The blackout in the northeast USA is going to cause some heads to roll, no doubt about it. A talking head on FOX News said that likely the worst thing happened at the worst possible moment. That’s all well and good, but isn’t that what we’re supposed to be prepared for?

In any event, what concerns me is that somehow this will be the impetus for someone to decide that the whole power grid now has to report directly to Tom Ridge at HomeSec. I hope that doesn’t happen. These guys and gals need to make sure this doesn’t happen again, to be sure, but we don’t need more and more government bureaucracy in an age when we have to react quickly to changing circumstances.

Decentralization is the best answer. What are the feds saying? “Listen to your local agencies/police/government for information.” That’s the right answer. Local solution to local problems. Some may say that the electric grid is a national issue and should be run by the feds. I’d say this is a state issue, and there are perfectly good brains at the state level to deal with this, and work with other states. If you want to blame the states for the blackout as a reason to give it to the feds, I’d have to say that removing the decision-making farther and farther from the problem is no solution at all. Let the folks who already have accountability for this get called on that accountability, and then fix it. Don’t give their responsibility to overworked, overbloated and far away federal bureaucrats.

The lights are already starting to come back on, albeit slowly. My folks in upstate NY are hearing on their (battery) radio that the lights in Syracuse are starting to come on in spots. (And The Command Post has noted my E-mail to them concerning this. Nifty!)

One of my submissions to Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” was used again. In yesterday’s column, scroll down to “Who is Simon, and Doesn’t He Ever Go to the Movies?”

Would you like to know a few ways the liberation of Iraq helped the war on terror, or improved the lives of Iraqi citizens, or created better security for them? How about 100 ways? The Whitehouse has published a document on their web site detailing these and other benefits. But even in this sound-bite, get-to-the-point driven world of the 24-hour news cycle, I wonder if you heard anything about this simple, easy-to-understand document from the major media. This is not the writing of some policy wonk, paid by the word. It’s a concise enumeration of the many benefits of fighting for peace.

(And no, that last phrase is not an oxymoron. Before the Iraq war, Iraq was still not at peace. Today, after the war, it’s light years closer to it.)

Billionaire George Soros has given $10 million to an effort to defeat President Bush in 2004. Let’s listen closely to the media referring to a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.

>chirping crickets<

Hold not thy breath.

Update: Looks like Kos finds this development to be a Good Thing(tm), although dollars-to-donuts he thought that Scaiffe’s money was pure eeeeevil. Ain’t partisanship grand?

Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, had a pitiful article on his magazine’s web site yesterday that really needs a good Fisking.

Now, I’ve not done a fisking before on Considerettes, although I did do it in an essay I wrote back in 1998, responding to each thought in President Clinton’s mea culpa on the Lewinsky matter (which was heavy on the “mea” and oh-so-light on the “culpa”). And I did one in 2000 to an article which was really a laundry list of why a liberal webmaster thought “reactionary right-wingers” called him a liberal.

So I was fisking before fisking was cool (or was even called “fisking”.) 🙂 But it’s been quite a while, so it’s about time for another one. Thus we have a fisking of (portions of) Kuttner’s article “The Fruits of Bushonomics“.

George W. Bush faces a race between the ill-advised economic policies sown in the first half of his term and the bitter fruit that those policies are starting to bear. If the sour effects of his economic policies are evident by mid-2004, he is in deep political trouble.

One can only say this with a straight face if, upon being reminded of the lingering economic effects of 4 planes that crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, one simply holds one’s hands over one’s ears and melodiously intones, “La la la la, I can’t hear you!” Even assuming that the policies are partially to blame (which I’m not stipulating), one would be hard-pressed to find its effects amongst the much larger economic wreckage left by the al-Qaeda attack. This is equivalent to saying that, amidst thousands of acres of forest torched by lightening, one grove of trees in it might, in fact, have been burned by a campfire. But Mr. Kuttner is now going to stand there, point at that supposed ring of stones with charred wood in it, and blame it for everything his eye surveys.

For now, at least, Bush can say that the economic news is mixed. The unemployment rate went up to 6.4 percent in May. It dropped slightly, to 6.2 percent, in June — but only because more and more people have dropped out of the labor force entirely as payrolls continued to shrink.

When W was campaigning for president, he correctly noted that the economy was about to go into a downturn. Democrats lambasted him for (first) trying to bash a good economy, then (when it was apparent that the economy was in a downturn) for creating the downturn merely by speaking of it. But the trend was already there. Kuttner is now blaming Bush for a trend that existed before he took office, and was made dramatically worse by terrorists. Never you mind the trend, says he, it’s the President’s fault.

