South Dakota Politics

Invincible Ignorance

The bad news isn't getting any better. From Real Clear Markets we get this:

A double-dip in home prices, pessimistic consumers and a slowdown in regional manufacturing raised concerns on Tuesday that the economy's soft patch could become protracted.

It isn't getting any better elsewhere either. From Robert Samuelson:

A year after rescuing Greece from default, Europe is staring into the abyss. The bailout has proved insufficient. Greece needs more money, and it can't borrow from private markets where it faces interest rates as high as 25 percent. But Europe's governments are reluctant to advance more funds unless other lenders -- banks, bondholders -- absorb some losses by writing down their debts. This, however, would constitute a default, risking a broader banking crisis that might torpedo Europe's fragile recovery in France, Germany and elsewhere. There is no easy escape.

It isn't getting any more mysterious. All over the developed world, governments have overspent, over borrowed and overpromised. This has been obvious for decades. The parties of the left and the right, in America and elsewhere, share the blame.

The solution is no more elusive than it ever was: the only cure is to reduce spending, pay down debt, and adjust our expectations to conform to reality. It would not be unreasonable to object that doing any or all of this in the short term might further depress economic growth, and thus make the problem worse, were it not for the fact that we are right now exceeding a trillion dollars in deficit spending each fiscal year. If that is our economic strategy, it isn't working.

Even if radical cuts in spending are something we can't afford just now, surely we could afford a plan for gradually climbing out of the hole we are in. To be sure, any plan that deferred actual pain would be greeted with skepticism by the markets and by the electorate, but at least it would be a plan. As I observed, the Democrats not only refused to offer a budget but also refused to even consider the President's previous budget.

Now the House has rejected an unconditional extension of the debt limit. From The Hill:

The vote was 318-97, with 82 Democrats joining every Republican in rejecting legislation that would have authorized $2.4 trillion in additional borrowing by the federal government. Seven Democrats voted present on the legislation.

I sort of admire the seven Democrats who voted present. At least they were willing to go on record to say that they have absolutely nothing to say.

The root of the political problem is a clear as the root of the fiscal problem: invincible ignorance. I offer here one example on a related topic. From Elliot Cohen at Real Clear Politics/Washington Post:

"Counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession," it actually dropped last year and violent crime is now at nearly a 40-year low. So said The New York Times last week. But what the Times did not report is precisely why it was so surprised to learn, yet again and probably not for the last time, how the "prevailing expectation" is maybe limited to people who think as did Marx (Karl maybe, Groucho for sure) that money is the root of all evil. On the contrary, evil is.

We don't know for sure what causes crime rates to go up or down, but we know for sure what doesn't. It has been clear for decades that widespread economic stress does not lead to an increase in the crime rate, nor does generally increase prosperity reduce crime. The New York Times is surprised again and again because its ignorance is imperious to information. The Times is wedded to the assumption that the root cause of crime is want. The Times, and the political culture it represents, is incapable of seriously questioning that assumption.

That same invincible ignorance was evident in the creation of the Euro. It is evident in the Times' vociferous opposition to any significant reduction in our social programs. Real cuts are coming, one way another. The Times, and the political culture it represents, cannot bring itself to face that. That is why the Administration and the Democrats in Congress can't produce a deficit reduction plan or even a budget. Granted, they are playing for the next election; however, given current economic realities, winning that election might be the worst thing that could happen to either party.

Republicans can take some measure of comfort in this. It confirms their long held views of government and economics. That is cold comfort, however, for two reasons. One is that Republicans spent like drunken sailors when they controlled Congress and the White House. Like Caesar's blood, the red ink is all over their togas. The other is that being right is very bad when you are right about bad things.

CDC Finally Takes Zombies Seriously

Long time readers of this blog will know that we have tried to keep our readers informed about the zombie menace. This is one of the many threats to the Republic and to mankind that government has hitherto failed to take seriously.

At last that situation is beginning to change. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has posted this document: Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.

I applaud the CDC for finally taking this threat seriously, but I find the document woefully inadequate. Most of the advice (keep a supply of water, food, and blankets, etc.) is just recycled hurricane preparation. People who suffer from storms don't turn into more storms.

Surely there should be something about guns, battle axes, and samurai swords! Maybe recommending target practice (aim for the head, not the heart) would be in order. Still, this is something. It is no wonder that the post caused the CDC site to crash. The signs are all around us.

Plato was Right about Innate Ideas

One of the most basic debates in modern philosophy concerns the existence of innate ideas, i.e., ideas that one is born already knowing. The great British empiricists (Locke and Hume stand out) were notoriously skeptical about innate ideas. They thought that all or almost all of what we ever know comes to us from learning, by way of our senses. Either we learn it by direct observation (roses are red, violets are blue), or we infer it by combining ideas that come by direct observation (observation of fossils + observation of contemporary lizards = knowledge of dinosaurs).

The idea that all the contents of a human mind are the products of encounters with the environment became part of the dogma of the social sciences in the last century. In this case, a philosophic idea became politically attractive. If all mental content comes from experience, then it might be the case that we can dramatically shape minds by reshaping the environment. Perhaps greed, envy, and all psychological sources of hostility and oppression could be eradicated in this way. It is not hard to see why someone might want to believe that.

According to a much older philosophical tradition, a lot of our mental content, maybe even most of it and especially the most basic elements of it is already present at birth. We come into the world like computers purchased at Office Max: with a lot of pre-packaged software.

In the Meno, one of Plato's most brilliant dialogues, Socrates makes a case for this. He sits down with a presumably uneducated boy (which is to say, a slave) and gives the boy a geometry lesson. He does so, however, without telling the boy anything. Instead, he simply asks a series of questions. The boy apparently comes up with the answers out of his own resources. The question is where he acquired those resources.

Socrates argues that the boy's learning is in fact a case of recollection. The boy is remembering what he once somehow knew and somehow forgot. From the Jowett translation:

Soc. This knowledge which he now has must he not either have acquired or always possessed?

Meno. Yes.

Soc. But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not have acquired it in this life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be made to do the same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge. Now, has any one ever taught him all this? You must know about him, if, as you say, he was born and bred in your house.

Men. And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.

Soc. And yet he has the knowledge?

Men. The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.

Soc. But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, then he must have had and learned it at some other time?

Socrates puts forth, only as a hypothesis, the idea of reincarnation. We come into this world knowing what we learned in previous lives. As usual, Socrates is right.

If you don't believe Socrates, ask the Mundurucu. This Amazon tribe is not big on abstract mathematics. From the BBC:

The basic tenets of geometry as most people know them were laid out first by the Greek mathematician Euclid about 2,300 years ago.

This "Euclidean geometry" includes familiar propositions such as the fact that a line can connect two points, that the angles of a triangle always add up to the same total, or that two parallel lines never cross.

The ideas are profoundly ingrained in formal education, but what remains a matter of debate is whether the capacity, or intuition, for geometry is present in all peoples regardless of their language or level of education.

To that end, Pierre Pica of the National Centre for Scientific Research in France and his colleagues studied an Amazon tribe known as the Mundurucu to investigate their intuitions about geometry.

"Mundurucu is a language with only approximative numbers," Dr Pica told BBC News.

"You don't have a lot of geometrical terms like square or triangle or anything like that, and no way of saying two lines are parallel... it looks like the language does not have this concept."

