The Only Republican in San Francisco

Two choices on Cindy Sheehan

Here’s the thing -- I don’t want to belabor the ongoing Springer-eqsue tragedy that is Cindy Sheehan. Given her behavior at the Capitol tonight, allow me to offer a framework as to how she might be treated.

Choice one, we take her seriously. We consider her a mature adult who is responsible for her behavior. In that case, we judge her on what she does and says, as we would any other person.

Choice two, we see her primarily as a grieving mother whose suffering overwhelms her judgment. If that is her identity, she should not be treated as an adult in control of her faculties and cannot be taken seriously.

I prefer the former. She should be treated with utmost gentleness and respect in regards to her loss. But we must also wonder about the judgment of a person who does photo ops on her son’s grave, and insults her sympathetic host at the Capitol. To give her a pass is to treat her as something less than an adult.

If one believes that the parent of a dead soldier has a singular moral perspective, certainly one must take the time to seek out the opinions of many such parents. Next time you a presented with a person who appreciates Ms Sheehan’s tactics, politely ask what other such parents have said.

Update: Looks it was all a mistake and someone on the other side of the aisle got the same treatment. So many good pixels wasted...

Mitt and the paradox of conservatism

Here’s an interview with Mitt Romney by Hugh Hewitt from the other day. He’s still my early pick for 2008. Mitt is smart, has an absurdly good grasp of the numbers, and appears to actually want to run government.

And that reveals the paradox of conservatism: we don’t like “good” government. We think it is underperforming at best and soul-draining at worst.

So, when you get true-believing conservatives in power, perhaps they find it hard to muster the enthusiasm to run the place. One of two things happens: they acquiesce to the temptations of power or they become disillusioned.

What makes Mitt different than other conservatives is that he actually wants to run government, and make decisions that lead to good government, not just less government.

That’s a conundrum for folks like me. Claims of “better government” are always pitches for “more government,” in my observation.

But in Romney’s hands it may be a winner politically. Imagine Romney running as both a serious conservative and a serious governor (lowercase g).

Romney has a hell of a track record, running the incredibly large and political Salt Lake City Olympics, founding Bain Capital, and as you’ll note in his interview, taking a serious view about government’s role in health care.

He understands the primacy of private sector, but also understands that government is not going to shrivel and disappear, as much as we may wish it.

That sounds a bit liberal. But recall that Bill Clinton reformed welfare and Nixon opened China. Is there a third way for conservatives?

The new racism

My friend Mat S. (also Drudge and Memeorandum) pointed me to new Washington Post article on a correlation between measured biases and geographical voting patterns.

Although they are coy at first, the organizers of the study pretty quickly make clear that they believe their findings support the idea that conservatives are racist. They don’t say how racist, or how much more racist than liberals.

I will grant the correlation and go one step further. I feel that calling a group of people racist is the new racism. Many people like the stereotype that conservatives are racist, and so are willing to believe it, for the same reasons we like our other stereotypes. Is that “meta” enough for you?

(Note also that the study is based on geography, not party identification. So if I participated in the study, and was not racist, I would count as a liberal due to my zip code.)

The more obvious point is, if we are willing to characterize a group based on a statistical correlation, does that affect how we judge individuals? Imagine a self-identified group (gay, black, Jewish) and imagine the stats you might discover. Would you then apply them to the whole group? A right-thinking person would know better.

I propose a study to correlate party affiliation with a predisposition toward accusing others of racism. What do you think we would find?

Update: thanks to Michelle Malkin and Ed Driscoll. Welcome readers!

Conspiracy theory as narrative at the Times

Check out this piece over at the NY Times, entitled “Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him”. It's a great example of agenda journalism.

As of this writing it’s at the top of the NYTimes.com home page. Now, after reading the article, can you cite the name of the person who attempted to silence Dr. Hansen, and the objective evidence? No, you probably can’t, because it’s not in the article. Here’s an excerpt:

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.
...
He said he was particularly incensed that the directives affecting his statements had come through informal telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

Mmm, seems that the evidence is comprised of no significant trail of documents. Front page stuff indeed! I presume this set of shackles is especially chafing:

Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

Now, keep in mind, the above is presumably the most damning piece of evidence that they could find. That, and “handwritten notes” recalling a phone conversation with a “public affairs officer”, a Mr. Deutsch.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" ...

