06-24-09

06-25-09

---

24 June 2009, a Wednesday

The numbers are looking better for the U.S. this morning but not so great for the rest of the world:

Except maybe for China:

This seems quite remarkable, to me, but was buried deep in this item and given only this casual paragraph.  It represents quite a large difference between China and the rest of the world, though.

Tom Friedman delivers his usual load of Liberal (Wishful) Thinking:

Liberals think with their emotions first and brains second, and while it may produce a warm feeling to complain about someone else’s addictions (Tom never uses oil, himself) it’s more intelligent to recognize what an addiction actually is.  We’re no more addicted to using oil than we are to eating food simply because both actions produce some unwanted by-products. 

A man named Tom Godwin once wrote a stirring science-fiction story quite a few years back, when space travel was only a notion.  The gist of it was that the pilot of the rocket on its way to Mars (or the Moon, I forget) with essential supplies the colonists there could not survive without and would certainly all die if they did not arrive, noticed that he had used up too much fuel taking off, for some unknown reason, and would be unable to land safely at his present weight.  But he was unable to jettison any of the supplies, and all were critical even if he could had managed to do so, so now what?  While searching for an answer he discovered that a young woman had managed to stow away and it was her unexpected weight which used the fuel on take-off and would make landing impossible.  She stowed away because her only brother was on Mars and she desperately wanted to see him one last time but had no other way to get there.

The story was called “The Cold Equations” and it illustrates Friedman’s lack of understanding perfectly.  The cold equations told the rocket pilot that at their current weight he would crash and as a result kill the girl’s brother as well as everyone else, but if he was able to reduce the weight of the rocket by the amount that she weighed he could barely make it.  The girl would certainly die, too, if he crashed, but if she voluntarily jettisoned herself into space then her brother, and all the others, would survive.

I won’t re-read the story because it made such a powerful effect on me that I don’t want to risk diminishing the memory, but the moral is that you simply cannot have all of the things that you want when some of them are physically impossible.  All energy sources produce amounts of energy strictly limited by the cold equations of physics and petroleum simply turns out to possess the energy density necessary for the widest number of purposes.  Sure, the Stanley Steamer ran on firewood but that simply isn’t practical for the transportation needs of the world, let alone just the United States.

This isn’t to say that it isn’t a good idea to add in solar power, say, but we need to remember that the sun produces only a maximum number of watts per square foot of receiving surface, even at maximum luminosity and solar cells with 100% efficiency...that is, you simply cannot get more than exists, a hot equation this time.  Wind is, I believe, even worse in terms of energy density.  And a gallon of water falling a foot also creates only so much energy maximum.

So even if you added all of them in (and people seem unwilling to consider the nuclear addition), and we should, you’d still come up short of what we need, or at least what we want.  If Friedman stopped jetting around the world then we’d use less aviation fuel, certainly, but I don’t think he wants to do that.

But even if we finally DO all of these extra things, and I believe that we will, there’s absolutely NO way it an happen in time to affect Iran’s green revolution.

Tom seems oblivious of the fact that even though the United States consumes a very large amount of oil it also produces a great deal of that oil domestically, and millions of Americans working in the industry would not be working anymore at $25 a barrel oil, not to mention the fact that new exploration money would dry up.  If the real goal is taking petrodollars out of the hands of tyrants then the best way to do that is, duh, produce more oil domestically!  But American producers have had their hands tied for decades now while others have not.  The justifications you hear are many and varied, but the result is always the same: the new discoveries come from foreign sources because those are the places being explored.

Now how in the world would that tax reduce our oil imports?  Does Tom imagine that Americans use every drop of their own domestic oil first and then import the desired additional amount afterward?  In that case we’d still use all of ours up first and then import less only if we consumed less, presuming we did not take economics into account...like, for instance, if even with the tax added the imported oil did not cost less than the domestically-produced oil.  What if the effect was to instead hamstring domestic producers so that they had to produce less at only $25 and thus we wound up importing even more oil than before?  Economics has some cold equations, too.

