Thomas Sowell, warning about the consequences of a "stimulus package":
Things that are bipartisan are often twice as bad as things that are partisan.
And:
We are far more rational when discussing sports than when discussing politics.
Despite his relative popularity, President Clinton was largely a disaster for his party. He campaigned as a “different kind of Democrat” and helped marginalize the “progressive” wing of his party. During his term, Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress. Clinton’s “third way” philosophy and triangulating tactics kept his approval ratings high but at the expense of moving the country to the right on various social and economic issues. . . .Now look at Bush’s tenure. He ran in 2000 as a “different kind of Republican.” And just as Clinton moved rightward on race and big-government liberalism, Bush tacked leftward toward the center on race and small-government conservatism. . . . [R]hetorically, his compassionate conservatism reversed a generation-long stance on the need to curtail the ambitions of government, just as Clinton’s New Democrat rhetoric abdicated liberalism’s decades-long campaign for a European-style welfare state. Bush in effect conceded the liberal complaint that small government was objectively hardhearted, while Clinton conceded the conservative complaint that orthodox liberalism was too utopian. . . .
Clinton left office insisting that he’d restored liberalism in America, but in reality he bequeathed a confused mishmash of ill-formed ideas, slogans, and hatreds. President Bush is winding down his presidency much the same way, talking about limited government, personal liberty, and spending restraint, but he’s left his party’s troops scattered across the battlefield, with no overarching strategy and an awful lot of friendly fire.
Goldberg concludes,
We were warned. Bush and Clinton promised to be different kinds of leaders. And they delivered.
So it is over. Finished. In November, we'll be sending out our most liberal, least trustworthy candidate [to] take on Hillary Clinton—perhaps not more liberal than Barack Obama, but certainly far less trustworthy.And the worst part for the Right is that McCain will have won the nomination while ignoring, insulting and, as of this weekend, shamelessly lying about conservatives and conservatism.
You think he supported amnesty six months ago? You think he was squishy on tax cuts and judicial nominees before? Wait until he has the power to anger every conservative in America, and feel good about it.
Every day, he dreams of a world filled with happy Democrats and insulted Republicans. And he is, thanks to Florida, the presidential nominee of the Republican party.
And on that note, I'm off to climb into a bottle of Bushmill's. It's going to be a LONG nine months.
That's Daniel Pipes's suggestion. But would Egypt want it?
Has the sheer awfulness of the Anglosphere Left ever been on such open display? Both the unscrupulousness and dishonesty of careerist white liberals and the clouds of gassy rhetoric with which the ethnic lobbies veil their acquisitive resentment? Say what you like about this campaign, we're getting some good instruction in the nature of modern liberalism.
One of the most revealing moments of Bill Clinton's presidency was one that the public didn't see. I remember reading that after the Senate voted to acquit him, Clinton wanted in his first speech to lambaste Kenneth Starr, who led the investigation that resulted in Clinton's impeachment. The detail that stays with me is that Clinton's aides had to restrain him physically until they persuaded him to give a more diplomatic address. That sequence of events isn't a bad summary of his presidency: an angry, unruly man groomed by an army of assistants into the appearance, but only the appearance, of smoothness and good humor.
I thought of that anecdote when I read about Jonah Goldberg's experience on The Daily Show this past week. I didn't watch it, but evidently it didn't go well, at least from Goldberg's perspective (and Stewart's perhaps). When I wrote beforehand that I thought it a huge mistake for David Frum, and then Goldberg, to appear on the program, I hadn't considered that Stewart might prove unprofessional. I'd forgotten about the writers' strike and the effect it might have on preparations for the show, and on the host's demeanor.
From several descriptions, I gather that viewers saw the leftward bias that Stewart's writers, producers and staff normally manage to make entertaining (though not to me). That glimpse behind the Daily Show curtain is one of two possibly good results of Goldberg's interview. The other is that, having seen how Stewart feels about conservatives who come on his show, in future conservatives might decide, as they should, that they prefer not to be a party to it.
