The Art of Peace

The Conservative Corrections Alpaca

2010-02-01T14:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a correction that Retracto the conservative corrections alpaca won't bother with.

From the American Spectator:

Their goal was to check to see if the phone system in the office was working. The men, under the leadership of a young media impresario named James O'Keefe, were querying why constituents of Sen. Landrieu had been unable to register negative feelings about Obamacare on the Senator's phone line. They had been told that perhaps the phones were out of order.

Nobody has claimed this was their real goal. They did not disguise themselves as phone repairmen to ask an innocent question. Some have suggested they wanted to sabotage the phones to see how the staff reacted when they were really out of order. Others that they thought it would be funny to pretend to think the phones were really out of order.

And the only source I've seen that they didn't actually try to bug the phones is one anonymous law enforcement source. I wonder what his political leanings are?

Wow

2009-08-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

Via BoingBoing.

You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each
Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you've received your reward. Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.

This is so logical its a shock to the system. Like a Christian airline CEO insisting that at most one pilot or co-pilot on a plane be Christian.

It opens the door into an important insight into something or other. I still have to think, I'm not smart enough to go through it just now.

Corporate funded protests

2009-07-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

Instapundit was rather impressed by this Bureaucrash protest. We have entered a new era - the grassroots rent-a-protester!

Yes, Bureaucrash calls themselves 'guerilla activists', but they are funded by the Competetive Enterprise Institute, which is funded by Exxon and other large corporations, as well as some other think tanks.

I wonder how much the protest cost? Check, Visa, or Mastercard?

Waxman-Markey

2009-07-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Well, the Senate is going to vote this bill down, and it's a good thing. Both Greenpeace and James Hansen consider this attempt to regulate global warming worse than useless.

Post Modern Libertarianism

2009-06-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

Now Instapundit is talking about going 'Hank Rearden'. I don't know if this is any different from going John Galt - google didn't turn up any other uses of the phrase.

Rebekah Allen of Concord came to Market Basket yesterday to do her shopping, and planned to look for the new trash bags required by the city’s pay-as-you-throw system. The bags were not there.

Market Basket, alone among Concord’s major supermarkets, has decided not to stock the trash bags. Their logic is simple: Why sell an item for which the store gets no profit?

Allen, when told of the decision, said she would still shop at Market Basket, and she did not mind going to another store for trash bags.

“I think it’s a bad program anyway,” Allen said of pay-as-you-throw. “I agree with (Market Basket).”

The city wants people to pay for their garbage collection - if they don't take it to the dump themselves. Sounds more libertarian than taxing people equally for garbage disposal regardless of how much or little they create.

This says something about the latest generation of 'going John Galt' libertarians in my opinion.

Color Scheme

2009-01-26T20:22:00.001-08:00

Alas, I don't seem to be getting many complaints about setting the world on fire. They all seem to involve the layout. I rather like my color scheme. I actually find the black restful. It seems everyone else disagrees with me. Anyone want to say something nice about my color scheme before I start fooling with the blogger layout?

If a statistic sounds like it can't be true

2009-01-25T17:02:00.000-08:00

[Post edited. Although there has been much talk of layoffs now and in the past, I believe public concerns about long lines may have averted the set of layoffs referred to in the last link.]

Via Instapundit, I read on Chicago Boyz that California could not possibly lay off government employees, since :

California has ~2.3 million unionized government workers and ~18.6 million civilians. With so many people organized with a laser-like focus on increasing taxes and spending, the private working citizens of California find it nearly impossible to prevent government workers from voting their own paychecks.

...

Of course no one is being whipped, but in effect an ordinary citizen of California cannot get their desires for reduced state spending implemented due to the disproportionate power of the State’s employees and allied interest. It appears now that the government unions will not accept any solution to California’s budget crisis except increased taxes in a declining economy. Ordinary citizens have no choice but to either emigrate or just lie there and take it.

Shannon Love hasn't forgotten that 18.6 million is more than 2.3 million, it's just that the 2.3 million are much more focused on keeping their salaries than the rest are on cutting them.

When I questioned this statistic in the comment section, I didn't get a reference, but the 'clarification' does sound a little more plausible. (I forgot to fill out the top part of the comment section, so I'm anonymous.)

# Anonymous Says:
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:55 pm

California has ~2.3 million unionized government workers?

I’m just curious where you got this figure. It sounds extraordinary. I take it you only include workers for the state of California, since employees for other levels of government would be happy to cut state workers and save on their taxes.

----------------

# Shannon Love Says:
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:07 pm

Anonymous 10:55 pm,

California has ~2.3 million unionized government workers? I’m just curious where you got this figure

California has 2.3 million state and local government workers. Most 90% are in one union or another. Teachers, police, fire, corrections officers, highway workers, office workers etc all belong to unions which to my knowledge are compulsory. The unions way in heavily on political issues. They are especially noted for spending millions on advertising campaigns. They collect those millions from union dues. So, even if 49% of government worker oppose an issue the other 51% can force the union to support it.

Do all these groups vote to support each other at all times? Here's a possible answer from a few months ago. Is it really only the state employees who think they are providing a service?

Of 9,017 DMV employees statewide, 1,345 — or 15 percent — could be gone by Friday after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs an executive order to deal with the state’s fiscal crisis.

The department also has 751 contractors who could be terminated. And that won’t be good news for customers, said Amber Carlson, who would lose her $14.75-an-hour part-time job answering phones and processing paperwork at the DMV’s Sacramento headquarters.

“People aren’t going to get their licenses back as quick. There’s going to be more people on hold trying to get their questions answered,” said Carlson, 25. “He (Schwarzenegger) is trying to push people, and he’s pushing the wrong people.”

Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the executive order Thursday, the first day of the August pay period.

About 22,000 temporary, part-time and contract state workers face layoffs. That could mean fewer food safety inspections and cutbacks in the programs that stock fish in the state’s rivers and lakes, among many consequences.

How to Break a Terrorist

2009-01-22T16:56:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading How to Break a Terrorist by Matthew Alexander. It's one of the most important books I've ever read. I'm not sure if anyone knows how to fix the world economy in the long term, but this man might be able to fix Afghanistan if he were given free rein.

When people talk about our giving up torture, one of the first things you'll hear about is a 'ticking time bomb', a hypothetical bomb which can only be disarmed if a terrorist tells you how - quickly. Usually the teller means this as an example of who torture cannot be ruled out, but Matthew Alexander dealt with similar situations - when abuse didn't work.

This is the story of the interrogation team which managed to help locate and kill Zarqawi. The plot hums along like a thriller, with conflicts between interrogators and prisoners, between different interrogators, and between interrogators and their superiors. In between there is time for a few light and humorous moments, and we learn a lot about both personalities and interrogation techniques.

Can we really help fix Afghanistan? This would be only the first step. New interrogation would have to lead to new nation building.

Fox News Discovers an 'Environmental Group'!

2009-01-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

The headline doesn't say it all, but it's a start:

Environmental Group Begrudges Inaugural Show as Mammoth Polluter

The Institute for Liberty says if environmentalists really want to honor President-elect Obama, they will stay home rather than contribute millions of pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

You have to read the fine print to discover this group is a conservative think tank. So is this think tank focused on the environment, from a conservative perspective?

This is from the home page of the Institute for Liberty:

Welcome!

Welcome to the online home of the Institute for Liberty and the Institute for Liberty Research and Education Foundation. IFL is an advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. Originally founded as a public policy center focusing on technology issues, the organization is now dedicated to small business and entrepreneurship, acting as an agent for holding back the incursion of costly regulatory regimes that burden American business.

Specifically, we fight against the “petty tyrannies” of government—the incremental diminutions in individual rights that lead to wholesale destruction of liberties. While IFL will direct much of its effort towards the federal executive branch, it will also advocate on congressional attempts to erode the rights of small business owners and frustrate entrepreneurship in America.

This doesn't sound like any environmental group to me.

At Last!

2009-01-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

Protein Wisdom has gotten around to repeating the inaccurate information being circulated by the 'liberal' media. You can follow the rumor back through their hat tip if you like, its been circulating awhile.

Of course, the MSM thought a bit differently about the $40 million 2004 inauguration

Don’t they know there is a war on? [...]

To many Democrats, images of Republicans in sequined gowns and designer tuxedos nibbling roast quail and twirling the Texas two-step in last week’s $40 million-plus inaugural extravaganza seemed inappropriate, unseemly, even unpatriotic, when American soldiers are dying in Iraq.

“Precedent suggests that inaugural festivities should be muted - if not cancelled - in wartime,” Representative Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from New York, chided in a letter to President Bush. Citing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s austere fourth inaugural in 1945, Mr. Weiner suggested that the money would have been better spent on armored Humvees and pay bonuses for the troops.

But for an incoming President with a $850 Billion stimulus package slush fund to reward political allies, what’s a mere $160 Million Party on the Mall?

Two errors. The stimulus package isn't paying for the inauguration, nor is the government. Almost all the money is being raised privately.

And the amount is wrong also, as Media Matters explains:

Here's why using the $160 million number and comparing it with Bush's 2005 costs represented a classic apples-and-oranges assessment: For years, the press routinely referred to the cost of presidential inaugurations by calculating how much money was spent on the swearing-in and the social activities surrounding that. The cost of the inauguration's security was virtually never factored into the final tab, as reported by the press. For instance, here's The Washington Post from January 20, 2005, addressing the Bush bash:

The $40 million does not include the cost of a web of security, including everything from 7,000 troops to volunteer police officers from far away, to some of the most sophisticated detection and protection equipment.

For decades, that represented the norm in terms of calculating inauguration costs: Federal dollars spent on security were not part of the commonly referred-to cost. (The cost of Obama's inauguration, minus the security costs? Approximately $45 million.) What's happening this year: The cost of the Obama inauguration and the cost of the security are being combined by some in order to come up with the much larger tab. Then, that number is being compared with the cost of the Bush inauguration in 2005, minus the money spent on security.

In other words, it's the unsubstantiated Obama cost of $160 million (inauguration + security) compared with the Bush cost of 42 million (inauguration, excluding security). Those are two completely different calculations being compared side-by-side, by Fox & Friends, among others, to support the phony claim that Obama's inauguration is $100 million more expensive than Bush's.

That's why the right-wing site Newsmax.com confidently reported that Obama's swearing-in would cost "nearly four times what George Bush's inauguration cost four years ago." So did Flopping Aces, a shining light of the right-wing blogosphere:

It may look like I quoted a whole post, but if you click through you'll see there's a lot more there.

Fear of Global Warming Alarmists

2009-01-15T15:51:00.000-08:00

One of the global warming deniers who writes in the Protein Wisdom pub (and perhaps occasionally in the comment section of Climate Audit if it's the same woman) has referred me in my comment section to her writings on global warming and those who study it, and asked me to answer. On her own head be it.

She acknowledges being unable to analyze the raw data herself. While I can't do this either, sometimes when I have read what both sides say about each other, it is possible to form an opinion. She applies a different method. She alleges that a few of the people studying global warming have done dishonest things, then states that they wouldn't have had to do these things if they had scientific truth on their side, so she has proven all the scientists studying global warming wrong without even mentioning their arguments! Some people would consider that an argumentum ad hominem, but that can't be, because she warns me:

Bring it on. I can defend myself against any honest argument. But if you descend into argumentum ad hominem or any other logical fallacy, I will hand you your head.

Or did I misunderstand? Did she mean she's OK in ordinary argument but much better than me in an ad hominem contest? Even though she talks about a politician, I dare not say anything about Bush or Imofe, whom not even all conservatives consider trustworthy. I've been warned she's an expert. I won't even mention Fred Singer or Richard Lindzen.

So OK, let's look at what she wrote:

1. If you have scientific truth on your side, you have no need to…:

a. …lie or misdirect to make your case. Yet Inconvenient Truth is riddled with lies. The infamous cherry-picker scene shows a chart that actually shows exactly the opposite of what Gore says it does. I read the original article, so I can verify this myself.

I've heard legitimate suggestions that book is misleading on certain points. This isn't one of them. Does the chart by any chance show that the Earth started to warm slightly before Co2 started to increase? That is what all the models predict. I've never heard a claim that rising Co2 is the only thing that can ever start the temperature of the Earth increasing. Is she saying the chart proves that the Co2 doesn't contribute to further warming after the initial impetus? How?

b. …conceal your data and methodologies. And yet James Hanson, Michael Mann, and others either fail entirely to archive their data or they refuse to let others analyze it.

Stephen McIntyre's has a blog called Climate Audit. He's made some penetrating criticisms of several scientists. He argues that the data archiving and sharing protocols used in several climate studies are outdated, that they might have been reasonable a few decades ago, but are insufficient now that much more is dependent on these studies. He compares these protocols unfavorably to those in industry.

What he doesn't do is imply that there has been dishonesty or bad faith of the sort that would let us reject the work of the scientists involved without reviewing it, on the grounds of personal dishonesty. If I'm wrong I'd be interested to see where he suggests this. Otherwise, perhaps Dicentra should consider following his example.

c. …stubbornly refuse to correct your mistakes. Michael Mann has been warned by the NSA to stop using certain data sets (strip-bark bristlecones, for example), and yet he continues to use them. McIntyre has also found egregious and yet easily correctable errors in his work, and yet Mann keeps propagating these errors in study after study.

There may be some legitimate debate about the bristlecones. The misleading thing here is the implication that Michael Mann has just ignored all the problems his critics have claimed. Discussing both sides does not require reading the original data.

The issue is not simple. Here's a sample of the other side. I'm not ready to write about the whole thing, I just want to show the implication that Dr. Mann is using the same data while ignoring all questions about it is simplistic.

Mike,
What is your position on the Bristlecone Pines?
(I’m referring to MM’s suggestion that they are in some way anomalous)

[Response: Thanks for the question. Much has been written on the potential influence of non-climatic factors in recent centuries (potentially associated with co2 effects) on the growth pattern of certain high elevation drought stressed trees such as the Bristlecone Pines you refer to. In Mann et al (1999) [Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K., Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations, Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 759-762, 1999], an attempt was made to remove these potential non-climatic influences. This was done by subtracting the anomalous pattern of growth that emerges over the past couple centuries in these chronologies relative to other tree-ring chronologies that otherwise exhibit very similar patterns of growth back in time, but which are unlikely to be influenced by the same non-climatic factors. More discussion of these issues (and references to relevant past work) can be found in the paper. -Mike]

Isn’t it a bit wrong to use the the word ‘independent’ [above]?
-If the various reconstructions use a common core of proxies, they wouldnt seem to be statistically independent to me -not that I am a statistician.