If you are using tax policy as a means of controlling not only oil consumption but also to control the place it is coming from then the answer is simple: increase taxes on imported oil and lower them on domestic oil.  When domestic oil becomes cheaper than imported oil then we will produce more and import less. 

There’s a simple rule which Friedman appears to understand half of: taxing something will reduce consumption.  The other side of that equation, though, reducing taxes on consumption—or production—will increase those things.  Obama doesn’t understand this with corporate income taxes, either.  If you want your offshore industries to move back home then make the tax environment at home more favorable than it is abroad, they’ll come home when that happens, bringing their jobs with them.

The other thing Tom doesn’t seem to get is that even making vehicles which are more energy-efficient than they used to be will not reduce total consumption if you make more and more of the new vehicles every year.  Maybe total consumption won’t go up as quickly, which is good, but it won’t decline.  It’s a very simple equation to write in order to show that increasing gas mileages by 20% while increasing the number of vehicles and miles driven by 25% leads to more consumption, not less.  When will Obama decide, instead, to forcibly limit the number of cars which car addicts can have?

The problem I see here is that everyone seems to be interested in only their own portion of the solution rather than embracing the total picture.

Look, unless we want to live lesser lives then we are going to have to increase energy production.  But this means ALL kinds, you can’t just pick wind and solar with equations that will never equal up while ignoring nuclear and not advocating for more domestic oil production.  But the other agendas come into play now as people mount their favorite hobby horses...Friedman doesn’t want to lower the price of oil by producing more of it, classical economic theory, he wants to lower the price by forcing his fellow Americans to consume less.  And he tries rhetoric...call it a “freedom” tax, even if it only means you are free to be able not to afford as much as you could before his tax...unless you are poor or elderly, in which case you can continue your profligate ways.

And apparently Tom has never heard of OPEC.  Look, if I stick a $1 freedom tax on gasoline in order to make Americans less able to buy as many gallons as before then oil prices will come down only as long as production levels remain high enough so that there is an excess independent sellers are competing to sell even at a reduced profit.  But if I can control the supply down to where it barely covers demand, or even slightly below it, then I can force the price even higher.

No matter what kind of government is involved it’s still a supply-and-demand world where prices are concerned, and if you can artificially control the supply then you can control the price even if demand gets reduced to a minimum.  The fact that nobody can go to zero means the producers can charge whatever they want for that minimum.

What we need is more free-world producers, especially domestic producers, so the oil sheiks aren’t running the only game in town, and for as long as oil is needed then that’s going to be the case unless we produce more oil outside of their control.

When Friedman stops jetting around the world then I’ll believe he’s getting serious about reducing consumption.  Ditto Algore.

I think this following exhibits a stunning lack of understanding of his own examples!

But this happened simply because Saudi Arabia COULD increase its production four-fold and thus not lose a penny to themselves even though they were as big a petro-dictatorship as Russia.  What we witnessed was one petro-dictator outcompeting another for its own gain.  And it was all due to the fact that they could increase their market share, a fine capitalist idea.  So what does Tom say about Iran?

But we cannot do that because we are unwilling and probably unable to increase our production fourfold, only the Saudis (maybe) can do that.  Tom thinks if he taxes Americans to the point where they can’t afford to buy as much as they did before then that will bring the price down, but he clearly didn’t read his own example.  It was the fourfold increase in production which brought the price down and destroyed the Soviet Union, not any forced decline in consumption.

Tom is actually simply a dreamer, when it comes right down to it.

I get the impression that he has no idea at all how the once great Persian Empire made its money in those days.  It may be charming to think that Persians who are learned in the sciences and collaborating amicably with the rest of the world would be able to get by without selling oil, but what, pray tell, would they trade in return for the things they are unable to create for themselves with their new civilization?  Iran’s problem now is that it doesn’t have much of anything else that anyone wants to buy besides oil.

Let’s face is squarely: in fact it is not petro-dollars which cause the problems but the people who control them.  Saddam once controlled all of Iraq’s oil money and was a very large problem, but now the democratic government is struggling to figure out a fair way to allocate those revenues to the people and we’re getting along well with them.  We have no quarrel or problem with the way the petrodollars are being used in Iraq and we recognize them as being a good thing for the people there. 