Economic growth came in at 2.4 percent for the second quarter of 2003. That was better than expected, but it needs to hit 4 percent or higher to reduce unemployment. Bush’s cheerleaders say that will happen, in well-choreographed fashion, in the election year.

Since he brings up economic growth number, let’s look at that trend thing again. At the Bureau of Economic Analysis (part of the Commerce Department), they have an Excel(tm) spreadsheet showing the quarterly GDP change data going back to 1946. Scroll on down to the year 2000, and you’ll see that trend in all its glory starting in Q3 of 2000; definitely not on W’s watch. The bottom was hit in Q2 of 2001 (where the economy shrank by 1.6%), again barely after Bush had a chance to warm the seat in the Oval Office. Bush inherited a tumbling economy, and when it started to come back, al-Qaeda made itself a household word. Even two 4+% quarters in 2002 didn’t help the unemployment rate (at best, it flattened). Such a situation is less (if any) of Bush’s making, and more of one where he was given a bad one, which only got worse, completely outside of his control. Further, the numbers for the past 3 quarters (1.4, 1.4, 2.4) do, in fact, point to an economy that is set to start making headway in the unemployment department. No “cheerleading” required.

But will it? Timing is everything. George Bush the first missed his rendezvous with prosperity in 1992. And the policies of Bush I were not as damaging as those of Bush II. Consider these several danger signs:

Deficits and interest rates. Long-term interest rates have gone up a full point in a month. Mortgages, which could be had at a bargain-basement 5 percent in late June, are back to 6 percent. The refinancing boom is slowing. The bond market is swooning.

Apparently, Mr. Kuttner believes that those bargain-basement rates would last forever. And is 6% really a “danger” sign? For perspective, rates between 1992 and 2000 (during a Democrat administration) varied between around 6.7 and 9.2%, spending most of their time in the 7s and 8s. Sure the refinance boom is slowing, in the same way price affects everything. We still have rates that are lower than anytime during the Clinton administration, and this is a “danger”?

Bush optimists contend that interest rates are going up because investors, sniffing a recovery, are shifting to stocks, leaving less demand for bonds. Dream on. Skeptics correctly point to the immense deficits resulting from Bush’s three tax cuts. If unsustainable deficits loom, the money markets eventually push up interest rates.

Immense deficits from tax cuts. Must’ve been immense tax cuts. (Hold that thought, we’ll return to it later.) Oh, and what about spending? You remember “spending”, don’t you, Mr. Kuttner? How about reducing that to ease the deficit. But you just know that, being a good liberal, he’ll never mention that.

Most serious of all, if long-term interest rates are impervious to the Fed’s policy of cutting short-term rates, then Alan Greenspan’s sorcery has lost its power. (And deservedly so. Greenspan should have used his prestige as a central banker to discourage the Bush tax cuts instead of taking a dive as a good partisan.)

Instead Mr. Kuttner suggest more taxing & spending, like a good partisan.

Trade. Like his military policy, Bush’s trade policy has been a blunt instrument. Bush and his economic appointees have been pushing for more international trade with few conditions attached. In theory this is good for everyone. In practice, global trade with few ground rules has exported more jobs than it has imported.

Goodness, this protectionism rhetoric sounds positively Buchanan-esque. In addition, the “giant sucking sound” we were to hear from Mexico was never really audible.

The Democrats may be divided on some issues, but on trade most Democrats favor conditioning trade with labor and other regulatory standards so that its benefits truly flow both ways. In an election year with a soft economy, Bush-style free trade is likely to be an ever harder sell.

‘Scuse me as I go off to find out who’s signature is on the NAFTA agreement.
…
Ah, found it!

Vanishing services. Ordinary Americans are saving a few bucks in their federal income taxes.

Whoa, wait a minute. Just a few bucks? A miniscule tax cut? But I thought it was responsible for the “immense deficits”.

Most of the breaks went to the top.

Or, more accurately, the more you paid the more you got, which is eminently fair. And Bush even bowed to Democrat pressure to give tax “breaks” to people who didn’t pay any taxes, which is, to be perfectly honest, unfair. Of course, as a “good partisan”, Mr. Kuttner isn’t challenging the logic of Democrats who both argue against any tax cuts at all while at the same time arguing for tax “cuts” for those who don’t pay.

