Biofules drive up world food prices 75%

Or so says a "confidential report" by the world bank.  From the British Guardian:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

How confidential can this report be, when the Guardian is announcing its conclusions?  But this is no big secret.  It's a no-brainer.  Shifting a lot of agricultural production from food to biofuel, just when energy costs put a lot of additional pressure on food costs everywhere, was bound to shrink the table at every shanty town around the world.  That might be a price worth paying if biofuels helped us solve the energy problems, instead of making them a little bit worse. 

Biofuel policy is a pretty good example of what makes conservatives skeptical about government intervention in the economy.  Unlike private business, government can afford to invest in big ideas.  But government doesn't' see its bottom line fall when the big idea turns out to be a bad idea, so long as its a pleasing idea.  Biofuel, like wind power, is a pleasing idea. It may also turn out to be a deadly idea, for a lot of people living on the margin.   

Professor Schaff, Quitter

Professor Schaff is retiring from blogging, and so SDP will have to make do without him.  I urge all our loyal readers to look up his gmail address and send him a passionate note urging him to reconsider.  It won't make any difference, but maybe he could use the warm fuzzy.  And anyway, if it doesn't work, I'll try giving out his cell phone number next.  I also know when his birthday is.  Be afraid, Jon.  Be very afraid.

Jon and I started blogging at the same time, so it will be a new experience doing this without him.  I have to confess that I think our blog has been a pretty good production.  I will go so far as to say that our readers might have learned something from time to time at these pages, or if not, at least they may have been entertained.  SDP is a moderately conservative blog.  Our three regular members, Jon, myself, and Jason, once took a test of political identities.  I found myself pegged as a conservative with libertarian tendencies.  I think that is correct.  I can't remember the results for my colleagues, but I think it is clear that anyone reading these pages could expect mostly conservative view with the occasional surprise. But Jon and I complemented one another is useful ways.  Anyone curious about that need only consult our posts on science.   

Jon wrote his posts shrewdly and with flair.  He is, though I will later deny I said this, a pretty bright guy with a lot of information under his belt.  Jason and I couldn't have asked for a better colleague.  SDP will be a poorer production without him. 

Speaking Of Independence

This is my last regular post for South Dakota Politics.  I have decided to essentially stop blogging.  As I explained to some of my blogging colleagues earlier this week, my attitude toward blogging these days is like my attitude toward calypso music.  I have nothing against it.  I am sure it has its virtues and fine people enjoy it.  I am just not interested. 

To the extent I continue to write here it shall be infrequent book and movie reviews and things of the like.   

It's been an eventful three and a half years at SDP.  My thanks to my colleagues.  Soldier on. 

Let me conclude on this serious note:

Indepenence Day

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.
THE UNANIMOUS
DECLARATION
OF THE
THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's GOD entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.

HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.

HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

HE has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyranny only.

HE has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.

HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.

HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the mean Time, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.

HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.

HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.

HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our Legislatures.

HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:

FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:

FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:

FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:

FOR abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:

FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

FOR suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.

HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection, and waging War against us.

HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.

HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.

HE has constrained our Fellow-Citizens, taken Captive on the high Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

HE has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.

IN every Stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every Act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them, from Time to Time, of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our Connexions and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the Rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connexion between them and the State of Great-Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of Right do. And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.

John Hancock.
GEORGIA, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Geo. Walton.
NORTH-CAROLINA, Wm. Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.
SOUTH-CAROLINA, Edward Rutledge, Thos Heyward, junr. Thomas Lynch, junr. Arthur Middleton.
MARYLAND, Samuel Chase, Wm. Paca, Thos. Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.
VIRGINIA, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Ths. Jefferson, Benja. Harrison, Thos. Nelson, jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.
PENNSYLVANIA, Robt. Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benja. Franklin, John Morton, Geo. Clymer, Jas. Smith, Geo. Taylor, James Wilson, Geo. Ross.
DELAWARE, Caesar Rodney, Geo. Read.
NEW-YORK, Wm. Floyd, Phil. Livingston, Frank Lewis, Lewis Morris.
NEW-JERSEY, Richd. Stockton, Jno. Witherspoon, Fras. Hopkinson, John Hart, Abra. Clark.
NEW-HAMPSHIRE, Josiah Bartlett, Wm. Whipple, Matthew Thornton.
MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, Saml. Adams, John Adams, Robt. Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry.
RHODE-ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE, &c. Step. Hopkins, William Ellery.
CONNECTICUT, Roger Sherman, Saml. Huntington, Wm. Williams, Oliver Wolcott.

IN CONGRESS, JANUARY 18, 1777.

ORDERED,
THAT an authenticated Copy of the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCY, with the Names of the MEMBERS of CONGRESS, subscribing the same, be sent to each of the UNITED STATES, and that they be desired to have the same put on RECORD.
By Order of CONGRESS,
JOHN HANCOCK, President.

BALTIMORE, in MARYLAND: Printed by MARY KATHARINE GODDARD.

Obama: Faith Erased Initiative

Joe Knippenberg gives a thoughtful take on Barack Obama's approach to so-called "faith based initiatives," i.e., the government using churches as a means to deliver social services. 

But the supposedly post-partisan Obama is singing from the hymnbook assembled by President Bush’s Democratic opponents, ignoring the weight of judicial precedent, not to mention any sort of nuance, in favor of a simplistic slogan. He ignores and indeed misrepresents the past to promote a fantastic (as in fantasy) constitutional vision whose roots are in an extremely simplistic and secularist reading of the First Amendment.

Notice the language Obama uses: taking religion into account when hiring is discrimination, which in our egalitarian culture is presumptively wrong.  But is it really discrimination when a religious organization asks that its employees support its mission or affirm its statement of faith? I’d call that an exercise of religious freedom, which is what a unanimous Supreme Court held in the 1987 case Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos.