Note than none of Mr. Deutsch’s purported quotes mentions Dr. Hansen in any way. Can evidence be both circumstantial and hearsay at the same time? Yes!

Was Mr. Deutsch asked for a quote by the reporter? I don’t see any mention, I would be curious to know.

Now, I am sure that Dr. Hansen is a scientist who sincerely believes what he says, and that he is credible. I also don’t doubt that he “fell out of favor” with the White House by announcing that he would vote for Kerry. Of course, no evidence is provided for that either, but let’s grant it.

It is entirely possible that there are people who would like him to speak less. It’s just that the article fails to find them.

What we have here is a conspiracy narrative, evidence-free, particularly ironic for an article on science.

My own conspiracy theory? Leslie McCarthy, another “public affairs officer” who has the money quotes in the article, took it upon herself to make this story happen. I can’t prove that, either.

What is a job?

You may have read this week that Ford will be laying off upwards of 25,000 people over the next several years, and GM made a similar announcement last November. This is a good time to take stock as to what a job is and why these actions should not be seen as a “loss” of jobs.

Counterintuitive, no? Plainly contradicted by the facts, yes?

The determinant of the number of people working in the auto industry is the size and condition of the industry itself, and not of any particular company.

The definition of a job is “work to be done”. The larger and healthier the industry, the more work there is to be done, and thus, more workers employed to do it.

The definition of a job is not, “a position at Ford/GM/[insert company name]”.

The truth is, these 25,000 jobs left Ford some time ago. Many consumers decided that they would rather buy cars from Toyota. Toyota grows, and hires Americans. Consequently, there is more work to be done at Toyota and less to be done at Ford.

Of course, the job loss at Ford will be difficult for many people, no doubt, and this becomes the focus of the story. For the country, this is a change, not a loss.

Evidence? The US has created nearly 5 million jobs and $12 trillion in wealth in the last five years, which would have been impossible without of the flexibility of our job market.

We must realize that the freedom to hire and the freedom to fire are the same thing. In a growing economy, every loss at Ford is more than equaled by a gain somewhere else. It’s not a happy story for everybody, but the winners outnumber the losers by around 5,000,000.

Hollywood, privilege and the fever swamp

Bear with me as I try to weave together three disparate threads into something cohesive.

Over the last few days, I’ve observed two similar phenomena. The first was Joel Stein’s column in the LA Times where he declared that the does not “support the troops.” It was a silly little piece written by a person with no expertise on the subject, but it caused quite a stir, exactly as intended.

The second phenomenon that I observed was a “denial-of-service” attack that was fomented against Kate O’Beirne’s book, and its listing on Amazon. A blog called firedoglake, largely written by a someone named Jane Hamsher, asked its readers to post as many negative reviews as they could, crowding out the legitimate reviews. They then aimed their love of free speech toward the Washington Post.

What do Joel and Jane have in common? Well, today, each of them was given an opportunity to make their points in a real live conversational forum. And in both cases, their heads were handed to them by more intelligent, informed counterparts.

Joel’s interview with Hugh Hewitt is here, and Jane’s forum with Glenn Reynolds and others is here. Read ‘em both.

Joel literally doesn’t have anything to say. And that’s fine, as Time’s Hollywood reporter, no serious person took him seriously.

In Jane’s case, she had one thing to say, really just an accusation, and one which was put aside quickly. She repeated it a few times, though on no occasion was it related to the question at hand. It was an embarrassing disaster.

Contrast this with Jane’s strident persona at firedoglake -- one of several blogs that Hugh Hewitt would describe as a fever swamp. The other that I’ve taken the time to read, and which is the prototype for the others, is DailyKos. (Fairness: LittleGreenFootballs is the right-of-center equivalent.)