Since the Mundurucu have no words for abstract geometrical concepts, it seems unlikely that they learned them from one another. And yet they know them. They actually did slightly better on some problems than French and American counterparts who had been schooled in geometry.

Pica's test was remarkably similar to the one Socrates used and supports the same point. Coming to know in the most basic things is a matter of recollection, recalling to consciousness what we are born knowing.

Plato was close to the answer. It is not that souls transmigrate between lives. Human beings are probably not reincarnated; but the human being is. Our minds are highly designed and that design is indeed born again and again. We learn a lot down here, to be sure. We could not begin to learn anything had we not been born with almost everything.

The argument over innate ideas is about to come to a close after more than three centuries. Plato was right. This is going to have profound consequences for the social and life sciences.

Pomp & Circumcision

San Francisco, not content with its claim to Rice-a-Roni, has leapt to the forefront of the foreskin protection movement. Next November, the city with more dogs than children will vote on an initiative to ban male circumcision.

Lloyd Schofield has come one step closer to achieving his mission to ban circumcision -- the surgical removal of the penile foreskin -- in the City by the Bay…

"The foreskin is there for a reason," said Schofield, who is retired from a career in the hotel industry. "It's not a birth defect. It serves an important function in a man's life, and nobody has a right to perform unnecessary surgery on another human being."

I can't help noting that Mr. Schofield isn't concerned with female circumcision, a procedure that, in its extreme form, involves the permanent mutilation of the female sex organs. I also can't help wondering what "important function" the penile foreskin serves. Protection against sunburn on a nude beach? I don't hesitate to point out that Mr. Schofield's principle would prevent a parent from having her children's teeth fitted for braces.

Let us allow that this is a sensitive issue involving sensitive tissue. Male circumcision is an ancient religious practice among Jews and Muslims. Prohibiting these groups from the practice would very probably run afoul of the Free Exercise Clause in the First Amendment. Generally the Court has required that infringement of a central religious practice be justified by a compelling government interest. I doubt that Mr. Schofield can meet that stringent standard.

Male circumcision is more widely practiced for medical reasons. It is at least as safe as ear piercing and seems to prevent urinary tract infections. That looks like a judgment call to me.

There is something wrong with Mr. Schofield. He is an intactivist, something he has every right to be. He has no business trying to impose his idiosyncrasy on parents and their doctors who do not share it. There is something wrong with a ballot system that allows him to put this ridiculous measure to a vote. I expect this measure will be voted down. Should it pass, it will be struck down by the courts.

I am happy to play this for amusement. What is not so amusing is that there are innumerable Schofields out there who are ready to tell you what soft drinks to drink and what fast food to feed on. If you think you should be able to choose whether or not to have fries with that, tell the lot of them to mind their own damn business.

The Kindle, the Book, & the Market

Earlier this year my daughter came home with a Kindle. I had no interest in eReaders until I played with hers. I sat down and read a New Yorker article. Then another. Then a short story and another article. Three hours later I finally turned the damned thing off.

Recently I got my own Kindle for my birthday. I downloaded True Grit, Zen Mind Beginners Mind, and The Ape and the Sushi Master. I subscribed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Reason.

The eReader is the third chapter in the history of the book. The first was the scroll, a long sheet of text wrapped around a spindle. The second was the book as we know it: a pile of sheets glued at one side to a spine with a protective cover. My Kindle is clearly a major advance in reading technology.

The big problem with the scroll was that it made it difficult to go from one part of the document to another. The big problem with the traditional book is that you have to hold it open. My Kindle allows easy navigation and it doesn't flip shut. That alone would give it the advantage.

The Kindle is much bigger than that. It is not a book but a library. Scrolls, books, and periodicals take up a lot of space. The eReader can contain hundreds of books, magazines, and newspapers. It is also a portable Barnes and Noble, as I illustrate above. It effectively ends the isolation that was once imposed on all those human beings who didn't live in a cultural center.

It does threaten a lot of traditional institutions. Book publishers, magazines and newspapers, and libraries offered reading content; however, they sold or lent the physical medium on which the content was stored and presented. The eReader eliminates all the physical media except itself. This is a problem that the publishing industry has yet to solve.

Two things need to be recognized. One is that the new reading technology makes all readers richer. When I was a teenager in Jonesboro, Arkansas, there wasn't a single bookstore in town. The other is that the free market produced this wealth. It is an imperative that we preserve the market that deliver such wonders.

Who’s Killing Medicare? Part 2

The only budget that the Democrats have produced in recent years was the one submitted to Congress in February by the President. It was an extraordinarily alarming document when one considered the long range budget projections it implied. Perhaps it is good news that the Senate voted it down by 97-0. Not a single Senate Democrat supported the President. Ah, but there's an explanation!

Democratic aides said ahead of the vote that the Democratic caucus would not support the plan because it has been supplanted by the deficit-reduction plan Obama outlined at a speech at George Washington University in April.

The only problem with that explanation is that an outline isn't a budget. A budget has numbers in it. The President refused to follow up his April speech with any actual numbers and that leaves the Democrats without anything resembling a budget. Since the Ryan plan has also be voted down in the Senate (40-57), that leaves we the people without any plan for fiscal management over the near future, let alone the chilling future that will follow.

Listening to public radio, I heard Senator Tim Johnson explain his vote. The Ryan plan, I believe he said, would "end Medicare". Ok. But the Ryan plan isn't the only threat to Medicare, is it Senator? Medicare is on the road to fiscal catastrophe all on its own. Here's a bit from The Corner:

Based on the trustees' report, despite a growing share of general revenue going to Medicare spending, the HI program will be insolvent by 2024 and registers $3 trillion in unfunded liabilities. And, of course, there's only going to be so much money that can actually go to health care, because the economy is unlikely to stomach spending increases of that scale. The question is, how much can the economy stomach before it can't anymore? When will voters decide that too much other spending is being squeezed out of the budget by health care and say they've had enough?

That puts the situation pretty well. Medicare is approaching a fiscal crisis that threatens not only that program but the rest of the budget as well. Except that the problem is much worse than that. The above note was based on the trustee's report. A "statement of actuarial opinion" appended to the report makes for a bitter footnote. Here is a sample:

In past reports, and again this year, the Board of Trustees has emphasized the strong likelihood that actual Part B expenditures will exceed the projections under current law due to further legislative action to avoid substantial reductions in the Medicare physician fee schedule. While the Part B projections in this report are reasonable in their portrayal of future costs under current law, they are not reasonable as an indication of actual future costs. Current law would require a physician fee reduction of an estimated 29.4 percent on January 1, 2012—an implausible expectation.

Further, while the Affordable Care Act makes important changes to the Medicare program and substantially improves its financial outlook, there is a strong likelihood that certain of these changes will not be viable in the long range.

To put it in precise political science terms, Medicare is in deep doodoo. It would be plausible, but unfair, to say that Senator Johnson and the rest of his Party are being cynical. They probably are focused solely on the next election. They hope to play on the fears of the elderly as they have done for decades.

They are also resolutely ignoring reality. Sooner or later the crunch will come. With every year, the crunch moves backward towards the present. The longer we wait to face it, the worse the pain will be. To say that the Democrats are neither doing nor even thinking about how to address the problem would be misleading. They are doing everything they can to demonize anyone who does try to address it. If anyone is acting to end Medicare, it's the Party that pretends to champion Medicare. The same goes, I might add, for Social Security and every other part of the Federal Government.