Read the while thing. 

Daschle's Future

Scott Waltman of the American News asks Tom Daschle what the future holds for our former senator:

One of Barack Obama's earliest and staunchest supporters, Tom Daschle said he's uncomfortable talking about the possibility of being part of a potential Obama administration.

"That's totally up to Senator Obama. I'm not expecting, nor am I seeking anything at this point," said Daschle, a former U.S. senator who represented South Dakota.

Daschle said his interest is helping the Obama campaign, not lobbying for a job after the general election.

This part in intriguing:

Next week, Daschle said, he and his wife are joining Ted Turner, Jimmy Carter, investor and philanthropist George Soros and others on a National Geographic trip to the Arctic.

Ted Turner, Jimmy Carter and George Soros.  Tom Daschle truly is a man of the people.  Limousine liberal people. 

Columbian Forces free Hostages

Someone needs to sit down with the narcoterroristscommierevolutionaries in Columbia and have a good talk about branding.  Their acronym is FARC.  FARC for heavens sake!  Sounds like something coming after too many beans. 

FARC hasn't been doing to well, of late.  The National Armed Forces of Columbia have killed most of their senior leaders, and captured a lap top that apparently contained all their passwords.  Professor Schaff is right about laptops.  The big news today is that the Columbian forces managed to free 15 major hostages, including a couple of U.S. citizens, without firing a shot.  They landed helicopters at the site where the hostages were held, and convinced the rebels to load their captives on board.  The helicopters were supposed to be from international relief organizations, so the rebels had every reason to think they were on their side.  The people inside the helicopters were Columbian soldiers, but they were dressed like American sociologists, with Che Guevara tee shirts and all, so it all looked kosher.  Just more rebels like us! 

Only after the airlift was in the air did the hostages learn that they weren't hostages anymore.  The Colombians pulled off a flawless hostage rescue.  The had a little help from the U.S. American planes above the jungle canopy monitored all the rebels communications.  And after the hostages had been snagged, we jammed the rebel communications so they couldn't mount any last minute response.  But all the footwork was done by the Colombians.  Damn good work.

It would be churlish of me to mention that this is the nation that the Democrats chose to insult by stalling the recent free trade agreement. So I won't mention it.  I'll just say that these son of a bitches are my kind of sons of bitches.  Damn good work. 

SDP Jazz Note: George Coleman on Sax

I haven't been doing many jazz notes of late, in part because I have blog specifically devoted to jazz: Jazz Note SDP.  My friend Ken Laster, whose In The Groove Podcast I have praised frequently, but not enough, has a post on the Jazz Note site about a concert he recently enjoyed.  Tenor players George Coleman and Eric Alexander shared the stage at The Jazz Standard in New York City.  I am very jealous.  Alexander is a young man, representing the current generation of jazzmen.  Coleman was the tenor player for the Miles Davis Quintet, briefly, between the tenures of Hank Mobley and Wayne Shorter. 

I think that Coleman is very under appreciated. In the first cut on My Funny Valentine, a live recording of the Davis quintet in 1964, Coleman seems to be playing two different instruments.  You can hear this cut if you go to my post "My Funny Valentine 1956 and 1964." Another good place to sample Coleman is at Daily Motion. Here he plays with the great Ahmad Jamal's Trio.  The piece is an excellent showcase for Coleman's mind.  The recording is marred only by the fact that you can't really hear the bass.   

If you think that you are brilliant, but no one else seems to notice, talk to George Coleman.  He knows how to do what jazz does best: explore all the nooks and crannies of melody without ever losing his way. 

Lincoln v. Darwin

Newsweek has a piece by Malcolm Jones: "Lincoln vs. Darwin: Who Matters More?"  It did kinda remind me of those "who's faster: The Flash or Superman" questions.  But it's not bad. 

I confess it never occurred to me that Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day in the same year.  Jones draws out a lot of similarities (both men were compulsive scribblers), but just as many stark differences (Darwin was born in privilege; Lincoln not so).  He argues that both were revolutionaries.  In Darwin's case that is undoubtedly true.  He revolutionized our understanding of biology. In Lincoln's case it is true also, but only in the sense that he continued the revolution begun in 1776.  For that reason Lincoln belongs in the pantheon of Founders, along with Martin Luther King who essentially completed the revolution. 

I also think Jones is flat wrong to say that Darwin overturned the idea of man as the crown of creation.  It is true that Darwin's theory puts man squarely in the history of natural species; but then a crown is a physical object resting on the head, not hovering above it.  Nothing in Darwin's theory prevents me from thinking that the human soul is the most magnificent and astounding thing in all creation.  Only human beings can be aware of or conceive of "all creation."

The question Jones asks only seems provocative, as he himself can see.  It is almost a no-brainer.  Darwin thought of natural selection first, but:

it does no harm to remember that he hurried to publish "The Origin of Species" because he thought he was about to be scooped by his fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently come up with much the same idea of evolution through natural selection. In other words, there was a certain inevitability to Darwin's theory. Ideas about evolution surfaced throughout the first part of the 19th century, and while none of them was as cogent as Darwin's—until Wallace came along—it was not as though he was the only man who had the idea.

The time was ripe for Darwin's dangerous idea.  If he hadn't come along when he did, someone else would have done the work. 

Lincoln is another story.  No one in history, so far as I can tell, better displayed the Aristotelian virtue of prudence.  He understood what was going on, and just what to do about it.  He realized that the United States was faced with not one but two mortal dangers: disunion, and continuing union at the cost of sacrificing our most sacred principles.  He had a command of rhetoric that was unsurpassed, and a talent for poetry that rivaled Shakespeare.  He seemed always to know how to navigate whatever political crisis presented itself. I have occasionally thought it an almost sufficient evidence of providence that such men as Lincoln and Washington arise when, and only when, we really need them. 

