Bogus Gold

I started this blog in July of 2004. When I look at that date on paper it doesn't seem all that long ago. I was hardly at the “dawn of blogging” or anything. I was definitely a second or even third wave adopter of this new "blog" stuff. But still, looking back now it feels almost like another era. It's strange to think how much has changed in the blogging world since then.

Back then most of the major media held the very notion of "blogging" in contempt. Bloggers weren't “real journalists” with careful fact checkers and editors, you see. This blogging thing was a stupid fad which would never catch on. All the best newspapers and glossy magazines said so. To the extent they acknowledged blogs at all it was only to sneer.

This created the feeling of a counter-culture within the blogosphere. Blogging seemed cutting edge and vaguely transgressive. New blogs were popping up all the time. We read each others stuff, commented on it, linked to it. It seemed fun, dynamic, and new. Where it all would lead, none of us really knew though we sometimes liked to think we did.

How quickly things change in the information age.

Just five years later almost all the mainstream media has integrated blogging into their own practices in a frantic scramble to remain relevant. Some formerly amateur blogs evolved to become so professional they're more like online magazines now, with full time paid employees and advertising clients and all the rest. Some bloggers went away when they didn’t strike that kind of gold, and it became clear that blogging for them was likely to remain a labor of love rather than one for profit. More commonly, a lot of former bloggers realized they didn't get much satisfaction in writing for free for an often fickle audience and eventually quit.

Surveying the scene now it's a lot different than it was. It looks to me like the era of the small personality driven "boutique" blog, covering all the topics that may interest an individual blogger of no particular celebrity, is coming to an end.

This may not be an entirely bad thing. The ending of this particular blog era seems to stem from the availability of so many more options for doing that sort of thing than used to exist. You no longer need to set up your own personal blog to share all your interests and thoughts with the world. There's Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other new social media which are better designed around individual personalities, and do a much better job connecting you to people who may care about what you have to say. I’ve tried them out myself, and while they don’t seem to suit me as well as a good old blog, I can definitely see their appeal and suitability for the things they’re made for.

This is a long way of saying I've decided to shut down this blog.

But the end of an era is also the dawn of a new one. This blog may be going away, but I'm not. I love doing the blogging thing. I like having a place where I can post opinion pieces and analyses and random thoughts and American Idol recaps all in one place where I have a fair chance of engaging a few readers.

That’s why I've accepted an invitation from Mitch Berg to move my blogging over to Shot in the Dark.

At Shot in the Dark I will be a contributor, rather than THE voice of the blog. That suits my current situation a lot better than trying to provide all the content myself.

I’ve identified Mitch a couple of times as my “blog father” – meaning it was reading Shot In The Dark that made me decide to start my own blog in the first place. There would have been no Bogus Gold had there not been a Shot In The Dark first. Mitch’s blend of conservative political opinion, sense of humor, sharing of his own life experiences, devotion to some quirky personal passions (e.g. Bruce Springsteen, bagpipes, bicycling, etc.), and engagement with his readers and other bloggers has always been the kind of thing I like about blogs. I’ll do my best not to ruin the place when I move in.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who read, commented, linked, e-mailed, or otherwise encouraged over the years. Hope to see you all at Shot in the Dark soon!

There's a BIG announcement concerning this blog coming soon. Probably Monday. More detail at that time.

In the meantime here's a picture of a guy with a big megaphone to get you in the spirit of things.

Hey, you know what would be terrific?! If the same guys who came up with this program also got around to reforming our health care system:

Some car shoppers are finding that their trade-in vehicles, which qualified for a Cash for Clunkers rebate last week, don't this week thanks to changes in the EPA's fuel economy ratings. ...

Even though the program's basic requirements have been known since it was created by Congress earlier this year, Cash for Clunkers didn't become official until July 24. So as part of the official launch, the EPA conducted "quality assurance and quality control effort regarding fuel economy calculations on more than 30,000 vehicle model types spanning the past 25 years," according to an e-mail sent by EPA spokesman Dale Kemery.

As a result, eligibility for roughly 100 vehicles was affected, Kemery wrote. However, roughly equal numbers became newly eligible and newly ineligible.

Hey, it's a new law. Gotta give the overseeing agency at least one mulligan. No reason to blow a gasket over this. So they screwed up a few thousand car sales by an unannounced last minute tweak to their regulations. If you're a glass-half-full kinda person you might turn that around to say that it might make another few thousand hypothetical car sales even better than before.

Besides I'm sure they'll be much more careful when it comes to deciding which medical procedures are covered rather than which cars they want to buy back. It only stands to reason... the more power you give the government, the more they'll defer to your well being.

And I, for one, welcome our new insurance claim overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted blogger, I can be helpful in rallying support behind their benevolent rule of our medical world. And if this in any way lends them to decide more favorably when it comes to covering the expense of my next colonoscopy I will surely hail it as yet more evidence of their righteousness and beneficence.

President Obama's approval rating, an item we were once assured would be the president's trump card over any opposition to his agenda in Congress, has (according to Rasmussen) dipped below 50%. This has to be stunning for his fan base (a far more appropriate term in this case than "supporters"). But really folks, what did you expect? Wasn't his popularity ultimately going to be tied to his record rather than his promises?

This is a man out of his depth. His background doesn't include any executive experience or serious accomplishment and we knew that when he was elected. Let's do a quick recap to illustrate how massive a disconnect exists between anything Obama has ever done and what he's now attempting to do as president.

Before seeking the presidency, Obama's experience in government was hardly impressive. He was never an important legislator at any level. His well established history of voting "present" in the Illinois legislature seems to be the best characterization of a legislative career that one could charitably call "undistinguished." His private sector experience was even worse. Unless you count his years spent as a "community organizer," which should more accurately be seen as his first step on the rung of the famously corrupt Chicago political machine, his experience amounts to a brief and unremarkable stint teaching constitutional law after serving as an editor of the Harvard Review (despite which he curiously never had a single article of his own published).

His list of accomplishments across all levels of endeavor reads rather impressively... if he were applying for admission to a liberal arts college. It's fantastically inadequate as a background for the leader of the free world. He registered voters. He advocated (to very little effect) on behalf of the poor. Despite possessing an entry level record of accomplishment, he'd written not one but two autobiographies before his election to the presidency.

We're told we should respect Obama's savvy and political skill, if for no other reason than because he survived the gauntlet of a modern presidential election defeating all comers, including the impressive juggernaut that was Hillary!™ Clinton's campaign. Yet Obama did not come close to the campaign experience most other candidates - Clinton included - experienced. His was the least vetted most openly cheered by the media of any candidacy in the modern era. Republicans like to complain about liberal media bias, but this was something else entirely. Not only Republicans but any Democrats rivaling Obama were savaged by the media while Obama himself glided through with very little scrutiny.

