Why I Don't Trust the IPCC

I was reading a new climate blog hosted by Nature Magazine. One of the early entries is about examination of the Hockey Stick. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in the process of releasing their fourth assessment report. The Hockey Stick was the center piece of their third report.

I started studying history, especially 17th century history, in detail in the 1980s and I was rather surprised to find out how variable climate has been. The world was in a warm state a thousand years ago. Starting around 1400, a long-term cooling period began. Known as the Little Ice Age, it lasted into the middle of the 19th century.

This is one reason that I have always been very skeptical about global warming. It isn't proving much to say that the world is the warmest now that it has been in the last 600 years if most of that period was colder than normal. It is like becoming alarmed because July is so much hotter than the previous six months.

Then the IPCC released their 3rd assessment report with the Hockey Stick. According to the new figuring, the Little Ice Age was just a localized phenomena limited to the northern Atlantic. When considered on a global perspective, it faded into the background. According to the new figures, the world's climate was amazingly stable until industry ramped up in the mid-19th century. After that, the world's temperature rose like the blade on a hockey stick.

Global warming was proved by the Hockey Stick. The IPCC was so impressed with their new graph that they featured it on the cover of their report and even on their letter head.

But people started questioning the hockey stick. Where had it come from and how did it go from obscurity to icon in a few months? Who did the peer review on it? What about conflicting evidence?

For a time these questions had to be asked quietly because no one would publish them. Finally the dam broke and the detractors had their say.

It turned out that the hockey stick was basically someone's doctoral thesis (specifically Michael Mann). It was never given a vigorous peer review. It was simply adopted.

The IPCC has stopped using the hockey stick as a symbol. Their newest assessment now uses a blended temperature chart.

The IPCC gains some of their credibility from their association with the UN but most of it comes from its reputation as a gathering of scientists interested in truth. The sad truth is that they are just people. While scientific method is supposed to provide a buffer to keep personal opinion from coloring results, it has to be applied.

When Mann presented his temperature reconstruction to the IPCC, they were so enchanted by the results that they didn't stop to check it. They needed it to be true and it confirmed their prior beliefs so they gave it a cursory check and made it their centerpiece.

This leads to the big question - how often have they done the same thing with other studies? How often have they accepted work that verified their mission or rejected something at odds with their pre-defined results?

The thing about trust is that once you know it has been abused, you are less likely to trust again. That's my position on the IPCC.

Campaign Coverage

The Democrats running for president seem to be getting a lot more coverage than the Republicans. I'm not just talking about coverage generated by their first debate. That is understandable. It's that they are getting more coverage in general.

I'm depending on a summary of wire-service reports on MyWay and on MSNBC and things might be different on other news sources but I don't think so. This fits previous patterns.

In the last few days there have been featured stories about Barack and Clinton, both criticizing Bush. Biden got a story on Iraq. There was also a story about McCain trying to convince a Republican convention that he really is conservative. In addition, Keith Olbermann posted one of his scathing "how dare you sir?" editorials about a speech that Giuliani gave. I didn't see the speech itself covered. If it was, it scrolled off of MSNBC's headlines a long time before Olbermann's editorial did.

Keep in mind that there are more Republicans than Democrats running. They are out there making speeches. They just aren't getting any coverage.

Why? The normal reason given is that Republicans are so orderly that there is little to cover compared to the raucous Democratic primaries. This isn't the real reason but it is what reporters tell us when asked.

There are a several factors that really affect coverage.

The first is that reporters prefer covering Democrats. They are Democrats themselves and they are interested in who they will be voting for, November 2008. This is not only true for the reporters covering the Democrats but also for the editors who decide which stories will get links, and, for that matter, which stories are even posted.

Then there is the assumption that the Democrats will win so the Republicans are just going through the motions. The assumption is that the 2006 election represented a permanent shift in voting patterns (or at least one that will last through 2008). Ohio is considered especially important. All the Democrat needs to do is win the states Kerry won plus Ohio to win the White House. Since Democrats won the Governor's office and a Senate seat, the assumption is that Ohio will go to the Democrat.

The final reason is that editors like the message that the Democrats are giving. They are criticizing Bush. Few reporters or editors like Bush. It is against editorial ethics to directly criticize the President day after day except in the editorial pages but they can get around this by quoting someone else as criticizing Bush. In fact, unless the candidates spend their entire speeches attacking Bush, the reporters and editors are going out of their way to pull anti-Bush quotes.

So does this matter? Yes. This is the first open election in my lifetime (unless you count Hillary as being a continuation of Bill's presidency). By over-covering one side, it gives the Democrats an aura of inevitability.

The big question is if a Democratic victory is really inevitable? Not according to the polls. Several polls have Republican front-runner Giuliani beating both Hillary and Barack. In fact, as things stand right now, he has a good shot at willing both Ohio and picking up Pennsylvania.

This means that fair coverage is important. The election is not a forgone conclusion. Not that this will make any difference to the MSM.

The good thing here is that the press might over-cover the Democrats. The Republican candidate may well seem fresh by the time the nomination is settled.

Surrendering for Votes

A few days ago I expressed the opinion that the electorate will turn against the Democrats if they are seen as surrendering in Iraq. The next day I saw a poll that showed around 57% of the population does support a quick pullout from Iraq. I also saw a quote indicating that Senate Majority Leader Reid's private pollster had come up with similar numbers.

That explains why Reid has done such a turn-around. Not long ago he was assuring people that he was not pushing for an immediate pull-out (there's no other way to describe a pull-out that starts in five months).

I still think that the Democrats will regret this and that they will regret it even more if they prevail. There were similar conditions in the early 1970s. A Democratic Congress acted against an unpopular president and cut funding for an unpopular war. There were loud voices insisting that our presence was only making things worse and that a pull-out would bring peace.

Things didn't work out so well in Viet Nam. The short-lived peace turned into slaughter. Many anti-war activists apologized for their part in ending the war.

But that's just stuff that happened to foreigners. Liberals have a long history of ignoring atrocities committed by communists. More important (to the Democrats), the American electorate lost faith in their ability to lead in a crisis. From the 1980s through the 2004 election they kept asking why the voters didn't trust them in a war. The simple answer is that they don't believe in war. They think that everything can be solved through "continuing dialogs", addressing "root problems" and, as a last resort, using law enforcement. Many liberals insisted at the time that the reaction to 9/11 should have been a law enforcement issue. More of them insist that now. It is the accepted opinion of the left that 9/11 was hardly worth noticing and that Bush seized on an excuse to implement his authoritarian (some call it fascist) agenda.

So, if we pull out in October, 2007 or January, 2009 and things get worse in Iraq, who is the public going to blame?

Several events are likely. Iraq will erupt into a full-fledged civil war; Iran and possibly Syria and Turkey will get involved and annex portions of Iraq; and things will get worse in Afghanistan - a lot worse. The Taliban will know for certain that they can win against America if they just keep the casualty count high enough.

All future wars will be tougher, also. Right now we are trying to prove that Viet Nam was the exception and that Americans are tough enough to win an occupancy. Failure in Iraq will prove that a small force that fights dirty enough can always outlast Americans.

And the public will blame the Democrats. They may win the presidency and increase their majority in Congress in 2008 but it will catch up with them soon enough and it will stick for decades.

Dropping the F-Word

No - not THAT F-word. I mean Fascist. Naomi Wolf thinks that America had a fascist takeover but somehow she's the only one to notice.

Her proof? She starts out with this list:

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. hey were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

I have yet to see armed soldiers in my neighborhood, the press is still firmly in private (and anti-Bush hands), etc. Regardless, she goes on to give a ten-point list of things that have happened in America. I'm not going to copy the whole column, just points:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America.

Her logic here is strained. She admits that there is a threat but she ignores that the US is the designated enemy of Islamic terrorists. Spain thought that they were too small to be a target then assumed that they were immune because they changed governments. America does not have that luxury. We have been a target since the 1980s, across four presidents. As with many liberals, Wolf pretends that all we have to do is dump Bush and Israel and the terrorists will love us. Any language to the contrary is fascist.

2. Create a gulag
Name a war in the last 200 years that didn't have some place to keep POWs. With a very few exceptions, the people in the prisons she lists are foreign combatants caught under arms. No, we are not granting them the full rights of Americans in court. This is an impossibility with POWs. They have been held for years without a hearing because liberals held the hearings up in court.

What we do not have is a system of prisons for holding political dissidents. If we did then there wouldn't be anyone left to spew venom on Kos.

3. Develop a thug caste
Most of this point is just silly. Near the end it gets outright offensive.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000.

There were a lot of questions about how the Gore people conducted the recount. Bush supporters staged a demonstration against this and Wolf inflates this into brownshirts. Contrast this with the people on the left who think it is ok to trash a city for daring to host a meeting of the WTO.

