talkers versus walkers

  Jay Nordlinger makes a point with which I agree: Obama is clearly the better debater.

This point came home to me when Obama used the phrase, "you can't just talk the talk you have to walk the walk." it struck me at the time there was an unfortunate phrase for Obama to use in the context of foreign-policy,  particularly when the discussion is about defending your friends from aggressive enemies. Surely, in that context,  "walking the walk" can only mean willingness to use military force -- a matter which can hardly make Obama comfortable.

But it seems to me that the point is larger than that. In thinking about Obama, his whole life seems to be a case of not living up to  That motto. indeed his whole life can be seen as a mockery of it, a mockery of his own motto. He talks about the sacredness of public financing and then becomes the first candidate to abandon the system, he talks about integrity and openness and rack up $1 million in earmarks for every one of the relatively few days he spent in the Senate. But even more than that, his whole life is based on talk; the question of accomplishment brings embarrassed mumbles even from his most passionate supporters.  he has ridden on words  to the heights of power  with barely in accomplishment to his name.

And most of what little he has done in his life is declared out of bounds for discussion by our political class.  We are not allowed to talk about his time with the Annenberg foundation as its chair since that would associate him with Roger Ayres, the unrepentant terrorist. We cannot talk about how the foundations spent its money under his direction for the same reason. Nor are we allowed to discuss the public-private partnership  (Fannie and Freddie Chicago style) he initiated with his property developing friends Tony Rezko & Co. (with whose help  he also bought his Hyde Park mansion) because that would associate him with a  known felon.  "Obama is not a felon. He disapproves of felonies. You are practicing McCarthyism." Substitute for   "felon," "terrorist," "slumlord," and you have the verbal magic wand which  wipes away the anointed one's past.  he has done little worth talking about and less you are allowed to. When it comes to "walking the walk," Obama  Let's his mouth to the running.

McCain, on the other hand, is uncomfortable in the world words.  He is a stranger there. His life has been almost totally lived in the world of action. As he asks nothing of words but that they reflect his deeds, he has little skill in manipulating them. They do not do his bidding. Confronted with the words of a man who uses them to avoid actions, to hide from making decisions, he is at a loss. He smiles nervously and looks around, as if to say "it just me, or am I really hearing this?"   when McCain makes mistakes it is painful to him. He admits them and apologize for them. He even tries to atone for them period witnessed his -- in my opinion misguided -- crusade for public financing of elections. Some Democrats have tried to make a point of the fact that 25 years earlier at the beginning of his Senate career McCain was caught up in the Keating five scandal.  They say, "McCain paints himself as a crusader for campaign finance reform, but he was in that scandal. This misses the point.  it is precisely because of that mistake 25 years ago that McCain has devoted his career to the cause of public finance. With Obama the order of action is reversed. He spends years talking about how important campaign finance reform is, and in his first major act, strikes a major blow against the system.

Obama has always "traveled on his tongue."  words have got him everywhere, accounted for his every  advance. Words got him his first job in politics. Pledging loyalty to his mentor as she prepared to make a bid for Congress, he was given his first  office. When she, relying on his words asked for the office back, his actions betrayed her. When she ran against him he used words again. Not the soaring rhetoric we are used to hearing, but the cold language  of law. He put his legal training to good use and got her and three other opponents disqualified. That was his first act of service to his constituents, saving them and the possibility of confusion on election Day -- his was the only name on the ballot. Public interest lawyering meets Chicago politics.

 "... Slippery vocables,  they beckon like a path of stepping stones. But lift them up and watch what writhes or scurries."

When Obama makes mistake he takes it not as a chance to apologize, much less atone, but as a challenge to his  verbal virtuosity.  The one occasion where McCain was able to deconstruct one of Obama's verbal smokescreens in real time, was when the Obama tried to pass off his  pledge  to meet  a roster of the world's worst dictators "without preconditions" as merely referring to "preparations." But by and large, most of the contradictions between Obama's words and deeds or, what is even more important, his words and his interests, are passed off as a confusion in the  part of the listener. he didn't just do the exact opposite of what he has been saying for years, you just misunderstood him.  "Just words?" Precisely.

McCain's life is a list of actions. He has said little that is memorable, done much that is. Obama... Does one even need to finish this sentence?

how in the tank are they?

 Commentary blogger Noah Pollak looks at the discrepancy between CNN's headlines and their polling numbers. while the headline says "Obama wins," the numbers, after controlling for the proportion of Democrats to Republicans who tuned into the debate, say it was a tie. Though the topline number -- 51- 38 Obama -- looks bad for McCain, reading down in the story we find that most of that is due to the greater numbers of Democrats who watched the debate in the first place -- 41-27.

Now to be fair, causality might go in a different direction. People might be more inclined to identify themselves as Democrats after having watched a debate where the Democrat, in their opinion, won. Moreover, there has been a secular increase in the proportion of Democrats compared Republicans in the electorate as a whole underway for some time. Still, CNN seems to, at the very least, have chosen to interpret their data  in the way most favorable Obama. This is important: these so-called "spiral of silence" or, as social scientists are not inclined to permit, "social desirability bias," has a tremendous effect on how the electorate as a whole perceives these debates.

the dabate continued

McCain has a good line: my opponent has the most liberal voting record in the Senate. It is hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left. His opponent, graciously, laughs at the quip.

So far the only laughter from McCain has been nervous laughter.

The great flaw in McCain’s whole gambit on the bailout package was that McCain never had a policy disagreement with Mr. Bush.

McCain spending freeze is answered with what about early childhood education? Of course we have been shoveling money at these useless programs for years but who wants to be against children? Certainly not John McCain.

Strange thing about this debate is that McCain keeps changing the subject. The reason you keep changing the subject is that McCain can’t challenge Obama in his own terms.

 Obama mentions  that Roosevelt purchased a lot of mortgages and in the end the government made money on it. Why doesn’t McCain seize on this? Why are we giving money to banks? Roosevelt gave money to people.

Obama challenged McCain spending argument by saying that under the McCain Bush administration spending has gone up and McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time. What is McCain’s answer? His answer is general, not specific his answers that he opposed Bush on a lot of things. That is true. But it is not directly answer the question why did spending go up so quickly under Bush? How would’ve been different if McCain had been president?

 The war. McCain outlines his support of the surge. His argument is clear enough.

Obama changes the question. Should we have fought the war in the first place? His argument is that we took our eye off the ball. Obama positions himself as not against military force but against using it unwisely. To a person without strong convictions on this question his argument seems quite reasonable.

McCain largely ignores a llama’s argument and goes back to talking about the   surge.

 All bomb a now directly answers McCain’s argument. It’s a decent argument he says yes the surge worked. It was a solution to a problem that we had caused. McCain refuses to look at Obama when he is being addressed and looks pathetic and weak.

McCain talks about reaching out to the opposition. But he doesn’t look at the other guy when he’s talking to him. If you want to say you’re the guy who can reach out to the other side you might show the courage to make eye contact.

Obama even has a beautiful answer for voting against the troops, McCain lacks the mental agility to answer it.

 Obama says that we should have stayed in Afghanistan and had more troops there.

Finally McCain directly answers an argument. McCain says that General Petraeus and Osama bin Laden agree on one thing, that Iraqi is the central front in the war. Not Afghanistan. That is a good answer. Unfortunately, McCain does not expand on why it is the central front in the war.

 I liked McCain’s counterpunch, saying that if you are so concerned about Afghanistan why didn’t you ever go there? Why didn’t your subcommittee ever have a hearing on the subject?


McCain gave his moving speech about Lebanon. But he didn’t mention that the group that killed the Marines in Lebanon was back and indeed created by Iran.

He makes this pitch about a league of democracies. Doesn’t that put the ball, or the game, on the opponents preferred field? Depending on our so-called friends in the world. Isn’t McCain’s argument that the Iranians won’t do anything until they believe the threat of military force is real? “Act with our friends and allies” is not a winner for McCain against a man that draws legions of foreign admirers.

Though one counters that we need Russia and China, even though they are not democracies. Then he comes back to his “not talking to someone we are punishing them” thinking is a mistake argument,  and says he will engage in tough negotiation. What makes the negotiation tough? Only what you threaten to do if the negotiation doesn’t work. What does Obama threatened to do with the negotiation doesn’t work? Well….

McCain comes out with Obama’s remark somewhere in ancient history about being willing to negotiate without precondition. Obama slides away from this blow with ease. Negotiate without precondition becomes “I reserve the right to me with anyone if I think preserve American security.” Presidential negotiation becomes having direct contacts. Obama even says the negotiations may not work.

