead to scout the trail only to have something bad happen.  Daniel and I were re-packing his bag when she came back and reported that she found some other visitors who said they were also lost and trying to find their way back to the Visitor Center.  So rather than continue, we gave up on ever finding a battlefield and, indeed, gave up on the notion that one even existed.  We saw no historical signs explaining what happened that awful day in May of 1864.  No trenches.  No cannons. No grassy areas where a respectable battle might be fought.  We saw no battlefield, but only a damnable intermediate terrain navigation course.  

Maybe there was a battlefield somewhere.  The history books talk about it, after all.  But the Visitor Center must have been built in the next county over.  Little Daniel was just worn out  and had to be carried.  He's tall for his age, and must have weighed around 35 pounds when we began carrying him back to the car.  I judge that he gained a couple hundred pounds by the time we got there.  

"How did you like your tour of the battlefield?" the sadistically smiling bearded swindler behind the cash register asked as we staggered into the Visitor Center.  I managed a rather undiplomatic response to the effect that it didn't exist, whereupon he took me outside and pointed to various points of interest that existed "over there" someplace.  It was all fine by me, as long as we could, …just, ….leave.  Some 30 years ago, I would have had a walk like that for breakfast, with 70 pounds of gear on my back and a 23 pound M-60 machine gun in hand.   And I would have been paid to do it, rather than pay for the privilege as we had on this day.   But those days are gone, and the trail wasn't fit for small children, either. 

Then again, our bug bites, aching legs, exhausted bodies and diminished spirits were but a minor inconvenience, a trifling insignificance compared with what the men who died at Pickett's Mill endured.  They fought every element of nature we had encountered that day without the benefit of a trail, or painted marks on trees.  Laboring under the weight of their own gear, each hill taller and more steeply treacherous than the last, these men pressed on until finally, exhausted and confused, they were cut down by the thousands.  Author Ambrose Bierce served with the Union Army at Pickett's Mill.  Here's what he had to say about it: 

The battle, as a battle, was at an end, but there was still some slaughtering that it was possible to incur before nightfall; and as the wreck of our brigade drifted back through the forest we met the brigade (Gibson's) which, had the attack been made in column, as it should have been, would have been but five minutes behind our heels, with another five minutes behind its own. As it was, just forty-five minutes had elapsed, during which the enemy had destroyed us and was now ready to perform the same kindly office for our successors. Neither Gibson nor the brigade which was sent to his "relief" as tardily as he to ours accomplished, or could have hoped to accomplish, anything whatever.

Barack Obama on the stump promoting Obamacare in 2009:

Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you. First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.  Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.

Now the promises of 2009 meet the reality of 2012. The findings of a new report out of the House of Representatives, as reported by the Daily Caller:

A new report prepared by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee suggests that companies would save billions of dollars by ending health insurance coverage for employees under Presidents Barack Obama’s health care reform law.

Based on an analysis of health care data received from 71 of the America’s Fortune 100 companies, the report found that if the companies terminate insurance coverage in favor of paying the $2,000 per employee penalty, they would incur a financial benefit.

According to the report, companies surveyed would save on average $400 million — or a total of $28.6 billion in 2014 — simply by putting their employees on the government exchanges.

Between 2014 and 2023, the report says, the average savings per company would be nearly $6 billion, a total savings of $422.4 billion.

This, of course, was the problem all along. Whether or not "you" keep your plan is inextricably tied to whether or not "you" pay for your plan. If, like about 45 percent of Americans (according to the most recent Gallup numbers), you receive your insurance through your employer, the decision isn't yours to make.

Points to the president for honesty. No one in the government is taking your current health insurance away from you. They're just making it so unpalatable for employers that your boss will do the dirty work for them. Squint hard enough and you may be able to see the distinction.

In his forthcoming biography of Barack Obama, author David Maraniss turns to letters and diaries kept by former confidants and old flames of the young Obama to document the President's history.  The biography, which has uncovered some inconsistencies in Obama's own memoirs, is already making the President squirm.

The present edition of Vanity Fair is running a short adaptation of Maraniss's work, which zeroes in on Obama's relationships with two ex-girlfriends, both white, from his early twenties.  In a letter to girlfriend Alex McNear, with whom he had become acquainted at Occidental College, the young Obama wrote about literature and of his quest to find himself.  Excerpts:

I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements—Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.) And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter—life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?

[...]

Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin like balls of sound. My feet hum over the dry walks. A storm smoothes the sky, impounding the city lights, returning to us a dull yellow glow. I run every other day at the small indoor track [at Columbia] which slants slightly upward like a plate; I stretch long and slow, twist and shake, the fatigue, the inertia finding home in different parts of the body. I check the time and growl—aargh!—and tumble onto the wheel. And bodies crowd and give off heat, some people are in front and you can hear the patter or plod of the steps behind. You look down to watch your feet, neat unified steps, and you throw back your arms and run after people, and run from them and with them, and sometimes someone will shadow your pace, step for step, and you can hear the person puffing, a different puff than yours, and on a good day they’ll come up alongside and thank you for a good run, for keeping a good pace, and you nod and keep going on your way, but you’re pretty pleased, and your stride gets lighter, the slumber slipping off behind you, into the wake of the past.

Now, I've read neither Dreams from My Father nor The Audacity of Hope, but Ann Althouse thinks that these excerpts from his old letters should put to rest the notion that Bill Ayers ghost wrote the memoirs.   "I am now willing to believe Obama wrote his own memoir," she writes. "This is that jejune 'creative writing' style that I was talking about back in 2009."

Jejune indeed.  And entirely pretentious.

(h/t Mollie Hemingway)

Last week, we took a bit of heat for not announcing that we have moved the podcasts to Thursdays while Rob's TV show is in production. So we wanted to get the word out early and loudly that for this week only, we're moving to Friday so our good pal Jonah Goldberg could join us for the full hour. 

To pass the time, get your hands on a copy of Jonah's new book The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas either on Amazon or later this week, on Audible (Jonah reads it!). 

Also, enjoy (OK, that may be the wrong word) this interview Jonah did yesterday with world class twit Piers Morgan. On Friday, we'll ask Jonah how he was able to resist the urge to reach across the table and clock him (h/t Ricochet member Joseph Eager).

Rob Long talks about golf, dating, food poisoning, and how all three are perfect ways to describe the television business.

Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng is in a Beijing hospital and he's making phone calls to anyone who will listen to his plight. This translated transcript of an interview he gave CNN last night is just horrible to read. Here are a few excerpts explaining what caused him to leave the safety of the U.S. embassy:

Q: What prompted your change of heart?

A: The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital. But this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone.

Q: Has the U.S. disappointed you?

A: I'm very disappointed at the U.S. government.

Q: Why?

A: I don't think (U.S. officials) protected human rights in this case.

Q: What would you say to U.S. President Obama?

A: I would like to say to (President Obama): Please do everything you can to get our whole family out.Q: Is this your most urgent wish?A: That's right.

He goes on to explain the threats made against his wife's health and safety and how surveillance teams have overrun their home. He explains how the embassy misled him about what would happen if he went to the hospital.

Q: Is it true no one from the embassy picked up your calls?

A: Yes. I called two embassy people numerous times.

Q: What do you want to say to the U.S. government?

A: I want them to protect human rights through concrete actions. We are in danger. If you can talk to Hillary (Clinton), I hope she can help my whole family leave China.

Q: The whole world is watching you -- how do you feel about this?

A: I feel very grateful. I feel they are sincere in their concern, not just for show.

Q: Do you feel you were lied to by the embassy?

A: I feel a little like that.

Q: What has this ordeal taught you?

A: I feel everyone focuses too much on their self-interest at the expense of their credibility.

Q: You're both still up at 3 a.m. -- feeling anxious?

A: Yes, we feel a lot of anxiety.... I told the embassy I would like to talk to Rep. Smith (Congressman Chris Smith) but they somehow never managed to arrange it. I feel a little puzzled.

Q: What would you say to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

A: I know Sino-U.S. relations encompass many issues and they have to consider many things. But the reality about my family is that our lives are in obvious danger. If we stay here or get sent back to Shandong, our lives would be at stake. Under such circumstances, I hope the U.S. government will protect us and help us leave China based on its value of protecting human rights.

Q: Are there people watching you at the hospital?

A: They have security guards here.

Q: Have the embassy people have left?

A: Yes. They promised to stay here with Guangcheng -- that would give us some sense of security. But we haven't seen anyone since we checked into this hospital room. I was actually persuading Guangcheng to seek treatment in a hospital -- but I didn't know the embassy (people) were lobbying him to leave (the embassy).

This is not a proud moment for the U.S. We pressured him to leave? We won't let him speak with Chris Smith? We lied about whether we'd accompany him in his hospital room? We're not answering his calls?

It's humbling to see what great hopes Chen has put in our country and I pray that we do not let him down. And I fear that we might, given how the embassy has behaved thus far.

This man has risked so much to speak the truth about China's brutal repression of human rights. It may not be popular to stand by such a man who has fought on behalf of unborn children and their mothers and fathers against the Chinese government, but this should be non-negotiable for us.

With the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's eradication from the mortal sphere comes a swirl of political quarreling over President Obama's spiking of the football. The other day, Obama chided Mitt Romney, in his typically peevish and unsubtle fashion, for opposing the policy he eventually pursued of unilateral action during the 2008 campaign:

“I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. That’s been at least my practice,” he said. “I said that I would go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him and I did. if there are others who said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, I’d go ahead and let them explain.”

