Everything Means Something to Someone

I was thinking this, and then RCP wrote it. The spin being put on last week's elections (a House seat in upstate New York, and the Governorships of New Jersey and Virginia) are just absurd. Mostly, that's because depending on what side of the aisle you're on, you see different things in the political tea leaves. But mostly, it's because people of a Democratic stripe are desperate not to have last week's elections related in any way to the Obama Presidency.

First the New York race: sure, the Democrat won, by 2 points....against a third-party candidate who didn't do much fundraising, and wasn't nearly as well-known as the Republican he displaced. Not to mention that 6% of the vote went to the ousted Repub, because the ballots had already been printed by the time she bailed to support the Democrat. Obviously, ill-informed voters went for her when many of them would have went for the Conservative Party candidate had they been paying attention (unfortunately not an prerequisite for voting). I don't see how this comes out as an out-and-out victory for the Dems. In the big-picture sense they got the House seat, so that's certainly something to be proud of. But acting like this portends any kind of Democrat strength into the future is ludicrous, even though a D did win in a conservative district.

Contrast that to Joisee and Virginia, which have been Democrat strongholds for more than ten years. To me, these races are a prelude to what every 2010 race is going to be about: the economy, jobs, and fiscal restaint. Neither sitting Governor could fix the first, delivered on the second, or demonstrated the third. They're a feeling brewing out there the Democrats have had enough time in the driver's seat to do something about the lousy economy, and they're not delivering. I'm not sure that's fair, but what I will say is that Obama & Co. never should have promised the things they did (8% unemployment, anyone?). That, more than the overall economic conditions, are what has poisoned the D's well.

2010 will be interesting, because it really will serve as a referendum on Obama's policies. At the rate we're going there's not reason to think we'll have sub-10% unemployment, so the situation, to me at least, seems dire for the D's. Time will tell of course, but right now, I say they lose control of one branch of Congress. That's an audacious claim a year out, and I know it. But I just don't see any mechanism to reverse the tide: the public hates the health care reform, they're scared to death about the cap and trade bill, and people are still losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands. Any sitting party would be thrown out on their ear over that. I doubt the D's in 2010 will be any different.

*Lance out*

Book Review: Fiasco

David Ricks' Fiasco is a unflinchingly critical take on the buildup and execution of the Iraq war through 2005. If you wanted to know the story behind what didn't work, this is the book for you.

Be prepared though: like I said, this isn't some ooh-rah cheerleader volume along the lines of Totten or Yon. Ricks spends alot of time pointing fingers in the book, though to his credit he points them up, even over things like Abu Graib. He takes great measure to stress that were leadership better, the actions of American troops would have been better, whether in combat or elsewhere in the theater.

I think this is an important book for those who are pro-Iraq to read, if only to show how false the pretenses were for going to war, as well as how bad the planning was. The Department of Defense was seriously convinced that people would be waving palm fronds at us while we rolled into Baghdad. One can only hope that if we ever have to do this again, like say with a nuclear Iran, we would have learned something from Iraq.

Ricks is a good writer - I'm looking forward to reading The Gamble, his history of the Surge. At the end of Fiasco Ricks is despondent and sad regarding the whole affair; and who can blame him? For those of us who know it got better after the last page was written, it offers an easier reflection on the bungling presented in Fiasco. That's really the best part of reading Fiasco: you know that eventually, it got better.

*Lance out*

Funny and Sad at the Same Time

Wired magazine had a survey that showed most parents would rather talk about drugs with their kids than science or math. I could really get up on my soapbox here and say that things like Carribean Studies shouldn't be options, that we graduate too many MBA's who can't function in the real world, and that law schools spit out too many graduates that do nothing to help anybody. But I won't.....suffice to say, if you don't know how to help your kids, get them a tutor. Heck, what's wrong with taking a class yourself?

Math and science themselves aren't so important - I've taken alot of both in my day, and bulk of it is not useful in day-to-day life. What is important is the problem-solving skills and intestinal fortitude you learn by suffering through vector calculus or P-chem. When you don't have to earn something, you don't value it. The same types of skills are not found in a business textbook. That's not elitism, that's just a fact.

Math, science, engineering and the like all teach people with nascent problem-solving skills how to develop and translate those skills to a vocation that benifits them and society at large. You just can't say that about liberal arts. There are plenty of people with well-developed leadership and problem-solving skills out there who aren't PhDs, and I understand that. We need those folks to manage the people who don't have those skills. The problem is that middle third who could develop the skills with the proper coaching, but don't.

So much for not getting up on my soapbox. My bad.

*Lance out*

China and Gaza. My Favorites.

Just a couple of links from some good articles from the last couple weeks.

So you know that I can give credit where credit's due, Krugman wrote a nice article about China's shenanigans with their currency.

