Painting the Map Red

Picked up Hugh Hewitt's new book up in the twin cities Thursday and finished it up in pretty short order. It was a must read for anyone that considers themselves anything less than a far lefty. It would bee good for them to read it as well, but folks on the far left can't possibly read anything that disagrees with them, or there is no way they would stay there.

He kicks off with; "It's break the glass and pull the alarm time" for the republican party. Bush isn't ever going to be more than a 50/50 President no matter how good he does, and it is time for Republicans to realize that they need overarching goals. A 60 seat majority in the Senate is the big goal what Hugh says needs to be focused on. He believes that Republicans can easily stay the majority party and potentially even do in the Democrat party so they needed to form a new party. Indeed, he would say that Republicans BETTER figure out how to do this for the future of western civilization.

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) isn't going to go away anytime soon, and if it isn't well fought (and maybe even if it is), there is going to be a 9-11 with WMD at some point that is going to radically change life going forward. The best way to keep that from happening is to keep Republicans in control, but that isn't going to be easy ... Because of the standard reasons; MSM, the rich guys like Soros and the Hollywood types, but maybe mostly because the nature of Republicans. Pretty easily disenchanted and perfectionistic ideologues that love nothing better than leaving the tent on "principal" even if the tent collapses because of it. I was there with Bush Sr and his breaking of "No New Taxes" ... so I did my part to usher in Bill Clinton, Monica, Internet bubbles, and the security conditions that created 9-11.

For Republicans to be a majority party, they have to be a very big tent, but it has to be tent ... he argues that Olympia Snow, John McCain, and Arlen Specter all make it in that tent ... Lincoln Chafee does not and needs to be defeated, even at the cost of Republicans voting for a Democrat. The seasoned political logic of the hows and whys of that alone are worth the price of admission. Hugh is a solid pragmatist, something that can never have to much exposure to Republicans.

He is convinced that the Democrat Presidential ticket in '08 is going to be Hillary/ Obama, and it is going to be VERY hard to beat. He doesn't think the Democrats have a great chance of taking either house this year, but it could come very close unless Republicans have a solid national goal, which he argues ought to be a 60 seat Senate. His main messages are all on the "going negative on the Democrats", arguing they are certainly doing, have and will be doing that with the help of the MSM, and they have given the Republicans better negatives to go after them with:

1). The Democrat left and the MSM have declared ware on the military
2). The Democrat left has declared war on religion
3). The Democrats have declared war on the Judiciary
4). The Democrats want to radically re-define marriage on the way to radically redefining the culture.
5). The Democrats are addicted to venom, and that venom is destroying the political process ... and people would like to see it stopped, which mostly means stopping Democrats.

He makes and interesting argument that the technology of the internet has made it impossible for the MSM to continue to put lipstick on the pig of the hard lefts screaming, bile, and "chip on the shoulder" attitude, where it has allowed thousands of generally reasonable, Christian, family oriented right-center blogs to spring up and be read. While the left blogs are loaded with "Hitler", the F word, and rambling rants against everything from Christians to the military to America itself, the right-center blogs that predominate tend to be just the opposite. Just like "guns don't kill people, people do", the internet is just a tool, it allows more direct contact with fewer filters. In general, for the center-right that has provided a picture that is much more flattering than the one usually painted by the MSM, where the left has exposed itself in all it's screeching, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-family and generally "anti" picture, and that picture has been far from flattering.

Representation and Polling

Powerline has a great discussion on polls and why Democrats are often surprised at the election results when they thought they were ahead in the polls. The media really enjoys polls that show bad things for Republicans. The actual representation of Democrats and Republicans in the population has become very close to even over the past 20 years, but the media polls tend to oversample Democrats by 10 points or more. Worse yet for the "surprise factor" (from a Democrat POV) is the Republicans tend to turn out better in elections.

The Democrats found a lot of the "evil" of the "Republican machine" on this. They claim that the "polls looked fine", but then they lost the election. The answer must mean that "Republican dirty tricks", or "election day shenanigans" somehow "stole" an election that they were all set to win.

Strategery

I finished up the Bill Sammon book "Srategery" a week ago or so. It has been awhile since I've read anything pro-Bush, and it is pretty amazing to hear the viewpoint these days. The biggest thing that hit me as reading it (although Sammon never mentioned this) is the contrast of the Clinton apologists with the treatment of the Bush people like Karl Rove.

Remember James Carville, Paul Begala and George Stephanopoulas? I suppose many don't, but they were the big paid Clinton hit men of the '90s, and they are all still around. George now has his own "news" show on ABC, "This Week with lefty Clinton Apologists". Well, maybe not exactly that title, but name one Reagan or Bush 1 guy that has his own mainline media show, or even "other" show where they are called anything other than "conservative commentator". Why is that different when they are the left? Carville and Begala have a book out that I saw being fawned over on a show recently. "Take It Back", or something like that.

There seems to be a bit of a difference between the MSM view of Republican operatives and Democrats that do the same thing. Chris Matthews, "Hardball" worked for 4 Democrats, Tip O'Neil being the one he talks of most. Tim Russert of "Meet the Press" worked for Mario Cuomo and then Daniel Moynihan. These are the guys that the MSM puts out front and center to give us "straight news" ... Oh, but Fox is biased, because Al Franken tells us that Bill O'Reily may have registered as a Republican at one time in the distant past. I suppose we ought to expect the standard for FOX to be different. BTW, Britt Hume, no such political background as the MSM guys previously mentioned. Huh, FOX is the most biased, apparently "biased" means "employs others besides certified Democrat operatives".

The Sammon book talks of the Bush people as actually decent, talented people trying to do what they see as the right thing for the country. Interestingly, Clinton people that talked of "Dragging a $50 bill through a trailer park ...", attacked any Clinton opponent by any means possible, including dredging up marital affairs that were 30 years old are STILL talked about as not only "decent", they are GREAT, and even given jobs by the MSM. The contrast between the treatment of those people and say "Karl Rove" is not very subtle.