Obama's Toast Botch

As Ann Althouse says, it is too painful to mock. 

Daniels & Pawlenty, Weenies & Risk

I have something to say about Mitch Daniels. He is a weenie. After keeping us all guessing for months, here is his reason for not running for President:

Our family constitution gives a veto to the women's caucus, and there is no override provision.

I can certainly understand Mrs. Daniels' reservations; however, it might have been better for her to marry and then divorce and then remarry a butcher or a baker instead of a governor with Presidential aspirations. Governor Mitch obviously thought he might be the right man for the Oval Office. Maybe he came to have doubts about this and this is his way of backing out.

If he really thought that he was the right man for the job, then it was his responsibility to seek it. Yes, he had a responsibility to consider his family, but he also had a responsibility to the Republic. The Republic protects all the families of all of its citizens. That is the kind of responsibility that families, and especially privileged families, should be expected to accommodate. Allowing the "women's caucus" to have a veto at this point means that he is a weenie.

Daniel's withdrawal leaves Tim Pawlenty as the most viable alternative to Mitt Romney. I just now had to enter 'Pawlenty' into my spell check. As suspect that Romney is fatally compromised, Tim has to be taken seriously.

He surely moves into the space that Daniels might have occupied. He is a conservative and a former governor of Minnesota. He can position himself as a plain speaking politician with little baggage. His face ain't nothin' to brag about, but it's genuine and not alarming. He is a fairly moderate conservative.

The best news so far is that Pawlenty has dared to say some daring things. He dared to say that federal subsidies for ethanol need to be "phased out". That may hurt him in Iowa, but it was certainly the truth that needs speaking. He dared to say, in Florida, that Social Security and Medicare are in dire need of reform.

Of course, the problem with saying risky if responsible things is that it's risky. It's pretty clear that Democrat's strategy is to offer nothing whatsoever of their own on the fiscal crisis. The President has no plan to bring the budget under control. Democrats in the Senate have no plans to even offer a budget for this fiscal year. Their only plan is to attack whatever the Republicans offer. That's a sound plan, if the only thing you care about is winning the next election and don't want to think about the fiscal reality.

Pawlenty may yet win if he can show the voters that he is the only one in race who is taking the public interest seriously. That's a tall order, and it remains to be seen if Pawlenty can measure up. Just right now, I don't see anyone else in position to do it.

Obama On Palestine 2

Here is the key quote from President Obama's speech last Thursday.

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.

Here is what the President said about what he said to AIPAC:

By definition, it means that the parties themselves… will negotiate a border that is different from the one that existed on June 4, 1967. [USA Today, May 23^rd, A6]

Okay. "By definition" the President's statement that the "borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps" means that a deal won't be based on the 1967 borders. Glad we cleared that up.

Here is the New York Times on the President's words:

As Mr. Obama himself pointed out, his theme in the speech last Thursday was not extraordinary. American presidents, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have consistently instructed their foreign policy aides to pursue an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians using the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps, as a basis for talks…

But the 1967 border issue has always been privately understood, not spoken publicly, and certainly not publicly endorsed by a sitting American president.

The President made this point himself:

What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately.

Well, maybe the reason why no sitting President has yet said publically what Obama said is because they could see in advance that they would end up eating their words, just like he did. When the President spoke openly about the 67 borders it sounded to most Israelis like he expects them to return to the 67 borders.

A more significant gaff occurs in Sunday's "I didn't mean it" speech. Powerline notices this passage:

I said that the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps -- (applause) -- so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

All that sounds pretty benign until you get to the word "contiguous". A contiguous Palestinian state would mean that someone could walk from the West Bank to Gaza without crossing a border. Try arranging that with "land swaps" without cutting Israel in half. The President has no idea what he is saying.

The good news and the bad news is that none of this matters much. There is no one among the Palestinian factions who is willing and/or able to make such a deal.

Obama Didn’t Say What He Said About Israel’s 1967 Borders

On Thursday, President Obama said that Israel's 1967 borders had to be the basis of any deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Many observers thought he meant that Israel's 1967 borders had to be the basis of any deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Today, speaking to American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the President expressed surprise that anyone thought that he meant that Israel's 1967 borders had to be the basis of any deal between Israel and the Palestinians. At least he cleared that up.

The President is right to be exasperated. Only some kind of pernicious partisanship would lead conservatives to think that, in announcing a shift in American policy that goes back to LBJ, the President really meant what he said. Only an invincible ignorance would lead someone to think that the President had even thought about what he said or had any idea what he was really saying.

Arizona Wildcats Win the NCAA Softball Regional

I had the tremendous pleasure this afternoon to watch the Arizona Wildcats softball team win the regional championship against Texas Tech (10 to 2). I graduated from the University of Arizona more than a handful of years ago, but I have been faithful in my fashion. I have watched the Women's softball team on TV over the years, but this was the first time I got to plant my butt on the aluminum and watch the game.

The sky was blue and a pleasant 90 degree breeze washed the Hillenbrand Stadium stands. Kenzie Fowler overwhelmed the Red Raiders from the plate. Arizona's big hitters did the rest. Brigette Del Ponte, Stacie Chambers and Lini Koria were awesome in the regional series. I watched a couple of home runs.

The infield was less impressive, missing a couple of easy plays. However, I did see one play that needs a Homer to sing it. Right fielder Brittany Lastrapes robbed Texas of a homerun with a running, leaping catch, but she slammed into the wall. She managed to throw the ball back to second to keep a runner on first, and only then took time out to collapse. All of us stood waiting while she was attended to by the coaches. After a bit, she rose and resumed her position.

That is what courage looks like. Brittany Lastrapes is someone who will not let you down. This is my team.

Arizona now advances to the NCAA Superregionals. The odds aren't good. The Wildcats are ranked 10^th, with a 40-16 record. I believe, I believe. It's silly, but I believe.

War Powers Inaction

In March I posted on the President's Libya action and the War Powers Act. I argued that, while the President was not constitutionally required to get Congressional approval for his action, he was certainly required to do so under that legislation. He didn't.

The only defense of the President's neglect is that the Libyan situation constituted the kind of emergency that allows the President to act without seeking prior approval. He is in that case obligated to inform Congress that he has put American forces in harm's way. He actually did that. That started a clock ticking.

From the Washington Post:

This week, the War Powers Act confronts its moment of truth. Friday will mark the 60th day since President Obama told Congress of his Libyan campaign. According to the act, that declaration started a 60-day clock: If Obama fails to obtain congressional support for his decision within this time limit, he has only one option — end American involvement within the following 30 days.

Obama has not only failed but he hasn't even tried — leaving it to Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, to call for a "specific resolution that would give [the president] authority." Neither the president nor the Democratic congressional leadership has shown any interest. They have been sleep-walking their way to Day 60.

The Administration acknowledges its legal duties under the WPA. It has apparently decided to ignore them.

Make no mistake: Obama is breaking new ground, moving decisively beyond his predecessors. George W. Bush gained congressional approval for his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bill Clinton acted unilaterally when he committed American forces to NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo, but he persuaded Congress to approve special funding for his initiative within 60 days…

Since the House of Representatives is out of session this week, Congress can't approve the operation before the Friday deadline. But under the expedited procedures specified by the act, speedy congressional approval is feasible next week.

