Libertarian Leanings

Jobs Report

American Thinker has an essay by Steve Feistein that observes a plummet in the importance of the "Jobs Report" and the "non-farm payroll" numbers that come out monthly.

The Jobs Report had replaced the previously accepted standard measurement of employment strength, the Unemployment Rate. For years, decades even, the Unemployment Rate was the universally recognized measure of the state of the economy’s employment health. The problem for the Democrats, and the mainstream media, was that this well-accepted yardstick of employment didn’t carry sufficiently bad news for the Republican administration. With unemployment numbers consistently in the mid-5%-to-low-6% range for most of his presidency (indisputably excellent by historical standards), the Democrats needed to focus on a number that they could leverage for maximum political gain. The monthly Jobs Report was that number...

Perhaps the most fascinating proof of the transparent, disingenuous nature of the Democrats’ “concern” over jobs creation is that there has been virtually no mention of the monthly jobs number by them since the election. The economy is in very good shape, by any standard. Employment is up, corporate sales and profits are very good, retail sales are excellent, unemployment claims are modest, the stock market has gained over 35% off its post-9/11 lows, and the employment prospects for new graduates are excellent. We’ll look back from the low point of the next inevitable business cycle and think of the period beginning in 2003 as the “good old days.” No amount of negative demagoging by Democratic naysayers can alter that reality.

The Democrats' 2004 campaign playbook called for a repeat of the 1992 strategy that brought Clinton victory over Bush the elder.  Having once started down that path, accusing Bush the younger of presiding over the worst economy since the Great Depression, they had to ride it for all it was worth.  No point now.

Not all that surprising

A while ago I put up a post that said in part,

The liberal bias of the media is in the news again. The question: Is liberal bias a problem? I would say not. I'm not going to claim liberal bias doesn't exist, it does. I just don't see bias as the problem. The problem is dishonesty.

That was last June.  Since then Dan Rather, desperate to get John Kerry elected, thought he could fool everybody with phony forged memos.  That deception lasted a couple of hours at most.  The memos, supposedly from a deceased Air National Guard officer, were demonstrated to be forgeries and Rather demonstrated to be faithful to a "higher thruth".  In other words he's a liar. 

Now, apparently Eason Jordan of CNN has accused American military personnel of systematic murder. 

The office of Senator Dodd, a Democrat of Connecticut who attended the panel, released a statement that said he "was not on the panel but was in the audience when Mr. Jordan spoke. He - like panelists Mr. Gergen and Mr. Frank - was outraged by the comments. Senator Dodd is tremendously proud of the sacrifice and service of our American military personnel."

Within minutes of making the comments, Mr. Frank said, CNN's Mr. Jordan began to immediately "pull back" on the assertion that 12 journalists had been killed by American forces. He instead focused on the deaths of two reporters killed when a missile fired from an American jet struck the 15th floor of Baghdad's Palestine hotel, where many reporters and film crews stay when in Baghdad.

Mr. Frank said he tried to get information out of Mr. Jordan so that he could forward it to the appropriate congressional investigative authorities. " I think Congress has demonstrated with Abu Ghraib that we will aggressively pursue reasonable allegations," he said. Mr. Frank said he has tried repeatedly over the past few days to get Mr. Jordan to provide evidence of crimes against journalists. He said Mr. Jordan promised to get back to him, "but I haven't heard anything yet," Mr. Frank said.

This is not the first time that Mr. Jordan has spoken critically of the American military's conduct toward journalists. In November, he reportedly told a gathering of global news executives in Portugal called News Xchange that he believed journalists had been arrested and tortured by American forces.

And in October 2002, at a News Xchange conference, he accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting CNN personnel "on numerous occasions."

Mr. Jordan's remarks might have shocked the American attendees, but they certainly played well among some in the audience. The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens, who covered the panel for his paper, told the Sun that after the panel concluded, Mr. Jordan was surrounded by European and Middle Eastern attendees who warmly congratulated him for his alleged "bravery and candor" in discussing the matter.

This is the same Eason Jordan who admitted to filtering the news from Saddam Hussein's Iraq in order that CNN be allowed maintain a presence in Baghdad.  His story was that he was protecting the lives of his reporters, but if that was the objective he should have pulled his organization out.  Instead he chose to sugar coat the news for the benefit of Saddam.  Isn't it odd that he wouldn't do for that the American military?  Well, maybe not.