He says that by negotiating with them we will strengthen our ability to form new alliances. Of course the exact opposite is also true. If we if we had negotiated with them alone and the negotiations broke down, our so-called allies would merely say well if only we cleaver Europeans had been involved. The fruit of McCain’s inability to make this argument is that he will not take it to its logical conclusion. Obama is correct, these differences in how to negotiate are essentially tactical. The real difference is what are we willing to do if negotiations don’t work; it is because no one is not willing to use military force that negotiations are doomed to not work.

McCain answers Obama’s argument by trying to hold him to his statement in the debate of almost a year ago. McCain does make a good point about how the President negotiating with someone legitimizes them. McCain gets the South Koreans are 3 inches taller number wrong. As I recall it’s much more than 3 inches.  The number I recall was 12 inches.

McCain looks weak because he is not willing to look at Obama. Why is he not willing to? Because he can’t be drawn into a direct argument.

A now McCain is trying to argue. He has figured out that Obama is parsing words. He realizes that Obama is changing “without preconditions” to “preparations.” That is a decent moment for him and it is the one time he actually looks Obama.

McCain shows off his ability to pronounce weird foreign names in discussing Russia and Georgia.

Obama defends his initial reaction to the Russian invasion. Said I called it wrong and illegal. This is a strong reaction for Obama. Obama says that I warned the president that we have Russian peacekeepers in south Georgia. That makes no sense. We should get an international envoy and international peacekeepers. Why didn’t anybody think of that before? I suppose the reason that there are Russian peacekeepers there is because, well, it didn’t occur to anyone to ask someone else to do it. What a pity that the woman was not on hand with this statement was made but was it a mistake? Of course not. There are Russian peacekeepers there because the Russians are willing to fight and kill and die for something. the Russians are there because the Russians are willing to use force. They demanded to be there.  The Russians are there because the Russians consider using force a part of diplomacy. They do not, like Obama, consider sending an envoy a strong reaction.

Obama used the phrase walk the walk and talk the talk in relation to the Georgia Russia situation. Should he really use that phrase? Doesn’t walking the walk in defending allies from aggression entailed using force?

“What I’ve said is that we have to store nuclear wastes safely?” Oh, another great idea. Why didn’t we think of that? My plan was to put in mason jars and back of my grandmothers house. How fortunate that Obama came along and told us of the folly of our ways.

McCain says I know our allies and I can work more closely with them. Is that a good argument for him to make? One of the creepiest things about Obama is how much foreigners like him. One of McCain’s strongest ads was criticizing the one for his popularity among four. By talking about how popular he is with foreigners he undermines his own argument, saying that it is not a bad thing and that it is not in fact true that Obama is popular with foreigners.

 Obama calls for more spending on nuclear proliferation. There is no problem to which Obama does not propose spending more money as the solution.

Obama takes the opening given to him by McCain, graciously complements McCain on his opposition to torture, and then goes on to rhapsodize about the importance of being liked by foreigners.

McCain talks about Obama’s dangerous plan for having a specific date for withdrawal. You know what I think is the weakness of this argument? Obama doesn’t really even believe his own plan for one will not be held to that date, if he decides it would be a bad idea to leave that quote the date, then he will talk his way out of it.

Obama makes the “Al Qaeda is resurgent,” and became has not so far answered it. Al Qaeda is resurgent in Pakistan. But it is and how he did in Iraq. And it is doubly hated in Afghanistan.

No one talks about a broader strategic vision. McCain does not have a broader strategic vision. He has a broader feeling, he has deeper commitments, and convictions. But he does not have a clear argument. He has a deep belief that this is a dangerous world with bad people and it, and that you deal with them through strength and credible threats of force. That you deal with your enemies by standing by your friends.  He is right. But he does not have the mental flexibility to make that argument. Sadly, he only has the character.  His problem is that he does walk the walk, it is the talk that trips him up.

Obama says that our standing in the world has gone down, but the way children world looked the United States is changed. Why doesn’t McCain say, yeah, asked the kids in Iraq how they feel about American soldiers. McCain doesn’t have the flexibility to make an argument in real time. He answers with one of his canned but good stories.

live blogging debate

 I'm watching the debate from a live streaming broadcast from the debate organization itself. This will be my first attempt at live blogging and my first attempt at blogging using the Mac Dictate program.

  the first debate is supposed to be about  the form policy, but the global financial crisis as overtaken that. Somehow through the magic of optics they appear to have found a way to make John McCain look almost as tall as obama.
 
   the root problem problem is foreclosures are taking place all across the country. in the root problem is deregulation and trickle-down economics from the Bush McCain administration.

 Albano looks the Camera McCain looks at Jim.  That, and his beginning with a note of concern for Senator Kennedy, reinforces the old fashioned this McCain.

Unfortunately instead of placing the blame where it really is, he goes into his old blather about bipartisanship and getting beyond party. The problem is that there has been a  bipartisan consensus of elites  to subsidize mortgages and bailout Wall Street.

It's strange that McCain ends his curiously rambling description of the problem by talking about ending our dependence on foreign oil. Clearly he is not going to try to blame the Democrats for these subprime lending us which is at the root of the problem. That is too bad. All bomb has to do is say this occurred while Bush McCain was president.  even he blames all my regulation is always bad philosophy.

McCain calls at corporate greed. But it is not corporate greed it is corporate greed backed by an implicit government guarantee. That implicit guarantee was designed and supported by the Democrats.

McCain's accountability   argument turns back on himself.

McCain has to point out that Wall Street didn't get in trouble in other areas the only trouble is in the housing market wiser trouble in the housing market and not in other areas of Wall Street finances because the government got involved in the housing market.  a

McCain will lose this debate unless he comes with a counterargument. I'll vomit has a story deregulation and the Bush McCain organization. McCain counted up let's be bipartisan. That is a loser.

In 13 minutes in and he has not mentioned that Obama is the second largest recipient of funds from the mortgage banking industry.

 win McCain is asked what to do about this is problem, he talks about overall overspending. This gets him to his favorite team of fighting here marks.

  the dominant narrative and immediately resume bomber good McCain has to win this debate,   golden boy merely has to not lose. 

You know you're in over your head when...

 Here is a really smart guy admitting that he has no idea what Paulson is doing. When a professor of finance from Yale who specializes in writing about the housing market and who says he admires you admits he has no idea what your plan involves, you know your plan is too complicated.

asking the wrong questionTab

 In all of the breathless talk about how Sarah Palin really didn't kill the bridge to nowhere, we have lost track of the question of who kept the thing alive. It turns out it was, in part, Senators Joe Biden and Barak Obama.   CNN reports that not only did the two Washington Senators voted repeatedly to keep  bridge alive, Democrats in the governor's own state of Alaska made an issue of her killing it. Perhaps the next time the Democrats start mocking the governor for her supposedly false claim they include the Democratic Party of Alaska among the objects of their derision.

Mr. Smooth

It is really striking how the Obama campaign has misfired. They just seem to keep misfiring.  But the attack on McCain's computer use seems the most egregious thing so far.  How could you bring up something so low?  To make an ad about how he can't use a computer when the explanation is that he can't use a computer keyboard for the same reason he can't comb his hair or tie his shoes--years of torture by the North Vietnamese.  Why would you ever give your opponent an opening like that?  Don't those guys over at the Obama campaign know about the internet?  Instapundit.com links to all the ways this is a daft ad.

Still, I could be wrong.  Unlike the lipstick-pig thing this one has not gotten out on the MSM.  I don't know why.  It seems a natural story. 

Revisionist Admiration

I think this post by Tom Bevan is closest to my take on the "lipstick-pig" controversy. Bevan adds the important point that however the remark might have reasonably been taken it is clear how his audience took it. When we talk about the way we want our politics to sound that is about the ugliest thing I could imagine. I seem to be an outlier in taking meanings from how people put things. A politician should be judged on the meaning a reasonable person in his society would take something. On that test Obama is clearly in the wrong. There is another point, this one made by Bevan and one that had not occurred to me, that McCain would be the first to apologize for a word or phrase that could be taken as a racial slur, quite apart from how he himself meant it. Who has, after all, been marching around demanding that we all watch what we say and taking the worst possible meaning out of every utterance? Good on them.

I hate agreeing with Obama

Much as I hate to admit it, I cannot seriously believe that anyone actually thinks the "lipstick on a pig" remark was actually directed at Governor Palin. Even the arguments that he should have known better, should have known how it would be interpreted posit a culture where every remark is given its worst possible construal. Is that a good thing? Is it what conservatives stand for? Didn't we say during the Lott affair that it was wrong to read so much into a remark. What kind of political culture do we end up with if we give everyone an incentive to search out insults in every analogy or casual remark? Hardly one that promotes free and open debate.

McCain and the Surge

Here is a vigorous defense of McCain's claim that it was his support for the surge that almost killed his candidacy, a claim labeled as "bogus" by Mickey Kaus.