If nothing happens, history will say that the War Powers Act was condemned to a quiet death by a president who had solemnly pledged, on the campaign trail, to put an end to indiscriminate warmaking.

The War Powers Act was very probably an unworkable piece of legislation from the start. President Nixon was right to veto it and Congress wrong to override his veto. It is, however, the law and is something the Democrats have long regarded as a significant achievement. By acting in contempt of it, the President is being characteristically feckless.

The same goes for Congress. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, Congressional Democrats are blithely ignoring a law that they regard as vital. Republicans are genuinely skeptical of the law, but they pretend to believe in the rule of law. This isn't sleep walking, it's zombie walking.

If the War Powers Act is bad law, then the President and Congress should act to repeal it or modify it. Leaving it on the books and paying lip service to it while contemptuously violating it is an offense against the republican form of government. All the President has to do is ask Congress to approve the mission. Perhaps he doubts that Congress would approve it. Perhaps he just doesn't want to publically defend his policy. Either way, this is bad faith.

Health Care Waivers & Refried Beans

I am in Tucson this week, attending a conference. That's what academics do instead of pilgrimages. I graduated from the University of Arizona and I confess that I thought I might look up one of my favorite professors. Then it occurred to me that he was in his mid-fifties when I knew him. That was well over thirty years ago. Being back here distorts my sense of time.

I can tell you, in case you ever visit here (or if you are here) that you should eat at El Charro. This is a family owned restaurant that has been in operation since 1922.  Even the chips and salsa were extraordinary.  I had their USA Today chimichanga. It was called that, in case you didn't guess, because it was featured in the national paper.  There is no human language capable of expressing how good it was. The meat filling was obviously cooked in broth with the usual suspects, but it was a little dry and/or aged. God's own chimichanga. It was thicker and almost as long as a parade baton. 

For the conference I have been reading Friedrich Hayek, Michael Oakeshott, and Leo Strauss. I won't know until after the six sessions what to think about all three together, but I will give you a hint: they were all opposed to social engineering.

I noticed with special interest this story from the Daily Caller:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama's administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's Northern California district.

That's in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama's Department of Health and Human Services approved.

The healthcare bill was so complicated that no human being could know what its actual effect would be. The administration has issued something like one thousand three hundred waivers, allowing various businesses and unions to escape the bills requirements. That fact alone suggests that something is wrong.

There is, as the Caller suggests, another reason to be suspicious. Legislation that puts a significant burden on various enterprises but allows the government to grant waivers gives the government a potent weapon. There are two ways that the Administration can use this weapon.

One is to conceal the real effects of the bill until after the next election. Some of the waivers were clearly intended to prevent a sudden loss of coverage by large firms, something that would have played into the hands of critics.

Another is to protect the Administration's friends, including hip nightclubs and unions. That is a very dangerous thing. It strikes a blow against the rule of law. The waivers are temporary, and so may the danger be; but this is something we should keep an eye on.

Two Thumbs Up 4 Thor

Back when I was an avid reader of comic books, two brands dominated the market: DC and Marvel. Readers tended to be fiercely loyal and I read nothing but Marvel. Well, almost nothing. I did briefly indulge in Green Lantern and Green Arrow, but I felt guilty about it. Marvel heroes were sometimes derivative of DC characters. Captain America was Marvel's version of Batman, with a teen sidekick, "Bucky" to match Robin. Aquaman became Namor, the Submariner, in Marvel. But Marvel characters were much richer, more resonant with the social culture. Marvel just had better stories.

The same two giants still dominate comic book culture, but Marvel has the clear edge in Hollywood. Only DC's Batman franchise rivals Spiderman on film. Superman still hasn't really taken flight since the Christopher Reeve days. DC has nothing to match the excellent X Men series, which is about to be reborn, or the superb Iron Man films. Green Lantern is about to glow on the screen, and may be good; however, Marvel has Captain America coming and a new Spiderman in the works. It looks like I backed the right winged horse.

One of Marvel's most original heroes was Thor. Marvel was good at creating (see: stealing) whole kosmoi in which to situate their characters. Thor was the Norse God of Thunder, son of Odin, sworn enemy of Loki, resident of Asgard. In the original comic, Thor was punished by his father for almost starting a cosmic war. Odin sent his son to earth to be imprisoned in the body of Donald Blake, a medical student with a limp and a cane. Fast forward, and Blake discovers that if he slams his cane into the ground it becomes and mighty hammer (Mjolnir) and Blake becomes the Mighty Thor.

Well, Thor is now using Mjolnir to smash the competition at the box office. I am happy about that and happy to report that I was happy when I left the theater. Thor wasn't great but it was plenty good enough.

The best thing about the movie was Chris Hemsworth. The Australian actor looks and acts the part well: Thor as a super muscular, super arrogant jock. He adds an irreverent sense of humor that was missing from the comic books.

The story takes place in three acts: the first in Asgard and in the realm of the frost giants, the second on Earth, and the third back in Asgard. The weakest part of the film is the middle part, where nothing much happens except that Thor learns humility, makes contact with SHIELD (a secret service devoted to dealing with Superheroes), gets a girlfriend (Natalie Portman), and gets his Mjolnir mojo back. This part of the film isn't bad, just underwhelming.

The first part of the film is well worth the admission price. Asgard is visually breathtaking. Anthony Hopkins is as good as you expect as Odin. When Thor leads his four best super buddies into the frost giant's realm, the resulting battle is about as good as superhero cinema gets. I gotta get me one of those hammers!

Superhero movies always have a problem of scale. How can you present a man-sized superman doing battle against gigantic foes? Thor's battle against the frost giants switches well between on the ground hand to hammer combat, and flying into the mouth of a Godzilla sized rock-frost-monster.

Thor is pretty good super movie making. The film spends a lot of time integrating Thor into an apparent larger project, the "Avengers Initiative." The Avengers were a group of Superheroes that had their own Marvel Comic for a number of years. It was led by Captain America, and included Thor and Iron Man. Whether this film idea will really happen or be any good are good questions. It invites the viewer to look for Easter eggs. At the end of Iron Man films and Thor, you get teasers pointing to an Avengers movie.

In Thor, there is a brief scene where a SHIELD sniper following Thor puts down his rifle and picks up a compound bow. That would be Hawkeye, one of the original Avengers in the comic book. God is good to nerds.

The Fiscal Freight Train & the Damsels Tied to the Tracks

The biggest threat to all federal spending programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, isn't Paul Ryan; it is the interest on the public debt. The Treasury Department, at least, recognizes the problem. From Bloomberg:

While some of the lowest borrowing costs on record have helped the economy recover from its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, bond yields are now rising as growth resumes. Net interest expense will triple to an all-time high of $554 billion in 2015 from $185 billion in 2010, according to the Obama administration's adjusted 2011 budget.

"It's a slow train wreck coming and we all know it's going to happen," said Bret Barker, an interest-rate analyst at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which manages about $115 billion in assets.

And here is a quote from the Washington Post:

Starting in 2014, net interest payments will surpass the amount spent on education, transportation, energy and all other discretionary programs outside defense. In 2018, they will outstrip Medicare spending. Only the amounts spent on defense and Social Security would remain bigger under the president's plan.

The soaring bill for interest payments is one of the biggest obstacles to balancing the federal budget, pushing the White House and Congress to come up with cuts deeper than previously imagined. Unlike with discretionary spending or even entitlement programs, the line item for interest payments cannot be altered except through other budget cuts.

