Released Emails Show Wind Lobby, Soros Group Helped with White House PR (PJM Exclusive — Read the Emails Here)
And so are YOU. This is pretty cool.
From James Taranto:
Chait actually makes two distinct claims about Obama: that he has a superior intellect and that he is a superior “communicator.” The first claim could be true, although it is far from indisputable. But the second claim is so absurd as to be delusional.
Obama has spent the past year trying to sell Americans on ObamaCare. He has failed utterly, as Podhoretz notes. Now, maybe Chait is right that opposition to ObamaCare is a product of stupidity. Maybe ObamaCare would be popular if a majority of Americans were as brilliant as Jonathan Chait. But in a democratic republic, elections are not limited to the elect. Shockingly, half of all Americans have below-average IQs. They vote too.
By no imaginable standard can a politician be considered a great “communicator,” or even an adequate one, if he is unable to persuade voters of average-or-below intelligence to back his policies.
Indeed.
Via Tom Maquire
We the Problem
From Newsweek: “Washington is working just fine. It’s us that’s broken.“
Given that we live in a constitutional republic, one has to wonder if they get just how fucked up and insanely ironic [not to mention arrogant] this headline is.
Nah. I doubt they do.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds has the meat of it.
It seems that our new category, “Unbelievably Stupid Ideas”, is gonna get more play than I thought it would.
Ilya Somin has an update on the regrettable Kelo v City of New London decision ::: and its aftermath:
For years, the site of the property condemned in the controversial Kelo v. City of New London case has stood empty. Now however, there are recent reports that the city of New London has found a developer interested in building townhouses on the site (see here andhere) [HT: my RA Eva Choi, and Michael O’Malley of the Yale University Press].
Several previous plans to develop on the condemned property have gone under. In November, the Pfizer Corporation, whose lobbying helped instigate the initial takings, announced the planned closing of its headquarters in New London. That step further reduced the likelihood that anything will be built in the area. It remains to be soon whether the townhouse development will work out better than these previous efforts. At present, it is not clear how much the new project will cost taxpayers, and a news report indicates that “[c]onstruction on the project will not occur any time soon.”
Even if the townhouses are eventually built, it is unlikely that they will generate enough development to offset the value of the numerous homes and businesses wiped out by the condemnations, the opportunity cost of having the area lie empty for years, and the over $80 million in public funds already expended on the project.
Ironically, much of the condemned area was a lower-middle class residential neighborhood before the takings, and New London’s current plan is to use the land for roughly the same purpose. The City could have “achieved” this result at far lower cost simply by leaving the neighborhood alone in the first place. Taken as a whole, the Kelo story exemplifies the ways in which “economic development” takings not only victimize property owners, but also often destroy more development than they create (see also my more extended discussion inthis article, which cites figures for the costs of the Kelo takings).
Ilya has added an update worth checking out. Me linky. You clicky.
Thank god that the Democrats are in control finally so that the special interests and lobbyists are no longer … uh … oh, wait :::
Lobbyists for healthcare, energy and financial interests had a banner year in 2009, with the average payout for each reaching as high as $177,000.
Despite his push to rein in special interests, President Barack Obama sparked a boom on K Street with major new proposals on healthcare, climate change and financial policies.
“The magnitude of the work done in the three fields is just huge,” said Michael Levy, of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s Washington office.
New lobbying restrictions led to a decline in the number of registered lobbyists working for clients in each of the three industries, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
The combination of more work for fewer lobbyists meant record payouts per lobbyist.
Lobbyists working in each of the three industries took home the most on average that they have in a decade, even when adjusted for inflation, according to analysis of the data by The Hill.
Many lobbyists work for clients in several policy areas, so the average payout by industry doesn’t necessarily equal the average overall compensation those lobbyists received. Spending was up in all three broad areas of healthcare, energy and financial-services reforms.
Healthcare clients spent the most overall on lobbying at $544 million, which was roughly $60 million more than in 2008. But there were more lobbyists (3,405) on healthcare issues than on either energy (2,311) or financial legislation (2,654).
Lobbyists earned an average of $160,000 for healthcare-related work.
Energy clients paid $409 million for an average of $177,000 per lobbyist. Lobbyists for energy clients beat out financial lobbyists for top billing.
That, combined with this story have me just shaking my head at all those hopey changey types :::
Barack Obama has long decried the corrupting influence of money in politics. As a candidate, he ran against lobbyists and the pay-for-play culture of Washington. As president, he has continued to hammer the theme, most recently in his impassioned attacks on the Supreme Court’s ruling inCitizens United v Federal Election Commission.
Given this, it’s a little surprising to learn that Obama has not only embraced the sordid money-driven culture of DC, but actually outdone his predecessors. An analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, for example, found that Obama has stuffed the diplomatic corps with more political appointees (i.e., cronies) than any president in the past 40 years. Only a year into the administration, close of half of the president’s biggest donors already have federal jobs.
