I'm Not Understanding Something

So, we have the banks sitting on piles and piles of CDOs, because if they sell them, they'll wind up under-capitalized and begin the credit-trap death spiral. But doesn't mark-to-market accounting require them to write down their CDOs' value as soon as anybody sells enough of them to make a market?

Could it be that nobody is selling CDOs? And, if so, doesn't that start to smell a bit of collusion on the banks' part?

Change--Not!

I've been scrupulously avoiding any discussion of the stimulus bill, but I can no longer contain myself.

Today, in response to still more bad (but completely expected) employment numbers, Obama said:

I am sure that at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, members of the Senate are reading these same numbers this morning. I hope they share my sense of urgency and draw the same, unmistakable conclusion: The situation could not be more serious. These numbers demand action. It is inexcusable and irresponsible to get bogged down in distraction and delay while millions of Americans are being put out of work. It is time for Congress to act.

This would be fine if the bill weren't a giant, steaming, Christmas-tree-shaped dog turd. Obama can have a stimulus bill any time he wants, just by including only infrastructure, temporary unemployment relief, and tax cuts. But he apparently doesn't want that. He wants to use the crisis as an opportunity to placate every constituency he owes from the campaign.

This is, of course, nothing new, nor is it particularly surprising. It certainly isn't a new kind of politics, however.

I performed a little exercise on the CBO analysis of the stimulus bill (PDF): I took all the expenditures the listed from the various titles of the bill and marked which ones looked stimulative to me and which ones looked like ornaments on the Christmas tree. My criteria where as follows: For something to be judged "stimulative" it had to either be one of the following:

1. A genuine infrastructure improvement (roads, bridges, public buildings, electrical grid, or broadband infrastructure).
2. A tax cut.
3. Something that sounded reasonable for helping out the unemployed.
   

Here's what I came up with:


In other words, there's about $250 billion that doesn't look very stimulative to me. A quarter of a trillion dollars.

Let's assume that I've been overly harsh and $100B of that actually is stimulative. That means that we can lop of $150 billion without trying very hard.

I don't care if we add more tax cuts or not. I'll grudgingly accept that we need a whopping big infrastructure spend (even though the evidence for that seems to be somewhat paltry, and this multiplier effect has obvious logical problems). But it's simply not gonna fly for Obama to try and stampede us into wasting hundreds of billions of dollars.

He should be ashamed of himself.

Delaying DTV Is Not All Sweetness and Light

Want to know what's really going on with the decision to delay the mandated switchover to DTV? Take a look at this, from three weeks ago:

But the transition will also free up huge swaths of spectrum in the 700MHz band currently in use by analog broadcasters, which the Federal Communications Commission auctioned off last year. As FCC commissioner Robert McDowell noted on a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this weekend, "there are companies paying hundreds of billion of dollars to use this spectrum, and they expect the goods to be delivered."

One of those companies is Verizon, which ponied up nearly $9.4 billion for spectrum it plans to use for its 4G Long-Term Evolution wireless broadband network. In a letter to top members of the House and Senate commerce committees Monday, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg urged members of Congress to resist any delay of the transition, warning that it could impede the company's plans. "Verizon Wireless intends to begin field testing and deployment of LTE this year," wrote Seidenberg. "Deployment of LTE, however, can only be done if we have access to the 700MHz frequencies. Delaying the DTV transition will delay our ability to upgrade those frequencies to 4G broadband for American consumers and have a negative impact on our nation's international competitiveness."

That viewpoint has put Verizon at odds with AT&T, which has signaled its support for a delay in order to ensure a smooth transition—and, coincidentally, is not planning to use its own winnings from the 700Mhz block for LTE.

It's not clear whether Verizon would really be able to make good on its plans to begin deploying its LTE network by the end of 2009. Most analysts believe that a relatively short postponement, on the order of three months, would have little effect on 4G deployment—provided it did not set the stage for further delays, as Verizon clearly fears it might. Such a delay might also avoid a spate of homeowners sliding off icy rooftops as they struggle to install new antennas.

But a longer, more disruptive delay might provide some breathing room for Verizon competitor Clearwire. That company is seeking to build market share for its own WiMAX network, a joint venture with Sprint, before LTE is ready for prime time. Clearwire has boasted that it remains years ahead of the competition, but while WiMAX networks in Portland and Baltimore are already up and running, scheduled expansions to other cities have been delayed until late 2009, even as Verizon has bumped up its own schedule. The company's stock has now been in free-fall for months, and several major backers recently announced they would take major write-downs on their investments in Clearwire. (The roster of large investors in Clearwire includes Obama-ally Google.) A toxic negative feedback loop in investor confidence could leave it unable to finance its promised buildouts for 2009. With any transition delay certain to push the spectrum handover into the next quarter of the fiscal year, if not further, the attendant uncertainty could also factor into investment decisions as Wall Street—and equipment makers—decide which standard to back.

I just love that new politics, don't you?

Gridlock, Please

I used to think that a simple split in control between the legislative and executive branches was sufficient for good government. Now I'm wondering if it isn't better to have a split in control between the two legislative houses. The GOP is having lots of fun in opposition and, after all, isn't it the essence of conservatism to say no to almost everything? The inability to get anything but the most obviously good legislation passed seems like a real winner, especially when the Presidency is held by somebody who's competent and confident in his own leadership.

I am genuinely frightened by this stimulus bill. Hopefully it can be delayed long enough for cooler heads to prevail. Hopefully the President is one of those cooler heads.

A (Possibly Rhetorical) Question About Bonuses

Wapo:

President Obama yesterday scolded Wall Street bankers who received millions of dollars in bonuses last year, calling the payouts "shameful" and chiding the executives for a lack of personal responsibility at a precarious time for the nation's economy.