Lincoln was a giant of political action.  Darwin was a giant of theory.  I won't open up the Straussian problem of politics vs. philosophy now.  But Darwin cannot compete with Lincoln on the question of who matters more in human history. 

War and Decision: A Book Review

While Scott McClellan's book sits on the bestseller list, Douglas Feith's War and Decision has received half the attention of McClellan although it appears to be twice the book.  The link above is to the book's homepage which contains a bevy of information, including Misconception and The Facts about the Iraq War.  Feith's book is informative, well-written, and in general a convincing account of the planning and early stages of the Iraq war. 

Feith, who was Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2001-2005, begins his book with a discussion of 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan.  While this is important subject matter, I suspect most people are more concerned with the Iraq war so I will concentrate on that. 

Why Iraq?  This is the title of Feith's sixth chapter.  First, Congress and the Clinton administration had already passed the Iraqi Liberation Act into law in 1998, making regime change in Iraq part of national policy (btw, in this section Feith incorrectly identifies Tom Daschle as being from North Dakota. People often confuse the two states and I like to clear things up by telling people that South Dakota is the Dakota just south of North Dakota).  Second, the Hussein regime was brutalizing its people with mass murder, torture and general reign of terror.  Third, the regime had attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush, surely an act of war.  Feith also delves into the connections between the Iraqi regime and international terrorism.  Next, the sanction regime was porous and was hurting the wrong people, namely the Iraqi citizenry. Also, Iraq was in serial breech of the agreements that had ended Gulf War I (including firing at US planes enforcing no fly zones). 

What about the WMDs?  Feith reports that the CIA told both the Clinton and Bush administrations that Iraq had large stockpiles of WMDs.  Iraq most certainly had the programs in place to reconstitute WMDs at a moment's notice.  Even after hostilities ended, the Iraq Survey Group "confirmed Saddam's intention and capability to produce biological and chemical weapons.  But the large stockpiles were not found" (emphasis in the original).   

Feith documents the fact that the Bush administration made a holistic case for war rather than basing its decision on stockpiles of WMD.  He also documents the various official investigation that failed to find any evidence that the intelligence was rigged or that administration officials pressured intelligence analysts to change their reports.  Feith goes into more detail than I can reproduce in this review.  Let's just say it's convincing. Read the book for details.

Feith has little good to say about the State Department and the CIA.  He depicts Colin Powell and George Tenet as political operators who did not do the kind of strategic thinking that was promoted by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.  If the Pentagon was more influential, Feith argues, it was from the fact that Rumsfeld had his team think out problems, argue out various alternatives, and then write tightly argued memos.  Powell and Tenet preferred to operate on the level of tactics and rarely made complex arguments.  Indeed, Feith argues that Powell especially seemed to want it both ways on Iraq.  He didn't want to commit himself to a full-throated defense of the war, but he never objected to the war decision.  This way if things went well he could say he never opposed, but if things went badly he could say that he wasn't a big supporter.  Powell and Tenet also undermined the administration by remaining silent in official meetings but then airing objections to administration policy to media sources.

Feith also has criticism for Condoleezza Rice.  Rice's assumption was that "interagency disagreements are a symptom of a dysfunction rather than useful debate."  Her reports to the president were often aimed at presenting the appearance of consensus rather than giving the president the stark alternatives and letting him decide. 

If anyone was shading intelligence, Feith argues, it was the CIA, which made a practice of giving more credence to intelligence that confirmed analysts' preconceived notions and dismissing contradictory evidence as "unconfirmed."  They also failed to tell administration officials exactly how poor their sourcing was coming out of Iraq.

Obviously Feith objects to the "Bush lied, people died" notion.  First, Bush made comprehensive argument for the Iraq war, not focusing on stockpiles of WMDs.  Second, Bush, Congress and various other governments, based on what they were told, believed Iraq to be in possession of stockpiles.  Here Bush, Congress and other governments were wrong, but they really did believe what they were saying. Finally, as noted above, after the war inspection groups did find vast WMD capabilities and strong evidence of WMD programs.  Saddam could have reconstituted significant amounts of WMDs in a matter of weeks.  But, Feith laments, after reports that large stockpiles were not found, the administration inexplicably refused to defend its case for war and started to play up the "promotion of democracy" angle. This, Feith argues, made it look like Bush was changing his argument to fit the news.  And that is not totally inaccurate, but it appears to have been unnecessary. 

Let me discuss the post-war planning,  as this post is already getting long.  In Feith's account,  Bush was wary about starting post-war planning too soon as such planning would undermine the administration's diplomatic ventures. It would make it look like Bush thought war was inevitable, which Bush did not believe until late 2002.  But again interagency squabbling hurt the effort.  The State Department was notoriously hostile to the "externals," Iraqis living outside of Iraq who might help form a government.  Although eventually the interim Iraq government was based on externals, State fought them tooth and nail, making planning difficult.  Second, Gen. Tommy Franks appeared uninterested in post-war planning, especially the training of a new Iraqi police force.  Next, although Bush wanted a quick transition of power, Paul Bremer differed and thought the Iraqis were not competent or hard working enough to take control.  He insisted that a constitution be finalized, rather just negotiated, before the US gave up power. Bremer ended up guiding a 14 month occupation that was intended to be only weeks. Bremer somewhat undermined his argument as the very people he claimed were incompetent were the very people he eventually selected to head an interim government.  It just took him months to do what could have been done in weeks, helping spur resentment by the Iraqi people. 

