I love Seattle. I was born and raised in Washington State and hope to move back there some day, but I can't help smiling when I read that the many granolas (and conservative outdoorsmen) can't do their usual hiking.

These people, most of whom likely buy into or peddle global warming hysteria, are stuck with hiking trials that are still covered with snow.  Two reasons: more snow and, more importantly, a significantly cooler spring. From the Seattle Times:

Only five groups have attempted Mount Rainier's scenic, 93-mile Wonderland Trail this year, and all have turned back because of snow.

Usually by late July, hundreds have made the loop around the mountain, said park ranger Daniel Keebler. This is also the time of year when park officials expect to see scads of day visitors on a mission to see wildflowers.

But after an unusually cold spring, late seasonal snow is putting a damper on such plans. Snowpack levels in the Cascades and Olympics are at their highest since 1999, according to data from the National Weather and Climate Center.

Visitors to Mount Rainier this weekend will find some trails still partially covered by snow, rangers say. But the seasonal snowmelt is under way. The Sunrise and Paradise areas at Mount Rainier are starting to clear up.

"Most of the day hikes have started to melt out," said Casey Wilson, a backcountry ranger at Mount Rainier. But the melt is late. Data from June, the most recent available, showed snowpack levels at Paradise were 150 percent of average. Levels at the White River area, by Sunrise, were about 125 percent of normal.

Somehow, I'm sure, the left-wing will blame these cooler temperatures on global warming -- or they'll just ignore it, since it doesn't fit their narrative.

Good news for Washington State this week in a recent Moore Insight poll.

Though John McCain trails Barack Obama by 10 points in Washington, Republican Dino Rossi is tied with Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire in the replay of their infamous 2004 grudge match.

You'll remember that Rossi beat Gregoire twice before she somehow pulled out a very, very, very narrow win after the third count of the votes. (Visit Sound Politics if you care to reread the accounts of how the Democrats stole the governorship.)

In a New York Times piece today, readers are informed of the continuing battle between McCain and Obama for votes of the Hispanic community and the tactics the two campaigns are using. It's a fairly lame piece that tells readers incredibly little.

But there is one important item buried at the end of the piece that reminds us that the Obama campaign is, indeed, concerned with and campaigning on race. Check this out:

“We’re going to spend more money on Latino TV and radio than has ever been spent on a presidential campaign, and by a lot,” Cuahtemoc Figueroa, the director of Mr. Obama’s Latino vote effort, told members of La Raza on Sunday.

The campaign also views Mr. Obama’s half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who taught school for several years in the Bronx, as something of a trump card to be deployed at events for Hispanic voters. “She speaks fluent Spanish, with a Dominican accent, and looks Latina,” Mr. Figueroa said.

Haven't we been told repeatedly that skin color was not something the Obamaniacs were going to focus on?

Who cares? We all knew they were lying.

If you just read "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race" in today's New York Times without thinking or without looking at the polling information, you would walk away with exactly the impression the Times is hoping most of its lock-step, blindly following readers will -- blame whites for any political problems Obama might have.

But if you're not a lemming, you'll start to wonder who is to blame for the political, black-vs-white racial tension that the Times appears to believe is running rampant in the U.S. -- a view average Americans would likely say is held mostly by the we-know-better-than-you elites on the East Coast.

Let's take a quick look at just a couple items the Times fails to point out:

First, the Times article implies (or at least the reader can easily infer) that white Americans are the voters with the racial hangups, which is why the fact that Obama garners so much more of the black vote. This paragraph is supposed to reveal how well Obama is doing courting the black vote:

Among black voters, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, Mr. Obama draws support from 89 percent, compared with 2 percent for Mr. McCain. Among whites, Mr. Obama has 37 percent of the vote, compared with 46 percent for Mr. McCain.

That graph reveals that blacks are voting by race, not whites. You see, Mr. and Mrs. Editor, 89-2 is a bigger discrepancy than 37-46. If anyone at the Times were either honest or smart, that would have been seen for what it is -- racial voting by a racial bloc . . . that's not white.

A second, more egregious lie-by-omission is the Times' coverage of its own poll, a pretty graphic for which they even took the time to create (see below).

Reporting on the voters' opinion of Obama by race, the Times says:

After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics is partisan. But Americans’ perceptions of the fall presidential election between Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also underlined the racial discord that the poll found. More than 80 percent of black voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama; about 30 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of him.

Reading that, you would again think that whites had a real problem with the black candidate and were, therefore, the real source of the "racial discord" that is the focus of the entire article. Two important points are missing from this paragraph's analysis of the Times' poll:

1) White's aren't happy with either candidate. Interestingly, white voters have a 31 percent favorable view of Obama (notice how the Times calls it "about 30 percent" to make it seem lower) and have a meager 35 percent favorable view of McCain. Those two numbers are so close that they're practically insignificant and reveal nothing about the racial biases of white voters.

