Another Leftist Lie Collapses -- We Aren't Running Out of Energy Resources

Several years ago a friend of mine who had a long career as a petroleum geologist told me that it would be best to think of fossil fuels as a renewable resource because technological advances were constantly increasing the store of fuels available for exploitation. Of course back then Al Gore was all the rage and the public was being barraged by an endless stream of Green propaganda. His words were a direct contradiction of one of the most important green talking points -- the idea that we were running out of cheap fossil fuels. I was intrigued. Here was a guy who knew what he was talking about telling me that the politically approved experts were wrong and I kept his advice in mind as one by one the pillars of the green movement, even Al Gore, came toppling down.

It turns out that my friend was right. Even lefty ideologues like Michael Lind are finally forced to admit that "Everything You've Heard About Fossil Fuels May Be Wrong"! It's a remarkable piece, especially because it appears in the left-wing journal, Salon. Lind writes:

The arguments for converting the U.S. economy to wind, solar and biomass energy have collapsed. The date of depletion of fossil fuels has been pushed back into the future by centuries -- or millennia. The abundance and geographic diversity of fossil fuels made possible by technology in time will reduce the dependence of the U.S. on particular foreign energy exporters, eliminating the national security argument for renewable energy. And if the worst-case scenarios for climate change were plausible, then the most effective way to avert catastrophic global warming would be the rapid expansion of nuclear power, not over-complicated schemes worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote to carpet the world’s deserts and prairies with solar panels and wind farms that would provide only intermittent energy from weak and diffuse sources.

....


Eventually civilization may well run out of natural gas and other fossil fuels that are recoverable at a reasonable cost, and may be forced to switch permanently to other sources of energy. These are more likely to be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion than solar or wind power, which will be as weak, diffuse and intermittent a thousand years from now as they are today. But that is a problem for the inhabitants of the world of 2500 or 3000 A.D.

In the meantime, it appears that the prophets of an age of renewable energy following Peak Oil got things backwards. We may be living in the era of Peak Renewables, which will be followed by a very long Age of Fossil Fuels that has only just begun.

 Read the article here.
 
This is an amazing admission. Not only is the "renewable energy" fad sputtering and about to expire, but the abundance of cheap energy also undermines the major tenets of another lefty cause -- the "new urbanism" which assumes that expensive energy will reverse the flight of middle class people from urban areas. It also is a repudiation of much of the current administration's energy policy. If the lefties at Salon can accept that, maybe the idea stands a chance of penetrating the minds of even the most benighted liberal. At least we can hope.

Return to China -- Part 5, The Great Wall

Our next day began with a visit to the Great Wall at Juyongguan Pass. This section of the wall is famous, having been a military stronghold since the 88th century BC, and because of its proximity to Beijing is a favorite tourist destination. It is traditional for people to climb the steps to view the wall from a high place. I had done that two years ago and had no interest in repeating the experience so I remained at the main gate while others tried to prove themselves to be "real" men and women.

This is a picture of the more difficult climb. Three of our party ascended and only one returned. The other two took a wrong turn and wound up in a parking lot some distance away from the main group, which caused our guides no small amount of consternation. Eventually we were all reunited.

The easier slope favored by most. It's actually not all that easy, largely because the steps are very uneven. You have to keep an eye on where you place your feet because it's a long tumble down.

I wasn't the only one to remain on the lower levels of the wall.

And while we amused ourselves in various ways, our guide took a short nap at a coffee shop.

Then it was back onto the bus and off to our next destination -- a government-run ceramics outlet for one of many "shopping opportunities" we enjoyed.

Return to China -- Part 4, The Summer Palace

 Our next stop in Beijing was at the Summer Palace, yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. The current structure is little more than a century old, although parts of it go back to the mid-eighteenth century. It served as the summer residence of the infamous dowager empress CiXi in the early twentieth century and many of its features date from that period. The story always told about the Summer Palace is that it was largely constructed with funds diverted from national defense and was thus a betrayal of the nation's interest by irresponsible rulers. The most infamous symbol of this fecklessness, which we hoped to see, is the "marble boat" which lay at the opposite side of the lake from where we entered the palace grounds.

Our first view of the complex upon arrival featured the Kunming Lake and, in the distance, the Jade Peak Pagoda. It makes a nice picture, no?

Normally we would have crossed the lake on one of many "dragon boats" that were available, but there was an extremely high wind that rendered the lake unsafe.

The tour boats were berthed so we had to hoof it if we were going to see anything up close. Of course walking, or in my case ambling, presented lots of opportunities for pictures.

Here's another shot of the Jade Hill Pagoda. I was shooting into the sun, so many of the details are obscured, even with a polarizing filter. Along the lakeshore in the center of the picture is the beautiful Jade Belt Bridge. I wish it had come out better, it really is gorgeous.

And here is a closer shot of the palace complex. Too bad we only had a limited amount of time to see it.

And this is the famous "Seventeen Arch Bridge" on the far side of the lake. It was crowded with pedestrians heading toward the palace.

We finally arrived at the palace. This is a shot of the famous "Long Corridor", an intricately decorated passageway that leads to the heart of the complex and eventually to the infamous marble boat.

Unfortunately we were now out of time. Besides, the place was getting crowded and included these unsavory looking individuals. We rested for a few minutes, then began our journey back to the bus without seeing the marble boat. To my mind it's not really all that impressive [here's a picture I took of it a couple of years ago] but some of the party members were quite disappointed.