I have not done justice to the amount of detail and documentation Feith produces to augment his argument.  This documentation is why I find the argument largely convincing.  A note of caution, though.  I am wary of a memoir (of sorts) like this where almost everything bad was someone else's fault and the author could seem to do no wrong.  To be fair, Feith on various occasions admits that there is no way of knowing if his or Rumsfeld's ideas would have worked better. And Feith does say that despite his obvious admiration for Rumsfeld, the Secretary's brusque manner often undermined his efforts.  But Feith engages in precious little self-criticism, and readers should be skeptical of that. 

As an aside, Feith believes the Abu Ghraib scandal was the turning point in the war, as in Iraq and around the world it cost the United States all its good will.  Rumsfeld recognized the embarrassment and twice offered to resign over it. 

Finally (whew), what were the overall deficiencies of the administration and Bush in particular.  Bush can be blamed for not running a tight ship, not insisting on getting all points of view (on this matter he gave too much authority to Rice), tolerating disloyalty (especially from Powell), and not carrying through on decisions about post-war planning. Bush also failed to defend the administration when it came under political attack, ceding too much ground to his opponents and allowing misrepresentations to take on the status of conventional wisdom.  In a particularly harsh section, Feith excoriates the president for switching his argument on Iraq from defending the nation to building democracy. In short, while Bush was once touted as the "MBA president," the guy who understood and could manage personalities, Bush was actually a weak manager who did not assert control over his administration.

This post is now almost as long as the book it reviews.  So let me conclude by highly recommending Douglas Feith's War and Decision. 

Dumbest Generation On Radio

I have written about Mark Bauerlein's book Dumbest Generation here and here.  You can now hear Bauerlein on th radio.  Go to Dennis Prager's site.  Bauerlein is on the first hour of the July 1, 2008 show.   Prager begins by talking about Obama, but then Bauerlein comes on. 

Ditto

A surprisingly positive profile of Rush Limbaugh in the New York Times.  Well worth the read and free registration. 

Obama the Flip Flop Pheenom

All politicians flip flop.  Well, let's say almost all.  McCain did it recently on offshore drilling.  Bush did it spectacularly on nation building.  Sometimes a flip flop is obviously the right thing: when you find out you're wrong on something important, or circumstances change.  Mostly it's a matter of damage control. 

But Barack Obama has been flip flopping so much of late that he is starting to look like a drill bit.  Consider this piece, from the New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters...

During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership. The bill is expected to come to a vote on the Senate floor next Tuesday. That decision, one of a number made by Mr. Obama in recent weeks intended to position him toward the political center as the general election campaign heats up, has brought him into serious conflict for the first time with liberal bloggers and commentators and his young supporters.

Now I think Obama's revised position is clearly the right one.  Companies that cooperated with the government in its efforts to prevent another terrorist attack shouldn't be punished for it.  What Obama thinks is now anyone's guess, if he thinks of anything other than how to win.  It's charming that this has created a rebellion in his own ranks. 

Steven Stark at Real Clear Politics thinks that this Obama's real vulnerability, and I am inclined to agree. 

How could the GOP make an effective case against Obama? The same way almost every successful campaign has built a case against a relative neophyte in the past. The more experienced opponents of Barry Goldwater (in 1964), George McGovern (in 1972), and Walter Mondale (in 1984) each ran the same kind of ad, accusing their opponents of flip-flopping on issues. Those specific assaults, of course, embodied a much larger critique.

Flip-flop attacks aren't really about the issues at hand. Instead, they're a way of reminding voters, "You don't really know this person well enough, do you?" Plus, they're a great way to make a candidate who appears to be "above politics" look as political as everyone else. In that sense, they are really character attacks on the opponent, and the reason they reappear so often in presidential politics is that they are often highly effective.

My sainted Grandmother voted against McGovern, she told me, because he was wishy-washy.  Obama is surely giving his opponents plenty of yarn for that sweater.  And it's one thing to let the independent voters know that you are just another politician.  It's another to drive 7,000 of your own loyal supporters into a campaign to keep you honest.

Obama may not really be the radical that conservatives make him out to be.  He would no doubt fill his administration with a lot of genuine radicals, and that's no small thing.  As for Obama himself, I am beginning to think that there is nothing there, at bottom.  He is another Bill Clinton without, one hopes, the debilitating character flaws.  I am not sure that's such a bad thing.  A candidate who cares only about winning and fame usually finds out that nothing succeeds like success.  I have often said that Clinton's presidency was remarkably successful from a policy point of view precisely because he guessed right what would be the winning policy. 

But Stark is surely right that this flip-flopping is a vulnerability.  McCain would do well to exploit it.

Progress in Iraq

Regardless of whether you think we should be there or not, we're there.  And regardless of what promises are made by the rapidly triangulating Obama campaign, it will be easier to get out of there if things are going better there.  So it might make sense to acknowledge progress when it happens, especially if you want out sooner rather than later. 

The Democrats seem to have a color blindness when it comes to the ink on news from Iraq.  No matter what color it is, they see red.  When the President announced his surge policy, they were pretty much unanimous in declaring failure in advance.  When spectacular progress followed that policy, they did everything their imaginations allowed to ignore it.  When it couldn't be ignored, they changed the goal posts: what counts is political successes in the Iraqi government.  Democrats jumped on the earlier report that most of the political "benchmarks" set for the Iraqi government were not being met.  That of course was bad faith.  The war in the neighborhoods was always the most serious problem, and that is a war we and the Iraqi government have been winning. 

But now tide has turned on that second front.  See how USAToday puts this:

No matter who is elected president in November, his foreign policy team will have to deal with one of the most frustrating realities in Iraq: the slow pace with which the government in Baghdad operates.

Iraq's political and military success is considered vital to U.S. interests, whether troops stay or go. And while the Iraqi government has made measurable progress in recent months, the pace at which it's done so has been achingly slow.