Not very reassuring

Obama's argument: Vote for me, I couldn't take away your guns even if I wanted to. There aren't enough votes for it in Congress. Not because it is against the Constitution, which after all, only means what the other smart people like me that went to Harvard think it means, and certainly not because it would be wrong. Just because there are too many people in Congress that wouldn't vote for it. Isn't that an argument for not voting for people that, well, think like Obama? Yes, he is a seasoned professional alright.

What is worse are the arguments for keeping guns. "Traditions of sportsmanship," etc., are so condescending. You could have a bit more confidence that gun rights were secure with him if he could give a serious reason for those rights.

What Did They Expcet?

One of the things that is so strange to me about the Sarah Palin coverage is the idea that social conservatives would be upset about her teenage daughter's pregnancy. It is rather depressing that there is such a gulf of feeling and sentiment that one side can so mistake the reactions of the other to an issue. Did people actually believe that conservatives would be demanding she be removed from the ticket or something? And what did they expect the McCain team to do, put out a press release about the woman's daughter? How weird would that have been?

One thing is rather self-serving about the surprise the MSM is expressing about the conservative lack of reaction--it feeds into their meme about the improper vetting of Palin by the McCain team. They can't just take the natural and obvious explanation that McCain didn't care (and what a monster he would have been portrayed as if it had gotten out that he was upset about it or even nixed her candidacy over it) but instead has to be evidence of his failure to do due diligence. What was he supposed to have done or said about it? Was he supposed to have announced the kid's problems? Denounced them? Is it fair or even reasonable to call his indifference to the situation a mistake if his having done anything else would have been denounced as an even worse failing? Either way the MSM are going to find a fault with the conservative. And imagine if this had been a liberal's daughter in this situation. When liberal John Edwards has a child out of wedlock and is caught meeting the mother in a motel room forcing him to hide in a bathroom it is a non-story but when the opportunity to smear a conservative comes up the creeps have a field day. It is just creepy.

Another interesting point that Cook brings out is that reporters are treating her as an unworthy choice in part because they had been treating her as an unworthy choice. This would not have happened with Pawlenty even though objectively he is about the same on experience and Palin simply because they had been talking about him as a contender.

Obama on Palin

Obama (quoted at the end of this article) shows much better sense in dealing with the Palin nomination than some of the people on his side. Sneering at motherhood and small towns is not smart politics. Still, it is hard to miss the way he slides away from the question of whether she has as much or more executive experience than he does, instead treating it as a question about Biden's qualifications. After all, Obama's presidential hopes were launched on a good speech and a few years in the legislature. If Palin compares reasonably favorably in terms of experience to Obama now think how the comparison would have gone four years ago when Obama first was talked about as a presidential contender, or when he first launched his own candidacy.

Setting the Record Straight

Great report from Michael Totten setting the record straight on Georgia. The Russians attacked first and had planned to all along. It was quick action in cutting off the Russian advance on the 7th by Georgian paratroopers that prevented the Russians from cutting the country in half and taking control of the oil pipeline.

You Mean Things are getting Better?

Bad news for environmentalists: things are getting better and have been for some time. In fact, samples from Greenland ice show that pollution is at lower levels now than at the turn of the twentieth century. It is almost at if technology and economic growth make things--what is the word--better?

The rights of the accused?

We hear a great deal about the rights of the accused when the accused are terrorists and murders, what about when they are Marines? When the charges against them are shown to be false and dropped do those who convicted them in public statements, comparing them to the culprits at Mai Lay calling for resignations all around owe the accused an apology when their charges are shown to be false?

Solzhenitsyn's Death

It is so odd. I was just in the book store thinking about buying a copy of the abridged Gulag Archipelago. We have the full three volume work at home in Chicago but of course I never got through it. I remember long ago trying to read it--I think I was still in college--and being struck by how many words I had to look up in the course of reading it. He used so many words that have only obscure English language equivalents. I remember the word "metastasis" and being so surprised that he had used a technical medical word that I thought no one would ever be expected to know. Of course once I knew it I heard it all the time. I don't know if that is because I started to be sensitive to it or because Solzhenitsyn's work itself made it more popular.

As I was reading today I was struck by how he always used metaphors to make his writing come alive. The metaphors would be drawn out for pages at a time. The archipelago metaphor is kept through the whole book and used over and over again to pull out new shades of meaning. Each phase of the purge is a new wave. Each group that gets targeted is a new river. A person caught in it is a single drop. One of the metaphors was only a paragraph. The purge was like an epidemic sweeping through a neighborhood. Like an epidemic it spread through casual contact, a hand shake or a chance meeting. If you were destined to 'confess' tomorrow and we had by chance exchanged words today, then I, too, am doomed.

Congress vs. Iraqi Government

Good suggested one liner from NR writer Kathryn Jean Lopez. The Iraqi government's rate of getting things done has compared favorably with that of the US Congress for sometime now. Think what the headlines would be if Maliki had shut out the lights on Iraqi legislators who were asking for a vote on a major national problem.

This brings up something that has long been striking to me: the contempt that many in the media and others who have opposed the war in Iraq have shown for the efforts of the Iraqis to institute a democracy. It is really quite shocking sometimes when one catches the tone of dismissive disbelief at the idea the Iraqis are capable of democracy. The partisan incentive to do so may be obvious enough, but it is still rather extraordinary to hear people that in large part seem to define their sense of political virtue by their opposition to racism and political inequality to be so openly contemptuous of a third world country's attempts at setting up democratic institutions.

It is one thing to say before the fact that setting up a democracy "at gunpoint" in a third world country is unlikely to succeed or at least may not be worth the cost, quite another to be openly contemptuous of the people that are trying to make it succeed and are risking their lives to do so. They sound like Winston Churchill snorting scorn on the idea that the Indians could conduct a democracy. In Churchill's case, though, the alternative to Indian liberal government was equally or perhaps more liberal (or at least competent, non-genocidal) government at the hands of the British. And, moreover, once the battle had been lost from his perspective and the Indians were in charge he didn't try to undermine the exercise.

What about Your supporters?

So, the blessed one has deigned to absolve McCain of the charge of racism with dumb and dumber ad. But wait. Obama never accused McCain of racism or dirty campaigning, just the people around him. That is why Obama made the painful decision to not take public financing. He had to have the extra funds in order to fend off the low attacks from McCain's friends. If we are holding our opponents responsible for the words and actions of their friends and supporters (and we seem to do little else these days) shouldn't Obama have to call off his friends? The bloggoshere if full of Obama-ites complaining about McCain's cleaver use of the race card. Isn't it incumbent on Obama to denounce them or be considered as having the same views?

Instead, he says of McCain's campaign:

"I think they're cynical," he said. "And I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues."

But surely, the Obama campaign's lack of substance is a legitimate issue?
If Obama has conceded that the ad isn't racist then doesn't he have to accept that the ad's point is what the McCain camp says it is? An attempt to argue that the Obama campaign is a series of empty platitudes and breathlessly related biographic details about the candidate himself. A man who has written not one piece of important legislation but has found time to write his auto biography twice before the age of 50 perhaps should not be surprised that people are questioning his substance. How many times did he think he could get away with starring significantly into his teleprompter and telling us that "this is the moment" for "change we can believe in" and "I have always said that.....," just before going on to explain why the position that appears diametrically opposed to the one he had been espousing just a few minutes ago is really no different from the one he is embracing now. denouncing n eomr ot the emn

MSM: See no stumble, hear no stumble

"Rob" at Pajamas Media records a few of the rhetorical stumbles of the Obamassiah that the Mass Media have not deemed worthy of mention. The analysis of why the Iraq war is causing a shortage of translators in Afghanistan is priceless and, it must be admitted, inarguable. After all, a translator you send to France can't be sent to China, though why you want to do so is left obscure by the great explainer. Merci, oh citizen of the world.

Count Down to Adventure

Well, the big day is almost here. Gill is leaving today from Japan and I am leaving on Tuesday. I still have to buy my ticket for the Kyrgyzstan leg of the journey but I am not anticipating any problems. Well, nothing beyond the problem of it being inordinately expensive and incredibly inconvenient.

Once we are in Kabul we have a couple of meetings set up at colleges and one at the State department. We are also going to hang out at some English classes. Our hope is that we can get enough paper surveys done in country to have a decent sample.

I finally got my visa today. It was quite a story. I had thought that I would be able to get it overnight. I sent it and called and asked if they were processing the visa and the guys asked me how much money I had paid. I know, it was just a practical way of asking how fast I had paid to have it processes, still, it was not the most confidence inspiring answer.

He rummaged around and found it and said he would have it out that night. It was actually the next day that it was sent. It came to the UPS store. When I went to the store to get it the kid working the counter--who was not the regular guy who does this--had to rummage around the store for 5 minutes, during which time I was thinking, "Well, between Afghanistan and Mississippi you knew someone would lose it."