But Romney's response - a line about the fact that the decision to take out Osama bin Laden unilaterally was so obvious, of course he would've done it, even Jimmy Carter would've done it - strikes me as wrong-headed. So too do attempts by those on the right, such as by Ben Shapiro here, or John Bolton here, to argue that it wasn’t a "gutsy call" on the part of the president at all. I think this is inaccurate argument to advance, and I think it does no political service to the right to diminish Obama's role in the OBL raid. In fact, I'd argue that Obama is accomplishing that himself. But let's come back to that point.

First, for Shapiro: there are strategic, operational, and tactical levels of decision-making in times of war. Telling the commander of SOCOM to lead an operation, and him telling a SEAL commander to lead at a tactical level, is not passing the buck in any way, shape, or form from the strategic decision President Obama made. Even Ed Morrissey is skeptical.  Those on the right need to realize that their best response to questions on this is simply saying they're proud of the men and women who accomplished this aim, and move on before getting into disputes about the chain of command.

Second, for  Bolton. The former U.N. ambassador's continued revisionism regarding Osama bin Laden only makes him seem smaller. He says: 

“I understand the Obama administration is trying to make the argument that foreign policy is a strength of theirs, using the killing of Osama bin Laden. But the way I would look at it is this: Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was president–he wasn’t killed because Obama was president.”

Well, look at it this way: thanks to our two party system, there were only two people who could possibly be president “while” Osama bin Laden was killed. President Obama's opponent explicitly opposed the method used to kill him throughout the 2008 campaign — a unilateral attack within a sovereign nation and a purported ally. When asked this specific question during their 2008 debate, McCain said that he'd work with the Pakistanis, not go directly in to kill bin Laden unilaterally. From the videotape:

QUESTIONER: "Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue al-Qaida terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies, like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?"

OBAMA: ...I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars, and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants. What I have said is we're going encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our non-military aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out.

MCCAIN: You know, my hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt used to say walk softly – talk softly, but carry a big stick. Senator Obama likes to talk loudly. In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable. You know, if you are a country and you're trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion. When you announce that you're going to launch an attack into another country, it's pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us… Now, our relations with Pakistan are critical, because the border areas are being used as safe havens by the Taliban and Al Qaida and other extremist organizations, and we have to get their support…. We need to help the Pakistani government go into Waziristan, where I visited, a very rough country, and – and get the support of the people, and get them to work with us and turn against the cruel Taliban and others. And by working and coordinating our efforts together, not threatening to attack them, but working with them, and where necessary use force, but talk softly, but carry a big stick.

Obama rebutted McCain by saying that wasn't what he was suggesting at all:

OBAMA: I want to be very clear about what I said. Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan. Sen. McCain continues to repeat this. What I said was the same thing that the audience here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we should. Now, that I think has to be our policy, because they are threatening to kill more Americans.

Now some might say this was more about McCain saying telegraphing the punch was unwise. But he made no such critique in other situations, instead demagoguing: “Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?” More McCain: “Pakistan is a sovereign nation... [they] want Bin Laden out of their hair and out of their country.”  He criticized the lone fellow Republican candidate who took the same position as Obama. And when Sarah Palin went rogue and suggested she agreed with Obama's policy that we should violate Pakistani borders if they didn't hunt terrorists there at our behest, McCain quickly shut her down and suggested it was just idle talk.

This was not just a difference of saying what you were going to do, telegraphing a punch. It was a fundamental policy difference of strategic importance: whether we should act unilaterally to take out bin Laden, or whether cooperation with the Pakistanis was necessary or advisable. Given our numerous problems with intel leaks through the ISI and the unreliability of Pakistan's Pervaiz Musharraf, it was not a small item of debate, but a very meaningful one. McCain gave us plenty of evidence he supported the latter view, which in retrospect looks as brazenly naïve as it always was, particularly considering where bin Laden was ultimately found.

Back to Bolton: saying Osama bin Laden was killed “while” Barack Obama was president ignores the fact that the very policy difference between the two men directly impacted how and why bin Laden was killed. (My own opinion is that when someone implements a policy that was the opposite of his opponents', and the policy succeeds, you credit him.) Unless, of course, Bolton would have us believe McCain was lying all along, or would have changed his mind when confronted with facts as president (McCain, of course, being known as a man who is not at all stubborn and changes his mind with ease). And remember that McCain also opposed the exact same interrogation methods and facilities Obama did... methods and facilities that yes, despite the left's best efforts to rebut the charge, led to bin Laden's death.