Now if I were a board of directors hiring a CEO, I'd think that the bonus criteria were spelled out in great detail in the employment contract. Is this the case? And if it is the case, are we really dealing with shamefulness, or are we dealing with equal parts of stupidity and of assumptions from a bygone era (aka six months ago)?

I have to say that the amount of red meat being tossed to the Left by Obama is verging on the excessive. (If we're going to hold Obama responsible for contents of the whimsically named "stimulus package", we're way, way past excessive, but I think this is probably more a rookie cat-herding deficiency than anything else.) Maybe that's just as well. The GOP seems to be remembering how much easier (and more constructive) it is to be an opposition minority. Every time Obama pours some more gasoline on the fire, the more the Republicans find their footing (and an increasingly alarmed fundraising base).

The Audacity of Shooting Your Mouth Off

Obama has seized on the energy issue--both as a matter of independence and as a climate issue--and has co-opted it. Good for him. But when you step up to such an issue, you assume the risk of being blamed when things go sideways, just as you assume the reward if real progress is made.

So Obama goes and talks about solar, wind, and ethanol very specifically in his inaugural speech but he is silent on nuclear power. Those three are certainly among the most promising technologies. But each has unsolved technological problems that prevent their deployment today.

Solar is too expensive. It can't scale easily to become a significant percentage of load for the grid, both because of an inadequate grid and because its power density sucks. And, finally, it's not suitable for base load until we find a really good way of storing the energy for when the sun isn't shining.

Wind is less expensive and scales better, but it still doesn't scale well enough to take over the needed percentage of power generation, and it suffers from the same base load problem as solar.

Ethanol can be used for base load, but it's ridiculous unless we're talking cellulosic ethanol and that's not really out of the lab yet. Furthermore, scalability is a big issue: What happens to the soil if you're using all your mulch for fuel? How do you transport gigatonnes of biomass to processing facilities?

Now, all of these energy sources are very promising. We should be investing heavily in solving the technical problems associated with them. But what if the technical problems can't be solved? We run across promising technologies like this all the time. (Think nuclear fusion...)

Meanwhile, nuclear power has no technical problems. It's got very high power density. It works with the existing electrical grid. It scales wonderfully. It's not much more expensive than fuel oil-, gas- or coal-fired electricity. It's safe (yes, really). Its waste is easy to dispose of. (There is no waste disposal problem at a technical level. There certainly is a political problem, but there's a political problem with all of this stuff: it's not as cheap as coal, gas, and fuel oil.)

But Obama is avoiding any mention of nuclear power. From his tepid position during the campaign to his thunderous silence in his early days in office, it's clear that Obama doesn't want to talk about nuclear. Maybe he wants to deploy it quietly so as not to enrage the Left, but we can't assume that yet.

Here's the bottom line. Obama has staked a big chunk of his reputation on improving the energy picture. Nuclear has better risk-to-reward characteristics than any of the energy sources that Obama thinks are politically correct. He needs to build out nuclear as a hedge against technological failure. Failure to do so comes with a steep price: If Obama could have fixed the energy problem with nuclear and all the other technologies come up dry, he deserves every bit of blame that we can heap upon him.

There are a few things that the government could do that would dramatically improve the deployability of nuclear power plants. First, the licensing process is intentionally obstructive. It could be streamlined with no detriment to safety.

The government could go a long way towards solving the NIMBY problem (Not In My Back Yard) and its more virulent ideological cousin, BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere, Near Anyone). Community review is all well and good but there's this thing called the common good that eventually needs to trump the delicate sensibilities of every single community everywhere. It's a sad fact that, as an industrial society, we have to have areas that are nasty and, well, industrial. A small risk attends the conduct of industry. The government can codify this risk, plan for it, and legislate when the reward so vastly outweighs the risk that we move forward.

Another major impediment to nuclear power is its insurability. Nuclear power is much safer than most other energy technologies in terms of number of accidents and ill effects caused by pollution. However, a major accident will happen all at once and affect a very large number of people. So on a per-capita, per-time-period basis, nuclear power is riskier than other technologies and therefore more difficult to insure. Government underwriting would dramatically reduce the cost of the technology with virtually no additional taxpayer exposure. (Think about it for a minute: If there's a nuclear disaster in the United States, is there any way that the government doesn't wind up footing the bill anyway?)

Finally, there are research activities that only the government can perform. Lots of nifty next-generation technologies are floating around. (My favorite is the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, but there are plenty of others.)

Sadly, Obama doesn't seem interested in any of this kind of policy. I think it's incumbent upon us as citizens to make sure that he knows we're watching him on this. He needs to understand the risk he's running and the consequences of an ideological stand on this issue.

It's a Metaphor or Something, Right?

Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle. But wait! There's more:

The animal, named Sumo, had become increasingly violent over the past years and was prone to making 'vicious, unprovoked attacks', Chirac's wife Bernadette said...

Mrs Chirac said: 'The dog went for him for no apparent reason."

Now he knows how Bush felt in the runup to the Iraq invasion.

Some Good Advice

A very fine To-Don't List for Republicans in opposition. Here's hoping that somebody's listening.

The Annotated Speech

Here's Obama's inaugural speech, with my comments:

My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

I thank President Bush for his service to our nation as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

So what about that oath? Not to the text, exactly. Is that a problem? Does he need to have a do-over? The text in Article II, Section 1, says, "Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:--'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' " Roberts botched it. If Obama just says it out loud, correctly, is he empowered to conduct himself as President? What if he doesn't?

