Captain's Quarters -

I found out a few days ago -- from reading The Corner, naturally -- that NRO editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg would give a speech to CFACT here at the University of Minnesota tonight. I have long wanted to meet Jonah, but didn't have the opportunity until now. With the First Mate in the hospital, I sent Jonah a welcome-to-Minnesota e-mail (to which he sent a friendly reply), but didn't think I'd get the opportunity to hear the speech.

Fortunately, the FM has improved greatly. I visited with her this afternoon and spoke with doctors, and they're very encouraged about her status. She tired out quickly today, so I need to let her get some sleep, but her blood pressure has been very consistent and very normal all day. They removed the IV drip and switched to oral medication, and they think she'll get out of the ICU pretty quickly. After I received an invitation from CFACT to introduce Jonah -- whose speech is next door to the hospital, as it turns out -- I accepted, and I'm looking forward to meeting him.

I'll live-blog the speech after I sit down. Keep checking this post for updates.

7:06 - Starts off by talking about the power of blogs -- how much the conservative blogosphere has matured and filled out. Minnesota "punches so far above its weight".

7:09 - Very humorous, but he wants to avoid the "humorist", especially after he got stuck on CNN between two comedians in late 2000, and got challenged to define what was funny.

7:11 - "You have a pulse, which is one of the things I look for in a non-inflatable audience ..."

7:12 - Talks about Bush Fatigue, and how it seems to be getting more and more burdensome. He doesn't feel the need to defend someone so poor at defending himself. Jonah also has gotten tired of having the front man for conservatism be someone who isn't terribly eloquent. That's why Jonah thinks that Fred Dalton Thompson has such cachet now.

7:14 - Jonah talks about his dislike for "compassionate conservatism", saying that he doesn't want government to feel his pain -- he wants it to feel his boot in its ass.

7:16 - If Bill Clinton spent a billion dollars on marriage counseling -- if not on himself -- we would have criticized it as outside of the scope of government. Why do we give Bush as pass? That kind of question has us wanting the next Reagan.

7:17 - Rudy Giuliani is more liberal than people think, but he's still the frontrunner for the Republicans, certainly an interesting development. Jonah says that he did a great job in saving New York City, but that doesn't mean he'll be the great foreign-policy president as people assume.

7:21 - The GOP is turning into the foreign-policy party, and the evangelicals take that very seriously -- apparently seriously enough to deprioritize the social issues on which they normally focus.

7:22 - Now he's looking at the Democrats. Hillary is imploding. A month ago, Hillary's people all dismissed Barack Obama as a flash in the pan, but they're taking him seriously now.

7:25 - Jonah doesn't think that Obama had a long shelf life, at least not if he stayed in the Senate. This is his time -- after this, he would get stale in the Senate chamber.

7:27 - Edwards: the Howard Dean of 2008. Or, maybe, the Howard Dean Wannabe of 2008.

7:28 - We're too focused on electability, instead of having the right discussions on the nature of conservatism.

7:30 - Now we're moving towards environmentalism, and tells a funny anecdote regarding a conversation he had with a polite but earnest Al Gore supporter. He references Jim Ignatowski, but only a couple of us are old enough to get the joke.

7:32 - Thanks, Lexhamfox -- we're hoping she gets into a regular room in the next couple of days.

7:33 - "Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of the globe went up one degree Celsius. In the same period, the globe got 1800% richer."

7:36 - The US uses its wealth to create positive solutions, such as medicine. Wealth frees people to create such things as AIDS treatments, cancer cures, etc. The rest of the world gets more or less a free ride on our R&D. Why should we limit our economic growth, when that's the case?

7:38 - Bush doesn't defend himself on Kyoto. The press says that Bush "refuses to sign Kyoto", but Clinton already signed it -- and then stuck it in a drawer after the Senate voted 95-0 to refuse to approve it if he submitted it. By that measure, Bush, "that war-mongering bastard", refused to sign the peace treaty with the Japanese. If the Democrats want to approve the treat, they could do it tomorrow, now that they control the Senate.

7:42 - China plans on building over 2000 coal-fired power plants over the next 15-20 years, or one every ten days.

7:45 - Carbon dioxide is a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator, of global warming. As oceans warm, they release more CO2.

7:47 - "You can tell you're being conned when all of the supporting evidence and all of the contradictory evidence is said to prove the same thing."

7:49 - M. Simon, I'm the one who got the temperature change wrong. Jonah said 0.6C, 1.0F.

7:51 - He's talking about the connections between fascism and liberalism, especially environmental activism. This is along the same lines as his next book.

7:53 - He's quoting Gore in Earth in the Balance, blaming Plato, Descartes, and Francis Bacon for using reason to separate Man from his Edenic idyll.

7:57 - Jonah mentions one of the more overlooked aspects of the Nazi movement - its polytheistic paganism.

8:01 - Carbon offsets, the modern-day indulgence to remove the requirement for penance for our sins.

8:04 - Moving into the Q&A. To the extent that the GW debate is over, doesn't that make Gore the perfect candidate for the Democrats? Jonah - Gore and Gingrich have that similarity. Both think they can build a movement that will allow them not to run but get swept into office without campaigning, Gore happens to be doing it better.

8:09 - Is there any candidate on the Right that can slow down the GW train? Jonah -- Short answer: no. Newt probably could do it. Bush lets the Democrats keep painting the lack of Kyoto agreement, but the Democrats could start implementing Kyoto limits now that they control Congress. If they don't, then Bush should use that against them.

8:13 - Fred Dalton Thompson deserves better than Jonah's assessment of him as a "bright new shiny thing". He could be a man who would not get rolled. Jonah - He agrees. He wouldn't have guessed that at this stage there would be this level of dissatisfaction with the current GOP choices, and Jonah is concerned about the desperate quality of the draft-Thompson impulse. So far, Jonah sees him as the Republican Obama.

8:17 - Why are Republicans are so unwilling to challenge GW dogma? Jonah - GW has become "the children" of the political debate of 2007-8. If you argue about GW, you hate the Earth.

8:22 - How can Democrats keep up with Newt Gingrich intellectually? Jonah - Best predictor of who will win in the general election is who has more likability. Newt's negatives are higher than Hillary's and much higher than Obama's. Intellectually, he may be able to run circles around them, but that doesn't mean he'll win.

8:26 - One of the interesting aspects of the campaign so far is that Hillary has lost her identity as a female candidate. Few people talk about her as the first potential woman President.

8:29 - Our focus on competence in the GOP primaries by supporting technocrats serves as a subtle indictment of the Bush administration.

8:32 - Wrapping up. Jonah is an excellent, engaging, and humorous speaker. He drew a significant crowd for a conservative at the U of M -- more than 100 people -- and kept them in rapt attention. He made the event fun and didn't spare criticism for either conservatives or liberals. If you ever get a chance to see him speak live, make sure you take full advantage of it.