Sammon is unabashedly pro-Bush and has inside access to the WH. The book chronicles 2004 and 2005 ... The election, Abu Grab, the convention strategies, the Swift Boat guys, Rathergate, the exit polls, social security, Katrina, Meyers, and up to Alito from the inside. Most stories have far more than two sides, reading a book like this makes one question how the MSM could be quite as incurious as they are. Maybe they have an agenda rather than an interest in reporting what is happening?

One thing is pretty certain, Billy C was WAY short of being the "comeback Kid" that George Bush has been, don't expect the MSM to be saying that a President that has beaten the odds over and over is in any way deserving. What was a point to be celebrated for Clinton is a terrible accident with dark overtones in the case of Bush.

Personal Notes

I was thinking that I was getting close to a full year of blogging, like most other things, I was late. The first entry was the 15th of March last year. For a busy person, blogging is one more thing to be late at. Is it worth it? Maybe mostly for friends and family that don't really care what I think politically, they can ignore the blog, and don't have to ignore quite as many conversations or e-mail notes as otherwise.

Mostly people care very little of what others think of most anything, they have their views, they like their views, and they are going to keep them. If something is "wrong", the problem pretty much has to be with someone else. The set of people that look at positions from both sides of the spectrum is tiny, and the set of people that actually enjoy a political discussion with someone that knows enough to make some challenging points is even smaller. As the media becomes more and more polarized, people are more and more able to hear only what they want, and in general, it seems that is the course that the vast majority on both sides are following. They are gravitating to the news sources that provide only the views that they feel comfortable listening to, and their blood pressure just goes up too high if they get exposed to the other side.

Thinking of a year ago also reminded me of heading out on the 7 day cruise over spring break. No spring break cruise this year, will be a couple of days up in the Twin Cities of family fun at the end of the week, but otherwise work as normal. Having a senior in HS that is doing part time college credit and part time HS credit means that he gets no real spring break, so we are staying around home. There will be a summer cruise to Alaska, so the deprivation isn't too severe.

It looks like we may break 60 on Thursday this week, so that should really get us into spring fever mode in MN.

City Hall Evicts Easter Bunny

Nice little article in the Pioneer Press about how tolerant our great state of MN is of "spring decorations". I hesitate to even consider an easter bunny and plastic eggs "religious" in any form, but they are too far out for the city of St Paul. Here are some quotes from that article:

A toy rabbit decorating the entrance of the St. Paul City Council offices went hop-hop-hoppin' on down the bunny trail Wednesday after the city's human rights director said non-Christians might be offended by it.

The decorations — including the stuffed rabbit, Easter eggs and a handcrafted sign saying "Happy Easter," but nothing depicting the biblical account of Christ's death and resurrection — were put up this week in the office of the City Council by a council secretary.

"I sent an e-mail that Easter is viewed as a Christian holiday and advised that it be taken down," said Tyrone Terrill, the city's human rights director. "It wasn't a big deal."

Why does the nation become more polarized? Christians are expected to tolerate anything from crosses in urine, constant swearing in the workplace, gay marriage and all other manner of direct attack on their faith in the public square, while a secular easter display is too large a burden to even contemplate a non-christian having to view. "Tolerance"? Don't expect to see any of that from the left.

Pour It On

The following is a great post from the WSJ that is worth a read. For those of us who have ever seen W live, we understand completely. During the Clinton years, the press always spent a lot of sympathetic time on "how difficult it was for poor Bill". All decent Democrats ought to be getting regular oral sex in the workplace I guess and that evil Republicans would seek to restrict a guy with as tough a job as Slick who felt everyone's pain, was just too much to contemplate. The MSM "support for Bush" ... or even any notice if he does anything positive is quite evident.

I've blogged enough in the past on some very solid attempts by Bush and Cheney to get the real story about Iraq out. There have also been ads run in MN at least by private groups that make a good attempt. The reason that Bush was re-elected is that when 100's of millions are spent actually getting the other side of the story out, and people are faced with having to vote for an actual Democrat, the numbers get quite different. Yes, there is "Fox News", and while it isn't over in the left ditch like the MSM, it isn't exactly the "Bush support system" that the MSM and Democrats make it out to be either. It was the network that broke the Bush DWI story just prior to the first election for example. What makes Fox noteworthy is that it is PRO-AMERICAN ... that is what is unique about it comparted to the MSM. Yes, Conservatives tend to be more pro-American, so in that way it is more "conservative", but it is a long way from "Republican".

The whole MSM, the Democrats, and a goodly number on farther right want to see this President break. This article makes a point that I suspect to be true ... bring it on, it ain't going to happen.


Pour It On
Whatever Laura's feeding George, it's working.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, March 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

For those of us who've complained for more than two years that this White House was ill-serving the troops in Iraq by not making the public case for Iraq, that changed this week in Wheeling, W.Va.

Whatever George Bush had for breakfast Wednesday morning, Laura should see that the White House larder is packed with it. By noontime, Mr. Bush was in Wheeling delivering the third in a series of public speeches to defend the Iraq war. For a president whose public persona--West Texas accent, smirk, swagger and errant word choice--has become the biggest butt of presidential comedy since Richard Nixon, it was an astounding, bravura performance. In fact, I'll pay him the highest possible compliment: It was Clintonesque.

Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill reside in the Valhalla of great communicators, but Bill Clinton and Harry Truman thrived as mere mortals, not only connecting with the mythic "common man" but somehow bonding to them. George Bush joined that class in Wheeling on Wednesday.