The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

We are clearly in a pretty bad recession. But beyond that, I'm having a bit of trouble deciding just how panic-stricken we all should be. The rest of the world certainly doesn't love us, but they hardly ever do--sometimes they're more vocal about it. I think the world respects us, even though they'd like to reduce our power. No surprise there.

So the depth of the alleged crisis hinges on how bad the recession is. We should be worried. But isn't Obama doing the same thing for which Bush has been pilloried lo these last seven years? Isn't he using fear for political advantage?

Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

A bit of an odd tone here. He needs to say this, of course. We have lost our confidence and we badly need to recover it. But Obama almost sounds like a scold here.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

I've now had 24 hours to let this sink in. Boy, what a load of self-righteous crap. One man's childishness is another's principled opposition. Or has Obama already forgotten his own stand on the Iraq war and how he justified it?

Don't get me wrong: I'm all in favor of improving the tone and conducting politics with neither vitriol nor hatred. But Obama has, in the past, shown a keen understanding that opposition is the best friend a good law or policy can have. Only through principled resistance can the inevitable weak spots in any policy be identified and shored up.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.

It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.

Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

Would anyone care to identify those that seek only the pleasures of riches and fame?

For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

This one's really weird. There's an appeal to the Vietnam generation in here but nothing for those fighting in Iraq (twice) or Afghanistan. This is the point where I started to get very concerned. There's lots of red meat in here for sixties-era liberals, but considerably less for modern pragmatists, progressive or otherwise. Since Obama's main appeal is his pragmatism, this is disappointing at best, alarming at worst.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.

"Standing pat" = "very bad behavior." Standing pat is often the right thing to do--not always, but often. I don't revolutionary change except where it's blindingly obvious that it's needed. There are several areas where that's true (the current monetary crisis, the lack of an energy policy that makes sense, the lack of any form of civility in government) but there are plenty of areas where you can only make things worse.

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Ooooo, maybe it really is the Great Depression! Or maybe just 1936.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.

The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

I'm behind him on the electric grid and high-speed internet initiatives. But, are we really suffering reduced growth because of our highway system? Yeah, yeah, maintenance is important, but is that what he's saying here?

We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its costs.

And if health care stubbornly gets more expense in spite of technology's wonders or, more likely, because of them, what then?

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.

Sun... check. Wind power... check. Ethanol... check? And of course, nuclear... huh. Imagine that. No nukes. What a surprise!

I'm inclined to give Obama a lot of rope in the hopes that any energy policy is better than no energy policy at all. But let's set down a marker right now, shall we? Obama is predicting both a climatic crisis from carbon-based fuels and an economic crisis as the supply of those fuels slowly declines. So it's important to try lots of things in order to generate an optimal solution to the 21st century's energy demands. But solar, wind, and ethanol all have significant technical hurdles to overcome before they can become anything like a panacea.

Nuclear, on the other hand, has no hurdles. The waste disposal problem isn't a technical problem; it's a problem of public will. We could meet all of our demand with nuclear power alone. We could drive our carbon emissions down by at least 60% (assuming that electric cars don't pan out, otherwise emissions could go even lower) with nuclear power alone.

If Obama fails to install a robust nuclear program and fails to plan for an increased nuclear role, then he is guilty of extreme energy malfeasance. He will be judged very harshly if none of the other renewable technologies takes hold strongly enough to solve the problem.

All this we can do. All this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.

Barry baby, we all love ya, but some of those "stale political arguments", like being cautious when adopting revolutionary change and paying for your government as you go, rather than running up truly alarming debts, are not very stale.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

Another weirdy here. Where programs don't help families or retirees or improve personal care, we'll cancel programs? What does this say about the defense department? Commercial supports? Policing programs? Hell, what does it say about energy programs?

And those of us who manage the public's knowledge will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

If this is the clarion call to increased openness, cool. But if it is, why is it so, uh, obscure?

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.

But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

Calls for regulation of markets? Well, OK. But the "ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart"? What does this mean? That the government will give you a job if you want one? Socialist claptrap.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.

Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

I think I hear Miracle Max in the distance, saying, "Goodbye, boys! Have fun stormin' the castle!" It's a nice line, but it's a cheap line. The expensive part comes when you can cut some corners to vastly improve your odds of avoiding an attack or live (or die) by your principles. Still, Obama gets to have a little naivete on his first day. Then we'll see.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

...and internment camps and military tribunals and forced rationing and J. Edgar Hoover. Again, lovely sentiments. Let's watch the self-righteousness, OK?

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.

Nice tap-dance on Iraq. But just what is a "hard-earned peach in Afghanistan"? And, given that we've just said that we're not going to wield power for power's sake, what exactly is the goal? And what is the national interest?

Obama has a long history of assuming that the Pottery Barn rule of international conquest trumps all other considerations when it comes to Afghanistan. We broke it, so we have to fix it. But he forgets that we broke it because we needed to eliminate a threat. That threat no longer exists in Afghanistan. It moved next door, to Pakistan. Afghanistan is a pile of rocks. It would be lovely if democracy flowered out of the mountains and the deserts there, but it's not the main requirement. The main requirement is to deny terrorists safe haven. Obama needs to understand the priorities better.

With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.

Sounds lovely.

We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.

And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

Encouraging. There's a very small sop to the multiculturalist crowd in here, but Obama seems genuinely to understand that America's power comes from its citizens being Amercians of the unhypenated kind.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.

And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.

It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Yup, very nice. Boilerplate.

Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.

These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

Best lines of the whole speech, and profoundly comforting to conservatives, especially after everything that came before it.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by nine campfires on the shores of an icy river.

The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.

At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you.