Now to Romney. I think his error here was the smallest of the bunch, but he still shouldn't have given the press the Carter-namecheck answer that ordering the strike was obvious. It seems, to a smaller degree than Bolton, to make the "gutsy call" into an obvious move. It wasn't, and suggesting otherwise is historical revisionism. There are so many possible outcomes which could've hurt the U.S. effort, turning into an embarrassing international incident, that a cooperative move with the Pakistanis or a hands-off drone strike both seemed like more pragmatic, responsible decisions to many in Washington's policy elite, and even some in his own administration. And that ignores Romney's own weakness on this point, which provides the press another opportunity to bash him.

If those on the right would just leave well enough alone, I believe Obama would have done, and in fact is doing, his best to make himself seem smaller on the issue. He can't help but repeatedly spike the football concerning bin Laden's death, and he is going to keep on doing it this whole campaign. These repeated invocations about how important he was to the mission just make him seem egotistical and self-aggrandizing, lecturing us for not giving him enough credit. It is unbecoming and unpresidential of him to order the historians how to frame history - Obama, not content to be his own messiah, seems to forever be trying to write his own Bible as well - and such a performance would play poorly with independent voters, who eventually would tire of him acting like he shot the bullet through bin Laden's skull himself.

Unfortunately, by disputing this so loudly and so publicly, the right takes the focus off of the economy or unemployment and makes the election talk focus on how much credit Obama should get for ridding the world of one of its most evil men. This is not, in my opinion, a "winning strategy."

So those on the right should let Obama spike the football again and again like a petulant child. He won't have the restraint to refrain from doing it so often that it grates. Instead, the right should realize that their best response to questions on this is simply saying: “I'm so proud of our men and women in uniform who eradicated Osama bin Laden from the face of the earth... and I'm glad that President Obama came around to our position that information gathered through enhanced interrogation can help us destroy our enemies.” Simple, classy, accurate, and then move on to talking about things people will actually vote about.

In The Washington Post, columnist George Will has an essay on his son's 40th birthday.

When Jonathan Frederick Will was born 40 years ago — on May 4, 1972, his father’s 31st birthday — the life expectancy for people with Down syndrome was about 20 years.That is understandable.

The day after Jon was born, a doctor told Jon’s parents that the first question for them was whether they intended to take Jon home from the hospital.

Those are the first three sentences of the article. But what begins with so little hope ends with so much.

This year Jon will spend his birthday where every year he spends 81 spring, summer and autumn days and evenings, at Nationals Park, in his seat behind the home team’s dugout. The Phillies will be in town, and Jon will be wishing them ruination, just another man, beer in hand, among equals in the republic of baseball.

It's impossible to do justice to Will's words, so you must read them for yourself. Read the essay here in its entirety. It's beautiful, just beautiful. Happy birthday, Jon Will.

A great story from Australia where lying climate scientists have been caught out lying again. This time about the death threats they've allegedly been receiving.

Except they haven't. An FOI request by a Sydney blogger has revealed that they've been up to their usual tricks, exaggerating in order to attract undeserved public sympathy for their bankrupt cause.

Most days in my inbox I get hate-mail from greenies who think I'm a card-carrying agent of Satan. Unless I'm in a low mood, these emails (and Tweets) tend not to bother me. Indeed, I greet them with a degree of joy and pride. After all, when you're taking flak it means you're over the target.

But here's the big difference between myself and the alarmist scientists. I'm not taking public money and I'm not telling lies.

The Ninth Circuit, the most liberal federal appeals court in the country, today unanimously rejected the lawsuit brought against me by Jose Padilla, who is currently serving his sentence for criminal conspiracy charges as an associate of al Qaeda.  Despite his conviction, he sued everyone involved in his detention as an enemy combatant.  He had already lost in the Fourth Circuit in South Carolina in his lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon and military officials who were in charge of the Charleston brig, where he was held.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision confirms that this litigation has been baseless from the outset.  For several years, Padilla and his attorneys have been harassing the government officials he believes to have been responsible for his detention, and ultimately conviction as a terrorist.  He has now lost before two separate courts of appeals, and will need to find a new hobby for his remaining time in prison.

In my column this week for Defining Ideas, I argue that the key to economic recovery is liberalizing labor markets, not relying on macroeconomic “fixes.”

Grim is the right word to describe the latest economic news from both the European Union and the United States. Throughout the European Union, austerity programs have failed both politically and economically. In Spain, unemployment rates have soared above 24 percent. The Dutch government is on the edge of collapse because of the popular and political unwillingness to accept the austerity program proposed by its conservative government. Romania is not far behind. Greece, Italy, and Portugal remain in perilous condition. France faces a presidential run-off election between President Nicholas Sarkozy, who is moving rightward on immigration issues, and the free-spending socialist candidate Franciose Hollande. On the American front, the decline of GDP growth to 2.2 percent rightly raises fears that our sputtering domestic recovery is just about over.

