Blogito, Ergo Sum - 31 March 2009

The guy shot and killed several people in front of witnesses and he’s only an, ah, alleged gunman.

What’s that? Isn’t this a trivial thing to worry about as Obama takes over the nation’s industrial base and turns the country into a socialist state? Well...uh...he’s only allegedly doing that, you understand.

Need more proof that we’re in odd times? Here’s the Washington Post’s headline:

Obviously these are all of the people who don’t own stocks in any way, shape or form.

The easy, liberal solution would have been to keep postponing the day of reckoning. Instead, Obama slammed on the brakes, saying the companies haven't gone far enough.

The problems have been building for three decades. Remember the Japanese import quotas of the 1980s, designed to buy time for the Big Three? That didn't work out too well. The Detroit automakers seemed incapable of building cars that Americans wanted to buy, or felt were sufficiently reliable, and Tokyo ate their lunch.

I’m not an Obama fan, as you know, but I have to say that his ouster of Waggoner did one important thing: it put not only the automakers but a lot of other companies on notice that they couldn’t keep coming up with only partial or even pretend solutions without consequences they might not like. It was a case of trying to produce some shock and awe to an industry that hasn’t really tried all that hard, seemingly, and still isn’t. When they all flew to Washington in their corporate jets they sealed their own fates, I think, by carelessly revealing how clueless they were...or maybe simply just how careless was enough.

I mean, even if you think the corporate jet was justified because of the savings produced in time lost to travel, they could have at least hitched a ride together in one of them. They didn’t think they had to do that, though, just like they’ve thought for decades that they didn’t really have to compete no matter what it took.

Chicago Tribune: "The move to put a Chapter 11 filing squarely on the table is an abrupt repudiation of the conventional wisdom in the auto industry that bankruptcy would be disastrous for car sales and the general economy. But with the automakers burning through billions while negotiations with creditors, unions and other stakeholders drag on, Obama may be ready to take that risk, experts said."

This is another thing it seems to me has to change...and maybe all around the world, in several other areas: this notion that there’s always time for more negotiations and decisions can be postponed indefinitely. It’s like they call meetings for the purposes of discussion, not decision.

Kurtz, as usual, tries to give Obama a little cover by blaming some of his critics:

If I recall, the “righty bloggers” weren’t too pleased with Bush for doing that, either. In fact, I believe that those righty bloggers were saying let GM et al go bankrupt like they should. Did Howard fail to notice?

Politico reports: "Based on conversations with White House officials and advisers, the president has a much more jaundiced view of the automakers -- and sees limited upside for bailing them out. . . .

"The prevailing mindset inside the White House is that both companies had a more than fair chance to prove they could present a realistic plan for survival. They didn't come close."

My opinion about the whole “this is Socialism!” complaint would be that the complainers are getting fair warning and the handwriting is plainly on the wall: if they want to avoid Socialism from happening, they will have to DO SOMETHING to prevent it! Crying “this is Socialism!” isn’t enough.

Newsweek cover boy Paul Krugman continues his critical approach to the Obama bailout, focusing on some of its architects:

"These days America is looking like the Bernie Madoff of economies: for many years it was held in respect, even awe, but it turns out to have been a fraud all along.

"It's painful now to read a lecture that Mr. Summers gave in early 2000, as the economic crisis of the 1990s was winding down.”

Wait a minute! The economic crisis of the 1990s was winding down and Summers was speaking in early 2000? Uh, wouldn’t that have been under Clinton, the guy who supposedly had a wonderful economy which Bush wrecked...especially after the 2006 elections, when Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress?

In the New Republic, Jonathan Chait sees Obama suffering the same fate as his two Democratic predecessors -- and blames the Hill:

"At a time when the country desperately needs a coherent response to the array of challenges it faces, the congressional arm of the Democratic Party remains mired in fecklessness, parochialism, and privilege. Obama has made mistakes, as did his predecessors. Yet the constant recurrence of legislative squabbling and drift suggests a deeper problem than any characterological or tactical failures by these presidents: a congressional party that is congenitally unable to govern. . . .”

