South Dakota Politics

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. 

Obama: Just Another Politician

McClatchy:  "From the beginning, Barack Obama's special appeal was his vow to remain an idealistic outsider, courageous and optimistic, and never to shift his positions for political expediency, or become captive of the Inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia, or kiss up to special interests and big money donors.  In recent weeks, though, Obama has done all those things."  Be sure to read the whole thing.

ALSO:  Howard Kurtz:  "Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban.  Oh, I'm sorry. He didn't change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement.  That, at least, is what his campaign is saying. The same campaign that tried to spin his flip-flop in rejecting public financing as embracing the spirit of reform, if not the actual position he had once promised to embrace.  Is this becoming a pattern? Wouldn't it be better for Obama to say he had thought more about such-and-such an issue and simply changed his mind? Is that verboten in American politics? Is it better to engage in linguistic pretzel-twisting in an effort to prove that you didn't change your mind?"

The Right to Keep & Bear Arms

I generally agree with Professor Schaff's treatment of Kennedy v. Louisiana.  It is a decision ungrounded in the text of the Constitution, precedent, or other legal or legislative traditions and practices.  This is not to say that I am in favor of the death penalty for child rapists or anyone else.  For all sorts of reasons, I think the death penalty is more trouble than it's worth. 

I turn to D.C. v. Heller, in which the Court affirms for the first time that the Constitution protects the rights of law-abiding citizens to possess firearms.  I should say that I have possessed and fired both a hand gun and a shotgun, but so far I have never nailed anything more sentient than a trashcan.    But I am more interested in black ink than in black powder.  I think the Court (5 to 4) was obviously right, but I think the decision allows for a lot more gun control that most places have now and I think a case can be made for such control. 

Here, from ePublius! (my work and Jon's) is the text of the Second Amendment to the Constitution:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The question in the case is this:

does the 2nd Amendment protect the right of the people (meaning individual citizens) to keep and bear arms, or

does the 2nd Amendment protect only the right of the state governments to arm their citizens and create state militias? 

Or at least it seems obvious to me that this is question.  Justice Stevens, writing his dissent, denies that this is the question, and his denial, I think, greatly reduces the force of his argument. 

The 2nd Amendment contains a prefatory clause, apparently explaining the purpose of the amendment.   Such a clause is unique to the Constitution, though not to other documents of the era.  But as Antonin Scalia ably demonstrates, the prefatory clause clearly does not control the operative clause.  Suppose Professor Schaff is present at the reading of his uncle Ferdinand's will.  The will contains this clause:

My nephew Jon, being handsome, always right in his opinions, and a snappy dresser, I leave him my entire estate of 1787 million dollars. 

The prefatory clause explains why Uncle Ferdinand decided to give Jon the cash.  But it has no effect on the fact that Jon gets the cash.  The disappointed relations might hire me to refute all three of Uncle Ferdinand's opinions about Jon, and I suspect I could earn that money.  But it wouldn't help.  "I leave him my entire estate," means "I leave him my entire estate." 

Likewise, the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," means what it says, regardless of why the Founders said it.  And there is no reasonable doubt about what it says.  The "right of the people" clearly means the right of those individuals who make up the body politic: the citizens who collectively are "we the people."  To say otherwise would undermine a very precious right only a few inches south of the 2nd Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nor is it uncertain what the right to keep and bear arms means.  It means the right to keep and bear arms.  Here "bear" at least admits of more than one meaning.  It means to carry arms in defense of the community or in defense of oneself.  By contrast, "keep" has only one meaning: to possess. 

The first ten amendments to the Constitution were added because the original document had no bill of rights.  With the sole exception of the 10th Amendment, the Constitutional Bill of Rights is devoted to rights of individuals.  To deny that the 2nd Amendment does not protect the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms would mean that nothing in the Bill of Rights, or anything else in the Constitution for that matter, need mean what it says. 

I think the Court's ruling is pretty narrow here, as it should be.  As the Constitution stands, neither the District of Columbia, nor any other government in these United States can prohibit law abiding citizens from possessing firearms.  The right to bear is a little more problematic, but I think it can be interpreted in a way that allows all reasonable restrictions.  The 4th Amendment does not prohibit general searches at airports.  Likewise a much more thorough licensing and registration regime for all firearms would be consistent with the second amendment, just as the 1st Amendment does not prevent government from requiring radio stations to be licensed.

If we really believe in constitutional rights, we ought to be concerned with how they apply to the various circumstances that arise.  It is bad faith to spend one's time trying to smudge out the original text. 

Science and Magic

As we have covered this ground before, I have only a brief response to Prof. Blanchard's musings on science and magic.  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. 

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." 

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. 

Document Dump

Lots of little stories to mention. 

The Bush Administration has struck a deal with North Korea.  The North Koreans agree to stop their nuclear program in exchange for the removal of certain sanctions.  This result comes from a series of talks with the North Koreans and various other nations.  You might recall that in 2004 John Kerry beat on George Bush for not unilaterally negotiating with North Korea, while Bush insisted that six-party talks were the way to go.  The damn unilateralist cowboy.  Time will tell whether the North Koreans live up to their side of the bargain.

Barack Obama once again "clarifies" his position on an important subject.  He used to think that the DC gun ban was constitutional, but after yesterday's Supreme Court ruling saying otherwise he is now "straddling" the issue.  Obama's long support for gun control is hard to deny. 

Last week I cataloged Obama's obfuscations on various issues.  I forgot one. Obama attacked Hillary Clinton for voting in favor of listing Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.  In keeping with his pattern on controversial matters, Obama didn't vote on this bill. Still, Obama now says listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group was the right thing to do.  The earlier truth is now inoperative.

Obama is also now supporting the FISA bill he previously opposed. 

The other day I took Obama to task for suggesting the greater regulation of energy futures speculation will solve the problem of high gas prices.  This story has some economists saying that if Obama and some in Congress get their way and new regulations pass, we will go back to $2 a gallon gas.  I wish it was so, although I doubt it.  As I said the other day, if speculators are investing contrary to what the market should dictate, they will eventually lose their shirts and the market price will prevail.  But I am prepared to be wrong, and if such legislation passes, I hope I am.  I believe John McCain also is in favor of greater regulation of energy futures, but I do not know if he supports the particular bill discussed in the news story.

 

More Court News

The Supreme Court has overturned Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns in a limited ruling.  While concluding that there is an individual right to own a gun, thus the outright ban is a violation of the 2nd Amendment, the majority intimates that a wide range of regulations are still permissible. 

Tocqueville on Rape

From Democracy in America:

The legislators of the United States, who have mitigated almost all the penalties of criminal law, still make rape a capital offense, and no crime is visited with more inexorable severity by public opinion. This may be accounted for; as the Americans can conceive nothing more precious than a woman's honor and nothing which ought so much to be respected as her independence, they hold that no punishment is too severe for the man who deprives her of them against her will. In France, where the same offense is visited with far milder penalties, it is frequently difficult to get a verdict from a jury against the prisoner. Is this a consequence of contempt of decency or contempt of women? I cannot but believe that it is a contempt of both.

The Supreme Court Rules

The Supreme Court yesterday, in reaching a decision that to put to death someone who viciously rapes an eight-year-old violates the Eighth Amendment, makes a decision so heinous even Barack Obama cannot support it.  Read the details of the rape here, but only if you have a strong stomach. 

I have many times on this site voiced my opposition to the death penalty.  But my view is prudential, not categorical.  In a world confused about the value of human life, I'd prefer that we err for the time being on the side of life even with the worst criminals.  Even if I was categorically opposed to capital punishment I would not be so arrogant or ignorant to suppose that the Constitution prohibits that which it clearly allows.  In short, I would not read my own values into the Constitution.

For a legal analysis of the case, see Scott Johnson, Ed Whelan, Matt Franck, and the editors of National Review. 

Obama's rejection of this decision would be more edifying if this is not exactly the type of decision one can expect from Obama's "living Constitution" judges.  Says Jonah Goldberg:

To his credit — or to the credit of his realpolitik advisers — Obama came out against yesterday's decision. But, that doesn't change the fact that he would appoint judges who would vote the same away and has voted  against judges who voted the right way. 

The 'living Constitution" is one of the hallmarks of the Progressive philosophy.  Let me quote from Sidney Pearson's introduction to Herbert Croly's Progressive Democracy. 