It is no surprise, therefore, that leading columnists like Paul Krugman have taken this opportunity to announce triumphantly that austerity is a “fairy tale” that shatters the social confidence that it is designed to shore up. It is futile to invoke fiscal austerity, he argues, when economically beleaguered countries really need to be “spending more to offset falling private demand.” The cure is supposed to be increased government spending, but that solution has its own serious problems. Krugman assumes that the declines in private demand and private investment are attributable to mysterious external forces that are beyond the power of government to control.

But both macroeconomic programs are doomed to failure. Only by changing our microeconomic policy—reforming the labor market, specifically—will we start seeing economic growth. The calcification of labor markets with regulation upon regulation is the primary impediment to economic recovery today, as I explain further over at Defining Ideas.

Today has been an unusual day in sports.

It started on a high note with the announcement that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would sign Eric LeGrand to an NFL contract. LeGrand, a standout at Rutgers University under then-coach -- and Rutgers grid savior -- Greg Schiano, was paralyzed in a hit in October of 2010. His story is truly an emotional one, mostly because of LeGrand's seemingly God-given gift to accept his situation with hope and good humor. Schiano, now the coach in Tampa Bay, made the classy move today. 

Then, I read that Andy Pettitte may have sunk the government's case against Roger Clemens. Clemens is on trial for lying to Congress about use of performance-enhancing drugs. Pettitte was called to testify because he had said that in 1999 or 2000 Clemens told him he had used HGH (human growth hormone). Pettitte and Clemens were once as tight as two sports buddies and fellow Texan pitchers could be. Their relationship chilled, but perhaps it's back on after today. In testimony this morning, Pettitte said it was “50/50” that he may have misheard Clemens. The final ruling, in many people’s opinion, seemed to rest on Pettitte, who, other than a brief dalliance himself with HGH, is considered to be an athlete and man of the highest principles. The others in the case all have some serious flaws.

Finally, just in the past hour or so, I see that Junior Seau has died from either a self-inflicted gunshot wound or in some sort of gunfight in his California home.

The left seems to think this video is damning in some way, but I think it's maybe the best I've seen Romney when it comes to defending capitalism and wealth. He's talking at the house of Papa Johns' CEO:

Here's Romney's opening lines, of the trees are the right height nature, before he gets into his normal campaign riff. But note the two lines he adds on:

Who would have imagined pizza could build this, you know that? This is really something. Don’t you love this country? What a home this is, what grounds these are, the pool, the golf course...

You know if a Democrat were here he’d look around and say no one should live like this. Republicans come here and say everyone should live like this.

This continues Romney's marked improvement in talking about his personal wealth. What I wrote a few months back after the Ann Romney "I don't consider myself wealthy" line:

Look, I see what you were trying to say here, but you flubbed it again. Someone please help these folks talk about being rich? The ability to go "severely capitalist" would actually help you – and seem more authentic than some transparently false narrative involving bootstraps.

Just say it: “I am very rich. I do not apologize for it. My goal in life is to give you every opportunity to get rich, too.” Remember your Coolidge: “I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves.” How hard is that?

Getting this rhetoric right is key for Romney's response to these sorts of attacks from Obama's campaign.

Last night on the eve of May Day, a rabble of vandals marched through San Francisco's Mission District, launching paint bombs at storefronts, smashing in car windows, and shattering the window of my favorite bakery, Tartine. 

The SF Chronicle captures the reactions of devastated business owners trying to make sense of the destruction.

Jeremy Tooker, owner of Four Barrel Coffee, was wiping paint off his store's windows as broken glass crunched beneath pedestrians' feet. He said a friend had alerted him of the damage after stopping a protester from smashing the glass storefront with a crowbar - and taking a hit to his arm.

"This just seems like they're frustrated with their impotency at this point," Tooker said. "It's like, 'Look at me, I'm still here, I'm still occupying.' "

As Koskoff smoked a cigarette by the damaged Aston Martin, he said he didn't understand protesters' motives.

"They're coming through the Mission, where there aren't any corporations, just a lot of small businesses, which is what they're all about," he said. "It doesn't make sense."

[...]

"Occupy is saying it's not them, but we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Occupy, now would we?" Michelle Horneff-Cohen, a real estate broker, said as she shivered next to the broken window of her workplace, Property Management Systems.

She said she had been dragged out of bed to deal with the damage. Although her company has insurance, she said, it will have to pay for much of the cost of repairs.

"I think it's [expletive]," Horneff-Cohen said. "We are the 99 percent, and this is [expletive]."

Democrats have thus far been at least loosely supportive of the Occupy Movement, employing the populist 99 percent language for their own political aims.  But the cognitive dissonance revealed here—i.e. "We are the 99 percent, and this is [expletive]"— by the San Francisco small business owners who are spending their day dealing with damage to their property, makes me wonder if Democrats will continue to treat the Occupiers as political kin going forward into this year's election.  I can't imagine that would be a good move.

