Hot Air from NBC

Last night NBC insisted that the current heat wave passing over the US is part of Global Warming. Their proof? They didn't cite any except for the number of records broken. This in itself means very little since many of these records were simply for a specific location for that particular date. Here in Columbus, the temperature hasn't broken 100 since the 1990s and the number of days over 90 was higher in previous years than now. With the heat wave breaking, there is not much chance of meaningful records being broken.

Not to be outdone, NBC's new web site has an article on warm summer nights proving Global Warming.

A top federal research meteorologist said he "almost fell out of my chair" when he looked over U.S. night minimum temperature records over the past 96 years and saw the skyrocketing trend of hot summer nights.

Maybe he would have kept his seat if he had heard about urban heat islands . Forests and farms tend to be cooler and to lose their heat faster at night. Buildings and roads soak up the sun and radiate it back at night. You can verify this for yourself - just put your hand or a bare foot on a driveway after dark. It will be warmer than nearby grass.

This effect can cause a local shift in temperature of 2-10 degrees - equivalent to moving a hundred miles south. As our cities expand, it would be amazing if nighttime temperatures did not climb. But that wouldn't scare people.

Defending Conservatives

Bob Burnett has been writing about the failure of conservatism on Huffington. I'd like to take issue with him.

His first point

Since the Reagan era, American conservatism has steadily gained strength. Indeed, for the five years of the second Bush Administration conservatism has been the only visible ideology in Washington.

Conservative domestic policy rests upon one central tenet: the federal government must be drastically reduced. Accordingly, the Bush Administration and an obedient Republican Congress slashed taxes. They assured the American people that, as a "natural" result of these cuts, two things would happen: the economy would flourish and the federal government would wither. But neither prediction proved accurate. The economy showed modest growth, which benefited only corporations and wealthy individuals; meanwhile, the real income of the average American family went down. And, the federal government didn't shrink; it grew.

There are a few big flaws in this argument. The first is that Bush (father and son) are Reagan Republicans. G. W. Bush ran on a platform of compassionate conservatism. This turns out to mean tax-cut and spend conservatism. Bush is a pro-defense, social conservative, not a Reagan/Libertarian. Bush is not a friend of limited government. In fact, two of his pet projects, No Child Left Behind, and the Medicare Drug Plan, were major expansions of big government. In most other spending, Bush has been to the left of Bill Clinton. Government didn't just grow on its own, it was allowed to grow by the lose fiscal policies of the Bush administration and by Bush's reluctance to veto spending bills.

Bush is a fan of tax cuts as economic stimulus and they have worked better than Burnett is willing to give credit for.

It doesn't help that Republicans only have a tiny majority in Congress and some of that is made up of RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). When Katrina hit, these are the Republicans who refused to give up non-vital projects in their own districts to help pay to help devastated areas. The Pork-Busters have been keeping track of these.

Burnett says:

During the last five years, conservatives discovered that while Americans rail against the federal government in the abstract, they actually like the programs it provides, such as Medicare and Social Security. They want their mail delivered on time and levees maintained to guard them from floods.

...but this is more an indictment of RINOs than conservatives. I'll agree with him about this but my solution would be to see some real conservatives at work instead of moderate/RINOs.

He also says:

Alan Wolfe observes that since the primary objective of conservatives was thwarted—they couldn't shrink the size of government—they settled for preventing it "from doing any good." From the Department of Justice to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bush Administration eased federal regulations and reduced oversight responsibilities; the result was an across-the-board abandonment of the public interest. Conservatives abandoned a vital historic role of the federal government: protection of our rights.

This is hyperbole at its best. With the EPA, for example, Clinton signed some new standards as a going-away present. As is standard, the Bush administration put a hold on the new regulations pending review and eventually passed them. The regulations were never looser than during the Clinton administration. There have been other examples where tighter standards are called loose. The standards for fuel efficiency known as CAFE were tightened but not as much as Democrats would have liked.

Burnett's next point:

Simultaneously, conservatives used the resources of the federal government as a vehicle for unprecedented political patronage; strengthening the Republican Party by securing huge donations from corporations. Conservative control of government unleashed an unprecedented wave of venality, a hybrid form of plutocracy where the interests of corporations where given primacy over the rights of individuals. This bias had many forms: sole-source contracts given in Iraq, bribery of Administration and Congressional officials, heightened influence of lobbyists, and elimination of bipartisanship — creation of an atmosphere where fairness and cooperation are seen as character flaws.

With all that patronage money you would think that Republicans election campaigns were out-spending the Democrats. They aren't. I'm sure that he is referring to Haliburten when he complains about sole-source contracts in Iraq but independent reviews have agreed that they are the only company able to provide the services needed. Lobbyists are better-organized and they target the party in power but that does not mean that Democrats will be any better.

Bipartisanship works both ways. Don't forget that in 1993 the Clinton administration made new Democrats take an oath that they would not cooperate with Republicans on anything. For that matter, look at how the Democrats are treating Joe Leiberman because of his bipartisanship.

Burnett is convinced that the government, when well-run, is the best source for all things.

In Federal agency after agency, conservative Bush political appointees privatized jobs that formally had been done by agency employees. This resulted in deterioration of service and massive cost overruns.

Remember the flu vaccine shortage of 2004-2005? That came about because the federal government is the sole-supplier for certain vaccines. This was done during the Clinton administration to prove that the government was better at managing health care than private industry. It didn't work.