Seven years from now, interest on the federal debt will exceed spending on Medicare. Again I have to point out that that is not what happens if the President's plan fails, that's his plan.

What is most worrisome is that these projections rely on optimistic assumptions about borrowing costs. The OMB projects that interest on the debt will consume almost 20% of all federal revenues by 2016. According to Economics21.

Over this period, the effective interest rate implied by the ratio of net interest expense to public debt is 3.5%. This happens to be the average for the 5-year constant maturity Treasury rate over the past 10 years.

However, the average 5-year borrowing cost for the 10 years ending in January 2000 was 6.3%, while the average 5-year borrowing cost for the 10 years ending in 1990 was 10.4%. Stress testing the President's budget against these different interest rate assumptions reveals that public debt dynamics could trigger federal insolvency in relatively short order.

If the effective interest rate on the debt is 6.3%, interest on the debt will consume thirty cents out of every dollar of revenue by 2016. If it rises to 10.4%, interest payments will consume 60% of all federal revenue by that date. By 2021, interest payments would consume almost 80% of revenue.

I return to the point of my last post. We are facing a genuine financial crisis. This slow moving train wreck doesn't look so slow to me. The train will reach the damsel within a decade.

The Ryan plan is at least a plan. It is a genuine attempt to deal with the problem. The President has no plan at all. The strategy of Congressional Democrats, the New York Times, Paul Krugman, and Cory Heidelberger is to say "yeah, something needs to be done," and to attack anyone and everyone who proposes the slightest cuts in the spending programs that are driving up the debt. This may win the next election, but it isn't going to save Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security. It's going to doom those programs, and a lot more as well.

Who’s Killing Medicare?

My esteemed Dakota blogosphere colleague, Cory Heidelberger, has been raking Congresswoman Kristi Noem over the coals for voting "to privatize, voucherize, and end Medicare." I submit that it is Cory who is really striving, with all the righteous indignation that is in him (and that's a lot) to kill Medicare dead. It won't be just Medicare, either, if Cory wins the battle.

[NOTE: I orginally posted a wildly inaccurate chart here.  I got the Chart from Powerline, but it was stupid of me not to realize that it couldn't be right.  Intrepid and cherished reader A.I. pointed out that fact in the comments section.  This is me rolling over on my back and exposing my belly.  I would prefer to keep the chart here as evidence that I am at least honest.  However, I do not want to risk keeping the chart in circulation.  Readers can decide whether the rest of this post stands on its own.]

If you really care about Medicare, or Medicaid, or Social Security, let alone all the other things that the Federal Government spends money on, you would have to care about that. Interest on the debt is the one item on the federal budget that is really not "discretionary". We can't stop paying that without bringing the global financial system down.

Note that the 1 million mark at the top right of the chart isn't dollars. It's billions of dollars. Interest on the debt is about to rapidly crowd out all other federal spending.

President Obama is resolutely ignoring this problem. He has offered nothing to address it. The Democrats in Congress haven't even produced a budget in more than a year. Meanwhile, Cory amuses himself by tearing into Rep. Noem for voting for the Ryan Plan, the only proposal on the table, like it or not, that actually addresses the problem.

The Democrats are fiddling while the future burns. Sooner or later the Republicans will have to agree to raise taxes. Raising taxes on the rich won't solve the problem. Raising taxes on everyone else won't solve the problem. We are going to have to reduce spending. The longer we put that off, the more painful it is going to be. My friend Cory and his Party are putting all their weight to put it off as long as possible.

Shale Gas, Prosperity, & the Green Agenda

I like the environment. I really like it. I have been an avid camper and backpacker for decades. I have visited a lot of places that one can only visit after walking for days with forty pounds of food, clothing, housing, and alcohol on my back. I won't describe the proportions. I enjoy breathing relatively fresh air and drinking relatively clean water.

I also enjoy living a life that is prosperous and interesting beyond the imagination of my more remote ancestors. I like having a warm, well-lit house with a blue ray hooked up to a wide screen and a laptop and internet connection with which to irritate my cherished readers and Professor David Newquist.

If I have to give up some of the latter to enjoy the former, I am prepared to negotiate. I am not as quick to give away the chance for a similar prosperity to aspiring people around the world as some of my environmentalist friends.

I suspect, however, that for a lot of environmentalists, prosperity is not something that needs to be traded for environmental benefits; rather, it is something that is bad in itself. In the late 80's a couple of physicists claimed to have achieved cold fusion.

It never panned out, but if it had it might have delivered a clean and abundant source of energy: prosperity for all without pollution or global warming. I recall reading a series of responses from environmentalists who were appalled at the prospect. It would mean that we don't have to give up all the good stuff. These folks, I judged, were enemies of human happiness.

We may be about to witness another test of green intentions. From Ron Bailey at Reason:

The world's projected natural gas supplies jumped 40 percent last year. How is such a thing possible? Until a decade ago, experts believed that it would be technically infeasible to exploit the potential resource base of natural gas locked in 48 shale basins in 32 countries around the world. Then horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, was perfected. The shale gas rush was on, and last year the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued an analysis revising its estimates of available natural gas dramatically upward.

Ron gives us an idea of what this means.

A rough calculation suggests that 100 percent of coal-powered electricity generation could be replaced by burning an additional 14 [trillion cubic feet] of natural gas, boosting overall consumption to 37 tcf per year. The EIA estimates total U.S. natural gas reserves at 2,543 tcf. This suggests that the U.S. has enough natural gas to last about 70 years if it entirely replaced the current level of coal-powered electricity generation.

Similarly, it would be notionally possible to replace the entire current U.S. gasoline consumption with about 17 tcf of natural gas per year. So replacing coal and gasoline immediately would require burning 54 tcf annually, implying a nearly 50 year supply of natural gas.

Since we probably won't stop burning coal and gasoline anytime soon, we may have just secured enough energy to supply the world's needs for the next century. We might be able do this while dramatically reducing coal and oil consumption and emissions.

Better yet, producing natural gas by fracking is much more environmentally friendly than oil wells or open cast coal mines. Burning natural gas, likewise, has a much smaller carbon footprint than coal or gasoline.

You might think that the environmentalists would be happy. They were in favor of fracking only a little while ago, Ron explains. Now that it actually promises to meet the world's needs, they are alarmed. The greens have gone red in the face over shale.

On their own there is a lot that the environmentalists can do to retard the exploitation of shale. They are masters at using the courts to such effect. Worse still, there is a potential alliance here between the greens and their traditional enemies in the coal and oil industries. Big Coal and Big Oil aren't necessarily happy to see Big Shale come on the scene.

If Big Green cares only about the environment and doesn't give a frack about common prosperity, it should still favor fracking. It is better for the environment than the traditional alternatives. If Big Green opposes the expansion of shale gas production, that will prove my point. They're really closet Calvinists, or worse, hair shirt Catholics. What really bothers then is the idea that someone, somewhere, might be comfortable and happy.

Healthcare Reform in Massachusetts

Mitt Romney's biggest liability in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination is RomneyCare, according to the CW. If Romney would only hire me for a six figure salary, I could solve his problem. "States," he could solemnly intone, reading from my prepared script, "are the laboratories of democracy. In a laboratory, a negative result is often as revealing as a positive one. I signed the Massachusetts healthcare reform fully expecting that it would fail. It did. More than anyone else, I really did something to discredit ObamaCare."