Think about the things Obama's campaign was so highly praised for: staying focused; staying on message; refusing to get distracted by challenges which might take him off message. And yet that "message" we're supposed to so admire him for not losing was at such a high and lofty level ("Hope!" "Change we can believe in!" "Yes we can!" etc.) there still isn't a lot of agreement about what exactly he had promised his presidency would bring. Right now he's seeing serious defection from independents who supported him because they don't believe he's acting as the "moderate" they were so certain he had promised to be. Yet his left wing is equally certain they heard him profess to being one of them. He might please both groups with the same speech, but it's a lot harder to please them both with the same actual policies. That Obama himself apparently didn't see this coming is further testament to his lack of experience (and perhaps also the hubris of a man who could publish two autobiographies before doing anything of great note).

Just a few weeks ago conservatives were terrified that Obama's popularity was like an unstoppable locomotive which was going to barrel through Congress implementing socialized medicine, cap-and-trade, steep new deficits, and correspondingly steeply higher taxes before there was a chance to slow it down. And perhaps it could have been so. But here is the part that made that outcome so improbable: Obama doesn't know how to enact his agenda. His prior record shows a man who has serially avoided working in the messy details of legislation, and avoided acquiring leadership experience in the private sector's school of hard knocks. He's been able to cover seemingly irreconcilable differences in the past with a speech or a vote of "present." That works well enough when you're not accountable for accomplishing anything more serious than becoming popular. It's completely inadequate when you're held to account for actual achievement.

Back on the campaign trail Hillary!™ Clinton gained some slight traction when she raised the issue of Obama's lack of readiness (It's 3am, etc.). The problem with this criticism was that it wasn't broad enough. Obama didn't simply lack foreign policy experience rendering him unready for a possible international crisis. He lacked experience should a crisis arise most anywhere within his presidential purview.

Despite the distaste Republicans may feel for her, does anyone seriously believe Hillary Clinton would be squandering the first year of her presidency, buoyed by commanding majorities in both houses of Congress (historically unlikely to survive the next midterm election), so fecklessly? Would she have handed her top priorities over to Congressional leaders and committee chairs to do whatever they may like without a strongly guiding hand? Would she appear so unaware of the details of her own policies? Would she have made the mistake of trying to get everything done at once rather than organizing and prioritizing? I suppose the honest answer is, "We don't know." But it surely doesn't seem very likely.

And that's where the silver lining starts to emerge. When you're president it's 3 a.m. all the time. There's a big difference between being the guy who gets to pick up the phone and knowing what the heck you're doing in response. Hillary Clinton, for all her faults, would have known what she was doing. From a conservative perspective, this would have been far worse for the nation than Obama's fumbling inability to get his agenda accomplished. Somewhat ironically, the nation may get a reprieve from the liberal attempt to remake the nation into its Euro-socialist ideal because Obama is simply not up to the job.

Students of history are familiar with the age old means adopted by people in criticizing their rulers. In more despotic forms of government a loyal subject harms their own case if they have the temerity to suggest the monarch may intend to cause harm or do wrong. Therefore no matter how wretched a kingly state treats its subjects, the king himself is spared personal criticism. The way you voice displeasure with the king is by saying he is "ill served by his advisors."

The reasons for this are complicated, but most notable for their universality. You'll find the same kind of criticism leveraged against ancient Chinese emperors, Egyptian pharaohs, Roman emperors, and English kings. Wherever the monarch seems personally beyond reproach... where one would cast oneself as a mad man, or traitor by speaking directly against him... one voices their displeasure by speaking of the monarch's "bad advisors."

Enter David Brooks. Brooks is the elder conservative columnist for the New York Times (the younger is Ross Douthat now that Bill Kristol has been kicked to the curb, but that's not important right now). He's the preferred kind of conservative for the Times' audience because his opinions lead him to damn the GOP for its lack of moderation more often than voice displeasure with those to his left. Unlike other allegedly conservative opinionators he never came out to openly endorse Obama prior to the election. But he has been decidedly hopeful that the Obama administration would prove to be to his liking.

It seems to be slowly dawning upon Mr. Brooks that the reality of President Obama does not match up with the campaign train "Hope and Change" version. But he can't quite bring himself to challenge the semi-divine person of Barack Obama himself. He lives in New York City, for gosh sakes! Therefore he turns to the age old device used by those who have lost faith in their ruler but lack the courage to say so:

Who’s going to stop this leftward surge? Months ago, it seemed as if Obama would lead a center-left coalition. Instead, he has deferred to the Old Bulls on Capitol Hill on issue after issue.

Machiavelli said a leader should be feared as well as loved. Obama is loved by the Democratic chairmen, but he is not feared. On health care, Obama has emphasized cost control. The chairmen flouted his priorities because they don’t fear him. On cap and trade, Obama campaigned against giving away pollution offsets. The chairmen wrote their bill to do precisely that because they don’t fear him. On taxes, Obama promised that top tax rates would not go above Clinton-era levels. The chairmen flouted that promise because they don’t fear him.

Ah yes, it's not Obama who has broken his promises. It's these cursed advisors and Congressmen who fail to serve the Great Leader's wishes faithfully.

The notion that Obama merely gave voice to his desire for moderation for the sake of popularity and electability may be whispering in the back of Mr. Brooks' mind. But he dares not challenge the honor of his "sovereign" like that.

But the truth will eventually out all the same. Many people invested so much in the hope that Obama was a new kind of leader - a healer... a lightbringer.. the vanguard of a new era of politics free of the old divisions. These people are not going to be ready to whip around less than a year later and admit they were taken in by just another slick politician lying to their faces and telling them what they wanted to hear. They still want to believe.

But if Obama keeps pushing his agenda - an agenda that may be many things but "moderate" isn't one of them - it's going to be a very rough road for Obama's "advisors" ahead. Especially the ones who stand for re-election in 2010.

Something fundamental to the nature of mankind is the belief that we are important. By that I mean human beings don't tend to wonder whether or not we're important. We wonder how we're important. The variations in how this is expressed cross-culturally are staggering, but the fundamental belief in mankind's importance seems as fixed in human nature as bipedalism or language.

One of the purposes religion serves (note: this has nothing to do with whether any particular religion is true) is to address this belief in mankind. To take one example, it just makes sense to us when we hear we are the children of God rather than just one of many animal species. Children of God are obviously important in the grand scheme of things in a way random animal species are not. This satisfies our belief in our fundamental importance and addresses "how" we're important in a very satisfying way.

To me this doesn't seem a minor aspect of human nature, but a rather important one. We have a long history of grasping for explanations about our own importance, seemingly needing to believe even when those explanations bring us misery and despair. This has long been a criticism leveled at some religions (e.g. teachings about sin and eternal damnation make people's lives more miserable than they would otherwise be), but I think the observation goes well beyond religion, appearing with just as much frequency and intensity among the agnostic and atheistic. Everyone needs to understand their place in the universe, and conclusions that we’re just not that important do not suffice.

And that brings us to the modern Green movement. Stewardship of the environment is not a new concept. There are plenty of precedents in history across many cultures. But something seems different about the modern Greens. It's widely noted that they seem to regard their interaction with the environment in ways that draw comparisons to the way Christians regard sin and salvation. The simplest explanation for this seems to be that, in a post-Christian world, environmentalism has become a new religion.