[Response: No, its an appropriate description. Several of the reconstructions that have been performed are based on entirely independent proxy data and entirely independent methodologies. Other reconstructions use a small number of common series but an independent methodology. None of the reconstructions use largely the same dataset, or precisely the same methodology. -Mike]

One more point is enough for now. We seem to be skipping around a lot.

d. …refuse to engage in open debate with skeptics. James Hanson famously said that he would not “joust with jesters” when asked whether he would debate his detractors.

What? After all the talk in your comment about the scientific method? Do you believe a televised debate is relevant to proving or disproving a scientific theory or not?

To be continued, if not in my next post, in the next week or so.

SEC Investigation

2009-01-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

Jason works in the financial center, so it's especially interesting to see his take on the failure of the SEC to detect what was happening with Madoff:

My take: One of Megan's commenters got it right: The SEC is made up of lawyers, not quants. They are simply not equipped to do deep due diligence on funds with complex trading strategies: It would take an advanced degree in statistics and a hellacious amount of number crunching to pull that off, and I haven't met the lawyer yet who is equipped to do that on his or her own... nor are the people who can do such things inclined to work for the SEC, or in journalism, for that matter, because the money isn't good enough.

On the other hand, I have met very few lawyers who truly understood the limitations of their field of expertise and circle of competence... an observation buttressed by the many stupid attempts to legislate from the bench. Or from the legislature, for that matter.

It is entirely within the realm of possibility that Cheung was a faithful and industrious public servant who did the level best she knew how, given the resources at her disposal and the fund of information she had, or reasonably could have had. The fault very properly lies with higher-ups who knew her expertise was in law, and not quant, and who failed to adequately supervise her, by providing her with the staff expertise or access to outside knowledge she needed to carry out an investigation of this nature.

The only thing he leaves out is that those higher ups were Bush appointees, and ultimately Bush himself. It must have been tough for a libtard hating fact checker to go as far as he did.

Thank Instapundit for this link

2009-01-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

According to David Frum in The Week, And while extreme hostility to Israel does not exist among Republicans, almost one in 10 Democrats describes Israel as an “enemy of the United States.”

Oddly enough, the Rasmussen poll he links to says, While 75% of Republicans say Israel is an ally of the United States, just 55% of Democrats agree. Seven percent (7%) of Democrats say Israel is an enemy of America, but only one percent (1%) of Republicans say the same. For 21% of Republicans, Israel is somewhere in between, and 28% of Democrats agree.

Has anyone fact checked his book on President Bush yet? I've been listening to so much criticism of the media I'm worried about his newspaper columns too.

ROFL

2009-01-05T20:18:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you hear people concerned about global warming accused by deniers of being the same people who were saying there would be another ice age in the seventies. All that could change in an instant, the way people who had been claiming the Earth wasn't warming suddenly started saying it was, but humans couldn't be contributing to it.

As a result of his discovery of the effect of solar cycles on the Earth's climate and in particular the lack of awareness he has observed in the media, government and among the people, he has begun a vocal and highly visible effort to alert all to the coming climate change in order that we are prepared for the record cold event and its global ill-effects associated with this new climate.

Gives a new meaning to 'climate change alarmist', huh?

How Long Will the Recession Last?

2009-01-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was studying Value Line at the public library. They are a great starting point to learn about many individual stocks, which they research and rate individually, but I'm not convinced they know quite as much about the economy as a whole. In particular, they seem to be forecasting the recession will end around the beginning of 2010, which seems to be consistent with what is priced into the stock market as a whole. My concern is that most of the fund managers and other institutional decision makers now employed seem to have lived most of their careers during a period when the market went up and up, and any dip was a temporary setback which could be waited out.

Let us hope they are right and I'm wrong - but let's imagine the opposite for a moment. Imagine that Japan and China keep buying dollars and dollar denominated assets to support their manufacturing industries, but our recession keeps going deeper and they are getting less and less export bang for their dollar buck. A point might come where they decide the money would be better spent directly in their own economies. This would be a difficult decision for them, since the value of their dollar denominated assets would fall, but they might make it. Equally well, some smaller nation might decide to sell their dollar (and American bond) reserve first, hoping that they would get the best price by being the first to sell. That could start the landslide that might force China and Japan to sell weather they wanted to or not.

I honestly don't know if it's too late for Obama to do anything or not. I keep remembering they days just before some third world nations started defaulting on their debt. People knew they couldn't pay it off, but argued that there would be no default because it was in everyone's interest to pretend the debts were good, so the banks would keep refinancing and the countries would keep making inadequate payments, and the loans would be counted as good assets. We all know how that ended up.

The Dollar to Euro exchange rate and why it may matter

2009-01-02T23:12:00.001-08:00

I've been studying this ten year graph of the price of a euro in dollars. You can see the price was actually higher in the middle of 2008. That's good, because a sudden rise in the dollar cost of euro's could indicate a serious problem. The Chinese yuan is pegged to the dollar - unless and until they decide that they could benefit their economy more some other way with the money they use now to buy dollar denominated assets to keep the dollar artificially expensive to help their exporters. The Japanese yen isn't pegged, although they do intervene in the market in much the same way as the Chinese.

If speculators were betting against the dollar, the first sign we saw might be the dollar euro exchange rate. Remember all those devaluations during the other little economic crisis? As long as imported goods stay cheap, we have a lid on dollar inflation, since American companies have to compete with importers on price. If other countries give up on lending us money (that is, buying dollar denominated bonds) to keep their imports artificially cheap, one of the first results we may see is inflation of hyperinflation.

Oy, more proof global warming is a socialist plot!

2009-01-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

Dan Collins of Protein Wisdom links to a Newsbuster post that selectively highlights words and phrases from a letter James Hansen of NASA sent to Obama. As most economists have suggested, Hansen also suggests a carbon tax would be the most effective way to fix this. He also suggests that giving the money back to people per capita would avoid hurting the poor near the end of the letter.

Needless to say, Dan Collins and Newsbusters regard this as evidence that real goal of alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his followers is to use the fear of man-made global warming to redistribute wealth.

Click through. Protein Wisdom is fun to comment on, you just need a name and e-mail address, and half the time some conservative will actually click back to read your blog if you leave a url as well.

Faux Hillary Blog post of the day

2009-01-01T10:28:00.000-08:00

This space is for the 18,000,000 Americans who continue to support Hillary Clinton. It is our intent over the next four years to show the other 18,000,001 Americans how they made a BIG mistake putting Obama in the Whitehouse. We will not be bitter, but we will not support the "Radical Agenda" of an Obama administration.

They say. On the other hand their Help Stop These Liberal Democrats! post has a picture of Hillary Clinton.

Rather misleading

2008-12-22T01:51:00.000-08:00

[Update - if you click through you'll find Instapundit updated.]

Instapundit says, MOUTH BUT NO MONEY on Proposition 8? Generally, when I “beat the bushes” for contributions, I also contribute myself. Apparently Andrew Sullivan feels differently, or perhaps there’s some mistake somewhere.

If you click through to the post, you'll see an interesting comment:

Pete said...
Andrew Sullivan is not a U.S. citizen (and can't become one because he is HIV+) so he cannot legally contribute. Does that answer your question?

10:33 PM

This comment was posted half an hour after Instapundit linked, and yet it seems like Glenn Reynolds could have done more research. Let's watch for updates.

According to Wikipedia Andrew Sullivan is not a US citizen.

Anti Global Warming 'Science'

2008-12-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

Much more widely read than a mere report by the Senate Minority leader is this quote from Protein Wisdom:

POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See Full report Here: & See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ]

Isn't that cute? The dateline makes it look like a real media report! And Dan Collins doesn't do much to dispell the impression either, he treats it like a news item, though he does link to the senate site.

Climate Progress does a good job bringing out the fine print. Here are a few quotes, you can click through any of them to the full post.

On what does Inhofe’s office base the “Sea Levels Fail to Rise” claim? Nothing more than a single blog post by a former TV meteorologist, Anthony Watts, who runs a denial website. That post claims “We’ve been waiting for the UC [Univesity of Colorado] web page to be updated with the most recent sea level data. It finally has been updated for 2008. It looks like the steady upward trend of sea level as measured by satellite has stumbled since 2005. The 60 day line in blue tells the story.”

[Graph not copied - click through]

...

No matter how many studies debunk the myth that the sun is a dominant cause of recent warming, the deniers just can’t let go. Inhofe’s office shouts “Study: Half of warming due to Sun!” On what basis? Again, a blog post by a denier — this time one who selectively quotes from a new Geophysical Research Letters study (subs. req’d). The blog and Inhofe’s office write:

… they conclude that “Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun.”

First, let’s give the full quote from the GRL study:

However, during the industrial period (1850-2000) solar forcing became less important and only the CO2 concentrations show a significant correlation with the temperature record. Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta and West, 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun.

Oops. The study shows that in the industrial period, it is carbon dioxide, not solar forcing, that is significantly correlated with the temperature record. The authors were not saying that their study found half the warming in the last century can be explained by the sun. It was saying their study found that only CO2 had a significant correlation, that the sun was not significantly correlated to temperature, and that the sun was clearly under half the contribution.

...

FORGET PADDED, LAUGHABLE LISTS: SCIENCE, NOT SCIENTISTS, TELLS US HUMANS ARE WARMING THE PLANET DANGEROUSLY

Inhofe’s Office claims “More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims.”

Yet the vast majority of those names are simply repeated from a 2007 list that was widely debunked, see Inhofe recycles unscientific attacks on global warming” and here and here and here. Let me repeat what I wrote at the time.

[Once again, click through to the whole post. Each 'here' is a hypertext link.]

“Padded” would be an extremely generous description of this list of “prominent scientists.” Some would use the word “laughable.” For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?

Credit Where Credit is Due

2008-12-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

I always mention any questionable facts I see on Instapundit because he's a nine foot giant with a club who claims to lead an army of Davids. My name is David, and he fights for the Republican establishment, so I tend to think he's Goliath in disguise. Plus, he's too busy to acknowledge my comments or criticisms, and some members of the mainstream media haven't been.

He just linked to what looks like a great book though. I'm gonna have to track it down.

I'm not sure what this economic upheaval will do to our superpower status, but this book is about what kind of superpower we want to be.

Will China buy General Motors?

2008-11-30T19:51:00.000-08:00

I'm actually pretty surprised we haven't seen this happen yet:

GUANGZHOU, China — The largest state-owned Chinese automakers may be poised to buy assets from General Motors and Chrysler, a government official said here.

According to the Chinese publication 21st Century Business Herald, state-owned companies such as Shanghai Auto and Dongfeng have the intention and the capability to acquire assets from the troubled Detroit automakers. The remarks were attributed to a senior official of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates the auto industry.

Another Faux Hillary Site?

2008-11-29T20:06:00.000-08:00

I think Instapundit has linked to another faux Hillary site.

I can't be absolutely sure, but the home page says:

This space is for the 18,000,000 Americans who continue to support Hillary Clinton. It is our intent over the next four years to show the other 18,000,001 Americans how they made a BIG mistake putting Obama in the Whitehouse. We will not be bitter, but we will not support the "Radical Agenda" of an Obama administration.

On the other hand, no mention of Hillary as Secretary of State, no names of authors names so we can check to see if they supported Hillary before Obama came around, and a recent post about how unfair people are to conservatives (I can't find a post link, but dated November 30, and selling a book).

Instapundit does it again!

2008-11-22T06:36:00.000-08:00

Professor Reynolds links to an article on the 'sham of sexual harrasement training'. He remarks ironically how shocked he is, implying he knew it would be a sham all along. I bet lots of people didn't even click through to discover the article is by a man who refused to take it, and did no research on the actual content of the course - or at least doesn't mention it.

Reynolds Wrap.

Al Qaeda Screws Up Again

2008-11-19T07:56:00.000-08:00

Many people have been worrying how to united the country behind our new President, but someone has found a way.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, using a demeaning racial term implying that the president-elect is a black American who does the bidding of whites.

The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.

In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — "house negroes."

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house negroes."

I've been posting here

2008-11-11T05:47:00.001-08:00

http://www.politicalcortex.com/user/David%20Weisman/stories

I'm not sure if I'm going to start cross posting to this blog or not. This links to my stories, if you click on the upper right you can see the whole group blog.

Wowee, still biased but with a pretty new web site!

2008-05-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

A whole article on Bush's attacks on the media, focused on the new GI Bill. It doesn't mention repeated explanations by PROPONENTS (including McCain himself) that it would keep soldiers in longer by giving people who only served a couple of years much less.

The Washington Times has a pretty new layout, but the same coverage.

Bush League Diplomacy

2008-05-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Via Skewz and willvanhorn.

'Eat Your Words, Mr. Bush!'

"These comments are brazen admissions by the industrialized West that their levels of prosperity are dependent on poverty and malnutrition in the developing world."

By Sitaram Yechury

May 8, 2008

India - Hindustan Times - Original Article (English)

President Bush: Inciting much of the world's population against himself ...

WHITE HOUSE VIDEO: In Missiouri, President Bush discusses energy, food; India comments at 00:40:00, May 2, 01:02:57

George W. Bush’s proclivity to tread on the absurd is amazing. Recently, he sought to blame the Indian people for the global food crisis by saying, “[India’s] middle-class is bigger than our entire population ... When you start getting wealth, you demand better food ... and prices ... go up.”

Not false, but considering our comparative standards of living and counterproductive ethanol incentives, shows a lot of gall.

They Told Him

2008-05-02T22:02:00.001-07:00

Usually Instapundit uses this formula ironically, only to point to draconian measures taken by Democrats. Oddly enough, he refers now to the enforcement of a McCarthy era anti-communist oath. Maybe he figures liberals are to blame because its in California.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we'd see college professors fired for refusing to swear loyalty to the state. And they were right!