I am really excited about the project. Even though we are behind and all I think we have such an exciting idea and such an interesting situation that we can't really go wrong.

Our project is to assess the impact of higher education on Democracy in Central Asia. Central Asia is a uniquely fluid political situation. One can imagine its future as totalitarian theocracies or beacons of liberal democracy with almost equal ease. One the one hand these countries have almost no experience with democracy and precious little experience with being nation states in the modern sense. On the other hand the loose political confederations that have governed these high planes for most of the last two millennia were, like many tribal societies, governed by surprisingly democratic institutions. For instance, in setting up a democracy in Afghanistan it was not necessary to set up entirely new institutions but only to revive and expand the powers of old ones, such as the Loya Jurga.

The influences that are in play internationally in Central Asia are also uniquely diverse. From being the connecting link to two great civilizations of the East and West to being the central battle ground in 19th Century imperial powers during the pseudo cold war known as "The Great Game," the area has always seemingly been the object of the machinations of greater powers. Today it has gone from being the cross-roads of international trade to being in the cross-fire of international conflict.

Central Asia lies in the fault lines created by the intersection of most of the important powers in international politics. Seeing this requires little more than reciting the countries that border central Asia: Turkey, Iran, Russia, India and China. Add in the major military facilities that have been recently added by the US and the potential for international conflict is obvious. And the great powers have moved to advance their interests in the area.

But more than geography makes CA liable to international conflict. The structure of population in the nations of Central Asia would create the potential for conflict without the intervention of outside powers. Harsh landscapes, weak central governments and colonization have combined to make the nations of CA a mosaic of ethnic groups, languages and cultures. The two nations in which we will conduct our initial studies, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, exemplify this.

Afghanistan, as many Americans have come to know all too well, is made up of four major ethnic groups. The Pashtoons are the largest, making up some 40% of the population. Ethnically they are related to their neighbors in much larger Pakistan. Behind them are the Tajiks--closely related to the Iranians or Persians--are the second largest. They are followed by the more Asiatic Hazzars--apparently related to the Mongols who invaded in the 13th century--and the Uzbeks--a Turkic people.

Next to Kyrgyzstan the Afghanistan looks positively homogeneous. There is no significan Pashtoon presence in Krygyzstan but all the other elements are there with additions. The main group is the Kyrgyz, who are numberically dominant in the population. Thier language is a variant of Turkish (they can pick up Turkish by osmossis though it does not seem to work in the other direction) but in appearance are more like the Mongolians. But there is a very large remnant of peoples from around the former Soviet Union there also. In addition to ethnic Russians there are significant contingents of Koreans, Tartar and Germans. Part of this diversity is due to Stalin's policy of sending populations of questionable loyalty (at least in his mind) to some place far away. Kyrgyzstan is nothing if not far away. At the edge of the Russian and the Chinese Empire; farther back in time at the edge of the Mongolian and the Trukish empires, it is always somehow at the periferry of somewhere.

It is also a very tolerant place, certainly by the standards of the region. This has made it a sort of ideological and identity politics battle ground. Bishkek, the capital, is home to several institutions of higher learning that are backed by different foreign powers as a way of advancing their interests and increasing thier influence.

The American University of Central Asia is the US's entry into the academic version of the Great Game. Backed by the Soros Foundation and the US State Department for its start up funds, it is patterned on an American style liberal arts college and all classes are taught in English. There are other Universities with greater or lesser degrees of government backing and teaching in the language of thier partron country. There is a Russian, Turkish and Kurwaity backed University, as well as the Kyrgyz National University. the European Union backs a graduate school and there is intermittant talk of Kyrgyzstan joining NATO in some way. There is also a strong and growing Chinese presence and many students express a desire to learn Chinese.

The situation in Kyrgyzstan makes a number of identities plausible for the typical citizen. One might think of oneself as an Asian or as an outpost of Anglo-American style democracy. One could think of thier country as primarily Turkic (it is referred to by Turks as "the Motherland"), as part of the Russian cultural sphere or an outpost of Sinic civilization. Of course there is a serious Muslim identity option too.

Democracy and support for the values that under lie it is also often thought to be a by product of higher education. Here we build on a well-trodden path from the beginings of large-scale survey research in the post war era.

Finally, in line with contemporary thinking about liberal arts education in the US, we expect that a liberal arts education backed by a 'liberal' nation should result in greater inclination toward critical thinking. We draw on relatively recent efforts to measure critical thinking as a result of liberal arts education in the academy, especially California's critical thinking initiative.

Our goal on this trip is to try out some of our questions and to build relationships with professors in institutions of higher education in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.

We propose to investigate the effect of these nationally backed institutions on the development of the political orientations of future elites in Central Asia. Roughly speaking, we expect the effects of national backing to be found in four areas: affect, identity, democracy and critical thinking.

The affect hypothessis is straight forward. If you are going to a school that is in part supported by a foreign government you should, on the whole, feel more favorably disposed toward that foreign government. Likewise with identity.

"Tut" go the tutters as the tut-tutting continues

The prize for the most tendentious defense of Obama's racism charge goes to Joan Walsh of Salon.com. Sure Obama was bringing in race, but in a light-hearted, fun-loving way, and besides, after their "scuzzy" attacks on the anointed one for being a light weight what right have they to complain anyway?

Now look who doesn't like stability

It seems like only yesterday that liberals were decrying the instability introduced into the Middle East by the invasion of Iraq. But now that stability seems to have been achieved look who is worried about "confus[ing] stability with US interests." Andy Zelleke and Robert Dujarric argue that the surge has not succeeded by, yet again, raising the bar via re-definition: the real goal of the surge (according to the good doctors) was to build up an anti-Iran coalition, a goal that is not going to be achieved but actually undermined by the success of the Maliki government.

The evidence they offer for this is surprising thin for a Harvard researcher. It seems

Historical animosity between Persians and Arabs, combined with
conflicting national interests, may impede the emergence of a
full-fledged Iran-Iraq axis. Many senior Iraqi Shia leaders spent years
in exile in Iran; and it would be prudent to assume that some of them
have become Iranian agents, whether out of conviction or coercion. It
would also be extraordinary if Iran had not taken advantage of Saddam
Hussein's downfall to infiltrate numerous low-level operatives as well
as senior spies and agents in government, business, the army, and the
clergy into Iraq.

Well, I guess that's it then. We're screwed. I mean, it would extraordinary if we weren't screwed. No way we can beat those clever Iranians. They have agents and stuff.

Odd that this mole-ridden Maliki government just crushed--on its own initiative and against our advice--Iran's proxy Motada al Sadir, but no matter. That was probably just a feint to throw off the neo-cons.

Even if one accepted the "evidence," such as it is, when did success get redefined to mean having an anti-Iran state? If that was the goal Sadaam did nicely. I seem to recall him offing a good million or so Iranians, and if stability gets you down, Sadaam is your go-to guy. Call me one of those neo-con-stability-mongers if you must, but as I recall (from my last vast right wing conspiracy meeting) that the idea was a democratic Iraq whose people busied themselves with trying to make their own lives better rather than pursuing messianic dreams of world domination. On that measure of success the current regime seems set on a course to do reasonably well. Certainly better than the decrepit autocracies that characterized stability in the Middle East for the last 50 years have done. And certainly better than Sadaam Hussein.

Bubble Boy

It is not easy being a Messiah. This Washington Post piece notes that Obama travels in a bubble tighter than that of a President. The contrast with McCain is striking. Add up the hours that Obama has had in the public eye in unscripted events and I suspect the number is astonishingly low, particularly if compared to those of McCain.

It is striking that this has not become part of the story in the mainstream press. Imagine if it were a Republican that was out doing $10,000 a plate lunches and meeting only with audiences pre-screened for adoration or Washington pols while a Republican were out on a bus doing completely open town hall meetings? The stories write themselves. You see the lines of limos outside the private fund raising event while the man of the people comes down among the people to hear their voice. And what is wrong with Mr. GQ that he can't speak without a teleprompter?

Right now the arrogance story line isn't catching on, at least the way the mass media polls it (asking people is he arrogant is not the best way to capture what is likely to be more of a vague uneasiness rather than a all or nothing conviction). But the material is there. How long before the media worm turns? Just one too many line reporters left barking questions while a media big foot gets to do another softball interview and the pent up flood of resentment could break all over the anointed one.

Hard Hitting Interview From Newsweek

Newsweek's in the tank interview with Obama. The hard - hitting verdict? The candidate is not letting adoration shown for him go to his head. No, "gee, changed your mind about the surge?" or, "think you might want to have a few press conferences?" or "No regrets about going to that hospital even if you weren't able to bring your cameras with you?" The troops whose funding he voted to cut off mid-surge, maybe you would want to say that you were wrong, that they were not making the situation worse but better? Maybe want to congratulate General Petreaus rather than lecture him? No.