Meanwhile, today in Oakland a group of about 100 protesters are busy harassing the banks.  One of the protesters explains his motives thus:

"We are here today because capitalism has destroyed basic human need," said a 20-year-old protester who only identified himself as Connor.

"I am sort of into the libertarian/communist thing myself," he said. "I am an advocate of human need, not monetary need.

Libertarian-communism.  Only in Oakland.

One of my favorite new Tumblrs ("a blogging platform that allows users to seamlessly display photos, videos and text in an easy-to-use format") is called "Hey Girl, It's Paul Ryan." The Washington Post explains:

The Ryan-themed site, which draws inspiration from another Tumblr site poking fun at actor Ryan Gossling, features news photos of the Wisconsin Republican juxtaposed with fiscally-inspired pick up lines, including “Stop, girl! Those Laffer curves are driving me wild” and “Girl, you must be an Obama entitlement program ... because you are definitely raising my interest rate.”

You get the idea.

Emily Zanotti, a self-described “freelance political communications consultant and comedian from Chicago” who also blogs for NakedDC.com, said she and her friends got the idea for the site after wondering what Ryan — who enjoys “Noodling,” or catching catfish with bare hands — might look like shirtless as he chased after catfish in a river.

“Really, we just put it together as an inside joke,” she said in an e-mail. “I’ve worked with lots of politicos (I’m a libertarian and work primarily with conservatives), and Paul Ryan is a bit of an ‘economic heartthrob’ among us, if you will. We liked the way that Paul Ryan and the meme fit together, and thought it might just appeal to people who work on the Hill or at least in the political industry. We didn’t anticipate that it would become as huge as it did.”

Even when I was the only girl in my entire university class studying economics, I thought fiscal conservatism was totally sexy. I'm vindicated.

More importantly, though, I think this shows that Paul Ryan has an appeal and charisma that might serve fiscal conservatives well into the future.

Quietly, Washington policymakers have begun to concede the need to weigh mobile technology’s benefits against its costs if our country is to avert fiscal ruin. That costs must be counted against benefits is common sense in other domains — and among information technology professionals. But it's anathema in public discussion of smart phones. To silence talk of tradeoffs, politicians invoke the “R word” — rationing.

Crazy, right?  In a free society citizens are free to collectively “waste” vast sums on iPhones, iPads, boats, motorcycles, fishing lure collections; pretty much anything they want.   After all, it’s their money. 

Unless it isn’t anymore. 

The quote above is actually pulled from an editorial in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, with the topic of mobile technology substituted for health care to make a point.  Freedom is suspended in the matter of health care because the government is progressively replacing millions of individuals making decisions according to their own priorities for "Choosing Wisely" as people smarter than you administer a fixed national budget for medical care. 

And no matter how hard you try, you will definitely have skin in this game.

Politicians, whether invoking the “R word” or not, are largely irrelevant.  They have already hired the bureaucrats who take our money, set the rules as they like – e.g., co-payments for cardiac stents but not for intra-uterine devices--and then allocate millions of individual health needs against the output of their Potemkin market.

ObamaCare delenda est.

Trust me, there's a reason I posted this on Ricochet.

Once upon a time Squeeze turned out tight brilliant pop tunes that often told a tale. Earnest young love in lower-class straits, boozy pub misadventures. The vernacular lyrics may have mystified American audiences - it took me a while to figure out, for example, that a character who pretended he was flush with cash “had done his mother’s meter” meant that he’d stolen the coins she used to pay for the gas in the flat. (I think.) (Delingpole or James of England, help me out.) 

They had two fine singer-songwriters (one a crooner, the other a guy who sang like a frog with a cold) a propulsive drummer, and a manic jester keyboard player. Too smart to be just pop, too personal to be a post-punk Important Band like the Clash, too human for nerd-wave status like the Talking Heads. You could sense the weariness  as soon as they hit it big, though. “Sweets from a Stranger” was over-produced; it spawned a hit single the old fans didn’t like; the songwriting wasn’t up to par. They were tired, and the band split up after the tour. 

They reunited, but the spark was never there. The songs developed a bad case of Costelloitis, swapping melody and simple structure for baroque indulgence. But every so often they’d just bang out a classic, and “Frank” had “Rose I Said,” an urgent little number with a a rote hook but a classic chorus. This live version is too rushed, but what makes it Ricochet-worthy is the chap who introduces the band. He was a fan. Smart guy, but you knew that.

So, Pat: Did you get to hang with the band after the show?