It wasn't the sort of set speech that presidents normally read, bobblehead bouncing between two teleprompters. Holding a hand microphone, Mr. Bush walked around a stage before a few thousand people giving a largely extemporaneous talk on Iraq and his presidency. It was mesmerizing. One kept expecting Mr. Bush, whose deepest supporters despair at his inarticulateness, to stumble into the underbrush of confused facts or argument to nowhere. Never happened. Not once. For over an hour, it was nothing but net.

OK, it wasn't Demosthenes, but it was George W. Bush at his Everyman best. The same George Bush who, when televised in front of the White House news corps comes across as a smart aleck, poured off the cable-news screens from Wheeling as a relaxed, buoyant, passionate evangelist for his presidency's most deeply held ideas--political freedom, military pre-emption and playing not to the polls but for the verdict of history.

Two obvious questions: Where's this guy been? And, to quote a long-ago factory boss, Is it a day late and a dollar short?

First answer: He was last sighted on the campaign trail. This is the man, liberal mockery and amazement notwithstanding, who won two hard-fought presidential elections, not as spin has it, only by Rovian genius but by connecting with audiences. But why what worked for a campaign was abandoned in time of war is something that will have to await an answer from the Bush White House memoirists.

The second question--does it come too late for his presidency or the war--is a tougher nut. Eerily, the Ides of March, the 15th of the month, just passed over the Bush presidency at perhaps its lowest ebb. His rating with the pollster's mob is an unseemly 37%. His version of the Roman Senate, the Republican Party, is in virtual political anarchy and content to let Mr. Bush bleed alone. Various Beltway solons have declared the president's war on Mesopotamia's Islamic fanatics a failure; Iraq is described by the press as on the edge of civil war. And almost daily one's close friends, strong supporters of Mr. Bush, say, "It's over."

But not until it's over.

When in our time people think of collapsed presidencies they often have in mind Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. For different reasons, both men broke. What Bill Clinton proved above all else is that no matter what the press, law and politics throw at you, the protective powers of the presidency are almost limitless--if you don't break. Mr. Bush's opponents, such as Democrats waving censure motions or blood-soaked front pages, had better get a grip: He isn't going to break. The Wheeling performance makes that clear.

Wheeling, however, also suggests both the promise and near-term peril for the Bush presidency. It was a signal event, but the print press largely ignored it. The Washington Post Thursday had no story; the New York Times and L.A. Times had minor accounts inside. The talk in fact broke no news in the traditional sense. But as in a presidential election, events that strike the print press as "nothing new" matter hugely in terms of public sentiment, that is, whose ideas win.

At the same time, the status of Iraq's government should be news. In last Thursday's Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius, writing from Baghdad, described in detail "unmistakable signs here this week that Iraq's political leaders are taking the first tentative steps toward forming a broad government of national unity that could reverse the country's downward slide." The column described intense negotiations following the February Samarra mosque bombing to form a national security commission acceptable to all political parties. A search of the Dow Jones-Reuters Factiva database for other accounts of these negotiations turned up only one story, a good one days later by Edward Wong of the New York Times, albeit on the bottom of page A10.

The tendentious editorial decision to paint the high-traffic front pages red with blood and demote the hard slog of political progress in Iraq to the unread inside has an effect. Any normal person would be depressed by constant face-time with stories of barbaric slaughter. If what amounts to a kind of contemporary brain-washing of both the American public and Washington elites causes them to falter and Iraq to "fail," no future president of either party is again likely to deploy U.S. military resources in any sustained, significant way. You can't imagine what "lose" will mean then.

The public's pessimism is at least understandable. Less defensible is that of Washington's exit-seeking elites. A bracing reality check for these folks has just been written by Frederick W. Kagan, a military specialist with the American Enterprise Institute. Hardly a flack for the White House, Mr. Kagan argues persuasively in "Myths of the Current War" (find under the Scholars listing at aei.org) that all the woulda, coulda, shoulda about going into Iraq and now getting out fast is simply irrelevant. "It does not matter now why we went into Iraq," Mr. Kagan writes, "only what will happen if we do not succeed there."

The White House has paid a price for not engaging these issues. Wheeling was a start. Keep pouring the Wheaties, Laura.

Sanding Off the Truth

MN Democrats have discovered a new way to talk about truth. While everyone in the world was on record as saying that Saddam had WMD, Bush apparently knew there would be none and his lie would be exposed, so he "lied" and went into Iraq anyway. At least that is what a "lie" used to be, you had to KNOW the truth but say something else.

Of course, things are far different if there is a "D" next to your name. For Bill Clinton, you just change the definition of "sex", "is", "perjury", and a few other things and "no lies". With MN Senator Majority Weasel Dean Johnson, it is "emebellishment" or "sanding off the truth". This is from a MINISTER, who other ministers have to tape record when he is lying to them, because they know he is a weasel. For non-weasels, you know they will continue to to stand by their words even if it is unpopular and costs them ... like Bush with WMD or Ports deal, but unlike Johnson.

'But Johnson said he did not 'lie' about the matter. To lie requires 'intent to deceive,' he said, while 'embellishment is sanding off of the truth.'" (Bill Salisbury, "Tearful Senate Leader Sorry For Supreme Court Gay Marriage Flap," Pioneer Press, March 17, 2006) No doubt the media will have a hard time staying on this story, but this web site should help

The man tells a group of ministers that he has talked to multiple MN Supreme Court justices and they have assured him there is no reason for a Gay Marriage amendment, there is no way they will overturn the law that MN has. Small problem, that would be a grave breech of judicial ethics were they to tell him that, but no problem it turns out they never even discussed it with him at all. So, he "sanded the truth".

The MN papers are being very careful to not call it a "lie", even on editorial pages, and they are mostly indicating that any attempts to keep this going are "politically motivated". A real rareity in politics. I'm sure we would see a similar viewpoint were there anything like this for anyone that had an "R" next to their name? Yea, sure, and if you believe that, be sure you aren't buying any discount watches on the street, I hate to tell you that they might not be quite "genuine".