With journalists like these who needs lackeys?

Jane Hamsher Interviewing Bruce Fein (a black helocopter Republican)

An amazing conversation between these to lawyercrats. They are complaining that people are not up on arms about the Bush administration as very disappointing. People should be outraged. But they don't take this as evidence that the system is working, that people are aware of what was done and have simply concluded that the actions the administration took were, if not justified, at least understandable given the exigent. Being a crytocrat means never having to defer to the judgment of your fellow citizens. Of course they know the real reason why their fellow citizens are not up in arms over what the Bush administration did in the first years after 9/11. The acceptance of the Bush administration's wiretapping policies is evidence of--drum roll please--racism.

One thing that is rather annoying about the conversation is that they never go into the issue of whether FISA's requirement is absolute. After all, the Clinton administration placed wiretaps on Aldrich Ames without going to FISA. Shouldn't he, then, have been impeached?

Points out that about 150,000 people have been murdered since 9/11 and yet no one says we should be at war against murder? Why doesn't someone say we have to suspend the Constitution over that? He also mentions Madison's quote that no society can have peace and perpetual war.

He argues that we can't be at war since we are not fighting a nation state. Since they are not a nation state then we are fighting criminals. Calling them fighters or warriors gives them too much dignity. Then again, calling them criminals is an insult to perfectly respectable criminals.

He argues that the reason the Congress is not impeaching Bush is because they are afraid it will come out that they approved of most of these things at the time they occurred.

Now he calls the war in Afghanistan a folly because these people don't have a "crumb" of democracy in their DNA. Lovely.

If these are problems...

Odd report from the Associated Press on how McCain has spent this difficult week, what with Obama garnering all those great visuals. But go to the bottom of the report and see that the polls are tightening in McCain's favor. With problems like these let Obama have all the successes he wants.

The report excerpts from McCain's hard hitting attack on Obama. The speech offers a telling contrast between McCain and Obama. The thing about McCain's speech is its spare, hard-edged and unadorned nature. There is nothing in it that could be called artful and therein lies a sort of art. There are no empty rhetorical "This is the moment" pieces of fluff. Just one declaration after another. I'm right, he's wrong, this is why. Not a trace of fat or decoration.

Completely backwards

David Broder, the keeper of the conventional wisdom, pronounces Obama's European tour a triumph and in doing so shows how upside down the Washington elite's world view is.

"Suddenly, long-standing Obama policies -- direct talks with Iran and a
16-month timetable for withdrawal -- seemed to be ratified by events."

Sorry, but this is so wrong. The 16-month timetable is ratified by the event of victory, a victory that we would not have if we had listened to Obama. His insistence that the surge had nothing to do with the victory we have achieved over al Qaeda, the Sadirists and the Sunni dead-enders. We have set up a democracy in the heart of the Arab world, a world that has had nothing but thug regimes since the end of the Ottoman Empire, and Obama thinks it is nothing.

Even more oddly, he thinks that the surge was so irrelevant to our success in Iraq that it is urgent we try it in Afghanistan.

And, as bad as the Bush administration cave-in on Iran is, sending a diplomat to sit in on talks with the other six parties on nuclear disarmament is hardly the same as inviting the world's leading holocaust denier to the White House for a can't-we-all-just-get-along sit down.

"He handled the expected question about his meeting with Gen. David
Petraeus by saying he perfectly understood the U.S. commander's
opposition to any timetable that would limit his options, but that as
commander in chief, he, Obama, would weigh Iraq's needs against those
in Afghanistan -- and also the domestic economy.

It was a skillful answer, not rejecting Petraeus' views but asserting Obama's own larger responsibility."

I am not so sure that is how it comes off. Dismissing the advice of a man who has been proven right, a man who is telling you that your decision may cost the lives of American fighting men and women, is perhaps not that smart.

Lecturing the General about the need for more troops in Afghanistan while telling him, in effect, that the additional troops he employed in Iraq were irrelevant to the victory we have achieved may not make as much sense to the man in the street as is does to the man in the capitol. Moreover, a man that so clearly refuses to take responsibility for his own words never looks good asserting his own larger responsibilities. His response to the General's advice is simply underlying the developing story line of Obama's arrogance. Does it look like he is smarter than Petraeus or just that he thinks he is smarter? And doesn't it just look like he is sticking to his line because he is too arrogant to change a previous position? A position which he rather oddly reiterated before setting off on his fact finding mission.

To his credit, Broder admits as much: "On the other hand, his saying there was no way to know what would have
happened in Iraq if the United States had followed his advice to start
the withdrawal of troops two years ago and oppose the "surge" seemed
disingenuous. Obama still has trouble admitting when he is wrong."

But if Obama's troubles are, as Broder says, "mild compared to those of McCain," why doesn't Obama get a bounce out of the trip in the polls? Could it be that what the Washington elites hear as cool wisdom sounds to many Americans like callow self-congratulations?

Disturbing but for the wrong reasons

The FBI posts the top ten myths about itself. The intent is to reassure the public that it is not some sort of sinister spying organization. Some of them are fairly amusing, but I find the top two myths both contradictory and disturbing, though not for the reasons the FBI is worried about.

Myth number 2 is "The FBI has files on every American." The item goes on to claim that they only have a file on individuals suspected of being part of a terrorist organization or of having committed a specific crime. This is followed by number 1: "The FBI can't or shouldn't do intelligence." You can't live up to claim number 2 and still be able to live up to claim number 1. Being an effective intelligence requires having files on innocent people.

The job of a spy is to behave like an innocent person. They do a lot of things that are perfectly innocent in isolation but only reveal themselves as dangerous in connection with other acts. Intelligence investigations are looking for very low probability events that are buried in patterns of innocent interactions.

The problem with that is you can't wait to have a file until you have evidence linking some specific individual to a specific crime if you want to be able to anticipate crimes. An intelligence agency must connect the dots. the "dots" are things that don't mean anything on their own but only acquire their true meaning in relation to a lot of other dots, themselves also meaningless on their own. The dots are people as well as actions, and the dots cannot be collected without some kind of file.

An intelligence agency that promises to not even open a file until they suspect an individual of a crime is promising to always be one step behind.

Like that is a bad thing

Here is what the story line on McCain has come down to this election:

"McCain is now cast as the crabby uncle who visits and shrieks there's
no gin in your house. He grabs the TV remote control, turns off the
cartoons and forces the kids to watch the ancient Mesopotamia special
on The History Channel."

Ok, but without him we might be caught unable to make a martini when James Bond shows up.

Pointing Out the Obvious

It is bazzare that Maliki's request for the withdraw of American troops on "roughly" the Obama time table is being treated as a vindication of Obama's policy. The simple fact is that Obama has been calling for a withdraw in 14-16 months for over a year. If we had followed his advice Iraq would be in chaos. That his proposal is now thinkable if not entirely advisable is a credit to the success of the policy he denounced (the surge). Allowing him to take credit for the success of a policy he fought against is just sickening, and exactly what our news media is going to do. Advocating pulling our armies out of Europe in 1945 is not a vindication of those that wanted to pull them out in 1944.

Humorless Haloed Humbug

He who must be worshiped, or at least not made fun of. Is there anything more noxious to a democracy than a leader that can not be made fun of? Bill Maxwell puts his finger on something disturbing about Obamamania.

Being Right on Iraq

Jame Plunkett is had a story about a politician who got too interested in fancy clothes, a cardinal error in Plunkett's estimation. The story proved the deadliness of the error because one day the young politician was hit by a bus and died.

That is a funny story. we recognize it as funny because of the principle correlation does not equal causation (as well as the post hoc ergo procter hoc fallacy). It is true that the young man's demise followed on his burgeoning obsession with clothes, but there is obviously no causal relation.

The same thing could be said of many of the arguments that the left uses against Iraq. It is true that a lot of bad things have happened since the invasion of Iraq by the US, but the causal mechanisms of those maladies are either unrelated to the ones the left warned us about or at odds with the left's warnings.

Air-Brush Obama

Someone in the mass media finally calls Obama on their habit of changing history. The Los Angles Times reports how the campaign has taken down the candidate's now embarrassing statements about the surge and replaced them with the candidate's current position which is...., well , I have never been able to figure that out exactly.

Bipartisan Greed

Froma Harrop argues that both parties are to blame for the Fannie/Freddie crisis. Her arguments are sound enough but seem to cut more against the Democrats than the Republicans. The case against the Republicans is that if they were really free market ideologues they wouldn't bail them out and that they were responsible for making the hedge funds and derivatives legal.

On the first point, so they aren't ideologues. Thank heavens.