Lomborg Redeux

2008-04-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

Supposedly Bjorn Lomborgs new book on global warming will be released in August 2008, but it's already available online and in my public library.

A part of his technique is to discuss in depth instances of exaggeration by people expressing concern about global warming - and ignore exaggeration and misleading statements by those who deny or downplay it. In particular, he accepts that the evidence that humans are helping to cause global warming, but ignores those who still claim otherwise.

At least its easy to read.

Apology

2008-04-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

I only caught part of Bill Maher's post apology show today, and he certainly didn't sound humbled by the experience. I'm not Catholic, and on another day I might even agree about certain things not making sense. Today I'm thinking of Christians who are very smart people - and of what things I take for granted that might seem ridiculous in a hundred years.

Washington Times Watch

2008-04-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

Washington Times editorialist Bob Parks reprints a common story as if it were fact, without comment:

Now we know that making a Prius causes more environmental damage than manufacturing a Hummer.

AutoblogGreen lists a few places where that has been debunked. This isn't controversial - many people blindly repeat this, but I've never seen a defense of the original 'study'. Lascelles Linton has hypertext links to more detailed information in the original paragraph, if you click through.

A few comments to my posts on the hybrid in the Knight Rider TV movie, said things like like "spare me." Yes, the Knight Rider TV movie is a remake of a cheesy '80s TV show, but it might inspire Ford to make a hybrid Mustang. Boston Legal's 10 million viewers probably believed the statements about hybrid batteries. My point is: Culture matters. It's probably more important than things like politics, technology, brand or anything. It really does not matter that the hybrid Hummer/Prius study has been discredited (many, many times) or that this argument is just stupid for the simple reason that batteries are recycled by law. If it's repeated on shows like Boston Legal, it's "fact."

Whose Shenanigans?

2008-04-17T19:02:00.000-07:00

Instapundit links don't always make a clear judgement, but here the Reynolds verdict is in - Wikipedia has engaged in Shenanigans.

So let's click through to Lawrence Solomon's complaint.

The thought police at the supposedly independent site are fervently enforcing the climate orthodoxy

No punctuation because this is the subtitle of his article. He doesn't settle down much further on, but he does get more specific. Some of his wikipedia edits have been reverted:

When Oreskes's paper came out, it was immediately challenged by science writers and scientists alike, one of them being Benny Peiser, a prominent U.K. scientist and publisher of CCNet, an electronic newsletter to which I and thousands of others subscribe. CCNet daily circulates articles disputing the conventional wisdom on climate change. No publication better informs readers about climate-change controversies, and no person is better placed to judge informed dissent on climate change than Benny Peiser.

For this reason, when visiting Oreskes's page on Wikipedia several weeks ago, I was surprised to read not only that Oreskes had been vindicated but that Peiser had been discredited. More than that, the page portrayed Peiser himself as having grudgingly conceded Oreskes's correctness.

Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

I read the article, then clicked over to the discussion page. There is no misrepresentation of Peiser's views in the current article - or discussion. You wouldn't think it from Solomon's article, but the discussion page explains a lot. There seem to be two major policies at issue. Wikipedia has established a rule that self published material (such as a blog or personal website) can't be used as a source. That rule may not be perfect, but there is a logic to it, because otherwise anyone could write something on any other page besides wikipedia and use it as a footnote. Also, an editor can't use 'personal research' in an article for much the same reason. Of course, if Peiser wrote a letter or article of complaint in anything not self published, that would be different.

Since Solomon doesn't link to the discussion page or the article in question, I will, although this version reflects discussion after Solomon's article was published. This is just a short quote, there are also defenders of Solomon's viewpoint.

Now to comment further - Peisers comment on Naomi Oreskes paper in Nature is a self published source. To be more specific: it hasn't been printed in a reliable source (in fact it was rejected by Nature), but only on Peisers own website. Despite this we include a mention of his critique, because its notable. It is presented in due weight and in accordance with WP:BLP.
The edits of Mr. Solomon changed that - and introduced a significant bias towards an unpublished critique of a scientific paper, and (might i mention) a critique that the author (Peiser), according to the ABC source - doesn't support anymore. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 15:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if the link has been posted, but the article referencing this page is Wikipedia's Zealots. Joshdboz (talk) 16:16, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

He didn't even get Kim's gender right. So much for fact checking... Raymond Arritt (talk) 16:49, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
As if this was an indication of anything... It kinda happens. --Childhood's End (talk) 17:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm impressed that it does... specifically as he makes a point out of it in the article "She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia" - had he done any decent amount of research on my userpage and profile as he says in his article - then its in rather plain sight there. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Another rather interesting detail - he starts by using the name tabletop, which was a user who has made exactly one edit (not related to Solomons at all) here [8], and then he continues on to claim that he is me.
Hmmm - rather sloppy research methinks. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:16, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
You'd think "This user is male" on your userpage would be a hint, but maybe that's too obscure for some people. Raymond Arritt (talk) 19:40, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Bill Maher is the left's Ann Coulter

2008-04-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

You could say this was just humor - but when is saying nasty things about someone humor? Via Cybercast News Service:

(CNSNews.com) - Comments by HBO's Bill Maher insulting the Pope and calling Catholicism a "cult" that promotes "organized pedophilia" have stirred resentment among many American Catholics upset he would say this the week before Pope Benedict XVI visits the United States.

The comments were made on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" on Friday, April 11. Maher went into a long monologue on his program comparing the Catholic church to a polygamous cult -- the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints -- which was raided on April 3 and whose founder, Warren Jeffs, was convicted last year for being an accessory to the rape of a teenage girl.

The Catholic Church has a serious problem, but accusing the Church as a whole of actively promoting (as opposed to covering up, or stucturally contributing to) this problem is unreasonable. There are plenty of Catholics who sometimes vote Democratic - and are repelled by the Maher wing of the party. Just as Republicans who seriously hope for success in Iraq should be repulsed by Ann Coulters suggestion that Muslims should be killed or converted by force, so should Democrats who really believe we are the party of inclusiveness reject Maher.

Washington Times Editorial Repeats Error!

2008-04-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

This is hilarious! James Lyon of the Washington Times repeated the same mistake he made last month!

History is a good teacher. What comes to mind is the 1968 Tet offensive that was a catastrophic defeat for the North Vietnamese, who lost more than 100,000 combat troops, but was turned into a victory for them by our media, according to the North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. If it worked then, let's try it again.

Courtesy of the Snopes.com reference on Urban Legends:

Claim: Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap's memoirs pinned U.S. military failure in Vietnam on American anti-war protesters.

Status: False.

Snopes.com has a thorough essay on this false rumor. History professor Ed Moise has studied one of the books where the quote was alleged to be found (the other doesn't exist). Washington Dispatch commentator Greg Lewis apologized for citing a quote from a book that he later found did not exist.

Oh yes. Here's the first time he made that mistake.

Republican Fixer tells all - or almost all?

2008-04-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

Allen Raymond, convicted former dirty tricks expert for a number of Republican campaigns, doesn't sound like such a sleezeball on this Jon Stewart Daily Show interview.

On the other hand, he still sounded like a sleezeball when I reviewed his book.

"His first campaign was a local election, and direct mail played a big part in it. He specialized in saying misleading things about his candidate’s opponent, some of which were nasty and personal. If he actually lied he doesn’t tell us about it – that might be illegal. He says his candidate complained to him about how the direct mail people were out of control, and he wanted the dirtier tricks stopped because some of the people who knew the truth and despised him (the candidate) for the misleading tricks were neighbors. Raymond says he encouraged this while pretending to try and stop it, because that was what was needed to get the candidate elected – and he liked the feeling of being an aggressive win-at-all-costs mercenary. I’m not sure if Steve Corodemus (he names names) was really as innocent as Raymond pretends or if he’s one of the few people Raymond still feels loyalty to – but I wouldn’t vote for him, a really capable and trustworthy assemblyman would have found out and put a stop to this garbage."

Joseph Palermo of the Huffington post has a great review, though he doesn't talk about what what our former fixex might still be hiding:

Raymond's experience inside the bowels of the RNC and his expertise in smear tactics, racist push polls and robo-calls, voter suppression, and other Republican mainstays give him a useful perspective. Maybe Democratic candidates in the future can better counter the inevitable Republican smears and attacks with a better understanding of how they work. But I wouldn't count on it.

Are we being patronized?

2008-04-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

Are we being patronized or has the Iraqi government (lead by Maliki's party) really planned to allow Washington to 'influence' it?

Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Samir Sumaida'ie, yesterday called on the United States to be patient and use its influence to push the country's fractious political parties together.

"The Americans can help various political factions to moderate their demands, and I think they have a lot of influence on individual leaders," Mr. Sumaida'ie said.

Who blocked this small but useful step to save oil?

2008-04-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'm used to blaming Republicans first, but in New York State the Democrats may be in the forefront of the march in the wrong direction.

It was there that Democratic members of the State Assembly, who control the chamber, held one final meeting to debate the merits of Mr. Bloomberg’s plan, ultimately conferring — in secret — before Sheldon Silver, the speaker, emerged to announce the outcome. The opposition was so overwhelming, he said, that he would not hold an open vote of the full Assembly, though many Republicans were supportive of Mr. Bloomberg.
“The congestion pricing bill did not have anywhere near a majority of the Democratic conference, and will not be on the floor of the Assembly,” Mr. Silver, who represents the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said after his meeting with fellow Democrats. A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg quickly denounced the decision as “one of the biggest cop-outs in New York’s history.”

Dragons at Your Door review

2008-03-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

I just reviewed a good book on Chinese businesses taking market share from American ones.

Most of the book focuses on tactics rather than strategy. They have many examples of how Chinese companies do what they do, and some interesting ideas about how American companies can and do fight back. For me the major point is that China backs these companies, and has set the rules to support them. They want to encourage technology transfer to China. If we do too well under the existing rules they can always change them.

A huge company makes refrigerators. They probably sell some of their smallest and cheapest refrigerators to students in dorm rooms. Now suppose a small Chinese company wants to break into the market. They can use their cheap labor costs to build cheaper products. The best Chinese companies even use the cheaper salaries of engineers to design products better as well as cheaper - but many major stores don't want to retail brands their customers have never heard of. Now suppose these small refrigerators can convert into desks with movable tops. Besides limited funds, dorm students are often short of space. Now there's a special product to appeal to what most companies never even considered a separate market. Once retailers have sold a product by a formerly unknown product to happy customers, the manufacturer has begun building name recognition with both retailers and end users.

Is Basra to Maliki as Iraq is to W?

2008-03-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Since the Basra assault began Tuesday, violence has spread to Shiite districts of Baghdad and other places in Iraq where Shiite militiamen hold sway, raising fears that security gains often attributed to a yearlong American troop buildup could be at risk. Any widespread breakdown of a cease-fire called by Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who founded the Mahdi Army, could bring the country right back to the sectarian violence that racked it in 2006 and 2007.

Mr. Maliki has personally staked his reputation on the success of the Basra assault, fulfilling a longstanding American desire for him to boldly take on rogue Shiite groups. But at the same time, as criticism of the assault has risen, it has also brought into question yet another American benchmark of progress in Iraq: political reconciliation.

“We don’t have to rush to military solutions,” said Nadeem al-Jabiri, a Parliament member from the Fadhila Party, a strong rival of Mr. Sadr’s party that would have been expected to back the operation, at least on political grounds. Instead of solving the problems in Basra, Mr. Jabiri said, Mr. Maliki “escalated the situation.”

For the third straight day, the American military was reported to be conducting airstrikes in support of Iraqi troops in Basra. Iraqi police officials reported that an American bombing run killed eight civilians.

The American military did not immediately acknowledge the incident. But Maj. Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, said: “We are aware of reports of an incident in the Basra area resulting in civilian casualties. We are investigating the report and do not have further details at this time.”

Impact of Basra on Iraqi Oil Exports

2008-03-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

This article from The Hindu has more detail than I've seen so far:

As the fighting entered its third day, a bomb hit one of the two main crude oil pipelines heading towards the Basra oil terminal. Oil exports are expected to be affected in a big way as Zubair 1— the main pumping station — has also been shut down. Nearly one-third of the oil produced in the area is transported through the affected pipeline.

“Fire-fighters are struggling to control the fire, which is huge. A lot of crude has spilt on to the ground... We will not be able to repair it unless security is provided for the crews,” Reuters news agency quoted an official from Iraq’s Southern Oil Company as saying. Officials estimate that it would take at least three days to repair the pipeline, provided calm is restored.

With Basra as the headquarters, nearly 80 per cent of Iraqi oil exports are routed through the south.

Deregulation

2008-03-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

Via Instapundit, surprisingly enough, EdCone reminds us deregulation isn't always good.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act broke down barriers between commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers established by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

Repealing key elements of Glass-Steagall was a bipartisan effort.

In testimony before Congress last year, Robert Kuttner explored links between deregulation of financial markets and the current deleveraging crisis, and suggested (among other things) "some restoration of the walls against conflicts of interest once provided by Glass Steagall."

Falsehood in the Washington Times

2008-03-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

According to the Washington Times,

The late Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap who was the leader of the North Vietnam military stated in his memoirs: "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender. It was the same at the battles of Tet. You defeated us. We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media were definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won."

Fortunately Snopes.com has a site dedicated to urban legends. This is the page where that claim is shown to be false, and the origins of the rumor are studied.

Sorry, got a horrible virus

2008-03-04T07:08:00.001-08:00

Hopefully I'll be posting again in a day or so.

A Shattering Discovery

2008-03-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Read the comments. Debonair Dude thinks the way I use quotations HTML linked to his original posts might be confusing or misleading, so I won't do it anymore, but I didn't change this since I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to hide the way I did it or make his comment not make sense. If he tells me he wants it deleted I'll be happy to do so.

Debonair Dude is a bit annoyed at his fellow conservatives.

Look I don’t know if its me that is not making my point clearly enough, or those people that tend to listen with cotton stuffed in their ears?But I’ll have ONE MORE shot at it. Then you can call me a “Rino” a “Hippo” or what ever other STUPID cliche that you wish to.