I don't find that explanation quite satisfactory. It's not that environmentalism is a religion. It's that environmentalism is motivated by the same basic need in mankind to understand their importance. This makes it attractive, not only to atheists and other kinds of unbelievers, but to anyone finding insufficient explanation for the importance of mankind in their other beliefs.

There's good reason you see a strong Green presence among the more progressive churches. It's not that they have abandoned belief in God. It's that they've abandoned those teachings that made mankind seem particularly important in God's grand scheme of the universe. Modern environmentalism provides that. This has practical importance for its adherents that can be summarized in one word: meaning.

A traditional Catholic may find meaning in attending daily mass, participating in the sacraments, perhaps saying the rosary. They believe this is a means of perfecting their soul and working toward salvation and eternal life. In the same way a Green might find meaning in recycling, choosing to purchase organic or sustainable products, and finding ways to lower their carbon footprint. In both cases adherents have a very tangible sense that their everyday actions are connected to a larger purpose. Even more, they believe that the accumulation of such actions over their lives is something of real importance - not just to themselves, but in the grand scheme of the whole world. Their life therefore matters in a very tangible way.

But as this belief in mankind's importance is not derived by rational understanding, but rather arrives as an a priori belief escaping examination, it has a tendency to distort thoughts upon which it is based.

Dr. Roy Spencer makes an interesting observation about a problem with climate models that examines exactly this sort of distortion. Bold emphases mine below (the italics are Spencer’s):

It turns out that the modelers have made a critical assumption that ends up leading to the their conclusion that the climate system is very sensitive to our greenhouse gas emissions: that the climate system was in a state of energy balance in the first place.

There is a pervasive, non-scientific belief in the Earth sciences that nature is in a fragile state of balance. Whether it is ecosystems or the climate systems, you will hear or read scientists claims about the supposed fragility of nature.

But this is a subjective concept, not a scientific one. Still, it makes its way into the scientific literature (read the abstract to this seminal paper on the first satellite measurements of the Earth’s energy budget…look for “delicately balanced”). Just because nature tends toward a balance does not mean that balance is in any way ‘fragile’. And what does ‘fragile’ even mean when nature itself is always upsetting that balance anyway?

Why is this important to climate modeling? Because if climate researchers ignore naturally-induced climate variability, and instead assume that most climate changes are due to the activity of humans, they will inevitably come to the conclusion that the climate system is fragile: that is, that feedbacks are positive. It’s a little like some ancient tribe of people believing that severe weather events are the result of their moral transgressions.

I would argue it’s a LOT like some ancient tribe of people believing that severe weather events are the result of their moral transgressions. But it’s also a lot like traditional Catholics meticulously listing every sin they can think of to their parish priest before taking weekly communion. And it’s also a lot like workers in the Soviet Union being celebrated as champions of the people for performing the most menial chores. All are examples of mankind’s need to find meaning in their lives based on an underlying assumption that the meaning must be in there somewhere.

And this far more than anything else is why it’s so difficult to shift the thinking of global warming alarmists. It’s the reason they contradict their professed belief in science with non-scientific assertions of “consensus,” and “the debate is over,” and “it’s beyond questioning.” If it is shown that all the industry of mankind at the height of our industrial progress and greatest extent of our population makes a collective impact more like a whisper than a shout upon our planet, what does that say about our own importance? Surely mankind’s powers are greater than that! Surely we must take care lest our very negligence destroy the world itself!

But maybe not. Maybe the world is far greater and we far smaller than we’d care to believe. Maybe searching for greater meaning in the natural world, a world in which we are ultimately just collections of atoms drifting through time, was always a fools errand.

Does it really matter whether we’re finding meaning in the recycling bin rather than the rubbish heap? Both place our importance squarely in the material world, and perhaps that’s not the proper place to be looking for meaning at all.

Word has it the blog service Bogus Gold is hosted on (Powerblogs) is going away soon. I say "rumor" because I haven't actually been notified of such a thing. But a lot of other blogs on the Powerblogs service seem to be reporting it. I'll take that as a sign more indicative of this place closing than not.

So my big quandry is whether I should use the excuse to migrate the blog, or to end it.

And by "end it" I don't mean "stop writing." I've had a number of very nice offers to join other group blogs in the past. Maybe this is the right opportunity to leave the solo path and join one of the group thingies. I'm certainly not up to writing at the everyday pace any more regardless.

On the other hand I would hate to lose the feeling of independence that comes with one's own blog. I can publish what I like here without regard to any other standard than my own. And I need never worry that someone else may override that decision either. That's not nothing.

Anyway, if the half dozen remaining readers of this thing have an opinion, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise... well I'll try to let you know before things go black here.

Finally, a gigantic mourning celebration for the rest of us. From Iowahawk:

Fans Flock to Mourn California, 1849-2009

LOS ANGELES - Millions of fans from around the globe gathered along Sunset Boulevard to pay final respects to California today, as a slow moving funeral procession transported the eccentric superstar state's remains to its final resting place in a Winchell's Donuts dumpster in Van Nuys. The self-proclaimed 'King of Pop Culture' died last week at 160, in what coroners ruled an accidental case of financial autoerotic asphyxiation. The death sent shock waves across the world and sparked an outpouring of grief by rabid fans. ...

The 640-mile long funeral parade route was lined with flowers, candles, teddy bears, and IOUs from millions of mourners and debtors who made the somber journey to watch the passing of the state that had once ruled the box office and industrial charts. Among them were current chart-toppers who cited California as a key influence.

"King of Pop Culture." Heh. It's funny cuz it's true.

Tommy Mischke, a man who offered a sincere and appropriate tribute to Michael Jackson on his radio show the day after his death, seems to have the sense that there is a danger in stretching hero worship out of proper proportion. After a day of umm... extra exuberant coverage of the King of Pop's funeral and associated events, Tommy's column this week provides a proper cautionary note about the dangers of excess in choosing our idols.

He would have been a fine hero at a time when I was looking for one. He was a former Major League ballplayer in his mid-90s living alone in Charlotte, North Carolina. I ran across his name 17 paragraphs into an obscure article in the sports pages and was surprised to learn such a relic could still be around. I dialed his number hoping to find a semi-lucid hospice patient with a couple of vague dugout memories and instead discovered an American treasure.

He had a voice like Shelby Foote from Ken Burns's Civil War series and a delivery to match. He was articulate, eloquent, and highly educated. He was a walking time capsule of the 1920s and '30s.

I could hardly believe my ears. Where had this man been? Why wasn't he being interviewed by Bob Costas?

He saw Cobb play; he sat in the dugout with the '27 Yankees. He graduated from Duke with honors and a desire to be a lawyer, but instead drifted into baseball and ended up playing with the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, Reds, and Philadelphia A's. There was no one like him. At a time when ballplayers were uneducated country boys, Bill Werber came into the league a literate young man with an athletic gift who could live the ballplayer's life and then tell its stories better than any peer.