Trent Reznor and Saul Williams had a plan for selling Williams's new album (which Reznor produced and helped fund) online. The plan worked less well than Reznor, at least, had hoped:
Williams and Reznor were trying to follow the lead of Radiohead by distributing music online without the backing of a label. Like the British supergroup, Williams made the album available for free in one version but he also offered the option of buying a higher-quality digital download for $5. The promotions were groundbreaking and plenty of people predicted that a profitable outcome would convince many musicians to drop their labels and use the Internet to distribute their own artistic creations.And then Reznor ended the hoopla last week when he reported on his blog that 154,449 people had downloaded NiggyTardust and 28,322 of them paid the $5 as of January 2.
Reznor's reaction to the experience so far:
What disappointed me is that I had thought--and this is just based on how I experience music--given the opportunity (his voice trails off). Why do I end up stealing music? Usually because I can't get it easily somewhere else or the version I can get is an inferior one with DRM, perhaps, or I have to drive across town to get it to then put it on my computer or it's already out on the Internet and I can't pay for it yet.If I think of it a month later walking through Amoeba (record store), hmm...do I want to just buy a piece of plastic and give most of the money to the record labels, who have to be thieves because my experience with them has always been that? And you have a lot of reasons why you didn't do it. So I thought if you take all those away and here's the record in as great a quality as you could ever want, it's available now and it's offered for an insulting low price, which I consider $5 to be, I thought that it would appeal to more people than it did. That's where my sense of disappointment is in general, that the idea was wrong in my head and for once I've given people too much credit.
Saul and I went at this thing with the right intentions. We wanted to put out the music that we believe in. We want to do it as unencumbered and as un-revenue-ad-generated and un-corporate-affiliated as possible. We wanted it without a string attached, without the hassle, without the bait and switch, or the "Now you can buy the s**** version if you buy..." No, no, we said: "Here it is. At the same time, it'd be nice if we can cover the costs and perhaps make a living doing it."
I'm not saying that this is a completely accurate test. Yes, there is a possibility that people downloaded it and the same people went back and downloaded it and paid for it and that can throw the numbers off. I get all that.
It kind of gets into the bigger picture that you've had to face as a musician over the last few years, which in my mind was a bitter pill to swallow, but it's pretty far down the hatch with me now: the way things are, I think music should be looked at as free. It basically is. The toothpaste is out of the tube and a whole generation of people is accustomed to music being that way. There's a perception that you don't pay for music when you hear it on the radio or MySpace.
There's a difficult transition in the mind of the musician and certainly in the mind of the record label. If that is the case, how does one adapt to that?
In a separate interview, however, Williams is optimistic:
I think it's early in the game. I'm not disappointed at all. I think Trent's disappointment probably stems from being in the music business for over 20 years and remembering a time that was very different, when sales reflected something different, when there was no such thing as downloads. Trent is from another school. Even acts that prospered in the '90s, you look at people like the Fugees or Lauren [sic] Hill selling 18 million copies. That sort of thing is unheard of today. But Trent comes from that world. So I think his disappointed stems from being heavily invested in the past. For modern times, for modern numbers we're looking great, especially for being just two months into a project. . . .[T]he lifespan from my last album, from touring, which is really how I made my income and everything, lasted for two years. . . .
Trent talked about how happy he is that your music is in more iPods than ever before.
Williams: To me that's the real deal. That's how I see it. And that's what leaves me not feeling disappointed because we all know that artists earn the most from touring. So it doesn't work against me giving it away free to so many listeners. The more people that are into it, the more people that say 'I got to see this live.'
Six years ago, a Special Forces soldier, just back from Afghanistan, walked into the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and asked the technical people why his guys could not have a device that would allow them to watch the video being generated by a Predator, AC-130 or other aircraft overhead. Since it was the Special Forces troops on the ground who were running, and fighting, the ground battle, it would help them a lot if they could see the real time video from above. At that time, the video was being viewed by people in the aircraft, or the UAV operators (who often were back in the United States, running things via a satellite link.) The ground troops had to ask the air force what could be seen on the video, and there was usually a delay in getting that information. It would be much better for all concerned if the ground troops could see that video in real time.The air force went to work, and in two weeks had a ROVER (Remote Operations Video Enhanced Receiver) prototype that Special Forces personnel could take back to Afghanistan. ROVER I was not terribly portable, but the Special Forces could haul it around in a hummer, and see what any Predators overhead were seeing. This proved very useful. A few months later, ROVER II appeared, which allowed troops to view UAV vids on a laptop computer. By late 2004, Rover III, a 12 pound unit built to be carried in a backpack, was put into service.