What does Hugh mean by his term? Essentially, it is a blog which appeals to angry people who want to be around more angry people. I’ll spare you the many beyond-the-pale examples, others have covered that ground.

My main point about the fever swamp blogs: they exist for the self-interest of the people that run them.

Kos has parlayed his blog into a position of influence, and I am sure, decent income. Whether he means what he says is a distant second as to whether it increases his stature -- and he is honest about this.

Jane’s motives seem similar. I can’t imagine that anyone spends that much time stewing in their own juices. Rather, it’s an act that gathers attention from like-minded people. Perhaps a career can be built on it. Perhaps she can be the Courtney Love of the blogosphere.

Now, what’s the Hollywood part? Joel and Jane are privileged folks with backgrounds serving big media. Because they have some expertise in the means of distribution, they believe that we should find them interesting.

Read them or don’t, but do understand you are being played. If you must respond, model your approach after Hugh and Glenn -- thoughtful, informed, graceful to a fault and thoroughly unforgiving of idiocy.

Update: I promised myself not to link over to firedoglake, but this is hilarious. Jane apparently had no fewer than five people helping her in real time in the above chat, and still she got schooled. By contrast, Glenn appeared to be on his own and was blogging Wonkette simultaneously.

Liberal fantasyland from 30,000 feet

Allow me to engage in a trivial aside here, but one which is amusing. The Only Girlfriend and I were on JetBlue last night on our way back from a lovely trip to NY. As I scanned through the most excellent on-board DirectTV, I watched a few minutes of Fox News.

They mentioned the cancellation of West Wing, describing it, snarkily, as a “liberal fantasyland.” I was a bit surprised by this, thinking, “My my, such schadenfreude Fox?”

(Actually, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to use that word.)

I kept flipping channels and lo and behold, what is on NBC but the West Wing. I haven't seen it in years, and after hearing such a gloat, I needed to see if Ms. Fox was being unfair.

Wow. Wow! It really was such a played-out fantasy.

A nuclear plant in San Diego overheats, confirming our worst fears about nuclear power. Upon hearing of the pending disaster, President Bartlet declares hands-on control of the situation. Not a nuclear scientist, not a disaster expert, but the president himself.

His aides start feeding him the data. Pounds per square inch of pressure on the building. Acceptable rems of radiation. The temperature in the core.

He makes the decisions...how many minutes the engineers can stay in the building...how many PSI are acceptable before releasing radioactive gas...he grasps it all and makes the call.

But do we really want a political professional micromanaging such a scenario? In the liberal worldview, we do. It’s sexy and we like to think that force of personality can save us.

In reality, don’t we want the best person on the job? It’s, um, unlikely that the president will be the most experienced nuclear plant manager in the country. To micromanage is not sexy, it’s authoritarian. But on the West Wing, it’s charismatic.

Back on the campaign trail, Jimmy Smits’ Democratic candidate says, over and over, these things aren’t safe and are near communities throughout the country. He also adds, “I don't want to sound alarmist.” Heavens, no.

To be fair, the writers did allow Alan Alda’s Republican candidate to put in his counter-arguments. Among them, that tens of thousands of people die every year due to our use of coal and oil. Somewhere between few and none die from nuclear. Europe’s greenhouse emissions are low because of their dependence on nuclear energy. Wind and solar can’t possibly keep up with demand.

But the alarmists win out. It turns out to be a political disaster for Alan Alda. At the end of the show, we see both campaigns removing the red states from the map.

What have we learned? Science is scary and must be entrusted to politicians. Nuclear energy is bad, regardless of pros and cons. And, disasters make good politics for Democrats.

On the plus side, the portrayal of political calculus is great and heck, I love Stephen Root! Perhaps the message has outlived its day.

Update: Thanks to Eric for calling my attention to the Nuclear Energy Institute blog, offering a very good fisking here. A couple of excerpts:

... the EPA doesn’t set radiation dose limits, and the president would never have the authorization to make operational decisions.
...
I did like that Alan Alda’s character pointed out the contribution nuclear makes in combating climate change, but that still doesn’t excuse NBC for perpetuating nuclear myths that make a fair pubic debate impossible.