Man, Democrats just hate tapes, stains, and oxegen starved wet secretaries bodies in their cars. They have this "sanding" down with complete media compliance even when there ARE physical facts, but those things are "inconvienient". The media is even willing to call any Republican prediction about the future that doesn't turn out to be perfect a "lie" (no matter how many Ds said exactly the same thing). It seems like the physical universe of fact ought to just be outlawed if one has a "D" next to their name and whatever they say is "truth". It seems only fair.

Feeling Lucky, Keweenaw Sledding

As a computer programmer I like to think that I understand reason and logic as well as the next guy and more than most, but I would never claim that those elements are the only, or even the major drives in my life. Case in point, I have been slowed and challenged by recovery of my broken elbow sustained on January 5th, with surgery on the 9th. I've been spending hours per day in various sorts of stretching activity trying to get motion back, lots of trips to the Doctor and bad nights of sleep trying to deal with a brace that keeps pressure on the arm to straighten or bend it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was first able to have enough motion to get my contacts back in, so I decided I was ready to snowmobile again. Anyone that buys a $7K machine that they may not get to use at all in a winter doesn't get top marks for reason, but I suppose taking off riding after surgery, rehab, and lots of lost hours when the arm still is far from 100% could be considered grounds for insanity, BUT, the trails were great, the sled was great, nothing bad happened at all, and it was WAY worth it! There are few things as much fun as doing something "insane" and coming out just fine.

Sometimes we like to think that it would be great if we humans felt the most motivated by what was logical and reasonable and showed the greatest odds of bettering our lives or the world around us all the time. In fact, a scientist thinking of "adaptive behavior" might assume that millions of years of adaptive evolution would produce exactly that outcome ... a very rational and adaptive human. They would of course be wrong.

We feel the best when we feel "lucky", when some sort of risk has paid off and things went well. We are forever cheering the underdog. Vegas and the lottery draw their billions, and like Lake Woebegone, we like to think all our kids are "above aveage".

Riding a snowmobile on groomed trails in the daytime without having any alcohol and staying generally at less than 60MPH isn't really completely "death defying" ... but relative to sitting behind a desk punching keys, it is pretty wild. The Keweenaw picked up 30" on top of the 15-20" that they had on the ground and we had some of the best trails ever, and very low traffic. managed to get the sled up from 160mi to 500mi, so got it broke in a bit for it's first year. It may not have been the most sane way to spend a couple days of vacation, but at least for me, it would have been hard to beat on the fun scale.

The Capitalist Manifesto

I was encouraged to read the Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein, and although I think it is a fine book and would encourage many to read it, for me it was a bit too much "preaching to the choir". I've already been over a lot of this ground with Hayek, Freidman, and like Bernstein, Ayn Rand. I'd like to find an author from the left that came close to being as fun to read and had as much an effect on readers as Ayn. My personal opinion over the years is that isn't possible, since economic freedom, rule of law and allowing individuals to choose what to do with the fruits of their labors is as necessary to economic success of a country as oxygen is to most life on this planet. The collectivist ideas flat out don't work, and all manner of attempts have failed to change that result, so writing something like this from the left would be like writing about a flat earth.

Bernstein goes over the good comparisons ... Hong Kong, East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Cuba and the USSR vs the USA. These have been well covered in many other books, and the results are completely clear. He also does a good job of questioning the idea that the Scandinavian countries are the exception, that socialism actually works there. It appears that we may have a case there of "killing the goose that laid the golden egg". Relatively pure capitalism was used in the past to create the wealth, and today that wealth is being squandered and the future borrowed against. One could argue that much the same thing is going on in the US with the entitlement programs like Social Security.

Where he does a little better job is in pointing out the fallacies of "the glorious pre-technology, pre-capitalist" past. Hobbes pretty much defined it, life was "nasty, brutish, and short". The VAST majority, like 90%+ lived in filth, disease, chaos, starvation, and pain for mercifully short lives. The myth of the "primitive secular Eden" is more widely held these days than the account of Eden in Genesis which those of us who are Christian hold to be true. Bernstein tars religion with the same brush as other partakers in the feudal system and given the history of the Catholic church there is merit there. Whatever the fault, when the masses are chattel that are not educated and allowed to improve themselves and their state, their lot is horrific. Church, King, or modern state, without the power of access to knowledge and the ability to profit from their labors, the material existence of the mass of humanity is not to be envied.

It is unleashing the power of the mind and the willingness to leverage it that makes capitalism great. By allowing "creative destruction", capitalism stays vibrant and in it's purest forms prevents the winners from one age from locking in their wins by stopping advancement and keeping things the way they like them, since the last round turned out in their favor. In general I agree with him, but it is at this point that I have trouble with the "pure approach". I understand why Bernstein takes it, like Rand he wants to leverage the obvious success of the capitalist system into a philosophy of life that "explains everything" in a tidy way. "The good is what provides the most/best life" ... the cynic in me says "he who dies with the most toys wins". Simple yes, but sadly lacking any real meaning.

This is where I part ways with the manifesto. If we are here by randomness and there is nothing beyond this, then other than maximization of pleasure, what would all this be for? The old supposed deep philosophy is "what will it all matter in 100 years"? Which of course is a way of saying "nothing", but in fact if it doesn't matter then, it doesn't matter now either. Dying with the most toys, dollars, friends, pets, or even books is still dying, and as in all things human, that is the final, not optional reality.

He also does nice defenses of attempted arguments against capitalism as causing war, being responsible for slavery, taking advantage of 3rd world poor people, and even defends the much maligned "robber barons". It is a solid work in defending the utility of the tool of capitalism, his only weakness is that he (like Rand) wants to decide that an economic model can be expanded to explain life, the universe and everything. Standard human idolatry, to convert "A good" into THE GOOD, and the ALL. We have a built-in desire to want more than meaninglessness, and also a built in compass that allows us to allow that answer to find us. Many decide that answer is not for them and go off and invent one. In the end, Bernstein looks at the universe and sees it as a nail to the capitalist hammer.

