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In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect, along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, "house negroes."
Of course, in the typically irony impaired way the left always stumbles into these things, Serwer apparently believes that al Qaeda came up with "house negroes" all by themselves. Spontaneous generation of "identity politics", AQ style?
Au contraire mon ami, the slur (and the method) is a well established one in lefty circles.
If you think Tom Daschle has been hanging out in South Dakota since his Senatorial defeat, think again. He's been in Washington DC working for the firm Alston & Bird. The WaPo says he's never been a lobbyist but admits that Alston & Bird have a lobbying arm. Of course it tends to stretch credulity that a powerful and well-connected former Senate leader would be employed by such a firm, with such an "arm" and never be called to aid in any Captiol Hill lobbying effort.
But apparently that's the fiction that's going to be foisted upon us and the WaPo is content to run up the first trial balloon. Memo to WaPo - no sale.
His wife is a registered lobbyist and will accordingly resign from her firm to prevent any "conflict of interest". How nice.
The sources, who are in a position to know, said that Daschle negotiated that he will also serve as the White House health "czar" - or point person - so that he will report directly to the incoming president.
The significance is that this guarantees that by wearing two hats, Daschle - and not White House staffers - will be writing the health care plan that Obama submits to Congress next year.
This is huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform. You don't tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That's not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.
Klein gets it precisely right. This is a pick in which the cabinet position is simply an artifice to allow Daschle the authority and the positioning to ramrod government health care through Congress. And I agree with Klein that the Obama administration is going to waste little time in putting the wheels in motion to take over as much of that as they can manage.
Daschle wrote a book entitled "Critical: What We Can Do about the Health-Care Crisis". In it he recommends the establishment of a government entity modeled after the Federal Reserve Board to oversee health care in the US. No possibility of a problem with a centrally controlled health care system is there? At the time it was published, then Sen. Obama wrote this about the book:
"The American health-care system is in crisis, and workable solutions have been blocked for years by deeply entrenched ideological divisions" ... "Sen. Daschle brings fresh thinking to this problem, and his Federal Reserve for Health concept holds great promise for bridging this intellectual chasm and, at long last, giving this nation the health care it deserves."
So, banks, financial institutions, possibly the auto industry and health care too?
Think of the DMV at the emergency room and prepare yourself to embrace the suck.
And of course, he's another Clinton re-tread who was acting AG and approved including the Marc Rich pardon at that time.
As to the charges of cronyism:
A partner at the D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling, Holder served as co-chief (along with Caroline Kennedy) of Obama's vice-presidential selection process. He also actively campaigned for Obama throughout the year and grew personally close to the president-elect.
There's certainly no question he's a Washington insider:
After serving in the public integrity section of the Justice Department's Criminal Division and later a District of Columbia Superior Court judge, Holder was named by President Clinton as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. He became deputy attorney general in 1997 under Janet Reno and was viewed as a centrist on most law enforcement issues, though he has sharply criticized the secrecy and the expansive views of executive power advanced by the Bush Justice Department.
The amusing sport of watching lefties say, this is not the Barack Obama I knew.
They are such drama queens.
And spoiled brats as well.
Obama gets practical, they go ballistic.
Firedoglake: "I think I am having an aneurysm. Why in the name of all that is sensible would Barack Obama want a Clinton re-tread as AG? Not just any Clinton re-tread, nope, the brain trust behind the Marc Rich pardon. Do you know how many brilliant, talented lawyers with great judgment he has advising his campaign?"
Jules Crittenden gets to the crux of the pick (and many of the picks so far):
Remember how Obama didn't pick Hillary for veep, and everyone said he was afraid she'd undercut him, he'd have to deal with Bill, all that? This is going to be fun over the next four years, when the going gets ugly and Obama is in the middle of a pack of Clintonistas, trying to figure out who's working for who.
And who is loyal to whom.
The claim of an "outsider" riding in to clean up the mess made by all the "insiders" is also getting very hard swallow at this point.