Burnett's faith in government is also part of his follow-up. This is his take on welfare reform.

Corresponding to their naïve disregard for the federal government, conservatives advocated their brand of Social Darwinism: "you're on your own." They insisted government has no responsibility to protect the rights or wellbeing of citizens; claimed that the market will take care of everyone.

A true conservative (the Libertarian sort) will point out that LBJ's war on poverty created an entire underclass who depended on the government and that this was a drag on general prosperity. In contrast, in a robust economy there are jobs for everyone who wants one eliminating the need for long-term dependency.

His mission statement for liberals is

From this foundation, the new liberalism needs to state the obvious: Americans need a responsible federal government and it's our common responsibility to pay for it. Liberals should reassert their belief that government can be a force for good, so long as it is well run. Not only must liberals be persons of integrity, they must provide the leadership that America desperately needs.

The operative phrase there is "so long as it is well run." This is where conservatives take issue with big government. A program may start but being well-run but with no competition and with the lure of empire-building they will not stay well-run. Further, a government program usually has the force of law behind it and a mountain of bureaucracy that makes changes near-impossible.

Burnett's two closing points

Finally, a new liberal ideology must address two other conservative beliefs: The first is that government should not regulate business; that this is the exclusive responsibility of the market. This is wrong, because an equitable American society requires the active intervention of the federal government to protect the rights and wellbeing of our citizens. A cornerstone of the new liberalism must be the primacy of individual rights over those of corporations and CEOs.

Liberals would gladly regulate business out of business. When Burnett talks about protecting the "primacy of individual rights" he really means collective rights. This can lead to absurdities such as the government suing Sears because they were not hiring enough women to work in the lawn-care department. It turned out that women don't want to work there but that didn't save Sears from millions in legal fees.

The second conservative belief that must be challenged is that the U.S. defense budget is sacrosanct. Americans have been brainwashed to believe that having the largest defense establishment in the world—spending $550 million per year on the Department of Defense—keeps us safe. Citizens must be taught to distinguish between big and smart. America can be protected even though DOD is drastically reduced. Money must be redirected from our military budget and used for vital needs such as the funding of our "first responders."

Until they changed their message to cut-and-run, the liberal reaction to the invasion of Iraq was that Bush hadn't sent enough troops, that he had tried to do it on the cheap. The truth is that Bush sent the troops that he could but, even after activating National Guard units, there are not enough troops to secure Iraq. Burnett would like to see the military cut further.

Redefining Health

A recent study showed that there are very few differences in eating habits between people with "normal" BMI and those who are "overweight" and "obese". 75% of the obese say that they eat healthy. Comparable percentages work out, snack between meals, and eat out. Even the numbers who eat everything served are not great enough to explain the difference in body weight. The people conducting the survey did admit that they didn't include the quantity of food eaten. Still, this shows that there may be no simple difference. At the least, the obese are not living unhealthy lifestyles. Consider that other studies that show obesity (but not morbid obesity) has little harmful effect on health. Now combine that with the study I wrote about a couple of days ago showing that people in the 19th century tended to have a "normal" BMI but were subject to chronic health problems and you start to wonder about the "obesity epidemic".

Is it possible that our standards of what is "normal" were set at a time when people were undernourished and unhealthy and that the current "epidemic" is actually what healthy people really weigh?

A few other factors - when doing a story on obesity, TV always shows people who are 50+ pounds overweight but you can be just 10-20 pounds overweight and still be considered obese. The BMI figures were adjusted down in the mid-1990s so that many people who were normal according to the old measure are now overweight or obese.

Putting Ourselves in Their Shoes

Let's imagine a situation similar to Israel's where the US is the one under attack. This is actually possible given the right chain of events.

First, let's assume that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrado follows through with his threat to start a civil war in Mexico unless he is made president. Mexico has had some provinces, mainly in the south, rebelling for years so this is quite possible. Now, let's assume that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez takes advantage of leftist anti-Americanism and starts providing support for the rebels, both in cash and in weaponry. Given civil conflict in Mexico, this is likely.

This next is a bit of a stretch but let's assume that the Mexican rebels decide that they want part of the US back. La Raza has demanded Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California so it could happen. In order to force the issue, they set up near the border and start lobbing missiles into the US. Most of these are un-aimed short-range missiles and mainly threaten cities within a hundred miles of the border but they also show off some long-range missile's that are part of Chavez's billion dollar purchase of arms from Russia. These can hit any city in the US. Further, Chavez announces that he is pursuing nuclear and biological weapons for self-defense.

So what would we do? Just sit and take it, knowing that worse was coming? Invade Mexico knowing that there would be civilian casualties? Attack Venezuela directly knowing that it would likely turn all of South America against us? Would we get any sympathy from Europe or the UN?

There is no good solution but we would at least be in the position of being strong enough and large enough that we would not be in danger of annihilation.

Deja Vu

I had a bit of Deja Vu during tonight's news. NBC ran a story about some formerly dedicated Republicans who were disenchanted with the party and would likely vote Democrat. David Broder wrote a very similar column about a long-time Republican who is disgusted with the party ad planning to vote against it.

They were running the same story two years ago - people who voted for Bush in 2000 were not going to vote for him in 2004. They ran this story again and again. From the news coverage, Bush didn't have a chance.