Return to China -- Part 3, Tiananmen Square

We exited the Forbidden City through the Tiananmen Gate and crossed over to Tiananmen Square just across the street.

The large pillar directly before us is the Monument to the People's Heroes, constructed back in the 1950s to commemorate the communist takeover of China. The writing on it literally says "The People's Heroes Ever Upright Not Decayed". The structure behind it is the mausoleum of Mao Zedong, leader of the revolution and the greatest mass murderer in the history of mankind.

The "Heroic People" themselves, portrayed in the act of rising up under the leadership of Mao to smash their "feudal" oppressors and to usher in a socialist paradise on Earth.

This building, stretching along the Western edge of the square is the Great Hall of the People where the Chinese parliament meets.

Directly opposite, along the Eastern edge of the square lies the National Museum of China. I would have liked to have seen it, but there was no time to do so.

We made our way southward along the Eastern edge of the square and encountered this structure -- the Zhengyangmen Gate, which once was part of the now destroyed city wall. It's a lovely building that formerly served as a military barracks and an archery tower protecting the entrance to the old city.

We waited for our bus to pick us up on the corner opposite this lovely old building, an example of the British imperial presence a century ago. It once was the main railway station. Today it is a railway museum and shopping arcade.

Then it was onto the bus for a short trip to see these guys. In Beijing you must try the Peking Duck and this place serves some of the best. It was yummy -- one of the best meals we had during our trip.

Retreat From Democracy

The media today is filled with news of the "Arab Spring" which they portray as a pro-democracy movement spreading through the Muslim world and to some extent this is true. The popular movements that have overthrown or threaten to depose strongmen throughout the region has the potential to advance democratic values, but such a felicitous outcome is by no means assured and hopeful characterizations of the disturbances as an advance for democracy mask a far broader, and far more disturbing trend -- a global retreat from democracy.

Back in January Freedom Watch issued a report that stated:

A total of 25 countries showed significant declines [in freedom] in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world.

With regard to the Arab world the report noted:

The Middle East and North Africa, which has long been the region with the lowest levels of democracy in the world, continued its steady decline in 2010. In addition to a reduction in Egypt resulting from the country’s sham elections, declines were seen in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iran. There were no status or ratings improvements in the region.

Of course things have changed since then and it might be argued that the revolts currently troubling regimes throughout the region were a direct response to the anti-democratic trends noted in the report, but this optimistic take must be considered within a far more depressing wider context.

Bertelsmann Stiftung recently released a report titled A World of Change: New Challenges for Economic and Political Transformation that observes:

The “democratic retreat” thesis has resurfaced in the context of several trends, including the autocratic tendencies observed in Russia and Venezuela, the erosion of rule-of-law standards in Nicaragua and South Africa, and the violent ousting of democratically elected governments, as happened in Thailand and Mauritania.

It is not so much that countries are shifting from "democratic" to "non-democratic" systems of government, but that an alarming number of nominally "democratic" countries are displaying authoritarian tendencies.

Over the last four years, the proportion of moderately defective democracies among all democratic systems has fallen from 62 percent to 49 percent, while the share of highly defective democracies climbed from 10 percent to 20 percent in the same period. In other words, although the number of democracies may have remained almost unchanged, the quality of several political systems outside of a highly stable top group is showing significant erosion.

These authoritarian tendencies include significant restrictions on freedom of the press and of rights of assembly, as well as disregard for the rule of law, widespread corruption, abuse of office, the weakening of stable and representative parties, and a general breakdown in trust and social capital in the national societies.

Some of these, you may note, are becoming problems in our own society.

So, celebrate the Arab Spring if you will, but keep in mind that the outcome is already becoming problematic and that it is set against a much broader trend that threatens to reverse the dramatic democratic gains that were made in the two decades after the end of the Cold War.

Return to China -- Part 2, The Forbidden City

Of course once we were in Beijing a visit to the Forbidden City was practically mandatory. It seems to be the starting point for nearly every tour, so early on the morning of our first full day in China we were up and on our way there. In the past we had entered the Forbidden City through the South Gate which fronts on Tiananmen Square and immediately found ourselves in one of the city's famous immense courtyards [here]. This time, however, we came in through the North Gate and entered the more intimate environs of the imperial residences.

Here's our local guide, "Susanna", who showed us through the complex.

And here is a picture of "Gavin", our national guide who stayed with us throughout the trip.

Both of them were pleasant, competent, and quite helpful. Gavin in particular proved to be invaluable to us later in the trip.

Most of the pictures taken in the Forbidden City feature the immensity of the place -- 9999 rooms including huge courtyards. Indeed these were what had impressed me on our first visit. But this time I chose to focus on smaller details, like this ornate gate through which we entered the imperial compound.

Or this elaborately decorated roof,

Or these stones decorating a walkway,

Or this pomegranate decoration on a door,

Or a lonely plant clinging to these roof tiles,

Or even some chipped paint on a doorway,

And of course I had to take a picture of this mama lion -- everybody seems to.

Since we were there, I might as well include a look inside one of the rooms of the royal residences. Nice to look at, but it doesn't seem very comfortable.

And, because it is expected, here a a shot of one of the courtyards. Impressive, no?

As we were leaving we passed these guys on their way in. I'm not sure what their purpose was, and couldn't stick around to find out.