Homicides have soared from fewer than 6,000 in Chávez's first year in office to 13,156 last year, according to official government statistics collected and released by private research organizations. That amounts to a homicide rate of 48 killings per 100,000 people, among the highest in the world and more than in neighboring Colombia, which suffers from a slow-burning internal conflict.
Here in the capital, the rate is even higher — 130 homicides per 100,000 people, translating last year to a total of 2,710 killings.
Compare the 48 per 100,000 to the US murder rate which we're told is way to high and makes us one of the more violent western countries. Our rate is 5.6 per 100,000.
Critics see this as an issue which may help bring down Chávez in the next election. The reason isn't just the murder rate. That's a result. The reason, say critics, are the Chávez government's actions and policies:
Critics of Chávez , among them prominent opposition politicians, say his government has contributed to the problem with rhetoric that accentuates class warfare. It has also armed citizen militias and radical political groups.
"Here, violence is not controlled. It is either fomented on purpose or is allowed to take place," said Mónica Fernández, a former judge who is director of Penal Forum, which analyzes legal issues.
Of course we've recently experienced what a crisis of any type can do to sway the vote in a particular direction. When the public's to fear was national security, John McCain was doing well. As soon as we had the financial meltdown and the economy took the top spot, McCain dropped like a rock and Obama took the lead.
With a murder rate of 48 per 100,000 (and the level of crime that goes with it), guess what the major concern of the Venezuelan public is:
Fifty-six percent of those recently polled by Datanalisis, a Caracas polling firm, said crime was their top concern, ahead of inflation and economic problems. And a poll by a well-known sociologist who studies crime, Roberto Briceńo-León, showed that 64 percent feared being attacked in the streets.
Chávez and the government essentially ignore the problem and dispute the numbers:
For years, the government has ignored the problem, even as violent crime became a staple of news reports. Some Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the state's inability to protect them. Chávez, although he speaks publicly almost every day, rarely mentions the crime rate. With criticism of government inaction mounting earlier this year, Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, then interior and justice minister, announced in a news conference that homicides had plummeted 27 percent in the first half of the year. "You have to be very careful with the figures," he explained. "It all depends on who handles the numbers and what are the variables that are taken into account."
Of course for 3 years, the government has kept the numbers secret. Why publicize bad news and hand the opposition a propaganda coup? However crime research organizations and criminologists have been able to track the information through law enforcement agencies.
The obvious point is Chávez has created this monster by arming citizen militias and radical political groups. It is one of his methods of consolidating power and stifling dissent. It also appears that these groups may be spiraling out of control. Chávez is either going to have to do what is necessary to bring them back under control and stop the violence or he's going to continue to ignore the problem and pretend it doesn't exist (hey, I forgot, there's a 3rd option - blame it on the US). Either way, his power and support suffer in the process.
By the end of September, Paulson was asking Congress for $700 billion in funds he claimed would be used to buy mortgage relates assets from U.S. financial institutions. Less than two weeks after Congress gave Paulson his money, the Treasury secretary switched course and used the funds to buy equity shares in banks. Many of the banks did not need or even want Paulson's money, but Paulson forced them to take it, hoping to set the stage for a massive consolidation of the banking sector.
Then just last week, Paulson shifted gears again. Now he is "exploring strategies" to purchase stock in non-bank financial firms, purchase consumer credit securities, and subsidize mortgage foreclosure mitigation efforts. There are specific problems with each of these policy proposals, but Paulson's announcement last week crystallized a much larger problem: Instead of being a source of market stability, Paulson has become perhaps the single most disruptive force in the global economy.
As George Mason Economist Russell Roberts explains, markets hate uncertainty:
When no one knows how the rules of the game are going to change - and they seem to change from week to week - who wants to take a risk? Who wants to borrow money? Who wants to invest? Business and consumers are hunkering down, waiting for the storm of change to pass.
The problem isn't liquidity. It's uncertainty. Paulson doesn't realize that his erratic attempts at creating liquidity are creating the uncertainty that makes liquidity meaningless. .
The great economist F.A. Hayek wrote that "the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
With each improvisation, Secretary Paulson is proving how little he knows about what he imagines he can design.