The funny thing is that they never run stories about people who voted Democrat and are now planning to vote Republican. It's almost enough to make you think that the MSM is trying to give the impression that the Democrats can't lose.

Now that I think about it, I remember hearing a long piece on NPR in the fall of 1994. It was on how the Democrats in Congress coudn't lose. That was the year that the Republicans took Congress. Hmm.

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

The left is turning very anti-Israel. The polite leftists say that Israel's response to the boarder incursion and kidnapping of two soldiers and the nightly firing of some 200 rockets has been disproportional. I'm not quite sure what they think would be a proportional reaction - probably sanctions. But these are the nice guys.

At the DailyKOS, someone made this post:

Imagine a world without Israel

by qrswave

Wed Jul 12, 2006 at 06:41:50 PM PDT

Or is that not allowed?

• qrswave's diary :: ::

>
> Muslims, Jews, and Christians could live in peace without fear of mutual destruction.
>
> There would be no more need for US AID or justification for Dimona.
>
> We could bring down the Wall, send prisoners home, and families could be reunited.
>
> We could dismantle checkpoints, open crossings, and pull down barbed wire fences.
>
> There would be no more settlements or armed settlers because the people would be united.
>
> We could replant trees and olive groves and rebuild battered cities.
>
> No more suicide bombers or sniper fire, and no more dead civilians.
>
> No more targeted killings and hell-fire missiles, or systematic demolitions.
>
> Palestinians and Jews could live together and the world could address other issues.
>
> What a simpler place this world would be
>
> if there was no need for a Jewish majority - where there would otherwise be none.
>
> Is it so hard to imagine?

Now, KOS is full of hard-core lefties who often shoot of their collectives mouths. What does the mainstream think? Consider this column from Richard Cohen in the Washington Post:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

His recommendation is

The smart choice is to pull back to defensible -- but hardly impervious -- borders. That includes getting out of most of the West Bank -- and waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else. This will take some time, and in the meantime terrorism and rocket attacks will continue.

There is a common thread in writing from the left. They insist that they are not anti-Semitic (anti-Jew), or even anti-Zionist (anti-Israel) they just disagree with Israel's policies. Often the writers are Jewish themselves. These columns make it clear that the left considers a Jewish state to be a mistake.

A look at history shows why Jews feel the need for their own state. Time and again, a country would be receptive to them and they would move there, then politics would change and they would be persecuted. For hundreds of years, Spain was considered the New Israel, the new homeland of the Jews. That changed abruptly in 1492 when the Jews were expelled. Germany, Poland and Russia were open to Jews in the 19th century but turned into death traps for them in the 20th century.

It is no wonder that the Jews want a place where they are in the majority and can protect themselves instead of hoping that the welcoming country of this century doesn't change in the next. With the growing Islamic influence in Europe, Canada, and the US, there are few places that can be guaranteed friendly through the end of the 21st century.

So, was it a mistake for them to settle on the middle east for their homeland? Iran's president suggested that Europe should set aside some land for them there and Cohen's piece seems to imply the same thing.

I'm not buying this argument. For one thing, Israel is the Jewish homeland and has always had a significant Jewish population. For another thing, all of the countries in the middle east are recent creations divided up by the British. There is no country with a legitimate claim on the land Israel occupies.

One final point - is the Israeli response disproportionate? A big part of their response is based on the nightly rocket attacks - attacks that can reach all of Israel. To stop or slow these, they are bombing the bridges and roads used to transport the rockets and the airport that receives them. Since this infrastructure is also used by the civilian population, it seems cruel but I suspect than most of the critics would advocate doing the same thing if terrorists in Canada started launching nightly attacks on the US.

Discovering Hot Air

Last night the Discovery Channel aired a special on Global Warming. It was billed as an event that would make the viewer an expert on the subject and able to judge for himself about the truth of the matter. In fact, it was a compilation of all of the worst exaggerations designed to scare people into supporting solutions without properly understanding them.

I'm sure that others will pick the show apart in detail. I'm going to pick up on one small piece to show how the program misleads.

While talking about rising oceans, the announcer said that "The only reason that we go to the ocean is to go to the beach but, for every foot that the ocean rises, we lose 300 feet of beach." Leaving aside that there are other reasons for going to the ocean than going to the beach, there are still three problems with this statement.

First there is the implication that beaches are static resources that can be covered. In fact, they are constantly changing. Beaches are part of a natural cycle of currents. In some places the currents pick up sand, in other places the sand is deposited. If the ocean level rises then new beaches will be formed naturally.

OK, so there will be beaches, but probably not where we expect them to be. Is that a problem? Not really. In many places, the natural currents have already changed and the modern vacation spots are no longer where the beaches naturally occur. Locations such as Virginia Beach spend millions of dollars annually rebuilding beaches that are trying to migrate elsewhere naturally. If the oceans rise then this process will continue. It might have to be accelerated but it will not be much different from what it already being done.

The final point, and one that they really don't want you to think about, is what would happen if we really do adopt significant measures to stop Global Warming? Great Britain has suggested a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. With households accounting for around 50% of carbon emissions, that means that individuals will have to cut their lifestyle deeply. Recreational travel will be a thing of the past.

This means that, for most of us, going to the beach will be out of the question. The beaches may be saved but the only people who will be able to appreciate them will be the ones living close enough to walk there.