2) More telling is the unreported views blacks have of the white candidate. The Times breathlessly reports that "more than 80 percent" of blacks have a favorable opinion of Obama, but they don't bother to tell the reader blacks' opinion of the white candidate. According to the Times poll (again, see below), only 5 percent of blacks have a favorable opinion of McCain. For the Times, it's worth reporting that only "about 30 percent" of whites view the black candidate favorably, but the Times neglects to report that only 5 percent of blacks view the white candidate favorably.

Sure, someone will point out that blacks skew Democratic, so they're more likely to support the black candidate. True, but why write the article?

The point was to show the racial divide among voters -- especially whites' inability or refusal to support the black candidate. In order to do that, the Times had to be its usual dishonest self.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton is none too thrilled about the Bush administration's decision to send an envoy to the Iranian nuclear talks.

Bolton was just on Fox News and called the move the "early coming to power of the Obama administration."

The Washington Post today has an article highlighting summertime unemployment among teenagers. The article laments the supposedly high rate of nonworking teenagers who can't get summer jobs because of increased competition in the job market.

Who is makes up the competition for these young would-be workers? In part, illegal immigrants:

Macias has plenty of company. Young adults seeking low-skill service jobs for the summer must contend with older, laid-off workers, illegal immigrants and college graduates who cannot find work in their fields, as well as with cuts in federal summer jobs programs.

Now wait a minute, I thoughts illegals were "doing jobs Americans won't do."

Looks to me like illegal immgrants are not only competing with teenagers for summer employment, but are competition with "older, laid-off workders" and "college graduates who cannot find work."

My friend Mac Johnson, who wrote a brilliant piece on gas prices for the June issue of Townhall Magazine, has a smart, funny piece at Human Events today.

Titled "John McCain's Economic Plan: Only 33% Stupid," the piece takes an honest, and therefore painful, look at some of McCain's economic ideas. When you get to the end of it, you realize that McCain wasn't joking when he said he doesn't understand economics.

To be fair, and Mac is, there are some good things McCain has proposed, including:

[T]he most important and avoidable factor driving up the cost of food right now is our idiotic infatuation with the mathematically ludicrous idea of making “biofuels” out of the corn we used to use for “food.”  We are currently destroying 25% of all the corn in America in order to make just enough expensive low-quality motor fuel to replace 0.6% of global oil.  The inflationary pressure of the price of food skyrocketing is substantial, coming on the heels of oil price surges.  Corn ethanol as biofuel is a threat to our economy, among other things.

McCain wisely proposes to roll back corn ethanol mandates and remove the $0.54/gallon tariff that prevents U.S. fuel producers from importing cheap Brazilian sugar-based ethanol to compete with the corn-based product.  To get more fuel, McCain radically proposes we drill for it at home, instead of relying on foreign oil or glorified corporate moonshiners.  This is unusually clear thinking for politician. 

But then, as Mac points out, McCain's ideas go downhill fast, especially with regard to his home mortgage subsidy plan.

McCain’s plan is to use government to give new cheap loans to the “deserving” homeowner in default.  Evidently, “deserving” is a new term for “those with poor judgment,” because the only people getting HOME welfare are those that ran out and got subprime adjustable rate mortgages at the height of the housing bubble and are now shocked to find that the rates on those mortgages are actually adjustable. ...

If you, like me, passed up that stupidity and got a fixed rate mortgage despite the fact that this meant you struggled to pay more for years while others used the surplus income provided by the introductory rate on their ARMs to buy gold-plated disposable jet skis for their pit bulls, then you are now officially a chump.  You can keep on paying.  That’s your punishment for forethought.  John McCain now wants you to pick up the tab for everyone else, too.

It's nothing new to those who are honest about the career of John McCain.

That’s pretty much the pattern of the whole “jobs” plan, and for that matter, McCain’s career – two common sense ideas followed by an excerpt from the Unabomber manifesto, Ted Kennedy’s website or some other crazy diatribe.  In fact, I see this economic plan as a wonderful preview of what a McCain Presidency might be like for conservatives: two steps forward then one step off a cliff.

So now we return to what's been the GOP argument for the last few months -- at least he's not as bad as Obama.

How inspiring.

Mayor Barry is known as "mayor for life," but he can't contend with Neculai Ivascu.

This from today's Washington Post (actually, the Post's KidsPost -- yes, I check out the KidsPost . . . mostly to watch for propaganda):

The residents of a Romanian village knowingly voted in a dead man as their mayor, preferring him to his living opponent.

Neculai Ivascu, 57, who ran the village for almost two decades, died from liver disease just after voting began but still won the election by 23 votes.