And God bless the United States of America.

Final thoughts: This is mostly red meat for the Left. It is profoundly in conflict with the image of moderation that Obama has projected through the general election and the transition. Still, if all the Left gets is a pretty speech and the rest of us get the benefit of a cool, pragmatic President, we'll be doing quite well.

I wish our new President very good luck. He'll need it. I expect to disagree with him at least half of the time. I hope that he takes that disagreement (or, rather, the collective disagreement that emerges from the conservative zeitgeist) in the spirit in which it is offered. If he can co-opt criticism and transform it into excellent policy, he'll be a great President. If he can't, he'll be Jimmy Carter.

A Few Final Bush Thoughts

Well, Obama is the President. Bush is on his way back to Texas. Most breathe a sigh of relief. I'm glad it's over but I wonder what the final verdict on W. will be.

Bush's "dram of eale" was an utter lack of subtlety. He was incapable of understanding that words and attitudes matter, even when one is doing the right thing. He was incapable of persuasion, which it turn led to, well, let's be charitable and just call it high-handedness.

From this character flaw flow all of Bush's mistakes: Objectively, the Israelis and Palestinians hate each other and aren't prepared to make peace, so why bother with diplomacy? North Korea, Iraq, and Iran truly are evil, so why mince words? France, Germany, and Russia oppose our invasion of Iraq, so we will run roughshod over them--why compromise? Though the State of Louisiana failed in its duties to New Orleans, FEMA pretty much did its job--why should it take up the slack for the State's failure? The list goes on and on.

Bush couldn't understand the value of diplomacy, so he ignored it. Bush couldn't understand the necessity of compromise, so his legislative agenda was largely unsuccessful. Bush couldn't argue well, so he was remarkably intolerant of dissent.

All in all, a very bad trait for a President.

We'll see how he's remembered. He was certainly a good man, and he had a huge amount of courage. He did a fine job keeping the war off of American soil. Ironically, he may have been so successful that he'll never get credit for it: If al Qaeda turns out to be crushed, then history will judge Bush's wars as a vast overreaction. Of course, there's a distinct possiblity that, without the wars, terrorism would be genuinely ascendant.

All in all, not a superb President. Maybe not even a mediocre President. But we'll see how things look after four or eight years of Obama. I remember being awfully tired of Clinton at the time. Now, I just wish we could go back to that party.

That Pesky Multiplier Effect

Conventional (or at least popular) wisdom is that each dollar of government spending contributes more than a dollar of GDP. Further popular wisdom is that spending has a better multiplier than a tax cut.

But Greg Mankiw thr0ws up several well-taken caveats:

In practice, however, the multiplier for government spending is not very large. The best evidence comes from a recent study by Valerie A. Ramey, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. Based on the United States’ historical record, Professor Ramey estimates that each dollar of government spending increases the G.D.P. by only 1.4 dollars. So, by doing the math, we find that when the G.D.P. expands, less than a third of the increase takes the form of private consumption and investment.

Mankiw goes on to poke further at the popular wisdom on tax cuts:

Textbook Keynesian theory says that tax cuts are less potent than spending increases for stimulating an economy. When the government spends a dollar, the dollar is spent. When the government gives a household a dollar back in taxes, the dollar might be saved, which does not add to aggregate demand.

The evidence, however, is hard to square with the theory. A recent study by Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, then economists at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that a dollar of tax cuts raises the G.D.P. by about $3. According to the Romers, the multiplier for tax cuts is more than twice what Professor Ramey finds for spending increases.

Why this is so remains a puzzle. One can easily conjecture about what the textbook theory leaves out, but it will take more research to sort things out. And whether these results based on historical data apply to our current extraordinary circumstances is open to debate.

Finally, we also have an obvious question from Arnold Kling:

It is amazing what happens when you assume that you live in a linear world. You say that the multiplier for government spending is 1.57.

Really? Over what range? Think of it this way: at which level of additional government spending would the path of U.S. real GDP be the highest?

(a) $100 billion in spending above the baseline
(b) $1 trillion in spending above the baseline
(c) $100 trillion in spending above the baseline

If you use a constant multiplier of 1.57, the right answer is (c). Yet we know that this is not the right answer. At $100 trillion in additional government spending, the United States would be operating like Zimbabwe, with similar results.

So to talk about "the" multiplier, as if it were linear, has to be wrong at some level. Is the multiplier linear over the range between $100 billion of additional spending and $1 trillion of additional spending? I think that is unlikely. Between, say $400 billion and $800 billion, is the incremental multiplier still in a range between 1 and 2? I worry that it is much lower. I worry that it turns negative somewhere in that range.

Personally, I can't see how all the inflating of the economy doesn't lead to a lot of, well, inflation. It doesn't if you think that there is an offsetting amount of deflation (say, somewhere between $5 and $10 trillion), but we really have no idea, do we?

Might not be a terrible time to buy some gold.

The Death of 8.01 and 8.02

MIT is doing away with its lecture=based introductory physics courses. One of my most excruciating memories from my intensely checkered career at MIT was attending 8.01 lectures in introductory mechanics in the dreaded, auditorium-like room 26-100. During the lectures on conservation of momentum, the professor set up an air track, smashed a couple of shuttles together to demonstrate his points, and then droned on with the rest of the lecture--while leaving the air track running, with the shuttles bouncing back and forth.

Now, it's impossible to get an air track completely level, and friction eventually does slow things down. So after 15 or 20 minutes, the shuttles would ever, so, sloooowly, coast to spot in the middle of the track, stop, and then, even, more, sloooowly, slide back in the other direction. There were 500 freshmen in that auditorium, all of them with the same wincing expression on their faces, watching that damned shuttle come to a stop. They all had similar expressions of relief on their faces when it started moving again.