A great deal of the show was like this - they didn't tell outright lies but they committed numerous lies by omission.

The June Attack on Iran

Last April, Seymour Hersch was making the rounds insisting that President Bush planned a major attack against Iran in the near future. He based this on a column he had published in the New Yorker. That column didn't give any timetables for the attack but he named June on several talk show appearances (which were verbal and therefore harder to find a link for). At the time, no one called him for making the exact same prediction a year earlier. At that point he was claiming that the attack would be in June, 2005.

We are now half-way into July so it is safe to say that there will be no June attack. Further, there seems to be less talk about attacks.

So, will anyone call Hersch on his mis-calculation? Besides me, that is.

Plame Game

Valerie Plame, former CIA covert operative and wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson is suing members of the Bush administration. Plame claims that her identity was leaked as revenge against her husband in retaliation for his criticism of Bush's Iraq policies.

I worry about the state of the union when former CIA and State Department people turn out to be really dumb. Assuming that this actually comes to trial, she is going to have to get on the witness stand and explain how she could be a covert agent when she was married to an ambassador. The two of them will have to reconcile the many public statements that Wilson made against his sword testimony before the 911 committee when it came out that he had repeatedly lied.

Wilson said that he went to Niger at the request of the Vice President's Office. He was actually sent by the CIA at his wife's suggestion. The defense attorney will grill the two of them on how Cheney could possibly defend himself without disclosing how Wilson was actually hired.

The left ignored what actually happened and continues to make him a star for no other reason than that he hurt Bush. By dragging all of this out into the open again, Plame assures that the real story will be heard again.

Or possibly she's delusional. In various interviews, her husband has described her as "Jane Bond" and talked about her cloak and dagger secret life.

A Small Town 4th

We spent the weekend in Bath, Maine which is a small town. There is a military base a few miles away and the largest employer, the Bath Iron Works, makes destroyers for the Navy. All of that adds up to a fairly conservative town.

 

We skipped the fireworks. They had some Sunday that we did see and it was foggy so we went to Superman Returns.

 

We did go to the parade this morning. Before it started, a news camera went around asking people to sing the national anthem. I heard a couple of people do it. One skipped a line but sounded pretty good. The other remembered the words but wasn't quite on-key. Both were applauded anyway.

 

Very few people work red, white and blue. I had on a Captain America T-shirt. No one recognized what it was but three different people complimented me on it.

 

The parade was long - around 90 minutes. Everyone took it seriously. This is the sort of parade that the Doo Dah Parade organizers can't stand.

 

There were a lot of Republicans in the parade. I there were 3 or 4 floats and a bunch of candidates They threw candy and talked with spectators they knew.

 

After a while a small group with "Bring the troops back now" signs went by. The silence was noticeable. One Democrat had his supporters march with this group. The rest of the Democrats were further back.

 

The main group of Democrats was much smaller than the Republicans and I think that they only had one float. They threw candy and had a singer singing "God Bless America". This group was out-of-step with Democrat leaders, MoveOn organizers, and particularly MoveOn organizer, George Soros who  says that America is the main obstacle to a stable and just world.Then there is this idiot at Kos who is sickened that his (now former church) sang "God bless the USA" right after a soldier was accused of an awful crime.

 

It really makes you wonder how Kerry won this state.

 

Bottom line, patriotism is alive and well in small-town Maine.

Watching the News

A few items from the news before I go on vaction:

Smoking

A couple of days ago the Surgeon General proclaimed that the debate over second-hand smoke is over. Around the same time, the British decided to look at the issue again because the studies on the subject have only shown a weak association. This column points out just how weak the case against second-hand smoke is. To put it in perspective, smoking exposes you to 250 times as much smoke as second-hand smoke does. It just doesn't make any sense that second hand smoke could have much of an effect.

Anti-smoking advocates in the 1980s realized that the only way to ban smoking was to expand the argument beyond personal responsibility. It's one thing to be killing yourself. It's a different matter if you can argue that smokers are killing everyone else around them, especially "the kids". So, the advocates funded some studies on second hand smoke and inflated the results. One wonders why the Surgeon General went along with this when the science is weak.

Gore and Warming

An AP story from a couple of days ago started with the statement:

The nation's top climate scientists are giving "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy.

Pretty impressive. Later on you find out that they only contacted 100 scientists, that only 19 replied, and only five were quoted. As this points out, there are a lot of problems with the story. The movie is currently showing in 514 theaters - not a lot but scientists usually live in populations centers big enough to attract the movie. The AP also included scientists who read the companion book which is presumably in bookstores everywhere. The fact that only 19% of top climate scientists had bothered to see the movie or read the book says that most of them are not interested.

So why doesn't the headline say – "nation's top climate scientists have not seen Gore warming movie" – which is the salient lede in this bit of amateur polling? Or even "some climate scientists ok Gore movie's accuracy." The answer is that neither of these headlines makes for a compelling story.

But even if you accept the newsworthiness of 19 climate scientists, it is important to ask what is the probability that this very low response rate has resulted in selection bias? In other words, were those scientists who read the book or saw the movie more likely to agree with it from the outset - especially as Gore's position is no secret?

A couple of days ago I complained about the press seeing itself as needing to be advocates instead of neutral reporters on global warming. This is just one more example.