On the second point, it is not the use of futures and hedge funds per se that is the problem but the fact that a "private" firm, headed by Democratic power brokers, was allowed to invest in them while being backed by an implicit government guarantee. No? There doesn't seem to be a great run on private firms--real private firms--that traded in such instruments. The only one that has failed so far, Bear Stearns, has apparently cost the tax payers little and private investors much, precisely as a free market ideologue would want it.

Too Big Not to Fail

A trenchant analysis of the Fannie and Freddie saga from Megan McArdle.

Obama and the cult of perpetual forgiveness

Obama and the media's white guilt complex means never having to say he's sorry.

Multiculturalism You Can Believe In

Diplomat asks for reduced sentence based on cultural differences.

In the countries he was stationed in as a consular official women just have sex at a younger age. (They also apply for visas at a younger age apparently.) You see, having sex with 14 year olds is not especially frowned on in some cultures (nor, supposedly, is filming the encounters for old times sake), so the judge should have a bit of cosmopolitan sympathy in sentencing.

The defendant also claims to have been wrongfully targeted for investigation because of his prominent involvement in nudist organizations. Some Philistines in the FBI somehow associated walking around naked in mixed company with having an abnormal sex-life and the fact that in his case they just happened to have been right is no excuse. The police took these "out of context." maliciously interpreting them in a bad light just because he likes to be naked in front of little girls rather than the proper context of liking to masturbate in the privacy of his own home while looking at pictures of little girls.

All Evidence Points to Global Warming

Glaciers in California are growing, which is evidence for? That's right! Global Warming. Glaciers get smaller--global warming. Glaciers get bigger--global warming. Why don't these global warming skeptics get it?

Change You Have to Write Down--Quick! Before it Changes!

The difference between Obama's flip flops and McCain's are that the latter can be traced to some change in facts, Obama's only to interests. Obama's changes correlate to changes in his audience or bank account.

Profiles in Fatuity

Krauthammer contrasts hard power and soft power in comparing the efforts of Europeans and Columbia in freeing Ingrid Betancourt. Guess which one comes off better? And as always what is the result for us? "The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard--" To help people oppressed by men with guns you need not diplomats or soft power but other men with guns. And the only nation that has them and is ever willing to use them to help others receives for its troubles only scorn.

e tu, Johnne?

Look who has come out against illegal alien felons? That is right, John McCain. Obama is not the only one tacking to the center, though somehow McCain getting tough of foreign felons seems more natural than Obama snuggling up with gun owners.

clipped from sentencing.typepad.com [A]s president, I will expand the Criminal Alien Program. We will require that the federal government assume more of the costs to deport and detain criminal aliens -- because this is a problem of the federal government's own making....

Profiles in Courage

The decline of civilization continues apace.

Post-Soviet Diplomacy

Here is a declassified intelligence report from 1995 where the government is thinking through the concept of deterrence in a post Soviet world. It notes with a remarkable lack of indignation the Soviets' methods of dealing with low level threats by making clear its intention to retaliate in kind. For instance, when Lebanon's civil war started spilling over into taking Russians hostage one of the terrorist leaders got a package with a single testicle from his son. They didn't bother the Russians after that but were otherwise able to carry on their civil war just fine. Why can't we have that kind of creative diplomacy?

Dissembling Fareed

Zakaria's latest offering in Newsweek is advise to the US on who we can catch up with the rest of the world.

As with all these articles it starts out with the warning that we are falling behind the more enlightened powers of Europe, this time on energy policy. But fear not, there is hope.

You see we can do more with wind, geothermal and Solar power--with a little bit more nuclear power.

So far so good, but then he goes on to ignore that Bush and McCain have both come out heavily in favor of nuclear power. Why not mention that? Because Fareed is non-partisan, at least when the content of his policy proposals would force him to admit the Republicans have the better of the policy argument.

He then makes the classic 'rising above mere partisan politics' argument saying,

"...even though American research labs are rising to the challenge, government action remains vital. The idea that government should "stay out" is meaningless. It is in knee-deep already; energy is a highly regulated industry. In fact, it's notable that we have low productivity and runaway inflation in two crucial areas these days—food and fuel. Both have been nationalized, protected or subsidized by governments around the world for decades."

Now that is interesting. On the one hand he starts out by claiming that the old conservative saw of getting the government out of the way of the market is outmoded, government has to be involved and already is. But then, as evidence, he gives examples of two industries where government intervention has caused stagnation. That would seem an argument precisely for getting the government out, would it not?

Then there is this,

"In a recent ranking of countries for environmental performance, jointly
produced by Yale and Columbia universities, the United States came in
39th, well behind every other advanced industrial country. (Germany
ranked 13,
Britain 14 and Japan 21.)"

Now that is strange. The first thing to note about this list is that it is not about the environment people live in but what people do to the environment. On any reckoning of how the people of the US live and how the environment affects our health we come out near the top.

But even if you look at the dread carbon production index, how can Japan be behind anyone in environmental performance? Japan is the most reliant on Nuclear energy and mass transit of any industrialized country. They can only come out badly on a list like this if they are ranked on use of "renewables". Nuclear doesn't count because it is not renewable (at least not the way we use it). So Japan suffers because it doesn't use enough wind or solar.

Now that is nice. Use an index designed to rank you as deficient if you don't use wind and solar to argue that you should use wind and solar. Cute.

Replacing the Towers

Seven years and counting. Of course we are no closer to rebuilding the towers, or building anything for that matter.

If it were a question of accounting the matter would be simple, but here we have a clash of identities, of a value rationality conflict. It is one thing when the conflict is between 100 stories and 80 stories--how about some number in between. But it is quite another when the conflict is over what kind of people we are. One side wants a park and a little museum where the exhibits can cover all of man's inhumanity to man to show that we are no narrow minded and understand that the people who committed these acts are victims themselves. They want a memorial that shows we are not motivated by revenge. The other side wants new office towers with Roman Eagles tearing out the guts of the perpetrators through all eternity as they roast in hell. They want a memorial that shows we will not rest until we are avenged. Whichever side you take, it is clear that the nature of the things at stake makes it difficult to compromise.

Nancy's Foreign Policy

It seems that our Speaker of the House has been carrying on her own foreign policy. Her name just keeps turning up in FARC correspondence as a friend and ally. Shouldn't someone be asking her what she talks about when she meets Chavez?

Keys to the Kingdom

Rod Dreher's review of a book arguing that the GOP's problem with working class voters is that it is economically too conservative. The old "cut taxes" rhetoric is as "stale as anything Mondale said in 1984."

Lawyers and the terrorist that love them

in the wake of the Columbian government's brilliant operation to free the hostages from the FARC, the international lawyers at opinionjuris.org (7/3/08) wonder if the Columbian government hasn't violated international law.

Now given that FARC has violated every international law and tenant of morality imaginable this would not seem to be a particularly burning question. But we are not lawyers. The violation is the rule against perfidy. The government of course claimed to be rebels, and apparently that is against one of the rules (though as far as I knew, it only meant that you were a spy and not entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status if caught. Since those caught by the FARC are either murdered on the spot or used as bargaining chips as their value dictates such protections would be worthless anyway)

The other issue raised is the story the government fed the rebels that they were picking the hostages up to take them to a meeting with some sort of international officials, either the red cross or un people. This, in the lawyers delicate mind, may constitute a violate of the perfidy rule as well. He does raise the important question of whether the Rebels will be willing to deal with the International Organizations in the future as they have in the past.

This consideration, though, should not be a legal question but a policy question. If the FARC cooperates enough with the UN to make its continued cooperation worth it then the ruse might be unacceptably costly to the government. But this is a question of prudence. The UN is not going to enforce these rules against the FARC. Its pronouncements are only ever going to apply to one side, the side trying to protect its citizens from predatory scum. I recall stories of the FARC posing as police. Is the UN going to go after them? If not, isn't the sole effect of the UN to make it ok for the bad guys to use tools to harm the innocent that the good guys cannot use to protect the innocent? The FARC is so far beyond the the law, being nothing anymore but a terror, kidnapping and extortion operation, that they are entitled to no rights from the international community.

The question is does using the ruse involving NGO's or the Red Cross or any other organization going to result in more or fewer hostages being freed with this organization? Whatever level of cooperation has been achieved the author nowhere suggests that it has resulted in any hostages being freed. If not, isn't refusing to use such a ruse to free hostages in order to free hostages tantamount to sentencing them to continued imprisonment without trial? "Without trial"? Look how the language of courts infects my own thinking. With or without trial is besides the point. They are innocent and would remain innocent, guiltless, even if some revolutionary "court" did convict them.

Information contained in Anastasia O'Grady's article in today's WJS suggests another reason that international law types may be worried about the precedent set by using "borrowed" NGO helicopters in the rescue operation: it makes the habitual cooperation between all too obvious to the outside world. She chronicles the cooperation that left-leaning NGO's practice with the FARC, particularly in their reporting of human rights abuses on either side.