A final glance back as we left the Forbidden City and went on to our next stop, Tiananmen Square, right across the street.

Rethinking the "Good War"

During our recent trip I had an interesting conversation with a friend regarding revisionist views on World War Two. Coincidentally, the New York Times this weekend published a nice review article by Adam Kirsch on that same subject.

Kirsch, of course, is writing from a Left perspective and his most important objection to the standard World War Two narrative [which emphasizes America's moral commitment to democracy and human rights, the heroic valor of Anglo-American participants, and nourishes the notion that America won the good war] is that it encourages a belief in American exceptionalism. He notes that Anglo-American involvement in the war was little more than a "sideshow" compared to the horrific slaughter that took place on the Eastern front. He also questions Anglo-American claims to moral superiority, noting that our ally Stalin was easily as horrific a figure as was Hitler, that Churchill was motivated by profound racism not much different from that of Hitler, and that the Allies knowingly committed atrocities every bit as nasty as those perpetrated by our enemies.

Leftist myths are just as easily challenged, [For instance it is now quite clear that Fascism is not a creation of capitalism and that Fascism and socialism are far more similar in their origins and values than is generally admitted. Nor is the old Frankford School canard that conservatives are closet Nazis sustainable. Nor can the global catastrophe of the war be attributed simply to an excess of nationalism.] but Kirsch doesn't consider these at all. His only concern is to challenge the idea of American exceptionalism. Still, it is important to note that our common understanding of World War Two and the lessons we draw from it are problematic and that historical revisionism is not just a normal, but a healthy, enterprise. So, despite its biases and blind spots, Kirsch's piece is worth a read.

Check it out here.

Return to China -- Part 1, Airport to Airport

The first day of our trip started, as usual, at Dulles Airport. The terminal building once was an impressive, state of the art structure but is now beginning to show its age.

Sun reflecting off pack ice in the Arctic Ocean. Once again we took the polar express -- direct from Washington to Beijing, about a fourteen hour flight.

The famous ceiling at Beijing International Airport -- the second busiest airport in the world [after Atlanta]. Last time we were here it was supposedly the biggest airport in the world (Heathrow, we were told, could be contained within one of its parking lots) but has since been surpassed by Dubai. There seems to be a continuing competition between the Arabs and the Chinese seeing who can build the biggest and best prestige structures. Similar to the competition a century ago between the French and the Americans. Aaaaah. adolescents -- they never learn.

While we were waiting for our group to assemble I took a few pics of other passengers standing around. This one turned out pretty well, I think.

Then it was off in a bus to our hotel, then to dinner and to bed. The real adventure would start in the morning.

Deconstructing Tarentino

For years we have been told that Quentin Tarertino's genius was his near photographic memory for film images and plot situations and his ability to inject them into new projects. Of course all director/screenwriters do this to a certain extent, but this remix shows just how completely unoriginal is Tarentino's work.

Whale Watchers

For years now environmentalists have been screeching at the top of their voices about the depletion of oceanic resources. Fish stocks are depleted, they cry, and will soon disappear, and whales, especially, are being hunted to extinction. But that seems to not be the case after all.

Science Daily reports that studies supposedly documenting the depletion of fish stocks are based on erroneous methods. They count the number of fish caught and subtract them from the estimate of the total population without considering that stocks replenish themselves over time. An alternative approach that measures biomass rather than catch shows that many stocks that have been portrayed as depleted and on the path to extinction are in fact quite healthy and sustainable. Read about it here.

And as for whales, scientists from Duke University have found that while the number of whales appearing at older feeding and breeding grounds has declined recently, new "superaggregations" of whales have appeared in previously unstudied areas thousands of miles away from older, better studied, grounds. In other words, instead of declining the whales have simply moved. The scientists, of course, attribute this to climate change, but it could simply be a natural movement in response to the serial depletion of krill in feeding areas. Or, perhaps they are trying to avoid all those pesky humans who keep bothering them in their old feeding grounds. Read about it here.

A Concert of Mishaps

Last weekend "She Who Must Not Be Named" and I accompanied some friends to the latest in the Shriver Hall Concert Series. The featured artist was clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich, a remarkable young talent. It was one of the most fun concerts we had attended in recent years, mostly because everything that could go wrong did, and Gleb was more than able to deal with the sequential challenges.

The first piece on the program was an old standard, Bach's "Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Major for Flute and Harpsichord". It was a bit different from what you usually hear because it was performed by Clinton Adams on piano and Gleb on E-flat clarinet, but was nicely done. The same two performers then did "Five Dance Preludes for Clarinet and Piano" by Witold Lutoslawski, which was more to my taste. I was starting to really enjoy the program.

Then things began to go agley. Next on the program was Andre Jolivet's "Sonatine for Flute and Clarinet" with Elena Yakovleva joining Gleb on the stage. Unfortunately, Ms. Yakovleva was still en route to the concert hall, so Gleb and Dr. Adams  performed instead a short piece by Camille Saint Saens that did not go very well. It was clear that they had not been able to rehearse the piece. Still, both were fine musicians and the piece was pleasant.

Then came intermission during which Gleb reappeared on stage to announce that there was yet another change to the program. He was scheduled to perform Mozart's "Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A Major", but some of the string players had not appeared. So he was going to improvise, performing two pieces that did not need external accompaniment. The first of these, Valentin Silvestrov's "Misterioso", was scored for piano and clarinet and Gleb proposed to perform both parts himself. Here is a video of Gleb rehearsing the piece. Weird, but impressive. I liked it. I was also struck how much it, like many modern chamber pieces, sounded like the sound track to a horror film.Things were starting to get really interesting.







