Global warming, global freezing, kudzu, swine flu, who's on first?

My favorite pundit, Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden, is an old geezer like me and like me, he's having a bit of trouble keeping up with which Chicken Little is running about.

Global warming, global freezing, poison peanut butter, kudzu, swine flu, who's on first? Pruden updates us on the panic du jour in A pandemic of panic -- are we dead yet?

We were all supposed to be in the graveyard by now, done in by AIDS, SARS, bird flu, poisoned peanut butter, Hong Kong flu, killer tomatoes, global warming and strangulation by kudzu. But here we are, proof that there really is life after death.

Now we learn that we might freeze before the pigs get us. (The chickens failed.) NASA scientists have observed that the solar wind is the weakest since we began keeping such records, that the magnetic axis of the sun is tilted to an unusual degree, and Ol' Sol is the quietest he has been in a century. A chill, say the solar scientists, may be on the way. (Or not.) Worse, says one of them, this could compel reappraisal of the science of global warning. Try as he might, poor old Al Gore just can't keep the cosmos in line.

But this week Ol' Sol has been put in the shade by a new panic du jour. The cable-TV networks and the Internet are bubbling with sunspots, even if the sun isn't. Sample these latest headlines from the Drudge Report: "Two flu cases confirmed in Scotland. Has globalization made us more catastrophe-prone? Swine flu sweeps the globe. Swine flu closes football stadiums. The world must work together against this threat."

We haven't seen a panic quite like this one since the last one...

The director of the World Influenza Center in London says of the outbreak, such as it is so far: "It's difficult to look on the bright side."

No, it's actually not difficult. About 2,000 persons in Mexico are down with flu, and about 150 have died. That's a mortality rate of about 7 percent. Sad, even tragic, but not exactly the most lethal flu virus we've ever seen. There's no mortality rate in the United States because no one has died. Only a few, very few, cases have been reported, and nearly all are described as "mild." You have to give the medical bureaucrats and the media credit for chutzpah to think they can keep such thin soup on the panic menu.

There are no firm estimates or even hopeful guesses of how many Americans are likely to contract flu this spring, but fortunately the ratio of panic to reality is not governed by facts. In the early hours of counting, barely 50 cases had been reported in the United States, and only two in Britain - that's 2, not 2,000 or even 200. About 300,000 to 500,000 cases of flu are reported every year in the United States, where 10 percent to 20 percent of the population comes down with the sore throat, coughing and achy bones of flu. Of those, 30,000 to 40,000 die. What we have so far in the United States is a 50-case panic, caused by a remarkably mild variant of the flu.

The medical researchers say it might mutate. Or it might not. If it does, it might, possibly, maybe, potentially be the worst killer since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Or it might not. Researchers are working on the vaccine, and the media is working on the panic. We may not get a vaccine, but soon there won't be a dry pair of pants on six continents.

And in case you missed it, I was too busy to blog about Pruden's Friday column, when he wrote about the law of unintended consequences in Obama's on-again, off-again, on-again flip-flopping about whether Bush administration lawyers should be jailed for saving the nation after 9/11.

Exacting revenge for unpopular policies is the norm in the third world, heretofore more likely in Barack Obama's ancestral Kenya than in America, more in the tradition of gangland Chicago than in Washington, where we count on cooler heads to prevail when raw emotion threatens to overwhelm sobriety and the undisciplined senses. We recall perceived national mistakes with the sadness of regret and even gratitude for lessons learned, not the frenzied catharsis of a St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Mr. Obama, having won the White House fair and square, is entitled to change any presidential policy he chooses, but the vindication of a national election does not entitle any president to exact mindless revenge...

The loquacious prince of Hyde Park should understand this, having eloquently sounded caution and reason on his inauguration as president, promising as he had during the long campaign to "look forward," not "backward." Rahm Emanuel, once described as the president's alter ego (if indeed such an outsized ego could have an "alter"), said as recently as Sunday that "it's not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution."

This was in line with what the president had said all last summer when he was campaigning for the White House, what he had said on his inauguration, and in line with his oft-stated goal of restoring bipartisan civility and mutual goodwill to governing the country. Mr. Emanuel's reassurance was regarded in Washington as putting paid to an ugly era, an emphatic determination to "move on" to something close to national unity.