Forget waterboarding and stress positions and prolonged isolation. Just put your enemny combatant in front of that air track and you'll have him spilling everything he knows in about two hours.

MIT is going to a high-tech, participatory approach to teaching its introductory physics courses. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. This looks like a significant innovation in teaching technology, which is ultimately the way how we solve our education problems.

Iran's Power

Conventional wisdom is that the war in Iraq and the neglect of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process have conferred new power on Iran. But I have some questions:

First, will Iraq be a puppet of Iran? There is certainly Iranian influence in Iraq that didn't exist in Saddam's day. But it seems as if the most blatantly pro-Iran militias have lost power over the past two years. Furthermore, the Iraqi government has finally managed to achieve some sort of balance between the Sunni and Shia groups, making it that much harder for Iran to achieve any workable political dominance. Do improved ties between Iraq and Iran really provide much political power to Iran?

One way that Iran benefits is that it no longer needs a standing army to defend itself from Iraq. But Iran has chosen to fund insurgent operations in Iraq, which probably cost as much if not more than garrisoning troops on the border. Furthermore, because it is conducting hostile operations in Iraq, it can't really release many border resources.

The same calculus applies to Israel. Iran has definitely accumulated power through Hezbollah and Hamas, but it's spending a hell of a lot of money and resources to do it and its neighbors are much more likely to take covert countermeasures against it. As a result of its higher profile, Israel regularly prunes back these groups' military power, forcing Iran to spend even more to resupply them. How long can they do this?

Finally, even as Iran's nuclear program continues, Iran's military adventures make that program less and less acceptable to the international community. An insular Iran with nukes might have been ignored. An aggressive, expansionist Iran can't be ignored, even by those countries that wouldn't ordinarily care much about proliferation.

In short, Iran is burning through a lot of resources for its new-found power. With the oil crash, it no longer has the windfall that allows it to be quite so profligate. Now that it's out on the limb, can it achieve its objectives before its financial position saws it off?

I'm Back (?)

I seem to have taken a couple of months off. Some of this was post-election stupor, but I've also had a bit of a health issue (a bit of C6 radiculopathy, which has made it painful and/or disturbing to type very much).

Starting Monday, I'll be heading back to work. I've been on a leave of absence for nine months and it's time to do something productive.

Which leaves the future of this blog sort of up in the air. I've enjoyed doing something approaching structured, non-technical writing for the first time in years, but it does take up a certain amount of time. We'll see.

A New Way to Regulate

Somebody's probably already thought of this but I hadn't, so here goes:

Today, we regulate for anti-trust by looking at market share in important industries. Today we regulate banks largely by looking at their total leverage. But, despite the media nattering on about companies that are "too big to fail," that's not really the problem. The problem is that some companies are too connected to fail. If you rip them out of the network of financial and supplier relationships, the damage done cascades through the whole network.

So why not regulate from a graph-theoretic basis? We not only want to know about leverage and market share, we want to know about how many other entities that hold debt or credit, or how many suppliers and customers, will be hurt if a given entity goes belly-up. If we had this information in a standardized reporting structure, regulators could look for excessively connected nodes or nodes whose average network distance was substantially shorter than the network diameter.

These are the companies that are most likely to cause trouble if they fail. Regulators could concentrate on these companies and, if necessary, take preemptive action to reduce the damage they could do to the rest of the network.

No idea whether this is feasible or what the unintended consequences are.

Earth, Say Hi to Fomalhaut B

The first images of an extraterrestrial planet have been obtained.

The achievement, the result of years of effort on improved observational techniques and better data analysis, presages more such discoveries, the experts said, and will open the door to new investigations and discoveries of what planets are and how they came to be formed.

This is a big deal.

When you can image a planet, you can get its spectrum. One day, not too far in the future, we will obtain the spectrum of a planet and there will be free oxygen lines in it. How different will the world be when we know that there is life on another planet, circling another star? Will we feel compelled to send probes there, irrespective of the cost? Or will this just become yet another datum in the panoply of wonders that is our modern world.

The economy sucks. We're embroiled in a low-intensity world war. Our politics is about to undergo the biggest upheaval since 1981, maybe since 1932. But we can still do... this.

The Boiling Frog Theory of the American Electorate

As I've said before, Obama's instincts are liberal but he's dispassionate enough always to think his positions through before acting. That makes him more centrist. But Obama still has a very liberal agenda. How will he execute on that?

Bill Kristol writes:

His selection of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff suggests that Obama’s not going to be mindlessly leftist, and that he’s going to shape a legislative strategy that is attentive to Congressional realities while not deferring to a Congressional leadership whose interests may not be his own. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were both tripped up in their first two years by their Democratic Congresses. Obama intends for Emanuel to ensure that that doesn’t happen.

Both Carter and Clinton lurched to the left, got their hands slapped for it, and were then forced slowly to moderate their positions for the rest of their terms. In short, they forgot the Boiling Frog Observation: If you toss a frog into boiling water, it will immediately hop out. However, if you toss a frog into cold water and slowly heat it, the frog will happily boil to death.

If Obama's smart--and he is--he'll recognize why this analogy is important to his success in transforming policy. If he starts with a moderate agenda, he won't create an electoral backlash in the out-year elections and he'll be re-elected handily in 2012. By then, he can make his legislative initiatives progressively more liberal without any reaction by the electorate. This is the key to maximizing the amount of damage he can do the country.

