USA Today has a piece today on the success of the surge. The summary ? Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, seem lost in a time warp. They could try to impose new benchmarks that acknowledge the military progress. Instead, too many seem unable or unwilling to admit that President Bush’s surge of 30,000 more troops has succeeded beyond their initial predictions.
To find an opposing viewpoint, they went to Maxine Waters, a well known expert on the middle east. Pitiful doesn’t cover half of it.
The Porkbusters database just went online. From now on, all Congressional spending will be listed in a searchable database. No more hidden earmarks once this gets up and running. Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma and an obstetrician, got this through last year with the help of Senator Barak Obama. Coburn is a “gadfly”, which means he puts the public first and exposes corruption. His Senate colleagues have attempted crude retribution by trying to prevent him from practicing medicine during recesses. That they would consider his care of his longtime patients the equivalent of their $10,000 speeches to lobby groups tells you more about their ethics than his. He could not have prevailed without the Porkbusters organization, which flooded the offices of Senators trying to kill the bill with thousands of phone calls. Frankly, I had despaired of any real reform but maybe I was too pessimistic.
Now, why isn’t Coburn a candidate for President ? Obama is.
The Secretary of State was once the subject of a boomlet for the presidential nomination after her boss’s term ends. That was back when it seemed she was going to do a good job. Lately, that boomlet has disappeared and what we see are clumsy statements that make her sound like one more State Department Arabist. The Palestinians had the opportunity for an historic peace in 2000 and Dennis Ross has documented that effort. Arafat turned it down and resumed the Intifada, only with suicide bombers this time instead of stones. Of course, Arafat has his apologists but what would you expect from the New York Review of Books? I was once a subscriber and used to chuckle over the singles ads in the back that stated “No Republicans.”
Condi would have been well advised to take Ross’s advice but there seems to be a never ending supply of wishful thinking at State and she has imbibed freely. I have previously posted my opinion of the Annapolis talks and they went nowhere.
What next ? That will be for the next Secretary of State to determine.
UPDATE: The Armed Forces Press Service has a timetable for when the military will begin shutting down facilities. I expect and hope that the civilians will be laid off and bases closed in Democrat districts first. That would seem only fair. Unless they pass a “clean” military spending bill with no timetables, February will see the first closings and layoffs. Just in time for the primaries.
We have been concerned about interest rates, the Iraq War and the shootings in Colorado. Meanwhile, Congress gets ready to shut down the government. Will they do it ? I don’t know. There is a lot of posturing going on. Next year is an election year. Clinton outmaneuvered the Republicans back in 1995 but can Bush do the same ? He has not been as agile in his public personna as Clinton was. The clumsiness of Newt Gingrich, with his complaint of being “snubbed” may or may not have been the factor that made the difference. Clinton wasn’t called “Slick Willie” for nothing. I can’t imagine anyone calling Bush “slick.” Nancy Pelosi is perfectly capable of doing dumb stunts although the public may not notice the small ones. It will be interesting to see what happens. If the Reublicans could only cure their addiction to pork, they might be in a position to benefit. We’ll see.
Kevin Drum doesn’t like it a bit.
UPDATE: The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has struck another blow for unfreedom of speech. The offending words?
“I don’t care if it’s a religious thing or not, if you don’t want to follow our rules, even if it is taking off your scarf thing for one lousy picture, then stay out of my effing country!”
Canada has a legal system more closely attuned to that of England than ours. The recent actions by militant Muslims to suppress any criticism have found sympathetic hearing in Canada. I previously posted about such an action in Britain. Now the campaign spreads to Canada. Mark Steyn seems to have had it right and is even becoming an example of the attempts to suppress dissent. The most recent outrage is a father murdering his daughter because she wished to wear western dress. To the Toronto Star, however, it is a ” violent dispute[s] between a 16-year-old girl in Mississauga and her father over her desire to show her hair and live a “normal” lifestyle” which ” raises questions about tensions between parents and children in the Muslim community.” I don’t ordinarily call murder a “tension.” but what do I know ? Here is more from a Canadian who shows that some of them are worried about freedom. Not enough, it seems.