But I already blogged about that.
What saddens me about this the most, is that I am just not surprised :::
You remember that “Constitution” thingy? You know, the anachronism from a bygone era, which Democrat politicians and judges take an oath to uphold and then promptly forget about — or claim that it’s a “living and breathing” document?
To show you how far left the Democrat Party has moved over the last couple of decades, a serious debate appears to be raging within the party over the role of the United States Senate. Not just procedures like the filibuster, mind you, but whether there actually should be a Senate at all.
Go read the whole thing [including an excellent brief history lesson on why we have checks and balances].
I am reminded once again how few people realize that we do not live in a democracy; we live in a consitutional republic. Given how the populace at large thinks, while I am certainly not in love with how our republic is functioning, moving toward more “democracy” would obviously be worse.
Mob rule.
Why do I get the feeling that precious few have read the Federalist Papers?
Micky Kaus over at slate.com has a good roundup and excellent commentary on the atrocious state of schools in Los Angeles [and I am sure other areas are similar].
Quotable bits :::
Unions vs. Liberalism, Part XXIIII: If you are a liberal who believes in public education, do not let the teachers’ unions do to your school system what the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has done to the L.A. Unified School District–make it so hard to fire a bad teacher that most school principals don’t even try. According to an L.A. Weeklyinvestigation, the school district itself seems to have given up:
In the past decade, LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — andonly four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.
[W]e also discovered that 32 underperforming teachers were initially recommended for firing, but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight. Moreover, 66 unnamed teachers are being continually recycled through a costly mentoring and retraining program but failing to improve, and another 400 anonymous teachers have been ordered to attend the retraining. [E.A.]
That’s less than one attempted firing a year. Why? Mainly because firings–and the bad performance evaluations that precede them–are almost invariably contested by the union. Firings must go through an expensive and protracted hearing and appeals process: “Documents show only one instance in the past 10 years in which an LAUSD teacher accepted his firing and left without a fight or big payment.” [E.A.]
Go read the rest on your own.
Speaking of Unions and other insane use of public funds that fly in the face of common sense. This is a bit old now, but in case you missed it ::: Willie Brown can talk common sense ‘cuz he is no longer in office.
In the UPS vs FedEx fight, UPS us running to daddy and wants the government to place additional labor rules on FedEx. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
From Reason.com ::: [Watch the video at the link]
You may have heard the UPS is in quite the fight with FEDEX. Though both are package-delivery companies, they’re governed by totally different federal labor rules. As a result, UPS’s workforce is much more heavily unionized than FEDEX’s—and more than twice as expensive.
So now UPS is trying to get FEDEX reclassified under federal law as a way of screwing a competitor. That’s horrendous, but it also makes a sick kind of business sense. And it also reveals the real villain: A government that is big enough to absolutely, positively guarantee it can screw any business. Overnight.
Barack Obama has long decried the corrupting influence of money in politics. As a candidate, he ran against lobbyists and the pay-for-play culture of Washington. As president, he has continued to hammer the theme, most recently in his impassioned attacks on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.
Given this, it’s a little surprising to learn that Obama has not only embraced the sordid money-driven culture of DC, but actually outdone his predecessors. An analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, for example, found that Obama has stuffed the diplomatic corps with more political appointees (i.e., cronies) than any president in the past 40 years. Only a year into the administration, close of half of the president’s biggest donors already have federal jobs.
Below is a list of Obama campaign bundlers and the taxpayer-funded positions they’ve received:
Go read the list for yourself.
Patterico has the summary :::
This surge in claims puts a damper on the last report, in which the unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly. However, it is consistent with the recent trend of unemployment news being “unexpectedly” bad again and again and again and again and again and well, you get the picture…
At what point does the WH press corp as this question ::: “ummm…Mr Press Secretary? We are less interested in the numbers and more interested in how you can keep a straight face while declaring these “unexpected”?”
Actually, I am curious when we can expect them to adjust their expectations to expect the unexpected.
Jeeeeeesuuuuuusssss.
This what happens when you have someone or some organization [in this case an administration] who/that divorces policy from results. It is as if they do not understand that when you hold out an object at shoulder height and allow it to drop, that…uh..gravity will take over. For them, when they hold it out, they still expect it to float and the fact that the object drops is “unexpected”.
Economics and basic laws of physics. Both are mysterious and mythical forces to most politicians [and sadly, most of the populace].
Update ::: Gatewaypundit has a useful graph on the Administration’s projections versus … reality. Check it out here.
This is very, very cool. Especially in light of this :::
The Navy intends to deploy an energy efficient “Great Green Fleet” carrier strike group consisting of ships powered either by nuclear energy or biofuels with an attached air wing of fighter jets fueled entirely by biofuels.
As Professor Reynolds would say ::: “Faster please!”
Ron Paul \"You Can\'t Reinflate The Bubble!\"
What happens when you live on credit, pay your creditors with more credit, then run out of funds? Witness the downfall of the American Republic.