Ok, it would be a tough sell. What else has Mitt got? Anyway, it does look grim for RomneyCare. From the Wall Street Journal:

A new survey released yesterday by the Massachusetts Medical Society reveals that fewer than half of the state's primary care practices are accepting new patients, down from 70% in 2007, before former Governor Mitt Romney's health-care plan came online. The average wait time for a routine checkup with an internist is 48 days. It takes 43 days to secure an appointment with a gastroenterologist for chronic heartburn, up from 36 last year, and 41 days to see an OB/GYN, up from 34 last year.

So Massachusetts reformed their healthcare system and now patients are spending a lot more time waiting to see a physician. Conservatives will point out that longer wait times are hardly an improvement. By contrast, Liberals want Canadian health care; but if Massachusetts had achieved a true Canadian system, the wait times would measured in years instead of days. So it's a failure from both perspectives.

Well has it reduced visitations to the emergency rooms? That, after all, was one of the great cost-saving advantages promised by ObamaCare and RomneyCare. No.

Massachusetts health regulators also estimate that emergency room visits jumped 9% between 2004 and 2008, in part due to the lack of routine access to providers. The Romney-Obama theory was that if everyone is insured by the government, costs would fall by squeezing out uncompensated care. Yet emergency medicine accounts for only 2% of all national health spending.

More Massachusetts residents are going to the emergency rooms.

Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic has a piece "Defending RomneyCare (because Romney Won't Do it)". He points out that the rise in wait time for a doctor and the decrease in the number of physicians accepting new patients are consistent with longer term trends. The numbers go up and down between 2005 and the present. Ok, but that only tells us that RomneyCare didn't do all that much damage. It doesn't indicate that the reform achieved any improvement.

With regard to emergency room visits, Cohn has this:

To be clear, I wish we had evidence that reform reduced ER usage significantly. It obviously hasn't and critics have every right to point that out, although I remain hopeful that reform can ease the ER load over time. I've also heard plenty of anecdotes about long waits in Massachusetts, so I'm not dismissing the possibility reform has exacerbated the crowding problem.

If that is Cohn's defense of RomneyCare, it's no wonder that Romney won't do it. States are indeed the laboratories of democracy and what is in the Massachusetts test tube may be a big or a small failure, but it shows no signs of a medical breakthrough. Cohn remains hopeful. What else could he remain?

I am doubtful. I think that rational healthcare reform was possible. That would have required an honest look at the strengths and weaknesses of the American healthcare system, unburdened by decades old political agendas. I am not sure that that was possible. It would also have required a courageous confrontation of the problem of rationing in an age where technology makes available more treatment than the nation can possibly afford. I am sure that such courage is not possible.

Meanwhile we go boldly and silly when Romney has gone before.

The Phantasm of Genetic Determinism

Modern intellectual culture is haunted by a pervasive anxiety concerning genetic explanations of human behavior. A good example of this is a recent piece by Richard C. Lewontin in the New York Review of Books. The anxiety is betrayed in the title: "It's Even Less in Your Genes".

Less than what, I ask? Less than "all" is the answer. We are constantly being told that our behavior is not "all" in our genes, meaning, presumably, we are not the biological equivalent of player pianos. This is an argument with no opposition. No one to my knowledge has ever argued that human behavior is not heavily influenced both by exposure to information and materials present in the environment.

Lewontin points out that the expression of genes in organisms as diverse as corn plants and ethanol producers is largely a function of the interaction between genes and the environment. A given corn plant will function very well in one location, but not so well in another. A plant with different genes may do the very opposite. Feedback loops are generated within all organisms as the expression of one gene responds to the expression of another, and the first responds again and so on. Likewise, when an organism responds to its environment, the environment if frequently changed, forcing the organism to respond again. These feedback loops get very complicated, and that usually makes it difficult or impossible to determine the actual function of specific genes.

That only means that it is difficult to define what it means for a behavior to be in the genes; it doesn't mean that the genes are any less consequential. Our genes are essential elements in our existence as organisms and in our behavior, but they are scarcely the only essential elements. The second digit in a three digit combination is useless without the other two, but you still have to know the second digit to get into your locker.

We are still suffering from some basic philosophic mistakes made at the outset of modernity. Many philosophers and scientists profess to believe in materialism, but materialism is rarely defined. If it means that all things are composed of material, it is clearly false. Empty space is not composed of material, nor is gravity. Information may be embedded in material, but it is composed of material. Melt your front door key into a dollop of metal and then try to open the door with it. The material is the same, but the form is different and that makes all the difference.

Likewise, living organisms are frequently described in biology as machines or mechanisms, but that is altogether wrong. Steve Talbott has a fine piece on this in The New Atlantis.

Think first of a living dog, then of a decomposing corpse. At the moment of death, all the living processes normally studied by the biologist rapidly disintegrate. The corpse remains subject to the same laws of physics and chemistry as the live dog, but now, with the cessation of life, we see those laws strictly in their own terms, without anything the life scientist is distinctively concerned about. The dramatic change in his descriptive language as he moves between the living and the dead tells us just about everything we need to know.

No biologist who had been speaking of the behavior of the living dog will now speak in the same way of the corpse's "behavior." Nor will he refer to certain physical changes in the corpse as reflexes, just as he will never mention the corpse's responses to stimuli, or the functions of its organs, or the processes of development being undergone by the decomposing tissues.

Yet…

Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning.

A living dog is what Aristotle called an ousia, or substance, about which characteristics like size and shedding are predicated. Its substance or reality consists only secondarily in its material, as Talbott illustrates above. The organism is the processes and functions by which its life is maintained and in which its life consists. Aristotle proposed that this complex, directed activity is the psyche, or soul of the organism. He was right.

The genes are an essential element in the functioning soul of any organism, including yours truly. But the organism is not the elements, it is the whole that comprehends and integrates the elements. There is no reason to fear reductionism here. The very fact of life refutes reductionism.

But perhaps Aristotle's ousia is merely a product of the human tendency to arbitrarily distinguish between object and background that Lewontin complains about.

As we change our intent, also we identify anew what is object and what is background. When I glance out the window as I write these lines I notice my neighbor's car, its size, its shape, its color, and I note that it is parked in a snow bank. My interest then changes to the results of the recent storm and it is the snow that becomes my object of attention with the car relegated to the background of shapes embedded in the snow. What is an object as opposed to background is a mental construct and requires the identification of clear boundaries.

Lewontin is no doubt correct that this tendency can lead to errors but that only means that sometimes we pick the wrong object to focus on, not that objects are arbitrary constructs of the human mind. If you notice that a bear is stalking you on a hiking trail, it won't help to change the focus of your attention to the evergreen trees and blue sky. The bear is unbearably real and so are you, at least for a little while longer.

It's time to be rid of materialism and rehabilitate Aristotle's biology. Then we could stop being afraid of genetic determinism and other such phantasms.

As with Libya, So Also with Iraq

A recent exchange between intrepid reader Bill F. and myself reminded me of our other war. You know, the one that has most vanished from the front pages. Here is a Washington post article I had to search to find:

BENGHAZI, Libya — Moammar Gadhafi's forces rocketed the main fuel depot in Misrata on Saturday, intensifying a two-month siege on the rebel-held city that has claimed many civilian lives and prompted warnings of a humanitarian crisis.

