In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.

Or, you might say that ingrate Europe has behaved like a bratty teenager, living off the blood and treasure of the United States while scorning her.

How many German troops are fighting in Afghanistan? None, because their soldiers are not allowed to fight. They just do peaceful duties.

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common.

No kidding. But that’s all Bush’s fault for being such a cowboy.

In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future.

Yes, because Europeans are pussies. When Yugoslavia fell apart, who came to the rescue? The USA. The Dutch UN “peacekeepers” in Srebrenica who allowed the Serbs to massacre Muslims under their protection were later awarded medals for their service. 

That’s Europe today, buddy.

Both views miss the truth — that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

Who violated the UN sanctions against Saddam, enbabling him to become a threat? The French and Russians.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

What a load of meaningless piffle.

…In the late 1990s, the term “toxic mold” found its way into media coverage and a handful of courtrooms. A few victims reported a frightening array of symptoms, from severe memory loss to infections and bleeding gums.

In a country where fear is second only to sex as a hot sales tactic, household mold, which has always been in the environment, soon became, in Kramer’s words, “toxic, dangerous, a killer.” While mold can be dangerous to the infirm, an opportunistic group of plaintiff’s attorneys convinced juries of an exaggerated threat — to the healthy. Awards by juries in Texas, California, Oregon and several other states exploded into massive figures, topped by $32.1 million the Ballard family of Texas was awarded in 2001 when their home was inundated with mold.

Builders and insurance agents feared that they would have “another asbestos” on their hands, an area of litigation that grew so huge, so vague — and so lucrative for lawyers — that some now refer to it as the “Asbestos Blob.” Construction companies, home insurers, health insurers and contractors decided to fight back against claims of health problems and property damage caused by mold, arguing that there is very little scientific or medical proof that household molds make people seriously ill.

But their side didn’t have Sharon Kramer. With Kramer as its Erin Brockovich and her daughter as a starring victim, a mold war exploded, with California at its center. By 2001, water-damage claims in California — driven by the discovery of mold — skyrocketed by a third, to $430 million of all homeowner-insurance claims paid, according to the Insurance Information Network of California. The average claim surged 80 percent from 1998 to 2001, to $4,730, to remove what, mere years earlier, had often been scrubbed away with a little Dutch Cleanser. The Mold Blob had arrived, and by 2002, insurers reported $3 billion in annual losses nationwide — paid as settlements for personal-injury claims and property damage caused by mold.

One of those demanding justice was Kramer, whose sickly teenage daughter was nearly killed by a household fungus that is innocuous to the healthy. A Realtor in exclusive Rancho Santa Fe, Kramer became an outraged gadfly and self-appointed mold researcher. She grew enraged by papers written by mold experts who sided with insurers and contractors in saying household mold isn’t particularly dangerous.

Like those who would later join the cause, including Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon, she saw a conspiracy funded by businesses out to end mold claims while risking the public’s health. She believed that the well-being of thousands depended on her exposing that deceit. Like the fight waged by McMahon over the death of his dog purportedly from mold, Kramer’s belief has consumed her. It has wiped out her comfortable suburban life and financial security and driven away all but her truest friends.

But the great mold scare never rose to the level of accepted epidemic among serious researchers. Despite public hysteria that continues even now, science today finds no direct link between mold and serious illness in people with normal immune systems.

The Centers for Disease Control now says: “There are very few reports that toxigenic molds found inside homes can cause unique or rare health conditions such as pulmonary hemorrhage or memory loss” — the kinds of illnesses claimed in successful lawsuits at the height of the mold rush. “These case reports,” the CDC warns on its Web site, “are rare, and a causal link between the presence of toxigenic mold and these conditions has not been proven.”

…It was not that many years ago when there was moral outrage ringing throughout the media because lenders were reluctant to lend in certain neighborhoods and because banks did not approve mortgage loan applications from blacks as often as they approved mortgage loan applications from whites.

All this was an opening salvo in a campaign to get Congress to pass laws forcing lenders to lend to people they would not otherwise lend to and in places where they would not otherwise put their money.

The practice of not lending in some neighborhoods was demonized as “redlining” and the fact that minority applicants were approved for mortgages only 72 percent of the time, while whites were approved 89 percent, was called “overwhelming” evidence of discrimination by the Washington Post.

Some people are more easily overwhelmed than others, especially when they find statistics that seem to fit their preconceptions. But if we do what politicians and the media seldom bother to do– stop and think– an entirely different picture emerges.

In our own personal lives, common sense leads us to avoid some neighborhoods. If you want to call that “redlining,” so be it. But places where it is dangerous to go are often also places where it is dangerous to send your money.

As for racial differences in mortgage loan application approval rates, that does not tell you much if you are comparing apples and oranges. Income, credit history and net worth are just some of the things that are very different from one group to another.

More important, in the same ways that blacks differ from whites, whites differ from Asian Americans. The fact that whites are turned down for conventional mortgage loans, and resort to subprime loans, more often than Asian Americans do is seldom reported in “news” stories about lending practices, even though such data are readily available.