It's Mischke. Read the whole thing.

There is an old saying about opinions. The cleaned up version is that "Everyone has them." The more profane version compares them to a particular part of the human anatomy that everyone also has. Never has the profane version been more appropriate than when it comes to those having opinions about Sarah Palin.

When the Alaska governor first burst onto the scene it made sense that she got a lot of attention. After all she appeared to be the only part of the Republican presidential ticket actually possessing a pulse. What's more she was shockingly non-dull and grey. That kind of departure from expectations was bound to grab a headline or two.

But I do confess to some bafflement about why everyone continues to feel the need to offer their opinions about someone who almost became vice president last year. I suppose it's possible that some people who don't live there might care a lot about the comings and goings related to the executive branch of the State of Alaska. But is there some reason everyone has to act like that kind of obsessive attention is rational or appropriate?

Yes, at the very moment she's mentioned in most discussions around who may head the Republican Party ticket for the presidency in the 2012 election. But that's three and a half years away. You're more likely to predict the winner of the Superbowl in 2012 than who's going to be the Republican nominee for president this far out. Talking about that now is the province of political wonks like Michael Barone. It's not ordinarily a thing of much relevance to anyone else.

If I had to guess why so many people feel the need to opine so loudly about a political resignation that would ordinarily go unnoticed and unremarked by themselves, it's that so many of the same people engaged in such ridiculous fits of Palin hyperbole during the past presidential campaign they are still attempting to justify it. This is true both on the side of Palin's supporters as well as her detractors. You had people obsessed over John McCain's running mate in a way that applied to no other vice-presidential nominee in American history. It's hard to rationalize the over-the-top sensational treatment of what should have been a campaign side note - let alone make it sound sensible.

With issues like the economy, war, nuclear proliferation, and the reform of the nation's healthcare system clearly at stake and getting scant attention by the press, a staggering amount of coverage was given to the most minute details of John McCain's running mate's life. You had more people voting for and against John McCain's ticket over Palin's previous decision not to abort a child with Down's Syndrome rather than whether or not it's a good idea to socialize the nation's healthcare system. That goes beyond irresponsible into an area approaching insanity. Thus it becomes post-hoc sensible to treat any news related to Sarah Palin as a HUGE deal. I mean if she mattered more than the danger of nuclear war with Iran she must still matter a whole lot, right? I mean... just imagine if she occupied the office Joe Biden does now! The implications would be.... umm... (mumble, mumble)... hey, did you see Sarah Palin went fishing?!

So anyway, my opinion over the announced resignation of Sarah Palin is: Why should I care? Because she may turn up running for some other office I actually care about sometime in the future? I think I'll have plenty of time to catch up on things at that time. I don't really feel the need to keep a running tally.

Far more important, in my opinion, is the disturbing continuation of Palin obsession when by now it should be obvious that there were a few more important aspects to the prior election that were kinda overlooked. Isn't it time to start focusing on those and leave aside the irrational excess of interest in the soon-to-be-ex Alaska governor?

The Waxman-Markey bill that recently passed the House, an attempt to install a cap-and-trade system regulating carbon dioxide emissions in the U. S., has certainly drawn a lot of attention. As is usually the case when a matter of ideological disagreement goes from abstract theory to actual legislation there is a lot to be said about it no matter which side you're on. In this case there seems to be no shortage of informed opinions debating the matter. There is also Tom Friedman's.

Tom Friedman has a fairly unique beat among American columnists. He's neither entirely a futurist nor entirely a pundit. He seems to be paid principally to jet around the world observing things almost always under the presumption he's discovering something others have completely missed. It sounds negative when you put it that way, but actually I think that's the secret to Friedman's popularity. He brings this wide-eyed, childlike perspective to his writing in which everything new and exciting to him must be new and exciting to everyone else too. He lacks the hesitation found in more sophisticated thinkers caused by uncertainty in this area. In fact he seems unaware that uncertainty should be any kind of barrier to offering his firm opinions in any area.

Witness today's Friedman column advising us that we desperately need to pass the cap-and-trade bill he describes as "a mess," which he "detests." What profound insight does he give us about the reasons we need this detestable mess to have the force of law?

Firstly, because not passing it would hurt our image with the other kids on the playground the other nations of the world. Or, in Friedman's words...

... for all its flaws, this bill is the first comprehensive attempt by America to mitigate climate change by putting a price on carbon emissions. Rejecting this bill would have been read in the world as America voting against the reality and urgency of climate change and would have undermined clean energy initiatives everywhere.

That was my emphasis above. It's necessary when parsing through a Friedman citation because he piles so much extraneous stuff around his subjects and predicates he often misleads you into thinking he's putting more substance in there than he really is.

Anyway, reason number one we urgently need a detestable mess governing our energy laws according to Friedman is for the sake of how rejecting it would be "read in the world." We may be damned if we do, but we're surely damned if we don't... damned by the world itself. Yikes! That all the myriad views across the world could possibly be so neatly and simply summed up in one single speculation is part of the magic of Friedman's style.

The second reason Friedman thinks we need a very bad bill passed into law is because he has some kind of hazy vision that it will lead to a change in the way people think. He doesn't pretend to be able to explain it. But he's just got a kind of gut feeling. And no, I am not putting words into his mouth here (again, my emphasis below):

More important, my gut tells me that if the U.S. government puts a price on carbon, even a weak one, it will usher in a new mind-set among consumers, investors, farmers, innovators and entrepreneurs that in time will make a big difference — much like the first warnings that cigarettes could cause cancer. The morning after that warning no one ever looked at smoking the same again.

Okay so, apparently we need a detestable bill passed into law for the sake of global image management and because of our abiding trust in Tom Friedman's gut feelings. This is beginning to appear as not so much a piece of analysis as a poorly supported opinion fueled by visions of a future in which the nations of the world are united as one and carbon dioxide is universally considered cancerous and gross. Compelling as that vision may sound it's not terribly solid reason to support this thing despite its already noted ickyness. Surely after realizing he has yet to connect the dots between the actual bill under discussion and its real-world implications Friedman would realize its time to get the the heart of the matter and give us some amazingly good reason to support this thing. And he attempts to do just that.

Reason the third we need detestable messiness in our laws:

Henceforth, every investment decision made in America — about how homes are built, products manufactured or electricity generated — will look for the least-cost low-carbon option. And weaving carbon emissions into every business decision will drive innovation and deployment of clean technologies to a whole new level and make energy efficiency much more affordable. That ain’t beanbag.

Well he tried anyway.

According to Friedman, after this bill is made law "every investment decision" is not only going to look for the lowest cost option - which is already what's done (spare me the quibbles and caveats, we're speaking at a very high level here). Ever after investors are also going to look for the lowest carbon option. Or, perhaps, Friedman means the lowest carbon option will automatically become the lowest cost option after this bill is passed. In either case he's very wrong so let's sort out the reasons why.