Logically he seems to have a point:

2. All of the above have dropped out...ALL OF THEM!

3. The only choice we have now, Or should I say that I have now is to

a. Support the party’s choice who is John McCain.

b. Vote for the 2 Libs, Hillary or Obama ( and that choice will never happen.

But why is he using logic all the sudden? Conservatism is about wanting huge deployments and tax cuts too. It's about not trusting our government to make sure all Americans have health care, but saying it can rebuild Iraqi healthcare - and the rest of Iraq too. It's about saying that industial policy can't work because it violates the laws of the free market, and complaining about the unfair advantage of China with it's government supported industries. It's about being unable to give up any tiny sliver of pork, but cutting taxes to force someone to cut pork in the future.

I think he should endorse Fred Thompson. When I first heard an actor was in the race, I thought we were doomed. He could use all his acting skills to convince the religious right he was one of them, and promise his soul to the rich corporate donors. He would have been Ronald Reagan except the trial lawyers would have loved him too. It turned out he didn't have fire in the belly. If the Republicans had been smart enough to feed him lots of beans and make him bend over, then light a match behind his buttocks, they would have seen plenty of fire, and they could have won the election.

Debonair Dude will probably want to say nobody reads this blog. It just so happens I got e-mail from nobody@hotmail.com who said he was getting bored with my blog and wanted to do something more interesting, such as watching the grass grow, so there goes that argument. I may be dumb, I may even be dumber, but I'm not trying to reason with a bunch of Republicans calling "Rino Rino!"

That's the last thing you hear before the herd stampedes and tramples everything in their path.

The Real Goods on Industrial Policy

2008-03-01T12:43:00.001-08:00

Via Avedon Carol's The Sideshow, a Buzzflash book review of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang. This review of an excellent book which I'm going to get hold of a copy of is also an essay by someone who knows about the subject. Reviewer Thom Hartmann quotes Alexander Hamilton at one point where the author himself only summarizes,

As Hamilton noted (this is only referenced in the book - I'm filling in Hamilton's actual words here):

It is a primary object of the policy of nations, to be able to supply themselves with subsistence from their own soils; and manufacturing nations, as far as circumstances permit, endeavor to procure, from the same source, the raw materials necessary for their own fabrics.

As to how to accomplish that, Hamilton and Coxe had a straightforward plan, which was adopted by the Founders of this nation:
I. Protecting duties.

Protective duties, or duties on those foreign articles which are the rivals of the domestic ones, intended to be encouraged. [B]y enhancing the charges on foreign articles, they enable the national manufacturers to undersell all their foreign competitors.

II. Prohibitions of rival articles or duties equivalent to prohibitions.

Considering a monopoly of the domestic market to its own manufacturers as the reigning policy of manufacturing nations, a similar policy on the part of the United States in every proper instance, is dictated, it might almost be said, by the principles of distributive justice; certainly by the duty of endeavoring to secure to their own citizens a reciprocity of advantages.

III. Prohibitions of the exportation of the materials of manufactures.

The desire of securing a cheap and plentiful supply for the national workmen, and, where the article is either peculiar to the country, or of peculiar quality there, the jealousy of enabling foreign workmen to rival those of the nation, with its own materials, are the leading motives to this species of regulation. …

IV. Pecuniary bounties [industry direct financial subsidies].

This has been found one of the most efficacious means of encouraging manufactures, and it is in some views, the best. Though it has not yet been practiced upon by the government of the United States (unless the allowances on the exportation of dried and pickled fish and salted meat could be considered as a bounty) and though it is less favored by public opinion than some other modes. Its advantages, are these -- It is a species of encouragement more positive and direct than any other, and for that very reason, has a more immediate tendency to stimulate and uphold new enterprises, increasing the chances of profit, and diminishing the risks of loss, in the first attempts.

V. Premiums [incentives for production, innovation, or quality].

These are of a nature allied to bounties, though distinguishable from them, in some important features. Bounties are applicable to the whole quantity of an article produced, or manufactured, or exported, and involve a correspondent expense.

Premiums serve to reward some particular excellence or superiority, some extraordinary exertion or skill, and are dispensed only in a small number of cases. But their effect is to stimulate general effort. Contrived so as to be both honorary and lucrative, they address themselves to different passions; touching the chords as well of emulation as of interest. They are accordingly a very economical mean of exciting the enterprise of a whole community.

There's a whole lot more Hamiltonian goodness there, but I'm pretty sure President Washington's compatriot is out of copyright by now, and has passed beyond litigation in any event.

This is sort of like the essay I wrote a few days ago, except twenty times better. My work as a blogger is cut out for me.

A truly moving tribute to William Buckley

2008-02-29T18:36:00.000-08:00

A tribute to Buckley as a person - rather than an ideological construct - has to be written by a progressive.

William F. Buckley was my friend.

I'm hard on conservatives. I get harder on them just about every day. I call them "con men." I do so without apology. And I cannot deny that William F. Buckley said and did many things over the course of his career that were disgusting as well. I've written about some of them. But this is not the time to go into all that. My friend just passed away at the age of 82. He was a good and decent man. He knew exactly what my politics were about—he knew I was an implacable ideological adversary—yet he offered his friendship to me nonetheless. He did the honor of respecting his ideological adversaries, without covering up the adversarial nature of the relationship in false bonhommie. A remarkable quality, all too rare in an era of the false fetishization of "post-partisanship" and Broderism and go-along-to-get-along. He was friends with those he fought. He fought with friends. These are the highest civic ideals to which an American patriot can aspire.

Congradulations Bloomberg!

2008-02-28T16:57:00.000-08:00

I want to congradulate Mayor Bloomberg on his decision not to run - and start thinking about who is funding Nader.

Industrial Policy

2008-02-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

The newest firestorm in the blogosphere is over Obama's corporate tax reform plans. I've seen too many blog posts to link to them all. Will they really help us? Are they just vaporware, or does he have real plans? Where can we find the details?

It seems they should be important, because some people are worked up.

According to Paul Craig Roberts on Counterpunch (click through to read the whole thing):

As reported by the Financial Times, Obama proposed a lower tax rate for US companies that maintain or increase their US workforce relative to their overseas workforce.

Economists, who have crawled out on a limb in defense of jobs offshoring, quickly denounced Obama's plan. As the US economy continues to lose relative ground, economists hold more tightly to their misconception that a country benefits by moving high value-added, high income jobs abroad and replacing them at home with low value- added, low income jobs. This view, which places the rights of capital far above the rights of labor and the duties of citizenship, is economically nonsensical as well. Whatever the defects of Obama's plan, it shows more serious thought than can be found among Washington policymakers and the economics profession.

I haven't been able to get at the article in the Financial Times, so I looked for links to Obama's speeches that were closer to home:

I don’t know about a time-out, but I do know this – when I am President, I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for our environment and protections for American workers. And I’ll pass the Patriot Employer Act that I’ve been fighting for ever since I ran for the Senate – we will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America.

Here at last we have something specific, a reference to s specific bill with the details worked out. Here are some details from the Patriot Employer Act, not a link to the original bill but a summary on Obama's Senate web site:

The Patriot Employers legislation would provide a tax credit equal to 1% of taxable income to employers that:

After all that? One !@#$%^& percent, not of revenue but of taxable income? What about all the companies that pay no taxes at all - how will this affect them? Speaking of which, what about companies not incorporated in the United States? If this were a value added tax it would hit companies regardless of where they were incorporated - but I don't see that on his website. Has he told the Financial Times something not on his own website? He's still talking about the Act I just quoted in his recent speeches.

I'm not saying this isn't a small step in the right direction - though I'm not sure it is. We need to think hard about industrial policy though, and before we can ask if Obama's policy will bring us towards our goals, we should ask what our goals are.

We need an example – a nation which has successfully used industrial policy to promote growth. That nation is China. For all their faults their growth rate has been phenomenal over the past few years, greater than that of any industrialized country. We must certainly consider the costs as well as the benefits of the policies we look at – but look we must.

According to the libertarian ‘fundamentalist’ interpretation of Adam Smith, industrial policy can never benefit industry. The original Adam Smith speaks out for government funded public education, favoring those industries which require a large number of educated workers. Other than that, his disciples haven’t distorted his work too much – he’s pretty laissez fair.

So, look at the Chinese industrial policy, forcing auto makers to build plants in China in order to be allowed to sell cars there. Perhaps this has been of no long term benefit to China. Perhaps all Chinese efforts to foster electronics and computer industries are doomed to leave Chinese manufacturers worse off than a laissez fair policy would have left them. So maybe we have nothing to worry about.

Those of us who don’t find that completely convincing may need new ideas. In modern American corporate life, it is not uncommon for people to change jobs. Sometimes something may make a balance sheet look good for ten or twenty years forward but not benefit a corporation or the nation that gave birth to it in the long term. With all it’s corruption and inefficiencies, the Chinese government seems to have found ways to manipulate our institutions. Perhaps with national unity of purpose even government can be effective.

I’m not suggesting that there is a secret Chinese Adam Smith who has written a book about how to take advantage of a capitalist society where ‘campaign contributions’ are legal, although certain kinds of overt corruption are much rarer than they are in China. Adam Smith didn’t so much invent entirely new ideas as codify, relate, and organize disparate ones, discussing for the most part what was already done by business owners and suggesting it worked for the common good. Similarly, through trial and error the Chinese have come upon tools which may be the seeds of something much larger.

Suppose we decided that Chinese divergence from free market principles will not be its own punishment. Our industrial policy would probably come in two parts – interim and long term.

Although the doctrinaire conservatives of today might not wish to acknowledge it, a good start for our interim policy might be Ronald Reagan. Don’t look so surprised. When Japanese auto imports were threatening Detroit, he didn’t push protectionist legislation, which would have been anti free market. No he got the Japanese auto companies to agree to voluntary quotas. I don’t know if he threatened them with protectionist legislation behind closed doors, but they certainly knew legislation had advocates in congress. The Chinese will understand the logic, and the name of Reagan may help attract American support. It won’t be easy though. The Japanese already had a great deal of market share to lose why Reagan made them an offer they couldn’t refuse – and if we wait until the Chinese have that much before saying anything, the dollar might collapse. The Chinese own huge quantities of dollar denominated assets, so they wouldn’t want that to happen – unless they concluded it would advance their long term strategic interests. Hmmm.

Lets think about our long term interests. The Chinese have found many clever ways to encourage American companies to manufacture things in China, where the skills and knowledge of workers, engineers, and managers are eventually available to Chinese companies. Of course they have low labor costs to tip the scales in their favor – but it seems long term policy is a part of it.

Asked whether Chrysler was worried that the alliance might help Chery develop into a competitor that might threaten its U.S. partner, LaSorda told The Associated Press, "No, we're not. With us or without us, they're going to grow. So the question is, 'Are you going to go with a winner?'"

********************************************

Ford is not saying how many workers it expects to take the buyouts by a March 18 deadline. But Wall Street analysts say the company has set a goal to get 8,000 employees to sign up.
General Motors is also extending buyout offers to all of its 74,000 hourly employees, while Chrysler is offering buyouts to workers on a regional and individual plant basis.
The belt-tightening comes after years of declining market share and increased competition from foreign automakers, led by Toyota.

It may well be that American auto companies are indeed doing the rational thing in terms of maximizing shareholder return - cutting jobs in the USA, accepting gradual losses of market share now in exchange for short term earnings which don't have to be discounted by risk or forgone interest. Is this really the best thing for the country? If not, the problem isn't really the free market. After all, it's the Chinese acquiring our technological skills rather than the reverse. Yet the strategy of building huge monster trucks which don't fit in a garage doesn't seem a long term winner for a variety of reasons - one being that China may do it too.

Cost cutting is needed, but there's no reason why American cars can't be world leaders for modern technology and low maintenance and quality, much as Toyota is today. I wonder how we could structure free market incentives so that making this a long term project would be cost effective.

Savings will be needed - and the first place to start is upper and middle management. The USA automakers seems to have more people in management than many other companies.

Ford is planning on giving retirement incentives to older workers and rehiring new ones for less. The union is part of the plan, so it doesn't seem all bad for workers. Maybe work rules could be changed too - right now it's hard to shut down plants that are temporarily unprofitable. Maybe workers could even be encouraged to get temporary jobs elsewhere during temporary shutdowns, with a small subsidy instead of full salary from their regular employer.

Wow

2008-02-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

I have to admit you have a heck of a lot more fans than I do - but so does Hillary Clinton!.

A protest less blogged than Berkley

2008-02-21T19:46:00.000-08:00

The Political Cat links to a blog about a protest less warblogged than the Berkley one. Perhaps this is because the atypical Berkley protest does show hostility to the military, while the Michigan protest blogged at Wyan.blog is full of 'support our troops - bring them home' signs.

You can find a bunch of great protest photos at Wyan.blog.

Senator Clinton may soon go back to legislating

2008-02-20T15:38:00.000-08:00

Here's a reason to be glad Senator Clinton will soon be in the halls of congress giving conservatives who had hoped to be rid of her fits:

I think that she will never be the President! Just the thought of someone so unqualified, immoral, fake, and personally greedy does make me crazy-but only for a moment-and then I remember that she will be unheard and unremembered in a couple of weeks. So lets cross our fingers, and in a week or so we can all say....Bye, bye Hillary!

Gun Free zones

2008-02-17T07:33:00.000-08:00

Credit where credit is due. I still don't think the right to bear arms refers to machine guns anymore than it refers to tanks or nukes, but it seems the latest shooting was in a 'gun free' zone. Small gun free zones seem to be a bad idea when you can buy a gun right outside them. Of course conservative politicians have gun free rallies - but they have people to enforce the rule, you're hardly going to have security search every student entering a school.

Do Gun-free zones encourage school shootings?, via Instapundit.

Will I be LGF moonbat of the day?

2008-02-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

Little Green Footballs quotes President Bush (and nobody else) on what he calls the Protect America act.

Awhile ago, before any law was passed, the executive branch asked a bunch of telecommunications companies to help them eavesdrop - without a search warrant. Of course they didn't do this for no reason - the administration believed national security was involved.