Gleb then announced that his next piece would be Steve Reich's "New York Counterpoint" which he would perform backed by ten clarinet parts he had previously recorded, but first he had to take care of  some "technical problems" with his instrument. He left the stage.

A few minutes later he reappeared accompanied by a beautiful young woman and announced yet another change in the program. Elena Yakovleva had finally arrived and they would be performing the Jolivet piece they had originally promised. Here's how it sounded.



With that the concert, and the seemingly endless series of mishaps, came to an end. It was an interesting experience. I was impressed by the virtuosity of the young man and his ability to substitute appropriate pieces from his repertoire -- ones that did not rely upon accompaniment. Discussing it afterwards we all agreed that we had thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Our congratulations to Mr. Kanasevich, may his career flourish. I expect it will.

The Greatest of All Time

Critics overwhelmingly choose Citizen Kane as the greatest picture of all time. Nigel Andrews explains why.

It storms after us down the corridors of history like its own hero. Bloated, grotesque, tremendous; destroying as it goes; influencing and renewing too. Every fresh decade calls it the best film ever made. Every new generation poses and tries to answer the question, "Why?"

Citizen Kane is 70. Three score years and 10 after its New York premiere in May 1941, it is still everywhere. Not just in its own flesh, as reissue, telecast or DVD, but in the monstrous spell it casts on filmmakers. 

Read the whole thing here.

I've seen the film at least a dozen times and each time I find something new to marvel at. It's not my favorite film [I'm not really sure what that would be], but it certainly is the greatest and most interesting I have ever seen!

Why Mel Gibson Must Be Rehabilitated

Joe Queenan explains why the film industry cannot afford to lose Mel Gibson:

If the year 2010 is the year Gibson goes down for the count, that is not necessarily something to cheer about, at least not from the film buff's point of view.... This is not an industry that can afford to lose talented actors and directors; it doesn't have that many of them. Moreover, you simply cannot talk about the last three decades of motion picture history without talking about Gibson's part in it. He is a linchpin of the industry, the kind of mainstream actor (not unlike John Wayne or Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood) who does not himself win acting awards, but without whom there would be no actors making films. Whatever you may think of him, Mel Gibson is Hollywood.

Read it here.

He's right. Absent government subsidy, film makers must depend on attracting viewers, and that is something that Mel Gibson, throughout his career, has been able to do. And he has done it very well. What is more, he takes chances and pushes the limits of the medium in interesting ways. He is, for all his embarrassments, a major figure who is still young enough to be making important films. I, for one, would like to see them.

The Good President (continued) -- Vindication

Christopher Taylor writes in the Washington Examiner:

President Bush was reviled and hated at an almost unbelievable level while in office, with almost no accusation or conspiracy theory untried or unbelieved by the left. Every single action the man took was considered evil and horrible, every single event was an excuse to shower bitterness and spite toward the man and all he did. President Obama's career and political campaign for eight years was largely shaped by how he acted toward President George W. Bush. Now all that has changed.

In one event, on May Day, the entire case against President Bush was demolished by one of his greatest critics: President Obama.

Read the whole thing here.

Of course Taylor is overstating the case, but that is what pundits do. It is true, however, that President Obama's actions with regard to the GWOT have generally confirmed the wisdom of his predecessor's precedents. Moreover, the political Left's case against President Bush has been pretty much demolished and their hypocrisy is prominently on display for all to see. All this is great and good to see, but there is danger here too. If we allow Obama's partisans to redefine the GWOT as a hunt for Bin Laden, we diminish and de-legitimate the far more important elements of our national efforts over the past decade. Operations in Iraq may have revealed important information on al Qaeda and Bin Laden, but that was not their only, or even their most important, purpose. We must not allow the Left to use the assassination of Bin Laden as a means to undermine our accomplishments and efforts elsewhere.

Bin Laden is Dead!

Best news possible. It has little operational significance, but it still is a great and good thing. Congratulations to both Presidents Bush and Obama, and to the men and women of our military.

ABC News reports:

Osama Bin Laden was killed not by a drone strike, but up close during a firefight with U.S. troops. He was not living in a cave when he died, but in a million-dollar mansion with seven-foot walls just 40 miles from the Pakistani capital, where U.S. forces killed him Sunday. 

The U.S. had been monitoring the compound in Abbottabad for months after receiving a tip in August that Bin Laden might be seeking shelter there. He had long been said to be in the mountainous region along the Afghanistan, Pakistan border, hiding in a cave as the U.S. sought to kill him with drone strikes from above. Instead, he was in a house eight times larger than its neighbors, with a seven-foot wall and valued at $1 million. The house had no phone of television and the residents burned their trash. The house had high windows and few points of access, and U.S. officials concluded it had been built to hide someone.

According to U.S. officials, two U.S. helicopters swept into the compound at 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Twenty to 25 U.S. Navy Seals under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command in cooperation with the CIA stormed the compound and engaged Bin Laden and his men in a firefight, killed Bin Laden and all those with him.

Read the whole thing here.

CBS News video report here.