4. Set up an internal surveillance system
We are at war in several different ways. Surveillance to look for terrorists is not the same as snooping on political foes.

5. Harass citizens' groups
The IRS was actively used to harass the Clintons' political enemies. Wolf gives a few isolated examples that happened under Bush. If this is fascism then it got better when Bush took office.

She also complains about protest groups being infiltrated. Considering how many protests are organized by communist-affiliated groups and the level of rhetoric, I hope that the government is keeping an eye on these people. This is nothing new nor is it unique to America. All governments keep potentially violent groups under surveillance.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
The TSA's watch list needs reform but it's a long way from the arbitrary arrests she describes in actual fascist countries.

7. Target key individuals
She doesn't have much to offer here. Academia actively represses conservatives. An independent conservative movement to bring balance is misrepresented. A few other examples are given but not accurately.

8. Control the press
Obviously she has not read the New York Times or watched Olberman on MSNBC or watched any network news.

9. Dissent equals treason
She goes out on a limb here. The President has the authority to declare citizens enemy combatants. From there they still get a trial. She is sure that this will change. Her proof? Well.. she's really sure.

10. Suspend the rule of law
One of the reasons that it took too long for aid to reach Louisiana after Katrina was the difficulty in declaring martial law. The response to that is given as evidence of a fascist takeover.

All of this is a example of the well-documented Bush Derangement Syndrome. The left is sure that Bush is evil. After the 2004 election they insisted that the Republicans had taken over the elections and that they would never allow the Democrats to win again. That was forgotten after the 2006 election.

Wolf could have made the same case against Clinton. The left was sure that Reagan was going to take over the government to say nothing of Nixon's planned coup.

There will be a new president elected in 2008. Bush will leave office quietly in 2009 and a new set of conspiracy theories will start.

Democrats Gone Wild

As I have pointed out before, the Democrats ran their 2006 congressional campaign on "a new direction in Iraq" and fiscal responsibility. Between the election and taking office, Speaker-elect Pelosi promised that she would keep a lid on direct attacks on the President. The goal was to show that the Democrats are ready to govern the country.

Less than five months after they assumed control of Congress and things are a mess. Committees are investigating the Attorney General and now one is investigating the claim that Saddam was trying to get yellowcake. uranium and is planning to subpoena Secretary of State Rice.

Articles of impeachment  of both the President and the Vice-President are being prepared.

On Iraq, the House originally tried to appear fair by giving Bush a year and a half to stabilize Iraq before withdrawing the troops. The Senate called for a less-than-reasonable 12 months. The compromise calls for a pull-out starting in five months and ending in 11.

In order to pass the Iraq deadline, the Democrats abandoned all pretense of fiscal restraint.

Speaker Pelosi herself went to Syria to offer a "Democratic-alternative foreign policy".

This will end badly for the Democrats. They are paying too much attention to Bush's approval rating and not enough to their own. While Bush's ratings are low, there is nothing to indicate that the country is thrilled with the job that the Democrats are doing, either.

Congress is considering a bill co-sponsored by Barack Obama that would allow people to sue for comparable worth.

Here's where they are going wrong:

They may yet get the head of the Attorney General, but their investigation into the yellowcake claim is futile. The British already investigated this and found that there was credible reason to assume that Saddam tried to purchase some. Even Ambassador Wilson admitted this when under oath.

The Democrats  may have enough votes for impeachment but they are a long way from enough for a conviction. They have no cause except spite and too many years of listening to their own propaganda. The attempt to impeach Clinton helped him and made the Republicans look petty. It is unlikely that this will come out any better.

Republicans are starting to quote troops in the field as saying that Congress's antics hurt them. The Democrats in Congress are unwilling to get progress report from the generals in charge. They are leaving themselves wide open to the charge that they cannot be trusted with the nation's security. I suspect that many Democrats are supporting the five month pull-out because they know it will will be vetoed and they need to satisfy MoveOn. There is no way to interpret the five-month pull-out as anything but a non-binding surrender by Congress.

Foreign policy is set by the President and the State Department. The House has no say at all in the process.

Finally, comparable worth never gained traction when feminists first pushed it. The idea of having a trial judge set your pay strikes at the heart of free-enterprise. Even most feminists gave up on it as study after study proved that women make less because they value other employment factors over pay.

I will be very surprised if any of this goes anywhere. Most likely it will turn into a train crash that the Republicans can use in 2008.

I wonder if Karl Rove is behind it?

Sheryl's "Joke"

Last week Sheryl Crow suggested that one piece of toilet paper should be enough.

Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

Her little suggestion got world-wide coverage. Now she says that it was just a joke.

Was it? Granted it was inane but so was everything else she posted during her tour. Maybe the whole thing was a joke?

Then there was the run-in with Karl Rove.

Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow?

Obviously he read Sheryl's blog and was concerned about what else that hand had touched.

There is a certain irony in Sheryl and Laurie's encounter with Rove. Early in the tour Laurie was upset that someone dared to question her view of reality yet she does not allow anyone else the same privilege. After all, she produced An Inconvenient Truth in which Al Gore declared that the discussion is closed. As is Laurie's mind.

Or maybe they were having another joke.

Who to Blame?

The normal human response to a tragedy such as last week's shootings at Virginia Tech is to find someone to blame. A lot of criticism was directed at the school administrators for not going into lock-down immediately. Given that it first appeared to be a simple domestic dispute with the wrong assumed suspect, there was little reason for a lock-down. It is also questionable how much good an earlier email would have done.

Video games were quickly blamed for inciting Cho to violence. This is unlikely as he did not seem to even own a game console.

Easy access to guns has been given as a reason. There are several problems with that. Last week was the anniversary of two other major tragedies - Columbine when two students tried to explode a bomb in a lunchroom and Oklahoma City where a crazed person did explode a bomb. Clearly someone who is bent on murder does not need firearms.

One part of the debate has been glossed over when talking about Cho's background. Over a year ago he was declared a danger to himself and others which should have disqualified him from firearms purchases. The part that no one seems to be talking about is that he could not be held because of how difficult it is to institutionalize someone involuntarily. If Cho had been locked up and getting treatment then he could not have killed anyone. This should be part of the national dialog but is not.

Everyone who knew him talks about how quiet he was. After hearing the videos he sent to NBC I can see why. He was ashamed of his thick Korean accent. Some accounts say that kids used to make fun of this. Clearly this was a major factor.

This raises a new set of questions. Cho came to America at the age of eight. Why didn't he speak better English? I know someone whose parents only spoke Chinese. He entered Kindergarten without knowing a word of English but when I met him as an adult he had no accent. Possibly Cho was enrolled in a Korean-language class for years and only learned English later.

Drudge put a copy of one of Cho's plays on-line. It is very disturbing. A well-meaning but not too smart Dick McBurger is trying to make peace with his step-son. The step-son accuses McBurger of awful things until Dick finally kills the step-son.

As far as I know, Cho was not adopted so where did the issues with an adopted father come from? My guess is that Dick McBurger was symbolic of Cho's adopted country. Seen in this light, Cho was predicting his own death by his adopted "father".

When all is said and done, the responsibility rests with Cho. Lots of people had a tough childhood without resorting to murder. It is not satisfying for the rest of us. We want someone to punish but the person really at fault is dead by his own hand.

Can Climate Change be Predicted?

Most of the case for global warming comes from computer models. The question is, if computer models have trouble predicting the weather a week from now then can they predict the climate fifty years from now?

RealClimate has an answer to this here. This is an influential climate blog. Al Gore recommends it and it has a relationship with Michael Mann, the creator of the Hockey Stick paleo-temperature reconstruction.

To summarize what RealClimate says, weather prediction is hard but climate is easy. Summer and winter are predictable. You can predict that it is cooler at high altitudes. Some local areas have distinct climates such as Northern Europe. Also, the greenhouse effect is demonstrable and carbon dioxide is known to absorb heat.

So - case closed? Not in the least. Yes, the seasons are predictable but this is nothing but statistical averaging. It is not a model that uses all known factors and computes the climate. It is not testable - you cannot roll it forward and backward and compare it to actual measurements (because that's all it is). And you cannot predict change with a statistical average.

It is also possible to predict the same climate using an invalid model. In the Middle Ages philosophers spent a lot of effort computing how the world worked but they started with the assumption that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

For that matter, a 10-year-old could make the same predictions based on nothing but his own experience.

What RealClimate was trying to say and many of the comments say is that local weather is subject to too many random fluctuations to be reliably predictable but these tend to cancel each other out when figured over a large enough area (a hemisphere for example). This allows a simplification in climate models so that it can be reduced to basic forcings. Since CO2 is a forcing, all we have to do is add in the heat gain from additional CO2 and we have the future climate.

Is this true? No. If it was then temperatures for the 20th century would show a smooth climb. Instead there is a climb through the 1930s, a dip that lasted into the 1970s, and a climb again.