Funny, he has been predicting this financial collapse for the last 2 years – it was the central platform on which he ran for president in 2007! (closing our overseas operations to reduce the costs was a means to avoid it from happening). Yet, he is virtually unused by the media. He is a Churchill that will not be voted into power because 1) the threat cannot be coalesced into a iconic enemy to fight like the Nazi’s were, and 2) because his rhetoric can’t begin to compete with Obama. Sad. History will look back on him and the unsuccessful grassroots swell of his 2007-8 campaign as the symptom of American collapse.
How much evidence will it take for people to question the idea that the government can “steer/direct/grow” our economy and realize that the government unbalances it and creates the challenges it then “needs” to solve? What has it EVER done right in this sphere?
The talking heads on television, who admittedly do not understand _basic_ economics (supply/demand curves, marginal utility, credit vs. capital, or the relationship between money supply and inflation and its consequence), “inform” an uneducated public (who also don’t understand basic economics) about the politicians promises and the pundits positions as if they were reality – then take polls that the politicians and pundits use as evidence that they are right.
The only part missing from the equation we see/hear in the media is the one that actually matters – the REALITY of market forces, which, like water, eventually go around, overflow, or bust wide open the various obstacles the government puts it its way, causing black markets (organized crime) and destructive collapse, leading the government to “reposition/reform” the obstacles, to ratchet up the process problem one more time, until it can’t and the whole thing collapses. Result? The depression, the meltdown of the 1970’s, and now the meltdown of the 2000’s – which we have been inflating to the point of popping for the last 8 years. Now what? More of the same? You bet.
The greatest political accomplishment in human history – the codification of individual human rights as the foundation of a government – destroyed because of the politicians desire for power (personal and ideological – the road to hell is paved with good intentions) and rhetorical skill to manipulate the gullible American people through an ironic combination of riches (entitlement) and righteousness (envy). The government that robs Peter (the future, the rich), to pay Paul (the present and the so-called poor), will always have the support of Paul, until it collapses into chaos – then government becomes warlords, and the process repeats itself – UNTIL people stop the cycle and put freedom (and the consequent self-responsibility) first – i.e., the American Revolution. It is Paul who needs to step up, and he is too lazy, stupid (by choice), and immature to do so.
End Rant.
Tragic. The US government nationalizing and bailing out major financial institutions it helped to destoy...
I am a libertarian. To contrast this with Democrat and Republican: we might say that the Republicans (at their core) want the government to stay out of our financial lives, but control what we do in our bedrooms (morality/religion). Democrats (at their core) want the government out of our bedrooms, but control how we manage our financial affairs (welfare/regulation/wealth redistribution). Libertarians want the government out of our financial lives and out of our bedrooms. Libertarians stand for the individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness according to our own conscience. They believe that the purpose of government is to protect the freedom and rights of citizens through a police force to protect us from the initiation of force by other citizens, court system to protect us from fraud (enforce contracts), and a military force to protect us from foreign invaders. The libertarian stance on foreign aggression is: commerce with all nations, alliances with none. Libertarians not only want us out of Iraq, they want us out of Japan! (and our other 800+ military bases around the world!) Let them hate us for our freedom and wealth, without the military presence/force that forces that freedom and wealth down their throats.
My reasons for being libertarian are simple. I believe that history has demonstrated (in every time. and in every part of the globe) that the more power you give to government, the more those who hold the power will be corrupted by lobbyists (business, religious, bankers, racists, populists, etc.). As PJ O'Rourke put it, "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." The more money and favors/regulations the government controls, the more money and favors the lobbyists can afford to spend to buy them, because (although it is somewhat of a gamble) the return on investment for lobbying is typically 10 to 1. As a lobbyist, I can spend $50 million dollars influencing various politicians in order to get a $500 million dollar annual contract, and $1 billion to get $100 billion contract. Smart business always follows the clearest incentives, and competing for government largess is clearly incentived. People/politicians are corruptible (especially through blackmail, which money buys easily), and so governments become corrupt. The solution is to reduce government power to reduce the scope and destructiveness of its corruption and keep it maximally accountable to its core functions. Hence, Libertarianism. The American Constitution/experiment, was created by men whom, by todays standards, are radical Libertarians, for the exact reasons stated above. I believe that they created the most beautiful social contract in human history, and I find it tragic that it is being increasingly ignored and distorted. I am patriotic in this sense: I believe that the ideals and values of life, liberty/freedom, protection of our right to use our property according to our own conscience (as long as we are not violating the identical rights of others) are worth cheering about and if necessary, fighting to maintain.
Some of you may have seen the post by Deepak Chopra about Sarah Palin, in which he psycho-eviscerates those who find value or some type of agreement with the positions she takes.