Ken Blackwell sounds like the future

A very extensive and interesting profile of Ken Blackwell in Ohio. He sounds like a great combination of qualities, resonating with both the economic part of the base (my people) and the religious part of the base (not necessarily my people).

2006 will certainly be an interesting year electorally for the Republicans. Will they be punished by swing voters and the taint of scandal? Do they fix this by moving right and solidifying the base (with people like Blackwell, Shadegg and Romney), or by moving left with a spririt of appeasement (à la Schwarzenegger and Chaffee)?

I would like to believe that the lessons of the current day are that character and ideas matter much more than party affiliation. Blackwell will run on the former and despite the latter, and he may well have a chance.

The article also talks about a new “graduating class” of black leaders who espouse conservative fiscal and social values and are gaining prominence. Bush picked up many votes from the African-American community in 2004, as folks took a good look at their values and the parties that represent them. Can the Democrats depend on the African-American vote in the future?

Niall Ferguson on the Great War of 2007

In another sobering article, Niall Ferguson describes the pre-history of the war that begins in 2007.

He describes the very plausible scenario that we may be building right now. As with my previous post on Steyn, I cannot recite Ferguson’s ideas better than he, so I suggest taking the time to read the above link.

I will pipe in with a further thought experiment. In order to judge the success of Iraq, one must not simply compare its current state to its state before the war -- although the comparison is more favorable than most would guess. Instead, one must imagine the current day, had we not removed Saddam.

In all likelihood, the UN inspectors would have faded from the scene. The US and Britain would still be patrolling the north and south of the country. UN oil-for-food money would still be enriching Saddam’s regime and flowing to the governments of Europe and beyond.

Saddam, hyper-intelligent, ruthless and emboldened by the West’s toothless diplomacy, sees that his Shiite neighbor has developed nuclear weapons. (Recall Saddam’s brutal history with Iran and the Shiites in his own country.)

Would Saddam be sitting idly by? No, instead, the West (read: the US) would now be confronted with two major oil-enriched Middle Eastern powers pursuing nuclear weapons. And imagine how Saudi and Egypt would be looking at this...

Yes, the current scene in Iraq might be described as simmering chaos. But imagine how it might have looked without pre-emption. Will history remember Bush as a visionary? Did he understand all of these risks, and choose the least-bad option? What is the least-bad option with Iran?

The risks of pure opposition

As some of us have watched and followed the Alito hearings, we may be seeing in full bloom the risks of being “pure” opposition. By pure opposition, I mean the stance that the Democratic party has taken since, essentially, the 2000 election.

Today we saw a dramatic departure from what was otherwise a boring exercise in Senatorial self-aggrandizement. This moment, when nominee Alito’s wife began crying as a result of Kennedy’s innuendos of racism, sexism and big-guy-over-little-guy-ism, will prove to be a further unraveling of the Dems.

The racism accusation comes from the fact that Alito apparently had a membership to a now-defunct organization, which had a publication, in which an article was authored, by someone Alito has never met, which was supposedly racist. Oh, 20 years ago. Follow that? Yes, Alito must be a racist.

This grasping of straws shows how desperate the Dems on the panel are to impress the big donors in their base. Ironically, by accusing Alito of racism, they have revealed how deeply bigoted their base is. Remember, the essence of bigotry is to make character evaluations based on a person’s identification with a group. What has been the Dems’ strategy over the last few days?

Alito comes off as vastly more thoughtful and much less likely to engage in group-think than the current Democratic leadership. They have nothing on him, and have been outclassed.

Echoing a years-long lack of ideas, the Dems put themselves in a position to stand for nothing but opposition. Its hollowness was made obvious today.

Update: As the Dems embarrass themselves, the Alito hearings are quickly and dutifully demoted on both CNN.com and MSNBC.com. Meanwhile, the blogosphere is on fire. How out of touch can the MSM be?