The centerpiece of leftist ambition is socialism.  Free market America has been repudiating socialism in a big way lately.  The problem with embracing socialism is that you may not also embrace the truth.  You have to make up the truth by inventing concepts like social justice, which has nothing whatever to do with justice, and everything to do with income redistribution and all of the coercion that goes along with it.  Or you have to twist the meaning of things, so that freedom becomes freedom from want or freedom from fear, but freedom does not mean freedom of speech, especially if you happen to be on a college campus.  Social equality means equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, or equality before the law.

No, the more you know about socialism the more you realize that you have to lie about it if you want to sell the concept.  Leftists know this and that's why the euphemisms come about.  Academia and the media are riddled with leftists who yearn for a socialist utopia, and for years they've had the soap box while everybody else was effectively silenced.  Sure there were conservative and libertarian messages out there but who heard them?  And when they were loud enough to gain attention, the authoritative voices from academia and the media spoke in disparaging terms, tainting the message and telling the casual listener, "This isn't for serious people.  Intelligent and responsible people don't go in for nonsense like this."

But the other voices, the conservative and libertarian voices, are getting louder now.  They can be heard on talk radio and on the internet, and it's become impossible for the leftists to discourage them all, or ignore them, or rate them unserious.  So they have to fight them in other ways and given that socialism is inherently dishonest, it should come as no surprise that the leftist fight employs dishonesty.  What's surprising is that the leftist fight employs such stupidity.  Well, maybe not.

Update:  Captain's Quarters has been all over the Eason Jordan scandal and the failings of mainstream media.

Hard-nosed, aggressive journalism requires that sacred cows suffer examination, and sometimes that examination reveals ugly truths. Journalists used to know this. Unfortunately, they now apply it only to those who fit their political beliefs as acceptable targets -- the US military, the Israeli military, the Bush administration and Republicans in general. When the sacred cows of the Left come under the exact same kind of aggressive journalism but unfettered by editors with political agendas, then we have balanced coverage and the promise of the full truth getting out to the public.

That, supposedly, had been the mission of the mainstream media. Based on their hysterical reaction to our demands for accountability from media executives, just as the media rightly demanded accountability from corporate executives cooking their books, that mission has been eclipsed. And if it has been eclipsed, as this "lynch-mob" excuse and the media blackout on Eason's Fables that preceded it demonstrates, one has to wonder what exactly eclipsed it. From our point of view, their mission appears to track quite closely with the American Left's mission of isolationism, growth of the federal government, and stepped-up attempts at redistribution of wealth.

Exactly.

Reform inches forward

According to this Washington Times article municipal elections are being held in Saudi Arabia for the first time in 40 years.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A candidate in groundbreaking elections beginning here today has a plan to reduce the kingdom's dependence on foreign labor, but it may be too radical for most of his countrymen: letting women drive...

The 45-year-old businessman, who is seeking municipal office in the kingdom's first elections in more than 40 years, is running on a social-reform platform that, besides letting women drive, would permit the opening of theaters and playhouses to help keep Saudi youth off the streets.
    But, he explained between phone calls as he drove through Riyadh, so great is the resistance to such ideas in Saudi Arabia that he finds the best way to promote social change is to emphasize the economic benefits.
    Thus, he speaks not about the rights of women, but rather of the need to reduce the traffic jams that daily clog the streets of the capital.
    It has been 40 years since Saudis were able to debate such issues in an election campaign, and at that time, they could vote only on the municipal level in a few major cities.

Carnival

The 125th Carnival of the Vanities is hosted this week at Coyote Blog.  These's a lot of good stuff, including one of my penetrating and insightful (or is it inciteful?) entries.   Anyway, it's worth the visit.

Back in the stratosphere again

Singing along with Gene Autrey, somewhat off key, I find that my event Number Three from the Top Ten of 2004 is flying again.  It's been like riding a yo-yo.  A brief rundown for those who missed the other posts on this topic:  The death of Yasser Arafat made my Top Ten important events of 2004 at Number Three because I felt it represented a Dramatic improvement in the chances for peace in the Middle East.  It's a story that has its ups and downs.  Well, here we go again.

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt Feb 8, 2005 — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says he has told Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Palestinians will halt all violence against Israelis, and Sharon says that Israel will stop military activity against Palestinians everywhere.