The reason we don’t feel the same way in Iran and Venezuela and even Saudi Arabia, to a lesser extent, is because of the individuals controlling those dollars.  In other words, the regime.

Iraq had a longer and more glorious civilization than the Persians did, educated and participating in world trade for many centuries, even millennia.  Now, post-Saddam thanks to Bush, they are on their way back to a center stage position in the Middle East and the Persians are as unhappy about that as they are anything else. 

George Bush forcibly created the space which brought about regime change in Iraq, but can the unarmed Iranian populace achieve the same thing without outside help?  Unlikely.  Friedman says we can help them by taxing ourselves an extra buck a gallon,, meaning presumably we’d buy less gasoline and therefore less oil from them, but how much oil do we buy from Iran today?

If we really are buying a great glug of oil from Iran today then couldn’t we effectively impose our own unilateral economic sanction?

It clearly isn’t the petro-dollars that are at fault, since we buy a lot of oil from Canada and Mexico and nobody has any trouble with North Sea producers, either.  The problem is the petro-dictators.  And since we don’t seem to be having much luck removing the dollars from the dictators, maybe we should think a lot harder about doing it the other way around.

What is needed is a return to common sense.  Oil isn’t an addiction any more than carbon dioxide is a pollutant for the simple reason that both are essential for life on earth as we know it.  Simply because someone who sounds like he belongs in authority says something is so doesn’t make it so.  Where do people think the luxuriant plant and animal life which created the coal beds and the oil came from if carbon dioxide concentrations had not been higher long ago and the planet warmer?  I know, I know, they don’t think about things like that.  If oil is addictive then so are copper and brass and steel and aluminum, air-conditioning, central heat...the list is endless.  Houses should be built only out of renewable wood, which also serves to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, if that’s important.

We have to simply acknowledge that the problem is bad men running bad regimes who need to be prevented from doing bad things.  We do this in our own civilized worlds; whenever we encounter bad people doing bad things we restrain them from doing so, forcibly if necessary.  Civilization exists where the laws are enforced and does not where they are not.  Oil is essential to civilization and a great many countries use their petro-dollars responsibly, so neither of those are really factors, only excuses.

The next time you see your gasoline station owner beating his wife and children you aren’t going to stop him by buying a bicycle or buying smaller amounts of more-expensive gas at another location, cutting off his family income in the name of saving his family from being beaten.  And the additional income your new provider gets as a result of your custom won’t cause him to start beating his wife and children, either.

As long as you are willing to tolerate the existence of wife-beaters then you will always have them with you, it’s as simple as that.  Our Founding Fathers knew this.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.”   – Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1787

 We've seen the blood from the patriots; it's time for some from the tyrants.

On a much lighter note, I had to laugh at Gene Robinson:

Did you get that?  And “the others”...carefully unnamed.  Who could he possibly have meant?

Are Liberals simply incapable of understanding the down and dirty real world even when they see it?  Says David Ignatius:

Let’s be pragmatic here and suggest a war-game thesis for consideration as one of the possibilities which must be considered.

Let’s just accept the fact that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are actually as much true religious believers as they claim to be.  Liberals apparently always want to believe that religious people never tell the truth, but what if A&K really believe what they say they do?

Namely, the destruction of Israel is more important to their religion than anything that happens to Iran, or themselves, as a result.  They believe they will go to paradise, which apparently Liberals do not think is possible or even rational because they shrug off what A&K have said as if it was meaningless rhetoric. 

That’s great if the Liberals are right, but disaster—actual disaster, not merely rhetorical disaster—if they aren’t.

Because Ahmadinejad and Khamenei do not have to stay in power forever, they only have to manage to last long enough to fire that one bomb that they have also openly said will be sufficient to destroy Israel.

They’ve already tested the rockets and the centrifuges are multiplying and spinning rapidly.  How much more time will be required?  All they need to do is stay in power just long enough because after that paradise awaits.

I don’t think Americans, and particular the Liberal branch, has any concept of the intensity with which A&K and a significant number of their followers take their religious beliefs.  We don’t do it so we figure they can’t either.