Democrat Outlook

As I saw the UAE ports deal go down by huge inside the beltway margins, I decided that all the parties inside the beltway except for Bush had found something they could agree on, stupidity. All the folks in Congress, Republican or Democrat are politicians at heart, which is very often just a slightly more complimentary way of saying “weasels”. Reagan is the only guy of my lifetime that managed to get to a leadership position that seemed to have far more principle than politics. Bush shows some good tendencies to that direction from time to time, and on this one his weasel quotient was exemplary.

We have established that a huge percentage of Americans, maybe 75% or more are anti-Arab company “ownership” of US ports. Very few of them likely know what they are really against here, but the media usage of “Arab", “foreign ownership” and “threat to security” was enough to stampede even more than the usual sheep. I’m reminded that 75% of the sheep were once in favor of the Iraq war as well, so the sheep are fickle.

When I allow the negative Democrat side of my brain to run wild I can see a dark vision in which the protectionists of right and left get together, pass some protectionist legislation that kills the current round of globalization. The Democrats win both houses of Congress in the fall and start impeachment for Bush, they pull out of Iraq, the markets crash world wide and the world plunges into the great depression II along with global terrorism. The MSM and the Democrats are insufferable in smug happiness as they settle in to blame it all on Bush as they blamed the first depression on Hoover and we face a new 50 dark years of Democrat hegemony.

Actually, just a negative dream, but March being the cruelest month in MN, it is tempting to think like a Democrat sometimes. As I look at the current Bush travails, I’m reminded that the media does a 50% good job of reporting with both parties; they report success well for Democrats, and failure well for Republicans, but there is always an issue of “hope”. Bill Clinton was always “the comeback kid”. Whenever he faced problems due to the evil Republicans or nasty stains, the media expectantly licked their chops and looked for another sign of a “comeback” … a good speech, a slight uptick in the polls, some stock going up, a woman with big hair within his reach, ANYTHING was a sign of a new fantastic “comeback”. They loved him.

Bush was “certified dead on arrival” after the 2K election … not really elected, “appointed president”. He was double dead when the great hero Jim Jeffords defected to the Dems and gave them a Senate majority. He was guaranteed to lose seats in the 2002 elections, presidents usually do, and he was guaranteed to. Afghanistan was a “quagmire” in 2 weeks. Iraq was a giant mistake from the beginning, and the list just goes on and on … “Mission Accomplished”, Abu Grab, 1K soldiers dead, the economy, jobs, this poll, that poll, Katrina, Meyers, now the ports. The MSM has declared Bush “dead and over” so many times they can’t be listed. So far he has recovered and come back from every one of them to date bigtime. He isn’t any “comeback kid” though … when the MSM sees Bush recover, their attitude is the opposite.

The Republicans in Congress have done themselves no favors on this one. Today the sheep think it is a great idea to diss the Arabs and Bush on the ports deal, tomorrow they will have changed their minds. When you tie yourself to polls and politics vs principles, tomorrow is even more volatile than the normal events of life and the world make it. We will pay for the ports deal over time. We need friends in the mid-east, the UAE have been solid friends, yet we have shown that racism, protectionism, and playing politics are worth more to us.

Ports Stolen from Barnett

The following is from the author of "Pentagon's New Map" and "Blueprint for Action", a strategic thinker that I think generally has his head on pretty straight. Fairly comprehensive and direct on the port issue, worth reading.

Time for America to grow up about the global connectivity of foreign direct investment: 

ARTICLE: “U.S. Lawmakers Receive Global Criticism for Objections to Ports Deal,” by Aaron O. Patrick, Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A4.
ARTICLE: “A Ship Already Sailed: America Ceded Its Seaport Terminals to Foreigners Years Ago,” by Simon Romero and Heather Timmons, New York Times, 24 February 2006, p. C1.
OP-ED: “Ports in a Storm: Do we believe in free trade, or don’t we?” by Zachary Karabell, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. A16.
EDITORIAL: “Ports of Gall: The new protectionists use national security as their cover,” Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A10.
ARTICLE: “Thwarted Attack At Saudi Facility Stirs Energy Fears: Officials Worry Terrorists Are Targeting Oil System; Crude Futures Jump 4%,” by Bhushan Bahree and Chip Cummins, Wall Street Journal, 25-26 February 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: “In Ports Furor, a Clash Over Dubai: Debate Exposes Conflicts Between Security Needs And Foreign Investment; PetroChina Hangs On in Sudan,” by Bernard Wysocki Jr. and Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: “How Foreign Banks Scaled the Chinese Wall: Titans Acquire Minority Stakes With Little Control of Their Own; Will the Strategy Prove Wise?” by Kate Linebaugh, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2006, p. C1.
ARTICLE: “Intel to Build Vietnam Chip Plant, Raising Nation’s High-Tech Profile,” by James Hookway and Nguyen Pram Muoi, Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2006, p. A4.
ARTICLE: “U.S. Funds Take On Global Flavor: Foreign Companies’ Equities Increasingly Populate Portfolios As Returns Pick Up Overseas,” by Tom Lauricella, Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2006, p. C1.

America has been the single biggest kingpin in outward-bound foreign direct investment since the Second World War, meaning our cumulative total of investment in other countries is bigger than anybody else on the planet. Sure, when you bundle up Europe’s numbers, they are huge (2X ours), but that’s including all the intra-European investment, which is like counting Florida investing in Michigan. Strip away all the self investment, and America is more than equal to Europe’s overseas investment total.

Have we benefited from all that overseas investing? Sure. We’re sought out cheaper resources and labor over the decades, pushing American firms to become ever more efficient and to move up the production value chain to new heights of technology and productivity. Have such investments forced our economy and society to leave behind industries that once defined our labor pool? Sure, but that’s progress, unless you think it’s better defined by every child performing the same job as their parents once did, and their parents once did, and their parents once did, and so on.