The reason the first version is wrong - the one in which investors look for least-cost AND low-carbon options for their investments - is that they are already able to do this without the need for any new law. If "least-cost" and "low-carbon" do not have to be the same thing for investors you wouldn't need "cap-and-trade." At most you'd need some kind of new labeling requirement so consumers could take "low-carbon" into their decision making the same way they can take "saturated fat" into their food purchase decisions. So, no, investors are not going to be looking for least-cost and low-carbon independently after this law is passed. They're not going to do so as a result of this bill anyway.

That leaves us with the other version: the least-cost option will also be the low-carbon option after this bill is passed into law. Except that is most definitely not true. And that's not a problem with the details of Waxman-Markey, its a problem with the very concept of taxing carbon emissions itself.

To understand why this is not true you simply need to think through the way this bill intends to impact cost in the first place. The bill intends to make carbon dioxide emissions, which currently cost producers nothing at all, into a taxable item. By way of analogy it's comparable to the 1696 British law taxing houses according to the number of windows they possessed. In that law there was a certain "floor" level established (six windows) below which there was no tax. Anything above the floor level would be taxed at an ever increasing amount based on the number of windows. In response to the tax, a number of home owners bricked up many of their windows to avoid paying the tax. Others lost some of their income to the government which they would have otherwise retained. Obviously either course of action cost home owners money, in the former case the cost of bricks, mortar and labor for bricking over existing windows, in the latter case the cost of paying the tax.

Cap-and-trade's cost mechanism works the same way. Below a certain floor level of carbon-dioxide emission there is no new cost at all. It's business as usual. If you're a little bit above the floor level, you might be able to find new ways to lower your carbon emissions by making a few changes to the way you do business - the analogue to "bricking over some windows." Any companies in this situation would obviously have to pay for these changes in some way that would show up to their customers as "increased cost." Thus favoring lower carbon alternatives that may be in competition with them in the short term. But in the long run the "business as usual" companies and the "bricked over some windows" companies would be competing once again on equal terms. Under the guiding principles of cap-and-trade, this is as it should be. The bill is intended to force those companies which can do business while emitting less carbon to "brick over the necessary windows" (i.e. make carbon emission improvements).

But the biggest area of "cost" intended by this bill is among the businesses which simply cannot "brick over" enough "windows" to avoid the tax. These are the biggest carbon emitters, and the main target of the bill. The idea is, since so many low carbon alternatives under current technology cannot compete with their high carbon counterparts on price, we need to artificially raise the price of emitting carbon dioxide. It's very cheap to produce energy by burning coal or oil - so let's make it more expensive to do so. As that cost is passed on to consumers of anything produced by energy (i.e. everything) natural market forces will drive investment into areas of low carbon emission in favor of high carbon emission. That's how it's supposed to work - even if it makes it prohibitively expensive for some businesses to stay in business at all. Cap-and-trade omelette? Meet your broken eggs.

The further intent of this bill, also alluded to by Friedman in the above quotation, is to drive investment into the area of energy production itself, prompting the creation new kinds of low-carbon energy production which would allow the cost of low-carbon energy to eventually compete with high-carbon energy even without an artificial tax distorting things. The market force intended to work here is "if you tax it, they will find a way around it."

Unfortunately lawmakers suffer from the same problem as Friedman and only think about the ways they intend people to respond to a new tax without sufficiently thinking through the unintended consequences. In the case of the 1696 window law, lawmakers didn't intend for homeowners to brick over their windows. They wanted them to pay the tax. The whole purpose of the bill was to raise revenue, not restrict sunlight. In this case lawmakers intend to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide. Higher costs are just means to that end the same way windows were a means to the end of government revenue in the window tax example. But will businesses within America and governments around the globe really just buckle under and penalize themselves financially while inventing as-yet-unknown low-carbon alternative energy sources? Don't you think some might look for ways to reduce their cost by avoiding the tax without having to reduce their carbon emissions? And might attempts to restrict those alternatives produce unintended consequences of their own?

Anyway, Friedman is finished explaining the urgency of passing an admittedly detestable piece of legislation leaving his reasons for doing so as:

1. Avoiding a bad global impression which would be created by not passing it.
2. Tom's "gut feeling" that it will change the way people think.
3. It will drive investment into low carbon alternatives over high carbon options.

Without going into exhaustive detail, here are the main problems with each of Tom's points:

1. The "globe" is far from unified in their opinion about capping carbon emissions. China and India have flat out refused to consider doing so in any manner that would limit their economic growth. That means no carbon restrictions in the fastest growing major economies in the world, including the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, regardless of this legislation.

2. Tom's "gut feelings" don't have a great track record.

3. As the "bricked over windows" illustrate, investors will explore all sorts of alternatives beyond simply accepting artificially increased costs while they search for a technological breakthrough. The details - those detestable, messy things Friedman admits he doesn't like in this case - matter VERY much. It's not important to understand what you want the consequences of this bill to be. It's important to understand the unintended consequences at least as well.

But, like an affable college sophomore content that he has overcome his fellow classmates' possible objections with an unassailable mastery of all the relevant facts, Friedman charges on to point out the problems with this bill. They are, according to Friedman, as follows:

1. Republicans
2. President Obama
3. The American People.

Again, I am not making this up:

Now that the bill is heading for the Senate, though, we must, ideally, try to improve it, but, at a minimum, guard against diluting it any further. To do that we need the help of the three parties most responsible for how weak the bill already is: the Republican Party, President Barack Obama and We the People.

Oh Friedman does think some of the problems involve the people who actually wrote the bill. They're involved the same way the victim of a drive-by shooting is "involved" in that particular transaction:

This bill is not weak because its framers, Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, wanted it this way. “They had to make the compromises they did,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, “because almost every House Republican voted against the bill and did nothing to try to improve it. So to get it passed, they needed every coal-state Democrat, and that meant they had to water it down to bring them on board.”

Please note that requiring compromise to pass legislation is how our system of government is supposed to work. It's designed to prevent a minority from plundering the wealth and/or freedom of the majority. Not that such trivialities apply in this case of course.

There are a whole host of reasons one might object to this particular piece of legislation, even if one believes as fervently as Friedman in the supreme imperative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, though Friedman doesn't bother to explore any of them. There aren't really any reasons this legislation must be rushed through Congress at maximum speed before even allowing Congressmen to read the bill itself, though that goes without comment from Friedman. In that light the incredulous outrage regarding the need to make (sneer) compromises in such a bill is jaw-droppingly misdirected.

The bill's authors cannot be held to account for this deeply "compromised" bill why, exactly? If they had taken the time to work with other legislators - even if they shut out every single Republican - they should have been able to write a bill that could pass despite uniform Republican opposition. And this is largely what they did. With Democrats controlling the House by a majority of seventy nine, Waxman-Markey passed by seven votes, including eight Republicans. They gave Republican legislators the absolute minimum level of engagement necessary.

The lesson Friedman takes from this? Hold the crafters of this legislation to account for their incredibly partisan approach? Gosh no. Instead he begins a rant that goes on for four paragraphs beginning with "What are Republicans thinking?" The better question is: "Why does Tom Friedman think the minority party is more relevant to this discussion than the people who actually wrote and voted for this bill?"