For Croly, the Constitution was a "living Constitution," which is to say that it was not bound by the principles of the Founders.  It could evolve into some other than what the Founders would have intended.  Croly described this as a "strength," but the implications were clear; a "living Constitution" could be interpreted and reinterpreted to the point where the original principles were lost altogether....The virtual elimination of the Constitution as a source of permanent principles was necessary because Croly well understood that as a practical matter there was not likely to be a new Constitutional Convention to draft a new document. (emphasis mine)

Croly, Woodrow Wilson, and other Progressives wished to replace the Constitution with the more enlightened view of their age (the Progressives were not the first nor last to believe that intellectual evolution had peaked with themselves).  This turns the judicial branch from an institution which uses its judgment to an institution that asserts its will.  Thus Obama and others like him don't really have a legal argument against the Court; they merely have a policy disagreement.  And that is what the "living Constitution" does. It turns the Supreme Court into just another policy making body.  So the opinion of five judges overrules the people of Louisiana (to say nothing of the jury), an overruling based on a whim. 

We are now in a legal position where our imperial masters on the Supreme Court believe that a man who perverts his role as a caretaker by raping his young step-daughter has so much dignity that the Constitution forbids the public from executing him.  But, the unborn have so little dignity that the Constitution demands that the public allow women to kill their unborn child for any reason at any point in pregnancy. 

Science, Technology, & Magic

Professor Schaff has another well-written and thought-provoking post on the perils of scientific culture. I agree with a lot of what he says, in this and in another related post.  I am not quite so hostile to laptops in schools as he is, but I have to concede that evidence is mostly with him on this one.  There is no good evidence I have heard of that suggests that providing students with computers improves their education.  Quite the contrary, it seems to lead to less homework and less reading.  The reason is probably very simple: the internet, for all its genuine wealth, offers a lot more distractions.  But while this is a very good argument against pushing computers in schools, it is also true that all of our students will be surfing the web soon enough.  We might ought to give thought to what to do about that. 

Professor Schaff gives us A Clockwork Orange as a warning of the dangers inherent in a scientific conception of man.  I read the book when I was about thirteen, and have only recently seen the movie. I still remember the stunning words "I was cured alright," at the very end, when Alex has had anti-violence, anti-sex conditioning removed. 

There is, of course, the danger that technology will allow managers to transform workers into mere cogs in an industrial machine.  I suspect that this danger will become more serious as biotechnology advances.  We aren't that far away from happy worker pills. But I think that Professor Schaff is guilty of one confusion.

This past weekend in Minnesota I was paging through a book at Barnes and Noble that was worried about the potential loss of America's "scientific soul."... I seriously doubt American ever had a "scientific soul," and if it did it is a good thing to remove.  When we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine, a thing to be manipulated for good and for ill.  Man, of course, is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine.

Science is not the same thing as technology.  The latter means a kind of know-how, understanding the underlying principles of some field just well enough to achieve some desired product or outcome. A consultant, hired by a factory manager, may indeed view the workers as mere cogs in the machine. What he is paid for is increasing output while lowering costs.  But even here the dangers are easily overstated.  Free human beings are much more efficient than slaves have ever been, and a technological shrewd consultant will realize this. 

Science is the pursuit of the underlying truths about the world, all of them, out of a simple desire to know.  If it is true that man "is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine," and I think that this is true, then the scientist will want to know that.  A machine is a mere reflection of the purposes of it's designer and users.  Living organisms, by contrast, have their own agenda and respond to our attempts at manipulation in more or less unpredictable ways.  I think that modern science is rediscovering the soul, after a long period of inattention.  But then I think the soul is what Aristotle thought it was: the actuality of a body, with the potential for life. 

So I cannot agree with Jon that "when we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine."  One of the best popular science writers, Johnathan Weiner, wrote a book called Time, Love, and Memory. This book is about the search for the genetic foundations of three of the most important biological powers among a wide range of species, including our own.  The title alone suggest the poetry in this search.  What it shows, I think, is not that mechanical forces determine life and thought; rather, life manipulates mechanical forces.  In so far as Jon and I agree, human beings are what we think they are: more than machines.  Honest science is illuminating this rather than obscuring it. 

Professor Schaff also offers Sherlock Holmes as an example of the dangers of science. 

In a Sherlock Holmes story I listened to during my recent road trip, Holmes laments while in a posh London neighborhood that while his friend Watson can appreciate the beautiful architecture of the homes, Holmes himself can only see places where crimes might take place.  His dedication to his science has made him immune to beauty.  What a pity if that is how we start to see humanity and nature, unable to appreciate their beauty, only able to see a machine.   

But Holmes is presented by A.C. Doyle as very dysfunctional person, however brilliant and fascinating to Watson. One interest alone motivates him: solving crimes. When he doesn't have a case to chew on, he is so painfully bored that he spends his time in an opium stupor.  Holmes is an artist at best.  He is interested in science only for its devices.  Charles Darwin, by contrast, was never bored. Nor, if you read his Voyage of the Beagle, can you imagine for a moment that science leaves one immune to beauty. 

Some of those who fear science (and I do not accuse Jon of this) do so because they sense that it threatens magic.  They are right.  All magic implies that the real world can be manipulated merely by manipulating the human imagination.  Make a doll that looks like Todd Epp, put a pin in the forehead, and Epp will say something irrational.  Wait, how could one tell?   Science attempts to correct the imagination until it can seize on and be nurtured by the nature of things. 

The best presentation of a world with effective magic in it is of course J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels.  I am a big fan.  In those novels, the world of science and technology (the real one) coexists with a world of magic.  But what does the latter look like?  It's Victorian in its architecture and clothing.  Everything in it except its magic is borrowed from the world of muggles (non-magical people), but with a significant time lag.  The magical world of Harry Potter is retarded. I don't think that Rowling  intended this lesson, but she teaches it.  It's fun to play with magic in movies and novels.  Outside that venue, it stunts one's growth.   

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in 1962.  The somewhat cryptic title refers to a certain view of man.  The word "orange" refers to the Malay word "orang," which means man.  Thus the main character of the novel, Alex, is a clockwork man.  If you have seen the film or read the novel (and I confess to only seeing the film) you know that criminal Alex is made "good" by the scientific application of certain visual stimuli that condition his mind to revolt at the idea of committing violence.  The clear implication of the end of the film is that this technique can be used to make men good, but can also be used to make men bad. 

This is one of the implications of the Atlantic Monthly article "Is Google Making Us Stupid," to which I referred yesterday.  The author, Guy Billout, discusses the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, who in the late 19th Century timed the activities of various workmen in an attempt to find inefficiencies in their behavior.  Obviously the more efficient they could become in the use of their time the more money was to be made by industry.  Taylor wrote a book, The Principles of Scientific Management, aiming to turn the management of men into a science.  In this way, the worker became almost literally a clockwork man.  When man becomes a mere machine, it is easy to see him as something to be manipulated and conditioned, just as we might manipulate our car engine or computer.

This past weekend in Minnesota I was paging through a book at Barnes and Noble that was worried about the potential loss of America's "scientific soul."  This was another in a long series of "evolution good, intelligent design bad" books, perhaps matched only by the "intelligent design good, evolution bad" books (for the record, I am an "evolution controversy" agnostic).  I seriously doubt American ever had a "scientific soul," and if it did it is a good thing to remove.  When we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine, a thing to be manipulated for good and for ill.  Man, of course, is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine. 

In a Sherlock Holmes story I listened to during my recent road trip, Holmes laments while in a posh London neighborhood that while his friend Watson can appreciate the beautiful architecture of the homes, Holmes himself can only see places where crimes might take place.  His dedication to his science has made him immune to beauty.  What a pity if that is how we start to see humanity and nature, unable to appreciate their beauty, only able to see a machine.   

Argus Leader: Wrong on Laptops

The Argus Leader is right on one thing: the spat over the funding of the governor's laptop initiative has distracted from the merits of the program itself.  The Argus Leader is dead wrong on another thing: laptops do not have educational value. 

Giving high school students access to laptop computers can be rewarding, especially for those who wouldn't otherwise have much access to computers. We all joke about how much more tech savvy our kids are, and there is much truth in that. But it also means that those children who don't have that level of familiarity with our digital world risk falling far behind.

Except we have research on this, and laptop programs do little to bridge the "digital divide."  Further, if the worry is that some students don't have computer knowledge, there is an easy way to combat that ignorance: have them take a computer class.  Like cavemen, the Argus is awed by the shiny object of the laptop. 

I wrote about this issue at length yesterday, so there is no reason to repeat myself.  Laptop programs for schools have no significant influence on the attainment of knowledge, and as such they are a waste of public dollars. 