Upon reading it several times, I became progressively dismayed, although fascinated by the clarity with which it typifies “green/Boomeritis” arrogance, including the hypocrisy and self-refuting logic at its heart. This article examplifies a common stance taken by those whom I consider the most politically active people in my life. My opinion, which I offer reasons for below, is that it expresses a fundamentally dishonest and destructive perspective that is at the heart of much of the “transformational” community’s conversation about politics.
Specifically, it is built on a narrative that claims/implies that it is inclusive and integrative (2nd tier, in Spiral Dynamics terms) , but is deeply self-absorbed and parochial (1st tier), and hence blind to its blindness.
It is written as if it is the only rational perspective possible, as if Deepak (and by extension Obama, or the reverse) are so right that there is no need for conversation about the accuracy of their propositions and conclusions, only about how to deal with them. This marginalizes all the values of people they disagree with – the very thing that their stance accuses all other perspectives of.
Deepak (and those who agree with and write similar pieces) pretend as if the “ground” that he is standing on and writing from represents an “enlightened/superior/higher” perspective BECAUSE it includes more information than its competing perspectives (in this case, conservatives like Palin). However, he demonstrates no understanding of the people he is critiquing. In place of understanding, he creates a straw man that burns so easily they he feels the need to apologize for how cruel he must seem to destroy his opponent so utterly. It is as if his opponent is so obviously wrong he doesn’t even need to establish the verity of his points, all there is left to do talk about their consequences…
Examples: In almost every sentence, he speaks an an unquestionable authority, and with a tone that indicates that disagreement is a sign of the stupidity that he is decrying (and, as it is said, you can’t argue with a sneer):
- Impulses that are different than those He (Barack and Deepak) promotes are “their worst impulses.”
- BECAUSE He calls people to “higher impulses,” Palin’s responses and values (and others who disagree with Obama’s policies) can by DEFINITION be simplified to “anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other” , and hence written off as unworthy of consideration or inclusion.
- “Small town values” become “a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.” – (What the hell?)
- “Family values” become “anti social justice.” (Huh?)
- Patriotism becomes “a fallback from a failed war.” (I know my patriotism is sourced from this…)
- her political position, including all of the changes she wants to make becomes “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change? Everything’s OK as it is.” – (of course, to disagree with someone who wants a specific change is to be against change in general. I knew that…)
He says: “there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. ” Well, if it is so obvious, why can’t they see it? because they are stupid? because they are victims of patriarchal bourgeoisie values (which they are too stupid to go beyond)? How about because they believe that feminism is a postmodern movement that is nihilistic in nature, substance, and rhetoric, and proposes ideals that conservatives like Palin believe are destructive and soul-deadening to living, breathing people? Such a response is simply not a possible legitimate stance to take in this article. It does not exist as a possiblity in Deepak’s world.
This is the hypocrisy. Lack of understanding leads to projection of the enemy onto Palin – against which Deepak establishs his hero stature, which stature is supposedly integrated, compassionate, and wise. All bullshit.
AND, the intellectual elite of the country and the political left do not even question or challenge him. This article has been sent to me by 4 different people – more than any other political article yet this election cycle. All of them have included positive or self-congratulatory introductions to it. None have mentioned its utter arrogance. So, here I am…
Jason Alexander (the philosopher of capitalism, not the actor), used to chide me, saying “Remember, people get the government they deserve. If the people are unWholeSum, the government will be unWholeSum.” I have spent the last decade losing my will to try to prove him wrong. Welcome to election year 2008.
This article is even more painful for me because I have severe concerns about the conservative side of this issue as well. However, an enemy of my enemy is rarely my friend, just as two wrongs don’t make a right, and someone disagreeing with someone who is wrong is not thereby correct.
Sad times for the most beautiful political experiement/culture in history – the American Revolution of Self-Responsibility and Individual Rights.
Well, I’ve looked over and considered all of the Propositions on our local San Francisco ballot. And I’ve come to the conclusion that the San Francisco Taxpayers Union is absolutely correct — there’s not a damn thing worth supporting on this year’s ballot.
I tried to keep an open mind going in. I have a good friend who is working hard to pass Proposition A — the $450 Million Public School Repair/Upgrade Bond. A lot of his work brings him into and around the San Francisco Public School system. He urged me to support Prop A., even invited me to work on, and donate to, the campaign.
But I just can’t. Not when our school system is so rife with waste, mismanagement, shenanigans, and cronyism. And I don’t see that changing any time soon, unless perhaps if we stop shoveling money into the dysfunctional system (and it’s worth noting that San Francisco passed a $300 Million School Repair and Upgrade bond just 3 years ago. Where does it stop?)