Government forces sent Grad rockets slamming into the depot, which contains vital stores of fuel for cars, trucks, ships and generators powering hospitals and other key sites in a city left darkened by electricity cuts, residents said.

There are three plausible outcomes of U.S., excuse me, NATO policy in Libya. One is that the various attempts by NATO nations to kill Gaddafi and/or weaken his regime succeed and the rebels win. Right now that seems the least likely of the three.

The second outcome would be that the rebellion collapses in spite of all NATO efforts, and Gaddafi restores his regime over all his territory. That is by no means certain, but it is looking more likely.

The third outcome would be that the constant armed conflict fizzles out and gives way to a stalemate sustained by the permanent protection of the rebel held areas by NATO airpower. I cannot judge the likelihood of that. It remains unclear whether the rebels can sustain themselves even in the absence of a final push by the regime. I only note that, if I am right about the slim chances for number one, number three is the only alternative to a Gaddafi victory.

What strikes me now is that we have seen all this before. Contrary to what Bill and many others have said, George W. Bush (43) did not "start" a war in Iraq. The U.S. and its allies were at war with Iraq for twelve years after George H. W. Bush (41) pushed Saddam out of Kuwait. We maintained no-fly zones over Northern and Southern Iraq and occasionally dropped a few bombs and launched a few missiles. That is war, plain and simple.

Largely by inattention, President Clinton allowed the Iraq war to settle into exactly the kind of stalemate contemplated in Libya Outcome 3 above. One of the benefits of that war is that the Kurds were able to build a largely autonomous regime in the North of Iraq, while the Shiites in the South were afforded similar protection. That put us in the position that we could not remove our protection without allowing Saddam to do what Saddam would do to those populations. What Bush 41 did, for better or worse, was not to start a war but to end one.

Unfortunately, Bush 43's invasion of Iraq foreclosed any public deliberation on the policy we were actually pursuing before the invasion. The question "should we have invaded?" allowed everyone to escape the question "what should we have done about the war we were already in?" I think Bush takes the lion's share of responsibility for this in making the case for the invasion. But President Clinton, both parties in Congress, and the Press deserve their share.

Had we faced that question back then, we might not be in the same situation now. Maybe the Gaddafi regime will collapse. It just doesn't look like that right now. A Gaddafi victory would at least put us and the rebels out of our collective misery, though in a less dire sense in our case than theirs. That would also be a very embarrassing defeat for the U.S. and the rest of NATO. We would have succeeded only in prolonging the violence.

That leaves option 3. The best we could hope for is a mostly quiet, indefinite stalemate. Of course, the situations are only roughly analogous. Recent reports suggest that rebel control is very limited. We have mostly handed over the air campaign to our European allies, and they seem to lack enough spare parts to keep their planes in the air. It is very unclear whether the Europeans will be able to sustain a no-fly zone for very long.

It is easy enough to blame President Obama for this situation but it's only fair to say that in this, as in almost all his foreign policy making, he is only falling into established patterns. Blaming Obama, like blaming Bush, can be a lot of fun depending on your political orientation. It can also excuse you from doing what you most need to do in foreign policy: consider the options available. Of course, other options would become available if this or some future President decides to change the rules.

Ps. We really need to convene an international council to decide how to spell Gaddafi, or is it Gadhafi, or Kadafi?

Memphis Blues and Mississippi Rising

One end of Beale Street is under water. Beale is the Memphis lane that is one of that Southern city's chief tourist attractions. It has been fashioned into a shrine to the Blues and the formative era of Rock and Roll. My brother makes guitars at the Gibson factory just around the corner. Just off the way, down General Washburn's Escape Alley, is the Rendezvous, the best rib joint in this or any other kosmos. I have worshiped there on many an occasion.

The Rendezvous is below street level. The Mississippi River is 45 feet above flood stage. It is predicted to crest at 48 feet. That means it is about ten times as wide as the Lord seems to have planned for. We are probably witnessing the greatest rise in our big river since the 1927 flood. This one is probably going to break that record. The Memphis Airport is completely flooded.

Those of you who hope that prayers can have effect might put in a word for the good folks who are standing knee deep in chocolate water.

Kill Missions & Moral Confusion

The Israelis have been frequently criticized for their policy of targeted killings. That phrase indicates the use of military hardware to kill specific individuals, including especially leaders of a hostile political organization. We are in no position to make such criticisms.

The United States officially and legally eschews assassination as a tool of foreign policy. We also assassinate people we consider terrorist, just as the Israelis do. Our unmanned predators are largely devoted to this task. They allow us to kill from the air, without risk to American personnel.

This contradiction makes for some clownish denials on our part. We and our NATO allies have been at pains to insist that we are not personally targeting Muammar Gaddafi in our Libyan operations.

NATO denied targeting members of Muammar Gaddafi's family on Sunday after a Libyan government spokesman said the leader had survived a NATO air strike in Tripoli that killed his youngest son and three grandchildren.

The Western alliance, which is conducting air strikes to protect civilians during an anti-Gaddafi rebellion, confirmed one of its targets included a command centre in the Tripoli neighborhood late on Saturday in which the Libyan spokesman said Gaddafi and his family were targeted.

Ok. This is the second time we have hit a building which we thought MG might be inside. This comes close to a gross verbal inexactitude, otherwise known as a big, fat, lie. Does Muammar really keep his grandkids in "command centers"? No, we weren't targeting his grandkids. We were targeting his butt.

When Seal Team 6 stormed Hotel bin Laden they were after the old cutthroat dead or alive, except for the alive part. It was a "kill mission." The fact that the Administration can't quite bring itself to say that explains their bizarre inability to get their story straight. Osama had a gun and used his wife as a shield. No, he hadn't and he didn't. There was a prolonged firefight? Well, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee sort of explains:

"They came in at night. It was dark. There were people moving around. They were fired at by, I think more than one person," Smith said. "There were weapons in the area. It was a fast-moving situation in which they felt threatened and they responded accordingly."

Citing U.S. officials, NBC reported that four of the five people shot to death in the operation that killed bin Laden, including the al Qaeda leader, were unarmed and never fired a shot --an account that differs from the administration's original assertions the Navy SEALS engaged in a prolonged firefight.

I am no expert, but I don't see how dark, people moving around, and weapons in the area add up to a firefight. In fact, I suspect, the SEALS killed all the men they encountered because it was a man they were gunning for. Killing bin Laden was the mission they were there to accomplish. Why can't we just say that?

Getting caught up in such lies is a consequence of not coming to terms with what you are doing. The President's anti-terrorism policy is Bush's anti-terrorism policy. He has ended up doing almost exactly what Bush did and what Bush would have done in his shoes. This is because the demands of his office and the circumstances in which he finds himself allow nothing else.

Unfortunately for his self-awareness, these realities are at odds with his understandable desire to distance himself from his predecessor and with his natural inclinations as a left-leaning Democrat. Fortunately for American interests, this didn't hamper the operation.

Still, it would be better for everyone to avoid confusion. The moral of this story should be simple. If you come after us, we will come after you, without hesitation and without mercy. Don't imagine that not having a weapon or not raising it will protect you if you are standing next to one of our mortal enemies. If your roomy is a terrorist you will die like a terrorist. The President doesn't have to say it like I said it. He does need to make sure everyone understands it, including him.