You'd almost like to write off Paulson's actions as 'bait and switch'. That would imply he had a plan he didn't think he could sell and is now implementing his real plan. Unfortunately, I, and I'm sure most of the rest of the financial world, have now come to the conclusion that he hasn't a clue and is simply reacting (and shooting from the hip) to things as they develop. Hardly actions which create the confidence necessary to bring certainty back into the markets.
Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history, narrowly lost his re-election bid Tuesday, marking the downfall of a Washington political power and Alaska icon who couldn't survive a conviction on federal corruption charges. His defeat by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich moves Senate Democrats within two seats of a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority.
Democrats now have 58 seats (and Joe Lieberman) in the Senate.
As an aside, taking the filibuster number from 60 to a another lower number is a rule change and only requires a majority (51) vote to pass. Whether the Democrats will take advantage of that to change the rules to ensure a filibuster-proof Senate by lowering that to, say 55, or whether they'll figure they're close enough to get what they want without doing so and preserve it for when they are again in the minority (and they will be) remains to be seen. I'd guess they'll preserve it for now and see how it goes for a while before contemplating any change.
A woman has become the first patient in the world to receive an organ created in a laboratory, in a pioneering operation that could change transplant surgery, doctors said yesterday.
Claudia Castillo's body part was grown using her own stem cells harvested from bone marrow.
Professor Anthony Hollander, part of the team behind the breakthrough, described it as an example of "stem cell science becoming stem cell medicine".
As an aside, obviously the stem cells used were adult stem cells. That seems to be the area in stem cell research where all the progress is being made.
Advantage?
Using Ms Castillo's stem cells to create a new airway for her means there are none of the tissue-rejection problems that are a major issue for transplant surgery and which usually mean recipients have to take powerful drugs for the rest of their lives.
Researchers from the UK, Italy and Spain worked together in the extraordinarily complex procedure to grow tissue from the 30-year-old mother of two to fashion a new bronchus - a branch of the windpipe - and carry out the transplant operation.
While this is certainly extraordinary and complex, it still isn't as complex as trying to grow a whole organ, such as a pancreas or the like. Still, it's a marvelous step forward.
The "how was it done" part of it:
A section of windpipe was taken from a female donor who had died and the trachea was stripped of its cells, leaving only connective tissue. Stem cells from Ms Castillo's bone marrow were then grown in the laboratory. Next, the donor trachea had to be "seeded" with two different kinds of cells - those made in the laboratory and those derived from tissue taken from Ms Castillo's nose and healthy airways.
The trachea graft was placed into a rotating "bioreactor" and the machine allowed the cells to migrate to the correct locations, where they began to grow naturally.
Finally the trachea, now covered in cartilage and lined with cells all bearing the patient's own genetic hallmark, was cut to shape and slotted into place. Without the pioneering operation, the lung would have had to be removed.
One of the members of the team thinks that in 20 years time this will be a very common operation. Pretty cool stuff.
This is the systemic problem with government today (and one that seems to end up effecting all governments eventually):
Last year at this time, many governors and state legislators were imploring Congress to let them spend more money by expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Since the states share the cost of the program with Washington, the expansion would have allowed them to cover families with incomes up to 300% of the poverty level (more in some cases). It also would have meant hundreds of millions in additional state spending, and an estimated $24 billion in additional federal spending. President Bush vetoed the bill.
Today, governors and state legislators are singing a different tune. Unable to pay their bills as tax revenues shrink, they're imploring Washington to bail them out. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had been grappling with a $15 billion budget deficit, wrote to Congress on Oct. 21 applauding plans for $14 billion in aid for states in the latest proposed federal economic stimulus plan. New York Gov. David Paterson has twice traveled to Washington, most recently on Oct. 29, to ask for federal aid. The Empire State's budget deficit is now estimated at $12 billion over the next two years.
You remember the battle over SCHIP don't you? Where state governments and Democrats tried to sell an expansion of the program as something 'for the [poor] children', even though the expansion included "children" up age 24 in some states and households making up to $80,000 in others.
If states are hurting now, just imagine the deficit increased by 24 billion had SCHIP been passed.