Combatting The Inflation Monster

I have argued on this site that the most important economic problem we face is inflation.  I have suggested that the Federal Reserve should be raising interest rates, not lowering them, and that the government should be encouraging both public and private savings.  Here is Robert Samuelson today.

Forget the housing collapse, the "credit crunch" and -- in isolation -- higher oil prices. The real economic menace may be resurgent inflation, which is the broad rise of most prices.(snip)

One antidote to rising raw material prices is for the Fed to reverse its easy money policies. Combating inflation is rarely popular or easy, because it involves slowing the economy -- even inducing a recession -- to relieve pressures on prices and wages. Unemployment rises. There are usually plausible reasons for waiting. Surely there are now. Housing remains in disarray. More loan defaults could increase bank losses. No matter what the Fed does, there are dangers. Perhaps inflation will spontaneously subside (as some Fed officials hope) because the economy is already weak.

But similar arguments for delay were made in the 1960s with disastrous results. The resulting inflationary psychology made inflation harder to extinguish. The initial unwillingness to take a modest slowdown or recession led to deeper subsequent recessions. There are now signs that we are at a similar juncture.

As is becoming increasingly the case, I find myself in almost total agreement with Mr. Samuelson. 

Obama's Bad Economic Ideas

The Wall Street Journal, not surprisingly, takes aim at two widely publicized proposals from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.  The first deals with Obama's plan to lower the price of oil by going after energy speculators.  So writes the Journal:

But there's no inherent reason to "bet" that commodities will go up rather than down. Bet wrong – place all your chips on red, say – and you lose. If a company purchases the future right to buy oil at $140 a barrel and it instead sells for $130, the option is worthless. Besides, somebody has to take the other side of any futures contract: Some are trying to predict where the price will go in the future, while the other side is attempting to sell its future price risk. But no one knows how things will end up. (snip)

One omnipresent talking point is that the so-called "Enron loophole" must be closed. A provision inserted in legislation in 2000 exempted certain oil contract exchanges where transactions were made via computer and telephone, rather than on a trading floor, from regulations that govern other exchange-traded commodities. But Congress ended that practice as part of its most recent farm bill, and there's no evidence that "over the counter" trading has caused the increase in oil prices. The political enthusiasm seems to arise solely from the word "Enron."

Those who wish to blame energy speculation for the rise in oil prices live in a world of fantasy where it must be the bogeyman raising oil prices, not economic forces.  But even if the they are correct in their assessment, by definition these speculators will get their comeuppance.  If they are indeed buying energy futures at higher rates than the market dictates, at some point the market will correct this, as with the "dot com" bubble burst of 1999-2000. One should point out that Barack Obama has no principled opposition to high gas prices, he just wishes the price would have gone up a little more gradually. 

More serious is Obama's plan to "save Social Security," which is really just masking a plan to raise taxes.  Obama plans to apply Social Security taxes on households (not individuals) making over $250,000. Donald Luskin writes about this in today's Journal:

One liberal columnist actually noted with glee the fact that this would take us back to top tax rates not seen since the 1970s.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Obama's new tax would siphon off 0.4% of gross domestic product annually. Combined with Mr. Obama's other tax-hike initiatives, "the total tax on labor would be close to 60 percent. In high-tax states like California and New York, the top rate would be even higher."

Would it help Social Security's financing problems? Mr. Obama has no idea. One of his senior economic advisers admitted to me that no one on the campaign has run any detailed models or performed any rigorous analysis. When one proposes an enormous tax increase, shouldn't there at least be a spreadsheet somewhere? (snip)

Throughout the history of the Social Security program, there has always been a connection between what you contribute in taxes and what you get back in benefits. If Mr. Obama uncaps the wages subject to tax, but doesn't uncap benefits, then he has severed the link between them. Social Security would stand revealed not as a work-related contributory retirement system, but simply as a tax-funded welfare and income-redistribution program.

Read the whole thing for the details.  What Obama's plan does is dramatically raise taxes on the most productive, increases labor costs, reneges on the promise of FDR that Social Security would be a pension plan not a welfare program, all the while doing little to nothing to address to Social Security problem.  Furthermore, Obama decries the Bush tax cuts, which cut rates for everyone.  Would he like to repeal those, further increasing taxes?  He also is for raising taxes on capital gains to 28%, nearly doubling the tax rate on investment.  With a compliant Congress, we are sure to see a significant increase in our tax burden in a coming Obama administration. 

Gov. Rounds Continues Foolish Support For Laptops

Two stories today on the continued support for the "Classroom Connections" program, i.e., Gov. Rounds' effort to put a laptop in the hands of every high school student in our state.  Here is Terry Woster's story and here is Chet Brokaw's.  The Rounds administration defended their program and its funding in front of the Joint Appropriations Committee yesterday.  According to the Woster story, outgoing Education Secretary Rick Melmer foresees 100% participation by our public high schools.  Brokaw reports this from budget director Jason Dilges:

He said state officials will return to the Legislature next year to seek money for a fourth year of the laptop program, and they will try to do a better job explaining how important it is.

"Technology, we all agree, is the wave of the future," Dilges said. "We can't afford not to go forward with this."

The idea that "technology is the wave of the future so we have to have laptops" is, frankly, lame.  The last problem our students have is that they are insufficiently adept at computer technology.  All the wizbang technology in the world serves no purpose if our students cannot read, cannot carry on a sustained thought, and cannot do math.  Laptops are of little to no use for any of these skills. 

It just so happens that my column today in the American News is on this subject, focusing on Mark Bauerlein's Dumbest Generation book.  If I may quote myself (and I may):

Graphic-heavy software and Web sites do little to raise the vocabulary of young people. The complexity of the written word and the plot intricacy of novels, even pulp novels, build vocabulary while encouraging contemplation and complexity of thinking.

But computers, video games and television, Bauerlein writes, condition the mind “against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unaided by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else.”

It is no accident that the National Association of Manufacturers lists low reading and writing skills as the No. 2 deficiency of employees.

Read the whole thing.  Also, read the Atlantic Monthly piece "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" to which Prof. Blanchard referred recently.  The piece is a little longer, so if you are the typical internet user you might struggle to get through it.  Leonard Pitts has some thoughts on that article here.  The author of the piece, Guy Bilout, writes:

[University College London researchers] found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

(snip)
“We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Believe me, students will figure out technology.  And those that need technology for their profession will be trained in it. But the ubiquitous use of technology in the classroom will make our students less literate, less thoughtful, and less human.  I urge the Rounds administration to rethink this initiative, and if they refuse to do so, I urge the legislature to cut all funding. 

 

George Carlin, RIP

If you have twenty-one odds and ends sitting on a shelf, and twenty fall off, what've you got left: an odd or an end?  That is one of my favorite jokes.  I know it comes from George Carlin, and I'm pretty sure it was in his HBO special, back in the late seventies.  I watched that show sitting on a pillow on the floor of an apartment just off of Arkansas State University.  I started laughing the minute Carlin walked on stage.  I haven't ever really stopped. 

Carlin was a comic poet of enormous talent.  It is fair to say, in this obituary, that he fell short of the first order.  When American popular culture went hippie, so did he; and it would be a long time until he turned his biting humor against popular culture.  I suspect that nothing made drugs easier to try, at least for middle class youths like myself, than someone who made them funny.  He made them very funny. I still remember this one, sort of.   

Want to have an experience?  Don't eat for three days.  Smoke three joints.  Then GO TO THE SUPERMARKEEET! 

He illustrated that last line by pretending to push a cart while plucking items off shelves as fast as his arms would work. And there is this:

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

That said, Carlin did maintain moral authority on  language and concepts. 

Consider the words flammable, inflammable, and nonflammable.  Two words ought to be able to handle this concept.  After, the thing either flams or it doesn't. 

No one ever knows for sure what a deserted area looks like. 

In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first. 

Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

And he was equally good at getting at the conceits behind ordinary sentiments.

If you love someone, set them free.  If they come back, set them on fire.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?  

One out of every three Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of two of your best friends. If they are OK, then it must be you.

But he was best at making ordinary life look surprising.

I have six locks on my door, all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three of them.

Ever notice when you blow in a dog’s face he gets mad at you, but when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window?

If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

Honesty may be the best policy, but then by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy. 

Goodbye George. 

Zimbabwe

It is not hard to understand Robert Mugabe.  He spent decades struggling for power and decades holding onto it.  Now he does not want to let it go.  Besides, he is eighty four.  After retirement comes what?  So whatever we might feel about fact that gangs of Mugabe supporters have been murdering members of the opposition with impunity, it shouldn't be wonder or surprise. 