The truth is that there are significant unknowns. Not all forcings are known nor is their effect. There are a numerous substances being released into the atmosphere constantly, both from nature and human-derived. These have different effects, some canceling out others.

There are also natural rhythms that are not well-understood. Both the Atlantic and Pacific have multi-decadal oscillations that warm and cool the oceans. El Nino and la Nina cycles are not at all understood but have a major effect. The effects of solar variations may be underestimated.

Then there are what Donald Rumsfeld called "unknown unknowns". If you push a car down a hill and measure it's speed over the first hundred feet you will see it accelerating. From this you would conclude that it would continue to accelerate. In fact, the faster the car goes the more friction is generated. Eventually the friction balances the acceleration and it reaches a stable speed... until you run out of hill.

Unless the driver pops the clutch and the engine starts, speeding the car up even more.

Water vapor and the effect of clouds are the unknown unknowns here. Global warming theory holds that as temperature increases, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere will increase until it reaches a tipping point. This would be equivalent to popping the clutch. Or it might cause more clouds, trapping even more heat which would also correspond to popping the clutch.

On the other hand, more clouds might reflect heat, stabilizing the temperature, corresponding to friction.

Or there might be other warming factors that have not yet been discovered but are subject to cycles. That would be running out of hill.

So, climate projection is possible if you know all of the forcings but impossible if you don't.

Do we know all of the forcings? No. That's where being able to roll the models forward and backward is important. If the models are accurate then they will match historic climate. They don't. The programmers have never solved this. They have forced their models to match the real world but that means that there is no guarantee that they will continue to match when predicting the future.

Missing From the News

Yesterday while we were waiting for word about who the Virginia Tech shooter was, my wife mentioned that he was Asian. "What?" I asked. I had just read an updated wire service account and it said nothing nothing about his ethnicity.

It turns out that this was suppressed. The Asian American Journalists Association issued this advisory:

As coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting continues to unfold, AAJA urges all media to avoid using racial identifiers unless there is a compelling or germane reason. There is no evidence at this early point that the race or ethnicity of the suspected gunman has anything to do with the incident, and to include such mention serves only to unfairly portray an entire people.

They are wrong about the race and ethnicity not having anything to do with the story. I'm sure that many people's first thought was that this was the work of a terrorists. The fact that the authorities withheld any information for so long gave the impression that something was being covered up. It's happened before. At least three Moslems have either attempted or succeeded in mass murder in the last few years. In these cases, the authorities have downplayed the attacker's religion until it was determined that he was "not a terrorist" (defined as not being affiliated with terrorist groups).

Those people who didn't assume that the shooter was a terrorist probably assumed that he was a white guy. By suppressing the actual ethnicity of the shooter, the AAJA temporarily reinforced the stereotype that he was white. Thanks AAJA.

Of course the truth came out this morning. The shooter was Korean.

A different bit of news that has been dropped is so subtle that you probably didn't even notice it. Which party does New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine belong to? This is normally given any time a politician is in the news with one exception - it is dropped when a Democrat does something that might reflect poorly on the party. Just try to find a reference to Corzine's party in a news account. Now, do you think that this would be dropped if it had been a Republican governor?

So, yes, it was relevant.

Columbine Revisited

We don't know enough about the awful slaughter at Virginia Tech to make any intelligent conclusions. At this point we don't even know the name of the murderer. Regardless of this, the left is already calling for a new round of gun control.

Since we don't know much about Virginia Tech, I'm going to review the last major school shooting which happened eight years ago at Columbine.

Most people haven't bothered to read the sheriff's final report report on the tragedy. I have and what transpired is not what was planned.

The two killers wanted to go out with a big splash, taking as many people as possible with them. Their original plan was to hijack an airplane and crash it into a tall building (and this was years before 9/11/2001). They gave up on this as impractical and decided to blow up their school instead.

They built a bomb out of a propane tank and hid it in the cafeteria. They carefully timed lunch periods in order to figure out when the room would have the most people in it - over 1,000. The library was on the next floor and the bomb was likely to cave in the ceiling, killing or injuring people there, also.

They set their bomb and waited. They planned on killing as many survivors as they could with their guns and pipe bombs. They even set off a bomb on the other side of town in order to lure the police away.

Fortunately, their bomb failed to go off. After giving it some extra time, they decided to trigger it manually. This is when they entered the school and killed people they encountered. They barricaded themselves in the cafeteria and tried to set off the bomb. Failing that, they finally killed themselves. While the final result was terrible, what they had planned was 100 times worse.

The lesson here is that these guys wanted to kill themselves and as many others as possible. Guns were not their primary weapon.

The only similarity I can see with Virginia Tech is a marbid determination to kill people before dying. While this killer depended on guns, without them he might have resorted to bombs or other lethal weapons.

Who Cares More?

After some setbacks on their attempts to end the war, Democrats are aking a new que from John Murtha - caring for the troops. Specifically, they care about troops who are about to be deployed. They care about them so much they want to stop deployment.

The way this works is to announce that the troops in question are not properly trained or equipped. Murtha posted on Huffington a few days ago and his comments are being echoed by other caring, responsible Democrats (AKA partisan hacks). Ohio's new governor Strickland and new senator Brown quickly joined in the chorus (joined by Ohio's nanny-in-chief, Voinovich who might be worried about keeping his job).

How serious are these concerns? he equipment part is nothing but a smokescreen. It is true that many units are not properly equipped. The reason for this is that they leave a lot of equipment behind in Iraq when their tour of duty ends. Poorly-equipped units will find equipment waiting for them in Iraq.

Training is a bigger issue but it is not a simple one. First of all, we are talking about units that have already had 1-3 tours in Iraq so they are not green troops. The training is for specialized missions and for tactics that have changed since their prior tours.

I accept that it would be better if all troops going into combat received all planned training before they went. At the same time, I recognize that staffing needs may not leave enough time for this. Is it better to make the front line troops wait while replacements and reenforcements receive better training? It's a tough trade-off to me but it seems like cutting training time will help more people.

To the Murtha crowd, there is no trade-off. Keeping troops out of Iraq is a goal, not a problem. If they could demand a five-year training period they would. The point is to keep the Surge from working by starving the commanders of troops. At the same time, they want to sound caring. It's not that they want to hurt the front-line troops. It's just that they want to protect the troops who are about to be deployed.

Touring for Hypocracy

It's difficult to imagine an anti-war tour that includes killing people or an AIDS concert that includes having unprotected sex with someone who is HIV-positive. So what are we o think of the Sop Global Warming Tour? Here are a bunch of people who are convinced that CO2 induced global warming is real and their solution is to generate more CO2 in an effort to raise consciousness.

The tour is not the only culprit. Al Gore's huge, carbon-burning house has been well documented. There is just no way to swuare hat house with his message. Personally, I think that he should live like the Unibomber in a small plywood shack without power. Since that isn't likely, he could sill live fairly well by following the examples of Ed Begley jr. and Dennis Weaver. Both of these TV stars built low-impact houses as examples of how others should live.

Then there is the example of Prince Charles flying across the Atlantic to accept an environmental award or the worse example of John Travolta flying one of his private jets of England to lecture about the evils of CO2. That one trip created more CO2 than an ordinary family does in a year.

The message in all of this is that he rest of us should change our ways. Once we do, possibly the elite will consider changing their own lifestyles. In the meantime, even if global warming is the greatest threat to ever face humanity (to quote Gore), we cannot expect the rich and powerful to actually do anything personally.

On-air rants

Ok, Imus said something racist and offensive and people are demanding his termination. He is going to be suspended and might yet lose his job.

I have no problem with that. It would be fine with me if they fired all of the shock jocks.

But there is no serious talk of firing Rosie who accused the British of engineering an international incident in order to justify an invasion (which didn't happen) and accused the US government of killing 3,000 people in order to justify something.

Someone's priorities are mixed up.

This endless Winter

February made the list of the ten coldest winers on record. We are only ten days into April but i has already been declared the second coldest on record. We've had snow flurries five days in a row. Around 70 cities set cold records on Easter.

Back during a heat wave in December and early January we kept hearing that the warm temperatures were because of global warming and we had better get used to it - it was going to be like that from now on. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman quoted his wife as saying that she needed a global warming wardrobe - winter colors in summer weight.

I wonder how she's doing with that now? Friedman never said. In fact, none of the columnists who said that the December warm spell was a sign of things to come have had anything to say about the temperatures since then. Seriously, after hearing that refrain multiple times in January I keep waiting for someone to say that the current cold snap is indicative of the future and we had better get used to it.

According to the logic they used just four months ago, the weather in February through April must be a predictor of a new ice age. Maybe Friedman's wife needs a wardrobe with summer colors in winter weight.