The New Yorker examines Israels July 2008 assault into Gaza. The article is surprisingly even-handed, given its source. I feel like they pay too much attention to casualty numbers, which are always high any time something happens in Gaza. Over a million people live in an area roughly 25 miles long by 7 miles wide. People are stacked on top of each other, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that casualties are high. My biggest sense, after having read the long piece, was one of utter despair. You can just tell that people on either side don't have much interest in ending the conflict. Hamas needs the Israeli boogeyman to maintain power, and Israel isn't going to talk to a government whose constitution vows genocide towards them. It is sad, but worth reading, because it's an example of good journalism, which is becoming harder and harder to come by.

That's all for now.

*Lance out*

Thoughts on Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The above is one of the more-quoted Bible verses out there. You see it often in the back of Gideon Bibles, and the like. Honestly, because I see it so often, I kind of blow by it, and haven't thought about it much. Well yesterday, I did. The dichotomy between what one does to earn death and eternal life struck me as very interesting.

Look at the first part of the sentence: the wages of sin is death. See, sin pays you back with death. The death here is a spiritual death, not a literal one. In other words, by sinning, you work towards death. It takes effort.

Contrast that with the second portion: The gift of God is eternal life. You don't have to do anything to earn eternal life - it's a gift! The idea is that if you did what God wanted you to do, you would have to do nothing more to earn His love. With sin, you have to put effort into separating yourself from God. Without it, you automatically earn His love.

That's my rumination for today, have a good one.

*Lance out*

Ruminations for a Tuesday

Who else is depressed that the one American automotive company that didn't receive federal money (Ford) managed to be solidly profitable for Q3 of 2009, while the two auto giants that received sweetheart bailouts likely will not? Me, for one. Though there is schadenfreude aspect to it all, it all but cements the notion in my mind that we're never getting that money back. The UAW got Chrysler and GM for next to nothing, and that's the way it's going to be. If you can't manage to be profitable with a government bailout and a program specifically designed to by that government to move your product, how are you ever going to do it in normal time? Not to mention the next 5 years, which will probably have unemployment at or near 8%, and personal spending at a 1975 level? This just sets the stage for Auto Bailout redux. Because remember, they're "too big to fail".

I've been thinking alot about the auto bailout lately, and more specifically Cash For Clunkers. It's a perfect example of Bastiat's "That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen". Written in 1850, it's no less relevant today as a treatise in the law of unintended consequences. The parable goes something like this: when a shopkeeper's window is broken, the glassmaker must make and sell a window, meaning that wealth is transferred, and the economy as a whole works. The tag line is "Without broken glass, what would become of the glazier?" It's actually led people down the road of intentionally destroying things so that new things can be purchased by those people. Enter Cash for Clunkers - all those clunkers had their motor oil drained and replaced with a silicate solution. The engine is then run until if seizes. If you go to a junkyard to find parts for your car in the next ten years, you'll see alot of cars with their engines painted green. That means those parts are completely hosed and unusable. There's an obvious parallel here to Bastiat's essay. The monetary exchange between the shopkeeper and the glazier is seen, as is the exchange between the auto buyer and seller. The problem is what you don't see. If the shopkeeper's pane of glass remains unbroken, he has two things: his money, which he can spend elsewhere, and a whole pane of glass. When the window is broken and replaced, he only has one of them: the glass. His money is gone, and can't be spent elsewhere. Somewhere, someone is losing out on a sale because of that broken window pane. That's the fallacy of Cash for Clunkers: the money people spent on cars would have been spent elsewhere, eventually. Destroying usable assets to get people to purchase new assets just deprives another entity of receiving the same money. There's no real increase in spending or productivity, in fact it's the opposite: with the government involved, the transaction becomes less efficient, because now you have to pay the government paper-pusher sitting in a nice air-conditioned office. Cash for Clunkers destroyed as many cars as it sold....which sounds suspiciously like Russia in the 1960s. The factories just ran, no matter what the demand for their product was. If a butter factory produced too much, it was just thrown away.

What blog post would be complete without a riff on healthcare? Finally, the Republican party is coming up with their own health care bill. It includes some of the things that the Dems should have inserted from the start, but couldn't because of their craven relationship with the trial lawyers union....tort reform! Actually what they're mandating is a federal system much like the ones many states have already to look at the merits of malpractice cases. I'm not sure if the sun is setting on the Dems' efforts or not - the New York Times ran a piece that was very critical regarding the individual mandate, and I doubt that Reid has the votes for his public option. The House version has come in at $1.2 trillion, which won't help things, either. I doubt strongly it gets scrapped and goes back to the drawing board, but there may still be time to affect some changes that takes some of the sting out of it for people in $60,000 and up range, who would be expected to pay up to $10,000 under the current plan just for premiums they don't use.