Although ROVER IIIs cost $60,000 each, they address dozens of suggestions and complaints from the troops who used earlier ROVERs. Some 700 of these entered service within a year. They were used in Afghanistan and Iraq, and can grab video feeds from army, marine and air force UAVs and bomber targeting pods (which have great resolution, even when the aircraft are 20,000 feet up.)
The Rover IV appeared in 2005. [It] allowed users to point and click on targets to be hit. With Rover III, the guys on the ground could see what they want bombed, or hit with a missile, but had to talk the bombers to it. This happens often, especially when the target is behind a hill or buildings, preventing the ground troops from using their laser range finders to get a GPS location. With ROVER IV, the bomber pilot, or UAV operator, is looking at the same video as the ground troops, and can confirm that the indicated target is what is to be hit. This is particularly important in urban warfare, where the building next door might be full of innocent civilians.
Over a thousand people a day are fleeing Mogadishu, and ending up in improvised refugee camps on the outskirts. Foreign aid groups are having a hard time providing food and other materials, because of the many gunmen hanging out in these new camps. Moreover, the soldiers and police belonging to the Transitional Government are increasingly going into the banditry business. This has even resulted in armed standoffs between soldiers and policemen. With Mogadishu changing hands, thousands of armed clan militia fighters are being moved around, and made quite angry. The fighting will probably intensify, and UN peacekeepers are not going to arrive in sufficient numbers to change anything. About 300,000 people have fled Mogadishu in the last three months.
Three more snapshots:
In Mogadishu, 40 armed men attacked an NGO compound, killing a security guard and chasing the rest away. The compound was looted.In Puntland, police killed two members of a kidnapping gang, that had recently grabbed a French journalist, and a doctor and nurse working for a foreign aid group.
Several hundred Islamic Courts gunmen are believed to be moving towards the temporary Transitional Government capital in Baidoa.
Every time I read about Somalia, as about most other countries, I give thanks to my ancestors for emigrating to the US.
Later: The day after I posted this I realized I should've added to the previous sentence ". . . and to the founders of this nation, the framers of its Constitution, and the people who keep it free."
Mark Steyn notes that "Free Dominion, the Canadian version of Free Republic, is relocating to Panama." We've reached the point—I wouldn't have believed it possible—at which Canada is less protective of free speech than is Panama. Steyn quotes from a few related items, and observes,
The price of liberty is eternal offensiveness. There is a name for societies that successfully outlaw offensiveness from the public space: Totalitarian. . . .This is the future of "multiculturalism": a society in which, in the interests of protecting the "collective rights" of various identity groups, individual rights are circumscribed and public discourse is ever more regulated by the state. Good luck making that work, Canada.
[T]he best way to show support is to support the beleaguered publishers by taking out a subscription to Maclean's for you or a friend.
American subscriptions are expensive—$90 each—so if you can't afford one yourself, see if like-minded friends will chip in. It's a good cause.
(For background, try this National Review editorial. This piece from The Economist is also worth reading.)
Later: I want to quote a bit more from Steyn's post linked at top:
Here's my bottom line: I don't accept that free-born Canadian citizens need the permission of the Canadian state to read my columns. What's offensive is not the accusations of Dr Elmasry and his pals, but the willingness of Canada's pseudo-courts to take them seriously. So I couldn't care less about the verdict - except insofar as an acquittal would be more likely to bolster the cause of those who think it's entirely reasonable for the state to serve as editor-in-chief of privately owned magazines. As David Warren put it, the punishment is not the verdict but the process. To spend gazillions of dollars to get a win on points would do nothing for the cause of freedom of speech: It would signal to newspaper editors and book publishers and store owners that it's more trouble than it's worth publishing and printing and distributing and displaying anything on this subject, and so it would contribute to the shriveling of freedom in Canada.This is a political prosecution and it should be fought politically. The "plaintiffs" certainly understand that, ever since the day they went in to see Ken Whyte and demanded money from Maclean's. I want the constitutionality of this process overturned, so that Canadians are free to reach the same judgments about my writing as Americans and Britons and Australians and it stands or falls in the marketplace of ideas. The notion that a Norwegian imam can make a statement in Norway but if a Canadian magazine quotes that statement in Canada it's a "hate crime" should be deeply shaming to all Canadians.