Politics

MSNBC reported a Supreme Court case this way: "Justices revise part of Texas redistricting". From that, you would think that the Texas Republicans lost the case. Not so. The Republicans won on the big issue - the redistricting itself. Since this was why the Democrats hounded Delay out of the Senate, it was a big win. The court did decide that a few districts had seen the influence of Hispanic voters dilluted but this is a minor adjustment. The Democrats had hoped to have the entire redistricting thrown out by the court.

Electric Cars

There is a new documentary out on Who Killed the Electric Car. It plays on conspiracy theories. GM had a test program for electric cars in the 1990s. When it ended, they insisted that everyone turn their cars back in to be crushed and scrapped. This seems like a mystery. Was the electric car killed by Big Oil? Possibly car mechanics who worried that they would lose work because of the simple, reliable electric cars?

This is stupid. The problem with electric cars is that they are very expensive and very limited. They are not zero-emission vehicles because they run on electricity that has to be generated somewhere. They are not all that efficient. There are power losses in transmitting the power from the generator to the battery and back to the wheels. They may be cheap to run but that is because they are feather-light in order to stretch the battery life and they bypass the highway taxes levied on gasoline.

With very limited range, heavy, expensive batteries, and little cargo space, these things are only useful as a second car for commuters and at $80,000 per car, there is no market for them at all.

So why did GM scrap them instead of letting people continue to drive them? The way they acted does make it seem like something was up. If you step back and assume that it was not related to oil or auto shops then GM's actions look like a company trying to avoid a liability problem. These things carry a lethal charge. Maybe GM was worried about future suits due to bad insulation. I don't know but this speculation is just as valid as the movie.

For more thoughts on the electric car, see here.

Taking Your Income for Freedom

Laura Miller on Salon has a review of George Lakoff's book, Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea. The thesis is that freedom is actually a progressive value rather than a conservative one. OK, I read the review expecting to see some concrete examples. There are a lot of claims that Conservatives falsely claimed freedom by framing and repeating their message. In theory this book is an attempt to do the same for the left. To show them how to refrain the argument.

 

So, what do we get?

Lakoff wants his progressive readers to understand that when conservatives like George W. Bush talk about "protecting our freedoms" by, say, trying to eliminate Social Security, they aren't being simply hypocritical, cynical or "mean"; within their own moral framework, what they are saying is true. It's just that their concept of freedom is "so alien to progressives that many progressives cannot even understand it, much less defend against it." There is no single, shared definition of what "freedom" looks like because it's a contested concept.

 

Of course, Bush never suggested eliminating Social Security, he proposed partially privatizing it in order to put off the coming fiscal crisis. Somehow the concept that a pay-as-you-go, tax-financed entitlement might run out of money is beyond progressives.

 

What else do we get?

Instead of allowing conservatives to define, for example, taxes as a restriction on a person's economic freedom, progressives should seize the initiative and characterize taxes as each citizen's contribution to a commonwealth that provides more freedoms than most of us could afford on our own. Government regulations don't limit the freedom of business, they free citizens from threats to the commonwealth like pollution or defective products. They liberate citizens from unfair discrimination that would otherwise prevent them from freely realizing their dreams and potential.

 

Here we have it. Taxation = freedom. The more of your money the government takes the more free you are. Miller expands on this.

Progressives could demand that the wealthy pay their "fair share" to enjoy the "freedoms" guaranteed by such government-funded infrastructure as the highway system, the Internet, the court system, the banking system and so on. (Lakoff points out that the rich tend to use more of these resources than others do.) Instead of allowing themselves to be portrayed as anti-business, progressives should say that they want to protect citizens from the sway of big corporations -- like HMOs and oil companies -- which, unlike an elected government, have no accountability to the public.

 

Here we at least have some concrete "freedoms" although I wonder about calling a highway system a freedom. Our highway system was inspired by the German Autobahn which was built under the Nazis. Hitler also provided banks and courts.

 

What about government protecting the average person from the depredations of big business? Progressives might have a potential message here but it's not about freedom. It's about protection. There is a legitimate debate over government vs. business. Government is elected, but only at intervals. Big business might seem anonymous but it is nowhere near as immune to market pressures as progressives think. Just look at General Motors. Regardless, protection is not freedom.

 

The whole argument is a perversion of the term "freedom". To say that we will take your money, limit your actions and call it freedom is to lie. This entire exercise is an example of progressives congratulating themselves on how much better they are than conservatives and wondering why the rest of the world doesn't recognize their superiority.

 

The real problem with the progressive's message is that they don't know or will not admit exactly what they stand for. They want to expand government but how far and in what direction? Are they socialists? What vision do they offer?

 

Possibly progressives can craft an appealing message but they need to be honest about what they are offering. They are not offering freedom. They want us to give up freedom in exchange for security,

What do you call it?

What do you call it when a powerful military leaves before its goals have been accomplished because of minor attacks by insurgents? The Republicans are calling it "cut and run". The Democrats are calling it a "redeployment" (redeploying all the way to the far side of China). I call it defeat.

According to a USA Today poll, this is the will of the people.

In the poll, 57% say Congress should pass a resolution that outlines a plan for withdrawing U.S. troops; 39% say that decision should be left to the president and his advisers.

Even allowing for the fact that USA Today polls usually skew anti-Bush, that's a lot of Americans who want us to do what Michael Moore suggested in 2004 - go home and live with our shame. As I complained a couple of days ago, this isn't surprising given the news coverage of Iraq but it is still distressing.