One of the problems with this bill is it offers complete retroactive immunity to these companies. Don't misunderstand the following - although there are powers I wouldn't entrust to any president, I'm just using Hillary as an example here because the Democrats seem to understand the danger here, while not all the Hillary haters do.

Suppose Hillary were to surprise everyone and win the nomination at the last moment and become president. Suppose her reelection campaign isn't going well, and Republicans are saying her actions have increased rather than decreased terrorism. Suppose she felt some of those Republicans were endangering the USA by creating panic, undermining American morale, endangering our nation by reducing respect for our security apparatus, whatever.

The circumstances don't quite justify a warrant on paper, but she asks certain telecommunications companies to help her out. What precedents would you like to have in place?

Alas, they are shortsighted - or looking at the wrong world

2008-02-15T17:15:00.000-08:00

We wouldn't want the government - or even some quasi private body - telling people in the media what they could say, would we? The only alternative is for private individuals to comment as forcefully and firmly on the media as possible.

Surely Al Shartpon (despite his many faults, none of which I see on display right here) has the right to express his opinion as to whom others should patronize and who they shouldn't. Of course those others have the right to do as they choose. Hillary has the right to say what she thinks of any commentator - and while there are risks to her announcing someone has their head stuck where the sun doesn't shine, they are hers to take, and certainly no indication she would use government power to enforce them.

I'm not sure if Our World as we see it is myopic or merely from another planet, but Debonair Dude seem a tad overwrought.

"Now what’s going to happen if this Power Hungry dirt bag gets to be President? The TV reporter David Schuster would get FIRED in a New York minute. What exactly did Hillary want after David Schuster apologized? His head?"

Does Hillary have free speech, or does she have to pretend to accept an apology she considers insincere? More imortantly, what about poor Imus? Whenever he's tired of a job, he makes outrageous comments until his employers have to fire him, which makes him more controversial so he gets a better paying job next time. Being defended by self righteous conservatives makes his task much harder. Are you going to force him to desecrate holy symbols in public before his employers are allowed to fire him without having to fear accusations they don't support free speech?

What do they do to lobbyists who flip flop?

2008-02-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

Via Shakesville

The Right Wing Watch has discovered a case of advocacy group flip flop. Fidelis has gone from hating McCain to loving him.

"What a miraculous turn of events! Do you suppose the presence of Joseph Cella - a former Fidelis president, Fred Thompson-backer, and anti-Rudy activist – on McCain’s newly announced Virginia Family Issues Leaders committee had anything to do with that?"

Hillary Campaign Going Down

2008-02-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

You'll be glad to hear they're getting back up though - hopefully to support Obama in the general election - and Hillary for a leadership role in the senate.

Seeing as this seems very symbolic - the baby wasn't hurt either, just a little shaken.

But I did have to agree when he said, “You have done this our entire marriage! We’ll be walkin’ along one minute, there will be a commotion, I’ll look down and you’ll be on the ground.”.

Common sense the long way round

2008-02-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

At Protein Wisdom they sometimes admit the obvious the long way round.

Today Dan Collins tells us:

"What Stanley cannot do, try as he might, is to demonstrate that Hillary! is treated more unfairly than other high-profile politicians, such as the one presently in the White House. If Hillary!-hatred is driven by misogyny, then to what do we attribute BDS? Of course, his point is rhetorical rather than intellectual, so perhaps that’s expecting rather too much."

So I take it all that stuff about how "Bush Derangement Syndrome" involves treating W much harsher than anyone would ever treat a liberal has gone by the wayside.

b.a.d enlightenment

2008-02-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

Upside down cake is misnamed - at least in the northern hemisphere. All those globes and solar system models which show the northern hemisphere on top are wrong. You may think I mean that both sides are equally top or bottom, but no. The proof is that Australians good naturedly refer to themselves as living 'down under', and they would be more sensitive about this assumption if they didn't know the truth.

What we call an 'upside down cake' is in fact right side up, with a plate on top of it, a table on top of that, and the planet Earth balanced atop the stack.

This may seem a rather odd way of looking at things, but the aftermath of blogroll amnesty day has started me thinking strange thoughts. None of the very biggest liberal blogs linked to it - but Instapundit did. This started me googling - did Glenn Reynolds ever purge conservatives from his blogroll? I rediscovered something I might have noticed last year. Glenn links to Skippy. He does have liberals on his blogroll - and I can't find any references to his dropping old friends either.

I'm adding Instapundit back to my blogroll. I remember being annoyed the way he referred to Drudge as a legitimate news source - and constantly complained about the New York Times. Well, OK, I guess none of my favorite liberal blogs are perfect either - and I do read him.

I was pleased to discover I bookmarked this post from A Layman's Point of View - it lodged in my mind, but I never posted about it. I'm not convinced, but it provides a starting point to get inside the heads of those we wish to persuade:

Me: (reaching the truck with the next box, I put it in the truck and looked at him, breathing hard) You're a Democrat, right? "Progressive," liberal, support Bill Clinton, hated Reagan, right?

Student: Yes, that's right, how did you know?

Me: A Republican would have offered to carry a box!

The student left without asking any questions.

Lesson 2: Liberals don't practice what they preach, like REALLY helping others. They'll watch you carry the box, even tell you HOW to do it, but won't really lift a finger to help.

I've often wished that conservatives would stop a second to think. If they can't trust W. to nominate conservative justices, is it even possible he made so managerial mistakes presiding over the administration of the rebuilding of Iraq? Does anyone miss Rummy's brilliance - and if not, did they all get carried away defending him? If they think Bush is soft on illegal aliens because he wants to keep salaries low for big businesses - is it even possible this compassion for big businesses has influenced his tax policies?

So I will be the change I would like to see in the world. Let me stop and think a second.

Can it be that we are really less compassionate than conservatives? I've seen conflicting studies - do you count donations to a church if most of the money is spent on services attended by the donators, and the facilities and programs used by them? How about if some churches do a lot to help the poor?

At times like this I'm reminded that if we're not less caring, we are not necessarily much more so. When we look back at ancient Rome or the British empire, we don't see good guys and bad guys. From our present perspective all the politicians and parties had much more in common than they knew.

Does it matter? I think perhaps it does. Words transmit more than logical arguments. Emotions and who you are come in as well. The pacifism of Ghandi and MLK came through with their character - men who went to jail and risked much worse standing up for what they believed in. A rich kid who could count on someone else doing his fighting is something else. It is too easy being anti-war merely because we personally don't like fighting - when we enjoy comfortable lives because we are protected by policemen.

Does this make the war in Iraq a prudent idea, well executed? Of course not. But think of all the rage we hear on the left at times, spit at people who might possibly do horrible things when placed in imposible positions, but who do many heroic things as well.

At the very least, we must do what we would have our countrymen do. Let us understand why they hate us - yes, why so many on the right hate us so fervently, even many of those who are decent people otherwise. There is a parallel here, if we have eyes to see it. There were many who believed a few years ago that once we showed the sleeping giant had been woken, that we had the will as well as the ability to use our enormous military power, the world would treat us with much more respect. And there are many who believe if we are angry enough and loud enough, the things we consider obviously true will abruptly be clear to our opponents as well. Let's remove the beam from our own eye before we try to remove the lumberyard (yes lumberyard, I'm a liberal, I still think they're crazier than we are) from anyone elses.

Monkeyfister's blogswarm successful!

2008-02-08T22:22:00.000-08:00

I was away from my computer a few days, but better late than never. Meanwhile, Monkeyfister's blogswarm exceeded his fondest hopes.

I'm linking to the original post in the title - his success report is here!

From mail.com:

In the aftermath of stunningly deadly and destructive tornadoes, this hard-hit community now has other worries -- looters, power shortages and a large number of residents still unaccounted for.

"They're going to have the looters and then the metal scrappers giving them hell," said Jason Newsse, who came from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to help authorities with search and recovery efforts that included cadaver-detecting dogs.

Liberal media traitors in Afghanistan, when everything is going so well.

2008-02-08T20:35:00.000-08:00

Jeff G. doesn't actually endorse this e-mail he reprints, though his comment seems to accept the premises as a basis for his own commentary. So I can't quite accuse him of three logical fallacies in one paragraph, although his ending slur on America saddens me. Clieck through - the paragraph I quote has several links that will explain everything imbedded.

Ray Robison emails:

The media has decided that the Taliban is winning and they are running with the “resurgent Taliban” lie no matter how much NATO says the Taliban is not “resurgent”. They are burying US success to help the democrat nominee.

Are they? Or is such spin actually more helpful to the candidate seen as most likely to prosecute the war vigourously, John McCain.

(crossposted from comment discussion)

Something said by one American general is not a pronouncement by NATO as a whole - especially when he acknowledges the other people we have encouraged to send troops are not sharing his experience.

A post on the blog American Thinker is not some sort of absolute truth (insert Jeffian pronouncement on truth here) but an opinion.

Even if the above were not true, we should surely inquire if the media were aware that an American general had made this statement, if they were aware it was inarguable truth, and parallel questions for the American Thinker post before bashing them.

after awhile he gets to:

In the end, should such a movement succeed in taking power, attempts to pull out of Iraq will put both a strain (immediate) and a stain (long term) on an Obama presidency. And there won’t be much that the history books will be able to do to insulate him — aside from celebrating the fact that he was the first Black president.

Form over content.

This is our America.

The Mahatma X Files: Blogroll Amnesty Day Anniversary

2008-02-04T23:23:00.000-08:00

The Hard Part of Blogroll Amnesty Day

Afghanistan and Pakistani food shortages

2008-02-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

We're hearing more about what the European troops aren't doing in Afghanistan - but this may be more important. From Empty Corner, via The Newshoggers blogroll amnesty day edition:

This closure is having an immediate effect in blocking supplies to NATO forces. The effects can become a whole lot worse. The shortage of bread will drive a lot of people to the Taliban.

Empty links to Dawn (a Pakistani online English language newspaper) with more information about the border closing and flour shortages.

Wisdom?

2008-02-02T06:13:00.000-08:00

Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom is having a nightmare.

That’s what gave us Jimmy Carter. And we’re still living with that nightmare — even if a certain giant river bunny who took a presidential oar to the skull may not be.

Dreams are funny things though. The flawed military action in Iran, the eagerness to get involved in mideast peace negotiations, the 'voluntary conservation measures'.

Jimmy Carter may be a symbol for a much more recent nightmare.

The hard part of blogroll amnesty day

2008-02-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

As part of the celebration of blogroll amnesty day, I need to link five or six blogs smaller than mine. That's tough, but I eventually decided just to minimize the windows the blogs were displayed in, making them smaller than mine. There may not be many blogs smaller than mine, but there are plenty of progressive blogs deserving more exposure.

Don't you love it when a little blog gets a story the mainstream media never even thought to look at? Meet Susan DuQuesnay Bankston of Kiss My Big Blue Butt. Since her county doesn't put local campaign finance reports online, she got the paper ones and had them scanned into the computer. She's posted the expense reports for county judge Bob Hebert online. Oh yes, remember when Tom DeLay moved to Virginia to give his state Republican election comittee a chance to choose someone else for the ballot? On January 11 she posted his voter registration card so you can see when he moved back - and think about the oath he took to a federal judge. It may be my browser but I can't seem to link to individual posts right now. It's also a lighthearted and fun personal blog.

Friday Lunch Club is another great blog. They focus on the middle east. GPC doesn't seem to live or work in the middle east, but his essays aren't based on the usual suspects - he'll introduce you to foreign media, Congressional Quarterly, and many other sources you haven't seen. He occasionally mentions private information as well - not necessarily secret, but something he heard from a source.

Here's a blog I discovered while writing this post for blogroll amnesty day. Why should you be interested in a blog about 'water issues' in the southeastern USA? I'm not sure how much of this is due to global warming, how much to rapid growth, and how much is just an unusual occurence, but we may be seeing a lot more of this in the future - all over the country. I never thought about the effect of a drought on a nuclear power plant before reading Watercrunch. Say hello to Watercrunch, which also has some exclusive pictures of an Obama rally.

Say hello to Wetmachine. He has ultra technical stuff about frequency auctions, progressive political commentary, and cyberpunk flavored fiction you can read the first chapters of for free - or buy as a complete book.

This Fucking War is a medium sized blog, but still an important one deserving more exposure. Madtom links to the 'other' war blogs that are not always linked with enthusiasm by the mainstream warbloggers. These are not only those opposed to Bush's policy or with reservations, but those of soldiers who don't follow poltiics but just write real stuff about what they go through which might give some a negative impression.

Distributorcapny is an enthusiastic participant in blogroll amnesty day. He's counting down the seconds until Bush leaves office. He has a lot of cool pictures and a few videos on his blog. He's calculated how much of Exxon's profit would be needed to bail out Merrill Lynch and Citibank - or to buy Guilliani the nomination. A fun place to visit.

Last but not least, I'd like everyone to drop by the comments section of The Dead Hand and Political Friends and tell them how wrong they are about everything. They're more fun to argue with than most small conservative blogs.

The First Anniversary of Blogroll Amnesty Day

2008-01-31T15:32:00.000-08:00

Jon Swift sent me an e-mail - February third is the first anniversary of blogroll amnesty day.

I'm glad to say he doesn't just consider it an occassion for whining and complaining, but he wants to kick off an annual celebration of the power of smaller blogs. His e-mail doesn't mention liberal or progressive blogs specifically, which might seem odd at first. No large conservative blogs were involved in blogroll amnesty day as such. It was a few big 'liberal' bloggers who declared they wanted their blogroll to consist of bloggers they actually read - and who don't seem to be looking for interesting new blogs to read now that they are established. Not only is this their priviledge, it may be a good thing for the left side of the blogosphere in the long run. Atrios and Markos couldn't read each good small Progressive blog for long enough to pick out the superb ones even if they wanted to. The job has to be crowdsourced, largely to the people who are hoping to be among the discovered.