The president hadn't counted on the rage of the jackals on the leftmost fringe of his party, organizations like MoveOn.org, which want only the "unity" of the lynch mob. They demand a hanging and the president promises only to think about it. Ever confident that his golden tongue, with or without the teleprompter, would mesmerize all foes and vanquish all rancor, Mr. Obama then threw George W. Bush's lawyers to the mob.

Perhaps the president imagines that nobody cares much about what happens to lawyers, but he has set in motion something neither he nor anyone else can control. Some of the Democrats in Congress, eager now to join the mob, will regret what they cry for. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, for one, was a member of the House intelligence committee and sat in on super-secret briefings after Sept. 11. She concedes that she heard about waterboarding but she doesn't remember exactly what she heard. Just like Barack Obama sleeping through 20 years of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's rabid sermons, Ms. Pelosi dozed through the briefings. Her colleagues on the intelligence panel say they remember her demanding that the CIA do more to get the "intelligence" to prevent another attack.

Now wouldn't that be sweet justice, if Nancy Pelosi should get snared in the revenge frenzy?

Hanson says 'It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings'

President Obama?! God help us all, it's looking more likely daily for one reason and one reason only. Panic. We're in the middle of something here that nobody seems to know how to end. It just sucks all the air out of a political campaign and sanity leaves along with it. 1929. Depression.

Is it happening again? If it does, we can just lean over and kiss our behinds goodbye. Maybe Obama won't be such a terrible President after all, but it won't matter if the bottom really does fall out because none of us will have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of. But. If.

There's always a but. Usually followed by an if. Nothing is certain in this life but death and taxes.

The fat lady ain't sung yet. She does seem to be warbling, warming up for the final aria.

But if... the rescue plan here and worldwide finally kicks in. If Wall Street finally gets over it's panic party and investors open up their Swiss accounts and start buying stocks again.

Suddenly, the sun will be shining again and voters will get their heads out of their behinds.

Then we will look around and start paying attention to this election and consider who to vote for with our common sense instead of our fears. And Victor Davis Hanson will say "I told you so."

Yet for all the gloom, there are several reasons why this race is by no means over...

It is still possible that, by the week before the election, there will be a sense of respite rather than continued anger and panic — and any day in which hysteria is not the topic of the day benefits McCain. In this regard, McCain must keep reminding in simple fashion that Freddie and Fannie were catalysts that drew in the Wall Street sharks: crooked officials cooked the books to get mega-bonuses; they got away with their crimes by lavishing money on mostly Democratic legislators (including Obama); and hand-in-glove they all covered — and still are covering — their tracks under a reprehensible politically correct cynicism.

Iraq is no longer the contentious issue of the primaries where Democratic candidates outdid each other in predicting failure, but mirabile dictu turning out to be a clear American victory. No one can now believe that withdrawal by March 2008, as Sen. Obama once advocated, would have been anything but an utter calamity. McCain needs to continue to emphasize the dire consequences of accepting such a defeat. The military is not broken, but now the most experienced, battle-hardened force in the world. Iraq is not, as Joe Biden once demanded, trisected into feuding fiefdoms, but an emerging consensual state. The more Iraq is out of the news, the more the growing public acceptance that it is becoming a success. McCain should continue to ask: Did Americans want victory in November 2008 or defeat in March 2008?

The Ayers controversy is cited by the in-the-tank media as signs of McCain’s desperation. Perhaps. But amid the tsk-tsking, there are also certain deer-in-the-headlights moments among Obama’s handlers.

Why? There are simply too many ACORNs, Ayers, Khalidis, Pflegers, Wrights, et al. not to suggest a pattern unbecoming of a future President of the United States. Obama’s past statements about his relationship with Ayers (and others) simply cannot be reconciled with the factual circumstances of their long association. McCain must focus on Ayers between 2001–2005. Then in the climate of national worry following 9/11, Ayers was on recent record as lamenting that he had not set off enough bombs, and yet until 2005 still in contact with Obama — about what and why, voters might wish to know.