We still think that we can offer or promise them something they will want more than they want the destruction of Israel.  Or a punishment (sanction) sufficient to cause them to give up that ambition rather than suffer the pain of the sanction.

And if neither proves to be the case, at what point will we know that for certain?

For my part, I don’t think Obama intends to do anything besides talk, no matter what.  I don’t think Europe will, either.  When the bright light appears in the sky above Tel Aviv we will all pretend to be very surprised that they really meant what they said.

And so at some point the Israelis will be forced to act for the simple fact that nothing the free world does to them as a result will be as bad as their total destruction.  When you are down to only two choices left, the lesser of the two evils will be the one you have to take, win or lose.

Is there any way to prevent things from reaching that point?  I’m very much afraid that I’m coming to think not.

On another hand, though, I’m wondering how dumb they can be.  When revolutions succeed it is quite often because the party in power miscalculated and made a big mistake...like maybe this one:

Aren’t they only making things worse with the behavior?

Because in anything like this the passions flare brightly at first but then burn down over time...unless someone managed to throw more fuel on the fire and make them blaze back up again.  The best way to defeat a revolution is to simply outlast it to the point where enough people decide things are bad, sure, but not quite bad enough to die for.

Robert Rahn brings back an old memory:

It wasn’t 150 years old when I saw it, but it was still impressive enough.  I was impressed with the transportation system everywhere in Europe, from there to Holland to France.  I loved the fact that you could go from the plane to the train to the subway to the trolly without ever going outdoors.  Even (well, almost) the ferry.  Moving from one form of public transportation to another was quite simple, really, and I’d never been anywhere before with interconnected transportation systems like that.

This from Jonah Goldberg on The Corner:

Aside from the quibble that there’s no such speed as “five nautical miles” I think it would be a great idea!

I’ve always liked the irreverent rendition some friends use to make of the 23^rd Psalm...”yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, because I’m the meanest son of a bitch in the valley”.  The pirates will retire when they’re no longer the meanest sons of bitches out there.

---

25 June 2009, a Thursday

Forget Iran, this is the important stuff now for the New York Times:

Well, maybe.  I’d have to say that I’m more Republican than anything else but I wasn’t at all happy with how far they were promoting this guy before now so I’m just as happy to see him leave.  I wasn’t too impressed with many of last year’s Republican presidential candidates, frankly, any more than I was with most (if not all) of the Democrats.  Are politicians really getting that much worse or is it just me?

Meanwhile,

Barry’s aides are writing an apology script for his teleprompter right now.  Alas, his careful straddle-attempt didn’t make him friends on either side of the battle.  Meanwhile, his apologists are working overtime trying to explain why his first position was good, his morphed second position was good, as was his third, and now they’re bracing themselves to explain his forthcoming stance.  No matter what it is, however, we will be assured it is the proper reaction.

Or maybe Barry won’t, because

And also this:

If they’re blaming the BBC then maybe...maybe what?  I don’t know, just maybe.  I mean, whatever happened to the neocons?

A prize is being award to the first person who can honestly say he didn’t think of Inspector Renault being shocked, shocked, in Casablanca.  But while Rick and the Inspector found rapprochement, in this case...

Obama, looking at the bright side, said at least he didn’t refer to me as the Great Satan.

And, of course, he will keep editing Obama’s comments until he expresses his regret correctly.  Obama, who has already serially apologized for just about everything American has done, except for maybe drones in Afghanistan firing rockets into crowds of civilians, will surely come up with something.  Or maybe he’s counting on this?

Hmmm...who do you please in this case?

Of course.  Thank God for political analysts, huh?  I wonder how much they make an hour?

And I suspect this latter notion accurately reflects Hussein Obama’s attitude, too:

Except...

I’m sure those are all neocon analysts, though, aren’t you?  Surely no rational person considers that to be a possibility.

I got a chuckle out of this one:

He’s all for talk, the man said, except when he’s the one doing it on the record.