It's a little harder to understand why he has always received so much outside support, and why it took so long for the rest of the world to wake up to the kind of man he is.  For that, I recommend V.S. Naipaul's superb novel, A Bend in the River.  Mugabe was supposed to be a hero.  But no one outside Zimbabwe believes that anymore, let alone outside of Africa. 

It's not clear what to say about Africa's other leaders.  South African President Thabo Mbeki is trying to engineer some sort of power-sharing compromise between Mugabe and his opposition.  That is not a stupid or morally bankrupt idea.  It worked in Kenya.  But of course it means rewarding Mugabe for his gangsterism.  Nelson Mandela's silence is more depressing.  But Mandela, for all this greatness, has always had a blind spot for whoever supported his side in the South African struggle.  He has never been willing to breathe a word against Fidel Castro.

The leader of the opposition and the man who would certainly succeed Mugabe in an honest election, Morgan Tsvangirai, has pulled out of next Sunday's runoff election.  This is probably a shrewd and decent thing to do.  Mugabe is determined to steal it and has made it clear that he won't surrender power in any event.  Tsvangirai's capitulation may reduce the level of violence, or at at least he will not be a party to it.  He may have some hope of waiting Mugabe out. 

Some years ago a colleague of mine from Nigeria defended Africa's "big man" political culture.  He thought it a better fit with Africa's traditions, and more likely to work than Western democracy.  Well, the results are in.  It turned Africa's breadbasket into an economic basket case.  Democracy is not a cultural choice.  It is the only means whereby a government can be forced to serve the interests of its people.  Making government work means making democracy work.  The nations should do whatever they can to help Zimbabwe emerge from its long nightmare. 

Your Government At Work

First, the ugly.  Our immigration people, who ok'd Mohamed Atta for flight lessons after he had flown an airplane into the World Trade Center and who regularly lose track of those who violate immigration law, are hot on the trail of De Smet priest, Fr. Cathal Gallagher. 

Born in Donegal, Ireland, Gallagher served 22 years in Japan before moving to Rochester, Minn., on a religious visa in 1996 to work with alcohol addiction. It was there that he met the Most Rev. Robert Carlson, then the bishop of the Sioux Falls diocese, who invited him to lead churches in eastern South Dakota.

"I thought I was going to go back to Japan ... but then I fell in love with De Smet," he said. "It's a very simple way of life, a place where people are important. I never expected to find that in the United States."

Gallagher applied for permanent residency in 2001 and was told in 2003 that his green card was on the way.

But in February 2006, a lawyer handling his application told him it was denied. Gallagher thinks it's because his work visa expired while he waited for an answer.

A technical violation of the law brings the weight of the federal government down on a man who made a good faith effort to follow that law and is clearly no threat to the public.  Meanwhile, scores of illegals who are actually dangerous pour over the border and wander the streets with the immigration service in complete ignorance. 

The good.  Apparently, FEMA is doing an excellent job responding to Midwestern floods. 

Up and down the Big Muddy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being commended for responding quickly and surely.

"The lessons we learned from Katrina we've taken very seriously," said Glenn Cannon, FEMA assistant administrator for disaster operations. He added: "We've changed the way we do business. We don't wait to react."

After Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, FEMA came into New Orleans late and unprepared, and soon became a symbol of government bungling. President Bush's compliment to FEMA Director Michael D. Brown—"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!"—became a big joke.

Now, storms and flooding in the upper Midwest have left 24 people dead, driven tens of thousands from their homes and caused billions in damage.

After the rain started falling in early June, FEMA arrived with 13 million sandbags to pile onto the levees, 200 generators, and 30 trucks to haul off debris. Across the upper Midwest, the agency has delivered nearly 3.6 million liters of water and 192,000 ready-to-eat meals. About 650 inspectors are working in Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin alone.

Here is an all too rare story of a bureaucracy learning from its mistakes and actually serving the people better.  George Bush, who took heaps of scorn over the Katrina debacle, will surely wait in vain for any praise over the recent success of FEMA. 

 

Zombies In Plain English

This short video provides some excellent details on how you can survive the coming zombie hordes.  One note of caution: contra this video, some think that it is not safe to go into the water.  There is growing consensus that zombies have some swimming skills.  Even if they can't swim, they can walk on the floor of the body of water, possibly reaching islands. 

Obama's Flip Flop on Funding

Like my colleague, I have no love of public funding for campaigns.  I think it makes it too easy for government to control parties and candidates.  So I am not exactly sorry if Obama has driven the nail into the coffin of the public financing system.  Likewise, I do not think that Obama acted differently than any other viable candidate would have in the same situation.  Were the circumstances reversed, John McCain would certainly be offering the same lame excuses as Obama is now offering, or if not, he would think of others, equally as lame.  I would like to think that SDP would not, in that case, be making incoherent arguments in defense of McCain, but that is no solemn pledge on my part. 

But it's not out of line for us to point out that Obama is breaking a solemn pledge (see SDP's Jason Heppler), and that he is acting against the principles his party claims to stand for.  I am therefore puzzled at the reaction of our esteemed Keloland colleague, Scott Ehrisman.  Scott seems to think that public financing is like holy water in a vampire movie: it makes all evil scream in pain and withdraw.  I think that's utter nonsense, but one did believe it, wouldn't one be furious with Obama? 

The New York Times is deeply disappointed.

The excitement underpinning Senator Barack Obama’s campaign rests considerably on his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has come up short of that standard with his decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election.

Mr. Obama is the first presidential candidate to rebuff the public system’s restrictions for the general election since they were enacted after the Watergate scandal. In doing so, he pronounced the public system “broken” and turned away from his earlier strong suggestion — greatly applauded at the time — that he would pursue an agreement with the Republican candidate to preserve the publicly subsidized restraints this fall [my emphasis]. 

Barack Obama has done unprecedented damage to the public system.  The Washington Post agrees with the NYTs, and what is more interesting, the Post points out that Obama agrees. 

BARACK OBAMA isn't abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it's in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn't about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he'd get if he stuck to his promise -- and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Mr. Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing. Really, it hurts him more than it hurts Fred Wertheimer.

Pardon the sarcasm. But given Mr. Obama's earlier pledge to "aggressively pursue" an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take. "It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Mr. Obama said in a video message to supporters.

Now I think it is nonsense for the Times to talk about "departing from self-interested politics."  Politics is always a tapestry woven out of a vast number of self-interests.  The trick is to weave them into coherent positions on the public good.  In a regime with freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, you can't shut out those "greedy lobbyist boot lickers" that Scott despises.  They will find some way to use their numbers and purses to influence politics.  Besides, they shouldn't be shut out.  The unions, the Sierra Club, the ACLU, have every right to want to use their clout to advance their interests in Washington.  So do the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and the NRA.  Obama will need their support after the election.  It's a good idea to get it now. 

What this incident shows is not that Obama is a bad man or bad candidate.  It shows that he is a candidate.  This is how they behave, like it or not.  I am not shocked or offended by this.  But someone who believes that Barack Obama represents a new kind of candidate, a departure from the politics of the past, might find this a convenient time to come back to planet earth.

The Grey Lady Discovers Progress . . . Just a Little Late

Jennifer Rubin:  "The New York Times has made a startling discovery: things are much improved in Iraq."

Fast Times at Gloucester High

Michele Catalano:  "At an age when most teens are making plans for college and careers, 17 teenagers from Gloucester had a very different plan for their lives; they wanted to become mothers. Not after college, not even after high school, but now, while they were still teenagers. Soon, the girls were appearing in the school nurse's office for pregnancy tests. Instead of scared young girls frightened at the prospect of a positive test, the nurse was faced with teens who were high fiving each other at the news they were expecting."

America's Over-Regulated Roads

The current Atlantic Monthly magazine announces itself as the first "ideas issue."  That is usually a sign that you can expect anything but ideas.  But it more than lives up to that conception.  Consider what is in it:

An article arguing that the destruction of large housing projects in major cities has only succeeded in flushing criminal behavior into surrounding suburbs.  I hadn't heard about that, and I am guessing that neither have you.  But it is a fascinating and disturbing read. 

It has an article entitled "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?"  Professor Schaff will like this one.  I have to say that it backs up his concerns about the internet and education. 

It has an article arguing that Donald Rumsfeld, for all his faults, has accomplished a major restructuring  of the American military that makes it much more fit for the future strategic environment. 

All three are important articles, and I expect that the first will cited for many years to come as a turning point in thinking about social policy. 

But I was most impressed with "Distracting Miss Daisy," by John Staddon.  Staddon claims that drivers and their cars are much safer in Britain than in the United States, and that this is largely because American roads are much more heavily regulated than British roads. 