"I know he died, but I don't want change," one villager said.

Election officials gave the post to the runner-up, but some villagers have called for a new vote.

The airlines in this country are driving people crazy with all the new fees, rude employees, dirty planes, whatever. The Washington Post has an editorial today addressing this concern and the ever-increasing misery of air travel.

Skyrocketing fuel prices have pushed the financially challenged aviation industry to come up with novel and annoying ways to shake more change out of the pockets of cash-strapped and stressed-out passengers. Want some water? Pay extra. Want headphones? Pay extra. Want some peanuts? Pay extra. The latest nickel-and-diming is the announcement by United Airlines, US Airways and American Airlines that they will start charging fees for a first checked bag. This is on top of hitting air travelers with higher fees for second pieces of checked luggage. Why not look under the seat cushions for loose change?

It's a common gripe among average American travelers, but it's also a cost that must be carried by someone -- and the answer is not that the business should eat the costs. Of course they must be passed on to customers, that's how all businesses operate. But that doesn't make the net misery of air travel easier to bear -- regardless of how much sense it makes. The Post sums it up nicely:

The baggage-check fee is bound to add to the unpleasantness of air travel. Passengers have to practically strip to get to the gate.  [Not to mention awful TSA employees.] They are crammed onto crowded planes that arrive late and don't leave on time. They wait at the luggage carousels for bags that have been lost or damaged. And now those travelers, desperate to get on or off a plane, will have to stand by with diminishing patience as someone down the aisle attempts to save $15 by stuffing a washing machine into the overhead bin.

But the increased fees and higher prices do prompt questions in my mind. How is it that Southwest airlines has been, as far as I can tell, one of the few -- if not the only -- airlines to file for government protection in bankruptcy? They keep their prices low, their flights are on time, their employees are a joy to be around, they refuse to surprise you with fees (see below), they still give you free drinks, they have lots of flight options, yet the seem to be doing well on the business end -- do you suppose there's any correlation here?

Here's Southwest's non-fees from their website:

• NO 1st OR 2nd CHECKED BAG FEES
• NO CHANGE FEES
• NO FUEL SURCHARGES
• NO SNACK FEES
• NO AISLE OR WINDOW SEAT FEES
• NO CURBSIDE CHECK-IN FEES
• NO PHONE RESERVATION FEES

In case you missed it, Townhall National Political Reporter Amanda Carpenter has been doing some brilliant work on the Chris Dodd/Kent Conrad Countrywide story.

Today she reveals just how involved Conrad was in making sure Dodd's bailout bill could make it through the Senate. From the report:

The role that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D.-N.D.) played in greasing the skids for Sen. Chris Dodd’s multibillion mortgage bailout is being overlooked.

Both Democratic senators are being fiercely criticized after Portfolio magazine published a story stating they had received “VIP” discounts from Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo on their home loans-- which has not been refuted by either Dodd or Conrad. Although Dodd is bearing the brunt of those criticisms, both senators had major roles in crafting legislation to benefit Countrywide to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. [...]

During the regular process of creating legislation,the chairman of the relevant committee is required to send a "Views and Estimates" letter to the Budget chairman outlining budget requirements for the bill. In this case, Banking Chairman Dodd needed to send a letter to Budget Chairman Conrad. Then, to advance the bill, Conrad must attach needed budget provisions to the bill make sure it can be funded later.

While signing off on this particular bill, Conrad added something called a “reserve fund” to Dodd’s bill which would prevent the bill from later being subjected to a “Budget Act point of order.”

Also, Amanda was on Fox and Friends yesterday talking about the Countrywide brouhaha. She nails it.

I must say that I was greatly heartened to read David Limbaugh's column today praising Ravi Zacharias' book "Beyond Opinion." Having been a long-time Ravi fan and someone who regularly listens to his lectures/sermons (audio archives available here), it was nice to read praise of his work in the conservative, political realm.

Zacharias' work is vital for the Christian community that needs to understand what it believes and why. Listening to one of his lectures or reading one of his essays is not something you do one time -- you have to read and re-read in order to really start to "get" it.

On the need to understand what Zacharias offers, Limbaugh writes:

I love apologetics because it helped me overcome certain intellectual hurdles that I believed, rightly or wrongly, were obstructing my faith. As I delved into the subject, I was immensely gratified to learn that most of my doubts and questions had been asked and answered by biblical scholars who embraced, rather than dismissed, such challenges.

If, for example, you can't reconcile the notion that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God could permit evil and suffering in the world, you might be surprised to discover that your concerns are hardly new. Such questions have troubled people for millennia. Brilliant and scholarly works exist addressing such questions, as well as seemingly problematic scriptural passages.