The possibility that the NGOs are tacitly aiding the FARC, as would seem to be the case from the way the rebels readily accepted that an NGO would give them the free use of a helicopter, calls into question the neutrality of the NGOs in the first place. If they can effectively be considered as being on the side of the FARC then their use in the scheme becomes an entirely legitimate ruse de guerre.

One striking thing is that the MSM in the US have paid no attention to the international law aspects of the story. A good story with visuals trumps international law without breaking a sweat.

To Sensible to be Practical

Economics 101. Though it is something that should covered in any basic economics course, listening to the rhetoric about oil prices from the two major candidates suggests that some basic principles of economics remain opaque to the body politic.

The reason that oil prices are going up even though there is no mismatch between current supplies and demand is that expectations of future price increases are causing producers to hold supplies off the market. If you had a stock that you believed will be worth twice as much 5 years from now as it is today would you sell it, or would you would hold on to it till you could sell it for a lot more? The same with oil.

People who sell a stock that later goes up drastically in price are called stupid. Oil companies that do the same with their oil are called public spirited. Politicians that demand that oil companies act in a pubic spirited way are called courageous. So far, the supply of courageous politicians has far outstripped the supply of public spirited oil companies. Thus, supply first contracted then held steady till the current prices were more in line with the futures market. As current prices have finally caught up with futures markets supply has started to increase (though not in the US, where political constraints have cut off most avenues of increase).

Why do people think that oil is going to be worth a lot more in a few years time, even though currently there is little or no mismatch between demand and supply? Because the demand for oil is expected to increase much faster than was thought just a few years ago. The main reason is the rise of China and, particularly, India. If those countries keep growing at the same rates they are now the demand for oil in the world will far outstrip the supply in the relatively near future.

That is why the futures markets were pricing oil so high. There is nothing exotic about a futures market. An oil future is just a promise to deliver a barrel of oil at a certain date in the future. The price of the future is simply the price at which the number of people willing to pay a dollar for the future barrel of oil equals the number of people willing to sell the future barrel of oil. A few months ago, as markets started to look at the implications of world wide growth rates and decided that a barrel of oil in the future was going to be worth a lot more than they had thought it would be. Futures prices started to rise and, as they did, so did current prices.

So the bad news is that future bad news is being priced into the current market. But that is a blessing in disguise. God’s Viceroy on Earth, the market, is telling us to drill.

Seriously, the futures market is just a signal. And the good thing about it is that, just as you don’t need to have a downward movement in current supply or upward movement in current demand to bring about a big increase in the current market price, you don’t have to have a big increase in current supply or decrease in current demand to bring about a huge decrease in the current price. All you have to do is convince the futures markets that the trends are in the right direction, that the future price of oil will not be radically higher than it is now, and the same mechanisms that have driven the current price of oil up can drive it down just as quickly.

There are two obvious things and as usual the most useful is the most painful. First is increasing supply. It is true that deciding to drill today would not mean any actual oil on the market for 5 to 10 years, but that doesn’t matter. It is the belief about the future tightness of supplies that has driven current prices up; reversing that belief can drive them down just as quickly.

The other thing, the non-fun thing, is keeping demand down. This can be done most efficiently by keeping the price of gasoline high. Advocating such a policy is also a highly efficient way to lose an election. That is unfortunate. As prices come down demand will go up, leadin us into the same problem we are in all over again. A tax on gas that went up as market prices went down such that the price was kept at around $4 a gallon would be a relatively painless way to avoid this. But of course, this solution makes far too much sense to ever be adopted in a democracy, let alone a democracy in an election year.

As for the effects of the oil prices on our economy are bad enough, our dependence on third world oil has an even worse effect on the political systems in those countries. There is a well-developed literature in both political science and economics on this question. In economics, the problem goes by the name of “the resource curse.” There is a well documented negative correlation between natural resources and democracy. The basic argument is that having a large, exportable commodity both increases the incentive to stay in power and provides the means to do so. The more oil you have as a proportion of your GNP, the more likely you are to be a dictatorship (case in point, Nigeria).

If you come from an undeveloped country that has a commodity as valuable as oil in large quantities the amount of money to be made by being the one that controls the rights to that commodity far outstrips the gains to be made from, say, starting a business or developing manufactures. Moreover, once you are in power, control over the commodity allows you to stay in power. Using the money it generates you can buy more muscle and political protection, as explained by Tom Hagen in Godfather I when arguing to the Don for taking Solatzo’s deal and going into narcotics (is there any principle of political science the Godfather doesn’t explain?).

Again the solution, like the sliding gas tax mentioned above, is as obvious as it is politically impractical. Still, we can always hope for the return of the British Empire.

The Disgrace of our Farm Bill

Miami Herald has a nice article on the disgrace of our 290 billion dollar farm bill. As bad as it is taking money from American consumers to subsidize rich farmers it is even worse to destroy third-world agriculture in Latin America and Africa. McCain had the guts to stand against it, and St. Obama? Do you really need to ask?


This is why I find the opposition and even disdain for McCain from the young libertarians so perplexing. Sure, McCain is not perfect on these issues and his grasp of the theoretical reasons that such measures are wrongheaded is surely very tenuous. But that makes Obama's bald pandering all the more inexcusable. Moreover, the grasp of economics is not all that important in cases like this where what is right and what is politically expedient are so starkly distinguished. The real need is not for a cleaver politician but a courageous one. The real need is for a man willing to do things that cost him. Looking at Obama and John McCain can anyone doubt who that man is?

So What do we do about it?

Dozens of e-mails in the rebel computers show that the FARC
commanders and Chávez were building what they referred to as a
''strategic relationship'' to strengthen the Bolivarian movement in the region.

There are at least eight references to an estimated $300
million in financial assistance that Chávez had pledged to the FARC rebels. In addition, the e-mails show that the FARC had agreed to give military training in irregular warfare to the Venezuelan army, and that the Colombian rebels even had an ''office'' at Fuerte Tiuna, the headquarters of Venezuela's military command in Caracas.

''The strategy was to create an international mediation group fashioned after the Contadora group that mediated in the Central American conflict in the 1980s, but aimed at consolidating Chávez's leadership in the region, and at using Chávez's clout to achieve international diplomatic recognition for the FARC,'' a senior Colombian official told me in an interview last week.

So what do we do about it? We know he is sponsoring terrorism, in effect making war on a neighboring country through the most despicable methods, and the "Human Rights Community" says nothing? Oh wait, they did manage to chirp something about the terrorists Geneva Convention rights may have been violated. Good thing they are on the case.

Vigilante Justice

Nice point made here by Fraser Smith about flight 93: they voted before they made their move against the Hijackers. "Before they acted, they made a plan - and then they voted on it.
That's what we do in our country. We vote. That's what we've fought and
died for from the beginning." From the beginning until now. Now the UN votes on it, or a judge tells us if it is ok. Good thing there wasn't a human rights activist on board. He would have demanded they wait till after the plane crashed and had a trial.

Try a Gun

Oh what to do, what to do? Thus laments Dr. Wittes on the question of how we are to deal with Osama bin Laden, were he to fall into our hands. How about this: kill him?

We were certain enough of al Qaeda's responsibility to invade a country and drop bombs on it etc., in order to retaliate for 9/11. Opponents of the Iraq war and of American foreign policy in general are at pains to draw attention to their agreement with this policy. There seems to be pretty general agreement that bin Laden is the head of al Qaeda. How can we say al Qaeda's actions are sufficiently evil and sufficiently well-know to justify such levels of violence and killing of innocents and insufficient to warrant the one man we can all agree is guilty? Churchill had it right. This is trial by combat. Make a little list. Kill him and get it over with.

Thus spake the Weasel

Here is Obama on Iraq, giving us a nicely executed tripple backtrack with a "you're like so hung up on details" and a "historically, I have made it perfectly clear thrown in for style. Here is a more detailed account from the New Republic. Obama only called for a withdraw of American troops in 2006 (something to keep in mind when you hear the word "historically" when he talks about his position). Seriously, when even the French think you are a weasel it is time to look in the mirror.

But Don't Question Their Patriotism

want to read about American victories in the mass media? No problem, there are plenty of such stories--in foreign newspapers. Click on the link to read one from the Times of London. Want more? Here is another bit of pro-American propaganda from those Neo-con stooges the French and their running dog lackey, Ali al-Saadi.

McCain's Problem?

Article on McCain's problem with teleprompters is contrasted with the boy wonder's ease with them. It is a sad commentary that the man who is willing to put himself out there and take any question for hours at a time but can't speak with a teleprompter is the one that has a problem while one that thrives on the fake authenticity of the device but limits his press conferences to a few questions is the one who does well. Why doesn't Obama have to hire consultants to help him answer questions on his own? Because the foam heads and their media allies see to it that it isn't necessary. The complaints about his inaccessibility to the press and public will have to wait until after they have gotten him into the White House.

into the lion's den

another strange incident, this time with Obama himself telling the story, where he is cast as bravely imparting a truth to a hostile audience. This time the story is Obama courageously telling a Detroit audience of auto makers that they would have to make more fuel efficient cars. They applauded and at the end of the speech gave him a standing ovation.