Consider the stop sign. It seems innocuous enough; we do need to stop from time to time. But think about how the signs are actually set up and used. For one thing, there’s the placement of the signs—off to the side of the road, often amid trees, parked cars, and other road signs; rarely right in front of the driver, where he or she should be looking.

Then there’s the sheer number of them. They sit at almost every intersection in most American neighborhoods. In some, every intersection seems to have a four-way stop. Stop signs are costly to drivers and bad for the environment: stop/start driving uses more gas, and vehicles pollute most when starting up from rest. More to the point, however, the overabundance of stop signs teaches drivers to be less observant of cross traffic and to exercise less judgment when driving—instead, they look for signs and drive according to what the signs tell them to do.

And then there is my favorite: speed limits.

Speed limits in the U.S. are perhaps a more severe safety hazard than stop signs. In many places, they change too frequently—sometimes every few hundred yards—once again training drivers to look for signs, not at the road. What’s more, many speed limits in the U.S. are set in arbitrary and irrational ways. An eight-lane interstate can have a limit of 50 to 70 mph or more. What makes the difference? A necessarily imperfect guess at probable traffic conditions. The road may sometimes be busy—so the limit is set low. But sometimes the road is not busy, and the safe speed is then much higher than the limit.

A particularly vexing aspect of the U.S. policy is that speed limits seem to be enforced more when speeding is safe. As a colleague once pointed out, “An empty highway on a sunny day? You’re dead meat!” A more systematic effort to train drivers to ignore road conditions can hardly be imagined. By training drivers to drive according to the signs rather than their judgment in great conditions, the American system also subtly encourages them to rely on the signs rather than judgment in poor conditions, when merely following the signs would be dangerous.

Sometimes regulation is good.  It's a good thing that buildings in California have to be constructed to withstand earthquakes.  But maybe too many regulations can be a bad thing.  Safety on the roads depends only a little on the physical characteristics of the roads and the cars.  It depends almost entirely on driver judgment and attention.  Maybe the Brits are right about this one. 

Obama and Fund Raising: An Email

Frequent emailer GG writes:

Obama has done the right and honorable thing by not accepting public funding.  For far too long politicians from both sides have taken advantage of U.S. taxpayers in fuding their campaigns.  I would think that Conservatives, "True Conservatives" would actually aplaud the Obama move on not accepting campaign contribuitions.  But, alas, they keep proving me wrong as usual.  Nothing new here. 

Of course, the complaint from conservatives is not the fact that Obama is opting out of public financing.  I and many (probably most) conservatives do not believe in the public financing scheme.  I am with GG that politicians should not use the tax payers to fund their campaigns.  I have yet to read  criticism of Obama from a conservative on this issue based on some conservative support for public financing of elections.  GG is just making that up.  Perhaps, though, GG should have a talk with his candidate, who said in rejecting public money, "It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections." So GG doesn't even agree with his candidate, but, as we see, his candidate's actions don't match the candidate's words.  I guess that's what GG calls "right and honorable."  Others might call it expedient. 

This is the criticism.  Obama claims to be a new politician, open and honest with the people.  A man of his word.  But what has he done? Via Yahoo News.

Last year, Obama filled out a questionnaire where he vowed to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." But since clinching the Democratic nomination earlier this month, Obama has not broached the subject with McCain. The only discussion occurred about two weeks ago between Obama's and McCain's lawyers,

Obama lawyer Robert Bauer said he discussed the public financing issue for 45 minutes on June 6 with McCain counsel Trevor Potter. In interviews and e-mails, both Bauer and Potter agree that Bauer raised concerns about McCain having a head start because he had secured the nomination in early March and Obama did not until June 3. Potter said he told Bauer that given Obama's fundraising "I was sure there would be no McCain advantage by the end of the summer."

That meeting, Potter said, "was not part of any negotiation" on public financing.

"There was no aggressive pursuit of negotiations with the McCain campaign, there was no pursuit, period, of negotiations with the McCain campaign," Potter added later in a conference call with reporters.

Obama wants all the appearances of being a new politician without actually acting like one.  Relatedly, he apparently is now claiming that he "extended health care for wounded troops who had been neglected" even though he didn't even vote on the bill he cites as evidence.  Whoops. 

To be clear, Obama's rejection of public financing is a smart move.  He has a fundraising and organization edge over McCain.  His prodigious fund raising is a sign of his broad support.  There is nothing dirty in not accepting public funds or being strategic in one's choices.  Yet, Obama did say he would take public funds and now has rejected those funds when they are inconvenient to him. This is a pattern with Obama: take the bold stance until it thwarts his ambitions, and then chuck his alleged principles overboard.  All politicians change their positions from time to time, and certainly electoral considerations take part in this calculation.  I for one hope John McCain changes his position on drilling in ANWR.  But Obama's actions just go to prove what I said yesterday: Obama claims to be a new politician, but in actuality he is just like the old.  So it is worth pointing out that one of his fundamental campaign themes is a house built on sand. 

Darwinian Evolution Observed in the Lab

Critics of Darwinian theory frequently complain that evolution cannot be directly observed.  In fact this has not been true for a long time.  Natural selection as a mechanism for change in the forms of organisms has been extensively demonstrated and studied in laboratories.  Little Green Footballs directs our attention to a twenty year experiment that has confirmed and enriched our understanding of the major elements in the theory. 

His source is science writer Carl Zimmer, who writes about biologist Richard Lenski at Michigan State University. 

Lenski started off with a single microbe [Escherichia coli, the common gut microbe]. It divided a few times into identical clones, from which Lenski started 12 colonies. He kept each of these 12 lines in its own flask. Each day he and his colleagues provided the bacteria with a little glucose, which was gobbled up by the afternoon. The next morning, the scientists took a small sample from each flask and put it in a new one with fresh glucose. And on and on and on, for 20 years and running.

So from one E Coli Jacob, Lenski produced twelve tribes.  Then he changed their environment by adding the sugar.  He has had twenty years to see how the microbes would adapt to the new environment. 

Based on what scientists already knew about evolution, Lenski expected that the bacteria would experience natural selection in their new environment. In each generation, some of the microbes would mutate. Most of the mutations would be harmful, killing the bacteria or making them grow more slowly. Others would be beneficial allowing them to breed faster in their new environment. They would gradually dominate the population, only to be replaced when a new mutation arose to produce an even fitter sort of microbe.

But how do you keep track of what is actually happening?  How do you know what is due to new information introduced by mutation, and what is due to previously unsuspected traits of an existing population? 

Lenski used a simple but elegant method to find out. He froze some of the original bacteria in each line, and then froze bacteria every 500 generations. Whenever he was so inclined, he could go back into this fossil record and thaw out some bacteria, bringing them back to life. By putting the newest bacteria in his lines in a flask along with their ancestors, for example, he could compare how well the bacteria had adapted to the environment he had created.

This is evolution observed and tested.  Lenski could constantly compare later generations to earlier ones, subject to genetic analysis. And if a population became contaminated by outside organisms (a constant problem), he could restore an earlier, uncontaminated sample.  It's a lot like keeping a back up copy of a file. 

What Lenski observed is exactly what Darwinian theory leads one to suspect: general adaptation to the environment, driven in part by random mutation. 

Over the generations, in fits and starts, the bacteria did indeed evolve into faster breeders. The bacteria in the flasks today breed 75% faster on average than their original ancestor. Lenski and his colleagues have pinpointed some of the genes that have evolved along the way; in some cases, for example, the same gene has changed in almost every line, but it has mutated in a different spot in each case. Lenski and his colleagues have also shown how natural selection has demanded trade-offs from the bacteria; while they grow faster on a meager diet of glucose, they've gotten worse at feeding on some other kinds of sugars.

So a beneficial trait emerged several times in different bacterial tribes.  The genes coding for the trait weren't there to begin with.  Random mutation is the only explanation for their emergence. 

But some traits are easier to get by mutation than others.  One of Lenski's bacterial tribes (he would call them colonies) acquired the ability to consume citrate, which is essentially the same compound that makes lemons tart.  Unlike the above mentioned mutations, this one happened only once in one colony. 

Some critics of Darwinian theory, such as the Intelligent Design school, acknowledge the power of natural selection to modify existing species, but complain that we have never observed speciation, the process by which a new species can emerge from existing ones.  Lenski has nailed that one down.  How do we know what a species is?  How do we tell which organism belongs in which species, or when two populations of creatures deserve to be identified as different species or subspecies?  The science of biology has no generally accepted answer to that question, because in almost all cases the boundaries are vague and shifting.  Are dogs and wolves two species or one?  And what about coyotes?  All three creatures interbreed. 