All of this is silly. Temperatures vary. 20 years ago we have major snowfall in both April 1 and April 4. Just a week ago it hit 80. None of this means anything. It's long-term changes that matter, not day-to-day variations.

But there is a new religion in town - Global Warming. We have to sacrifice our civilization to it, the god (or is that a goddess?) demands it. Any time the temperature is slightly above normal or anything bad happens i is because the Global Warming God is angered. If things are normal or temperatures are 30 degrees below normal - well, it happens.

In the meantime, Europe is two years into a cap and trade scheme. It is working exactly as they should have expected although according to this article the results caught people by surprise. Basically, electricity costs rose 25% and construction is being moved to 3rd world countries were Kyoto is not in effect. Also, some companies have figured out how to game the system and others are lobbying for regulations that will benefit them rather than the world at large.

But none of that will save them when the glaciers come back.

Rosie's Rant

A couple of weeks ago Rosie O'Donnell had a bi tof a meltdown. She started by accusing the British and possibly the Americans of somehow causing the Iranians to hold 15 soldiers hostage. Next she said that the confessed 911-planner known as KSM was railroaded. When asked is she though that the government was in on 911, she replied with a disingenuous, "No, but his was the first time in history that fire melted steel."

A lot of people have jumped on that line but Rosie was right in sort of a half-assed way. Steel has a very high melting point. You cannot melt it in a normal fire. It takes a blast furnace. On the other hand, as any blacksmith can demonstrate, you can heat steel in a fire until it is red hot at which point it loses much of its strength. This isn't a secret, it's science.

Rosie posted some further "proof" on her web site but somehow missed this bit of basic science.

There have been calls for her to be fired. She is employed by The View which is produced by ABC News. When she starts spreading around false information, it reflects badly on the entire news staff. Rosie is allowed her own opinions bu she has to provide solid documentation for them when she presents them on The View. She has accused the US and British governments of staging an international incident and of killing thousands of people yet her proof requires a fundamental mis-statement of the physical properties of steel.

I have seen Rosie's defenders point out that Ann Coulter wasn't fired after accusing the 911 widows of profiting from their husbands' deaths. There are significant differences between the two.

1) Coulter said something hurtful. She did not accuse anyone of conspiracies.

2) Coulter's remarks were obviously opinion. Rosie presented hers as provable fact.

3) Coulter's remarks were in a book. Rosie's were given on the air. As the author of the book, Coulter gets full responsibility. Since Rosie was on something vaguely billed as a news show, it is implied that her statements of fact have been checked by the news department.

So, should she be fired? It wouldn't be out of line. Dan Rather was forced off the air after defending forged documents. While Rosie and The View are much lighter-weight than Rather, the accusations are serious enough that, at the least, ABC should issue a statement that they do not support this iew.

The Imperial Congress

For years the Democrats have complained that Bush operates an imperial presidency - exceeding his constitutional authority and working without proper oversight from Congress. Now that the Democrats control Congress, they are acting rather imperial themselves.

First there was the bill that specified what troops can and cannot do. This seems to be in direct contradiction with the President's constitutional role as commander in chief.

Then Pelosi wen to Syria in order to show them that the Democrats have an alternate foreign policy.

Under the constitution, there is only one foreign policy. It is directed by the State Department which is under the control of he Secretary of State who in turn reports to the President. Congress's role in this process is to confirm the Secretary of State and treaties. Even this is done by the Senate, not the House so Pelosi has no constitutional standing to be discussing alternate policies with foreign leaders.

Even during the Viet Nam War, we never saw the Speaker of the House go to the USSR in order to open a dialog for peace.

What of the visit by House Republicans shortly before Pelosi's visit? Why didn't anyone take note? Probably because they did not go with the stated goal of circumventing  their country's foreign policy.

I'm not going to say that the Democrats hate Bush more than Nixon but the Democrats in power gave Nixon more respect.

The 20 Billion Dollar Question

Democrats are insisting that the country is behind their attempts to end the war. If this is true then why did they need to tack $20 billion in unrelated spending into the bill? President Bush is asking this, also.

The Democrats have themselves boxed in. Their base is expecting a withdrawal from the war but the way they are doing it is likely to come across as not supporting the troops.

Even if everything works out the way they want as it did 30+ years ago when they de-funded Viet Nam, it will still bite them. They made out pretty well in the late 1970s, taking the White House and gaining a big majority in Congress but much of this was a reaction to Watergate rather than the war.

By the early 1980s, resentment over the way the war ended was boiling up. The movie Rambo brought it to a head. The new common wisdom was not that we were defeated in Viet Nam but that our leaders in Washington hadn't let us win the war.

Since Democrats ended the war and had associated themselves with the peace movement, people stopped trusting them with national security. This still cost them as recently as 2004. If they force a pull-out from Iraq and things go as bad as expected without us stabilizing the country, it might be another 30 years before anyone trusts Democrats with national defense (Clinton won on domestic issues during the period of peace between the end of the Cold War and recognition of the Long War).

The Return of the ERA

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is back. There is an effort to re-introduce it.

For those too young to remember, ERA was intended to grant equal rights for women. It was first introduced 35 years ago and seemed on the fast track to ratification. Then is faltered as opposition to it gathered. It came up during one of the Carter/Reagan debates. Carter accused Reagan of planning to kill ratification. Reagan responded, pointing out that under Clinton no states had ratified it and two states rescinded their ratification. It eventually died in 1982 after the Supreme Court ruled that the ratification period could not be extended.

In the meantime, nearly everything that the original supporters could have hoped for in 1972 has come to happen. Most women work. The majority of college and university populations are women. Woman's pay runs around 98% of men's, when compared for equivalent jobs with equal experience. Women clergy and astronauts are common as are women in the military. The Speaker of the House and the Secretary of State are women and many people expect the next president to be one.

So why do we need he ERA?

When it was first introduced, the ostensible reason was to have women's rights written big so all could see. When pressed, the supporters admitted that the real reason was that they regarded it too difficult to push their agenda through Congress and fifty legislatures. They wanted women's rights raised to constitutional status so that they could take their case directly to the Supreme Court.

I was against the ERA when it was first introduced for two reasons. First, I think it is wrong to by-pass the legislatures and have the judiciary dictate law. More important, the amendment is worded loosely enough that it could lead to changes in society far beyond the stated goals. Both of those objections continue today.

The biggest goal still on the feminist agenda is pay equity between men and women. Since the current inequity exists because of choices that women make (taking jobs that allow more time with the family, taking off 1-4 years to raise young children, etc.) this would require a government take-over of the economy unseen since the fall of he Soviet Union.

Of course, there is a second group that would profit from the ERA - Gays. The language of the ERA would instantly legitimize gay marriage and remove any lingering laws or customs considered anti-gay. This is no coincidence. The National Organization of Women (NOW) has always been lesbian-friendly (in all possible ways).

My own position has not changed in the last 35 years. I don't think that issues as central to society should be passed on to the courts to decide.

There is one reason for the ERA that I don't think is being discussed. With the current influx of Moslem's coming to America, we suddenly have a large population that has a history of oppressing women. Even by the standards of the pre-feminist 1950s, things such as forced marriage and genital mutilation are beyond the pale. Feminists might make the case that current advances need to be enshrined to make backsliding difficult.

Strangely, this is a major bind spot among feminists.

What are the Democrats up to?

By passing bills calling for troop withdrawal in the nex 12-18 months, Democrats seem to have decided that their only purpose is to defeat the enemy at home (Bush). In order to do this, they gave up on all the other lofty goals they campaigned on.

The bills passed are a strange mixture with something for every faction. For the anti-war crowd, there is a demand for a pull-out. For the moderate Blue-dogs, the pullout will not take place until next year. For everyone else, there is $20+ billion (with a "B") in earmarked funds.

The Democrats played hardball on this one. They slipped in appropriations for Congressmen without even being asked to. If a Congressman was still hesitant to vote for the bill they issued an instant press release saying that the congressman had turned his back on his district.

For those with short memories, these are the same Democrats who campaigned last year on a platform of fiscal responsibility and who promised to end earmarks. As I already said, none of those goals are as important to the Democratic leaders as handing Bush a defeat.

This also means a defeat for our troops. How can it be taken otherwise when it calls for a withdrawal at an arbitrary time regardless of what is going on at the time.

This does raise a number of questions:

If, as Rep. Murtha claims, we are making things worse by staying then why wait? Probably the biggest reason for the delay is that an immediate withdrawal would be seen by the American people as the surrender it is. By giving President Bush several more months to wage the war they can claim that it is up to him to win it in that time. This appears to be an attempt to shift blame.

Why October. 2008? That's the dae the House set. The Senate went for March 31. Is this an attempt to end the war before the election? Are Democrats worried that the 2008 election will become a referendum on the war with their candidate calling for an immediate retreat and the Republican calling for us to win? This is an interesting theory because it implies that the Democrats are afraid of what the people actually want (remember, they didn't run on retreat from Iraq, they ran on a "new direction").