I said to my friend, “we have to stop feeding the beast.” And he tried his best, but he couldn’t bring me over to his point of view. And the School Bond is perhaps he most compelling item on the ballot. The other stuff is just economic poison or political grandstanding — or both, in many cases. Force all employers to provide paid sick leave (Prop. F)? Say Buh-bye to jobs for San Franciscans (ahhh.. who needs ‘em, anyway?) Or how about Prop. H, which would force all landlords to increase the current $1,000 per tenant “relocation charge” for Owner Move-In or repair evictions to $4,500 per tenant (up to $22,500 per unit)? And people wonder why apartments are being converted into condos at a breakneck clip and nobody wants to build apartments here. Great for the few tenants who receive these exorbitant, extorted payments, very very bad for everybody else (including any tenants who are looking for a new place to rent.)
And on and on it goes.
In a way, the horrible crop of ballot propsitions will make it very easy to vote on November 7th. Just mark “NO” next to every San Francisco measure. Simple!
Below are the San Francisco Taxpayers Union ballot arguments. The SF Taxpayers Union is a worthy organization dedicated to injecting some restraint and some much-needed economic sanity into our turbulent and often screwy economic and political climate, so go here to sign up for their updates and information. They boldly assert: “San Franciscans pay enough to live and work in San Francisco without having our pockets picked every Election Day.”
Indeed. Here’s the SF Taxpayers Union:
Taxpayers Beware!
There they go again! Here are some good reasons to vote against everything and save your money:
Prop A – Another School Bond . . . . No
$450 million with no guarantee how it will be spent? We know they spent part of the 2003 bond on schools that were later closed and that most of this one will be spent on a disabilities lawsuit settlement, Until responsible people come up with a long-range spending plan, there are better uses for property taxes.
Prop. B – Supervisors Stay Home . . . . No
Taxpayers deserve the opportunity to confront the people who take and spend their money. Make them go to work like everyone else.
Prop C. – Politicians Get a Big Raise . . . . No
The Sheriff gets $55,000 more and the Mayor gets $40,000 more if this passes, plus all of the trickle down raises to staffers whose salaries are tied to elected officials – labor costs will skyrocket. There are no incentives for performance – they can do a lousy job and still get a raise.
Prop D. – Privacy Protection . . . . No
It’s one thing for the city to be uncooperative with the Federal Government, but it’s quite another to force city contractors to do the same. Another attack on business.
Prop E. – Higher Parking Taxes . . . . No
This 25% parking tax increase and 35% valet parking increase is not even going to MUNI – it’s going into the General Fund for the Mayor and Supes to spend as they will. Driving a car is already too expensive – save your money for gas.
Prop F. – Mandatory Paid Time Off . . . . No
Forcing small businesses to provide benefits without regard to whether doing so will drive them, their customers, or the taxes they generate to other cities is foolish..
Prop G. – Anti Formula Retail . . . . No
This will require a Planning Commission hearing for every new formula retail store (like Starbucks), and enable the Supes to ban them outright in more commercial districts. Just another anti-business and anti-taxpayer move.
Prop H. – Renter Relocation Benefits . . . . No
Property owners would be forced to pay thousands of dollars to renters [up to $22,500 per unit] for temporary relocation, even if they are repairing/improving their buildings for the renters’ benefit!
Prop I. – Fun and Games at City Hall . . . . No
While we agree it would be fun to watch the Mayor try to answer questions from the Board of Supervisors every month nonsense such as this belongs in a comedy routine, not on a ballot.
Prop J. – Impeach Bush/Cheney . . . . No
The Board of Supervisors needs to stay out of national and international debates. Ballot clutter like this costs tens of thousands of dollars for each proposition, money better spent on police officers and gardeners.
Prop K. – Feel Good Housing Policy . . . . No
A policy debate that belongs in Board chambers, not on the ballot.
AnalPhilosoher asserts that it’s inappropriate for President Bush to call Jihadists fascists because “jihadists aren’t statists” (via Instapundit.)
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Okay, well, how can we square this assertion with the former Taliban government in Afghanistan or the current Iranian regime?
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If you read Paul Berman’s excellent book “Terror and Liberalism” (and everybody should), you’ll be AMAZED at just how many links there are between classic European fascism on the one hand and the Muslim movements we’re dealing with on the other. I mean what would you call the Baath movement of Iraq and of Syria but a classic fascist movement? (And you’ll find that their history is actually directly connected with European fascism). It’s true that the “Islamist” movements have some different wrinkles. But as the Buddhists say, are they more the same, or more different? And again, don’t forget about the Spanish Phalangists — widely considered to be a classic “fascist” movement — who incorporated the religous angle, albeit in a European and Christian form.
Here’s more Berman on the subject (but do check out his book.)
Also…we blogged about Berman and the meaning of Iraq at awhile back.
Personally, I am thrilled that Bush is finally articulating this.
Over at EU Referendum we see the Director’s Cut of Qana.
The narrative here is of how the combination of Hezbollah’s media management and modern photo-journalism has turned the recording of a tragic event into theatre, in the best tradition of Michael Moore.
As best we can, we have pieced together the jumble of evidence which surrounded the production of the iconic photographs which were published around the world, and put them in perspective. Many of the photographs have been used before, some are new to this site and others are video “grabs”. But it is not the pictures, per se, that tell the story, so much as their ordering and analysis. Make of this what you will, but I can assure you that you are not supposed to see them in this light.