The systemic problem? The focus of politicians is short-term (what can we do now that will impress voters and help me stay in power?) vs. long-term (what should we do which is in the best for the country, state, city on down the road?). And the election system has evolved to favor those who look short-term and reward them with continued power. Stand up and deliver, if you will.
That's especially exacerbated in the House, where members stand for election every two years. So their focus is really in the short term as, in modern times at least, they pretty well start running for reelection the day after the win their current election.
And that's only part of the problem, in reality. The rest of the problem is systemic as well - entrenched career bureaucrats. Their two priorities are protecting their fiefdom and increasing its power.
As long as the politician's priority is the next election and bureaucrats are left to actually run government, all the hopeychangitude in the world won't make any difference. There are to many vested interests involved in keeping it just like it is for any real reform to be accomplished.
Oh, and one other minor problem - as long as those who are charged with reforming it also run it, nothing will change.
So look for a lot of cosmetics in the next few years - or lipstick on a pig if you prefer - but no real change. And that's especially true if the Fed insists on bailing out states, cities and businesses and refusing to let them learn the hard lessons of failure and mismangement.
The world is on track to meet its Kyoto protocol target, according to very preliminary data released for the first time today, but not solely through a global willingness to regulate greenhouse gases.
The efforts of some countries to rein back emissions have been bolstered by an economic downturn in others, says the UN.
Time to celebrate, no? But (there's always a "but"):
This means the encouraging news could be reversed if governments do not put policies in place to slow and eventually reverse the trend.
Yes indeed, let's clamp down those economy busting mandates so we can make the downturn permanent. Limiting a trace gas for which man-made activity is but a minor contributor is worth the hardship such mandates would impose, isn't it?
The comments from Major General Qian Lihua, director of the ministry's Foreign Affairs Office, come amid heated speculation within China and abroad that the increasingly potent naval arm of the People's Liberation Army has decided to develop and deploy its first aircraft carrier. Traditionally, a carrier would accompany and protect a battle group of smaller ships.
Actually it's a mutual protection scheme, with the "group of smaller ships" dedicated to protecting the carrier.
Maj Gen Qian declined to comment directly on whether China had decided to build a carrier, but in the defence ministry's most forthright statement yet on the issue he made clear that China had every right to do so.
"The navy of any great power?.?.?.?has the dream to have one or more aircraft carriers," he said in the interview, which aides said was the first arranged by the defence ministry on its own premises. "The question is not whether you have an aircraft carrier, but what you do with your aircraft carrier."
One thing which should be understood about aircraft carriers upfront - they're not defensive weapons. They are power projection weapons. So "what you do" is going be predicated on the question of where a country needs to project military power where it is incapable of doing so now.
"Navies of great powers with more than 10 aircraft carrier battle groups with strategic military objectives have a different purpose from countries with only one or two carriers used for offshore defence," he said. "Even if one day we have an aircraft carrier, unlike another country, we will not use it to pursue global deployment or global reach."
Obviously the argument can be made that ensuring vital sea lanes for the transport of oil to China must be kept open and that's a valid mission for a carrier battle group.
But so would supporting a military takeover of Taiwan - something, to this point, the Chinese aren't militarily structured to accomplish.
An effective Chinese carrier could have serious implications for any conflict involving Taiwan by strengthening the mainland's ability to counter the island's air force and control its sea-lanes.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and threatens military action against the island if it tries to further formalise its current de facto independence. Taiwanese separatism was the "biggest threat" China currently faced, Maj Gen Qian said.
Of course building a carrier and then effectively using one, are two different things. Developing a naval aviation arm would also take time. That said, I'm not sure if I understand this:
Admiral Timothy Keating, head of US Pacific Command, said in Beijing last year that Chinese development of a carrier should not be the cause of any unnecessary tension, and that the US would even be willing to lend a helping hand.
To that I say, nonsense. We've seen enough in terms of "free" technology transfers to the Chinese over the years. Let them do a bit of trail and error development themselves. "Lending a helping hand" would appear to work against our best interests in the region by helping to destabilize the military situation there.