All that investment has built up this magnificent global economy, which is bigger now than it has ever been, and features less violence and danger than it has ever had to withstand before. That’s right. You go back in history and you will find an ever increasing percentage of humanity either actively involved in or preparing for mass violence. Today, that percentage is lower than it has ever been, because the numbers and cumulative size of conflicts around the world are lower than they’ve ever been.

The spread of the global economy is responsible for that, and our immense role in exporting investments around this world has been preeminent in creating that future worth living.

And yet we are so fearful of the mutually-assured dependence we’ve created with all this investment, especially when it comes back at us in the form of other countries investing in the U.S., something that’s been a hallmark of our development for decades and decades stretching back to our infancy. I know, I know, America was a perfect democracy from the start and we built this entire economy on our own, with no help from anybody except the immigrants who showed up. This is the American mythos, and we love it. But the truth is we've had huge inflows of foreign direct investment throughout our history (Number 1? The Dutch.), as lotsa foreigners “exploited our cheap labor” and our natural resources. And we benefited hugely from this.

Truth be told: no country develops without access to foreign money in this global economy. So FDI must flow. In reality, it’s the Dune-like “spice” that drives our global economy—more than oil does.

So we are rightly criticized as hypocrites when our lawmakers object to the UAE ports deal. Not just because it’s anti-trade, but because it flies in the face of current reality: the countries that run the world’s ports, including ours, are those that most heavily depend on trade (Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, Denmark, China, Germany, Taiwan and that city-state called Seattle). Seafaring centers rule that trade (can I get a “duh”!).

This is our game, the one we created after WW II to keep great power peace, and it’s worked like a dream. Now, great powers and wannabe regional ones all play by our rules. So when one of them does unto us what we’ve been doing unto them for decades, it’s pretty strange for us to cry foul, and even worse to cry national security.

Did DP World have an advantage in bidding for the British company that currently runs a number of our ports? Sure. And we should we wary of letting states-masquerading-as-companies pretend they are playing on a level field? All things being equal? Yes. But all things are rarely equal. And if we’re seeing connectivity result that otherwise would not be there, then I say we choose investment over fear. Do I want Dubai to become a Hong Kong/Singapore of the Middle East? Sure. Because I want the Middle East to connect up to the world. In fact, that’s the whole purpose behind our Big Bang strategy of toppling Saddam: connecting the Middle East up to the global economy faster than the jihadists can disconnect it.

The Al Qaedaists of the Middle East know damn well what they’re doing: they want to sabotage the regions’ economies, disconnecting them from the world, and reap the whirlwind of social distress. Thus we should expect more attacks on port and energy facilities like the one that targeted the Abqaiq facility recently.

I know that some op-ed strategists want to play that game as well, arguing we should cut the global economy off from the Middle East by denying ourselves its oil as quickly as possible, but I argue for just the opposite approach. I want shared economic and strategic interests, not some rapid-fire economic divorce.

That’s the essential nature of the military-market nexus that we ourselves have forged in this era of globalization. I know we are called a debtor nation, but in reality we are a security exporter, one that overspends our public funds in order to pay for the world’s security, which only our power-projecting military is capable of providing. For that service, the world pays us by buying our debt. But that process can only go so far, as we’ve seen with Japan years ago and China today. After a while, our trade partners can accumulate only so much of our money in reserves. When saturation is reached (beyond the fear of currency speculation), then these countries naturally want to diversify their holdings; they want to own us as much as we own them.

This is natural and good and a furthering of the mutually-assured dependence that defines the Functioning Core of globalization. In fact, to move from the Non-Integrating Gap to the Core, such interdependency must be an avowed goal of the migrating nation (in this case, Dubai). We either welcome that mutual dependence or we renounce the very system of growing global peace that we engineered.

We are too far down this road to change course. Invest in a “U.S.” mutual fund today and you’ll find that much of its money sits abroad, seeking greater opportunity--as it should. Some can call such activity akin to being "economic traitors," a charge so foolishly wrongheaded as to deserve complete condemnation. Instead, such investments do more to secure our national security than all the efforts of our defense establishment.

And yet it is so sad to see American leaders, right at the moment of our emerging historical triumph, becoming so amazingly full of self-doubt and fear. What do we need to continue to succeed in the world we’ve created? A highly educated and ambitious labor pool of entrepreneurs. How hard is that to achieve? You tell me.

Other countries are responding to this challenge of Friedman’s “Flat World,” and they’re doing so with less fear. China lets our banks buy into their banks. Vietnam lets Intel come in and build a big chip factory that, a few years back, would have gone to China. Everyone is striving mightily to move up the production chain and all America does is fret over industries we’ve let go abroad instead of focusing on what we really need to do next: invent the next wave of industries that will define our future.

But I am being too harsh here: those industries are appearing across the dial in America. We just need to revamp a lifelong educational system to make American labor confident enough that we can collectively migrate our skills and labor to what comes next, instead of vainly trying to hold onto what came before.

Yes, yes, easier said than done. But what do these “far-sighted” protectionists offer us instead? Look closely, because upon further examination it comes off as a sort of economic back-to-the-future escapism that comes uncomfortably close to Osama’s arguments for civilizational apartheid: “Don’t deal with this challenging future; instead retreat into a more homogenous imaginary past.”

We need confidence now more than ever because we are closer—now more than ever--to the global future we’ve been crafting for decades and decades. I feel a huge debt to the Greatest Generation, one that requires I keep pushing the pile throughout my career. I have never felt more connected to both past and future as I do today, and it fills me with a sense of great optimism.

But optimism requires confidence. You have to see the world you’ve created. You need to feel a pride of ownership and a sense of parental satisfaction.