To Obama, the Glory

Osama bin Laden was probably the closest thing we have ever had, in real life, to a James Bond villain. He was super rich, intelligent, and ambitious. He was the head of a nefarious organization with global reach. He was dedicated to doing mayhem on a Biblical scale. It is altogether appropriate that he was taken out by G.I. Joe after years of footwork by Maxwell Smart.

I am not being facetious. That's my way of celebrating. The finding and killing of bin Laden was brilliant work from beginning to end. Who gets the most credit? That's easy. Barack Obama.

The President made the decision to pull the trigger. That could not have been easy. If Geronimo hadn't been there, it would have wasted eight years of painstaking intelligence work. The President could not rely on airpower. We needed not only to kill bin Laden but to know that we killed him. President Obama took a serious risk in sending in helicopters and men. A Desert One type debacle could surely have doomed his presidency and his reputation. He made the right call. Accordingly, all the glory that goes to the magnificent warriors in and out of uniform is also his glory.

I have only the most minor of criticisms. It would have been better for someone below the President to make the announcement. The President himself should come out only to take responsibility when something goes wrong. Having the Secretary of Defense make the announcement would have better enhanced the President's stature. President Bush rightly declined Obama's offer to appear with him at Ground Zero. Bush has, I think, a better appreciation of decorum than his successor. Again, that is a minor criticism.

It is fair to point out that Bush's critics, including Barack Obama, criticized the President for precisely the things that made this operation possible. Obama blamed Bush for neglecting the hunt for bin Laden. We now know how unfair that criticism was. Last Sunday's operation was the result of a hunt that began in the third year of Bush's Presidency.

It is also fair to point out that journalist muckraker Seymour Hersh once informed Keith Olbermann that Seal Team 6 was "an executive assassination ring". Hirsh seemed to think this was something to be ashamed of and alarmed about. That is not how most Americans see it today.

Seal Team 6 (or the Naval Special Warfare Development Group as it is officially called) is a precision strike force that would make Leonidas' Three Hundred bow in admiration. They accomplished their very difficult mission without losing a single one of their own, in spite of losing a helicopter. This is the kind of thing that doesn't work nearly so well in a Hollywood action flick.

Candidate Obama also vehemently criticized President Bush's national security apparatus. That's ok, that was his job as a Democratic candidate for office. Once it became his job to be President, he continued almost all of Bush's security policies. No one has done more to restore the reputation of the Bush Presidency than Bush's successor in the White House.

If Osama bin Laden had lived another ten years, secure in his compound, and then had passed away peacefully in his Abbottabad bed next to his most recent wife, that would have been a personal victory for a twenty four karat enemy of the United States. Now the books will read that he cowered behind high walls for six years in a compound, afraid to use the internet or a phone, and had to burn his own garbage. Then we found him and blew his brains out. Point United States. Moral: don't mess with us. We will find you, and when Seal Team 6 goes airborne, your ass is oatmeal.

There are all kinds of caveats popping up on the network. We are cautioned about celebrating the death of anyone, however bad he may be. We are reminded that OBL was one man and that his death is hardly the end of al Qaeda or of terrorism in general. That's fair enough. But all glory is fleeting and all victories provisional. That is all the more reason to celebrate now. The real victor in war is the strategos, the Commander in Chief. Just now, the glory goes to Barack.

A Great Night for America

On the day of the Royal Wedding, one news announcer proclaimed, “It’s a great day for Great Britain.” Tonight is a great night for America. Politics this year has been interesting, but disheartening. With unemployment still high, the deficit expanding, and no end in sight to irresponsible spending, it has sometimes been tempting to leave the radio off, newspapers folded, and the television tuned to something more entertaining and less serious than the news.

But tonight, the news of Osama Bin Laden's death is not only the end of the hunt for public enemy #1. It is also one of the first events that has unified most of the country. It is a burst of good news and optimism in the midst of the depressing, negative news that has seemed to dominated every network. Thousands of Americans of all different stripes are together, cheering in the streets and even the president, who has sometimes seemed unemotional, had tears in his eyes as he concluded his speech. Tomorrow, radios and TVs will be turned on and tuned to news channels. Newspapers will be flung open. For at least a day or two, it will be morning in America.

Osama's death is good news for most Americans, but it may be even better news for President Obama, who's intervention in Libya was disapproved of by the majority of Americans. According to Gallup, "The 47% of Americans approving of the action against Libya is lower than what Gallup has found when asking about approval of other U.S. military campaigns in the past four decades." But the apprehension of Osama Bin Laden makes the president seem much more competent and will almost certainly boost his approval rating.

When President Obama decided to release his long-form birth certificate, many asked, "why now?" Donald Trump took some credit for the move. But perhaps it was this news, not Trump's challenge that really prompted the announcement.

If the president intentionally timed the release of his birth certificate to coincide with this announcement, that too was a shrewd move. It gives Obama two victories in a row. Either way, this will be a particularly good week for President Obama and the Republicans will certainly have their work cut out for them in the next election.

For now, though, there is cause for every American to celebrate. Well done, US troops, and well done, Mr. President.

Obama Nails Usama

Well done.   He isn't only merely dead.  He's really most sincerely dead. 

Republicans Winning the Battle of the Budget Plans

When Paul Ryan produced a budget plan that included serious cuts to Medicare, recognized laws of political physics suggested two things. One was that the voters and especially the elderly would turn on the GOP. The other was that Republicans would buckle and run screaming in all directions.

Given that, we are apparently witnessing a miracle. House Republicans have stood firm so far behind the Ryan plan. Instead, it is the Democrats who continue to fragment. From the Washington Post:

A growing number of Democrats are threatening to defy the White House over the national debt, joining Republican calls for deficit cuts as a requirement for consenting to lift the country's borrowing limit.

Meanwhile, the great reversal of fortunes for the GOP has yet to be realized. Instead, the GOP is polling pretty well. In a recent Gallup/USAToday poll, Republicans were favored over Democrats on 5 of 6 major issues (health care was the lone exception).

On the economy, Republicans were favored by six points. On the budget, Republicans were ahead by a whopping twelve points!

Something almost as striking appears when you breakdown responders by age. When Gallup asked people whether they favored the Ryan Plan or President Obama's budget proposal, Americans split evenly. Given the conventional wisdom referred to above, that alone is good news for the GOP.

However, the only age group that favored Obama was the 18 to 29 group. Americans between the ages of 30 and 49 favored the Ryan plan by 6 points. Americans over 50 favored the Ryan plan by another whopping 10-12%.

That is significant for two big reasons. The older groups are the ones most likely to come out and vote. Right now, no one expects the Democrats to turn out younger voters in the way that they did in 2008.

More important is the fact that the older voters are those most invested, literally, in Medicare. What does it mean that voters favor the Ryan Plan over the Obama response in proportion to age and likelihood of voting?

It doesn't mean that these voters are ready to embrace steep cuts in Medicare or Rep. Ryan's voucher idea. They aren't. That's like asking someone to vote in favor of exercise and a diet. At the same time, voters favor spending cuts over tax increases. Will support for the Ryan plan hold when people see what they will actually have to give up? It is not hard to imagine the contrary.

What these poll numbers suggest is that the most politically active and invested voters really do recognize that the U.S. is facing a very serious fiscal crisis. They recognize that something has to be done. They also recognize that the Republicans are genuinely addressing the issue and that the President and his party are not.

The House Republicans have done a very bold thing. Just right now they winning.