We have one hope: Obama may be smart, but Congress approximately has the I.Q. of the frog in question. Paradoxically, if we are to keep Obama's agenda as centrist as possible, it may be important that Obama fails to rein in the crazies on the left.

No Kneeling Before Zod!

Sage advice from John Scalzi, who helpfully critiques the best and the worst of sci-fi movie presidents.

An Alternative Theory On McCain's Electoral Defeat

Consider the following:

1. One day, while sitting in his A-4 on the USS Forrestal, minding his own business, a missile was accidentally fired into John McCain's aircraft from another plane sitting on the deck. Though McCain escaped with his life, resulting secondary explosions caused the largest loss of life at sea since World War II.


2. When McCain recovered from his Forrestal injuries, it was only a few missions later when he was shot down over Hanoi.


3. Because he was an admiral's son (and grandson) and refused to cooperate with the North Vietnamese, he was singled out for exceptionally harsh torture.


4. In 2000, McCain's first presidential campaign foundered on an exceptionally well-run and exceptionally vicious rumor campaign sabotaged his chances in South Carolina. The competence of that campaign was almost certainly the result of an accident of fate: anybody other than Carl Rove wouldn't have been nearly as effective in torpedoing McCain.


5. Finally, after surging ahead in the polls, McCain became the first candidate in US history to fall victim to a massive financial crisis only six weeks before the general election.

Now, consider these facts as well:

1. Barack Obama won his Illinois state Senate seat when a routine ballot-qualification attempt against his opponents actually succeeded, allowing him to run for the seat unopposed.


2. When Obama decided to run for the US Senate, his opponent fell victim to possibly the juiciest sex scandal, involving him coercing his wife, a well-known Borg at the time, into attending sex clubs with him. Again, Obama ran virtually unopposed. (I don't count Alan Keyes as opposition.)


3. It just so happens that Obama arrives on the national scene at just the right time to make a terrific speech at one convention, then becomes a junior Senator at just the right time to capitalize on growing national disgust for all things Republican. Having no record that could be used against him, he is able to bootstrap a successful presidential campaign.


4. With his numbers sharply declining and only eight weeks left in the campaign, Obama becomes the beneficiary of the same financial crisis that wreaks havoc with the McCain campaign.

I've gone on at great length about Obama's many talents and McCain's obvious deficiencies, but maybe the reason the election turned out the way it did is simpler to explain than that: McCain is the unluckiest man in the world, and Obama is the luckiest.

Why I Voted Against McCain

Apparently I am now One of the Ones I've Been Waiting For.

Shit.

When you no longer believe in protest votes, the only way to vote against McCain is to vote for Obama. So I did. Mind you, it was completely irrelevant for whom I voted: I live in Texas, in a safe Republican state, in a safe Republican district (21, and Lamar Smith ran with no Democratic opponent). But it's important to go on record for my awe-inspiringly massive readership.

Here are the reasons why I just couldn't pull the trigger on McCain:

• Would you really want somebody who hired those advisers to run that campaign actually running the country?


• The campaign suspension during the financial brouhaha, which led to nothing except confusion and a humiliating walk-back on all of McCain's fancy rhetoric. The "fire Chris Cox" thing didn't fill me with warm fuzziness, either.
  


• Palin: a good idea with extremely poor execution. Bush had a lot of good ideas, too...


• All of McCain's policy proposals had the same basic problem as his legislative successes: they sound wonderful at a high level but are riddled with unintended consequences and various impracticalities.


• The extremely wide dynamic range of both McCain's intellect and temperment. Like the little girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead, when he was good he was very very good but when he was bad he was horrid.


• The Republicans need to lose and lose big. As painful as the next four or eight years are going to be (and they're going to be awful), it is simply a requirement that the electorate informs its representatives what kind of government they simply will not accept. It does no good to have a winning philosophy of government on your side when you don't follow it, let alone understand it. Maybe we'll get smarter ones next time.

This is a head vote, not a heart vote. As I've said many times before, my first impulses are almost always conservative and it's impossible not to want to root for McCain, if only for his sheer moxie. It's an odd feeling to cast your vote one way and then be secretly rooting for the other guy, but there it is: Obama will be a less bad President than McCain.

Perhaps I'm repeating myself, but... shit.

The Culture War

Let us enumerate the components of the conservative coalition:

• There are business conservatives, who advocate that free trade, low taxes, and a streamlined regulatory structure are the principal contributors to the economic health of our society.


• There are foreign policy hawks, who point out that social health can only occur in a society that isn't besieged with enemies.


• There are libertarians, who believe that society innovates and flourishes when individuals are restrained only by their own individual morals.


• There are social conservatives, who believe that society must be protected from itself and that the best way to do that is to oppose any force that might change it.
  

The business conservatives get along fine with the hawks because muscular foreign policy is good for opening new markets and for corporate welfare. They also get along with the libertarians because their interests tend to be a subset of the libertarians' interests. The hawks like the biz types because they make the technology that drives national security and they like the social conservatives because their posture is defensive all the time. The libertarians have a love/hate relationship with all of the other groups: they hate corporate welfare and big defense budgets and they especially hate government-mandated social engineering. But they love unfettered markets and they love national security when it is construed narrowly. Most of all, however, libertarians understand that their freedom must be grounded in some sort of faith and strong social fabric, even though they're not willing to specify what that faith and fabric should be.

Which leaves the social conservatives. As far as I can tell, they feel like their way of life is under attack from everybody. Their principal agenda are to beat back that attack on whatever front it presents itself. They're mostly happy with the hawks because the hawks are also motivated by defense, albeit on a international scale. Social conservatives are isolationists but the smart ones realize that their society can be changed even faster by international forces than it can by domestic ones. They're suspicious (rightly) of the biz types because they believe (rightly) that the biz types don't care what kind of society we have as long as it's a prosperous one. And they hate the libertarians because the libertarians ultimately are willing to let culture evolve to adapt to changing conditions.