Obama's announcement:



Perhaps the best thing about this is the way that the nation is drawing together to rejoice. Sure there are carpers in the blogosphere, but they are of no consequence. This is a great triumph for our nation, our military, and our political leadership, both in the previous administration and the current one.

I am glad to see that Obama makes the point that this is not the end -- that the war continues. All credit to him for his persistence in the face of intense political pressure from elements of his own party to quit.

Note to al Zawahiri -- you're next.

President Bush's statement:

Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001.  I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission.  They have our everlasting gratitude.  This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.  The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message:  No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.

From NRO Corner

Fight Of the Century -- Hayel v Keynes, Round 2

Econorap -- It's wonderful!

S.E. Cupp on "That Rock 'n' Roll Dude"

Superhot S. E. Cupp is promoting Rep. Thaddeus "that rock 'n' roll dude" McCotter for president [here]. The Republicans could do a lot worse. I've seen McCotter in action on Gutfeld's show [S. E. Cupp appears there too] and his intelligence, humor and command of the issues is evident. He is definitely a rising star in the Republican firmament. He won't be the nominee for President, and probably wouldn't want the gig, but he would make an outstanding VP candidate.

The Continuing Collapse of Scientific Authority

You can't always believe what you read in elite peer-reviewed journals. Even the top journals in medicine frequently publish erroneous or falsified information. And the problem is getting worse over time. The number of articles retracted in major journals has been increasing in recent years. To some extent this is because journal editors, at last awakened to the scope of the problems, have been combing through past publications to root out false and erroneous articles, but the fact that so much misinformation has been published and has gone unchallenged for so long should serve as a reminder that science is a human enterprise and as such subject to all the foibles of humanity.

I Thought She Was Supposed to Be the Dumb One

From the New York Sun:

The big question as Chairman Bernanke gets set for his first quarterly press conference is how Sarah Palin was able to figure out sooner than everyone else that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of quantitative easing wouldn’t work. Disappointment in the Fed’s policies is being reported this morning at the top of page one of the New York Times. It reports that “most Americans are not feeling the difference” from the Fed’s “experimental effort to spur a recovery by purchasing vast quantities of federal debt.” It reports that “a broad range of economists say that the disappointing results show the limits of the central bank’s ability to lift the nation from its economic malaise.”

It’s a terrific story, and well-timed, given that on Wednesday Mr. Bernanke will break tradition and meet with the press. It is part of the Fed’s effort to get ahead of what is emerging as a public relations catastrophe, as gasoline is nearing six dollars a gallon at some pumps, the cost of groceries is skyrocketing, and the value of the dollars that Mr. Bernanke’s institution issues as Federal Reserve notes has collapsed to less than a 1,500^th of an ounce of gold. Unemployment is still high. Shakespeare couldn’t come up with a better plot. But how in the world did Mrs. Palin, who is supposed to be so thick, manage to figure all this out so far ahead of the New York Times and all the economists it talked to?

She did this back in November in a speech at Phoenix, which the Wall Street Journal, in a laudatory editorial at the time, characterized as zeroing in on the connection between a weak dollar and rising prices for oil and food. “We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth brought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings,” the Journal quoted Mrs. Palin as saying. “We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It's the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.” Now here is the New York Times quoting a raft of economists who have reached the conclusion that Mrs. Palin’s warning was right down the line.

The past few years should have been a humbling experience for the self-proclaimed "best and brightest" who arrogantly claim on the basis of achieved academic credentials the right to order other people's lives. Time and again they have erred in judgment and made an unholy mess of things. Nowhere has the failure of expertise been more on display than in the official response to our current economic crisis.The fact that the much derided former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, a product of public schools and universities, should have more clearly seen the consequences of Fed action than Chairman Bernanke and a host of highly acclaimed economists should be a sobering reminder that effective governance has little to do with technocracy. Wise governance is learned not in textbooks or academic and administrative settings, but in the hurlyburly of practical political striving. Few politicians in my lifetime have displayed such profound understanding of the needs and aspirations of ordinary people as has Sarah Palin. She understands life in ways that Ben Bernanke and the credentialed elites never will. Hers is a voice that should be heeded, but in their blinkered arrogance the beltway crowd will never understand that. It is up to the voters to teach them that essential lesson. 

The Fracking Debate

McCain's Heroes

More and more I am coming to the conclusion that as bad as Obama is [and he is horrible] McCain would have been worse.

From the WaPo:

Libyan rebels welcomed President Obama’s deployment of armed Predator drones and received praise from their most prominent U.S. visitor Friday, as they expressed hope that increased American support would help turn the tide in a conflict that the top U.S. military officer acknowledged is becoming deadlocked.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an early proponent of helping the rebels in their fight against forces loyal to longtime leader Moammar Gaddafi, arrived Friday in Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital in eastern Libya, and told reporters that the anti-Gaddafi fighters are his heroes.

Read the whole thing here. [emphasis mine]

Were they his heroes when they were trying to kill Americans?

McCain and Obama are indeed chuckleheads, but it is hard to blame them for their follies. They are imprisoned in institutional and ideological formulations that had their origins in the military and economic crises of the mid-twentieth century -- modes of thinking and acting that, in the post-Cold War world, are increasingly obsolete. McCain is a product of the national security state. Obama has embraced the alternative doctrines of liberal transnationalism. Both are irrelevant to the world of the Twenty First Century and attempts to apply them are proving to be destructive.