The political left has opposed nuclear power just as it tried to ban nuclear weapons. Of course, it didn’t matter to them that the Soviets were not going to comply. It was enough, or maybe the real purpose, to disarm the west. The Cold War ended with the Soviet Union collapsing. Opposition to nuclear power remained a remnant of the old “Ban-the-Bomb” mentality. The fact that the ban added to generation of greenhouse gases (Not that I believe they are a major factor in climate), was not important. Nuclear power was evil because….. Well, it was just evil.
Aside from the emotional aspect, the left has claimed that it is unsafe and too expensive. The safety question is often answered with the riposte that more people have died in Ted Kennedy’s car than from nuclear power, at least in the US. The Soviet accident at Chernobyl was due to the general crudity and disregard for safety that was true of most of the Soviet Union. They, and even the post-Soviet Russians, have lost nuclear submarines to such bungling right up to the last decade. Now, with the global warming hysteria, there might be some common sense appearing on the political left. It probably doesn’t mean that real knowledge and judgement are appearing, just that they are now more afraid of global warming than of nuclear power. Still, I don’t require the motive be correct if the action is desirable.
It makes no sense to see natural gas used to generate electricity when natural gas prices are climbing and it is the ideal fuel to heat homes. Nuclear power is an ideal method for generating electricity but is blocked by ignorant emotion. Interestingly enough, before global warming was attributed to CO2, Scientific American, a popular science journal, unfortunately contaminated by left wing politics, was expressing worry about the waste heat from nuclear plants as source of global warming. That 1960s theory has been superseded by the current dogma.California has now become dependent on natural gas for electricity generation. A recent report states: “California’s electricity and natural gas markets have become closely inter-related since natural gas has become the predominant fuel for electricity generation. The growing demand for electricity is, in turn, driving the increasing need for natural gas supplies throughout California. The role of natural gas in electricity generation affects how the natural gas systemmust be designed and operated.”
This is not healthy. One reason is that natural gas is also derived from unstable political areas like the Middle East. Huge liquified natural gas carriers are floating bombs that may attract terrorist attention. Natural gas is not the answer. Will the political left allow the industry to recover?
They complain about cost when a large share of the cost is due to perpetual litigation generated as a rear guard action by themselves. The legal costs are chiefly those of litigation-driven regulatory actions. Perfect safety is demanded while other energy systems have less than a perfect record. Coal, for example, has a major role in chronic respiratory disease and deaths. The other major issue is spent fuel but this is technology and, given a revived interest in building and using plants, it will eventually respond to renewed research. Reading these left wing blog comments, one can see that opposition is still intimately tied to opposition to nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, 30 years of inaction in energy production has seen a proliferation of nuclear weapons all over the world that did not require nuclear power plants to produce the fuel. Ask Iran.
Gateway Pundit has the scoop on a series of bogus reports of atrocities and attacks in Iraq. It has even occurred in Afghanistan but that is a Reuters report so no surprise. And, of course, that one was another fake. There is a yearning on the left for the US to suffer a defeat in Iraq and even in Afghanistan. Some of this is a longing for their youth by 60s radicals whose high point in life was the US defeat in Vietnam. Some is the old left wing theory that the US is imperialist and is a bastion of evil capitalism. The enemy, of course, has figured this out and plays to this audience. Maybe the MSM has decided that their clientele is the political left and they are catering to this audience. In some cases, this seems to have been a questionable business decision. These reports, and the credulity of the press to anti-American fake stories, explains, as if we still needed one, why talk radio is a conservative information source. The internet, especially Google, is less reliable unless one digs through all the left wing links put there by efforts at gaming Google.
Of course, the MSM supports the troops even while slandering them.