Also, he has a great Mea Culpa on why he missed this, and a discussion that fits right into my theme about how many missed this meltdown, and advice for those of us who did and might think too much of ourselves:
I should mention first that the few people who did see it coming were not necessarily any wiser than anyone else. Some of them had predicted nine of the last five recessions. A stopped clock is right twice a day. Even those who claim to have foreseen this mess couldn't make the case well enough to alarm very many other people. And if you want to know if they were really wise or just selling a different story because the market was less crowded on the pessimistic side, you'd have to look at their bank accounts. Did they put their money where their mouth was?
Wall Street and economics are littered with the figurative corpses of those who got a big call right and got lots of attention and then became a joke as their prescience proved to be just luck.
Megan McCardle gives a touching and heartfelt explanation of why opportunity cost has to be considered in regards to GM in "Save the Rustbelt."
Speaking of Megan, she has inspired a true decining institution to ask for a bailout:
But Megan McArdle at The Atlantic came up with a compelling argument:
"The news business is special. Without us, you wouldn't know anything. Besides, it provides millions of low-paying, insecure jobs to overeducated yuppies who are going to move back home, into your basement, if you don't do something, quick.
"And the news business is the other industry that can, all by itself, send the real economy into a tailspin. You think you're worried about a depression now? We could make you really depressed. I'm not threatening, or anything; I'm just saying, it's a nice country you've got here. It would be a real shame if someone convinced consumers to stop buying Blu-Ray players and shift their savings into canned guns and ammunition."
Meanwhile Hormel is betting that the present economic situation is a bullish sign for Spam! Fascinating stuff really, as Spam has a number of devotee's. My wife spent time in Hawaii this summer studying Pearl Harbor, and came back and marveled at the many uses Spam is put to there, including in faux Sushi.
For those who commented on my two previousposts at QandO, thanks. I think the comments had more information than my posts, and gave me a good chance to flesh out a number of ideas.
Worried about what is in store for banks in Europe? You should be, and past history says it could be pretty ugly.
How Out of Touch Are Politicians When It Comes to Energy Policy?
Posted by: McQ
If you look at some of the statewide propositions, you'd have to wonder.
Take California, a state most people think of as being a bit to the extreme side of green, whether the reputation is earned or not. Given the following, maybe "not" is the more correct choice:
In California, President-elect Obama defeated Senator John McCain by a comfortable margin of 61 percent to 37 percent. But that did not help the "green" ballot propositions to pass.
California's Proposition 7 would have required power companies to produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010, 40 percent by 2020, and 50 percent by 2025. Despite the Golden State's impeccable "green" credentials, its citizens nonetheless decided that an economic downturn is no time to increase regulations on power companies and drive up energy prices for consumers. Proposition 7 was handily defeated, garnering a mere 35 percent of the vote.
California's Proposition 10 , the California Alternative Fuels Initiative, was supported by businessman T. Boone Pickens and benefitted from the favorable media attention Mr. Pickens has garnered. Prop. 10 would have used taxpayer money to fund research in renewable technologies such as solar, and given grants to cities and colleges for renewable energy projects. The Proposition also would have used tax incentives to favor consumer purchases of high fuel economy or alternative fuel vehicles, including natural gas vehicles. Prop. 10 failed with 40 percent of the vote.
San Francisco's Proposition H would have authorized a municipal take-over of the electrical business in the city. Prop. H also required that 51 percent of the city's electricity be produced from renewable sources by 2017, 75 percent by 2030, and 100 percent (or all that is "technologically feasible") by 2040. Opponents ran a successful campaign to defeat the measure, focusing their efforts on the "blank check" granted by Prop. H, referring to its provision allowing the Board of Supervisors to issue bonds in order to meet the ambitious renewable targets. Even San Francisco, the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, did not trust the city to run the electric grid and Prop. H was voted down, receiving only 41 percent of the vote.
The "green" President gets 61% of the vote but three propositions which one would think would fit right in snugly with the agenda the Democrats have been talking about for years get voted down by almost the same percentage as Obama garnered - 65% to 35%, 60% to 40% and in probably the most liberal and supposedly environmentally aware city in the state, 59% to 41%.