This morning I spent 20 minutes mulling over a couple of offers for overseas rights to America Alone from the Islamic world. It seems that Muslim publishers from Turkey to Indonesia are more robust than Osgoode Hall law students. What a sad comment on the decayed Dominion.
Yes. Buy a subscription. I've already ordered mine.
Here is a far bigger crisis than global warming. Say good bye to Africa's wildlife as Sub-Saharan Africa's population doubles or more to between 1.5 and 2 billion by 2050. . . .Sub-Saharan Africa's population density is going to rise to over double where Latin America is today. Good bye jungles and rain forests. Good bye savannahs. Add in growing Chinese demand for rare animal parts and I do not see how many of Africa's species of cats and primates survive. I guess they'll survive in zoos along with elephants.
5 or more babies per woman. Little use of contraception. Yet our dysfunctional elites are too busy with biomass energy ideas and global warming meetings to do anything about it.
At Pop Candy, Whitney Matheson notes that some film studios are posting screenplays for which the studios have Oscar hopes.
I just learned that David Frum appeared on The Daily Show Tuesday. Why would he agree to an interview there?
Yes, he has a new book to promote. But why The Daily Show? The program's audience is the smarmy Left, and its host, Jon Stewart, is—to use again the adjective provided by Frum's NR and NRO colleague Jay Nordlinger—toxic. Why would Frum, a serious and dedicated conservative, lend his presence, and his imprimatur, to such a person, and such a setting?
I imagine he'd answer to the effect that conservatives should try to speak to liberals, and if The Daily Show gives conservatives access to a liberal audience, then conservatives should use that access when they can.
If I've expressed Frum's attitude accurately, I'd like to know what evidence he has, now that Stewart's been hosting The Daily Show for more than eight years, that it's ever made liberals more open to conservative ideas. I know some Daily Show viewers—a couple are in my family—and I can promise you that no appearance by a conservative on the program has influenced any of them in a rightward direction.
Frum's reasons, whatever they are, are rationalizations. He wants to sell books; he wants influence; so he goes to The Daily Show. The rest is self-deceit.
I'm trying to think of decisions comparable to Frum's, and the one that comes to mind is way out of scale: the New York Philharmonic's planned trip to North Korea. This article describes the Philharmonic's visit as "a diplomatic triumph," but I share Terry Teachout's reaction to the announcement:
It horrified me--no other word is strong enough--to see them [Zarin Mehta and Paul Guenther, the president and chairman of the Philharmonic] sitting next to a smirking representative of Kim Jong Il, the dictator of a brutally totalitarian state in whose Soviet-style prison camps 150,000 political prisoners are currently doing slave labor.
Again, the situations are profoundly different. Stewart, despite his noxiousness, is no mass-murderer, just a panderer to the snide. Still, as Theodore Dalrymple has written, "Men commit evil within the scope available to them." The Philharmonic made its choice; Frum made his. Both are contemptible.
I've long read and enjoyed Frum's writing. He's been on my blogroll since I started blogging. I'll continue to visit his site and read his articles, because there's much to admire in his work, and I believe that he sincerely wants to make the nation better. But I respect him a lot less today than I did yesterday.
Later: A more proportionate comparison, though still imperfect: Laura Bush choosing in Saudi Arabia to don the kind of outfit Saudi women are forced to wear. As Caroline Glick wrote,
In the United Arab Emirates, Mrs. Bush was photographed sitting between four women covered head to toe in abayas while she was wearing regular clothes. The image of Mrs. Bush sitting between four women who look like nothing more than black piles of fabric couldn't have been more viscerally evocative and consequently, symbolically meaningful.The image told the world that she - and America - is free and humane while the hidden women of Arabia are enslaved and their society is inhumane.
But then Mrs. Bush went to Saudi Arabia and the symbolic message of the previous day was superseded and lost when she donned an abaya herself and had her picture taken with other abaya-clad women. The symbolic message of those photographs also couldn't have been clearer. By donning an abaya, Mrs. Bush symbolically accepted the legitimacy of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies, (or disembodies).
With his appearance on The Daily Show, Frum sanctioned the program's tone—sneering and shallow—and its pervasive scorn for conservatives and conservatism. I hope he comes to realize his mistake.