"The Senate poses a particular obstacle to Democrats. Its structure gives greater voice to residents of low-population states, who tilt more Republican than the country as a whole. If you assume that every senator represents half the population of that state, then the Republican caucus represents less than 38 percent of the public. In electoral terms, we think of that as a tiny, even fringe minority. It's less than the share of the electorate that voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. But it supports enough senators to block the majority's will. . . .”

A perfect example of what I call Liberal Logic. The Democrats are a party congenitally unable to govern, yet they shouldn’t be blocked for some reason?

It’s a faux argument, anyhow, since the Democrats hold a huge majority in the Senate, so anything close to the public’s will—NOT the will of the Democrats as a party—will get the tiny number of Republican votes necessary to be filibuster-proof.

Whatever happened to the old days when Democrats complained about the danger of Cheney holding the tie-breaking vote?

More Liberal Logic. If the moderates did not defect, Obama would not be an extreme liberal as a result? In other words, his actions do not define him, his supporters do? An interesting notion. Extreme actions become moderate if only the moderates abandon their ideology....

Joan Walsh goes a step further in Salon, saying the Hill Democrats are morally suspect:

"The Democrats can't get us out from under this mess until they are forced to reckon with their role in creating it. Every time I see Chuck Schumer on television pretending to be a populist scourge of Wall Street, I remember his role in blocking higher taxes for hedge fund managers and repealing Glass-Steagall. I can't help thinking that Tim Geithner is too close to the industry that took over -- and took down -- the economy to tame it. A large part of the Democrats' resurgence in the last four years, ironically, has been its success raising money from Wall Street, which undermines its populist street cred at a time like this. Fortunately for the party, Republicans are just as compromised."

Quite aside from the notion that it’s “fortunate” if the other side is as bad as your side, rather than a disaster, she has part of it right. Every time I see Barney Frank complaining about how the Republicans are for deregulation, and not a single soul in the press disagrees, I remember HIS role in telling the American public that there was nothing wrong, no danger at all, even while Bush and McCain were ASKING FOR MORE REGULATION.

You’ll find this difficult to read anywhere in the MSM, however. As you see what’s wrong in her use of the term “fortunately”.

I took some heat a few weeks ago for quoting a radio industry analyst as saying that Rush Limbaugh's ratings had surged during his vociferous battle with the White House. Now Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer has the numbers to show that my piece was on target:

"The beginning of the Obamist era, combined with a direct White House campaign targeting the talk titan, however, provided rocket fuel for El Rushbo's ratings. Even to seasoned industry veterans, this data should prove stunning.

"In New York City, WABC has experienced huge gains during Rush's noon-3pm timeslot: from 4.6 to 6.7 overall (12 and older) share, good for first place overall in the nation's largest market. Rush's Big Apple listenership is now estimated at 693,000.

"In the second-largest market, Los Angeles, KFI-AM has surged into the number one position (all listeners 12 and older) from 9am to noon, with 618,000 listeners, a 4.6 to 6.0 audience share increase over three months . . .

"Chicago, saw another huge move, with Rush affiliate WLS also taking first place during his timeslot (12 and older), from 5.2 share to 6.9 and a total local listenership of 396,700 in the third-largest market . . . KSFO/San Francisco saw similar results, despite the extreme-left bent of the Bay Area: 4.7 to 6.0 share . . . Total audience: 346,000 . . .

"DC's WMAL also saw Rush-related growth: 4.1 to 6.7, good for third overall and an audience of 155,300. Men 35-64: number one with a staggering 6.4 to 13.4 move."

Why not? It’s the essential question. If you won’t answer that, why are we talking to you? Just say a plain “yes” and we can move forward.

Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me.

Liberals are putting forth this false notion that we—or Israel—cannot do enough damage to halt Iran’s nuclear program because it is too diversified around the country.

What bullshit. Unless they have multiple duplicate facilities, the chain is still only as strong as its weakest link. You have to refine uranium; you have to enrich uranium; you have to build a warhead; and you have to have rocket on a launch pad. Take out any one of those and the program stops.