On a side note, Friedman drops this gem of an observation in the middle of telling off Republicans:

Yes, this bill’s goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is nowhere near what science tells us we need to mitigate climate change.

So according to Friedman it's not just badly compromised, but it's also not going to accomplish much good even if it works as planned? Nifty! The disparity between Friedman's reasons for supporting this thing and the incidental details he doesn't seem to find as important is growing intriguing in its own right.

Oh, and remember that list of problems with the bill above? The one where he blamed Republicans, President Obama, and the American people? Yah, it's mostly just Republicans. Obama is suspect only because he hasn't been loud enough in his support... yet. And the American people part? That's really just a call-to-action for a mass movement among the youth to flood the Washington mall with protesters cap-and-trade enthusiasts. I am totally not kidding:

And then there is We the People. Attention all young Americans: your climate future is being decided right now in the cloakrooms of the Capitol, where the coal lobby holds huge sway. You want to make a difference? Then get out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. Get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon. That will get the Senate’s attention. Play hardball or don’t play at all.

"Play hardball or don't play at all." Where hardball equals mass demonstrations supporting a detestable, terribly compromised piece of legislation which "is nowhere near what science tells us we need to mitigate climate change." Or maybe just getting "into somebody's face." Because teenagers angrily lecturing us about complex energy legislation is just the thing we need to drive our policies at the moment.

As I've noted before, the most striking thing about climate alarmists, Friedman among them, is their dogmatic support for "taking action" even while admitting their preferred actions won't work, may cause harm, and there remain viable alternatives which could be explored. In this case Friedman wants to pass bad legislation which admittedly won't make a difference in combating global warming but will somehow make a difference in some fuzzy, hard to describe way making it totally worth Americans paying artificially higher costs somehow.

Some day I will attempt to construct a compendium of "things I wish I said." Whenever I do, this quote from George Will will have a place in it:

Our leaders are often wrong but rarely so precisely wrong.

That's pure rhetorical gold.

Remember when "Heck of a job, Brownie!" represented a stinging indictment of an administration's self-damning tendency toward cronyism and incompetence? You know the moment I mean. At the height of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, President Bush arrived on the scene in New Orleans and lauded his personal selection to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency using that phrase. Of course most people didn't think FEMA had done an especially good job responding to the crisis, and a little digging discovered that "Brownie", a.k.a. Michael Brown, had essentially no qualifications for running FEMA in the first place. The resulting public outcry resulted in "Brownie" being forced to resign and left the Bush administration's reputation for competence in government irrevocably stained. Good times... good times...

But things are all better now, right? Feel the Hopenchange!

Brian Deese, the 31-year-old Yale Law School dropout charged with restructuring General Motors, takes a lot of flak for his inexperience.

Although a think tank researcher with zero business experience might be an unusual choice for such a big job, GM desperately needs a break from the past. Deese, a novice in an insular industry full of seen-it-all-before veterans, may be uniquely qualified to look beyond what "everyone knows" is possible and bring America's largest automaker into the future.

Emphasis mine, with my jaw still hanging open from the brazen chutzpa of that spin.
Can you think of any truly difficult situation in your life where you'd accept that logic? Just think about it for a moment and try to comprehend what is being said there.

"Every accountant you've seen so far has advised you to declare bankruptcy as you simply have no means to pay your debts. It's time to let someone with no knowledge of finance or your financial situation take a crack at it!"

"The electrical wiring in your house is not up to code and is going to cost thousands to repair, according to every licensed electrician who's looked at it. Why not grab some guy off the street who's knowledge of wiring begins and ends with flipping a light switch to fix it?!"

"Your cancer has proven inoperable so far, but all you've seen are experienced surgeons and oncologists. Let's split you open and have someone with absolutely no relevant experience have a go!"

Fun as that kind of riffing may be, please note that President Obama is actually, literally following that logic right now in his auto-industry intervention.

Ah, but not to worry. The dogged Washington Press Corps is on the case! They, who pride themselves in their fierce independence and uncompromising dedication to the truth, would surely never allow such a thing to go unremarked.

Here's the New York Times introducing the uniquely unqualified Mr. Deese:

It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Wow! What a stinging setup! I can't wait to see the smackdown that follows this! ...

Mr. Deese’s role is unusual for someone who is neither a formally trained economist nor a business school graduate, and who never spent much time flipping through the endless studies about the future of the American and Japanese auto industries.

Umm... well that's... a bit less stinging than I was expecting. Surely there's a criticism a bit harsher than "unusual" coming in regard to this. ...

Mr. Deese’s route to the auto table at the White House was anything but a straight line.

Umm... (scrolling ahead)... it looks pretty straight to me. He proved an effective political foot soldier in a few Democratic campaigns. Rubbed some elbows at a couple of lefty think tanks. And then... BAM... he's in charge of "dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism." Forget all that hard work and study, kids! In Obama's America politics trumps knowledge and experience every time.

If you're looking for someone pointing out that it may be just a wee bit irresponsible to put someone so young and inexperienced in charge of something so significant, about the only place to look is in the conservative commentariot. Because, of course, expecting qualifications for an appointee running a multi-billion dollar government project is an entirely partisan issue.

At the moment people seem so dazzled by Obama's Audacity of Hope Hype that niggling details like putting the government takeover / restructuring of the U. S. Auto Industry into the hands of a complete novice slip by largely unremarked. But I've got news for Obama's fans, including his media fan club... It's highly unlikely every single initiative undertaken by Obama is going to prove a dazzling success. And when things start to fail the public will examine things like this and wonder who the hell let such things slide. The political motivations on the Obama side will play easily enough into the usual public cynicism about their politicians. But what, exactly, is going to be the media's excuse for cheering this stuff on rather than sounding the alarm?

The scariest thing you'll read this week is something you'll probably be tempted to overlook. It is this:

Carbon Emissions Linked To Global Warming In Simple Linear Relationship

Damon Matthews, a professor in Concordia University's Department of Geography, Planning and the Environment has found a direct relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. Matthews, together with colleagues from Victoria and the U.K., used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data to show that there is a simple linear relationship between total cumulative emissions and global temperature change.

Big deal, you might say. All those already upon the Global Warming bandwagon have been acting like this was already known for a couple of decades now. That's how we came up with the "carbon dioxide is pollution" nonsense. That's how we got ideas floating around like "carbon taxes" and "Cap and Trade" schemes.

Well yes, but... No one is seriously proposing a flat out carbon tax simply because opposition to it is a political no-brainer. People like to vote for taxes on other people. It's political suicide to be the politician (or the party) who wants to raise everyone's taxes.

Which is the whole reason Cap and Trade has been the preferred route for democratic governments to go in their attempt to restrict carbon emissions. It cloaks massive new taxes under a veneer of markets and trading and capitalist enterprise. When higher prices are subsequently passed on to consumers, they never get to see a direct correlation between the defacto carbon taxes and the resulting increase in consumer prices.