Those are whopping losses.
And check out Colorado:
In Colorado, the President-elect defeated Senator McCain 53 percent to 45 percent, but a ballot measure that increased taxes on energy companies was defeated by a wider margin.
Colorado's Amendment 58 would have increased severance taxes on oil and gas companies by $321.4 million dollars annually in order to fund renewable energy projects, college scholarships, wildlife conservation, environmental clean-up, and water treatment. The Amendment was handily defeated 58 percent to 42 percent.
Those sorts of losses tell me that there is a fairly large level of skepticism out there concerning the necessity to commit to the vapor ware of "renewable energy" when it is clear that the targets set are simply unreachable with current technology and would most likely retard the search for traditional energy sources that are available now. It also seems to argue that there's a large amount of skepticism concerning AGW as a real or imminent problem.
And, interestingly, national exit polling seems to support those suppositions:
Nationwide exit polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly support increased access to energy resources. According to MSNBC's exit polls, 67 percent of all voters support increased access. In addition to the above examples of regions that voted for Obama, but against the spirit of his energy policies, exit polls found that almost 50 percent of Obama voters support drilling for oil and gas offshore.
Oil is at a low right now, which takes some of the pressure off of the "drill here, drill now" mantra. But this is a temporary respite. Demand will grow again as economies expand - and despite our current crises, they will. At some point, we'll again face an energy crisis as the cost of oil heads back up.
I have to wonder - given these results - how the new administration will pursue it's goals ("green collar" jobs, billions into renewable energy research, renewable energy use mandates, cap and trade and no new drilling)? Or will it pay any attention to these results at all, instead assuming that being voted into office gives them license to pursue their agenda whether the people agree or not?
Murdoch to Media - Monopoly has ended, get used to it
Posted by: McQ
Rupert Murdoch, addressing the demise of newspapers, takes the media as a whole on and tells them that the old version of the game is over and they'd better figure out how to work within the new parameters if they hope to survive.
Nothing particularly new about that argument, but it is interesting to see Murdoch say out-loud to the media what some would only hint at obliquely:
"My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers."
The print media will survive all of this once they figure out the business model what works and gains them a profit. What Murdoch is pointing out though is it is perhaps not the medium, per se, that's the dinosaur, but instead some of the editors, reporters and proprietors who refuse to confront the sea-change that has overcome them. And the other very important point, of course, is the MSM as a whole has done much to lose the trust of its readers and viewers.
Interstingly Murdoch talks about a problem that is common for many industries, not just the media:
"The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly—and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception."
Nor are the old network news operations which continue to decline is viewership. Murdoch continues:
"It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news-and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren't satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven't always responded well when the public calls them to account."
That's the reality that many within the media refuse to acknowledge. Just as the church began to lose its power when its interpretation of the Bible challenged after Gutenberg printed it in mass quantities, the same has happened to the media with the advent of the internet.
They are no longer the sole arbiter of what is or isn't news and with that, they have lost their ability to shape both news and the resultant national conversation that ensues. The fact that the supposed watchdogs are now watched closely is galling to many of them.
Murdoch uses the well know example of Dan Rather and the forged documents to make the point:
"Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. '60 Minutes,' he said, was a professional organization with 'multiple layers of checks and balances.' By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as 'a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.' But eventually it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Mr. Rather and his producer to resign.
The media has had to figuratively eat those words on multiple occasions since.
There is obviously going to be a winnowing of the media. But as Rupert Murdoch points out, it most likely won't be the medium itself that will end up being the dinosaur, but instead, many of those who make it up and refuse to change.
The insufferable Peter Schiff has a video going around, which frankly, is just brilliant. He may be unpleasant at times, but he nailed this thing, and took mounds of abuse while doing so. More importantly, I KNOW HOW HE FEELS!
The resentment, irritation, condescension and, at times, outright hostility to my Cassandra act makes me wish I had a video of my own. Sigh...