The White House sees the progress in a particularly positive light, declaring in a new assessment to Congress that Iraq's efforts on 15 of 18 benchmarks are "satisfactory" — almost twice of what it determined to be the case a year ago. The May 2008 report card, obtained by the Associated Press, determines that only two of the benchmarks — enacting and implementing laws to disarm militias and distribute oil revenues — are unsatisfactory.

That is a marvelous job of yellowing the story: my God it took them a whole year to make political progress!  This in a country that is trying to reconcile diverse ethnic groups while suppressing a civil war in the streets.  By any reasonable standards, this was lightening fast, not "achingly slow."  But whatever you think of the pace, if the failure to meet the benchmarks was important a year ago, success in meeting them now ought to be equally important. Apparently not.  See Fox:

He criticized the report for looking at whether progress on a goal was "satisfactory" rather than whether the benchmark was fully met. He estimated that only a few of the 18 benchmarks were fully achieved.

Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who requested the administration's updated assessment following a report 12 months ago, scoffed at the new findings.

Of course the Administration was merely reporting according to the standards that Congress itself had set.  Never mind that.  Rep. McIntyre is committed to defeat. 

Democrats like to point out that Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until after the invasion.  That's a very strong point.  But precisely because it is, isn't it kinda nice that Al Qaeda got creamed?  Now that Iraqi President Maliki looks like a hero, locally, for defeating Iranian surrogates, he might have the clout to make his government work a lot better.  Isn't that kinda like progress?  Wouldn't it be kinda nice if a functioning democracy is achieved in Iraq, stable and friendly to the United States? 

Of course that raises a terrible prospect.  What if it turns out that the war was a success?  What if, years from now, we look back and are forced to say that, however ill-advised and ill-executed the war was in its beginning, it in fact achieved a stable and decent government in one of the oil-rich countries of the Islamic world?  What if Iraq becomes a model for reform movements in neighboring countries?  I wouldn't bet good money on any of this, but then the present level of success was unimaginable two years ago.  George W. Bush might end up getting credit for a greater progress in the Middle East than any other president has ever achieved.  I'm guessing that Rep. McIntyre is a lot more worried about that than he is about al Qaeda or Iran. 

Scott Suit Goes On

Dan Scott's lawsuit against the Argus Leader will continue:

The state Supreme Court has refused to dismiss a libel lawsuit against the Argus Leader and its top editor over a column he wrote.

The decision means the case now will go to trial.

Former Sioux Falls Development Foundation President Dan Scott sued the Sioux Falls newspaper for at least $1 million, saying his reputation was damaged by a July 15 piece by Executive Editor Randell Beck.

Beck said the column was clearly parody and protected by the First Amendment.

Circuit Judge Kathleen Caldwell of Sioux Falls concluded that jurors should decide the issue.

America The Broke

Rod Dreher lists several stories (see here and here) indicating just how serious the energy crisis is to our economic well being.  It becomes clearer by the day that our policy of loose money and high government debt is damaging our currency and, ultimately, our way of life.  I have been railing on the Federal Reserve for lowering interest rates instead of raising them.  Here is the Asian Times:

The oil price has doubled in the past year because the US Federal Reserve panicked over risks to the over-leveraged financial system and flooded markets with excess liquidity. The world is willing to pay arbitrarily high prices to hedge against inflation, but the cost of inflation hedges drags down the world economy. Last week's spike in commodity prices and swoon in global stock markets points the way to a deep and prolonged fall in economic activity.

And here is Forbes:

What is happening now is not demand destruction, it is a financial disaster. The U.S. consumes 21 million barrels of per day. At $135 per barrel, the U.S. spends $1.0 trillion per year on oil, which is equal to 15% of the $6.8 trillion in take-home pay of everyone who pays taxes. If oil prices rose to $200 per barrel, the U.S. would spend $1.5 trillion per year on oil, which would be equal to 22% of take-home pay. Moreover, those percentages of 15% and 22% do not even include the cost of coal or natural gas. In other words, the U.S. will be broke long before oil prices hit $200 per barrel, and the rest of the world would be sure to follow.

Still think it is the speculators driving up the price of oil?  The ever prescient Robert Samuelson explodes that myth in today's must read:

Speculator-bashing is another exercise in scapegoating and grandstanding. Leading politicians either don't understand what's happening or don't want to acknowledge their own complicity. (snip)

Politicians promise to tighten regulation of futures markets, but futures markets aren't the main problem. Scarcities are. Government subsidies for corn-based ethanol have increased food prices by diverting more grain into biofuels. A third of this year's U.S. corn crop could go to ethanol. Restrictions on oil drilling in the United States have reduced global production and put upward pressure on prices. If politicians wish to point fingers of blame, they should start with themselves.

At least McCain is for drilling off-shore and expanding our nuclear energy capacity. Obama and the Democrats seem to be putting all there eggs into the renewable fuel basket.  Only a fool would think that somehow solar and wind energy will even come close to meeting our energy needs in the short, medium and even distant future.  Fossil fuels must remain part (I said part) of the energy solution.  But not if you are the majority leader of the United States Senate, who took a short break from looking for unicorns to unload this whopper:

Carlin Skewers Environmentalists

A dear friend poked me gently in the ribs over my tribute to George Carlin: "You know he would hate your politics."  Actually I don't think Carlin was much into hating.  Like most great comedians, he was all about exposing pretensions.  I don't doubt that we will have a lot of disagreements about politics, if ever we meet in the next world (which raises some interesting questions about where). 

Anyway, here is a clip of Carlin tearing a new exit strategy in the backside of Environmentalists.  It is truly delicious, and I am with George on this one. 

Obama Surrogates Attack McCain's War Record

Jim Geraghty catalogs the seven (now eight) Democrats who have belittled John McCain's military service.  The most recent is "informal Obama adviser" Rand Beers who says McCain had the "wrong kind" of military service. 