The Saudis have discovered a new tactic to harass those who study terrorism. A book on the financing of terrorism was stopped using British libel laws. Not many Americans realize that Britain has no First Amendment, no freedom of speech. The British press has always been free in expressing criticism of their own government but criticizing anyone else is fraught with risk, especially if they are rich, or have rich friends. Now Canada has become another venue for these harassing suits. The Saudi billionaire has the wherewithal to overwhelm those who are required to defend themselves. Now, cowardice similar to that of Oxford University Press, is spreading. The Saudis are no friends of ours. The relationship is purely self interest. They sell us oil and we help the royal family to keep the angry population at bay. We should no more expect friendship from them than we would expect it from a pimp who offers to sell us his sister.
UPDATE #2 French Presdent Sarkozy seems to agree with Bolton.
UPDATE: Bolton is not giving up his attack on the NIE. Too bad he is not in government anymore but he is still helping defend the country.
Bolton yesterday ripped the intelligence “community” a new one over the recently released NIE. A few memorable quotes:”Fifth, many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran’s nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as “intelligence judgments.” He also points out a real concern: “the risks of disinformation by Iran are real. We have lost many fruitful sources inside Iraq in recent years because of increased security and intelligence tradecraft by Iran. The sudden appearance of new sources should be taken with more than a little skepticism.” All in all, this looks more like another of Timmerman’s Shadow Warrior exercises.
UPDATE: The Bali Conference is going on but they have probably not considered this. The article is here and the conclusion says: “The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.”
Oh oh.
Another UPDATE: This essay says pretty much what I believe about global warming. The linked article is interesting, though.
” But throughout the 20th century, solar cycles had been increasing in strength. Almost everyone agrees that throughout most of the last century the solar influence was significant. Studies show that by the end of the 20th century the Sun’s activity may have been at its highest for more than 8,000 years. Other solar parameters have been changing as well, such as the magnetic field the Sun sheds, which has almost doubled in the past century. But then things turned. In only the past decade or so the Sun has started a decline in activity, and the lateness of cycle 24 is an indicator.
Astronomers are watching the Sun, hoping to see the first stirrings of cycle 24. It should have arrived last December. The United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted it would start in March 2007. Now they estimate March 2008, but they will soon have to make that even later. The first indications that the Sun is emerging from its current sunspot minimum will be the appearance of small spots at high latitude. They usually occur some 12-20 months before the start of a new cycle. These spots haven’t appeared yet so cycle 24 will probably not begin to take place until 2009 at the earliest. The longer we have to wait for cycle 24, the weaker it is likely to be. Such behaviour is usually followed by cooler temperatures on Earth.”
Here comes the new Ice Age.
End UPDATES
Recently, I posted a piece about the loss by John Howard to Kevin Rudd in the Australian election. Part of Rudd’s campaign platform was “immediate action on climate change.” They disdained the Howard coalition government’s caution and said: “Unlike the Coalition’s Climate Change Fund – which starts in 2012 alongside an emissions trading scheme – Labor’s plan is fully costed and will start next year.”
Rudd is now PM and attended the Global Warming jamboree in Bali. What did he learn between the election and now ? The cost of his good intentions. Note the headline. “Rudd made progress towards Kyoto ratification his first executive act, a sharp way to symbolise the break from Howard’s era. Delegates to the UN conference in Bali applauded when informed (most such delegates represented nations that have no binding targets under Kyoto anyway). But by week’s end the reality of climate change policy was superseding the switch in Kyoto symbolism. As expected, Rudd said his Government’s 2020 emissions target would not be decided until the mid-2008 report from Ross Garnaut. Australia has no intention of being trapped into the 25-40 per cent emissions cut by 2020 that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposed for developed nations.
This betrayed the real political moral of the week: how quickly the gulf is opening between the Rudd Government and the scientific or green lobby groups in Bali and elsewhere demanding radical outcomes. This conflict, sooner or later, will assume epic dimensions.”
Well, that may set a record for the appearance of reality after an election.