Later: And now Jonah Goldberg.
Stefan Theil at the Financial Times website:
In France and Germany, schools have helped ingrain a serious aversion to the market economy. In a 2005 poll, just 36 per cent of French citizens said they supported the free enterprise system. In Germany, support for socialist ideals is running at all-time highs: 47 per cent in 2007 versus 36 per cent in 1991. In both countries, attempts at economic reform have been routinely blocked by a consensus against policies considered "pro-market". Might some of this be traced to the ideas instilled at school? In a project for the German Marshall Fund, I analysed French, German and US high-school curricula and textbooks for their coverage of the economy, the welfare state, entrepreneurship and globalisation."Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer," asserts Histoire du XXe siècle, a text memorised by French high-school students as they prepare for entrance exams to prestigious universities. Start-ups, the book tells students, are "audacious enterprises" with "ill-defined prospects". Then it links entrepreneurs with the technology bubble, the Nasdaq crash and massive redundancies across the economy. Think "creative destruction" without the "creative".
Theil offers several other examples, and concludes,
It is no surprise that the continent's schools teach through a left-of-centre lens. The surprise is the intensity of the anti-market bias. Students learn that companies destroy jobs, while government policy creates them. Globalisation is destructive, if not catastrophic. Business is a zero-sum game. If this is the belief system within which most students develop intellectually, is it any wonder French and German reformers are so easily shouted down?
(Via NCPA.)
Katharine Sanderson at Nature.com:
Switchgrass, a prairie grass that sways around the borders of many US fields, offers 540% more energy than the energy sown into it, research has shown. The renewable fuel should be seriously considered as a low-greenhouse-gas, high-energy biofuel source, the researchers say. . . .Soya bean biodiesel, in contrast, returns 93% more energy than is used to produce it, whereas corn grain ethanol currently provides only 25% more energy.
(Via Harry Fuller at ZDNet.)
Scientists trekking across a little visited part of Antarctica have discovered a bizarre relic of the Soviet Union is dominating the South Pole of Inaccessibility.In the middle of no-where – literally the point on Antarctica furthest from the sea – an imposing bust of revolutionary Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin peers out onto the polar emptiness. . . .
One of the drillers, Lou Albershardt, told an US website that they took six weeks to reach the pole, noticing Lenin from a long way out.
They all speculated on what the bust might have been made out of; marble or concrete.
“You wouldn’t believe it. He’s plastic,” he said.
(Link, including the Shelley reference, via Brian Faughnan.)
Lots of libertarians there (such as these guys, a group I once considered joining). I'm afraid Paul will draw most from Thompson's voters and push Thompson into fifth there. But that'll be the peak of Paul's campaign.
Later: Wrong and wrong (Thompson landed in sixth—I didn't consider that Giuliani would be a factor). I also thought Obama would beat Hillary. The only thing I got right was that McCain would win the GOP primary. And, I guess, that Paul's now speeding along the downward slope, though I hadn't foreseen some of the causes for his slide.
Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed,* reporting on a resolution passed at the Modern Language Association's annual convention:
Defenders of the original version faulted Nelson’s version for being even-handed.
No points for guessing which hand the critics wanted favored.
*My brother-in-law is an editor and co-founder of IHE.
Rich Lowry hypothesizes that Thompson's an introvert, someone who
can't stand—and finds exhausting—random interactions with strangers, which is why so few introverts are politicians. Those that are either are anomalies or fiercely willful people whose ambition makes it possible from them to punch through their natural resistance to all the painful socializing a politician has to do. This is why Fred would want to do a different kind of campaign, one based on web videos and blogs and the like rather than the usual glad-handing on the stump. Just a theory, fwiw.
I'm an introvert, which may help explain why I like Thompson more than I do any of his rivals. I'd be rooting for him regardless, because his platform is also my favorite—as Thomas Sowell wrote, "Thompson seems to have the best policy positions and the best political track record among the Republican candidates"—but it's a pleasant experience to like the candidate I support.
Later: Glenn Reynolds:
Thompson is running the kind of campaign — substantive, policy-laden, not based on gimmicks or sound-bites — that pundits and journalists say they want, but he's getting no credit for it from the people who claim that's what they want.
Nothing to do with introversion, but interesting.