Then there is the biggest question - is this meant to be anything more than an other non-binding resolution? The Democrats know that Bush will veto the bill. He's already started making noises about them abandoning the troops. They don't have enough votes to override a veto. Soon they will be in the same position that the Republicans were when they shut down the government under Clinton. Clinton won that one and no soldier's life was at stake because of Congressional inaction.

Faced with that reality, the whole thing could just be a big show to placate MoveOn.

Mr. Gore goes to Washington

Al Gore is testifying before joint committees of Congress today on Global Warming. According to statements made before hand, he is going to say that Global Warming can be reversed but we need to take drastic action. He is calling for a 90% across-the-board cut in greenhouse gas emissions  by 2050. For the calendar-challenged, that is less than 43 years from now. Gore is calling for more than a 2% cut per year in greenhouse as emissions.

Now, I could probably lie with the first year or two of that. Depending on how cold the winter and how warm the summer, this might even happen on its own. It might not even be noticeable in the general economy.

After that, the cuts would start to pile up. I seriously doubt that civilization as we know it can exist on 10% of today's carbon emissions.

To put it in perspective, around half of current energy use is private and the biggest portion of those go to heating and air conditioning. After that comes cooking and lighting. Computer use is in there somewhere but varies a lot per family.

So, in order to cut your personal use by 90% you would have to cut back on heat, forget air conditioning, forget TV, PCs, and game consoles. Radios will probably be ok. You can get radios powered by hand-cranked generators that will run for a few hours between cranking.

Lighting will be reduced to possibly one compact fluorescent bulb for a few hours per day.

It is sort of a march back to the 18th century except we cannot burn wood for heat or candles for light because they also emit CO2.

That's how personal cutbacks will be in 40 years. It's hard o see manufacturing doing any better. Solar, wind, hydro-electric, and nuclear power can provide some power but this will become more and more expensive. Nuclear power is the only one of these options that does not have severe built-in limits and it takes a lot of tie and money to build a nuclear plant.

It's hard to see how there will be enough energy for much beyond food production and transportation.

All of this brings us to the biggest question - even if we assume that Global Warming is for real and that the worst of the IPCC predictions will come to pass, is it worth it to mitigate Global Warming? Gore is still talking as though it will be easy to cut back. Just stop new coal-fired power plants, change the type of light bulb we use, establish cap-and-trade, and let the market do the rest. He is lying. 90% cutbacks will be wrenching, causing tens of thousands of deaths from lack of air conditioning and cold alone.

And that's assuming the worst happens if we do nothing.

None of this is part of the global debate but it should be front and center. What will mitigation cost and is it worth it?

Common Wisdom and the Election

Common wisdom says that the Democrats will take the White House in 2008. This is based on three things - the White House usually switches parties when one party holds it for eight years; public dissatisfaction with Bush and the war will translate into a rejection of the Republicans, and the 2006 election showed that the country has moved to the Left.

Let's look more closely at these, especially the first one. It is true that the other side has won most times that a party has held the White House for eight years. This happened in 1952, 1960, 1968, 1976, 1992, and 2000. It did not happen in 2004 because Reagan had already defeated Carter in 2000. The 1988 election is particularly interesting in this discussion. In that one, Bush (41) ran as a continuation of the Reagan administration and won. It is also interesting because his opponent, a liberal from New England, offered a clear difference to Bush and went down to a decisive defeat. Four years later Clinton, a moderate from the South, was able to defeat Bush.

An important point to remember is that when the White House changed hands with no incumbent in the White House, the sitting Vise-President was running as a continuation of the current administration. Vise-presidents are seldom a good stand-in for their president. They are normally chosen specifically because they are different in order to broaden the president's appeal. Even Gore who, like Clinton, was a southerner, came across as a Washington insider in contrast with Clinton, "the man from Hope". It is difficult for someone who was chosen because he is different to run as a continuation candidate. When Bush ran in 1988 he started by recanting all of his positions from 1980. After spending wight years in the Reagan White House, he had learned the errors or his ways.

There is also a strong element of fatigue at play. After eight years, the electorate is tired of the same old faces and policies. A president usually does most of his accomplishments during his first term. It is tough for a vice-president to make the case that the current administration needs four (or eight) more years in order to accomplish its goals. In 2000 there was talk of Clinton Fatigue. Now it is Bush Fatigue.

This election is different. The slate is completely open. That eliminates much of the "fatigue" factor. In addition, Hillary faces some residual Clinton fatigue. Similarly, Edwards may suffer from having already been on the ticket in 2004. The election may go to the candidate who feel "freshest".

As far as the other two points of common wisdom - that dissatisfaction with Bush will sink the Republican candidate and that the 2006 election signaled a shift to the right, neither has a lot of merit. The country may be dissatisfied with Bush but Congress continues to poll lower than Bush.

Has the country moved to the left? The Democrats think so. The main three candidates, Clinton, Barack and Edwards, are all far to the left of Bill Clinton or the image that Kerry projected in 2004. This may be their undoing. In 2006, voters were angry with corruption in Congress and frustrated that the war in Iraq was still going on. Even with that, the Democrats' wins were comparable with the opposing party in the sixth year of other administrations, even Reagan. This was not an overwhelming vote of support for a liberal agenda. Most of the winning Democrats weren't even running as liberals. They were recruited as pro-military centrists who could win close elections against Republicans. Now that they are in Congress, they have organized as the "Blue Dog Democrats" and they have prevented the older, more liberal Democrats from implementing their agenda.

The current slate of presidential candidates is not going to appeal to the people who voted in the Blue Dogs.

So, in spite of common wisdom, the election is still wide open.

Global Warming Winers and Losers

This interview ties in nicely with my last post about companies lobbying to become winners in global warming legislation.

Enron was the pioneer, pushing Kyoto before there was a Kyoto, after acquiring the world's largest windmill company and a half-share in the world's largest solar panel company; these are financial black holes without massive subsidies and mandates, which is precisely what the Kyoto agenda promises.  Enron had the world's second-largest gas pipeline network, the cost of space on which would be dearly expensive once coal was regulated out of viability.  They set up a trading floor to play bookie to millions of sales of carbon dioxide "credits".  All of these elements of the agenda would cost our economy dearly by piling on inefficiencies, as it is in Europe now, with no environmental benefit. This is the world's second-oldest profession, "rent-seeking", that is trying to gain millions from government favors that they could not earn in the marketplace.

GE has Enron's windmills and some of their pipeline assets, BP has the solar panels.  DuPont got out of the nylon business and for reasons peculiar to that decision would have about a half a billion dollars in CO2 equivalence "credits" to sell others who want to keep using energy in the event a Kyoto-style scheme is imposed domestically.  Lo and behold, suddenly they strike a "responsible" pose of hand-wringing over Congress' failure to impose this albatross around the economy's neck.  Certain cynical power companies have varying motivations, including a desire to be paid to replace aging coal-fired capacity with new gas plants that they have to build anyway; some nuclear providers want to be paid for not emitting CO2 but only water vapor.  And the list goes on.

What each of these companies share in common is a belief that their pals in government will stop before they go too far and actually fully implement the Kyoto agenda, but will only go just far enough to provide windfall profits of money for nothing.  It is a remarkably cynical and very dangerous game.

All of these companies get the public relations benefits of being for legislation to prevent global warming and all stand to profit quite a bit. The legislation itself will be a meaningless show piece (one hopes) that will cause enough discomfort so that people know that their government is doing something but not so much discomfort that people actually question the legislation.

Even states such as Minnesota which is considering a draconian reduction of 80% in the next 43 years has the real pain being felt long after the politicians will have retired. See here for the details of their scheme. While wonderful advances in technology are possible, energy use has climbed steadily for centuries. I really wonder how the people of Minnesota will survive on 20% of today's energy use?

DSL and Global Warming

DSL (Daylight Savings Time) came three weeks early courtesy of an amendment to the energy bill passed years ago. The change was intended to save energy but there are real questions about its effectiveness this early in the year. My wife complains that she will be back to leaving for work at dawn. That means that any energy saved in the evening will be lost in the morning. The sponsors of the bill announced that the change will not be evaluated to see if it did any real good.

This is typically what happens when politicians decide to solve a problem. It does not really matter if the solution does any good or if it actually makes things worse. The important thing is to be seen solving a problem.

As with most government solutions, there are winners and losers. The winers are candy companies. With DSL now ending in November, they hope that kids will Trick-or-Treat longer, selling more candy. They had lobbyists who made sure that they got their way.

The losers were airlines and companies with computers. Millions of dollars were spent in the last few weeks changing schedules and patching computers, all for questionable results.