Rationing the earth

Imagine you're making a wool blanket. It's going to be a thick heavy blanket made with 8 pounds of virgin lambs' wool. Already you can tell it's going to be a nice warm blanket, but you think you can make it even warmer if you add a magical ingredient. Cashmere wool. That's the magical stuff that'll give your blanket special warmth on the coldest nights. The magic formula directs you to carefully mix in one eighty-fourth of an ounce of Cashmere to the 8 pounds of virgin lambs' wool and begin to make your blanket. Only in a fairy tale would such a tiny bit Cashmere make a difference in the warmth of an 8 pound blanket. In real life you'd never know it was there.  But fairy tales come true when we talk about the causes of global warming.

Global warming is the latest rationale for folks on the left to propose some sort of rationing. Rationing is the answer to everything.  For poverty it's income redistribution, rationing everybody's combined income. When it's not income it's oil. Back in the 70's they were frantic with predictions that oil would run out.  Washington was actually printing ration stamps before somebody had the good sense to get rid of the oil price ceiling. Before oil, they went on about over population and the impending worldwide famine. Family planning's the ticket. We'll ration people. Now it's global warming.

It's a given among the environmentalists of the left, that people do only harm to the earth. Let me qualify that. Western people, particularly Americans, are the ones who harm the earth. It's our greed, you know. We drive SUV's, and by doing that we take more than our fair share. Our gluttony poisons the planet by adding to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

The atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, inter alia, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have grown: by about 30%, 145%, and 15%, respectively (values for 1992). These trends can be attributed largely to human activities, mostly fossil­fuel use, land­use change and agriculture.

So what exactly does it mean that carbon dioxide rose by 30% and methane by a whopping 145%?  According to this chart, between the years of 1750 and 2003 carbon dioxide is thought to have gone from 280 ppm to 372.3 ppm, an increase of 92.3 ppm, and methane went from 730 ppb to 1843 ppb, an increase of 1113 ppb. For those not in the know, "ppm" stands for "parts per million" and "ppb" stands for "parts per billion".

Do the arithmetic. Carbon dioxide concentration comes out to be .03723% of the troposphere, while methane represents .0001843%. The combined estimated increase in these two gases represents .0093413% of the total atmosphere. By the way, that percentage of 8 pounds is roughly one eighty-fourth of an ounce.

We're being asked to conclude that these trace gases in Earth's atmospheric blanket have some magical impact on its insulating qualities, while nitrogen, which makes up 78% of the atmosphere, and oxygen, which makes up 21% of the atmosphere have little bearing.  Does this make any sense?  Take a good look at the wording in this paragraph.  It's from Manchester Metropolitan University Atmosphere, Climate & Environment Information Programme

Despite their relative scarcity, the most important trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere are the greenhouse gases. Most abundant in the troposphere, these gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour and ozone, so-called because they are involved in the Earth natural greenhouse effect which keeps the planet warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. Apart from water vapour, the most abundant greenhouse gas (by volume) is carbon dioxide. Despite being present in only 370 parts per million by volume of air, carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases help to keep the Earth 33°C warmer than it would otherwise be without an atmosphere. Through emissions of greenhouse gases however, mankind has enhanced with natural greenhouse effect which may now be leading to a warming of the Earth climate.

Notice the part about how the "greenhouse gases help to keep the Earth 33°C warmer than it would otherwise be without an atmosphere."  They know they're pushing a load of crap.

Consider this from Steve Antler

...reader Harold Brashears sends in the following comment on this recent post:

I was amused to see the quote from Stephen Schneider. He was a prominent global cooling enthusiast, not long ago.

His paper on global cooling: Schneider S. & Rasool S., "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols - Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate", Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141.

A more recent Schneider quote:

"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."

(In interview for "Discover" magagzine, Oct 1989).

There's another little problem with the global warming theories. Research by Harvard University is said to prove that there was a period in the middle ages when the climate was much warmer than it is today.

The review, by a Harvard University team, examined the findings of studies of temperature proxies such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts that allowed scientists to estimate temperatures.

The findings prove that the world had a medieval warm period between the ninth and 14th centuries, with world temperatures significantly higher than today's.

They also confirm claims that a little Ice Age set in about 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up, but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages.

The end of the little Ice Age is significant because it implies that the records used by climate scientists date from when the Earth was relatively cold, thereby exaggerating the significance of today's temperature rise.