Earlier today, we saw reports that Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese dissident who has been oppressed because of his powerful activism against China's forced abortion policy, left the U.S. embassy where he'd sought refuge. The headlines emphasized that he'd been "reunited" with his family. Now, the Associated Press reveals that he left the embassy under the most horrible conditions:

BREAKING --AP: Chen tells AP he was told Chinese officials would have killed his wife had he not left embassy

And one of the people who helped Chen escape, He Peirong, is herself detained now.

At about 5:00 a.m. Dublin time, I skyped Peirong one last time and she did not answer. She had been detained, and no one has heard from her since.   We don’t know if Peirong is being tortured or whether her detention will last days, months or years.

In pressing for Chen’s freedom, let us also press for the freedom of his rescuer, He Peirong, a hero in her own right.   She stood up for Chen during his time of greatest need.  The least we can do is stand by her as she pays a terrible price for her courage.

I wish that the United States had done more to ensure Chen's safety and that of his family and friends. I'm not sure if anything could have been done, but the response of China shows that this regime -- beloved as it may be by New York Times columnists -- remains one of the most oppressive in the world.

Regardless of what you think of Austrian economics (your author is sympathetic, if not a full-fledged convert), you have to give credit for chutzpah to Robert Wenzel, editor and publisher of the site Economic Policy Journal and a sharp critic of the Federal Reserve. Last week, Wenzel, at the bank's invitation, delivered a speech at the New York Fed ... where he savaged the central bank's policies and called for the institution to be abolished.

That may be wise. It may be foolish. But this is undoubtedly one of the most audacious codas ever delivered in a policy speech:

The noose is tightening on your organization. Vast amounts of money printing are now required to keep your manipulated economy afloat. It will ultimately result in huge price inflation, or, if you stop printing, another massive economic crash will occur. There is no other way out.

Again, thank you for inviting me. You have prepared food, so I will not be rude — I will stay and eat.

Let's have one good meal here. Let's make it a feast. Then I ask you, I plead with you, I beg you all, walk out of here with me, never to come back. It's the moral and ethical thing to do. Nothing good goes on in this place. Let's lock the doors and leave the building to the spiders, moths, and four-legged rats.

The Pew Research Center has good news on the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden's death:

A year after the death of its leader, al Qaeda is widely unpopular among Muslim publics. A new poll by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, conducted March 19 to April 13, 2012, finds majorities – and mostly large majorities – expressing negative views of the terrorist group in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Great news, right?  Only 21% of Egypt, 15% of Jordan, 13% of Pakistan, 6% of Turkey and 2% of Lebanon express even favorable views toward the terrorist group.

Looked another way, of course, that means that al Qaeda enjoys the support of 47,284,049 Muslims in only five of the 50 countries in which a majority of the population is Muslim.

Not a typo -- according to this survey, more than 47 million Muslims in only five countries support the terrorist group. If roughly similar percentages of Muslims support al Qaeda in the remaining countries -- which include Indonesia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia -- we're talking a lot of support.

I wonder which way the media reports of this survey will frame it -- as comfortingly low support or frighteningly high.

On the other hand, before his death last year, Pew used to measure confidence in Osama bin Laden. And those figures plummeted among Muslims over the years.

Who can forget the horror of learning, a few years back, that a modern Airbus A330-200 aircraft simply vanished over mid-Atlantic, initially without a trace?  

Over the weekend, the Telegraph published a chilling analysis of the June 1, 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.  After the autopilot disconnected in a thunderstorm--a fail-safe response to faulty airspeed data from frozen pitot tubes--the pilot flying AF447 commanded excessive nose-up trim, entering a deep stall.  Incredibly, the pilot held this attitude throughout the plane's descent.

For most of its four-minute, 7-mile plunge, AF 447 could have resumed controlled flight if the pilot flying had lowered the nose and held the attitude long enough to regain flying speed.  This basic stall recovery procedure is taught to every pilot in initial training and drilled repeatedly in flight checks.

What went wrong?  In a word:  technology.  Too much technology in between the pilots and the aircraft.

But there is another, worrying implication that the Telegraph can disclose for the first time: that the errors committed by the pilot doing the flying were not corrected by his more experienced colleagues because they did not know he was behaving in a manner bound to induce a stall. And the reason for that fatal lack of awareness lies partly in the design of the control stick – the “side stick” – used in all Airbus cockpits.

 Cockpit controls in most modern airliners are connected to computers, not directly to engines and flight surfaces.  Both Boeing and Airbus make extensive use of such "fly-by-wire" systems.  Where Airbus goes further--a step too far in the case of AF447--is in eliminating the tactile signaling provided by the older controls.  In a conventional aircraft,  the pilot flying commands a nose-up attitude by pulling the stick back and the stick on the other side of the cockpit likewise moves aft, providing feedback to the PNF (pilot not flying).  Boeing emulates this control behavior in its fly-by-wire aircraft, Airbus does not.  Relax back-pressure in a new Boeing airliner and the nose will lower to its previously trimmed position, just like an old-style cable-and-hydraulics plane.  In an Airbus, the computer carries on with the last command input until receiving a new one, even though the stick is visibly in the neutral position.  