While Barack Obama was urging supporters not to devalue the military service of rival John McCain, an informal Obama adviser argued Monday that the former POW's isolation during the Vietnam War has hobbled the Arizona senator's capacity as a war-time leader.

“Sadly, Sen. McCain was not available during those times, and I say that with all due respect to him," said informal Obama adviser Rand Beers. "I think that the notion that the members of the Senate who were in the ground forces or who were ashore in Vietnam have a very different view of Vietnam  and the cost that you described than John McCain does because he was in isolation essentially for many of those years and did not experience the turmoil here or the challenges that were involved for those of us who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam war."

One would hope that the rank stupidity of these remarks should be obvious (e.g., McCain had limbs broken, teeth broken, and was subject to brutal physical and mental torture, but he didn't experience the "turmoil" of Vietnam?). 

This is a pattern.  When Bill Clinton ran against legitimate war heroes in George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, military service meant nothing.  When it was Al Gore and John Kerry running against George W. Bush, their Vietnam experience was crucial, indeed for Kerry is was elemental to his campaign.  To even question Kerry's rendition of facts of his service was to "swift boat," now a verb of opprobrium indicating a false and unfair attack (even though even Kerry had to admit that parts of his story were false, namely that the "Christmas in Cambodia" that had been "seared" in his memory never actually happened).  But apparently that truth is no longer operative and today's truth is the John McCain didn't serve in the right way, making him ill equipped to be commander-in-chief. 

From the Jerusalem Post:

Anyone can talk about "supporting our troops"; the McCains serve. McCain's father and grandfather were respected American admirals. Of McCain's four sons, three have gone the military route. One was a Navy pilot like his father, one enlisted in the Marines at age 17 and recently completed a tour in Iraq, and one is completing his education at the Naval Academy (raising the strong possibility that, for the first time in half a century, the United States will have a president with a son at war).

Yet, likely because of those same values, McCain maintains a strict code of silence about his sons' military service, no matter how legitimate his pride or politically useful their military status. Through 2007, McCain was the strongest Senate advocate of vastly increasing troop levels in Iraq, strongly influencing the administration's wildly successful "surge" strategy.

Yet McCain never brought up his own son's service in some of the roughest areas of Iraq. His principled refusal of political advantage from his son's Iraq service extends to refusal even to be interviewed on the subject, or to introduce his son to campaign audiences.

Obama & the Slumlords

Republicans complain that Obama has had a free ride with the Press.  There is certainly some truth to that, but a story is a story and there is a story by Binyamin Appllebaum in Boston Globe that might be the most potentially damaging piece I have yet seen on Obama.  You can see a short clip summarizing the story here.   Mickey Kaus calls this Obama's Katrina. 

CHICAGO - The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition...

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable...

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

There are two obvious issues here: that Obama forcefully pushed for funding for a low income housing policy, but apparently didn't pay much attention when the policy began to fail; and two, that while the policy was a disaster for the low-income people it was designed to help, a lot of private developers made out like bandits and Obama reaped a lot of financial support from those same developers. 

Now its fair to say that, if it were McCain at the center of this story instead of Obama, Democrats would be tearing their shirts and gnashing their teeth over the terrible injustice.  Congressional committees would even as we speak be launching investigations.  Likewise, Republican strategists have to be looking for ways to exploit the story. 

On the other hand, it is not at all clear that Obama is really guilty of anything.  When your policies benefit financially powerful people, they tend to support you for office.  When those people are smelly, it can often rub off on you.  That's common politics pretty much everywhere, and it's hardly different in Chicago. 

As for the policy: using tax dollars to fund low-income housing was one of the ideas floated about in the 80's and 90's, after it became clear that the policies of the sixties and seventies had failed spectacularly.  The theory was that private managers would have more incentive than government managers to make housing work for the occupants.  That might have been true if the private managers depended on the good will of the occupants for their profit, as ordinarily happens in a free market.  But the managers were paid by the government, and government can quickly become forgetful of its original purpose.  Besides, it's Chicago, and milking the public teat without helping to feed the cow, well that's a time honored tradition. 

If Obama were really the new kind of politician that many people think he was, he might have paid more attention and demanded that the developers at least maintain the housing they had been lucratively paid to develop.  Instead, it looks like he acted pretty much like the bad old kind of politician, and didn't bite the hand that fed 'em. 

But all that said, it's not clear that there is anything Obama could have done that would have made a difference.  Over the last four decades various cities have tried everything to break the cycle of poverty among the poorest of their residents, and nothing works.  If there was mischief going on behind the scenes in this affair, and if Obama was tainted by it, we ought to know.  But at least he was trying to find a solution.  Some critics of the private development idea think that only public funding can be honest, but public funding was drying up and besides, Chicago wards soak it up like a sponge and always seem to look dry.  It will be interesting to see whether this story had legs. 

Lemmon, SD: The Far Side Of The World

Speaking of Lemmon, we went on yet another prairie dog shoot this weekend.  This is the second one of the year.  A fine time was had staying at the new Lemmon Lodge (with a pool!) and eating at Benny's and the Alaska Cafe.  A guy from Lemmon once told me, "Lemmon is not the edge of the world, but you can see it from here."  I am continually impressed with the beauty of that area of our state, the kindness of the people, and the stupidity of the prairie dogs.  I am grateful for all three of those things.  Unfortunately it was quite windy, making shooting difficult. 

If anyone thinks the world is overpopulated, they have never been to Lemmon.  Here are some pictures from just east of Highway 73, near the Grand River National Grasslands. 

Latest In Oil: South Dakota Wells and North Dakota Millionaires

This article assails a "do nothing" Congress when it comes to the energy issue.  As expressed in the article, the Democrats insist on "windfall taxes" on oil companies, a deal killer for Republicans, while the GOP insists on more drilling, a deal killer for Democrats.  This passages in humorous:

Some experts have told Congress that speculation in oil futures could be adding a $40-a-barrel premium to the price of oil, which translates to about $1 a gallon at the pump.