The long-term repercussions of this are stunning. Our pull-outs in Viet Nam, Lebanon, and Somalia convinced our enemies that we are a hollow-people who can be defeated by a weaker but determined force. This will prove them right and make them redouble their efforts elsewhere.

There are implications for the rest of the world, also. Much of the world disarmed over the last several decades because they could depend on American military intervention. Europe, especially, has reduced its military strength to the point where they would be unable to send significant help to Iraq, even if they agreed to. This has contributed to world peace. What will become of this if the world decides that the US military is not to be relied on?

Responsible members of Congress must realize this, even the Democrats. That means that they are letting their hatred of Bush overcome their responsibility to defend the United States.

Shaping what you think

Last week I complained about a news story on MSNBC saying that a new study by the National Research Council confirmed global warming and the "Hockey Stick" reconstruction of historic climate. I was right to be skeptical. The story contained this quote:

The National Research Council panel concluded that the Mann-Bradley-Hughes research was "likely" to be true, said John Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member. The conclusions from the research "are very close to being right" and are supported by even more recent data, Wallace said.

This is not what the report says. What it says is that:

1) The Little Ice Age existed as a period of global cooling. There was also significant, widespread, regional warming  confirming the Medieval warm period.

2) The proxies available are really only accurate for the last 400 years. After that, confidence levels go down. Despite this, they were willing to go on record as confirming an earlier warm period.

3) The proxies are not accurate enough to project temperatures for a single year or even decade so statements like "The 1990s were the warmest decade in 900 years" should not be made.

Bottom line - instead of confirming the Hockey Stick, the report disproved it.

So why was it reported the other way? Because the press in general decided some time ago that global warming is so important that they have to filter the news. If ordinary people knew that there is legitimate dissent, they might not be willing to accept the drastic measures needed to stop global warming. and if global warming isn't a reality after all? That doesn't matter. People should limit their driving and power usage and strive to live more simply, anyway.

I noticed a similar policy of filtering the news on a completely different subject. The AP report for Iraq printed last Saturday listed American dead, coalition forces dead, Iraqi civilian deaths, the number of bombs that went off in the Baghdad area, and mentioned a brief battle between Americans and insurgents near the Green Zone in Baghdad. From the wire service report you would think that no insurgents were killed anywhere. In general, it's hard to remember any accounts of insurgent deaths that didn't include an account of an American atrocity.

I'm certainly not the first to complain about this but the coverage from Iraq is all one-sided. It is a daily count of deaths - American, coalition, and civilian but never insurgent. No military offensives have been reported since Faluga. Nothing but a constant drip of death.

After the initial coverage the networks swore off using embedded reporters. The complaint was that they were not reporting, they were cheerleading. The news services apologized for being so one-sided and promised to do better. Obviously "better" means one-sided for the other side.

A phoney study on warming

The National Research Council announced that Global Warming is real and vindicated the "hockey stick" graph showing that we are living in times of unprecedented warming.

Except it didn't. In a stunning bit of intellectual fraud, they only validated the most recent 400 years of the hockey stick. Earlier than that and experts disagree.

The thing is that everyone agrees that it was cooler 400 years ago. Before the hockey stick, this period was known as the Little Ice Age and ended around 150 years ago - the same time that the hockey stick shows the climate as rapidly warming.

The panel looked at a 2000 year period but the first 1600 years were glossed over. This is important because traditional climatology holds that there was a warming period from 800-1300 AD.

The panel was supposed to tell us which theory to believe - the hockey stick with its constant climate prior to the mid-19th century or the traditional view with natural ups and downs.

As it is, they might as well have announced that studies showing increasing warming during the period from January-June in the Northern Hemisphere prove Global Warming.

Pro-Defence Democrats?

Last week, Glenn Reynolds wondered if Democrats can ever get tough? Can they embrace such issues as national security and defense? The short answer, of course, is no. What is more interesting is looking at why this is so. I identify four distinct groups that are either part of the Democrat mainstream or have significant influence in it. Working my way from the outside in, these are:

Peaceniks.
The Democrats first attracted this group in 1972 during the Viet Nam war and it still influences them. This is the most ethically pure of the groups. They are against all wars everywhere. They are no where near the mainstream but they are vocal and their protests get a lot of press. This group had a lot of influence on Clinton's foreign policies. The interesting thing about this group is that there are a lot more people claiming to be part of it than actually are. I will explain as I go along.

Anti-Americans.
These people think that America is corrupt, has always been corrupt, and always will be corrupt (unless we have a revolution and put them in charge). They look at the Democrats as being nearly as bad as the Republicans (this was Nader's main campaign theme in 2000). To them, even a "good" war like WWII was just an excuse to establish an American empire.

While the peaceniks are consistent, the anti-Americans will jump through philosophical hoops to justify their positions. Look at Afghanistan. Prior to September, 2000 there were numerous protests about the Taliban and its record on human rights with the strong implication that they should be overthrown by a benevolent outside force. When this happened, the same people started protesting in favor of the Taliban.

Members of this group insist that they are simply pacifists but they tend to be supportive of violent anti-American foreign leaders. They draw moral equivalencies between America and Israel striking military targets and terrorists striking civilians.