These are Supposed To Be the Good Guys

We have been assured that in the Libya conflict we are on the side of angels. Well..., fallen angels perhaps. Pajamas Media links to videos of blatant human rights offenses perpetrated by the anti-Quaddafi forces we are backing, but about whom we know very little. The more we see of them, though, the less deserving of support they seem.

While the International Criminal Court has announced that it is investigating charges of war crimes against Muammar al-Gaddafi and other members of the Libyan regime, harrowing video evidence has emerged that appears to show atrocities committed by anti-Gaddafi rebels. Among other things, the footage depicts summary executions, a prisoner being lynched, the desecration of corpses, and even a beheading. The targets of the most serious abuse are frequently black African prisoners. The ultimate source of the footage appears to be rebel forces or sympathizers themselves.

Check out the whole thing here.

That's right. They took these videos themselves and broadcast them. They seem to be proud of what they are doing and see a political payoff in advertising their barbarity.

Explain to me again just why we are supporting these guys?

We Have Met the Enemy....

and it is the next generation.

ht: Jonah

Amazing Undersea Photos

It's easy to take photos like this. Alexander Semenov explains:

It’s simple: Take a camera and macro lens, and encase it in an underwater housing. Connect all the cords, close it, check all edges and buttons, and check your underwater strobes. Then lug all (approximately) 8kg of your high tech photography equipment out on the boat, dive into the sea, and find your creature. Manually set up all parameters of the camera and strobes—then be sure not to move or even breath—and adjust your camera to find the right focus point (no auto-focusing, all manual). Press the shutter button, and that's it. Well, almost. There are always some environmental issues, such as currents, icy cold water (-2*C), total darkness below 20m depth, constant turbidity, and more. But you can get accustomed to it after about two or three hundreds dives. Good luck!  

Check out the whole interview, accompanied by fabulous photos here.

Sarah Hits A Homer

Sarah Palin gave a speech in Madison, Wisconsin and showed just why she has to be taken seriously as a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election cycle. She takes it to Obama hard, clear, and direct. This is one lady who cannot be ignored. Check her speech out here.

Wow!

Here's how Reuters reported the event:

Sarah Palin rides to the sound of the guns. It was a chilly, wet and blustery afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin — one more appropriate for a late-season Packers game than a springtime political rally. The stirring NFL Films theme,  “The Classic Battle,” would’ve been a more apt musical choice than Van Halen’s “Right Now” to accompany Palin as she entered the stage outside the state capital building to address thousands of Tea Party members, along with a good number of extremely hostile, expletive-hurling government union rowdies.

In the last few months, political professionals and insiders have been writing off the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate, convinced she won’t run for the GOP nomination in 2012 or ever. Then again, even those GOPers who are running can hardly compete with the MSM’s weird, all-consuming fascination with The Donald.

But all it took was one powerful, pugnacious and presidential speech — just 15 minutes long — for Palin to again make herself completely relevant to the current political and policy battles raging across America.

 Read the whole thing here.

Marx and the Academics

Ron Radosh has a nice review of Terry Eagleton's latest whitewash of Marxism over at Pajamas Media. He writes:

For some reason, every time a modern capitalist economy faces a problem such as our current fiscal crisis here in the United States, members of the academy trout out Karl Marx as the solution. The latest example comes from The Chronicle Review, the literary supplement of The Chronicle of Higher Education. It is written by the British activist and writer Terry Eagleton, and is based on his new book, Why Marx was Right.

We all are all too familiar with the fact that while the world is moving away from social democracy, not to speak of Marxism as a philosophy, it always remains alive and well in our institutions of higher learning. Eagleton is too smart to not be unaware of the serious challenges to Marxism, especially the major defeat it suffered after the fall of the Soviet Union. So he acknowledges this at the start. He writes:
“Were not Marx’s ideas responsible for despotism, mass murder, labor camps, economic catastrophe, and the loss of liberty for millions of men and women? Was not one of his devoted disciples a paranoid Georgian peasant by the name of Stalin, and another a brutal Chinese dictator who may well have had the blood of some 30 million of his people on his hands?”

You know what is coming next, if you are even slightly bit familiar with the Left’s fallback position: Marx was not responsible for the wrong interpretations made of his work by the totalitarians of the last century.  Sure enough, Eagleton argues that “Marx was no more responsible for the monstrous oppression of the communist world than Jesus was responsible for the Inquisition.”

Well, that sets up a nice false equivalency. See how Radosh handles it here.

Shooting Fish In A Barrel

Add another nail to the coffin of global warming theory and the IPCC report upon which policy recommendations are based. Check out Douglas Keenan's article in the WSJ. He does a pretty good job of explaining just how inadequate was the statistical analysis on which the IPCC relied. Warning: a little familiarity with stat theory is helpful.

Read it here.

150 Years Ago Today -- War!!!

Today marks the onset of open hostilities in the American Civil War. Here's the news that greeted people in Philadelphia on that day.

The Beltway Bunch versus America

Mickey Kaus, one of the brightest guys doing political analysis, explains where the real lines of conflict are drawn in the budget debate -- hint, it's not where the media are telling you it is. 

There’s a $1.6 trillion deficit but the feds are still hiring. As of March 23 they were hiring someone to run a Facebook page for the Deparment of the Interior (at up to $115,000 a year). They were hiring equal opportunity compliance officers at the Peace Corps and Department of Interior for $150,000 to $180,000 a pop. They were hiring deputy speechwriters for officials at relatively obscure agencies. …P.S.: The point isn’t so much that these federal employees are overpaid, though they are. The point is that if there were any actual sense of a deficit crisis in Washington these are jobs that would not be filled at all. 