Oh well, it pays to remember that Cassandra was right. I was never as sure of myself as Peter, but risk management isn't about knowing you are right, but knowing what could go wrong and whether it wis likely enough to act upon.
As an aside, Peter is no big government type, and he goes to prove that despite the media focusing on Roubini and others (who do deserve a lot of credit) that people across the ideological perspective warned of this. Thus having seen this coming is not the same as being correct about what to do about it, since those who saw the oncoming train differ markedly on that score.
On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
The blunder?
GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
Did GISS admit the mistake? Well first it tired to find a new way to justify it's declaration of October being the hottest October on record:
This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
Finally GISS addressed the Russian temperatures:
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with.
Of course it is the absolute responsibility of GISS to ensure the data they use is the correct data, especially when they offer their work as an authoritative representation of reality and call for massive changes in the way we live, work and spend our money. Naturally such mistakes throw doubt on the entire body of work they've presented thus far in support of AGW. I'm sure scientists will be pouring over that now, in order to assess whether the same mistake was made in past data and the conclusions drawn from it.
This isn't the first time that Hansen's claims have been challenged:
In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
Hey, if you can't trust a government institution to give you the straight scoop, who can you trust? [/sarcasm]
That truth, according to counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullin is, "it's winnable, but just barely".
The four reasons he gives in a New Yorker interview are as follows:
Well, we need to be more effective in what we are doing, but we also need to do some different things, as well, with the focus on security and governance. The classical counterinsurgency theorist Bernard Fall wrote, in 1965, that a government which is losing to an insurgency isn't being out-fought, it's being out-governed. In our case, we are being both out-fought and out-governed for four basic reasons:
(1) We have failed to secure the Afghan people. That is, we have failed to deliver them a well-founded feeling of security. Our failing lies as much in providing human security-economic and social wellbeing, law and order, trust in institutions and hope for the future-as in protection from the Taliban, narco-traffickers, and terrorists. In particular, we have spent too much effort chasing and attacking an elusive enemy who has nothing he needs to defend-and so can always run away to fight another day-and too little effort in securing the people where they sleep. (And doing this would not take nearly as many extra troops as some people think, but rather a different focus of operations).
(2) We have failed to deal with the Pakistani sanctuary that forms the political base and operational support system for the Taliban, and which creates a protective cocoon (abetted by the fecklessness or complicity of some elements in Pakistan) around senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
(3) The Afghan government has not delivered legitimate, good governance to Afghans at the local level-with the emphasis on good governance. In some areas, we have left a vacuum that the Taliban has filled, in other areas some of the Afghan government's own representatives have been seen as inefficient, corrupt, or exploitative.
(4) Neither we nor the Afghans are organized, staffed, or resourced to do these three things (secure the people, deal with the safe haven, and govern legitimately and well at the local level)-partly because of poor coalition management, partly because of the strategic distraction and resource scarcity caused by Iraq, and partly because, to date, we have given only episodic attention to the war.
So, bottom line-we need to do better, but we also need a rethink in some key areas starting with security and governance.
The surge in Iraq was in answer to problem one there. An increase in the level of troops across the board (NATO), not just the US, is going to be required in Afghanistan. Iraq is a much more urban country than is Afghanistan, consequently, we could accomplish our protection scheme much easier than in more rural Afghanistan.
We didn't much have to deal with a sanctuary problem in Iraq. Although there were foreign fighters crossing from Syria they weren't using Syria as a sanctuary, nor were they launching cross-border operations and then withdrawing into Syria (the same can be said of Iran). The sanctuary problem is one of the most important problems we must solve in order to take out the Taliban. In the case of Iraq, you had a non-Iraqi entity (al Qaeda) trying to establish itself within the country. With the Taliban, you have a home-grown entity with the support of many of the tribes which control the cross-border area. Militarily there's no question that we can defeat the Taliban. But that, just as in Iraq, isn't where this war will be won.
The last two points are critical. The Afghan government has, to this point, been ineffective and unsuccessful in establishing itself outside the capital. This has got to be the area of major effort in the upcoming years. Without success in helping the Afghan government become effective and established down to the local level, the military aspect of this war turns into nothing but a holding effort.