Mr. Kuttner, would you start sending me a paycheck for working for The American Prospect? Yeah, I know I don’t actually work there, but if it’s OK to “refund” money to people who’ve not paid any, it must be OK for me to get money for something I don’t actually do.

But as Bush and company cut federal aid while adding costly federal mandates, local services are deteriorating. Meanwhile, many states are having to raise property and sales taxes.

States have been on a spending spree for quite some time, and for many things other than those basic services. Oh rats, there’s that “S” word again; “spending”. And again, as a “good partisan”, Mr. Kuttner knows only one remedy for balance sheet problems; more taxes.

A lot of this is implicitly about class and the tiny elite that Bush has helped.

Well what do ya’ know, I’m part of the “tiny elite”; those people in America who actually have children and are getting a tax rebate! Unfortunately for the phraseology, this supposed “elite” is far bigger than Mr. Kuttner wants to admit.

In good times Americans don’t want to hear about class. Everyone expects to be Bill Gates someday. But in tough times, regular people become far more alert to who is getting most of the cookies. Bush is accountable for that, too.

At all times, all Democrats want to talk about is class–how one is getting more “cookies” than another–and want to demonize Bill Gates, and those like him, as (at least) merely lucky and (at most) greedy monsters. At all times, no one should care about who’s getting most of the cookies, because it shouldn’t be the government’s job to hand out cookies (and it shouldn’t be stealing so many of the ingredients).

Liberals are accountable for that as well as their failure to lay blame and give credit where they are properly due, ignore the spending side of government deficits, and using class warfare to divvy up government “cookies” to their constituents.

Jane Galt has a good, balanced piece about global warming, how it’s reported, and how both sides need to just calm down and get their facts in order. I’ve been saying all along that there’s way too much uncertainty in this field to be setting public policy based on it. Jane covers, in part, the history of revisions in projections to make them closer to reality once they’re proven wrong.

Finally, we are all prone to think that we are right. Scientists advocating aggressive models of warming may be right — or they may be overconfident. A look at the history of downward revisions in warming projections is educational on that score. According to journalists, the scientists were every bit as certain about projections that were as much as 4 degrees celcius higher, just a short time ago. A little humility about the much-vaunted scientific consensus is in order.

…and a little less fear-mongering.

ScrappleFace does it again with a parody news item proclaiming “Episcopal Church Appoints First Openly-Muslim Bishop”. If you’re going to ordain people who openly violate the teaching of a Book they’ll be preaching from, where does it stop? The answer, of course, is that it won’t stop, and the Episcopal Church is just the latest example of that slippery slope, falling further and further into self-contradiction.

The sad thing is that to many who support this move, it’s a way to keep the church relevant in the 21st century. Unfortunately, that’s not the result, since all this contradiction in message does not provide any solace to those whose lives are full of contradictions and inner turmoil already. A single, clear message is what makes the Church relevant and applicable to any life throughout the centuries, not morals that change with the times. Traditions may change, style may change, but God doesn’t.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that the racial civil rights war has been won! No matter your skin color or nationality, we are now officially equal. How do I know? Check out this report from FOX News (scroll down to the bottom to see it):

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, has detected racial discrimination in the naming of Hurricanes. She says names like Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Sam and Hurricane Wanda are just too white and, “all racial groups should be represented.” But, as The Hill newspaper notes, Jackson Lee will have to wait until at least 2007, when the current roster of names runs out.

Yes, when the “whiteness” of hurricane names are the cause of uproar for black politicians, it serves to show 2 things:

• Said politicians have become irrelevant.
• If they’re forced to look to such trivial things as hurricane names to find discrimination, it must be virtually wiped out.

Steven Den Beste has an amazing overview of what is likely the Big Picture for the West in the Middle East, and in Afghanisan and Iraq in particular. It’s an very in-depth look at what the root causes of the war on terrorism are/were, why the US is involved the way it is, what the possible responses by the US could have been (and their likely outcomes), the strategies, the results and the future. This is a big picture, and will take some time to read, but it’s worth it.

Charles M. Brown, a former member of the anti-war protest group “Voices in the Wilderness”, has written an incredible article about his return to reality after realizing how foolish the group was. There are a lot of good sections in this I could quote, but here are some of the best:

This one-dimensional depiction of life in Saddam’s Iraq was pure Baath propaganda, and I (as well as other group members) knew it. As I came to see this as a complicity and collaboration with one of the most abusive dictatorships in the world, I tried to get the rest of my group to acknowledge that our close relationship with the regime damaged our credibility. I failed to persuade them, so I quit. Unfortunately, it seems that my former colleagues have regarded this decision as a kind of political “defection,” and it has cost me several friendships, which were apparently contingent on my continued willingness to toe the (Baathist) line.