Instead of tightening their belts, denizens of the beltway precincts are attempting to shift attention away from discretionary spending [where their bread is buttered] to entitlements spending [which benefits the public at large]. Kaus admits that entitlements is where the big money is, but the refusal of the beltway crowd to share in the pain is, to him, suspicious.

[I]t looks like a tacit conspiracy of Washingtonians not to sacrifice the jobs of any of their friends, or the local economy, by any kind of actual slimming down (of the sort a private company in similar straits would have undertaken years ago).

He asks, Why not wring the fat out of government first?

 

Good question.

Read the whole piece here

Stonehenge Close Up

Stonehenge - About as close as you can get in England

Lies of the Left (continued) -- "The Kingdom of Lies"

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

I am a subject in a kingdom of lies. At 57, I have grown up with decades of untruth — advanced for the purposes of purported social unity, the noble aim of egalitarianism, and the advancement of a cognitive elite in government, journalism, the arts, and the universities.


Alger Hiss really was a communist operative, albeit an elegant and snooty sort of one. The Rosenbergs were tag-team spies. Noble Laureate Rigoberta Menchu did not really write her own memoir. I admire the lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, even as I sensed there were large areas of their biographies that simply could not be disclosed and that the censorship was apparently for our own good. I know that if I did what Eliot Spitzer did I would not be hosting a TV show.


I did not quite know how “witch hunt” characterized the often disreputable tactics of Joe McCarthy — cruel and obnoxious were the better adjectives. You see, there were really communists in Hollywood at a time of a dangerous global cold war against communism, in a way there were never any witches at all in Salem.
But then for some reason I sensed that a murderous, camouflaged Fidel Castro killed more innocents than a murderous, gold-braided Augusto Pinochet. I accepted that we were to be silent about the former’s crimes since his ends were said to be good, while the latter’s crimes were for the bad — though economists of no particular political affiliations have shown that Chileans escaped poverty and dictatorship while Cubans were, and are still, plagued by both.

He's just getting started. Read the whole thing here and ponder the magnitude, persistence and pervasiveness of the falsehoods on which our contemporary culture is based, and how profoundly they represent a repudiation of our national experience prior to the 1960's. 

Slowly I Turned....

A conversation with an old friend brought to mind this comedy treasure from burlesque theater. Here's Lucille Ball's version of it. Enjoy!

Obama's Fantasyland

The great debate continues -- are the many and manifest failures of the Obama administration attributable to sheer incompetence, or are they informed by guiding principles?

Nile Gardiner, writing in The Telegraph, thinks it is the former. He sees "a clueless presidency adrift in a sea of confusion" of which the Libya misadventure is only the most recent instance. [here]. Steven Metz, over at the New Republic, disagrees. He strives mightily to discern within the seemingly random impulses generated from the White House a coherent strategy. He writes:

Put simply, Obama’s Libya strategy is designed to avoid the most undesirable outcomes rather than optimize the chances of a desired outcome, to do something without “owning” the conflict, to maintain maximum flexibility as the situation evolves, and to do all of this in the face of powerful constraints. The question is whether this strategy can actually work.

Read it here.

I will give Metz credit for ingenuity. He alone seems to have some idea of what is going on in Obama's mind. I, on the other hand, think the wise course is never to ascribe to conspiracy what can just as easily be explained as incompetence. At least I hope so. Responding to Metz' article Richard Fernandez notes that if he is right then Obama has fled the real world for a fantasyland of legal fictions.

In that strategic world, no matter the galaxy it inhabits, neither victory nor defeat exist.  It’s gone. Poof. Finished. Kaput. America can tag along on expeditions which it pays for, but cares not where it leads. Best of all, it isn’t war, repeat: it isn’t war. Therefore the President doesn’t have to ask Congress for permission to make it.

....

[S]uch a strategy, if accurately described by Metz may really represent the ultimate triumph of lawfare over common sense. Of fantasy over reality. Of the cartoon network over the news channel. Strategy becomes ultimately an affair of words, perceptions and formulations. There is no objective correlative between these fancy concepts and physical events like death, the occupation of cities, looting, curfews, the forced movement of persons or things of that sort.

But Fernandez notes fantasies are not innocuous. They do have real world consequences.

You may tell a man that if he feels a boot in his face or a bayonet in his gut to imagine it isn’t there. Unfortunately he still feels it, but so long as all the gunpowder and blood remain overseas, and only ink and talking points are shed domestically, then a boot isn’t a boot and a bayonet isn’t a bayonet.

Read the whole thing here.

So in the end it really doesn't matter whether the failed policies are attributable to incompetence or malfeasance. What matters is that the failures have real world consequences from which millions of people are and will be suffering. As I have pointed out in a number of posts, the objective state of the world became much better during the Bush presidency. I doubt that we will be able to say the same of his successor.

Film Studies 101 -- The Future of Film

"The Future of Film" by Joseph Susanka

Film is not dead.
 
Well, film as a format might be dead. When such cinematographic greats as Dante Spinotti, John Seale, and the criminally underappreciated Roger Deakins begin proclaiming the extraordinary technical and artistic benefits of shooting digitally, the writing is definitely on the wall.