It seems relatively easy to distinguish human beings from chimpanzees, but we do so by recognizing the different traits of each species: they are hairy and walk on their knuckles, we are naked and laugh at jokes.  But one of the defining species characteristics of Escherichia coli is that it can't eat citrate.  In nature, E coli only acquire this ability when they borrow it from other species of bacteria.  In Richard Lenski's experiment, Darwinian evolution has produced a new organism that does not fit the definition of any previously existing species of organism.  Speciation has been observed in the laboratory.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  I think that is almost a tautology, though it leaves a lot of open questions about God.  But He created it according to a number of basic physical laws, and allowed pointy heads like Lenski to discover them. Evolutionary biologists have been more faithful to the Creator, in their own fashion, than have the critics of Darwin. 

For those of us who want to look and things and see what they are, Lenski's work is pure gold. 

RNC Blasts Obama on Free Trade

Obama Stumbles on Fundraising

After losing most contests in the final three months of the primary, Barack Obama's fundraising numbers fell during the same three months.  Numbers released today shows May 2008 was his weakest fundraising month, outperforming John McCain by only one million:

Democrat Barack Obama raised $22 million in May for his presidential campaign, his weakest fundraising month this year, and ended the month with $43 million cash on hand, the campaign reported Friday.

...

The May figures place Obama and McCain on nearly equal footing. McCain raised $21 million in May and reported $31.6 million cash on hand at month's end.

But McCain also benefited from the Republican National Committee, which reported $53.5 million cash on hand to the Democratic national committee's $4 million. The parties are already working with their respective presidential candidates to coordinate their campaigns.

Obama reached a peak in February, where he raised $50 million.  Those numbers dropped to $40 million in March, and $32 million in April.  Between February and May, Jeremiah Wright, the derogatory small-town comments, and several gaffes haunted the campaign.  Meanwhile, John McCain has improved his fundraising numbers since the nomination.  He has spent far less than he raises while remaining in the spotlight, meaning he's been far more efficient with his money.  While Obama's supporters talked about raising $100 million in June, it appears most of their fundraising opportunities passed with the primary.

UPDATE:  A bit premature?

Thune Fighting Crime on the Reservations

From a Thune press release:

Senator John Thune today joined Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Ron His Horse Is Thunder in testifying before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in regard to the draft Indian Crime bill that Senator Thune and others have drafted.

"The absence of basic levels of public safety on many of our nation's reservations has reached a crisis point," said Thune. "The law enforcement surge on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation is already showing signs of success, but there is still much that needs to be done to combat the high crime rates that plague much of Indian Country.

"The draft bill before the Indian Affairs Committee encourages the appointment of Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute reservation crimes in federal courts, empowers tribal justice systems, and improves the collection of data regarding crimes committed in Indian Country, which would allow for more adaptive methods to combat lawlessness."

Last year, Senator Thune hosted a roundtable meeting with leaders from all nine of South Dakota's tribes, and law enforcement and public safety was the top concern. Since then, Senator Thune has worked with tribal, state, and federal officials to find ways to address the public safety crisis-including efforts both last year and this year to boost federal funding for additional law enforcement officers and to improve tribal court systems.

Does Obama Now Want to Stay in Iraq?

Jim Geraghty:  "Aren't Obama's comments to Zebari — presuming they're being characterized accurately — a glaring contradiction of the Obama campaign's constant declaration of 'profound differences' with McCain on the Iraq War? Isn't a large chunk of his support from the Democratic grassroots built on this notion that a President Obama would bring the troops home quickly?  Is a trip by Austan Goolsbee to the Iraqi embassy the next step? Will there be private assurances that Obama's Iraq stand on the campaign trail is 'more reflective of political maneuvering than policy'?"

UPDATE:  Abe Greenwald:  "Remember Those Iraqi Benchmarks? Well, Guess What… Democrats no longer talk of the 18 benchmarks for measuring progress in Iraq because so much progress has now taken place."

Re: Obama the Politician

Piggybacking on Prof. Schaff's post below, you also might want to read the post entitled "Barack Obama: The Undistinguished Gentleman" over at Protein Wisdom.

Obama Reneges Public Financing

Barack Obama has broken his pledge to fund his campaign with public financing, a promise he made last year if the Republican candidate also agreed to it.  John McCain has offered to stay within the system, but Obama told supporters today he would abandon that offer.  He offers three reasons for abandoning his position, but never fully explains why.  One reason is because the McCain campaign and the RNC take lobbyist money, but how that differs from the DNC and their interests is left unexplained.  He also says Republicans skillfully use 527s, which has nothing to do with public financing, and Democrats have their own 527s and excelled at using them against the GOP in 2004 with big donors like George Soros.  Finally, Obama declares the system "broken" but never says why he hasn't done anything in his three years as Senator to fix it. 

Obama feels that he can raise more money outside the system than within it.  He may blame McCain, the weather, or the alignment of the planets, but it comes down to the money.  His reasons for abandoning public financing have nothing to do with the examples he cited.

UPDATE:  From April of this year:

Obama The Politician

David Brooks writes that Barack Obama, contrary to popular opinion, is a politician and a pretty deft one at that.  This provokes some thought.  What do we know about Barack Obama? 

Obama argued that he'd meet unconditionally with our enemies, but when he came under attack for that position he said he'd have "preparation," but not "preconditions," as if  there is a difference. 

He argued that Iran was no significant threat to the U.S., but then when criticized he backtracked saying that he has always thought that Iran posed a "grave" threat to the U.S.

He railed against NAFTA while having his surrogates assure the Canadians that  he didn't mean it. 

He recently called for an "undivided" Jerusalem, but when he found out that those are fighting words in the Middle East he had to back off. 

He swore his fidelity to public financing of presidential campaigns until that became inconvenient so now he has forsaken such financing. 

He says he won't be swayed by the special interests and greedy corporations, but, according to Brooks, he has a "phalanx" of corporate leaders bundling money for him. 

He tells us that he won't make promises he can't keep, yet he also promises $900 billion in new spending with only $40 billion in new revenue, all the while insisting that he'll balance the budget. 

He was opposed to the war in Iraq in 2002, but in 2004 he said his position was pretty much the same as George Bush's, and now of course he claims to be the pure anti-war candidate. 

He tells audiences that he is for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, but is apparently telling members of the Iraqi government that he won't act too quickly. 

He claims to have a new politics, but he is a conventional liberal, ranked the most liberal member of the US Senate by National Journal.

Relatedly, he claims to offer a new politics, but he is a product of the corrupt Daley machine in Chicago, hiring Daley's right-hand man, David Axelrod, as his spokesperson.  He got a sweetheart deal on a $4 million mansion from corrupt Chicago business man Tony Rezko.  But Obama says he is shocked to find out Rezko is a criminal. 

He makes claims to "post-partisanship," yet he has voted with his party 97% of the time in the US Senate.  You almost can't get any more partisan.  One reason he talks so much about the ethics bill he supported is that it represents the only evidence of bipartisanship he has and is the only piece of significant legislation he has any association with.

He claims to offer bold leadership, but as Brooks documents, throughout his career he has avoided making tough votes, choosing instead to vote "present."   

He claims that he sat in the seats at Trinity Christian "every Sunday" yet was unaware that his pastor was an anti-American racial separatist.  He said he could no more disown his pastor than he could his own family, but he then disowned his pastor only weeks later.

Obama is just like other politicians, only a lot more charming and not quite as competent at governing.   

Songs of South Dakota

I've received some feedback from my post on songs of North Dakota.  Reader Randy R. writes in:

You asked for songs of South Dakota?

"Rocky Raccoon" by The Beatles

Emmy Lou Harris' The Ballad of Sally Rose album

And our blogosphere cohort Pat Powers writes:

You forgot Liz Phair (although no self respecting SDakotan is going to champion this for State song): http://www.metrolyrics.com/south-dakota-lyrics-liz-phair.html

Frank Sinatra: http://www.thepeaches.com/music/frank/IGotAGalILoveInNorthAndSouthDakota.htm

Bee Gees:
http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/bee_gees/south_dakota_morning-lyrics-1128414.html

Dwight Yoakam:
http://artists.letssingit.com/dwight-yoakam-lyrics-rapid-city-south-dakota-pn9v4rx

Cherry Poppin Daddies (of Zoot Suit Riot fame)
http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/c/cherrypoppindaddies799/hazelsouthdakota37688.html
From the Album Rapid City Muscle Car

And that's just the top of the iceberg.....