This group is broad and deep. It includes a number of intellectuals who are celebrated because of their anti-American views, people such as Noam Chompsky and Ward Churchill. It also includes pseudo-everymen like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.

The big anti-war rallies are organized by International ANSWER and Not In Our Name, both firmly in the forefront of this group.

For the most part, the anti-American group is outside the mainstream but it does include a few members of Congress such as John Conyers. The majority of this group's influence comes from demonstrations and intellectual peer-pressure.

The Internationalists.
With this group we are moving into the Democrat mainstream. While they think of themselves as "internationalists" they really reflect current political thinking in Europe. After the fall of communism, Europeans looked back as centuries of warfare and decided that there are two specific root causes. These are religion and nationalism. Europeans solved the religious problem by becoming officially secular and they regard all expressions of religion as equally repugnant. Look at the Europeans quoted as seeing George Bush and Osama bin Laden as equivalent because they both mention God.

The solution to nationalism is to temper the nationalist impulse with an international body - specifically the UN, the EU or, at least, NATO. This is why President Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" was never accepted by the Internationalists - no matter how many countries were included, they weren't the right countries.

Europeans have a huge aversion to war. Their preferred tools are sanctions and multi-lateral talks. To their mind doing things unilaterally, especially in the interests of a single nation, lead to Nazi Germany. This is one reason that the Bush/Hitler comparisons keep coming up (the other is blind hatred of Bush but I will get to that).

This group is well entrenched in the Democrat mainstream. John Kerry typifies it as does George Soros and MoveOn.

The Bush-Haters
Unlike the other groups, this one has no positions of its own. All it has are reactions. Bush proposes a modest reform to Social Security and the Bush-Haters insist that the current system is perfect. These are the people who insist that Bush was personally responsible for the levees failing in New Orleans and for Katrina itself.

Since Bush made national defense his signature issue, the Bush-Haters are against every part of it. Every action is interpreted in the worst possible light.

While many of the Democrat elite are Internationalists, the rank and file are Bush-Haters and they are led by the party chairman, Howard Dean. Not only are they against anything Bush ever did, they try to take revenge on any of their own who is considered to have helped Bush. There is a strong movement to dump Joe Leiberman, the party's 2000 Vice-Presidential candidate because he is seen as a traitor for being pro-defense.

So where does that leave the Democrats? The peaceniks are against anything military including defending our nation. The anti-Americans are against defending a country based on oppression (the US). The Internationalists want to depend on international diplomacy and French approval. The Bush-Haters would eat their own spleen before supporting any position Bush held. All of them turn on any Democrat who is the slightest pro-defense and all of these groups are too important to the Democrats to disown. That leaves the whole issue of national defense to the Republicans.

al-Zarqawi and Ann Coulter

When I checked the Huffington Post earlier today it only seemed to have two subjects - al Zarqawi and Ann Coulter.

 

al-Zarqawi was the most prominent terrorist in Iraq. He was responsible for numerous deaths, some of them done by his own hand on camera. He was actively trying to start a civil war - not a "low level" one but a major, all-out one. He also blew up the UN headquarters in Baghdad and the Golden Mosque. So what do the Huffies have to say about his death? Either that he wasn't really important or that we should have killed him four years ago - back when his relationship with al-Qeada was in question. Somehow I just can't see Eric Alterman approving of us killing someone in a foreign country who was, at the time, not a threat to America.

 

The truth is that something went right under Bush and it would kill them to admit it.

 

The other topic is Ann Coulter. Ann is a conservative shock jock. She regularly makes over-the-top statements. In this case, he was talking about a quartet of 9/11 widows. She referred to them as "witches" and said "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."

 

Like I said - over the top.

 

But who are these widows and why would Ann say such things about them? Like Cindy Shehan, they are over-the-top themselves. One of them sued naming George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Norman Mineta, Peter G. Peterson, Condoleezza Rice, George H.W. Bush and Kenneth Feinberg, in addition to "Other unnamed past, present, officials, representatives, agents, and private consultants of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA". She insists that President Bush knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks and allowed them to happen in order to build support for the war against terrorism. It would be nice if someone mentioned this when talking about Coulter.

 

It doesn't matter. The controversy will sell lots of copies of Coulter's books.

Red Flags in Canada

Over the weekend it was announced that 17 people have been arrested in Canada for acquiring three tons of ammonium nitrate. When mixed with other, easily available substances, this could be used to make a bomb three times the size of the one used in Oklahoma City. The suspects are all affiliated with radical groups inspired by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. This raises two red flags.

1) The news media has been telling us that the American-style assimilation protected us from the sort of home-grown bombings that happened in England and Spain and the sort of general violence that occurred in France last Fall. Canada assimilates immigrants similar to the way that America does. The would-be terrorists in Canada have been described as "{...} very well-established professionals, well-established families, no criminal pasts whatsoever." If assimilation is no protection then America can expect more attacks.

2) Isolationists from the left and right have been saying for years that September 11 happened because we behave like an empire. If we would work with international bodies, pull our troops back to protect our borders, and support the Palestinians over Israel then we would be safe. In other words, instead of waging a war on terror, we just need to act like Canada. Obviously that is not enough. It is not enough to act like France, either. France has a history of terrorist attacks of its own.

The morals here - we are at risk and there are no simple solutions.