But film as an art form? As an exciting, engaging way to tell stories; to explore human nature in its many fascinating facets; to communicate with others and challenge them to consider great truths? Borrowing from Twain's immortal words, the rumors of film's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Read the whole thing here.

Film may have a future, but does Hollywood?

Mark Harris writes:

[L]et's look ahead to what's on the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.

Can Hollywood continue to survive churning out such crapola?

Harris thinks so. Read why here.

Burning the Koran

Yes, Terry Jones act of book burning was provocative, offensive, and irresponsible.

No, he should not be prosecuted, investigated, or the subject of any official response. We do have rights, and he was exercising his.

Jones is a moron, but he is in no way worse than those infantile "artists" who deface or offensively represent Christian symbols. They are offensive, irresponsible morons too.

Nor is he any worse than Bill Ayres or any of the other creeps who deface or destroy the American flag.

In no way is Pastor Jones responsible for the deaths of people in Afghanistan. If you wish to condemn him, then you must assign equal responsibility to the news media who publicized his actions, to Hamid Karzai who exploited those reports for political gain, and to the Muslim religious zealots who instigated riots. But, in the final analysis, the only responsible parties are those sub-human wretches who carried out the murders.

The most dangerous and dismaying aspect of the whole affair is the opinion expressed by various government and media figures to the effect that Pastor Jones should be investigated, the subject of other official actions, etc.

That's all I have to say on the subject.

I leave further comment to Christopher Hitchens [here].

The Good President (continued) -- Guantanamo

Well, it took a while, but our fine young President, on the very day he announces his re-election bid, finally admits that President Bush was right on Guantanamo, he just can't bring himself to say the worlds. Instead we get [from the NYT]:

WASHINGTON — In a major reversal, the Obama administration has decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for his role in the attacks of Sept. 11 before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and not in a civilian courtroom. 

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to announce on Monday afternoon that Mr. Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the attacks, and four other accused conspirators will face charges before a panel of military officers, a law enforcement official said. The Justice Department has scheduled a press conference for 2 p.m. Eastern time. 

Read it here.

Another tacit admission that on all the things that really matter, Bush was right.

Things Fall Apart

The liberal-progressive synthesis that has dominated our political culture through most of the past century is rapidly disintegrating. Jonah Goldberg points out some of the most prominent instances:

For the last two years, the old ways of Washington have been crashing down like pillars of Mordor at the end of The Lord of the Rings.

Then-candidate Obama was himself fond of noting that the conventional wisdom — or “CW” — was that a black guy with a funny name could never be elected president.  

....

Coming into office during a wrenching financial crisis, the conventional wisdom was that the American people would rally around New Deal policies. At least that’s what liberal historians and political scientists said they should do.

The experts were wrong.

He discusses a number of other areas in which the 

The reason, of course, that the conventional expert opinion has regularly, and sometimes spectacularly, been wrong in its assumptions is that the political culture is changing. In hindsight you can see the harbingers -- the tax revolt, Perot, the success of anti-Washington candidates, etc. but intellectual habits die hard. It will take a real shock to the system to finally convince the political class that the old progressive nostrums no longer apply.

Now who is going to administer that shock.

The Good President (continued) -- TARP

In the avalanche of anti-Bush hysteria ginned up by political opportunists and journalistic know nothings in the past few years every one of his actions has been subject to intense criticism -- none more so than TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] created by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, signed into law back in October, 2008. Variously attacked as a "bailout" for Wall Street, a "takeover" of the banking industry, and a mean-spirited and limited failure to respond effectively in the face of economic collapse, TARP has actually been one of the most successful government responses to an economic crises in history. At least that is what Robert Samuelson has argued. He writes:

It isn’t often that the government launches a major program that achieves its main goals at a tiny fraction of its estimated costs. That’s the story of TARP — the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Created in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, it helped stabilize the economy, using only $410 billion of its authorized $700 billion. And most of that will be repaid. The Congressional Budget Office, which once projected TARP’s ultimate cost at $356 billion, now says $19 billion. 

This could go lower.

One lesson of the financial crisis is this: When the entire financial system succumbs to panic, only the government is powerful enough to prevent a complete collapse. Panics signify the triumph of fear. TARP was part of the process by which fear was overcome. It wasn’t the only part, but it was an essential part. Without TARP, we’d be worse off today.

Indeed we would! One might quibble with some ways in which the Obama administration has administered the program -- I certainly would -- but as originally conceived and signed into law by President Bush it has been a stunning accomplishment. It is important to appreciate this. TARP is one of the few examples in which the government has responded effectively to economic crisis. There will be other such crises and it will be to nobody's benefit if the shining example set by President Bush should be buried under a cloud of politically-inspired acrimony.

Read Samuelson's column here.

Film Studies 101: Gone With the Wind as a Postapocalyptic Epic

An interesting take on one of the greatest films of all time. A world destroyed and then the saga of survivors' attempt to rebuild their ruined lives.

Obama and the "Three Graces"

Victor Davis Hanson, the great summarizer, asks the question:

how did Obama, the archetype war critic, find himself bombing—in optional and preemptive fashion, and without congressional authority — an Arab Muslim oil-exporting country, and one that posed no immediate threat to American national security, despite being governed by a monster who, nevertheless, had been recently courted by Western intellectuals, academics, universities, and diplomats?

His answer is the best, most coherent, short summary of the crisis I have seen yet.

Read it here.