Why the Russians Lost the Cold War

From shoutwire:

Ok, so we found the entrance.  Now where's the door?

I have just one question: how did they get the barrels there?

Energy and Economics

My esteemed Keloland Colleague, Todd Epp, has a thought provoking post on energy.  That's another way of saying I disagree with almost everything he says.  Or at least the part after the confession. 

Oil will continue to be part of the energy equation for the foreseeable future. But the sooner the United States embarks on meaningful government funded research and development on biofuels, hydrogen, solar, wind, and other "green" energy solutions, we will continue to be held hostage by exorbitant fuel prices, multi-national corporations, unfriendly foreign governments--and our own laziness and lack of will.

I am not sure what "meaningful" means in this context, except for more expensive.  But consider the items in Todd's list.  Contrary to popular belief (and George W. Bush is included here), hydrogen is not a potential energy source.  You start with water and you end up with water.  That's sounds clean and it may be; but applying the laws of thermodynamics, it means that the energy it takes to separate hydrogen out has to be greater than that what you will get back from burning it.  Hydrogen may become a very useful and clean means of storing energy, but it can't solve the basic problem. 

Government investment is biofuels is meaningful if anything is, and it has given us ethanol.  God knows I love it, as it is helping to fuel the South Dakota economy; but it may prove to be one of the most disastrous environmental policies in decades.  At present, the ethanol industry consumes a lot more energy than it adds back, so it is hardly helping. 

The same is true for wind power, which is a technological means of turning air currents into government dollars.  Wind power may become modestly viable in the future; but the obstacles to it as a serious source of power are horrendous, and this make it very unlikely that it will ever be more than a very marginal contribution.  For now it is a net loss.  Solar energy may be more promising over the long run, at least as a source of small scale generation. 

The problem with "meaningful" or sub-meaningful government investment in such things is that it tends to be driven entirely by two forces tangential to the problem it addresses: what sounds sexy and nice (wind and sun, good!), and what constituencies can cash in. Neither of these things is tied to any actual payback in energy production.  The companies that are investing in wind power are doing so for the sake of tax breaks.  They are all but uninterested in selling their meager output of electricity.  So long as government subsides keep corn prices high, producers don't have to care about the cost-benefit analysis of ethanol policy. 

The difficulty in trying to generate "green" energy is illustrated by the experience of one Al Gore.  Last February he was criticized for the fact that his home has a very large carbon footprint, larger than most neighborhoods.  So Gore had all kinds of green technologies installed at his home.  The result?  His personal energy use surged by 10%.  It's very challenging to calculate the real outcomes of any technology. 

But it's easy to tell how much it costs in dollars.  The free market is not the answer to every problem, but it is obviously the answer to this one.  As energy costs rise, two things are going to happen: producers will become more efficient at finding and extracting energy, and consumers will become more efficient at consuming it.  I think those two processes will continue to meet our needs indefinitely, but that of course is speculation.  All we can say for certain is that they have been the engine of economic growth in every society since the industrial revolution began.

I don't think there is anything wrong with government investments in technology research.  If the state can pay Professor Schaff's salary, it can do other useless things with its money.  Some good may even come of it.  But it's contrary to all evidence and reason to think that it will lead to "energy independence." 

Energy News

John McCain is advocating nuclear power.  Good for him.  Meanwhile, Democrats, aware the opening up new areas to drilling is wildly popular, are making sure that such proposals do not come up for a vote.  Instead, they are proposing nationalizing our refining capacity.  To think that central planners can adequately respond to the vagaries of supply and demand for oil is akin to believing that the moon is made of cheese.  It defies all experience. Nationalizing refineries will almost certainly mean greater inefficiency in our distribution of gas.  That means gas shortages, causing a rise in price. 

I haven't met or read the person who thinks that more drilling is the single solution to our energy woes.  But only a fool or an ideologue would not tap domestic sources of fossil fuels as one part of a comprehensive energy policy.  We are not going to eliminate the need for fossil fuels tomorrow.  Since we need them, why not have a greater supply produced domestically?  As I say, this is part of a comprehensive approach to energy, which also includes expansion of nuclear power and renewable power, such as solar and wind as well as promoting conservation.  Look at the opinion polls and consumer activity.  People believe and act in a way that shows a grasp of the obvious: we need to both  drill more while becoming less dependent.  So vast majorities favor more drilling while our buying habits show a rejection of gas guzzling cars.  That's prudence. 

Minnesota: Vulgarian For Senate

If you've been following the Minnesota Senate race, you know that Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken, the comedian, has been getting whooped pretty good over his past writing, including a vulgar piece in Playboy about pornography and a proposed Saturday Night Live skit making fun of rape. Rep. Betty McCullum (D-MN) has been pretty tough on Franken. 

Franken's foibles have now made the Washington Post in a column by Michael Gerson.  Gerson considers the notion that Franken is engaged in serious comedy, the activity of the satirist:

Satire has been called "punishment for those who deserve it." Writers from Erasmus to Jonathan Swift to George Orwell have used humor, irony and ridicule to expose the follies of the powerful, the failures of blind ideology and the comic weakness of human nature itself.

So what is Franken's "provocative, touching and funny" contribution to the genre? Consider his article in Playboy magazine titled "Porn-O-Rama!" in which he enthuses that it is an "exciting time for pornographers and for us, the consumers of pornography." The Internet, he explains, is a "terrific learning tool. For example, a couple of years ago, when he was 12, my son used the Internet for a sixth-grade report on bestiality. Joe was able to download some effective visual aids, which the other students in his class just loved." Franken goes on to relate a soft-core fantasy about women providing him with sex who were trained at the "Minnesota Institute of Titology."

Orwell would be so proud.

"Porn-O-Rama!" is a modern campaign document every voter should read -- the Federalist Papers of lifestyle liberalism. It has the literary sensibilities and moral seriousness of an awkward adolescent nerd publishing an underground newspaper to shock his way into campus popularity. But, in this case, the article was written in 2000 by a 48-year-old man.

As they say, read the whole thing.

An important distinction to be made here is between public and private vulgarity or crudity.  Most men (and probably quite a few women) have been around and perhaps engaged in what we can call "locker room" conversation.  Crude, off-color humor is often part of this jocularity.  It is one thing to do this in private, away from the public ear.  It is another to present is an acceptable mode of public discourse, as the way adults talk to each other.  Gerson is correct; Franken uses his freedom of speech they way an adolescent would: to say naughty words and giggle at them. Franken appeals to the low in us, not the noble. 

Franken's sex talk appears to sink to the level of the puerile, never to rise again.  This is not to say sex jokes are never appropriate. Shakespeare has plenty of sex jokes (think of the bawdy talk from Mercutio and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet). But this bawdy talk serves a purpose, to prevent us from talking sex too seriously, either over-romanticizing it or over analyzing it.  In either case, Shakespeare's bawdy talk serve to provoke thought, Franken's to end it. 

As Gerson suggests, Franken's endorsement by his party likely serves to lower the quality of our discourse. Franken's humor is not just vulgar, it is mean.  The word "mean" literally has the connotation of small or petty (as in "no mean feat").  Franken makes us smaller, a lesser people.  His election would represent a loss for simple decency. 

The Democrats targeted the current office holder, Sen. Norman Coleman, as one of the easiest targets.  Perhaps they nominated one man capable of losing to Coleman.  Either way, whether Franken gains the seat or not, the Democrats come out as losers. They either lose an election or their dignity. 

Flooding Update

A couple days ago I wrote about flooding on the Mississippi, which we passed over on Saturday going from Iowa to Illinois at the town of Burlington, IA.  Well, if I may paraphrase Johnny Cash, "How high's the water, mama?  It's 30 feet over flood stage and rising."  Read the story here.  As I feared, the bridge at Burlington (I have a picture in the original post) is now closed due to flooding.  We contemplated going to Hannibal, MO on the way back.  Well, I guess we won't be doing that. 

Obama the Accident Prone

Today's big goof up was one of those small but really embarrassing unforced errors.  From the Politico:

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

Now it's easy to see what "volunteers" were worried about.  A picture of Obama including two apparently Muslim women would be bound to appear on dozens (or who knows how many) wing nut blogs with Barack HUSSEIN Obama as the post title.  Still, to exclude these women is playing into the hands of bigots, and that is something that one cannot allow oneself to do. 

Closer to the man was Obama's gaffe about Jerusalem.  From Reuters:

Addressing a pro-Israel lobby group this month, the Democratic White House hopeful said: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

 

The comment angered Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as the capital of a future state. "He has closed all doors to peace," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said after the June 4 speech.