How entertaining that both global cooling and global warming have the same supposed cause - burning fossil fuels. It may very well be that there is a crisis, but if there is I suspect it's not with our climate.  If there's a crisis it's a crisis of the liberal psyche, driven to ration something, anything, but finding fewer and fewer excuses to do it.

Where's Robert Musil?

One of my daily reads for the last few of years has been Robert Musil, whose writings could be found under the banner Man Without Qualities.  Always informative, always entertaining.  My introduction came by way of a Google search for anything on Enron.  This was almost exactly three years ago.  My search turned up a post entitled Indelicate Questions of an Aged Aunt, (you'll have to scroll to the bottom to find it) which wondered aloud, what exactly was Robert Rubin hoping to accomplish by phoning a former colleague at Treasury on behalf of Enron.

The Man Without Qualities values a polymath, including the rare one such as Robert Rubin who enjoys Congressional and media infatuation. But even infatuated ingenues deserve words from a hardened aunt willing to remind the family that the thrilling, romantic whirl does, in fact, share aspects with the process of selecting a prize animal for stud – all of which recommends that the squire in question be asked certain rather indelicate questions...

The Times prematurely declares that Mr. Rubin’s “call to Peter R. Fisher, under secretary of the Treasury for domestic financial markets, will probably be no more than a footnote in the Enron story.” But just as aged Auntie might impede the swelling emotions of the moment with her indelicate inquiries (Is there insanity in the family? Has the young man ever been - er – “detained” by the authorities? And so on.), I suggest that Mr. Rubin be required to answer some indelicate questions of his own, questions notably omitted in the Times interview.

At the time, the Senate was still in the hands of the Democrats and the Senate investigations into Enron's collapse predictably enough couldn't see a point in talking to Mr. Rubin about what he might have known about Enron's accounting practices and financial condition.  The Aged Auntie's questions went unasked.  But Man Without Qualities continued for the next three years to point out those troublesome contradictions that so often seem to crop up when liberal elite are faced with living up to liberal ideals. 

And now with liberal hypocracies in full bloom, Man Without Qualities has left us without a word.  His last post was nearly two months ago.  I hope he is on to bigger and better things.  Or if not bigger and better things, I hope he is enjoying whatever it is that occupies him in place of his writings.  I miss his writings, though, and wish him well.

Blair captures the left

Tim Blair moved his weblog.  One of the last things he posted at the old address was a picture.  Perfect, isn't it.

Poll Numbers

Via Captains Quarters, Bush's approval numbers went up among those who watched the State of the Union Address.

The percentage of respondents who said the president's proposals in those areas will help the country rose 15 points from when the same question was asked of the same people in the two days before the speech.

In the post-speech sample, 70 percent of respondents said Bush's policies on health care were positive, while 66 percent approved of the president's plan for Social Security.

Bush showed almost as much improvement on Iraq, with 78 percent of respondents saying U.S. policy there is heading in the right direction, a 12 percentage point increase over pre-speech polling. Overall, 77 percent of respondents said Bush is taking the country in the right direction after the speech compared to 67 percent beforehand.

67% beforehand?  Who knew?  Another bit of under reporting by MSM?

The "insurgents"

Iraq the Model provides a bit of insight on the character of those whom the media invariably refer to as "insurgents".  These are the guys Michael Moore calls "Minutemen". 

The suicide attack that was performed on an election center in one of Baghdad's districts (Baghdad Al-Jadeedah) last Sunday was performed using a kidnapped "Down Syndrome" patient.

Eye witnesses said (and I'm quoting one of my colleagues; a dentist who lives there) "the poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance".

I couldn't believe the news until I met another guy from that neighborhood who knows the family of the victim. The guy was reported missing 5 days prior to elections' day and the family were distributing posters that specified his descriptions and asking anyone who finds him to contact them.

When a relative of mine (who has a mental handicap due to an Rh conflict at birth) told me a month ago that a group of men in a car tried to kidnap him as he was standing in front of the institution he periodically visits to get medicine and support waiting for his brother; I thought that he was imagining the whole story. He said that they tried to force him into the car telling him not to be afraid and that they're from the "mujahideen and not going to hurt him". My relative, despite his handicap was moved by his survival instinct and managed to run away. After I heard the other story, I began to connect between the two stories and to consider my cousin's story as a true one that uncovered a new miserable war technique that can come only from the sickest minds.

The attack using an individual with Downs Syndrome was also mentioned in here.