Which brings us to global warming. The costs of DSL changes were minor compared with carbon reductions. The winners will win big. The losers might go out of business. The public will end up covering the tab. A number of large companies are already lobbying in case Congress does pass some form of cap and trade on carbon.

Four Unspeakable Untruths

Slate has four unspeakable truths about Iraq. They are: The war was a mistake, the soldiers are victims, the war dead were wasted and the war is lost. The big question here is, are these "truths" really true?

The first one is now a matter of faith among the left. With Saddam dead and gone, it is easy to forget what the circumstances of the war were. First, Saddam had already started two wars and was likely to start more as soon as he re-armed after the sanctions were lifted. He was already bribing other countries to push for lifting the sanctions. The left ignores it but it was well-documented that he planned to re-establish his weapons programs as soon as possible. The sanctions were the main reason that he had not already rearmed. We had also spent over a decade in open hostilities with Saddam. An unbiased observer with a long memory has to admit that a war with Saddam was very likely. The big question was if it would be on his terms or ours?

If the war was not a mistake then it is hard to insist that the war dead were wasted lives. Even if the war was a mistake, most of the dead have come from the insurgency. Everyone this side of John Murtha admits that our troops are the only thing stopping a bloody civil war - something much worse than the low-level conflict going on now. The wasted lives argument holds that a single American life is more important than dozens of foreigners.

The soldiers as victims argument just doesn't match reality. It holds that recruits are forced into the military by poverty. This was thoroughly disproved after Kerry's "joke".

The final point - have we already lost? This is not the real question. Unfortunately, insurgencies last a long time. It could take a decade to really pacify Iraq. The real question is if we have the resolution to stick it out? If not then we have lost. Unfortunately, this is the most likely "truth". The real lesson of Viet Nam is that the left will mobilize against any war that lasts longer than a few weeks or has more than a handful of casualties.

What Does it Mean?

Several items have come up in the last week or so. Their significance is debatable.

Gore's House
As has been widely reported, Al Gore's house consumes more energy in a month than a normal family's house does in a year. Gore's representatives have defended him pointing out that he has installed compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and other energy-saving technology. He also buys green credits from a company that he chairs.

What does it mean?
Gore has been telling people that curbing global warming is as simple as changing to CFLs and buying green credits. Since his house still requires a ton of energy, it is not this simple. In addition, Gore's green energy company is getting some overdue scrutiny.

Cheering the Taliban
When news reports were posted of a failed attempt on Vice-President Cheney, many people posted comments on Huffington, KOS, and DemocraticUnderGround expressing disappointment that the attempt failed. Ariana removed the comments and complained that they didn't mean anything.

What does it mean?
Dozens of people prefer the Taliban over the current administration. What's more, they were sure that the audience they were posting to would be supportive of this. They were right. I am not aware of anyone replying to these posts to point out that the Taliban is against nearly everything that these people believe in.

Hiring the Bloggers/Attending the Convention.
A few weeks ago the Edwards campaign got in trouble for comments his official campaign bloggers have made in their own blogs.

Over the weekend conservatives held a convention. Most of the presidential candidates attended as did Ann Coulter. At least a few liberals complained that this was a double standard.

What does is mean?
Nothing. There is a big difference between hiring someone who is outspoken and being in the same room with such a person. I doubt that liberals really want to be held to the "being in the same room" standard. Besides, Coulter made it clear that she does not approve of front-runner Rudy Giuliani and Mit Rhomney is lukewarm about her endorsement.

The Press and Rudy
Nearly every article on Giuliani mentions that he is at odds with conservatives on most social issues. It often seems that the press is trying to remind conservatives that they should not be supportive of him.

What does it mean?
Two things. First, liberals have been complaining for years that the Republicans are a bunch of bigots controlled by Christian fundamentalists. For Rudy to do well with this group is a shock to liberal's world-view. We saw they same thing when they kept asking Dick Cheney if he still loved his daughter, even though she is openly gay. They just can't wrap their minds around the concept of tolerant Republicans.

Second, I am sure that they have noticed that Rudy does very well in early polls. If he ran today against Hillary he would win in a landslide. This may be the press's attempt at trying to derail a Republican victory.

McCain and the War
Last week McCain announced his candidacy on Letterman and made a comment about lives wasted in Iraq. He has been backtracking on this ever since.

What does it mean?
I don't know. When Barack made his slip there was little doubt that this was his real opinion. McCain has been a war supporter all along. It is troubling that his private opinion may be at odds with his public support.

The Jesus Tomb

I only watched a bit of the Discovery Channel's special on the Tomb of Jesus. It was enough. I saw some talking heads telling us that it had to be Jesus's tomb because the names matched his family. In particular, his brother's unusual nickname was found in the tomb along with lots of other names that matched his ancestry but were very common.

I'm not buying it. The proofs presented depended on a lot of precise details in the Bible being correct except for the ones that contradicted their thesis. They ignored details such as Jesus's family being too poor to own such a tomb or the implication that the family of Jesus of Nazareth might be from Nazareth instead of Jerusalem.

On the other hand, I don't think that this was an attack on Christianity. Last year's special on the Gospel of Judas was a genuine historical look at early Christianity and it made a lot of money. On TV, any time something makes money it will be imitated. That's all that this was. Just a bit of early history linked with Jesus in order to generate some controversy in order to bring in the viewers.

The House that Gore Built

Al Gore wants every one to cut back on their carbon usage. It's easy, he assures us. Gore himself already lives a carbon-neutral lifestyle. Nothing to it. You just switch to compact fluorescent bulbs, buy a hybrid, and pay for a few carbon credits.

How's that working for Al? A group called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research put out a press release showing exactly how Gore actually lives. It seems that his house uses a lot more energy than you would expect. Last year he burned up 221,000 KWHs (up from 19,000) compared with an average of 15,600 for the area. And this isn't even his only house.

Gore's supporters point out that the Tennessee Center for Policy Research is a conservative group and therefore biased against Gore. This is irrelevant if the information is accurate. They also say that you can't expect someone who is rich to live like the rest of us. While this is true, there are a lot of energy-savings technologies available to the rich that the rest of us cannot afford. President Bush has a geo-thermal system at his house in Crawford and uses only 20% as much energy as the average home.

Others insist that Gore's work is so valuable to the world that he should be exempt from the sort of restrictions that the rest of us need to follow. This might be a valid point when talking about his world travels in the service of carbon emissions reduction, it does not give him a free pass at home. Someone who insists that we should all switch to compact fluorescent bulbs should replace the gaslight burning along his driveway. This confusion about public goals and private actions is what put Clinton into an impeachable position.

The big excuse that the Gore people give is that he pays for carbon credits. He pays an additional $400/month surcharge for green energy plus he gives money to other groups to offset his carbon usage.

There is even some question about the groups that he gets his carbon credits from. It appears that he is an officer and investor in the company. Regardless of this, let's assume that they work. This still means that he is buying his way to carbon neutrality.

This gives us a real measure of the man.

In the war against global warming, Al Gore is a chickenhawk. Rather than make changes to his lifestyle, he pays others to do it for him. The problem is that everyone cannot buy credits. Someone must make actual cuts. In order for the cuts to mean something and have enough left over for Gore and the other chickenhawks, most people are going to have to make cuts.

In the brave new world that Al Gore advocates, most of us will be living in conditions worse than our parents but Gore will be unaffected. He and the other rich will continue as they always have. It will just cost a bit more.

As long as Gore is telling the rest of us how important it is to cut carbon emissions, I expect him to live like Ed Begley Jr. Lead by example or shut up.

The Parable of the President and the Neocons

Slate repeats this story from a recent book:

[...], Bush 43 still sometimes drew on his father's wide knowledge of the world. Though he refused to read newspapers, he was aware of criticism that his administration had been excessively beholden to a particular clique, and wanted to know more about them. One day during that holiday, according to friends of the family, 43 asked his father, "What's a neocon?"

"Do you want names, or a description?" answered 41.

"Description."

"Well," said the former president of the United States, "I'll give it to you in one word: Israel."

Supposedly the author heard this story from several sources which meant to him that it must have really happened. Did it? I am really skeptical. It sounds too much like a political parable. It reinforces several points that everyone "knows" to be true.

First there is the image of Bush, the clueless president. He wants to know something but he can't go to a newspaper to look it up. Why? Because he refuses to read newspapers to the point of enforced ignorance. Never mind that he and his wife have said that he does read the news - it's the opinion pieces that he doesn't read. This detail is there to show that Bush is both ignorant and stubborn.

So who does he go to for information? His father. This is also part of liberal dogma. They hold that Bush is an ignorant party boy who only got to be president through his father's connections and who could barely dress himself without people from his father's administration.