Of course the same applies to the right - but not all conservative bloggers realize it. Yes, Reynolds reads the blogs on his blogroll, and if one of them links to someone he might pick it up and give a new blog an Instalanch. In the main, hoping for something like that is rather like hoping to win the lottery instead of engaging in financial planning. Who knows what will catch his eye? Even if he agrees with you about most things a loves the way you express it, he probably won't realize it until he's seen several links to you on blogs he respects. You may not get an Instalanch until you're well known anyhow.

In the next week or so I'm going to expand my blogroll again. When I post about something I'll use google and technorati to see what's worth linking to. Mostly though, there are three linking blogs so good I refer people to them instead.

The Sideshow is a great place for an overview of the left side of the blogosphere. Avedon Carol must get a lot of e-mail, but if you link to her and wait patiently she will eventually notice and look you over. Give her a hat tip and blog about the most interesting things you find there. Participate in the discussion in her comments section. After awhile you could send her a link to one of your best posts, and there are no guarantees but I imagine she'll at least take a look.

If we're concerned about blogroll amnesty day you probably know Skippy already. Not only does he link to anyone who links to him, he also offers 'Say Hello' front page coverage! I don't know if he ever takes links from e-mail, but he looks over the blogs that post about his articles and participate in the discussions in his comment section.

Monkeyfister wins the award for most awards awarded to small progressive blogs. Join the community, get to know Monkeyfister and the blogs that already link there, and you'll be in time for next year. Oh yea, follow the link next to the Incivility Certification, there's some good thinking there even if you don't accept it all.

Hullabaloo doesn't link quite as much to small bloggers as the other blogs, but the links that do occur are part of thoughtful and interesting posts. Crooks and Liars has a Friday roundup which is relaively small, but being linked there is the equivilant of a highbrow Instalanch.

I don't think I can compete as a linking blog in general, so here's what I'd like to do. If anyone's managed to get in a witty debate with a conservative blog I'd like to hear about it and link to it. We'll make people forget there ever was a Reynolds - Greenwald feud! I started by reading this, though I guess you don't have to be a potty mouth if you don't want to.

I had a remarkable dialog

2008-01-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

Say hello to Jason Williscroft of the Dead Hand Journal! I had a remarkable discussion with him on the comment section of his blog. I think his final comment pretty much gives you the flavor of it. As usual, the link text is also quoted text, linking back to his blog.

I'm going to assume that you mean "amusing" in that particular GOTCHA fashion we reserve for people who comment about books they haven't read, right?

Sure, why not. Of course, as long as we're being very clear about our premises, here's another one: your amusement must also be predicated on the oh-so-common liberal assumption that no thing could possibly be related to anything else... at least not if it sheds a negative light on a nutty liberal idea.

Thus, we must extol the virtues of urban planning while carefully avoiding the demonstrable fact that the problems it purports to solve were all caused by... urban planning! We must take great care to limit our CO2 emissions, despite the fact that it's been conclusively demonstrated that global warming causes a rise in CO2 levels, not the other way around.

And, of course, we couldn't possibly operate under the assumption that the ideas in Albright's most recent tome are the same ones she has consistently espoused throughout her entire, lackluster career. That WOULD be amusing, wouldn't it?

I would have to study urban planning before commenting on it. Until then, I won't insist he extol it. Why would I? Nah, on second thought it might be fun to watch. Extol you must, as you say.

Did you say it's been conclusively proven a rise in CO2 levels did not cause global warming? I'd like to know where. I saw some research indicating temperatures had often risen in past eras before CO2 started to rise. It didn't purport to prove CO2 didn't and wouldn't cause global warming, but only that global warming from other sources often started the initial CO2 increase. You must have seen some different research than I.

Well, it's reasonably likely that Madeline Albright espouses the same ideas she has expoused previously, though it doesn't always happen. Myself I prefer to read books before commenting on them. At any rate I will try to read most of your blog posts before commenting on them. In case it turns out the ideas are pretty much the same as you've been espousing through your blogging career, I hope you'll at least bring out some of the wit you used against Mr. Torgerson on occasion, so there need be none of the accusations of lackluster you level against the hapless Albright.

Avoiding a hard choice

2008-01-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

If victory in Iraq is really possible, it is highly desirable. McCain is the only cheerleader of the Iraqi war I might consider voting for. He may have supported Bush against the anti-war people, but he's also pointed out that Bush wasn't doing enough. He's really about victory, not just sticking it to liberals.

This doesn't prove that victory is possible. The Iraqi's have passed a law allegedly meant to pacift the Sunnis - which was strongly opposed by the Sunnis. We have no leverage over the Shia government. We can't tell them we'll leave if they refuse to cooperate, because the only leaders who don't say we should leave as fast as possible say any talk of leaving (or that there are serious problems) is capitulation to the terrorists - and to Democrats. The Shias fear the Anbar Awakening militias will ultimately turn against the central government and or the Shia. If they are wrong their distrust will eventually provoke the Sunnis. If they are right that is even worse news.

Iraq may no longer be our Vietnam. It may be our India - what India was to the British empire. One generation does fairly well, then the next generation forgets the past, then there is violence again.

In a way it is a relief to hear Republicans talking like this, as does Andy of Political Friends:

McCain is a big believer in the man-made global warming myth. McCain is a cosponsor of the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act. This would impose many of the Kyoto type regulations on the United States without the U.S. ever signing on to to Kyoto. You may believe that climate change is happening, but the impact of a law like this on U.S. companies could be devastating. Democrats typically favor this type of global legislation, not Republicans.

McCain not only supports a higher tax burden on American citizens, he also believes in the same class warfare the Democrats resort to when they discuss taxes. McCain originally voted against the Bush tax cuts. On the campaign trail, he is saying he did this because the tax cuts weren't coupled with spending cuts. I can understand this point of view. However, originally he didn't vote for the tax cuts because they helped out "rich Americans" at the expense of the "working class". Which party does that sound like?

I don't know if it's good or bad, but this will spare me a difficult choice in November. McCain is the only candidate who has knowledge, who comes from military training and a military family, who can do more than more of the same, or hoping he chooses good advisors. It may be good - I would be tempted to believe we could win in Iraq, and if this was ever possible it may no longer be. India cost the British Empire more per capita than Vietnam cost us.

I don't believe any Republican besides McCain is likely to be elected. My main fear is that the Democrats will fail to acknowedge was is already happening because they fear to be blamed for it.

Redebaathification law?

2008-01-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

This is the first I heard of this. Fortunately I've added Hullabaloo to by blog reader now.

Of course, this tracks with what I wrote 10 days ago about the Iraqi de-Baathification law, which was obviously bogus from the moment it was announced.

Obviously this was something spearheaded by the Shiite majority in the Parliament, otherwise it could not get done this quickly. What I did not know until reading deeper into the reports is that the law was actively opposed by the Sunni minority who you would think would be precisely those to benefit from its implementation. And the prime movers were the Sadrists, not likely to be those interested in unity and reconciliation [...]

The Sadrists had demanded that the De-Baathification Commission not be dissolved, but would accept a change in name for it. They had demanded that the Baath Party remain dissolved, and that the high-ranking members of the party be forbidden to enter the new political life or serve as bureaucrats. The Sadrists had also insisted that any high-ranking Baathists presently employed by the new Iraqi government must be fired!

The headlines are all saying that the law permits Baathists back into public life. It seems actually to demand that they be fired or retired on a pension, and any who are employed are excluded from sensitive ministries.

Fried squirrel

2008-01-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

I've seen an awful lot of jokes about fried squirrel lately. Maybe some people have been wondering how Huckabee could be crazy enough to mention that on television. For many of us, it's easy to forget that trapping or shooting a squirrel can be the difference between having meat and not having meat for some of the rural poor. Nobody who was even in that situation, or knew anyone in that situation, will be impressed by the sneers.

Police at the door

2008-01-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

A 31-year-old Spanish woman was bathing her children in her Madrid home when police showed up on her doorstep.

'You had an abortion in February 2007,' the officers said, handing her an invitation to be questioned as a witness at a police station investigating alleged irregularities at the Clinic Isadora, which terminated her pregnancy.

...

Groups described as neo-Nazi or ultra-conservative have attacked Madrid clinics, smashing windows, spraying walls and threatening employees or clients.

Spanish abortion clinics staged an unprecedented strike last week in protest against the attacks and what they regard as an unjustified increase in administrative inspections.

The strike was from Jan 8 to Jan 12. You would think this would have had anti-abortion activists cheering, but the clinics didn't see it that way. It certainly didn't deter this.

Is this in our future? It's hard to track down much about what happened. There are Spanish newspapers published in English, but they don't have much about this. This article was supplied to Big News Network by the Indo-Asian News Service. Somehow they feel more like talking about it in English than the Spanish do.

Wikipedia lists a few countries where abortion is outlawed under all circumstances. They don't all have freedom of the press, so who knows what goes on there. It seems the most dangerous places are not always those with the strictest laws, but those where they have the most popular support.

Nibras Kazimi Speaks Out

2008-01-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

This is noteworthy because Nibras Kazimi is strongly pro Shia government, and usually so confident about how things are going in Iraq.

First, the Iraqi security forces involved in this operation were very poorly trained; distribution of fighters, muzzle discipline and chain of command were all lacking. There were several fighters in civilian uniform and others wearing military-issue uniforms with civilian coats. Soldiers were shouting the names of the Shia Imams to give themselves courage; it looked like a mess and sounded like amateur hour.

Then five minutes into the video, we see a badly wounded cult member who seems as if he is dying. He is taunting the soldiers by encouraging them to kill him and calling them "cowards" and "debased". But the excitable reaction from the soldiers exposed them as undisciplined and thuggish: instead of providing medical aid, they left him to bleed and cursed him out by saying that the cult members were "Jews" and "infidels". One placed him boot on the dying man's mouth to keep him from talking and another spat on him. Others broke out into a chant, the longer version of which is associated with the Sadrist movement.

The secret to keeping Pakistani nukes safe

2008-01-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot in the mainstream press about Pakistan, the dangers of extremism and political repression. If I just read the usual suspects I never would have found out about the flour shortages, and the role they may play in destabalizing Pakistan.

High-level meeting on flour crisis, from Dawn.

From Worldnews, Flour crisis persists despite govt's tall claims

Another article from Dawn, Protest held against flour crisis

There are a couple of articles about wheat shortages too.

Could keeping Pakistan stable be as simple as sending them food?

Wikileaks

2008-01-13T21:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not endangering National Security here - wikileaks is already well known and has been mentioned in major media.

According to the about page, Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.

Further down they say:

Who is behind Wikileaks?
Wikileaks was founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

Our public Advisory Board, which is still in formation, includes courageous journalists, representatives from refugee communities, ethics and anti-corruption campaigners, including a former national head of Transparency International, human rights campaigners, lawyers and cryptographers.

There are currently over 1,200 registered volunteers, but we need more people involved at an organizational level.

and further down still:

Why are the Wikileaks founders anonymous?
Most people who are involved with Wikileaks are not anonymous, however, the founders (and obviously our sources) remain anonymous. Our reasons are:

Some of us are refugees from repressive countries with families still in those countries.
Some of us are journalists who may be banned from entering these countries for work if our affiliation was known.
Additionally, given that some must be anonymous for reasons outside of their control, an imbalance of representation and exposure is threatened unless all founders remain anonymous. Furthermore, the effort to encourage anonymous sources to release material to the public is enhanced by an ability to empathise via solidarity in anonymity. Anonymity also demonstrates motivation by goals higher than reputation seeking.

You do find some names, including some authentic Chinese dissidents, if you dig around. Yet the lions share of the leaks seem to be from the United States government. Not quite what you'd anticipate from the reasons given. That doesn't prove anything, and even if it did it wouldn't show who. Maybe someone than me can investigate more systematically.

I have a hunch though. Who has been very clever at using computers against the United States? Who has been working hard to control the internet?

So maybe China. The site says they do ban Wikileaks inside China, and I believe it, but that doesn't mean they don't use or even sponsor it.

So I searched for Wikileaks about China. In comparison to the scads of stuff from the United States, there were only a handful. Fair enough, it's harder and more dangerous to leak stuff from there - although you would think those Chinese dissidents would give this section a leg up. With the (possible) exception of a document I found in Chinese, everything seems to have been leaked to other places before appearing on Wikileaks. Original documents from our military have appeared there. Hmmmm.

This could possibly be bad. I wish I could say the end result would be a more honest USA having an advantage over a repressive China, but selective leaking manipulated by China, perhaps even extortion of the American government, could be harmful indeed to my country.

Is this worth having our government forget about net neutrality, legislate as best it can to reduce the violence to our legal system (the constitution is not a suicide pact) and close this down at all costs? Nothing I've seen so far would justify the costs of that.

So the CIA has to start thinking what Chinese documents can and should be leaked. I think a greater portion of their intelligence is focused on us than visa versa, but if this is assymetrical warfare, I hope we're already preparing for it.

Oh no!

2008-01-11T08:35:00.000-08:00

My husband and I are both registered Democrats. With the Primary here in New York in the horizon, we are still undecided. Well at least for me, because the husband is vocal in telling me that he may not cast his vote, as his heart doesn’t beat for any of the Democratic candidates. His heart is beating for someone else although, the man hasn’t declared his bid for the White House yet.

Bloomberg is a good mayor, but he'll only be a spoiler for the Democrats.

In New York we don't usually worry about this

2008-01-11T07:13:00.000-08:00

When we hear about snow in New York, we're usually worried about driving to work, or kids going to school. In the Colorado river basin its different.

Major storms erased fear of another dry winter across much of the state, as snowpack readings increased from near record lows in early December to near record highs by the end of the month.

"Going into the end of November, it was very touch and go - drought conditions were redeveloping over the eastern plains, and snowfall in the mountains was much less than average," Nolan Doesken, state climatologist and senior research associate at Colorado State University, said.

"Weather patterns changed abruptly. We went from being dangerously dry and warm to being back on track for an average winter."

...

With as much as 80 percent of Colorado surface water originating from melting snowpack, it's critical the state receive adequate winter snowfall, officials said.

This is good news, but I doubt all those state officials who were carefully negotiating shares of river water a few months ago will stop worrying.