I can't tell what will happen as the dust settles from this election but it's pretty clear that the conservative compact under which these four groups operated is irrevocably shattered. The question now is whether there's a workable coalition to be forged from three of them, and whether that coalition can siphon off some support from the center-left.

The pure social conservatives are the problem. They are, to put it bluntly, reactionary. There are lots of conservatives out there (myself included) who think that slow social change is better than fast social change, but it's only the self-identified social conservative who thinks that stasis is the proper condition. Social conservatives blame liberals for the assault on their families, their beliefs, and their way of life. Social conservatives are now so besieged that they feel that they are at war with the forces ripping through the American social fabric. They're looking for somebody to blame, and then they want that somebody removed from power.

This is, of course, nonsense. Did liberals create the electronic revolution that brought all information, all opinion, into their homes? Did liberals create a culture so vibrant that it attracted immigrants from around the world, and in so doing changing the basic American social consensus? Did liberals produce a scientific worldview so sophisticated that any belief had to be held up for constant scrutiny and re-evaluation? Did liberals create an economy so robust that, for the first time in history, the vast majority of our citizens can live a life of near-idleness and still manage not to starve to death?

The social conservatives are very fond of the term "culture war" but if this is truly a war, they're having a little trouble with identifying the enemy. If they are at war, they are at war with historical forces and they're going to lose unless they manage to turn the clock back to an era without modern media, without global contact, without science, and without wealth. In short, the only way for the social conservatives to win their war is to win it the same way the Islamists would like to win theirs.

There is a conservative coalition to be had but it's not the one that Tony Blankley advocates. It is much closer to the model of the commentators that Blankley so despises. The biz types and the hawks and the libertarians can do just fine without the reactionary social conservatives. The converse is not true.

Conservatives have a big job cut out for them. The Center and the Left don't see any difference between the various elements of the conservative coalition and they're perfectly happy to discredit all of them. If national security is neglected, the US will be seen--rightly--as a nation in decline. If libertarian economic policies are discredited, though, we won't have to worry about being a nation in decline--we'll simply collapse. This is a dangerous time and it calls for seriousness of purpose. Railing that you didn't like how history turned out will have to wait for a better day.

How Much Will You Pay to Rent a Nation?

Throughout the almost three decades of conservative power, I was hopeful that we'd learned a few things that were approaching the level of acknowledged facts:

• Foreign trade is universally beneficial, even when it destroys industries in your own country.


• Providing able-bodied adults access to perpetual government support (welfare) creates a permanent under-class and contributes more to human misery than being mean in the short term and forcing people to fend for themselves after a while.


• Confronting implacable enemies early works better attempting to placate the implacable until they're ready to attack you.
  


• Rich people pay the amount of tax that they think government is worth, rather than the amount that government thinks they should pay, leaving the middle class to make up the difference.
  

This may be the sum total of wisdom accrued from the conservative revolution. And I agree with Roger Kimball when he points out that Obama doesn't seem to be enthusiastic about any of the four:

What I find depressing about this–as, indeed, about the whole Obama juggernaut–is the extent to which it represents a return of bad ideas that have already been tried time and again, have failed and made people poorer and less stalwart, and yet seem poised to make a sorry comeback once again.

All of these principles are important and all can contribute significantly to the ultimate success of society. But it seems to me that the ultimate denial of reality comes when we forget that governments don't operate with the "consent of the governed" so much as they operate with the consent of those willing to pay for it.

When you have 80% of the revenue being collected from 5% of the population, those 5% wield huge power. Fortunately, the rich are pretty much like everybody else: most of them are good, hard-working, patriotic, well-meaning individuals who look out for their own interests first but acknowledge that looking out for the interests of their society is in their long-term best interest as well.

But, unlike the other 95%, the rich tend to be well-educated and financially sophisticated. They are very good at understanding the value they receive from government and are able to price that value. The rich will pay for government but they'll only pay for what they think it's worth. Beyond that level, they will defer recognizing income, export wealth to tax havens, or pay armies of accountants whatever it's worth to hold on to their money and keep it out of the hands of the government.

We have a few data points from the last fifty years. We know that the rich are unwilling to pay 90% of their income for government. They're not happy paying 50%. They're quite happy paying somewhere between 15% and 35% (depending on how much of their income comes from capital gains) and they were only slightly less happy paying between 28% and 40%.

So Obama may get away with resetting rates back to the Clinton-era tax structure, especially in a time where the rich understand that the national debt is dangerously high. But what will happen if he spends as he's promised to spend? What will happen if the rich see the national debt getting worse? In other words, what will happen when they see that they're not getting good value for their money?

There are only two things that the rich can do to rectify the situation. They can either try to seize power or they can vote with their feet and leave. Seizing power means that they become politically active and channel huge amounts of money to candidates that will fix things. This is, of course, something that the other 95% of the population will try very hard to oppose, possibly successfully. After all, the other 95% benefit from government for a long time before it collapses. Campaign finance laws and the internet militate against such a seizure, because they make populism a more potent force. But the wealthy still have inordinate clout; I wouldn't count them out in a good old fashioned class war.

And we should hope that they win. Because it's when the rich decide that the government can't be salvaged that things get really bad. The rich can live wherever they want to. They can move their money wherever they need to. When taxes move from being a necessary evil to a case of throwing good money after bad, the rich stop paying taxes--or at least they go pay taxes somewhere where their investment gets a good value. Once that happens, the next domino to fall will be a loss of faith in US currency and then it's all over.