But implementing Cap and Trade is not as easy as it sounds, and especially so in a litigious society like our own. The problem with the entire philosophy underlying Cap and Trade is that it has always been very, very complex to measure the true impact - and therefore the measurable value - of carbon emissions versus offsetting activities. The climate is not a linear system after all. It's complex and chaotic. How do you set the definitions around your basic tradable commodities if there isn't a simple, quantifiable and therefore measurable basis underlying the whole thing? You'd end up in endless and expensive legal disputes over the relative impact of carbon in one case versus another based on all kinds of potentially offsetting conditions. That has been a formidable barrier to the successful implementation of Cap and Trade from the start.

So how does this seemingly innocuous and virtually redundant study change things? I'm so glad you asked. From the same article linked above:

Until now, it has been difficult to estimate how much climate will warm in response to a given carbon dioxide emissions scenario because of the complex interactions between human emissions, carbon sinks, atmospheric concentrations and temperature change. Matthews and colleagues show that despite these uncertainties, each emission of carbon dioxide results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs.

So there's this incredibly complex relationship running between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming running through all sorts of complicated factors. This very complexity has previously prevented a simple basis for bundling all the different circumstances of carbon dioxide emissions together to determine their impact. But now, suddenly, through clever use of modeling against a particular set of climate data, we now have that previously elusive formula by which we can take a single variable - in this case carbon dioxide emitted - ignore every other related factor and state with certainty what its proper impact in the overall "global warming" scheme will be! Amazing!

Why, that means it will be a snap to get this Cap and Trade thing under way. We now have a reliable means allowing us to ignore all the complicated uncertainties that could otherwise derail things.

Now where have I ever heard of anything like that before? Hmmm...

Oh yeah! It reminds me of a similar great discovery in the financial sector not too long ago. Remember this?

It was a brilliant simplification of an intractable problem. And Li didn't just radically dumb down the difficulty of working out correlations; he decided not to even bother trying to map and calculate all the nearly infinite relationships between the various loans that made up a pool. What happens when the number of pool members increases or when you mix negative correlations with positive ones? Never mind all that, he said. The only thing that matters is the final correlation number—one clean, simple, all-sufficient figure that sums up everything.

That's from Felix Salmon's brilliant article explaining how a single model built to simplify correlations of risk between different securities based on mortgages lead directly to the recent financial implosion. But of course, this model didn't operate in a vaccuum. In order to allow such a simple thing to wreak maximum damage throughout all the world's finances, one more thing was necessary.

No one knew all of this better than [the model's inventor] David X. Li: "Very few people understand the essence of the model," he told The Wall Street Journal way back in fall 2005.

"Li can't be blamed," says Gilkes of CreditSights. After all, he just invented the model. Instead, we should blame the bankers who misinterpreted it. And even then, the real danger was created not because any given trader adopted it but because every trader did. In financial markets, everybody doing the same thing is the classic recipe for a bubble and inevitable bust.

So what happened to the financial markets was:

A. A model was discovered which made previously impossible correlations simple and quantifiable.

B. The model was seized upon by people who didn't really understand it so that they could use the resulting quantification to commence buying and selling in areas previously too complex for them to attempt.

C. This model was adopted universally, meaning any flaw within it would have a universal impact.

D. When the underlying reality hit a situation the model couldn't handle the entire house of cards collapsed.

Interesting parallel, you might be thinking. But surely these things are so unalike as to make any such comparison irrelevant. After all, what would buying and selling carbon permits and offsets have to do with buying and selling mortgages?

The answer may surprise you.

You've heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey [that's the main Cap and Trade legislation - ed.] climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn't get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown.

That article linked above is only really scratching the surface here because, while noticing the financial peril by identifying some of the same specific financial instruments as were involved in the housing crisis, it misses the larger picture: Cap and Trade requires a means to simply and universally quantify economic activity surrounding carbon dioxide in a way that translates into "warming impact." Only once this is determined can the market mechanism underlying the concept begin to work. And the way it would work (the way it is intended to work it should be noted - this is by design, not a loophole) is to issue emissions permits and offsets which subsequently market forces could buy and sell and trade and do whatever else it wants with them.

Obviously this would require some kind of regulation. And that is already taking shape.

Cap and trade would create what Commodity Futures Trading commissioner Bart Chilton anticipates as a $2 trillion market, "the biggest of any [commodities] derivatives product in the next five years." That derivatives market will be based on two main instruments. First, there are the carbon allowance permits that form the nuts and bolts of any cap-and-trade scheme. Under cap and trade, the government would issue permits that allow companies to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Companies that emit too much can buy allowances from companies that produce less than their limit. Then there are carbon offsets, which allow companies to emit greenhouse gases in excess of a federally mandated cap if they invest in a project that cuts emissions somewhere else-usually in developing countries. Polluters can pay Brazilian villagers to not cut down trees, for instance, or Filipino farmers to trap methane in pig manure.

Let's think about those two main instruments for a moment: carbon allowance permits and carbon offsets. They're based on the same metric, one stated as a positive and the other as a negative. An allowance permit covers situations where carbon is emmitted - added. An offset covers situations where the warming impact of carbon is countered - subtracted. Which one is more valuable? Neither one, obviously. They are of equal value because they're both expressions of exactly the same thing - warming impact. How is this measured? By converting carbon dioxide into a single "warming" metric.

What's so important about that single "warming" metric is that you need it to allow any business to determine how many permits or offsets - in any combination - they would require to engage in a planned activity. That number will drive their demand. And the aggregation of that demand throughout the entire economy would create a tremendous new market for permits and offsets - which would susequently create the opportunity for incredible fortunes to be made in speculating upon their value. That is not just "kind of similar" to what happened in the mortgage market, that is exactly what happened in the mortgage market.

For the sake of clarity I'll draw the parallel more explicitly. In the case of mortgages the complex element in need of a single quantifiable metric was "default risk." In the Cap and Trade market, that element is "warming impact."

In the case of mortages the complexity was overcome, not by solving for the complexity, but rather by finding a model which allowed them to ignore it entirely. In the case of cap and trade that very same kind of model is the "grand discovery" being trumpted in the article I noted at the beginning of this post.

In the case of mortgages the availability of this newly quantifiable metric spun off dizzying arrays of new financial derivatives greatly amplifying the importance and reach of all transactions based upon the certainty of their key measure - "default risk." In the case of cap and trade - well things are shaping up exactly the same. The only difference is the metric itself is "warming impact." And surely the model producing that could never prove prone to error.

In the case of mortgages the model achieved maximum impact throughout the financial system by its near universal adoption by those who scarcely understood the model itself. In the case of Cap and Trade that same effect is intended to be achieved by legislation mandating the adoption of such a model by implication. Think this is overstatement? Then try to think how a market would react to a wandering and arbitrary standard driven by political whim rather than predictable formula. That kind of uncertainty would kill this thing in the cradle. The only way to get this plan off the ground is to base it in the certainty of science and mutually agreed upon fact (or at least a compelling illusion of the same). That's why this "simple linear relationship" between carbon emissions and warming cited at the top of this post is so significant. It hands legislators a tool which doesn't require them to understand anything about the climate itself - they just need to measure one single thing. Once they have that legislated... Voilà! The market will do the rest.