Various Topics

When Katrina hit and New Orleans flooded, the Left was up in arms. It must have been President Bush's fault! They quickly dug up some stories about levee funds being cut and crafted a message - if only Al Gore had won in 2000 (or if the Supreme Court hadn't "selected" Bush) then he would have seen the dangers and strengthened the levees. Moreover, he would have passed Kyoto which would have stopped the Global Warming that creates hurricanes in the first place.

Last week the Army Corps of Engineers admitted that they had done a terrible job of protecting New Orleans and that these problems go back decades. The problems include using the wrong type of soil for the floodwalls, assuming that New Orleans was sinking slower than it really is, reliance on outdated designs, and a general piecemeal approach.

In other words, Bus is in no way to blame. So, is anyone on the Left willing to come forward and admit that they were wrong?

A lot of articles are coming out saying that AIDS is 25 this month. Actually, it is several years older than that but the first description of the syndrome in a medical journal appeared in June, 1981.

I noticed at President Reagan's death a lot of people blamed him for the spread of AIDS and this will undoubtedly surface again. It is not accurate.

There is a long lag time between being infected with HIV and developing AIDS. This is often 5-7 years. During the late 1970s the gay bathhouses in San Francisco were notorious for what we not consider unsafe sex. This is where the disease really took off, before Reagan even took office.

Another myth is that Reagan never devoted enough money into finding a cure. This was also false. It was based on the idea that AIDS could be treated like a bacterial infection. It is a virus and we still do not have a cure, just treatments that extend the lives of victims.

A final myth is that it was only taken seriously when it started to threaten the mainstream population (heterosexuals who do not share needles). In fact, it never threatened this group. Studies of wives of infected men have shown that even when your partner is infected, you are unlikely to catch it through heterosexual intercourse. In order to catch it, you have to put something where it was not designed to go.

One last point, AIDS activists like ACT-UP must take responsibility for much of the spread of AIDS. They lobbied against wide-spread testing. They even objected to testing blood donations although they were over-ruled on that one.

There is a strong possibility that AIDS in Africa is being transmitted by means other than sex but, because of the activists from the 1980s, few experts are willing to suggest that transmission may be through medical equipment that is not properly sterilized.

I was looking at the Democrats' platform. I am not impressed. A few points really stick out:

Real Security
We will protect Americans at home and lead the world by telling the truth to our troops our citizens and out allies.

Sorry Howard, but "Bush lied" is not a policy.

Honoring Our Troops, Veterans, and Their Families

This from the party of John Murtha?

If you want job creation, a strong economy, and a fiscally responsible federal government, there's only one choice: vote for Democrats.

No specifics here but we can get an idea of how fiscally responsible they will be further down.

Democrats know that the key to expanding opportunity is to provide every child with a world-class education. We want to meet our responsibilities to America's children by ensuring that our schools have the resources they need to help our kids meet high standards.

Democrats will also help expand educational opportunities for college by providing relief from skyrocketing college tuition, increasing the size and access to Pell Grants and supporting proven programs that encourage more young people to attend and succeed in college.

That's great. It's also expensive but that's nothing compared to this next item:

In the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth, no one should have to choose between taking their child to a doctor or paying the rent. Democrats are committed to making sure every single American has access to affordable, effective health care coverage.

That sound you just heard is the bank breaking. Then there are these points:

We reject the false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy environment.

Better ask Europe how false this trade-off is.

The Democratic Party is committed to genuine reform that protects our rights and ensures that elected officials act ethically -- not just within the law, but within the spirit of the law.

Every time Howard Dean talks about the Republicans' "Culture of corruption" I think "$90,000 in the freezer."

Then there are the flat-out lies:

Democrats believe that after a life of hard work, you earn a secure retirement. Our commitment to protecting the promise of Social Security is absolute. We will not allow anyone to endanger Social Security or take even a single step toward dismantling it. We are open to any and all ideas that ensure that the current and future generations of retirees receive the benefits they were promised without heaping trillions onto our national debt.

They are opposed to any and all reforms and will continue to be until Social Security collapses around their ears.

It has been pointed out elsewhere that the Republicans may not deserve to win but the Democrats don't deserve to beat them.

Haditha

What happened in Haditha in November, 2005? It started when a roadside IED killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas. According to Representative John Murtha and others, the Marines then charged the closest house killing some of the civilian occupants. Then then charged the next house and killed most of the occupants including women and children. A bit later then charged a different house and killed some more civilians.

This account bothers me more than a little. I realize that war is stressful and a group of Marines already under a lot of stress might have taken it out on the closest targets, not caring that it included civilians.

There are other possibilities, though. The insurgents have taken refuge behind civilians before and it changes the picture quite a bit if there were armed insurgents hiding among the civilians. For someone who is supposed to be pro-military, Murtha is too willing to start making pronouncements before the investigation is finished.

Similarly, someone names Jesse Macbeth posted a video claiming that he committed similar actions while in the service. The military denied knowledge of Macbeth and right-wing bloggers quickly pointed out numerous errors in his statements, his discharge form, and his uniform. Still, it became a viral video among the left.

The left doesn't really care what the truth is. They are already convinced that civilians were killed without reason. What is more, they act as though this was standard procedure and that it was personally authorized by President Bush. They want atrocities to happen (regardless of what really occurred) so that they can characterize this as typical behavior. This happened in Viet Nam and helped turn the public against the war so the left is trying to do it again.

Happy Memorial Day.