And you don’t have to wipe any of them out, either. What do you think would happen to our space shuttle program, for instance, if someone severely damaged the main building at Cape Canaveral? No, wait, let me tell you...we’d be a decade recovering. Tell me, are the Twin Towers rebuilt in New York City yet?

This notion that it would be so very difficult to set Iran’s program back a decade or more is simply nonsense.

We forget how life has been transformed just from the 1960s alone. As a student, I used to drive a beat up car with spare points, plugs, an old alternator and starter replacement in the trunk. The clutch went out frequently—so I ended up at the side of rural highways quite often. In 1969 it was common to see California freeways littered with broken down cars; now it is a rare occurrence. I grew up with a father taking apart our dryer, washer, vacuum cleaner, and refrigerators almost monthly; today, they seem to run on autopilot.

I was never much of an auto mechanic, but today you can’t even see the sparkplugs, even if you know where they are. The Chrysler has two lugs plainly marked “positive” and “negative” for the battery terminals if you need a jump, or whatever, but the battery itself is down out of sight and has to be accessed through the wheel well from underneath. And the last time I took apart a simple device to see if I could repair it, the maze of electronics defeated me before I even got started. Without specialized test equipment you can’t even tell what’s wrong.

And with manpower and repair costs what they are, replacement is often cheaper than repair.

Something is changing with military technology. New applications and tools seem to be evolving at warp speed. The easily caricatured, clumsy massive industrial complex seems to be outmatched by near instantly created decentralized efforts involving new innovative new drones, body armor, and munitions. The soldier adapts to battlefield electronics as he does video games and the Internet. For all the slander directed at Donald Rumsfeld, few realize very early on he tried to articulate how new high-tech weaponry had added enormous lethality to military units, without a commensurate increase in manpower.

So true...I’d be lost if they reactivated me in today’s Marine Corps. I wouldn’t even know how to operate the half of the gear that I understood. In my way we walked to school in the snowstorm...no, wait, wrong story...we had a heavy steel helmet that took weeks to learn to merely wear (civilian necks are not used to that much weight) and an Ml rifle plus a cartridge belt and canteen and a bayonet we never used for the intended purpose and fatigues and combat boots. After that it was pretty much just us. I look at pictures of today’s Marines and I can’t even imagine wearing all of that gear...let alone in the heat of Iraq! Incredible!

Someone at Wal-Mart must have taken over the logistics of the US military. Our troops are drowning in “stuff”. Mountain-high pallets of bottled water in the desert. Cat scanners in a tent city. On-line “cafes” amid the IEDs. 3,000-calorie dinners in the middle of nowhere. Bar-codes on everything from ammo boxes to boxes of plastic forks. We joke about this surfeit of things, and how it makes our military slow and plodding. In truth, they can go almost anywhere in the world, and in hours clone almost any landscape in America, from the sewage and power systems to the communications and food. There has never been any logistics remotely comparable to that of the present-day American military.

I suspect part of this dismays our enemies as much as anything else. They look at how much of “America” we have created in our bases in Iraq and marvel at our capabilities even while we’re complaining about the things we don’t have.

It’s kind the way I felt a couple years ago when I went back to southern Utah after seven years in Costa Rica. The town in this instance was Cedar City, a nice small Utah city in my day, nothing very big or very special as small cities go. We happened upon the local Wal-Mart and I’ve never seen anything like it in my life! Anywhere...and we had a Wal-Mart in Jackson before we left in early 2000. This one was immensely larger, had everything from soup to nuts, literally, plus some things I wasn’t even sure what they were.

I walked around with my jaw hanging down all the time we were there. How I’d like to take some of my Costa Rica friends there for a visit, just to walk through the store. Americans have not even the slightest concept of how lucky they are, and here in Costa Rica I live in a reasonably modern second-world country.

What’s that? What’s a second-world country? Well, there don’t seem to be any called that, but it’s not a third-world country and it’s not a first-world country, either.

When I first came to Costa Rica in 1993 I dubbed it “Southern California 40 years ago” and that still holds pretty well true as we have caught up but the U.S. has continued to pull ahead. But we now can buy things here in rural La Fortuna that years ago were unknown, so the times do change.