But critics say that policing the financial markets, much like a windfall profits tax, would do little to increase worldwide oil supplies, which some energy analysts see as the root of the problem.

Would do little?  How about nothing!  How would regulating speculators and taxing oil companies magically make more oil come out of the ground? 

I have often commented that by attacking the oil companies we really injure the average Joe who makes his living in the oil fields.  Attacking oil industry profits won't affect the lifestyle of the Exxon corporate board members, but it might cost a North Dakotan or South Dakotan a job. The high price of oil is causing oil wells in Harding County to open up and money to flow into that sparsely populated part of the state:

For the past few years, rooms at the Tipperary Lodge motel in Buffalo that sat empty in winter have been full.

Truck drivers, road builders and laborers have been busy, and a revenue source for Harding County that brought in about $1.6 million in 2007 already has added $1.4 million to the public coffers this year.

While everyone with a car or truck in South Dakota feels the pain of record fuel prices and President Bush calls for drilling in environmentally sensitive areas that have been off limits to oil exploration for decades, for the little oil patch in the northwest corner of this state the astronomical run up in oil prices has ignited something of a boom.

Read it all here.  You see, when you attack the oil companies you don't hurt the fat cats in Houston, you hurt Diane Haivala, owner of the Tipperary Lodge in Buffalo, SD.

Meanwhile, the oil boom is creating millionaires in North Dakota.

State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells.

I wonder how many people those evil oil companies are employing in North Dakota?  I happen to know that there are people from Lemmon, SD who now work in oil fields in North Dakota.  That's oil company profits and speculation putting people to work. 

Here is Joel Dykstra on this issue:

We need to take action to reverse years of neglect by Washington incumbents. We need to open up areas of American territory in Alaska and off-shore to exploration to get more oil and gas flowing to American consumers from American reserves. We are the only country in the world that imports more oil from overseas without utilizing its own God-given resources.
 
Senator Tim Johnson voted at least five times to keep parts of Alaska off-limits to oil exploration. If these areas had been opened instead of blocked we could be using American oil now instead of importing more from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela - two countries who use our dollars to work against American interests around the world.

SDP on TV: Inspector Lewis

The PBS series Mystery brought a lot of great English detectives to American TV.  For many years I enjoyed their interpretations of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Adam Dalgliesh.  But my certain favorite was Inspector Morse.  Morse, played with exquisite brilliance by the late John Thaw, was a brooding, over-educated Oxford man, with a weakness for English beer.  What's not to love?  The sound track was also pure genius, incorporating a kind of morse code beeping into a deeply moving theme.  It helps that I traveled to Oxford just about the time that the series got started. 

Morse had a sidekick: Robbie Lewis (Kevin Whately).  Lewis was presented as the opposite Morse, with little higher education and no taste for opera.  But Whately skillfully built his character into formidable presence. 

Some of the Morse scripts were based on the novels of Colin Dexter, who created the character; but others were "inspired" by the novels.  If Thaw had lived longer, we might have gotten more of them.  As it is, PBS is bringing us a new series: Inspector Lewis.  Lewis has now replaced Morse, and has his own sidekick: James Hathaway (Laurence Fox).  Here the tables are turned: Hathaway is a Cambridge man, who knows a little Greek and can quote Nietzsche.  Needless to say, the learning is relevant as he and his boss untangle the webs woven by Oxford Dons and other upper crust villains. I have seen the first two.  Both were good, but the second was dynamite. There are at least two more to go. 

This is very good film making.  It is solidly English detective genre in plot, and so it carries all the social friction of our mother country.  High and low culture, privilege and poverty, the smoker Hathaway navigating all the tobacco-free zones, all that is there but it always the background.  What matters is who done it.  Don't miss Inspector Lewis. 

Science, Technology, & Poetry

Professor Schaff and I have engaged frequently over the question whether the scientific view of the world is healthy or not.  In my recent post, I drew a distinction between science and technology.  The former tries to understand the world for the sake of knowing.  The latter tries to understand the world in so as is necessary for mastery of some domain.  Jon says this:

Prof. Blanchard defines science thusly: "Science is the pursuit of the underlying truths about the world, all of them, out of a simple desire to know."  True enough.  In this sense theology and philosophy are sciences or are parts of science.  But for at least 250 years this is not what most people mean by science, as most people are not Aristotelian in their outlook.  When most people say "science" what they mean is the attempt by man to use his mind to master the natural world, including himself, and manipulate it to his own ends.  It is not just about "understanding," it is about use.

It is certainly true that a lot of people, including a lot of academic authorities, are unaware of the distinction between science and technology.  For the most part this a good thing.  It keeps legislatures, incurious about nature but very curious about economic development, interested in funding science.  But scientists have never been confused about what they are doing, for the last two thousand years. They were trying to understand what is.  Jon goes on:

The divide between philosophy and the natural sciences is deep.  In general, the modern scientist, qua scientist, does not believe that we can say anything authoritative about that which is not measurable and quantifiable.   Thus the complaint, for example, that political science is not a "real science," try as it might to ape the natural sciences.  There is the derision of the humanities as "soft."

I don't think the divide is all that deep, but what my colleague is complaining about here is what the philosophy of science calls "physicalism." This is the view that nothing exists except what is physical, and here "physical" means measurable.  This is one of the special characteristics of modern science, and it is has been so spectacularly successful in opening up the book of nature that I find it hard to fault it.  But it is important to this applies only to the raw data.  Einstein's general and special theories of relativity begin with measurable data, but the data was available to everyone.  Einstein interpreted the data with astounding genius, presenting profoundly beautiful visions of the kosmos.  Those visions necessarily go beyond what is measurable, even if they suggest experiments which involve measurement.  Modern science, like all science, is dependent on poetry.