However, the first effort must be to secure the population (remember the thinking behind the surge was to secure the population and give the Iraqi government the time necessary to make the progress it needed to govern effectively).
Kilcullen suggests:
As an example, eighty per cent of people in the southern half of Afghanistan live in one of two places: Kandahar city, or Lashkar Gah city. If we were to focus on living amongst these people and protecting them, on an intimate basis 24/7, just in those two areas, we would not need markedly more ground troops than we have now (in fact, we could probably do it with current force levels). We could use Afghan National Army and police, with mentors and support from us, as well as Special Forces teams, to secure the other major population centers. That, rather than chasing the enemy, is the key.
So, while more troops are necessary, a plan such as that he discusses here would mean the troop buildup might not have to be as large as some are suggesting.
However, on the critical governance side, our State Department along with vastly increased efforts by the diplomatic teams of our NATO allies have got to get more involved. As we found in Iraq, we have to teach the Afghans how to govern (budget, legislate, and execute) at the most basic level and at all levels. This should become the priority of the effort there, while at the same time boosting the military presence where necessary in order to begin better securing the population.
Addressing the sanctuary problem, Kilcullen suggests a three stage strategy:
This means that building an effective nation-state in Pakistan, though an important and noble objective, cannot be our sole solution - nation-building in Pakistan is a twenty to thirty year project, minimum, if indeed it proves possible at all-i.e. nation-building doesn't deliver in the time frame we need. So we need a short-term counter-sanctuary program, a long-term nation-building program to ultimately resolve the problem, and a medium-term "bridging" strategy (five to ten years)-counterinsurgency, in essence-that gets us from here to there. That middle part is the weakest link right now. All of that boils down to a policy of:
(a) encouraging and supporting Pakistan to step up and effectively govern its entire territory including the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], and to resolve the current Baluch and Pashtun insurgency, while (b) assisting wherever possible in the long-term process of state-building and governance, but (c) reserving the right to strike, as a last resort, at al Qaeda-linked terrorist targets that threaten the international community, if (and only if) they are operating in areas that lie outside effective Pakistani sovereignty.
I would think that the last part of that, if properly approached, could be negotiated with Pakistan fairly quickly. What you can't do is continue to violate the sovereignty of Pakistan willy nilly and expect them to then cooperate on other fronts. But as Kilcullen suggests, a critical piece to the "success in Afghanistan" puzzle is a stable Pakistan able and willing to effectively assist in the effort of defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The incoming administration promises to focus itself on Afghanistan. I think Kilcullen provides an excellent strategic blueprint which, if fleshed out, would provide the plan(s) necessary to achieve eventual success. As noted previously, while it is still a counter-insurgency battle and for the most part the same principles apply. However the war in Afghanistan also presents some unique problems not found in Iraq that require some different solutions. What's not in dispute, however, is this is going to a long war that will be going on for years.
From the early 1920s through 1985, the average level of debt-to-GDP in this country was 155%. The highest peak in history (until the recent debt boom) was in the early 1930s, when debt-to-GDP soared to 260% of GDP. In the 1930s, the ratio then cratered to 130%, and it remained close to that level for another half century. (See chart below).
In 1985, we started to borrow, and last year, when we got finished borrowing, we had borrowed 350% of GDP. To get back to that 155%, we need to get rid of more than $25 trillion of debt.
Do we have to get back to 155% debt-to-GDP? No, we don't have to. But given what happened after the 1920s, and given what people will probably think about debt when they get through getting hammered this time around, we wouldn't be surprised if we got back there. It seems to be sort of a natural level.
The banks have written off $650 billion so far. So we suppose that's a start.
That would mean reducing (de-leveraging) our economy's debt load by 25 trillion. I have no idea how you cut even 10 trillion in debt without massive economic dislocation.
In this podcast, Michael, Bruce, Lance and Dale look ahead at the prospect of major reform, and discuss the economic implications that may strangle it.
The intro and outro music is Vena Cava by 50 Foot Wave, and is available for free download here.
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