The “story” – for that is what it is – starts here, in the wreckage of the buiding at Qana which is performing the temporary and unwholesome function of a morgue. It is from here, that the bodies are extracted, the essential props of this theatre. And standing on the left of the frame is one of the two star characters of our story, Mr “White Tee-Shirt”. With equal accuracy, though, we could call him Mr Hezbollah, for reasons which will become apparent [...]
I recently saw “good night and good luck”, which re-awakened my interest in the cultural impacts of fascism and the ability of people with media power to smear people with inaccurate but effective half-truths, or out and out lies. To avoid dealing with the unfair social ostracism such smears create, many of the best and brightest quit the game, or go along with the party line in the hopes of keeping at least a few sane voices in the mix.
As I have watched the press and media around the global warming issue, it reminds me heavily of this “McCarthyism” style of debate. I am watching every climatologist I am aware of who questions Gore’s (and the IPCC) data or agenda being written off as spurious or even malicious. This time, instead of “communism” these previously well-respected climatologists are smeared with “corporatism.” They lose funding, get their articles rejected without review, and become fodder for the “conspiracy” theorists in the global warming camp.
Gore regularly smears (meaning asserts without proof or context) the more prominent anti-global warming climatologists with “ties to oil interests” and “their work has been discredited.” This public comment gets reprinted thousands of times. Meanwhile, the scientists themselves question how and where their work has been discredited. They offer systematic defense of their work which are not published by the journals that publish their status as discredited.
What about the funding that these people get, and the political power and fame? Are those, perhaps, motivations that equal the supposed “oil” ties of anti-global warming hysteria?Alvin Gouldner pointed out that in Marx’s system of capitalists, workers, and landlords, he left out the intellectuals. By leaving them out of the equation (he happened to be one, go figure), Marx’s system leaves room for them to dominate the system, which they did and have. When we add them back into the equation, we see that the leaders of the communist revolutions have all been intellectuals, and those in power after the revolution as well.
In the same way, I question whether we might want to add “alarmists” to the political/scientific equation around global warming. Why is it that people are so quick to jump on Gore’s bandwagon? Why do they so easily write off those scientists who claim that the data does not lead to a preponderance of evidence for HUMAN impact on global warming? Why do they listen intently to scientists whose speciality is not climate but ignore the climatologists that dare to question Gore’s Claims? Why are they so easily led by those who use clearly ambiguous scientific reports to mean certain “proof” of their position?
And what are the source documents that the politicians and pundits use to “prove” their case? Upon what basis do they claim “scientific consensus?”Several critics point out the variation between the substance of major reports and the “summary findings” that end up in the conclusions, showing that the DATA suggests major uncertainty, but the summaries suggest that the issue is decided. Here are a couple examples cited by Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
Given that we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task is currently impossible. Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising impact. Thus, although the conflicted state of the affair was accurately presented in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the infamous “summary for policy makers” reported ambiguously that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” This sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.
The next IPCC report again described the problems surrounding what has become known as the attribution issue: that is, to explain what mechanisms are responsible for observed changes in climate. Some deployed the lassitude argument–e.g., we can’t think of an alternative–to support human attribution. But the “summary for policy makers” claimed in a manner largely unrelated to the actual text of the report that “In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”
In a similar vein, the National Academy of Sciences issued a brief (15-page) report responding to questions from the White House. It again enumerated the difficulties with attribution, but again the report was preceded by a front end that ambiguously claimed that “The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability.” This was sufficient for CNN’s Michelle Mitchell to presciently declare that the report represented a “unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man. There is no wiggle room.” Well, no.
I wonder if, in retrospect, if and when we discover that the human contribution to global warming is insignificant, or given in terms of millennia rather than decades, we will look back on the current “certainty” of public sentiment as yet another symptom of the same human desire that lead to the spread and horror of socialism and communism. Even more, I wonder if we we learn that historical lesson, or simply repeat it on whatever issue of the day promises the most powerful feelings of self-righteousness and distracts us from the existential issues of being a human being in an era of power and choice?
So, Dan Rather is talking about Rathergate and partisanship and the media. San Francisco Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman liveblogged Rather’s latest, um, account at the annual Television Critics Press tour which is going on right now in Los Angeles. An excerpt of Rather’s remarks ran today on the first page of the Chronicle’s Entertainment Section.
(Side note: Goodman has dubbed the annual TV Press Tour “The Death March With Cocktails,” and his accounts are consistently enjoyable, if one cares about insider reports from the TV industry and rich-and-famous foolery and that sort of thing. You can follow The Death March With Cocktails here.)
And, for easy reference and background, here is an index of the entire pre-election Rathergate memo scandal.)
Below is the full transcript of Rather’s remarks. Rather had just been asked if he felt that he carried any “baggage” from his career in network journalism.