And finally there is this:

Prof. Blanchard and others are admirably attempting to bridge this gap.  But it does not change the fact that when a modern scientist says America has a "scientific soul," he does not mean we are a nation of Aristotles.  In short, he does not mean by "science" what Prof. Blanchard means. 

I do not know whom Prof. Schaff was reading when he came across that quote: "America has a 'scientific soul.'"  The unnamed writer might have meant merely that America was brought into being by people who had a great confidence in science, and that it has been nurtured here ever since.  If so, her or she was certainly right.  The founders thought their revolution and constitution making were informed by a scientifically correct understanding of human nature.  I happen to agree.  Benjamin Franklin earned an immortal place in the history of physics by suggesting that electricity needed two poles, positive and negative, to explain it.  Science has certainly been an integral part of the American soul, and this is one of the reasons for our greatness.

And just for clarification: I think a nation of Aristotles would be a very bad idea. 

Ob The Great and Powerful!

Intrepid reader and gracious friend of SDP, Mondak (also identified as GG), sends us this:

Senator Barack Obama's support has rebounded in the most recent polls in June and he is ahead of McCain by 13 points!  This is great news.  I couldn't be more happy for a man who has, what I and many in my generation believe, the vision to continue to propel a political movement that will take us beyond the old baby boomer politics. People in this nation appear to be sick and tired of the old politics and want politicians to offer and advance real solutions to the crisises we face today.  Obama has admitted on several occasions that he is not perfect and does not have all the answers and why should he?  We all have a stake in this election and our country and the world.  It's all of our responsibilities to work toward a better USA and world.  I have no doubt that with McCain, Obama, and the growing Democratic majority in Congress, we are finally witnessing a "coming together" to represent the common interests of human kind.  It won't be easy, it's always a long journey, but, we can not succeed if we do not try.  I think JFK and Reagan said something similar along those lines.

I understand Mondak's desire for a new kind of politician and a new kind of politics.  The trouble is we still have the same old kind of voters living on the same old planet Earth.  Mondak wants Oz the Great and Powerful to offer "real solutions" to our problems.  But just recently we have gotten a pretty good glimpse of the man behind the curtain.  Here is Evan Thomas from Newsweek:

The fund-raiser was unremarkable, by L.A. standards. Under enormous chandeliers at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, wealthy donors mingled with showbiz types (Dennis Quaid, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Beals) and ate endive spears stuffed with brie. Couples willing to donate $28,500 got to dine beforehand with the candidate, Barack Obama, who gave his usual stump speech and mocked his opponent, John McCain, for believing "that a bunch of oil rigs along the California coast was a good idea." (McCain had just recommended that states be allowed to opt out of the federal ban on offshore drilling.) This last zinger got a roar from the crowd, not a few of whom own shorefront properties in places like Malibu and Santa Barbara.

       

Raise some big bucks, ridicule your opponent, pander to the locals. Nothing unusual about that for a politician. But wait—wasn't this the candidate who was going to change politics as usual? Obama's decision to abandon the public financing system for the general election is a kind of change, but not what most voters had in mind when they voted for him in the primaries. By forgoing federal funding (and abandoning a pledge to first discuss the matter with his opponent), Obama will likely be able to outspend McCain, who is staying within the limits, by about four to one. Obama called the campaign-finance system "broken" and insists that he relies on small donors. But small donations to the Obama campaign have slackened, and in Los Angeles, Obama was able to take advantage of a loophole that allows him to circumvent the maximum individual donation ($2,300) by raising money for the Democratic Party. (McCain, who is staying in the system partly because he can't raise as much money as Obama, is exploiting the same loophole.)

       

Since he clinched the nomination, Obama has become a fairly traditional presidential candidate, shoring up the party base by telling interest groups what they want to hear.

Barack Obama is obviously a very talented politician, and more importantly, a man who seen his opportunities and took 'em. Such is the stuff of which greatness is usually made.  He has indeed built a vision, a Mondak puts it, of something new and glorious.  Well, that's the market. 

But the job of a presidential candidate is to build coalitions behind his candidacy, just as the job of a President is to build coalitions behind his policies. Doing that means promising a lot of people a lot of things, and it is rare in a politician for all those promises to be mutually consistent or meaningful.  I don't think it is a terrible thing that Obama has torn a gaping hole in the public financing system for campaigns, in violation of his party's principles and his own solemn pledge.  I didn't like the system to begin with.  But I don't see how this is consistent with a "vision." 

I don't believe for a moment that Obama really believes in a constitutional right to own firearms.  When it comes to choosing Supreme Court nominees, people who agree with Scalia, or people who agree with Justice Stevens?  Obama is triangulating, as the Clintons put it, announcing positions he doesn't really hold to make it harder to attack him from the right. 

Again, I don't have any real problem with any of this.  Obama is a politician, and that is what they do.  Bill Clinton did it with flair.  Evan Thomas thinks that both Obama and McCain are uncomfortable doing it.  Maybe Obama is the better choice for voters, but it is silly to think that either he or McCain represents something new.  As the campaign goes on, it becomes harder and harder to say exactly what Obama's vision is.  Is he for immediate withdrawal from Iraq?  Well, yes and no.  What are his solutions to the current energy price problem?  He has no real solutions because there are no real solutions, or at least none that aren't unpleasant to mention.

If Obama came out and said: "look, we are just going to have to settle for a lot less in life to solve our energy and environmental problems," that might or might not be right.  But at least it would be new. If he said: I am going to appoint judges who will establish gay marriage by legislative fiat, as the California Supreme Court has in that state, that would honest, and would give us a vision to believe in or reject.   Don't hold your breath.