Why make up or imagine a story like that. Wouldn't it be more conformable to his vanity to remember the truth? After all, getting Detroit auto executives to find something commendable in a proposal that is against their immediate interests is an achievement. Why not play that up?

What is going on with the left is some sort of need to establish for themselves an identity as non-conformists, underdogs bravely telling the truth to a recalcitrant world. If the world agrees with you then you haven't been progressive enough. There is a sort of need to be persecuted, else you are not being truthful enough.
They must see themselves as the keepers of a high and enlightened truth that the masses cannot grasp on their own, that they are afraid to face. Winning an argument, or worse yet, not encountering an argument at all, calls into question their moral superiority.

It is a bit like their attitude toward race. They must bring up again and again how they are able to look past race and prejudice, so much so that they can't stop bring ing up race and prejudice and seeing it when it isn't there. For if it isn't there then what are they? It is the inverse of the white poor of the old South who needed blacks around and for them to stay poor so they themselves would have someone to be better than. If you are not more evolved than a Detroit auto executive that who are you more evolved than?

the military and our media patriots

Awe inspiring ceremony in Iraq as the largest re-enlistment ceremony in history takes place without a quiver of interest from our media. The re-enlistment is twice the size of the already high rates of re-enlistment from last year. News? Sign that the surge is working? Naaahhh.

Lawyers and the terrorist that love them

in the wake of the Columbian government's brilliant operation to free the hostages from the FARC, the international lawyers at opinionjuris.org (7/3/08) wonder if the Columbian government hasn't violated international law.

Now given that FARC has violated every international law and tenant of morality imaginable this would not seem to be a particularly burning question. But we are not lawyers. The violation is the rule against perfidy. The government of course claimed to be rebels, and apparently that is against one of the rules (though as far as I knew, it only meant that you were a spy and not entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status if caught. Since those caught by the FARC are either murdered on the spot or used as bargaining chips as their value dictates such protections would be worthless anyway)

The other issue raised is the story the government fed the rebels that they were picking the hostages up to take them to a meeting with some sort of international officials, either the red cross or un people. This, in the lawyers delicate mind, may constitute a violate of the perfidy rule as well. He does raise the important question of whether the Rebels will be willing to deal with the International Organizations in the future as they have in the past.

This consideration, though, should not be a legal question but a policy question. If the FARC cooperates enough with the UN to make its continued cooperation worth it then the ruse might be unacceptably costly to the government. But this is a question of prudence. The UN is not going to enforce these rules against the FARC. Its pronouncements are only ever going to apply to one side, the side trying to protect its citizens from predatory scum. I recall stories of the FARC posing as police. Is the UN going to go after them? If not, isn't the sole effect of the UN to make it ok for the bad guys to use tools to harm the innocent that the good guys cannot use to protect the innocent? The FARC is so far beyond the the law, being nothing anymore but a terror, kidnapping and extortion operation, that they are entitled to no rights from the international community.

Democracy doesn't have to mean peace

Nathan Sharansky is hopeful about the prospects for democracy in the
Middle- East with continued military success in lraq . What he should
be worried about are the prospects for continued peace with the success
of democracy. There is nothing to stop a democratic Middle-East from
democratically deciding to kill the Vars. Indeed, that maybe the
winning ticket in some of those countries. That might be the royal road
to electoral success in some of those places. Instead of competing on
the basis of who can best deliver peace and prosperity the may compete
on the basis of war and dead Jews. It didn't seem to hurt the Nazis.

super size those french fries

Our allies the French areactually acting like allies. It wonder if it will rub off on the Democrats?Nah. still, I can dream, can't I?
This could be really good news I the Bash administration will only act on it. of course, the main thing is to get it done. The only way we can realistically stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon at this point is military action. But unless the Bush administrationreally picks up the ball and runs with it all will just fable into another round of talks at the U.N.
On a less serious note, the good fun that could be had in the campaign by putting the Democrats to the left of France are just to good even for Mr. "I won't stoop to that sort of campaign" campaign McCain to ignore

Scalia's self-contracition

Brave attempt to charge Scalia of incoherence if not hypocracy. The flaw is that the case revolves not around the pre-1800 Constitution or the scope of the right in question but the scope of the Court's authority. The scope of the Court's authority is prescribed by Congress and has never, NEVER, extended to enemy combatants in the 800 year history of the writ (with a couple of 20th century marginal exceptions). If one concedes at the outset that the Court deals with anything it wants to then the similarities exist. But even then, note how weak the similarities are. If they are similar on the grounds that they involve the pre-1800 Constitution (a telling phrase right that--was there a later one written that our history books pass over? Don't answer that, Justice Kennedy). And what Supreme Court cases do not involve the scope of a right? Finally, Wasn't the 2nd amendment case about the very existence of the 2nd Amendment right?

clipped from www.prospect.org The gun case and the Guantánamo litigation in fact have much in common. Both concern governmental efforts to deal with a risk of deadly violence. Both involve interpretations of the pre-1800 Constitution: the Suspension Clause of the 1789 document, and the Second Amendment of the 1791 Bill of Rights. And in both the Court had to decide a novel question about the scope of the right in question.

Alice in Lawyer Land

My God, they are actually going to do it. They have just struck down the detention of the first Guantanamo detainee out on the basis of a civilian court hearing.

It turns out the court was not satisfied that the evidence against the detainee came from an objective source. The source was the government of China and its evidence against was against a Chinese national of Uighur descent. The Court even allowed itself some humor, saying that the government's reasoning came perilously close to the Alice in Wonderland logic "that whatever the government says must be treated as true, thus rendering superfluous both the role of the Tribunal and the role that Congress assigned to this court."

Funny, I don't remember the Congress being involved? I thought the Court had decided on its own to expand its jurisdiction in the face of Congress' decisions, but never mind. The Alice in wonderland comment is nice too, in that all the Court is claiming that whatever it says should be regarded as true, not the "government." The debate is over venue, who makes the decision. It is necessarily coming down to whose decision has to be regarded as true because of who says it, that is, who has the authority.

Courts are allowed to get things wrong because they presumably err on the side of protecting the innocent. But that is an illusion. They err on the side of not using force. This may or may not protect the innocent. It may, in fact, imperil them to a far greater degree than the most tyrannical government.

But the red Queen has spoken. And what could be more Alice in Wonderland like than the demand on the part of the Court that the evidence against terrorists come from a source that can be regarded as "objective"? Who is objective about terrorism? If we found such an entity would we find its objectivity admirable? Is it the fact that China bares particularly hard feelings against terrorists that aim to over throw its government that its evidence is to be disregarded? Or do we regard everything that the Chinese government says as unreliable?

The latter is a particularly interesting proposition, for isn't gaining the assent of the Chinese government the sine quo non of international legitimacy? It is, after all, the potential threat of a Chinese veto on such matters as Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma that apparently makes interfering with genocide in those countries an illegal act.

In any case, the man admits he is an enemy of China. Do we now send him back to China? That is, after all, presumably where you go when you are freed from incarceration by a foreign government. The Court has left the question of remedy open--courts need never weigh options. The fact that its remedies might even be worse for its intended beneficiaries is a question that court never has to face.

Now the Pentagon employees that asked for confidentiality in the case have had their requests denied by the Court, saying that their requests lacked 'specificity.' Apparently they have to have had some specific threat from Islamist terrorists to merit privacy. Just the general policy the enemy has of killing our intelligence officials, let alone the common sense notion that who are personnel are and where they live might be something we would want to keep secret, is not satisfactory to the Court.

Who exactly is qualified to assess the worth of intelligence? Intelligence officers? No. They are now just writers. Their true judges are the literary critics of the court. Whatever deep judgments they are able to make based on years in the field and repeated dealings with a foreign intelligence service are now nothing. Our dealings with foreign intelligence services will now be reduced to DAs meeting with colleagues from different jurisdictions. The decisions will not be about their own judgments of the character of the source, the evidence and the object of their decision but only on how it will play before a DC court judge. Not much chance of the Chinese reaching that bar. Nor for any other intelligence service, for that matter. Expert-ism has met its match. Expert judgments reign supreme in every other field except the protection of ourselves and our allies from terrorists. Those judgments will now be the purview of the literary jesters at Court. The Red Queen also made type II errors. Unfortunately, when someone says "off with their heads," it is usually that of a father who wanted to send his daughter to school.

We will now wait for intelligence from "objective" nations. Afghans and Iraqis presumably need not apply.