The Obama campaign quickly invented excuses for the remarks, but surely they are exactly what they appear to be: evidence that the candidate just isn't that well informed on a lot of key issues. 

Obama is surely eloquent, but he has shown some difficulties in remembering basic facts like how many states there are (50, not 57), or where he is at any one time.  John Podhoretz, blogging for Commentary, makes this point:

It is clear Obama’s path to victory is through the teleprompter. Let him give a big speech and he drives it like Tiger Woods hitting a fairway, as he did Sunday with his stunning sermon about the importance of fathers. But let him sit for an interview with a well-prepared reporter who isn’t interested in shilling for him and Obama makes mistake after mistake. This is what happened the other day with ABC’s Jake Tapper, who got Obama to talk about how we need to treat terrorism as a law-enforcement matter — which is exactly what he should not be saying if he wants to solidify those less-liberal Democratic votes in the states where he was shellacked by Hillary Clinton — and how he opposes all forms of school choice — which works against his vague message that he is a vague agent of vague change.

Now I think these are more interesting cases.  Obama surely had a point: terrorists arrested inside the United States will be subject to the justice system, and there is no reason why that system is not up to the job.  But what we need to know about a President Obama is that he would be willing to make the hard choices that international terrorism might force on him.  Suppose his national security adviser walks into his office and informs him that a terrorist attack against the U.S. is being assembled at a certain location, say, in Sudan.  Will he order his officers to use any means at their disposal to acquire the target, or command them to wait until a warrant can be obtained to listen in on their conversations?  Will he order his forces to launch an attack the way a nation attacks its enemies in war, or hesitate for fear of violating international law? 

What seems to happen again and again is that Obama says the things he needs to say about all this only after it turns into a controversy.  I suspect the reason for this is very simple: he spent twenty years talking only to people who were clustered well to the left of center on the political spectrum. Republicans should not be too hopeful about this.  I am guessing that Obama Inc. will firm up pretty quickly.  But just right now the candidate is a bit accident prone. 

Quantum of Solis 3

Cory Heidelberger rose to the challenge I issued in my recent post, and came up with his own soap opera explanation for the "Obama Hires Solis Doyle" story. 

And then it hits me (thank you, Dr. Blanchard, for the inspiration): Solis Doyle's appointment is proof that Chicago politics rules supreme. It's more than cronyism: it's a reward for a job well done. Solis Doyle's performance as Clinton's campaign manager was too incompetent to be believed. She knew what she was doing: she was the Obama machine's plant in the Clinton camp. They got to Solis Doyle in 2006, got her to burn up Clinton's Senate campaign money and then sabotage the great inevitable campaign in Iowa. Mission accomplished; now Solis Doyle can come in from the cold and openly work for the Chicago pals she's been helping all along.

Well done Cory!  That's much better than anything I came up with.  Of course, if it's true, Solis Doyle ought to be Obama's Chief of Staff. 

But leave it to intrepid reader Gene to come up with a plausible explanation.

Professor—it’s all about the Hispanic vote—nothing more—nothing less.  Gene

Well, ok.  Obama has legitimate reasons to be concerned about the Hispanic vote.  But this explanation is a lot like the Chicago politics explanation: it only tells us why someone like her was chosen, not why she was chosen.  Couldn't the Obama people have found an Hispanic to be the VP chief of staff who wasn't disastrously incompetent, and didn't alienate the Clinton people?  The Department of Mysteries will keep an open file on this one. 

Let's See Your Cat Do This

Another reason to have a dog:

OMAHA, Neb. -- A Labrador retriever lived up to its name Friday when he plucked his 12-year-old owner out of the Platte River, near North Bend.

Tony Bailey can usually swim in the river, but recent rains have pushed it up higher than normal and whipped up unusual currents. When Tony jumped into the Platte on Friday, he was quickly sucked in.

"It was, like, over my head and I couldn't touch," he said.

He was only a few feet away from the shore, but the river current was strong enough that it was pulling him down and under. He said his cries for help weren't being heard by anyone, except Jake, the 4-year-old Lab.

"I was saying, 'Help, help,' and I saw him jump in, and then my head went under, and when I came up, he was right here by me," Tony said.

Tony said the dog swam out next to him and he grabbed the dog's neck. The dog swam back to shore with the boy in tow.

Follow the link above for video about Jake the Wonder Dog. 

George W. & Europe

The critics of the Bush Administration often complain that George W. has wrecked our relations with the rest of the world.  Like a lot of conventional wisdom, this was half true and is now behind the curve.  Our four most important European allies, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, all have rather strongly pro-American governments just now.  The best news comes from France.  From the Washington Post:

President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday announced a major new defense policy that would integrate French troops into the command structure of the NATO alliance for the first time in more than four decades.

Now that represents pretty dramatic progress in American-European relations, and even better news for NATO.  The military alliance between the U.S. and Europe is the only police force the world order has. 

It is not clear how much good this good news is worth.  Europe once hoped to rival the U.S. by uniting, but it is clear now that they aren't capable of much uniting and wouldn't be all that impressive if they were.  Europe is fading.  Still, having them with us is better than not. 

Quantum of Solis

As I posted last night, the Obama organization has hired Patti Solis Doyle to be chief of staff to the Senator's yet unnamed running mate.  I thought this required some explanation.  Our esteemed Keloland colleague, Cory Heidelberger is up to the task.

Blanchard ignores the Chicago angle to the Solis Doyle appointment:

But as long-standing as Solis Doyle's ties to Clinton may be, her Chicago roots run even deeper. Her first job in politics was on the campaign staff on Mayor Richard M. Daley, a leading Obama patron, and she has a long friendship with the Illinois senator's chief political adviser, David Axelrod. She also is close to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, another Chicagoan and Obama confidant [Anne E. Kornblut, "Solis Doyle Joins Obama Campaign," Washington Post: The Trail, 2008.06.16].

So we don't have to read soap opera into Obama's appointment of Solis Doyle; good old Chicago loyalty and patronage might be the simpler explanation... not that I see that one helping me win any arguments with SD Politics.

Let me get this straight: Obama choses a Chief of Staff for his prospective VP before he chooses a VP, when you might think the latter would want to have some say in the matter.  He chooses Solis Doyle, who served as Senator Clinton's campaign manager but was fired by Senator Clinton for manifest incompetence.  And as the Washington Post reports, this is likely to alienate many people in the Clinton camp just when he is presumably trying to integrate them into his campaign.  Moreover, this may well be a insult to Ms. Clinton, as the she and Solis Doyle haven't gotten along so well after the one fired the other.  But Cory thinks it is all explained by the fact that Solis Doyle has Chicago connections.  Well, I am glad we cleared that up.

I offered my own explanation, half in jest:

This is shear speculation, but it might be that Solis Doyle has something on the Clintons.  God knows what.  But that might allow Obama to control the Clintons, which in turn is only important if he thinks that they might actually become an obstacle to his election.

Cory was quite right to call this a "soap opera" explanation.  He means by that, I think, that it is too entertaining to be likely.  But as long as I am entertaining myself, at least, here are some more soap opera plots. 

2.  Maybe Ms. Solis Doyle has something on Obama. A little tidbit that the Clintons couldn't risk using or maybe that she kept in a pocket for a rainy day in Iowa.

3.  Maybe the Solis Doyle-Clinton relationship isn't really strained, Obama is going to pick Clinton, and Hillary wants her old comfortable team back. 

4.  Maybe Solis-Doyle wasn't really responsible for Senator Clinton's debacle at all, but just took the blame like a good soldier.  Now she gets her medal of honor, which Senator Obama agrees to pin on in return for Hillary's withdrawal and support. 

The latter is actually a lot more plausible than the others, but I don't really believe any of them yet.  I produce them to highlight how difficult an explanation would likely be.  There are a lot of people with Chicago connections.  Why this person with this heavy baggage?  I don't have any reason to suspect anything wrong here, I just think it is genuinely mysterious.  I invite suggestions. 

 

Songs of North Dakota

A reader passes this link along by Norman Geras:  Songs of North Dakota

I can think of three right away for South Dakota:

• 8th of November:  "Said goodbye to his momma as he left South Dakota / To fight for the red, white and blue" (1, 2)
• Stays in Mexico:  "He was an insurance salesman from South Dakota" (1, 2)
• Ballad of Hollis Brown:  "There's seven people dead / On a South Dakota farm" (1, 2)

Any other suggestions?  Drop me an email: [email protected].

Where's the Outcry?

National Review:

Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?

Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

Why isn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?

When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?

Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?

When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a "vanilla" Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?

Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?