I think Obama understands this. I hope Obama understands this. Because we're closer to the tipping point on the national debt than ever before. The events of the last six weeks should be a warning to him and the legislature. It's not only financial markets that run on confidence and trust. Politics do, too. The rich are betting big that Obama can produce a competently run government for just a little bit more money. If they decide that he can't, I'm not sure they're going to be patient enough to give it another try.

Having now finished my little discourse in plutocracy, I'm off to vote for Obama. I sure do hope he's as smart as he thinks he is. There doesn't appear to be another alternative.

What Shall We Do With the Media?

The media has always had a somewhat liberal bias, no doubt because the people who are attracted to journalism are somehow predisposed to be liberal. That's unfortunate but things worked out OK as long as the journalists were fairly diligent in rooting out their own biases and the conservative establishment did a reasonably good job of exposing the more egregious failures of impartiality.

Then came Fox News.

Now, I really don't have anything against Fox News. First of all, a network with a conservative bias seems like a really good marketing idea. And a network to offset the other networks' liberal bias seems like a pretty good idea at first blush. But it's really a disaster.

The impartiality of the media has always been at best metastable. It required constant attention to standards and practices to keep it objective. Fox News didn't do that; their target audience wanted a conservative slant and Fox gave it to them, with only the slightest nod to objective standards. Furthermore, Fox was the first outlet to discover that punditry could be fun--and much cheaper than gathering actual news.

The problem with this is that it took the rest of the media off the hook. Once Fox adopted a point of view, other networks and newspapers had to adopt one to compete. Unfortunately, few of them were as clever as Fox. They just stopped enforcing standards and practices, told their correspondents to be more interesting, and let 'em rip. Since the vast majority of those correspondents were liberal, we got a media noticeably more slanted to the left.

This is how we get no serious Ayres investigations, no serious ACORN reporting. This is how we get a series of excoriating Palin stories and nothing on Biden. This is how we get no serious policy analysis of Obama's ludicrous tax and health care plans while every inconsistency in McCain's plans is poured over in loving detail. This is how we get no coverage of the John Edwards follies until it's too late to matter. This is how we get MSNBC.

Please note: I'm not saying that Obama is going to win because of the media. I'm saying that the media has done us a huge disservice by adopting a frivilous point of view in order to compete. This is extremely troubling. Things really don't work very well without objective reporting. Somebody needs to figure out how to have good ratings/circulation while still imparting high quality facts and considerably less opinion.

Here's My Problem

I kinda buy this piece:

What these doomsayers miss is that, in many ways, the conservative movement is now stronger than it ever was. Rush Limbaugh, his radio show amplified by his web presence, is now joined on the air by countless other thoughtful conservatives and right-leaning libertarian voices, including Bill Bennett, Larry Elder and Laura Ingraham. The conservative blogosphere has joined the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, National Review and The Weekly Standard as sources of conservative opinion.

Should McCain lose, they will becoming increasingly powerful. Expect Rush’s audience to soar. Even our readership will increase, as gays who become disgusted with how the national gay groups fawn over a Democratic president (as did HRC over Clinton in the 1990s), will be looking for a place where their views are articulated.

But I'm pretty sure that the mechanism described above will only act to further split the Republican Party down its already-yawning ideological divide.

I've been convinced that the foundation of intellectual conservatism is rooted in faith and religion. From the faith comes the religion. From the religion comes the unity that's necessary to hold the community together. Granted, there is a non-religious way to get strong families but it's immensely difficult and fraught with peril. (I know this from personal, rueful experience.) And even if many non-religious families hold together, they still lack the community cohesion that's necessary to crank the whole Hayekian conservative machinery to life.

Since I am non-religious, this kind of conservatism is never going to appeal to me, however much I agree with many of its philosophies about free choices in a free market, made by self-restrained men and women. I'm confident that a new intellectual foundation can be forged for the conservative movement, one that reconciles a more unrestrained libertarianism with a pragmatic, conservative policy.

But if it really is true that the winners in the intramural war that's now erupting are the talk-show pundits and the more ideological of the conservative blogosphere and press, then that new conservatism will drift away from the old conservatism. Neither branch in the split will be powerful enough to begin to change the debate in the country.

There are only two resolutions to this split. It's always possible that the libertarians and the social values crowds will renew their uncomfortable bargain. I really don't see this happening; the antipathy between the two camps has grown exponentially through this election. Still, I suppose that it's possible to reach a compromise where religion has a vastly diminished role in public debate.

The other possibility is that a new libertarian alliance is formed with centrists and conservative Democrats. That might restore the balance of a two-party government but I don't know how one brings along the religious right.

In any case, the battle promises to be furious. Ultimately, that may be the best thing that can happen to conservatism of either branch. The more vigorous the debate, the better the ideas that eventually emerge.

Very Troubling

Look, I know it's gonna be bad, I'm resigned to that, but Obama's not making me happy with my decision to vote for him. It's not that the comment to the plumber was so shocking. After all, anybody who's actually read Obama's tax plan knows that it isn't a tax cut, it's a bag of refundable tax credits that is nothing but simple wealth redistribution, plain and simple.

No, the thing that bothers me about this is that it's so facile:

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Maybe you actually need to see and hear it to understand that Obama thought that what he was saying was no big deal. (Apologies for the F&F nonsense on either side--couldn't find a clean copy of the sound bite without doing editing.)

On the positive side, Obama's pretty good at thinking through the things that his instincts tell him. I hope so, because it doesn't seem like there's going to be anybody around that will be willing to inform the emperor that he has no clothes.