“Yes, I have baggage. I have the baggage of being a graduate of the journalism school out of the University of South Vietnam. I have baggage from the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham. I have baggage from Watergate and covering, as the White House and lead correspondent for CBS News, on the only President in history who resigned. I have baggage from Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded it. I have baggage from two interviews with Saddam Hussein. You bet your life I’ve got a lot of baggage. And make no mistake, I’m proud of it. Yes, I’m biased. I have a very strong bias toward independent journalism, italicized, underlined, put in bold caps. Some – I’m not here to argue all – some of the problems I have and have had with this question of, quote, bias, is misunderstanding what my bias is. I’m committed to independent journalism and, yes, fiercely independent when necessary. And a lot of the times it’s necessary. Not all, but some of what you describe as, quote, baggage, comes from people who have the following view, which they’re entitled to have. This, God bless it, is America, and you can have it. But their view is, to not just Dan Rather, but to a lot of people in journalism, “Listen, Mr. or Ms., you report the news the way I want it reported, or I’m going to make you pay a price. I’m going to hang a sign around your neck that says you were a bomb-throwing Bolshevik or something. And I’m going to mount a sizable and very effective smear campaign on you.”
Now, this doesn’t only happen to me. If you’ve seen “Good Night, and Good Luck,” you know what I’m talking about. And I should – I should be lucky enough to live to the day that I can walk in the same room with Ed Murrow, but I can’t, and nobody before or since him could. But there’s the model for things. If you’re determined to be independent, you’re going to take the heat. If you are determined to be fiercely independent when necessary and say, “No, sir” – or ma’am – “I’m not going to report the news the way you want it reported. I’m not going to be bullied or intimidated. I’m not going back up, back down, or back away to meet your partisan, political, or ideologic agenda. I’m going to play to my bias for independent news” – now, when you face the furnace, you have to take the heat, and some of the time, you’re going to get burned. And I’ve got plenty of scars. I’ve made my mistakes, and some of my wounds are self-inflicted.
But the one thing, if you check the record – and I invite you to check the record – you will not find me cowing to pressure. Now, sometimes that can lead to making mistakes. Sometimes – and I’ve had people tell me, “Dan, this is not healthy for your career.” Well, my answer to that is to hell with the career. I didn’t get into journalism as a careerist. I’m not going to go out of journalism as a careerist. So yes, I’m biased about doing independent journalism. And you bet I’m prejudiced. I’m prejudiced toward reporters – and America is filled with reporters – who want to do the right thing. Increasingly it’s difficult to do the right thing because of what I described before. You stand up and ask the tough question. You ask the toughest question you know how of the highest power you can find, and I guarantee you the second your backside hits the seat, there are going to be people coming after you. But you know, that goes with the territory. I wouldn’t have it any other way. That news, real news, news at its best, is a wake-up call, not a lullaby. And I’m not in the lullaby business.”
Captain Ed has ANOTHER great post. He also has some reasonable seculation and asks some daunting questions. Quotable:
One of the reasons that the DoD may have sat on the captured IIS files without translating or releasing them, some speculate, was that the contents may embarrass some of our allies in the overall war on terror. One document released yesterday seems to support that analysis. According to document CMPC-2003-000878, the Russians gave more active support to Saddam prior to the March 2003 invasion than previously known — and they used Syria as a conduit…
[...]
This doesn’t have much to do with WMD, of course, but the revelation of the movement of tank engines — seventy of them for every armored unit — has to raise some eyebrows about the relationship between Washington and Moscow. It also should remind people about the materiel conduit that Syria supplied to Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin, and whether or not that conduit operated bidirectionally. Perhaps the WMD that the US seeks did not stay in Syria at all, but made its way to Russia instead.
UPDATE and BUMP: Another look at our friends in Moscow comes in document CMPC-2003-001950, which details a meeting with the Russian ambassador in March 2003. The diplomats discussed the evacuation of Russian citizens from Iraq, but also discussed current American military assets deployed in the Gulf theater[...]
Be sure to check out all the materiel our Russian “allies” gave to Saddam in The Captain’s post.
Captain Ed has a great post about Yale’s courtship and eventual rejection of Hashemi, the Taliban’s former diplomat at large. Quotable:
It’s odd that Yale would have trotted out the diversity argument, considering the regime that Hashemi represented. Let’s recall that the Taliban beat women for not covering themselves from head to toe and men for shaving their faces. Ancient Buddhist carvings, considered artistic and historical treasures, exist no more thanks to Taliban tolerance. The Taliban also reintroduced the lovely Islamic tradition of tolerance by crushing homosexuals to death or throwing them off of towers.