And they still don’t get to come to our 4^th of July festivities.  But how can that be smart?  How many deals have been struck over a beer and a couple of hot dogs, after all?  Hey, ‘Mad, I’ve been thinkin’...  Yo, Barry, what’s up?  You like them dawgs?  Yeah, never tasted anything like them before, what are they?  Oops...

From the Washington Post:

You don’t say, Mr. Ultimate.

Bolding mine, naturally.  And these are the people Obama expects to have a rational conversation with.  Can’t we all just get along?  But does Obama expect to talk with Khamenei?  No, he expects to talk with Ahmadinejad.  Why?  America’s top man speaks with their second banana?

I laugh every time I read someone telling us not to worry about what Ahmadinejad says because he doesn’t wield the real power in Iran, and yet that’s who Obama is supposed to sit down with in order to discuss things.  Can you imagine Khamenei coming to the U.S. and being sent to Biden’s office?

What’s that?  Oh, sure, I agree the idea is quite amusing to think about...  Mr. Ultimate could worry about a potential dictatorship while clubbing the people he said would not submit to bullying and by the way, Joe, why was the invitation to American 4^th of July parties offered and then withdrawn, wouldn’t an informal talk over beer and hot dogs be helpful, and Biden could tell him about how FDR went on television during the Depression to reassure the American people in the manner a good president like Ahmadinejad should, and that would be just for openers.

And don’t you just love the idea that our State Department would even think about it being appropriate to invite Muslims to share beer and pork-laden hot dogs while listening to the Star-spangled Banner in the first place?  Oh, how withdrawing that invitation must have smarted!  They were probably looking forward to joining in on the “rocket’s red glare” chorus.

Can you imagine what we’d be hearing now if George Bush had said he’d sit down and talk without preconditions and then rescinded a State Department invitation to a picnic as an, ah, expression of disapproval? 

Howard Kurtz brings us back to earth in Media Notes:

Isn’t Larry Craig an odd name to include in this group?  If I recall, he was guilty of wiggling his fingers beneath the bottom of a restroom stall, which a knowledgeable and vigilant policeman said he knew was an offer for illicit homosexual sex (since there is such a thing as licit homosexual sex, after all, and apparently if Craig had been in the bar and asked the officer “hey, baby, what’s your sign?” that would have been legal).  But if we include Craig then why exclude Barney Frank, since he’s by far the most-prominent sitting Democrat who has admitted to not only paying for illicit homosexual sex but actually operating a homosexual prostitution ring out of his apartment...only just like the housing meltdown while he supervised Fannie and Freddie, he didn’t know what was happening all around him at the time and therefore was not guilty?

Howard, of course, is a typically unbiased reporter.

But as for the original question, I think the answer is: opportunity.  Sex is, after all, an emotional reaction rather than an intellectual one, and in general we find that one of the sexual partners plays the role of the protector and the other the protected.  I’ve witnessed this over and over in both heterosexual and homosexual relationship, both gay and lesbian and in the animal world as well. 

And in all sexual courtship rituals, the protector (typically the ‘male’) has the job of trying to attract a partner from among the ranks of the protected, who except in the case of rape is the one who makes the choice.

The more powerful the protector looks in all of the various categories that count (richer, smarter, younger, handsomer, etc etc etc) the more opportunity he has to find a sexual partner.  Powerful politicians simply are more attractive to a wider range of available sexual partners than are us ordinary folks, it’s as simple as that.  In fact, they don’t even have to search or ask any longer, they have ‘groupies’ who make them offers.

And when all else fails, they have the money.  How many among us could fly to Argentina on a whim to see a lady friend, for instance?

Anyhow, here’s the

Amusing, because they were only prospects not even close to actually running, whereas John Edwards looked, many thought, to have an actual chance of being president and maybe even a better chance of being Kerry’s vice president the previous election! 

And since Clinton actually was the president, I think the Republicans are still a distant second in the presidential sexual misconduct sweepstakes race.

Have the Republicans had an actual president or presidential candidate with a legal campaign involved in a sexual scandal, or are they still 0-for-2 on that score?

I enjoyed this quote from The Anchoress::

Good point.