It seems that after a few years of Global Warming coming faster than forcast, we may have a few years of slower than forcast warming, sure to be misinterpreted - even before they happen:

Global Warming: I wrote last year that I thought global warming had hit its high point. I don't mean the temperatures, I mean the fanatical discussion surrounding it. While there are still many many faithful believers, I think many people have had their eyes opened during the last year. I see more and more articles by Fox News, CNN, and the mainstream media discussing the other side of the argument. I think in the years to come, 2008 may be looked at as the time global warming stopped being considered a serious subject.

You think?

2008-01-10T16:05:00.000-08:00

Who would have thought?

Those of us from the conservative side of things have had a long tradition of dislike of the Clintons--husband and wife. Sometimes this dislike has become so intense and overpowering that it has clouded--or at least impeded rational judgments about either.

Read the whole thing to learn what provoked this amazing insight.

Huckenstein Who?

2008-01-09T22:24:00.000-08:00

Skippy has put into words what many people seem to feel, both more clearly and less pretentiously than any blogger I've seen yet.

quite true. rove was happy to let the fundies of this country think they had an inside track to the oval office as long as the votes were coming his way. but now that a populist evangalist is looking good to a large block of the gop base, the repubbb establishment is shaking in their boots. the last thing they need is a standard bearer that cares (or at least seems to) about the middle class.

the repubbbs have spent the last two decades doing everything they can to gut the protections for most americans and feeding the wallets of the uber-rich. you can bet that the homophobia of the fundies was simply a mask that the party of larry craig and mark foley wore to grab as much campaign contributions from the church of the holier than thou as possible.

I'm leaving the typos as they are, since only Skippy would dare leave them in.

So on the one hand many liberals agree that the Republicans have suckered the Evangelicals. We are pleased they have discovered this - because we don't like the Republicans.

Conservatives often speak sarcastically of liberal tolerence. Somehow it's a relief when some of them discover that NorthEastern conservatives sitting in the big tent disparaging multiculturalism and tolerance include Christianity (except at weddings and funerals) as one of the cultures they don't want to tolerate too much of.

And yet, I know a fair number of Christians. Almost all of them are smarter than me in some ways, and many of them are smarter than me in more ways than I am smarter than them. If the conservative pretense of being more respectful for different beliefs than we is more threadbare than ever, perhaps this would be a good time to examine our own reactions.

While reversing out position on certain issues would make no more sense than deciding Prohibition was workable after all, if we had only tried harder, perhaps we should think about the idea of liberal intolerence. It's not surprising that liberals are not so different than conservatives. We are born into the same era, and mirror each other more than we would like to admit.

One starting place would be our reaction to people mocking Islam - and people mocking Christianity. I'm not saying we shouldn't care about starting riots, or that we should change out ideas about free speech, but the two standards need to be considered together. This is one of the things which has often been mentioned by the religious right, and if we don't want the Evangelicals to feel the covert disrespect of the New York - Washington conservatives is better than the overt disrespect of liberals, we should be glad instead of sorry than there are things we can and should in all fairness improve.

Pieces of the puzzle

2008-01-06T10:04:00.000-08:00

Glenn Greenwald has put the pieces together.

Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses

Glenn unravels the irony here layer by layer. Are they merely saying people will abandon the Democratic party? Sometimes it seems so, but Goldberg says

I think it's worth imagining a certain scenario. Imagine the Democrats do rally around Obama. Imagine the media invests as heavily in him as I think we all know they will if he's the nominee — and then imagine he loses. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged. I can imagine the fear of this social unraveling actually aiding Obama enormously in 2008. Forget Hillary's inevitability. Obama has a rendezvous with destiny, or so we will be told. And if he's denied it, teeth shall be gnashed, clothes rent and prices paid.

He's supposing Obama is already the nominee, so he's not supposing the problem is African Americans abandoning the Democrats. If he's hinting at racial violence, Glenn Greenwald reminds us of real violence - in the recent past.

Instigated by an order from New York congressman John Sweeney to "shut it down," dozens of screaming GOP demonstrators pounded on doors and a picture window at elections headquarters. The canvassing board, which had already found a net Al Gore gain of 168 votes, reversed a decision it had made a couple of hours earlier to begin a tally of the undervote.

The mob gang-rushed a local Democrat carrying a blank sample ballot. They threatened that a thousand Cubans were on their way to the headquarters to stop the count. Several people were "trampled, punched or kicked," according to The New York Times. The canvassing board chair at first conceded that mob pressures played a role in the shutdown -- which cost Gore the 168 votes as well -- but later reversed his position. . . . .

Material for comedy

2008-01-04T16:13:00.000-08:00

Jon Swift ought to make something out of this:

Will Mitch McConnell forgive the Republicans for stabbing him in the back?

Despite the fact that Republicans have constantly pretended to take the anti-pork talk of Republican leaders at face value, they suddenly stab him in the back by being a tiny bit genuinely annoyed - at least for awhile.

Seen on the Evangelical Outpost

2008-01-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

Don't accuse me of quoting too much from the Evangelical Outpost - there is much more, all worth reading. Did I hallucinate this paragraph? Better check.

The Mainstream Media Ain't So Bad -- Many bloggers (including me) have a knee-jerk reaction to the mainstream media. We "just know" they have a liberal bias and that they can't be trusted to report accurately on Republicans and conservatives. If my experience is any indication, then most of what we know is "just wrong."

My job wasn't to spin the press but to present the facts for the Huckabee campaign's side of the story. I expected that I'd have the toughest time with the professional journalists but most of the reporters that I dealt with (especially Michael Luo of the New York Times and Jonathan Martin of Politico) were quite fair and always professional. Even when their coverage was cringe-inducing I rarely could fault them for being inaccurate or putting their own biases ahead of the facts.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said of the conservative media.

My rapid response list included a broad range of journalists, pundits, and bloggers and variety of outlets--everything from The New York Times to HotAir. Often they would ask me to clarify statements made by the Governor, defend claims made by the campaign, or offer evidence on a point of contention. Almost always the mainstream media from the "liberal" outlets were more fair and balanced than were the ones from the "conservative" side of the media.

Some conservative outlets, of course, were notably fair and accurate. Although he never pulled his punches, Jim Geraghty at NRO's The Campaign Spot always let me present a rebuttal to the claims of other campaigns. The same can be said for NRO's Byron York, one of the few conservative reporter/pundits that seemed more concerned about getting the facts straight than he was in shoring up the conventional wisdom of the GOP establishment.

But while there were a few other exceptions that I could praise (e.g., Terry Eastland from The Weekly Standard, Phillip Klein and Jennifer Rubin from The American Spectator, the guys at RedState), far too many of the conservative outlets refused to present any evidence that conflicted with their typical anti-Huckabee narrative.

I even sent out personal emails to a number of prominent pundits and bloggers who had criticized Huckabee for being insufficiently conservative. I told them that if they would send me a list of their grievances I'd provide a personal response from the campaign addressing their concern. My only condition was that they would post the exchange in its entirety. Not one of them took me up on my offer.

As a campaign staffer, I found such behavior frustrating. But as a consumer of conservative media I found it infuriating. There are a number of pundits, bloggers, reporters, and radio hosts that I will never trust again to be "fair and balanced."

(To clarify my last point, let me say that I had only one expectation from my fellow conservatives: that they apply the same standard to every candidate. I had no problem with a conservative pundit bashing Governor Huckabee for raising the sales tax by a penny in Arkansas…as long as they also bashed Governor Romney for raising "fees" in Massachusetts. I had no problem with their complaints that Governor Huckabee wanted to establish diplomatic relations with Iran…as long as they hammered Mayor Giuliani for the same sin. Very few even made an attempt to be consistent in their criticism. That was what I found so disappointing.)

What's the Transhumanist Libertarian Professor up to?

2007-12-31T22:30:00.000-08:00

Everyone makes mistakes, but some are more worth contemplating than others. Is a libertarian who usually supports Bush against the left giving a bit more to the religious right than he realizes with his reflexive sneer at the 'left wing academic elite'? Is he eager to please them without actually contradicting his own beliefs, as long as they don't vote for Huckabee?

If you follow Reynold's own link, you'll see two errors in his two sentence post. The group wasn't banned, and action wasn't taken based on 'unacceptable views on premarital sex'. The group was denied funding because it excluded people who refused to 'agree with a “statement of faith,” including its interpretations that Christians should not engage in sexual activity outside the context of marriage between a man and a woman.'

Is that reasonable? Maybe not, but the University of Montana has a rule that groups funded from student dues must potentially benefit and be open to all students. In practice, this doesn't seem to be a problem for most Christian groups. Some of the student groups on this list probably have members with religious reservations about homosexuals, and at least some probably don't have any homosexuals eager to join anyway:

List of University of Montana student groups, bookmarked at religious groups.

So why pick on the Christian Legal Society? Both sides seem all lawyered up, and one consists mainly of lawyers. The Missoulian seems to have covered the viewpoint of the CLS:

The students allege that UM's Student Bar Association granted their organization preliminary approval for both recognition and funding, but when the matter was up for final ratification, funding was denied because of e-mail objections by other students.

“In response, the next day the Student Bar Association Executive Board derecognized the chapter, stating the Christian Legal Society-University of Montana's Statement of Faith requirement and its interpretation to prohibit sexual relationships outside of marriage for its voting members and leaders violated the Student Bar Association nondiscrimination rule,” the lawsuit states.

The group also contends that when asked to reverse the decision, Eck upheld the Student Bar Association's decision.

“To date, CLS-UM has still not been told how its membership and leadership policies conflict with any SBA bylaw,” the group states in its complaint, adding: “The SBA is facially flawed in that it provides unbridled discretion to the SBA and law school student body and does not adequately ensure against viewpoint discrimination.”

I e-mailed the President of the Student Bar Association for an opposing point of view, and was told all questions were being referred to UM Legal Counsel David Aronofsky, who is out of the country until Jan. 20th. The lawyer is already quoted in the article as wanting to study the case further.

Without seeing those e-mail objections it's difficult to say who is right or wrong, but it might be interesting to learn about the group Instapundit speaks up for.

Here's their homepage.

The aren't libertarians. Go to the right hand column and follow the link urging dismissal of a lawsuit against Kentucky Christian College. It seems the State of Kentucky gave this private university a few million to build a school for pharmacists, and its only open to students who accept the college's policy about only having sex in a marriage. It may be enforced slightly more aggressively against homosexuals.

According to Medical Right Watch they are involved in back door attempts to fight Roe VS Wade.

Here's an opinion from FindLaw:

Turning to the political context, the CEF case was brought by the Christian Legal Society on the merits, with the National Legal Foundation, another Christian organization, submitting an amicus (friend of the court) brief. These two organizations are part of a larger movement dedicated to re-introducing Christianity into the public schools -- and, failing that, to siphoning public funds from the public schools to private religious schools and home-schoolers.

The political reality is that these organizations are using equality principles to further Christian ends; except in the courts, their devotion is not to equality, but rather to Christianity above all other faiths.

Read the whole thing.

In Vitrio fertilization

2007-12-30T08:01:00.000-08:00

Futurepundit links to an article in the British Times Online about embryos being destroyed at British fertility clinics. He writes some interesting stuff about how this might change in a few decades, and a little about the contrast between the American religious right protesting stem cell research and remaining silent about this.

For those who truly believe the destruction of a fertilized human egg is murder, there must be a terrific internal cost to remaining silent about IV fertilization. There are indeed Christians who won't use it, but none who speak loudly of it in the national political arena - at least in the United States.

What Erick on Redstate calls the New York-Washington Corridor of Conservative Intelligentsia is willing to tolerate the overturning of Roe VS Wade. They don't live in the states which might outlaw abortion, and could afford to have it done safely and secretly if their daughters needed one, whatever the law. Fertility treatments are more expensive - a genuine industry. An attack on those would show who finances the Republican tent, and who is tolerated as long as they shut up and vote Republican.

Say Hello to Friday Lunch Club

2007-04-19T22:22:00.000-07:00

Friday Lunch Club has an ambitious plan.

Striking a balance, maintaining a wealthy blog, keeping one's sources anonymous while prodding the readers' interest is a blogger necessary baptism. Posting here will be episodic at first, hoping to graduate to a regular blurb soon after. Don't give up on me too early in the game, and remember, dead blogs don't deserve an epitaph!

Unlike Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, I don't do 'Say Hello' posts each time I add to my blog roll. I think Friday Lunch club deserves one though, it's the most underrated new blog I've seen so far. As far as I can tell they haven't developed any ananymous sources yet. They do a great job in posting from and linking to English language media from elsewhere in the world that most American bloggers may not be regularly monitoring, including the Lebanese Daily Star and AsiaTimes. When they link to American sources, these are often academic sources such as Syriacomment and the American Prospect, or whistleblower.org and the Small Wars Journal, rather then the few large media sources that almost everyone quotes from and blogs about.

I was a little put off by yet another poll about the Isreal lobby - until I saw the post about the Saudi lobby.

Turkish rhetoric with Iraqi Kurds heats up

2007-04-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

Via Friday Lunch Club, the Belgravia Dispatch is monitoring the chance of Turkey sending troops into the Kurdish area of Iraq.

They quote several sources, including the London Financial Times:

Turkey's top general called yesterday for military intervention in northern Iraq in comments that will increase regional tensions - already high after a series of verbal exchanges between Turkish and Kurdish leaders.

Turkey is accusing the Iraqi Kurds of sheltering Turkish (Kurdish) rebels - and building up troops on the border.

An anonymous commenter pointed out

2007-04-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

An anonymous commenter pointed out that my post before last about this wasn't complete.

From Foreign Policy magazine, an interview with Nibras Kazimi:

My mother’s family is Kurdish, and they’re Talibanis. My mother’s village was targeted during the Anfal. They dug up the cemeteries, and my grandfather’s grave was dug up. They were stamping out traces of people. It was vindictive, and it wasn’t unique to my mother’s village. It happened across many of the villages that were affected by the Anfal campaign. And through marriage, we had relatives who were directly affected by the chemical bombings at Halabja. On my father’s side, the ones that had registered as Persian nationals rather than as Ottoman nationals were deported to Iran. Some of the young men were seized, and they spent years in prison, some of them executed. You know, the usual Iraq story. My father’s people were Shiite Arabs from Kazimiya, a formerly independent town that has become a northern suburb of Baghdad. It’s actually where Saddam was executed, in the military intelligence complex.