And at some time you have to let go of your fears. You have to accept countries for what they’re becoming, not what they’ve been. You need to seize the opportunities to turn enemies into partners and partners into close friends.

We are at that moment in history.

We need that confidence and that optimism that’s defined America’s past and will shape this world’s future even more.

We all live in a world of our making. Some deride that self-awareness as naïve or delusional.

I call it real power and tell all the fear-mongers to f--k off.

Disaster Party

It has been fun to listen to the MSM and especially NPR deal with the fact that Mardi gras is under way in New Orleans. Six months ago, this was the "lost 3rd world city of Bush incompetence". Tonight, the floats with the beads and black-tie revelers were rolling into the convention center that was so central to the "scandal" 6 months ago.

They keep working as hard as they can to have it both ways, it reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live skit where something is BOTH a floorwax and a dessert topping. New Orleans is BOTH a terrible example of federal ineptitude, AND, miraculously, it is a city ready for tourism and a huge party 6 months after a horrible natural disaster.

"Oh how terrible" ... "Come on down and PARTY!".

Ports

It was a good week for all of the media right, left, and middle, plus both parties on all sides to spend on the UAE ports story that I found to be completely uninteresting. My main reason for disinterest is that while I’m not much of a believer in big government (or even big business) getting close to everything right, I’m not a “no government” person either (those would be called “anarchists”). In order for this particular issue to be a real problem, a rational person would have to be a “no government” person. 99% of what is done in government (like in business) is done by people that are career employees just doing their job day after day with a lot of oversight, processes and procedures, and unless the organizations are completely broken, they are going to generally do an “average job” … not excellent, not horrible, just “average”. After a 28 year career in “big business”, one realizes that while all the checking, reporting, status and meetings are far from exciting or glamorous, they do go a long way to guard against “the big boo-boo”.

The human condition is not in general “rational” however. Nobody likes to admit it, and normally we don’t, but it is written into our snake brains to “prefer like”, so we are all snake brain level racists (and gluttons, and sex fiends, and prone to violence … all just parts of our basic human nature). The combination of “Arab”, “Bush Administration” and “Outsource” allowed masses of people even including liberal Democrats to display their racism with abandon. After all, the former owner of the loading function at the ports was a BRITISH company, and of course we KNOW that those folks wouldn’t be terrorists. (Oh wait, all the bombers there last summer happened to be British citizens, but no matter, they are trustworthy as opposed to ARABS.

I saw General Tommy Franks on TV discussing the fact that the port of Dubai services more US military ships than any other port outside the US and the same company that handles fueling, loading, docking, etc is the one that was going to be doing it in the six US ports. They don’t of course handle security for the warships, but they wouldn’t be handling it for the ports either, the US Coast Guard and Customs do that … agencies of the same US Government that apparently a ton of folks believe doesn’t work well enough to review an application for some dock hands. Note: that is really what we are talking about here, not “owning the ports”, “security”, “controlling the ports”, or a host of other pieces of misinformation that flowed from sources of the left and right in this case. This one united both the fringes.

This is the kind of political controversy that a Democrat would never face, they don’t have the character to stand up for something, especially when the political answer is completely easy. Everyone knows that outsourcing is unpopular, and everyone knows that “Arab” tends to be unpopular. Bill Clinton would never have got here, this is a tough political position to defend and be in, and he never stood up for any of those. The only thing he was fully committed to was sex with interns at the oval office. While on saner days, and apparently in private, many of the Democrats might admit that we sorely need allies in the Arab world, globalization is a reality, no US companies wanted to bid on the contract for the ports, UAE has been one of our best allies in the Arab world and racism isn’t that becoming, politics is a lot easier than statesmanship, so they are out sticking it to Bush, and if that makes the US look like a racist country that only bombs Arabs and has no real friendship with any, no matter.
This one has brought out a different class of Republican discontent. Harriett Miers brought out the folks that felt that winning elections ought to be about something, and if you made promises during the election, you at least tried to fight for them when you had the chance to make an appointment, even if you lost. Turns out that the fight is pretty darned easy in some cases and you CAN win, as was proven with Alito. The right wing folks out in front on this on are the “America first, last, and let the rest of the world rot if you have to” isolationist wing. What is sad is to see the number of Republicans that ought to be more up on world affairs willing to sit on the sidelines and let Bush just keep taking the flak, since they know this one is a tough sell politically. Some of it is no doubt 2nd term fatigue and off-year election jitters, but it is sad to see that there is more knee weakness in the Republican party than is often evident.

One thing certainly DOES give me major pause though. Jimmuh Carter supports Bush on this one! Jimmuh has been 100% out to lunch on every issue from asking Amy, providing nuke reactors to the N Koreans, to being Howard “Job is my favorite book in the New Testament” Dean’s spiritual advisor. Since Jimmy thinks that America is having a crisis of moral values (his book), I was generally heartened that things must be much better than I thought, now this! Goes to show that it is a complex world, I’m just going to have to chalk it up to one of those phenomenons like “even a broken watch is right twice a day”.

Both Sides of Humor

Trying to figure out "the line" for humor is a very interesting and telling intellectual problem that I believe tells much about individuals and the state of a given culture at a given time. Racial humor is an example of something that has become nearly 100% off limits because of the unacceptability of any sort of white to black humor being socially taboo. Being a bald guy, I know that jokes at the expense of bald men are always acceptible. Fat jokes are far less so, and it will be interesting to follow the future in that area. Bald jokes certainly bothered me when I lost my hair in my early 20's, but I adaapted, but I'm sure part of that adaptatation probably made me tougher and more combative without any thought on my part. The method of adaptation probably says something about my base personality that required little thought on my part, I believe we are very far from blank slates, on the other hand I don't believe we are already fully sculpted personalities either. My natural tendency was to think that I needed to learn to deal with it on my own; the idea of "victimhood", or "political correctness for bald guys" seems unlikely to happen and undesireable from too many levels to even begin to contemplate, so "adapt and deal with it" was my course.