Finally, some drive-by linkage:

• Next up for a bailout: Reporters! In a report titled "The Reconstruction of American Journalism" authored by the president of the Washington Post, among others, the paper suggests putting a tax on things like cable and internet fees to set up a fund to beat back that pesky internet journalism thing. Which is kind of like the inventors of the 8-track writing a letter to Congress saying "We know we can't compete with this "CD" thing, but since we once enjoyed a near-monopoly, we'd like you to tax our competition to get us back there". It's just unbelievable, but totally indicative of the bubble these people live in. You know why nobody is buying newspapers? Because there's better stuff on the internet for free. Adapt or die.
• Bill McGurn burns the President. Ouch.
• Several elections happen today: NY-23, which has been super-dramatic, as well as the governorships of both New Jersey and Virginia. I think the R's pull of the Guv positions, but NY-23 is too weird, and close, to call. Any race with a third-party candidate on the ticket is a toss-up, in my opinion.I

I am out like fanny packs. Peace.

*Lance out*

Movie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Maybe it's my adolescent love of comic books. Maybe it's the joy I experience seeing a larger-than-life, well-done action sequence in a blockbuster movie. Maybe it's my severe man-crush for Hugh Jackman. Pick one....any way you slice it (bad pun alert!) I thought X-men Origins: Wolverine kicked some serious tail, even though colons don't belong in movie titles.

Comic book purists cringed when the movie came out because it played fast and loose with the "official" backstory. The biggest deviation (but also the only one that allows there to be a movie, in my opinion) is that Sabretooth and Wolverine aren't brothers in the comic. If you're an über-geek, like me, and want to see a more specific rundown of where things differ, go here.

My biggest dissapointment was how little the character Deadpool had to do with the story, not to mention the fact that they altered his powers and backstroy too much to make him a recognizable character. Deadpool has always been a fan favorite, because honestly, what's not to like about a wisecracking cancer-ridden mercenary with super-regenerative powers? I hear there's a Deadpool movie in the works...hopefully it doesn't go the Daredevil route and suck. Having Ryan Reynolds play 'Pool would be a good start - he's the closest approximation to the sense of humor and delivery Deadpool has in the comics.

In a sense this is your "typical" comic book movie, and the strength of the cast makes it an enjoyable ride the whole way through (I didn't mention Liev Schriber yet, but should have. He gives a very strong performance). It would have been worth seeing in the theater, I think.

*Lance out*

Going Back in Time

I had (past tense) lots and lots of fun stuff to blog about last week (which thanks to the miracle of Blogger time warp, reads like the coming week). But life got in the way. Hopefully it's not all too dated to write about next week (which is really this week). Sufficiently confused? Oh well. Can't be any worse than the feeling you get reading what I write in the present....or the past ....whatever. Just get the Flux Capacitor to 1.21 Gigawatts.

*Lance out*

Our Transparent EPA

I'm late to the party on this one, but thought I would post it anyway. Long story short, a policy wonk at the EPA wrote a paper basically refuting many of the conventionally-held beliefs about the theory of carbon-dioxide induced climate change. Said wonk's paper was buried by his wonkish superiors, who said the train has left the station, and no dissent on the topic will be tolerated. After several Freedom of Information requests, the EPA relented and released the paper, allowing the wonk to post his paper on his personal website.

Said wonk's name is Alan Carlin. He's an MIT-trained economist with an undergrad in Physics who has worked at the EPA for 30+ years. He's a scientist by degree....unlike Al Gore, Barack Obama, or half the senior administrators at the EPA. He's not presenting original work, but more an amalgam of work from disparate corners of climate science that represents, in my estimation, one of the best refutations of the current GW theory out there. Even if you're a diehard anti-capitalist greenie, it's work reading Carlin's paper. My favorite table is the one below: high R-squared means "good". You'll see that CO2 levels aren't so much.

Some other things that come out in Carlin's commentary that should make anybody concerned with the science of global warming (and not just the policy) pause include:

• There are two major ways of measuring surface temperature: land-based boxes and satellites. Since 1978, the satellite measurements have flatlined while the land-based boxes (mostly in urban areas surrounded by things like concrete and brick that hold and retain heat really well) have continued to increase. The two satellite data sets largely agree. The land-based box methods, all of them, do not.
• The best models put forth by the IPCC doesn't even come close to predicting the temperature flatline we've been in for the last 10 years.
• The mean global temperature follows the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (current trends in ocean temperature) much better than the world's concentration of CO2.
• The mean global temperature follows total solar irradience much better than the world's concentration of CO2.

On the last two bullets above, you have to be careful not to ascribe undue merit to a correlation. Consumption of Coca-Cola and life expectancy have both increased by by leaps and bounds since 1950, but that doesn't mean that Coke makes you live longer.

Again, my standard take on AGW is that maybe it's the CO2. But I see many, many other avenues that deserve study more than the CO2 angle just going by the data currently available. The joke I always tell is "You know why Greenland is called "Greenland", even though it's covered in ice? Because it used to be green! They grew grapes there 500 years ago!" That's appeal, and not science, and I know it. But that's still better than anything Al Gore is peddling.

*Lance out*

Credit Where Credit's Due

I really dislike Maureen "I report my opinion, not the facts" Dowd, but every once in a while she, like the paper who employs her, writes something pretty good about international affairs. It's about the Czech Republic and Europes impending self-flagellation via ratification of the Lisbon treaty.

*Lance out*