Many mistakenly believe that Christian belief, because it involves faith, is unsupported by reason and evidence and that becoming a Christian requires checking your intellect at the door and accepting Christian truth claims unquestioningly. But anyone who has truly studied Christian theology and apologetics -- I hadn't during my skeptical days -- understands that Christianity rests on a powerful body of evidence and that reason and intellect are its allies, not its enemies.

Before you cavalierly assume that there are unanswerable contradictions or unfathomable paradoxes, before you reject Christian theology out of hand because you witness Christian hypocrisy, before you dismiss the Bible as merely a wonderful piece of literature with some instructive moral stories, do yourself the favor of reading it for yourself. And read what other believing, conservative scholars and theologians have written on the subject.

You will come away enriched beyond your greatest expectations and no longer able to say that Christianity is for dummies -- or ducks the tough questions. Debunking the stereotype of the Christian as a nonthinker and that Christianity discourages intellectual examination, Ravi says, "We are fashioned by God to be thinking and emotional creatures. The emotions should follow reason, and not the other way around."

Conservatives rightly complain about the lack of coverage of positive news coming from Iraq. Most of us believe, based on reports outside the liberal media, there is significant progress being made there (see Michael Yon's brilliant report in the June issue of Townhall), but we want the rest of America to understand it, too.

Today, an Associated Press report from Robert Reid actually gives a report on the good news from Iraq.

BAGHDAD (AP) - Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets.

Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war's supporters.

But he doesn't stop there. Reid actually gives us some real information to back up his reporting (though much of it is couched in things-could-still-turn-awful language), giving evidence of progress that conservatives already knew was happening and that honest reporters had been chronicling for some time.  For example:

Iraq is by almost any measure safer today than at any time in the past three years. Fears that the country will disintegrate have receded—though they have not disappeared.

The wave of sectarian massacres that pushed the country to the brink of all-out civil war in 2006 has calmed.

Shiite-Sunni reprisal killings still occur. But gangs of Sunni and Shiite death squads no longer roam the streets at night with impunity, seeking out victims from the rival religious community.

Last month, at least 532 Iraqi civilians and security troopers were killed, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press from Iraqi police and military reports.

Although the number remains high, May's total was down sharply from April's figure of 1,080 and was the lowest monthly figure this year, according to the AP count. By comparison, the AP count showed at least 1,920 Iraqis died in January 2007.

American deaths last month—19 including four non-combat fatalities—were the lowest monthly tally of the war. In May 2007, 126 American service members died.

Many Sunni insurgents have stopped fighting and turned against al- Qaida in Iraq, which U.S. commanders say still remains a threat.

Now the question is whether the "big media" will use this reporting.

Call me a liar.

I'll let George Will make the compelling case for Americans to actually be optimistic about the U.S. economy. I'm not sure which part of the video is more interesting -- Will's case for economic optimism or his smack-down of Robert Reich.

Townhall contributor Fred Thompson spoke with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" about the Supreme Court's horrendous Boumediene decision issued last week.

Few newspaper editorial boards have the guts to really call out Democratic senators. Thankfully, the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal does not suffer such a lack.

If you've not yet heard about this story or if you have but have not had your daily dose of outrage, you really must read this lead editorial from today's Journal.

The Countrywide Financial sweetheart loan scandal continues to grow, spreading to Senators and other Beltway potentates. We are about to find out if Congress's passion for investigating business ethics extends to conflicts of interest and cash that involve fellow Members.

Take Senator Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat whose office issued a Friday statement saying that "I never met Angelo Mozilo." What he did not say then but admitted under later questioning by a Journal reporter is that, although he may not have had a face-to-face meeting with the Countrywide CEO, Mr. Conrad had called Mr. Mozilo and asked for a loan. The result was a discounted loan on his million-dollar beach house and a separate commercial loan of a type that residential lender Countrywide did not even offer to other customers, regardless of the rate.

So after calling the CEO of a company with various matters before the Senate, asking for a loan and then receiving at least two sweetheart deals, Mr. Conrad now says: "I did not think for one moment – and no one ever suggested to me – that I was getting preferential treatment." Lawyers will immediately wonder if this isn't a version of the "ostrich defense," which judges describe during jury instruction as willful blindness or deliberate ignorance. For what other reason, besides preferential treatment, would one call the CEO of the mortgage company? Does Mr. Conrad call August Busch IV when he wants to buy a six-pack?

Raise your hand if you believe Sen. Conrad. Anyone? Anyone? Hmmmm.

What about Dodd?

The same goes for Senator Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), who chairs the very Banking Committee responsible for drafting the laws that govern Countrywide's market. Mr. Dodd is still in denial mode, but so far no one has knocked down the Portfolio.com story that he received discounted loans as part of Countrywide's "Friends of Angelo" program.

Interesting. Any chance either of this "typical politicians" will be held to account? Doubt it.