So Bush 43 asks Bush 41 what a neocon is. The answer, Israel, is also part of liberal dogma. The left ascribes many motives to Bush for the invasion of Iraq - oil, revenge for an attempted assassination of his daddy, more money for Haliburtan. On the other hand they only ascribe one motive to the neocons - Israel. They are written off as a Jewish cabal intent on hijacking American foreign policy for the benefit of a foreign nation.

While it is true that some of the neocons are Jewish, many are not nor have any of them shown any indication that they are anything but loyal Americans.

So the whole purpose of the parable is to discredit the President, his advisers, and the war. Pretty convenient for a true story but typical for a parable.

Partisanship and Global Warming

Last weekend two different people posted to the Huffington Blog asking why Global Warming has become a partisan issue? Each of them answered the question in the next sentence when they continued, "Why don't conservatives just accept what we tell them and do what we say?"

The question is worth a closer look. Why is the political debate between liberals and conservatives?

One reason is that a group that I will refer to as the eco-alarmists tend to be on the far left. There are several traits that make up this group, many of them shared with liberals in general.

The really distinguishing trait is alarmism. They are always alarmed over something, it is always humanity's fault, and something drastic must be done immediately to prevent future catastrophe. Their track record on this is poor. I remember hearing Paul Harvey tell us in the mid-1960s that the world would run out of food by 2000. This was later adjusted to the mid-1970s. The air was going to be so polluted that people would live in domed cities with filtered air. The ozone would also be gone by 2000 causing everyone who ventures out to get skin cancer. Those who stayed in would probably all get AIDS. Our cities will run out of water. And, of course, we were supposed to run out of natural resources, especially oil, in the 1980s.

Global Warming is just the latest in a long string of predictions.

Conservatives tend to be, well, conservative about this sort of thing.

Where the ecco-alarmists share traits with the rest of the left is in their love for authoritarian governments. It doesn't matter if the government is promoting social good or ecological good. In both cases, a government that knows better than the masses dictates how people will live.

Then there is the convenient overlap between agendas. The left hates cars and most forms of personal transportation. They want us in crowded cities, walking most of the time and taking public transportation the rest. Once you control how people can move around you control their lives. The left hates suburbs, cars, and soccer moms. Strange how all of that will have to go to stop global warming.

The right, especially the Libertarian right, thinks that people should have choices.

Then there is the left's view of business. Much of it is shaped by Marxism and folk-Marxism. They tend to view big business as an endless supply of money that is going to undeserving capitalists. The same mindset that argues that raising the minimum wage will not affect any other part of society thinks that you can limit industry without ruining the economy.

Where liberals see black and white, conservatives see trade-offs.

There is one other trait about the eco-alarmists - many of them are satisfied with symbolic action. Mandating low-flush toilets nationwide did very little to affect water-use in the Southwest. Switching car air conditioners from freon didn't affect the hole in the ozone. The Kyoto Protocols rank among these. Even its supporters admit that it will not significantly affect global warming but it will hurt industry.

Then there are the solutions to problems that never were. The Bald Eagle was saved by stopping farmers from hunting them rather than by banning DDT Legislation to stop acid rain had to be rushed through Congress in 1990 before a report commissioned by Congress could be published because the report said that acid rain was not a threat. Is global warming another non-problem? Eco-alarmists say that the threat is too great to wait and find out. I've heard that one before.

Conservatives have long memories about these things. We will not disregard the eco-alarmists' track record and assume that this time they got it right.

That's why it is partisan.

The HPV Vaccine

For the first time there is a vaccine against a form of cancer. This cancer is unusual because it is caused by Human Papilloma Virus which is a sexually transmitted disease.

The impulse, fed by a major lobbying push by Merck who makes the vaccine, is to give it to every woman and to give it to them before they can possibly catch the virus. This means 10-13 year olds.

Many conservatives worry that this sends the wrong message about sex. I am not among them. I realize that, no matter what they are taught, some of these girls will grow up and have promiscuous sex.

I do have several objections.

First, the immunization is expensive - nearly $400. Currently, insurance companies will not pay for it so the parents will have to pay. That is a fair chunk of money.

Then there is the risk factor. I suspect that this is why insurance companies are unwilling to pay for the immunization. The type of cancer that the vaccine prevents is fairly rare. On a cost-justification basis, the expenditure is a poor investment. I know that some people will argue back that if it saves only one child... This is an emotional appeal. The same justification could be used to insist that everyone have an annual cat scan, just in case something shows up. In both cases, billions would be spent to save a disproportionately small number of women.

The immunization is not perfect. It is around 70% effective so the chance that girls who are immunized will be spared the cancer is only reduced by 2/3s, not eliminated. That hurts the cost justification.

There have not been any long-term clinical trials and the tests that have been made have been on grown women, not preadolescences. It wouldn't take a lot of bad reactions to make the immunizations a bigger health risk than the disease.

Finally, the effectiveness of some immunizations fades over time. Is this one of them? What if the effectiveness starts fading after a decade. Given the ages involved, that would mean that women in their early 20s who thought that they were protected would be at risk. In the absence of long-term studies there is no way to say for certain that this will not happen. [Update - I just read that it only lasts for 5 years and no booster currently exists.]

The entire issue seems like marketing being sold as public policy. Strangely, the people most suspicious of pharmaceuticals, the liberals, are for it. I suspect that this is a combination knee-jerk pro-feminist reaction fueled by the desire to do the opposite of religious conservatives.

If families think that their daughters should be protected then they should be free to have them immunized but it should not be forced on the population.

Campaign Mis-steps

Even in the last presidential campaign, no one paid any real attention to the candidates until the Dean surge at the end of 2003. In today's accelerated campaign, people are already hanging on the candidates' every actions. Look at Biden. Just complimenting Obama was enough to cause an uproar because he was not sufficiently respectful of previous black candidates. In the last few days other candidates have had problems.

There is John Edwards and the bloggers. A couple of experienced bloggers were brought on board without properly checking their writings. It seems that, in addition to being vulgar (a job requirement) they are also anti-Christian, and specifically anti-Catholic. In a series of mis-steps, Edwards appeared to fire them, then he released a statement that he had talked with them and would be keeping them on, then they resigned. The Left is in an uproar with contributors to the Huffington Post insisting that the Catholic League violated campaign law by interfering with an election.

Sidebar - assume that a Republican had hired a blogger who was found to have made anatomical references to Muslims and CAIR objected. Would the Huffington Posters be defending the bloggers or CAIR?

The Edwards campaign is better off without these bloggers. Had they remained it would have given the impression that he agreed, or at least sympathized with, their views. Democrats already have problems with the religious, especially the pro-lifers. Having people who despise the pro-lifers as campaign spokespeople means that he will not have a chance with these voters.

The whole thing could have been avoided if the person who hired the bloggers had reviewed their word with an eye to how it would reflect on the campaign. What actually happened left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

This is fairly mild compared to what Barack Obama did. In one of his first campaign appearances after announcing his candidacy, he had this to say:

We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we have now spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.

He tried to retract this statement almost immediately and in later statements:

I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term.

No matter what he says now, that is not the sort of thing that just slips out when you don't mean it. This is his private opinion, something that he has probably said to friends and staffers. He knew that this would be an unpopular view so he meant to keep it to himself.

This statement will probably haunt him. It is on level with Kerry's "Stuck in Iraq" statement. No matter what the candidate says, it sounds so much like his real views that he cannot disown it. Also, like Kerry, he is insulting the troops.

Since this came directly from the candidate and since Obama is getting so much more coverage than Edwards, this is a significant error. It also shows that Obama has not learned to weigh every word before he speaks. This is ironic considering his reaction when Biden made a milder slip of the tongue.

Southern Son

For a presidential candidate with no credentials except for an undistinguished career in the Senate and limited campaign resources, the southern strategy seems like a good bet. The idea is that you you skip Iowa, New Hampshire, and the other New England primaries and concentrate on Super Tuesday. This is when five southern states have a primary. A convincing win here can vault you over the other candidates into front-runner status allowing you to do some serious fund-raising.

The drawback is that the early primaries may not account for many delegates but they can give a candidate an unstoppable momentum. In practice, the most a senator can get from the southern strategy is a shot at the number 2 position on the ballot and credibility for a future run.

That's how things worked for Al Gore in 1984. He failed to do well in Super Tuesday and his candidacy was over before the Doonesbury cartoons lampooning him as Prince Al had a chance to run.

John Edwards followed Gore's lead in 2004 and, like Gore, could not stop the Kerry juggernaut. Edwards did strike a chord with his "two Americas" speech. Between that and his status as the last challenger standing he got on the ticket.

Now he's back with a new image. He now says that he was too timid and paid too much attention to the advice of consultants. Like Hillary, he says that we don't know the Real Edwards.

The main differences are that he is now very anti-war and he has moved to the left of what was already a pretty liberal platform. Also, by now we know that he is the son of a mill-worker so he no longer reminds us hourly.