When Iraq and Wall Street were off the front page, Obama went moribund in the last months of the Democratic primary. Why? Not because of racism, or even public weariness with Obama’s hope and change fluff, or his flip-flops, or occasional striking ignorance about basic history and geography. He finally began to wear on the public — as he continues to when events of the day do not smother the attention of the voter — for two reasons.

First, the public tires of all the media slant, the celebrity rants, and the shills in popular culture, that in concert hourly berate, beg, threaten, and ridicule voters on behalf of Obama. We are supposed to accept Obama’s apotheosis, replete with Latinate seal, Greek columns, biblical injunctions about the seas and atmosphere, and prophesies that he is The One whom we have been waiting for. The creepy effect of ordering us to accept our own salvation becomes cumulative. So there is a quiet unease among the voters, as there always is in America, when someone finger-points and lectures them what they must do — or else!

Second, for all the two years of nonstop campaigning, Obama somehow still remains an unknown — and for apparently good reason. He has almost no record in the Senate to speak of — other than one as America’s most predictably partisan and liberal Senator. What is known of his Chicago associates is not reassuring, and so the only defense can be silence rather than exegesis. No one knows anything of his record at Columbia University, how he got into Harvard Law School, or what he was doing until he reached Harvard, or exactly what he did as a community organizer in Chicago, or how a person with no record of legal scholarship was about to be offered tenure at the Chicago Law School. Each doubt in and of itself is of little import, but again in aggregate even the generalities make voters uneasy — especially when they hear of fraud among voter registration drives, swarming radio stations to stifle those critical of Obama, and threatened lawsuits to yank pro-McCain ads.

The odds always were against McCain. And the outcome in these last few days may be seem contingent in large part on breaking news beyond the candidates’ control. Yet McCain still has it within his own power to win the election. Obama’s view of America is mostly rosy emulation of the European Union; McCain’s is to restore fiscal sanity, keep our defenses strong, and ensure that American exceptionalism remains a fact, rather than descends into an empty slogan. In that context, it makes no sense to sneer at McCain for being behind, but a great deal to hope that he isn’t.

Palin panic projections from the leftwing

Have you ever noticed that sometimes people accuse you of things that seem to come from out of nowhere, but you later find out that the accuser is guilty of what they accused you of doing?

As Jesus said, before you try to pick that speck out of your brother's eye, better remove the 2x4 from your own eye. And that's exactly what Democrats are doing over McCain's pick of Palin, accusing him of making a panic move when in reality, it's the whole leftwing that's in full panic.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air explains:

Democrats offered a little projection over the weekend and claimed that John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate exposed his panic during their convention, a claim that only made sense if one hadn’t endured it on television. Unfortunately for them, the meme of panic doesn’t apply, nor did it make any sense, given McCain’s position in the polls. The Washington Post reports that McCain favored Palin for months, and that it reflects a deliberate focus on reform and change:

The WaPo report says:

Far from being a last-minute tactical move or a second choice when better known alternatives were eliminated, Palin was very much in McCain’s thinking from the beginning of the selection process, according to McCain’s advisers. The 44-year-old governor made every cut as the first list of candidates assembled last spring was slowly winnowed. The more McCain learned about her, the more attracted he was to her as someone who shared his maverick, anti-establishment instincts.

Morrissey continues:

Far from being some sort of panic attack, McCain’s selection of Palin was a deliberate effort to craft a specific message for the general election and for his Presidency, should he win. He wants to challenge his party to recall their reform roots from the Reagan Revolution and the Contract with America. He cannot expect to have that taken seriously or effectively without having a real reformer, and not just a talker, on the ticket with him. He needs the conservative base energized and enthusiastic to make that message effective, and Palin provides both a track record of real reform and energy for the GOP base.

As the Times said on Friday, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. The panic seen from the Left shouldn’t surprise anyone, either. After their so-called reformer picked a 35-year Washington insider as his running mate, the ticket of true reform is obvious to even them.

Considering the Palin pick turned Obama's brief convention bounce into what one pundit called a "dead-cat bounce," wiping it out overnight, I'd say the leftwing is wise to go into full panic mode.

Look out lefties, Al Gore was right. The sky really is falling. And project not upon whom the sky is falling, because it's falling upon thee.