The latter point seems especially germane when it comes to Yale. After all, they have taken the position that the American military cannot stage ROTC classes at the campus due to their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexuals in the military (which I also oppose, for several reasons). Yale’s students and faculty argued that the university would benefit from having Hashemi’s diverse viewpoint represented on campus, but they kicked out the military for a much milder viewpoint and action than that of Hashemi and his colleagues.And while they argue that Hashemi would have benefited the Yale community by his inclusion, no one appears to wonder whether Yale students might benefit from having the ROTC on campus and the diversity of political opinion it might create.
Yale invited Hashemi — he didn’t just show up and fill out an application. They went out of their way to get him to choose Yale, because as their admissions office stated, they didn’t want to lose another “high profile” candidate to Harvard. Regardless of all the arguments about diversity and openness, all of which get belied by Yale’s policies towards the American military, Yale obviously chose Hashemi as a tweak at the Bush administration. They thought that Hashemi’s presence would embarrass the White House and give Yale some sort of moral authority.
Instead, they have demonstrated themselves to be hypocrites, and still do with this decision.
A letter to the editor at the Lansing STate Journal:
Islam or death
I read Le Roy Barnett’s letter (“Muslims, speak up,” June 26) about Muslims’ opinion on Abdul Rahman’s conversion to Christianity.
Islam is not only a religion, it is a complete way of life. Islam guides Muslims from birth to grave. The Quran and prophet Muhammad’s words and practical application of Quran in life cannot be changed.
Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death. There is no disagreement about it.
Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God.Please do not ask us Muslims to pick some rules and disregard other rules. Muslims are supposed to embrace Islam in its totality.
Nazra Quraishi
East Lansing
Hat Tip: LGF
Most disturbing about all this, however, is the initial observation made by the WSJ’s editorial writers: “A single liberal retirement from the Court would thus put Hamdan‘s reasoning in jeopardy.”
How can this be? How can it be that we’ve reached the point where highly-charged SCOTUS decisions often break along partisan / ideological lines? (And before you go noting Kennedy’s break, note, too, that Kennedy defected on Kelo, as well, expanding “public good” to mean “whatever a local municipality can justify by arguing that it will bring in more revenue”. And to be fair, I think Scalia guilty of the same flawed “reasoning” in Raich).
The answer to why this is now so, I think—how “reasoning” become so completely relativistic—is that we no longer have a unified strategy for how to interpret, with the idea of a Living Constitution often acting as a judicial shortcut for failed legislative initiatives, which has the practical effect of codifying a strained (and logically problematic) idea of interpretation and how it is made to work, allowing its proponents to move back and forth between readings that cite legislative intent and readings that deny the importance of that intent in new and different “contexts.”
Be sure to read the whole thing
Hoping We Fail: Who loses and who wins in the high-stakes poker in Iraq?
This was a piece Victor Hanson wrote in 2003. It was recently re-presenced on his web site with this preface:
The recent hysteria and rush to judgement over alleged Marine crimes at Haditha, and the downplaying of the significance of the capture of al Zarqawi suggest that many, here and abroad, simply wanted the United States to lose in Iraq, for a variety of political reasons. Almost three years ago, VDH outlined the motives of these parties and suggested it was unwise to bet against the Americans in Iraq, especially since democracy would eventually emerge and ties between al Qaeda and Saddam’s police state would probably come to light. [em. mine]
And of course, those ties are now coming to greater light through the slow, painful, understaffed and underemphasized process of translating Iraqi documents into English.
However Stephen F. Hayes has been on the case for a few years. This post is not the oldest, nor the most recent, but it had the highest google ranking for the terms I searched. 
Anywho…
Hoping We Fail is an excellent roundup of all the usual suspects and some of their underlying pathologies that lead them to root for failure–or perceive it as primary where there is more evidence for success on the balance.
It begins thusly:
It is not hard to determine who wishes the United States to succeed in rebuilding Iraq along lines that will promote consensual government, personal freedom, and economic vitality: hardly anyone. At least, few other than the Iraqi and American people.
A long-ish piece by Victor Davis Hanson that covers many elements of this war we are engaged in. As always with VDH, it is well constructed, complex, multi-faceted, and worth reading.
I give you this excerpt not as a good representation of the peice as a whole, but becasue this is one aspect that is particulaly poignent for me right now. All the more reason to go read the whole thing.
Finally, we are witnessing a larger existential war, in which Iraq is the central, but not the only, theater. Put simply: will the spreading affluence and liberality of Westernization undermine the 8th-century mentality of the Islamists more quickly than their terrorists, armed with Western weapons, prey on the ennui of a postmodern Europe and America — with our large gullible populations that either don’t believe we are in a real war, or think that we should not be?
Americans know exactly the creed of the Islamists and what they have in store for us nonbelievers. Yet if we are not infidels, can we at least be fideles? That is, can we any longer articulate what we believe in, and whether it is worth defending?The problem is not that the majority of Americans have voiced doubts about the future of Iraq — arguments over self-interest and values happen in every long war when the battlefield does not daily bring back good news.
Instead, the worry is that too many have misdirected their anger at the very culture that produced and nourished them. [...]
Emphasis mine.