So both sides of his family experienced terrible atrocities from Saddam and his allies. His father's family was indeed Sunni - but Sunni Kurds. Few of us have ever demonstrated the sort of forgiveness that would enable us to criticize him. At the same time, the people who have been put in charge of American forces after hard experience both say we cannot win this war by force alone. If they are wrong, someone should come up with a better plan than that of Petraeus and Gates. If they are right, we need to remember that Nibras Kazimi isn't an ally of those with a realistic plan for victory. This civil war will not lead to an extinction of all violent Sunni's, but of a generation brought up to believe that suicide bombing is heroic. At best the infighting gives us a little time. I don't know if Al Qaeda can change course again or not, but even if not history has many examples of civil wars breeding more and more violence and hatred, rather than leading to the death of the violent and peace.

I'd like to buy a clue

2007-04-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Pat Sajak has an opinion about global warming - sort of.

I mean what are they doing personally. If I'm driving an SUV or living in a big house, they can accuse me of callous disregard for the problem, but at least the callousness is based on my non-belief. What about them? Why are they still driving that big car or living in that big house?

Needless to say, he doesn't go on to express respect for those who drive Corolla's or Prius's.

In fact, why are they driving at all? Why haven't they moved into a minimalist home within walking distance of their office? Talk about callous!

Imagine being absolutely certain we are the verge of a man-made catastrophe and not doing everything within your power to help reverse it. Anyone who truly believes it and still uses anything more than the lowest-wattage single bulb or drives one mile more than absolutely necessary is nothing short of a monster! A skeptic's actions can be blamed on ignorance; a believer's can only be chalked up to a shocking disregard for his children's futures.

I take it he doesn't apply this to people like W who've grudgingly acknowledged there's a problem - only to liberals.

Nobody knows the time frame for certain - or the scale. Rebuilding more urban areas so people can comfotably live without cars is a great idea. Meanwhile, even Sajak only says 'the direct link between man and the warming is much more tenuous'. Why doesn't Sajak do a little bit to avert potential catastrophe - as when you buy insurance for a car accident or house fire you don't think is likely?

2007-04-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

Nibras Kazimi of Talisman Gate is a Shia partisan - though he may call himself secular.

Notes on Counterinsurgency and De-Ba'athification

Talisman Gate’s Counterinsurgency Recommendations: Al-Hayat reports today that Iraqi officials are planning to wall-in certain Baghdad neighborhoods within concrete barriers as part of the new security plan. An unidentified source at the Ministry of Interior told Al-Hayat that the neighborhoods that are to be walled-in are four predominately Sunni ones (Dora, ‘Amiriya, Al-‘Adel, and ‘Adhamiya), another predominately Shi’a one (Sadr City) and one mixed (Hai al-‘Amil).

This sound a lot like one of the counterinsurgency plans I was advocating four months ago: Go Smart (December 1, 2006). But I would have also added other Sunni neighborhoods and satellite towns such as Hai al-Jami’a, Khadra’, Yarmouk, Ghazalia, Jihad, Mushahdeh, Khan Dhari, Mahmoudiya, Yusufiya, and ‘Arab Jbour.

It doesn’t make sense to close-off Shi’a areas since the biggest danger from these neighborhoods would be death squads aimed at Sunnis; if the Sunni neighborhoods are already secure then there’s no need to close off Sadr City, which would have serious economic ramifications on Baghdad’s economy and services by bottlenecking the movement and circulation of the capital's workforce.

What about death squads aimed at Sunnis in non Sunni (mixed) areas? Or how about demonstrations like the very recent one sponsored by Al Sadr?

An authentic Iraqi voice in the middle

2007-04-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

Via This Fucking War, a new (to me anyhow) Iraqi voice in the middle.

And then a friend came and told me about Sarafiya Bridge - and as I saw the picture of that great strucutre on which I tread upon many days of my life, I just couldn't take it anymore. I'm really afraid of what might happen if structures I really care such as Imam Ali in Najaf or Abu Haneefa in Adhamiya are destroyed, now I can understand how Shiites felt when al-Askari was destoryed, it's horrible, just horrible i tell you, I pictured myself wearning the same armed belt, the same grenades and going around here to find where the fuck does that sick fuck Harith al-Dhari lives so I can just give him the taste of his medicine once and FOR ALL. What use is us? All we do is just sit around and do nothing as our country is destroyed by those pigs, those monkeys, those apes, Remember why I was so pissed off about that Star Academy bimbo? Because when al-Askari shrine happened I was really optimistic about the Sunnis and Shiite finally proving to the world that it doesn't matter like I always thought it doesn't, I was optimistic about all the joint prayers and I cursed fellow bloggers but then again I was proven how little do I know! So when I watched those 7 million asses voting and lauding it as some big deal I get a serene sense of Deja Vu, Fuck you Shada Hasson

Iraqi Parliment bombing roundup

2007-04-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

This roundup on the Iraqi Parliment bombing comes with a hat tip to Avedon Carol of The Sideshow who showed us how roundups are done, and Technorati which made it possible. This is my first roundup, pardon the plaster please. I'm sure the majority of blogging on this subject hasn't been finished yet, and better and more thorough roundups will follow. The early bird may get the worm, but the early worm gets eaten. I've used Technorati to make sure I catch posts by new blogs I haven't seen yet - but some of the big blogs have probably posted things that Technorati hasn't spidered yet.

Time Bandit thinks we have a civil war because we went in without a plan. Connecticut Bob looks cynically at Joe Lieberman's talk of improving circumstances in Iraq. America's North Shore Journal just links to CNN, and cautions us to take early reports with a grain of salt. Brain, Symbol, Experience has a vivid picture of a major bridge bombed at the same time. The Democratic Daily says ironically that the surge is working, and asks if McCain wants to go for another walk. The San Francisco Journal fears a downward spiral. Thoughts of an Average Woman has some sarcastic thoughts about people who've been telling us how things are getting better. Open Diary reminds us this is supposed to be the most heavily guarded part of Bagdad.

I suspect my Technorati search for 'Iraqi Parliment' didn't catch everything. The first few links all referred to the recent bombing, then they were about the oil law and other events involving the Iraqi Parliment.

Crowdsourcing Deluxe - real services for play money

2007-04-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

It's illegal to print money - even if you don't disguise it as government currency. That's why casino's can't accept each others chips - before you know it they would be competing with the Federal Reserve.

How about Blogshares? On one level it's a casual web browser game. You can buy and sell shares of blogs as if they were companies. The number of links from other blogs and recent blogshare buying and selling both figure into the price. One way to make an (imaginary) profit is to figure out which blogs will be growing in the near future - before other players do. It's a casual web browser game though, and you can make a profit easier than that. Buy a big block of almost any blog 'stock', then make smaller purchases over time. Then sell it all. Unless you pick a blog with a high P.E. (basically an overpriced blog, since there's no real earnings, just a measure of the number of links) you'll make a profit, since it goes up each time you buy. After you sell it all as a block, better pick a different blog stock - it didn't go all the way down.

This may sound easy, but it can be compulsive - and plenty of browser based games are no more complex than that and still get many players. Anyhow, there's much more to the game than that - if you want to be one of the top players. You can earn chips and karma by voting to characterize blogs by 'industry' - that is, political blog, science blog, business blog, craft blog, education blog ect. There is more than one level (liberal and conservative political blogs). You can earn sigma and chips by looking for inactive and deleted blogs. The end result is that if you want a list of active liberal (or conservative) blogs, blogshares is one of the best places to go. Unlike other blog directories, they don't rely on bloggers to register their own blogs - they use spiders, and players have incentives to find new blogs - and categorize old ones. Bloggers also have no incentive to delete their own inactive blog from a directory when they lose interest in it.

Blogshares cash (B$), chips, karma, and sigma all cost the game owners nothing. The game seems to be a labor of love, supported in part by donations. For a few dollars a month you get unlimited trading and other advantages. Oh yes, they also sell advertising for cash to google and others. Even if they need volunteers to keep going, there's potential here - getting people to do real work for imaginary money. This seems to go one better for the Mechanical Turk model of crowdsourcing.

The blog index without the game can be found at QuackTrack.

Adsense nonsense

2007-04-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

I was hoping adsense was just showing me the public service ads because advertisers didn't want to pay to advertise to the owner of the page displaying them, but apparently not.

Light blogging ahead

2007-04-11T04:05:00.000-07:00

My wife is getting ready for an operation - a minor one but she's very nervous. The weather is turning beautiful around here and getting out a bit might be good for both of us. Blogging may be light the next few days.

Milestones for bloggers

2007-04-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

A link from one of the bigger bloggers in no substitute for creating something that will keep people coming back on their own, but it sure is encouraging. My link to a Welcome to Pottersville post quoted three short paragraphs, just enough to encourage people to click through - supposing I had any readers who hadn't read it. Fortunately jurassicpork is successful enough not to begrudge me the link from BuzzFlash, which I assume they gave to me because Welcome to Pottersville's whole point was to encourage new bloggers.

Thanks again to both of them!

Help for smaller bloggers like me

2007-04-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

Vie Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, I found a great post on blogging from Welcome To Pottersville.

2) You ever heard of Buzzflash? Cursor.org? Send them your best stuff, see if they bite. It took me about a year before I started getting linked regularly on Buzzflash (although 8 times out of 10 it's to a NY Times op-ed piece that I drag from behind the firewall) but more and more they link to me for my stuff. God only knows who goes to Buzzflash but the sheer number is staggering and you never know who it is. They have a separate site called Buzzflash.net (near the top of the .com index page, on the right) for the express purpose of whoring your own posts and sometimes, without having to email the Buzzflash editors directly, they'll pick up on something on the .net site and link to it.

3) Email journalists, let them know what you think about a story they’ve written (and actually read it: Writers hate it when you pretend to read something they’d slaved over just to suck up to them when you betray that you really didn’t. I get that all the time, or, even worse, when I get flamed for something that Frank Rich wrote) and make sure your URL is in the tagline of your email. Max Blumenthal linked to me on The Nation last month on his own. So serendipity and sheer, dumb luck also plays a part.

4) Without sucking up the A listers, as I've patently refused to do since I set up Pottersville late last June, continue whoring your blog in the comments section. If the webmasters get pissed off at you, tough shit. Whales collect barnacles. If they ban you, they ban you and you’re really no worse off since they were never paying any attention to you, anyway (Interesting fact: The more blogs from which I get banned, the higher my readership gets. I cannot understand it, myself but it’s a fact. Every month without exception that Pottersville’s been up has been better than the last in terms of hits, sessions, page views, etc). However, I wouldn’t recommend this tactic if you’re just starting out. It sucks to be banned, especially if you’re not given a reason as to why.

2007-04-08T05:50:00.000-07:00

I'm what they call a late adapter. I'm just starting to use google feedreader.

2007-04-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've been reading about Blogroll Amnesty day (If you're one of the few blog readers who hasn't heard about it, there are some links an my sidebar. I've been thinking about my own linking policy.

I'm going to try to build a sidebar of great blogs that might actually be useful to people looking for blogs they haven't subscribed to yet.

I will almost always do reciprocal links with active blogs. There would have to be something about a blog I very much disliked for me not to link to them after they linked to me. This is true even if I'm on a huge sidebar, provided it's on your front page.

I'll do linkers one better. I'll actually read your blog sometimes after linking, and I'll link to posts I find especially interesting, and move a blog out of the generic liberal and conservative category when I find something more notable about it. I don't read every blog every day, so you could always e-mail me a link to a specific post.

I hope someday I'll have enough traffic that I won't have time to add everyone who links to me to my sidebar. I'll put up a reciprocal linking widget then, but I'll try to look at as many of them as I can.

2007-04-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

One inch forward, ten feet backward.

Bush has gone from distancing himself from measures of global warming to trying to make pacts with Brazil and China to share technology. As many pointed out gleefully when Gore tried it, such carbon offsets mean little with no cap and trade system in place - but he was no longer ignoring the problem.

The National Review Online was kind enough to print a transcript of a Fred Thompson radio broadcast, so we know what we'll get if the Republicans nominate and get him elected.

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

He doesn't actually say none are cooling - or give a percentage. Never mind that. The best way to decide if solar radiation is causing warming is probably to observe the sun. Gristmill is an environmental site - but they include links to the original research.

This is a job for satellites. According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978, when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has not changed.

There has been work done reconstructing the solar irradiance record over the last century, before satellites were available. According to the Max Planck Institute, where this work is being done, there has been no increase in solar irradiance since around 1940. This reconstruction does show an increase in the first part of the 20th century, which coincides with the warming from around 1900 until the 1940s. It's not enough to explain all the warming from those years, but it is responsible for a large portion. See this chart of observed temperature, modeled temperature, and variations in the major forcings that contributed to 20th century climate.

Now let's ask - suppose we keep increasing our production of greenhouse gases - and the sun begins to warm again. Meanwhile, tell me if you find an alternative reading of these two sets of data from global warming 'skeptics', or if they merely repeat that the sun has warmed over much longer periods.

2007-04-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

The Sideshow links to the latest round of questions about who or what Petraeus met with. If it's really true that some Republicans voted for the surge but demand progress by August, it seems to me the worst of both worlds. Petraues has already said that the surge can only buy time for the Iraqi government to deal with the Sunni's. How long will it take them to get started - and how long before results begin to show?

There's a danger people who believe in the war will feel obligated to pretend every temporary dip in the violence is permanent progress, even if they know troops have been moved around, making things better in some areas but worse in others. Like the surge - Petraeus said it will only buy time, but so many Republicans seem to want to pretend it represents real progress ... setting Americans up for more disillusionment.

2007-04-04T14:37:00.000-07:00

Good news (Reuters) via Iraqi Mojo!

Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Spokesman denies reports on Iraq cleric views on law

Spokesman denies reports on Iraq cleric views on law (Thanks Maury)

BAGHDAD, April 4 (Reuters) - A spokesman for Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric denied reports that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had rejected a new draft law that would allow many former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to regain state jobs.