Under normal circumstances, the Airbus approach provides a lower pilot workload--a better "user experience" in Web 2.0-speak.  However, in the corner case of an emergency with multiple instrument failures, overloaded pilots lack the physical cues that would likely have saved 228 souls on board AF447.

And the problem of too much well-meaning-but-intrusive technology goes beyond the flight controls:  even the design of the computer-automated stall warning contributed to the disaster.

Bonin’s insistent efforts to climb soon deprived even the computers of the vital angle-of-attack information. An A330’s angle of attack is measured by a fin projecting from the fuselage. When forward speed fell to 60 knots there was insufficient airflow to make the mechanism work. The computers, which are programmed not to feed pilots misleading information, could no longer make sense of the data they were receiving and blanked out some of the instruments. Also, the stall warnings ceased. It was up to the pilots to do some old-fashioned flying.

With no knowledge of airspeed or angle of attack, the safest thing at high altitude is to descend gently to avoid a stall. This is what David urged Bonin to do, but something bewildering happened when Bonin put the nose down. As the aircraft picked up speed, the input data became valid again and the computers could now make sense of things. Once again they began to shout: “Stall, stall, stall.” Tragically, as Bonin did the right thing to pick up speed, the aircraft seemed to tell him he was making matters worse. If he had continued to descend the warnings would eventually have ceased. But, panicked by the renewed stall alerts, he chose to resume his fatal climb.

Over on the Member Feed, Maggie Somavilla posted a link to a National Review book review of the horrifying memoir, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.

Reading NR's two page review of the book is overwhelming.  We learn of the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, a young North Korean man who had spent his entire life from infancy in a North Korean gulag with up to 200,000 other prisoners.  He and his fellow prisoners were kept as animals; they lived in squalor, disease, and brutality.   Shin witnessed the beatings and executions of classmates and family members, and was even instrumental in bringing about his mother's and brother's hangings.  The details of his existence in the prison camp reveal a human darkness beyond comprehension.

Being overpowered by sadness and disgust, I shared the review with a handful of close friends so that I wouldn't be alone with the burden of this horrific knowledge.  One friend was outraged by the powerlessness he felt upon reading the review.  "Why isn't the U.S. intervening?" he demanded.  "Someone needs to do something!" 

And then his anger over the situation turned into frustration toward me for making him aware of such an awful reality.  "Well then there is no benefit in the media informing me about atrocities taking place in the res to of the world if no one is helping.  I would prefer to remain ignorant in my San Franciscan community, and go to Giants games and shop at Whole Foods," he concluded.

That's the mentality that our own Claire Berlinski butts in to with her reporting of the goings on in Turkey.  It's a fury induced by powerlessness that people feel when learning about atrocities in a faraway corner of the world.  Either that, or an apathy that results from a desensitization to this kind of news; there will always be madmen and violence and horror in the world, and aside from praying, there's so little that any of us on our own can do about that.

Even if they often fall short, it's easy to see a clear purpose of domestic media—government must be held accountable by the citizens, and the citizenry must be kept informed in order to do that.  But what's the purpose of the media when it comes to reporting on global issues?  Why, for instance, is it important that some nobody like me knows about the horrors that seize North Korea?  Is it merely knowledge for the sake of knowledge?

Rising taxes, a crumbling infrastructure, a draconian regulatory regime, schools that fail to educate, and a state government that remains an arm of the unions.  You can read a lot of complicated data on the current unhappy state of the Golden State--which, of course, looks all the unhappier by comparison with data on the low-tax, low-regulation Lone Star State--or you can simply look at this:

U-Haul rates for one-way 26 foot truck rentals in May:
From Sacramento to Houston: $2,370
From Houston to Sacramento: $1,007
From San Francisco to San Antonio: $2,214
From San Antonio to San Francisco:  $1,069

Thanks to my friend Doug Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth, who claims (he really does) that his aim in directing me to this was not merely to depress me.

As discussed on Ricochet yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden recently gave a speech revealing the source of his vaunted foreign policy expertise –“Dr. Strangelove” (yes, the movie). But that wasn’t Hollywood Joe’s only movie reference. Like other surrogates for President Barack Obama, Biden has begun attacking presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney as a “Back to the Future” candidate.

While the Obama campaign hopes to define Romney as backward looking, the attack backfires as badly as a DeLorean time machine. If, as team Obama says, Romney is the candidate who wants to take America back to the future, then Obama must be the president who has taken America back into the past. Over at Forbes, I have a new column looking at how Obama longs for life before Ronald Reagan.