(And liberals accuse Ashcroft of crushing dissent.)

Voices preached by its actions—more particularly, by conducting regular trips to Iraq to deliver medical and other supplies, all in violation of the U.N. sanctions regime as well as several U.S. laws and presidential executive orders. The quantity of aid we brought to Iraq was always a paltry, symbolic amount, but the real emphasis of Voices was to have group members “witness” the detrimental effects of sanctions for themselves, by visiting Iraqi hospitals, schools, and other areas—always in the presence of official “minders” of the Iraqi regime. These orchestrated trips provided the grist for group members, who returned home to educate their communities on the horrors of the U.S.-imposed sanctions. In my case, the propaganda fed to me in Iraq by regime spokespersons was my primary source of information on sanctions, which I then imparted to audiences all across the United States. The same was true of my colleagues.

More examples of why taking the word of a murderous dictator is never a good idea. But then, most thinking people know this already.

Voices’ arguments about sanctions were straightforward—and utterly simplistic. In retrospect, I am embarrassed to think that I propagated them. Voices held that sanctions were violence that the U.S. government committed against Iraq, through the exercise of raw power. The Iraqi regime was entirely helpless and passive and had no ability to respond to the economic pressure the U.N. had put on Iraq since 1990. Voices was oblivious to deliberate Iraqi obfuscation on disarmament and to Saddam’s domestic policies, designed to maintain his iron grip over the Iraqi people for as long as possible. It was our stubborn view that the regime had little or no ability to control or direct Iraq’s destiny. We saw the U.S.-sponsored sanctions as the primary cause of violence in Iraq and so overlooked (or denied) Saddam’s decades-long legacy of severe repression.

I think the key word in this paragraph is “simplistic”. I’ve seen video of a blogger interviewing people at an anti-war demonstration, and while they can “talk the talk”, they can’t seem to “think the think”, to coin a phrase. When they were asked simple questions about the situation or what their alternate solutions were, they fell back on prepackaged mantra or outright falsehoods (or a simple “I don’t know”). Their anti-war sentiments are knee-jerk at its finest; all reaction and feeling, no thought. Simplistic.

Because of our collective ignorance of Iraqi history and politics, we were largely unaware of the service we rendered to the regime. Not only did Voices members meet senior Iraqi officials (including Tariq Aziz), but the group was publicly thanked for serving as an official channel of information from the Iraqi regime to the American people by Saddam Hussein himself. We had no interest in Iraqi dissidents, exiles, and opposition groups, who had documented Saddam’s past aggression, genocide, and flaunting of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. Voices simply parroted Baathist propaganda, and the regime learned to use us (and other peace movement groups) for just that purpose.

Many anti-war protestors insisted that they were not pro-Saddam, as they were sometimes labelled. However, their actions were in practice, if not intent, bolstering Hussein’s position. As I’ve said before, Hussein used these groups for his own ends, whether or not they knew it. Many of us outside the anti-war crowd knew it, if course. Their ignorance, however, was no excuse.

To be perfectly frank, we were less concerned with the suffering of the Iraqi people than we were in maintaining our moral challenge to U.S. foreign policy. We did not agitate for an end to sanctions for purely humanitarian reasons; it was more important to us to maintain our moral challenge to “violent” U.S. foreign policy, regardless of what happened in Iraq. For example, had we been truly interested in alleviating the suffering in Iraq, we might have considered pushing for an expanded Oil-for-Food program. Nothing could have interested us less. Indeed, we even regarded the paltry amounts of aid that we did bring to Iraq as a logistical hassle. When it suited us, we portrayed ourselves as a humanitarian nongovernmental organization and at other times as a political group lobbying for a policy change. In our attempt to have it both ways, we failed in both of these missions.

As Limbaugh has often said, liberals care more about appearances and intentions than actual results; it is only important that you be seen caring than actually doing it. Here is another classic example.

What happens when a thinking person realizes they’re caught in this mire of feeling instead of thinking, ignoring reality in pursuit of political aims, and then returns from the wilderness? They write articles like “Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist“. These excerpts, lengthy as they are, do not do the full article justice. Definitely worth reading, and keeping in mind when those in the press accept claims from groups like “Voices in the Wilderness” unchallenged.