Shocking as it may be to some, lenders are in the business of making money, and they don’t much care whose money it is, so long as they get paid.

Politicians, on the other hand, are in the business of getting votes, and they don’t much care whose votes it is– or what they have to say or do in order to get those votes.

It was government intervention in the financial markets, which is now supposed to save the situation, that created the problem in the first place.

Laws and regulations pressured lending institutions to lend to people that they were not lending to, given the economic realities. The Community Reinvestment Act forced them to lend in places where they did not want to send their money, and where neither they nor the politicians wanted to walk.

Now that this whole situation has blown up in everybody’s face, the government intervention that brought on this disaster in is supposed to save the day.

However, Obama is not on that committee. This one is hard to explain away as a slip of the tongue — like the 58 states or seeing the fallen soldiers sitting in the Memorial Day audience.

No, this is Clintonesque Al Gore-like lying (clumsy and easily found out).

The actual membership of the committee is here.

Last night I had the TV on long enough to watch a disturbing, evening-long debate on CNN. The various anchors, including the conservative Glenn Beck as well as Anderson Cooper, kept returning to the issue of biased media coverage for Senator Obama. They were happy to concede that he is getting more than twice the media coverage that Senator McCain is getting. The question, presented to various pundits and strategists, was whether this was strictly bias, or could there be another reason?

David Gergen, a man whose shallow thoughts have reached the ears of  too many presidents, made the point that Obama is a great story, and his campaign knows how to make things newsworthy, while McCain is boring, and his campaign is boring and therefore not newsworthy. That, not bias, according to Gergen, explains the majority of the additional coverage he gets. What constitutes newsworthy? Gergen cited the fact that McCain is going to give his convention acceptance speech in the normal convention venue, while Obama is going to do his at a stadium packed with 70,000 people. To me, this is evocative of something Leni Riefenstahl might have documented. But the word Gergen used, over and over was “sizzle.”

It should be noted that NRO’s David Frum was on the panel. He valiantly made the case for substance, and he argued, rightly of course, that McCain’s political story — the comeback from the ashes — was compelling political drama, and his substantive policies are worthy of attention. Normally Frum wins debates. But if the standard is “sizzle,” or sex appeal, then any rational, substantive argument is doomed to lose.

Gergen’s considered advice was that the McCain campaign needs more — and cleverer — dog and pony shows to attract and dazzle the media. This is the advice of a former advance man, to be sure. It is awful advice, if you think that democracy depends on informed citizens who make reasoned judgements about leadership abilities, experience, and judgement, let alone the substance of policies.  

It is excellent advice if you think that this race is being treated like a reality show, with the media as judges of performances that will sell.  It is worth pointing out, of course, that even American Idol, with its faux democracy, only picks a winner who manages to go on to commercial success very intermittantly. And yet, the media, and perhaps many of our fellow citizens, seem to be looking more for an American Idol than for a President.

Late next week the government will release initial estimates of real economic activity in the second quarter. Not long ago, in early April, when the quarter was just beginning, the consensus forecast for Q2 2008 real GDP growth was 0.0%, with as many economists predicting contraction as were predicting growth.

Now, three months later, the consensus is up to 2.2%. And no surprise - we are forecasting a 3% growth rate, more bullish than almost any other economist.

Yes, it is true that the home building and autos sectors have been hammered. But, it is not true that this weakness has spread. Outside those sectors, the economy is not just healthy but downright strong, reflecting relatively low tax rates and loose monetary policy.

It’s bad enough that Rep. Pelosi refuses to embrace reality, evaluate facts and oversee meaningful debate. But the hissy fits she throws against President Bush and the Republican minority are worse yet. This is a sad situation.

Pelosi’s reaction to Bush’s lifting of the ban on offshore drilling is a perfect example. She called the action a giveaway of “more public resources to the very same oil companies that are sitting on 68 million acres of federal lands they’ve already leased.”

The key phrase is “public” resources — not Democratic resources or Pelosi’s resources — and polls clearly show Americans are behind coastal drilling. The speaker knows that.

Her demonizing of Big Oil doesn’t make sense, either. The companies want to get oil out of the ground. Their exploratory technology is very effective, and they’re drilling extensively. But not all lease properties have oil that’s readily recoverable.

Pelosi says the president’s action is a “gift of more profits for the oil companies.” Does she prefer that foreign, and often hostile, nations make the profits? Well, they are. She knows that, too.

“The Bush plan is a hoax,” Pelosi charges, ignoring the fact that we know large reserves are located off our shores, in Western oil-shale deposits and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Bush says let’s get it as quickly as possible, drilling responsibly off our shores, in the West’s oil shale formations and on 2,000 acres of the 19 million acres in ANWR. Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest oil field, has proved we can do so and not hurt the environment. It can be done, and America needs it. Pelosi also knows that.