When Edwards ran in 2004 he was seen as under qualified with only a single term in the Senate. Now, with Obama running after 1/3 of a term, the bar has been lowered. Between that and his run along side Kerry, he seems more qualified, even if he is not. His main qualifications continue to be that he is young and articulate (there's that word again).

While he is running as the friend to the working man, there is little in his past to suggest that he would be an effective leader. He made his millions as a trial lawyer to the detriment of regular people. If you know a woman who had a C-section in the last few years you can thank Edwards. His class-action suit tippled the number of C-sections performed annually with no improvement in infant health.

In many ways, Edwards is running on a platform that FDR would have liked. He is for universal health care and against free trade.

Edwards appeals to labor and traditional liberals but is trailing Hillary and Obama badly in the polls. His main chance at capturing the nomination would be if the party rejects a white woman and a black man as too risky and goes with a southern white man.

The Inevitable Candidate

Hillary Clinton has been preparing herself to be a presidential candidate longer than anyone else in modern times. She has been following a course of actions that she and Dick Morris worked out in the 1990s. This includes her stint in the Senate and even the sort of committees she has served on. It was important to her to be on the Armed Forced committee in order to establish her credentials as a tough leader who could handle foreign affairs. It is assumed that her most visible votes were calculated as part of this strategy.

Hillary is easily more qualified than her main competition. She has more time in the Senate than Edwards (one term) or Obama (1/3 term). She also has an inside view of how the White House works. Not even her Republican competition can claim that. As First Lady, Hillary had unprecedented power. She interviewed potential cabinet appointees and had veto power over them. She even selected the Attorney General. She has often been referred to has half of Bill's brain.

Hillary has spent years building up her campaign apparatus. She has a full campaign organization complete with rapid-response unit. She has already been courting potential donors and has a campaign fund many times her competitors'. More important, she likely has access to George Soros and his shadow organizations. In 2004, the Soros-affiliated organizations, headed by former Clinton people, spent more money on the election than the candidate, John Kerry.

For all of this Hillary has some significant negatives. Her name recognition has peaked. She has been in the public eye for 15 years. While she leads the polls, this might be due to name recognition more than anything else.

The last two Democrats to win the presidency were southern governors who ran as Washington outsiders. After eight years in the White House and more than six years in the Senate, Hillary is the ultimate insider. She also abandoned any claim as a southerner when she ran for the Senate from New York. That leaves the outsider roll available for Obama and the Southerner roll for Edwards.

There are real questions about what she actually stands for. Did she vote for the war out of real conviction, was she misled by the President, or was it a cool calculation to make her look stronger? Saturday Night Live did a parody of this saying, "I wouldn't have pretended to care about the war if I had known it would be unpopular." When SNL goes after a Democrat you know that she has screwed up. (In January, 2001, SNL did a dead-on bit about the last few Clinton scandals saying, "What did you expect, we're the Clintons.")

While Hillary's time in the Senate has been scandal-free, there is still a lot in her closet from her years with Bill. Many of the worst Clinton scandals were also linked to her. Whitewater was actually about the possibility that Bill, as governor of Arkansas, tried to use his authority over the banks to minimize his loss in an investment. Hillary's close friend Vince Foster killed himself and his files vanished. Weeks later they appeared in the living quarters of the White House. How could they get into one of the most heavily guarded homes in the world and what was cleaned out of the files before they appeared? In 1993 the White House travel staff was fired and replaced with Clinton campaign workers. There were rumors that Hillary did the firing even though she had no authority to.

Bill and Hillary survived all of these scandals by stonewalling investigators. People went to jail rather than testify about the Clinton's roll.

Then there were Bill's last-minute pardons. A couple of these directly benefited Hillary's relatives. This was also mentioned in the 2001 SNL sketch.

For all her background and experience, Hillary has never actually been in charge of anything larger than the First Lady's staff. Her one attempt at legislation, a monster of a health care bill, died in committee.

Hillary has several personal problems, also. She comes across as cold and humorless and her voice goes shrill when she speaks up. She hasn't lived with her husband in nearly a decade and speculation is that the only reason she is still married to him is politics.

Recently Hillary said, "I've known evil men." The crowd erupted in laughter. She insists that she meant Osama bin Laden. Some on the far left think she meant George Bush. The rest of the country assumed that she meant her husband.

There is a good chance that a new scandal about Bill will come up. He has been seen often with a member of the Canadian Parliament and it is assumed that they are having an affair. The specter of Bill as First Man carrying on with a member of a foreign government will not help Hillary.

Currently Hillary is trying to move to the left in order to make it through the primaries. The anti-Bush left has not forgiven her for voting in favor of the war. She is trying to find a course short of an apology and admission of error that will not hurt her in the general election. So far this has not worked.

Hillary claims to be the best-known person that no one knows. Her campaign is currently based around the idea that people don't know the real Hillary. After 15 years in public it is hard to believe that there is anything more to know. More likely we are asked to be introduced to the new, re-invented Hillary.

In order to minimize her negatives, Hillary is positioning herself as the inevitable candidate. Why worry when she is going to be the winner, anyway?

The "A" Word

I am going to start giving my take on the presidential frontrunners. Barack Obama seems like a good place to start.

Last week Senator Biden got in a lot of trouble for praising Obama. The word that most people seem to have the most trouble with is "articulate". It seems that, by calling Obama articulate, Biden implied that other blacks are not.

There is more to it than that. Yes, Obama can speak without substituting "axe" for "ask" and he forgoes rhyming couplets but there is more to it than that.

Right now Obama is either first or second in the race for the Democratic nomination. Why? He has very little experience. He has only served two years in the Senate and before that he was in the Illinois legislature. That's not much of a record to run on. As far as I know, he has not distinguished himself as an international expert. He has a book out but his name was topping the polls before it went to the printer. He doesn't have any signature issues. I doubt that most people can say where he stands on any issue except for the war (surprise - he's against it).

So why is he rocketing to the top of polls?

It's mainly because he gave kick-ass keynote speech at the 2004 convention. He connected with the crowd in a way that Kerry and Hillary can only dream of. He is one of the few Democrats who can speak of God without sounding like he is pandering.

In other words, he is articulate.

This isn't an insult. It is a rarity.

Nether Bush, father or son, is articulate. Gore (lockbox) sounds like a university professor. Kerry (I voted for it before I voted against it) manage to make Bush look polished.

So Obama is in the race because he is articulate. He just hasn't figured out what to articulate, yet. He is currently trying to create a campaign that will preserve his status as a fresh, young, outsider - the first post-boomer candidate.

None of this tells us what he would be like as President. Given his total lack of executive experience, I suspect that his first years would be a learning experience. It took Clinton two years before he really got a handle on the job and he was a former governor. Carter never did figure it out and he was also a governor.

Does today's world allow time for on-the-job training for a president?

And the Nobel Prize for Dishonesty...

Can you win the Nobel Prize for telling exaggerations if it is in a good cause? we will soon see. Al Gore has been nominated.

Keep in mind that it doesn't take much to get a nomination. Still, the reason for the nomination is telling. One of the people making the nomination explained why he nominated Gore and Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier:

"Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila works from the ground up," Brende said.

"I think climate change is the biggest challenge we face in this century," Brende said.

The way that Gore put climate change on the agenda is by a presentation that is somewhere between exaggeration and outright lies. One point that he frequently makes is that the ocean levels will rise 20 feet by the end of the century and he presents this as a hard fact.

The truth is that at the time he filmed his presentation the estimate was more like 20-50 inches. The current estimate (unless it is revised by tomorrow's release) is 5-22 inches. That's between 12 and 48 times the level that Gore gave.

All of Gore's arguments are like this. Gore, like many who worry about global warming, worry that the public is not taking the issue seriously enough. Their solution is to exaggerate the consequences, silence debate, and gloss over the cost of mitigating CO2 emissions.

It probably says something that the nomination came from a socialist but I'm not sure what.

Biden and Barack

Senator Joseph Biden said this to a reporter about Barack Obama:

"I mean, you've got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a story-book, man,"

Abama later released a statement:

"I didn't take Sen. Biden's comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate," Obama said. "African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate."

Ok, they are articulate, but no one would call them mainstream. Jackson was the only one to win any states in the primaries. The others ran vanity campaigns - they knew that they had no chance but they ran because it got them into the debates with the real candidates. To seize on the word "articulate" without acknowledging the weakness of these other candidates is also historically inaccurate.

While Biden seems to be the one who took the initial damage, it opens some questions:

1. Is Obama really so thin-skinned and race-conscious that he would take a compliment and turn it into an insult against previous black leaders?
2. Is Obama really just trying to curry favor with black leaders who previously haven't cared for him?
3. Is Obama fighting dirty by making an opponent's remark seem racially unaware?

None of these questons reflect well on Obama's canidacy.