On to the situation at hand. Harry Whittington walked out of the hostpital looking hale and healthy Friday and gave a gracious and understanding statement. Nice civil humor, the kind without any hatred being required could really begin now, so my guess is that humor will promptly end from the left. Cheney had a simple, though bad accident, but in the end, everyone walked away not only without much in the way of lasting physical effects, but very willing to forgive and forget. Both Cheney and Whittington acted as excellent examples of how to handle a very difficult personal situation, and the MSM and many Americans did an equally "excellent" job of showing how to let partisanship and personal animosity rise above civility and basic human kindness and understanding. I see all parties involved as very true to their basic natures. Cheney and Whittington because they are long ago classy gentlemen that really wouldn't know any other way to act, the MSM and many Americans because they believe that their standard of personal hatred, even to the point of in more cases than I would have imagined before last week, wishing a very impressive old guy dead if it would help bring down a VP they happen to politically hate.

Contrast is often a source of humor, but the comparison to Kennedy is far more than humor, it is understanding at a deep level that sometimes only a humorous contrast can fully bring to the surface. When the young secretary that it is commonly understood is in the midst of an affair with a senator is drowned in his car and he fails to report the incident to the authorities until the next AM, we have a situation that we need to be very clear on the "D" or "R" contrast to know how it would be handled. Here we have a "D", so Teddy continues on in public life and has so little concern for the past incident he currently has a dog named "splash". Being on the left means that scrutiny or even basic decency is something you can safely ignore. There is both humor and sadness in the comparison.

As a parent, it is hard to imagine how it must feel to have your child killed by a powerful national figure and to see that the concern from the local electorate doesn't even rise to the level to remove him from office, and nationally his party barely is able to refrain from putting him up as a presidential canidate. Is this a "joke" to point out the comparison with the mild Cheney accident, and thus cruel to whatever relatives of Mary Jo Kopekne that still may be watching? I think not, since to know that some still remember the travesty of justice and the callousness of the MSM and Democrats in this country willing to protect a Kennedy in the face of what looks to be at least very close to murder.

The contrast really does say it all. Mary Jo will not be walking out of the hospital and telling the nation that she is sorry for all the trouble that the incident at Chappiquidick caused poor Teddy.

Springtime for the Press Corps

The MSM and the late night humor folks are having a great time with the Cheney shooting incident. One would exepect it, and they are behaving exactly as would be expected. No need to go back on a littany of press "accidents", but let's just go short term and think about "12 Miners Safe" ... when of course it was 1 miner that was barely alive, and 12 that were dead. Infallibility is something that we are not going to be seeing from our MSM, nor of course from any of us. The usual response is rapid forgiveness, since we know our own feet of clay.

The victim in this case is still in the hosptial, had a heart attack induced by the incident ... I'm thinking the humor might be less if he wasn't a Republican too? We all know many hate Cheney and the term in German says it best; schadenfruede - malicious enjoyment from the suffering of another. It is very human, but not many amoung us really look at it as something that is less than evil in itself, EXCEPT in the case where the person that we are feeling it about has been judged to be less than human and worthy of no positive regard at all ... Hitler, Bin Ladin, Saddam ... and now we see clearly from the left, Cheney.

Schadenfrude is something we all understand, usually ascribe to our darker selves, and enjoy it only sparing and somewhat in private, EXCEPT with the exception above (and even then we understand the darkness). We now see that a lot of people have gorged themselves on enough MSM bile to actually categorize the VP of the USA as someone who one can share publicly a normally ugly human emotion. It is often the smaller things that let us see inside the souls of those around us more clearly.

The defense of Clinton was a larger, but similar clarity kind of example. I've already heard the obvious comparison, but even that tells more about the speaker than they intend. "Well, you conservatives took a lot of joy in Clinton and Monica, that is no different". Such a statement tells one that logical argument is of no use with such a person, because consistency CLEARLY is not an issue. Are we to believe that human males have no more control over their sexual impulses than someone has over a split-second decision in a hunting situation? Apparently yes, but in that case there is very little in human existence that would be under our control, which would tend to meet the liberal model pretty well I suppose. We are all here stumbling and bumbling about with absolutely no control or responsiblity for anything ... unless we are Republicans, in which case we are not only responsible, but constantly doing the wrong thing with evil intent (see "consistency is not an issue").

As Leno said, neither Clinton's or Cheney's aim was very good, but that is about the only similarity. Dick Cheney was responsible for an accident. There are no humans walking around of an age anywhere close the the VPs that haven't been responsible for accidents of similar sorts of parameters, though hopefully not of severity. Of course, there are many that are responsible for accidents of much worse severity, and in general as humans we realize our failings and are quite forgiving of even cases that are quite egregious in overlooking safety, since we well understand "there but for the grace of God ...".

Clinton made a conscious choice, not once, but many times. If he can't be held responsible for that choice, then we would need to take every sex law off the books, and every promise made in marriage off the books and mark it all down as "beyond human control". (along with essentially the whole concept of "self control" or "personal responsibility") While there were certainly plenty of jokes that arose after the ludicris defense attempts about "what is is", very few conservatives "enjoyed" the travails of Clinton. They despised his chosen behavior in the White House and hated what it said about the country that even such blatant case of disrespect for the Presidency and the laws of the land could not be removed from office. Most of the same folks who defended Clinton (and often still do) are now wallowing in schadenfruede for Cheney.

This story is essentially no story at all beyond a basic report, but the response of the press and a number of people in the public is the story. It lets us see that the souls of a lot of our fellow citizens have become so corrupted that they now display their dark side with pride and joy. Springtime indeed, Sig Heil! Enjoyment of the dark side is far from a new device to control the unsuspecting masses.