Beware of conclusions that go searching for their supporting research. Double plus beware of such conclusions when trillions of dollars are on the line. And triple plus beware when the subsequently discovered supporting research relies upon speculative modeling in lieu of solid evidence. Taken together these have a collective quality of wish fulfillment. But genies belong in fairy tales and not our markets.

So whether you're the greenest of the green, or a card carrying global warming skeptic, you have plenty of reason for alarm. Another house of cards is being built before our eyes before we've even recovered from the collapse of the last one.

The new Federal Department of Unmeasurable Statistics estimated yesterday that super-extra focus on Hopenchange emanating from President Obama's transcendent consciousness, plus a few hundred billion dollars in deficit spending, will "create or save" precisely 600,000 more jobs by the end of the summer. This compares to how his slightly more distracted focus on Hopenchange (he was just moving in and had to take some time choosing the drapes, figuring out how to work the phone system, updating his business cards, etc) plus a few hundred billion dollars in deficit spending "created or saved" 150,000 jobs in his first 100 days. This comes as quite a relief as there were 345,000 jobs he forgot to "create or save" in May alone, and another 504,000 he forgot to "create or save" in April. All told there have been 1.6 million jobs which the president's glorious stimulativity didn't get around to "creating or saving" so far.

Or I mean there would be if that was measured by how many have been shed since the time we were warned how really, truly awful the jobs situation would get if we didn't let the president stimulate us back to a sound economy with gobs of borrowed money and a bevy or earmarks for his Democratic buddies in Congress. But I guess we're not doing that kind of measuring any more, preferring to focus on the far happier "created or saved" figure provided by magical pixies, or gnomes leaving post-it notes on white house computer screens in the wee hours of the morning, or however it's derived.

Of course reactionary cynics may note that it seems odd for the Obama administration to follow their prior attempt in "creating or saving" jobs by more of the same, when the economy actually shed 17% more jobs than said administration forecast would be lost if they did absolutely nothing to try to save them. This graph from Geoff at Innocent Bystanders illustrates this insolent observation of actual measurable employment numbers, rooted in the failed politics of the past which our Great Leader has promised to transcend:



But happy members of Obama-nation know this ignores the important foundational work going on in delivering us into a new era of Hopeyness. Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, as the saying goes, and you can't "create or save" a few hundred thousand jobs without "collateral damage" to a few hundred thousand other jobs. That should just go without saying. I mean really people, does he have to spell everything out for you?

Next on the agenda... reforming the nation's health care system. We can surely look forward to President Obama providing the same kind of rigorous attention to detail and seriousness of thought in that arena as he's already demonstrating by "creating or saving" us toward double digit unemployment. And the same press corps which is boldly choosing not to question the president's transformatively non-falsifiable contentions is already gearing up to tell us how fantastically better it's going to make all of our lives. I for one can't wait.

UPDATE:

Yet another illustration showing how some people are still stuck in the tired old politics in which elected officials are expected to keep promises and are held to account for the actual results of their policies. It's sad how this guy just does not get Hopenchange.


(h/t Allah)

From Ed Morrisey, in the course of dissecting one of the latest intra-blogger feuds among the big blogs:

Rick, as is his wont, writes at length about his outrage:

Well yah... that's kind of the whole schtick, isn't it? After that it's just good for gossip. And we're surely above that.

Well this is the kind of thing that makes me shout spontaneous expletives!!

Restaurants come and restaurants go. Except, it seemed, D'Amico Cucina, which managed to maintain its lofty position at the summit of the Twin Cities' food chain for more than 20 years. No more. The luxury downtown Minneapolis restaurant, which regulars have long shorthanded to "Cucina," will serve its last dinner on June 27.

I am not shy in admitting I am ignoring the business angles here, since I can only assume this closing "makes sense" from there. I don't dispute that. I don't challenge that. I just hate the result.

Why? Because D'Amico Cucina can never be just a "business" to me. It will always be an experience ... an artistic assertion of the culinary order. You didn't go to D'Amico Cucina to be merely fed. You went to experience the culinary arts elevated to something... higher. Thankfully, in the Twin Cities, you can do that a lot of places now. But you know what? A lot of that is due to D'Amico Cucina...

...the restaurant's most enduring legacy might be its longtime role as an incubator of culinary talent. Its alumni have gone on to create the next generation of influential Twin Cities restaurants, including Tim McKee and Josh Thoma of La Belle Vie, Isaac Becker of 112 Eatery, Jim Grell of the Modern Cafe and a host of others.

As a pop culture metaphor, that's a legacy in Twin Cities dining not unlike saying the Beatles spun off the Stones, the Who, and Led Zep... I mean really.

You cannot even seriously TALK about food in the Twin Cities these days without reference to Tim McKee. La Belle Vie is far and away the best fine dining spot in town, which is where Josh Thoma adds to the McKee impact. And that doesn't even get into the handful of other top spots in town with McKee's name involved (Barrio, the new Cue, Smalley's Carribean Barbecue). Becker's 112 Eatery is pure gold and everyone knows it, even if it defies an easy niche. Grell's Modern Cafe is one of my personal favorite restaurants, and I eat there so often it's not even considered a special occasion. It's not a stretch to note that none of these would exist without D'Amico Cucina having been there developing its top talent in top of the line fashion.

What's more frustrating, food wise this was NOT a restaurant in decline!!

I personally LOVE what Chef John Occhiato has brought to the place. I've said before and I'll say once more, he's the best talent in that kitchen since Tim McKee. And I've tasted offerings from all the chefs since McKee.

Anyway I'm booking my final reservation for a restaurant that will undoubtedly be one of my all time favorites. I hope others do the same to give it a proper send off.

Kim Carlson is the Star Tribune's resident "green lifestyle" enthusiast. As such she fervently believes that making lifestyle changes in a direction called "green living" are not only a good idea, but constitute moral activity of the highest order. A few quick examples:

Kim spends time rating people on a scale from brown (i.e. despoilers of the planet) to deep green (i.e. the virtuous and pure). She's not an absolutist though. She allows that "brown" people can get "greener" over time. She's just fine with that... provided you are making an effort to move in a greener direction. Her world view is flexible like that.

She's also known for hectoring people about lawncare. You used chemical fertilizer on your lawn? She used fish guts and corn gluten. Simple lifestyle choice? Oh heck no. Remember, she's saving the planet. But what exactly does that make people who continue to fertilize their lawns the chemical way? Here's a hint... She characterizes her fish entrail strewn lawn compared to your lawn like this:

"[G]iven the choice, we would rather have a safe lawn than a painted green toxic lawn of perfection."

She probably has to wipe layers smug off the inside of her windows after driving down most suburban streets these days, with all those "painted green toxic and (sneer) perfect" lawns. Amazing what fish guts and plant waste can do for a greeniac's sense of self importance.

Oh but she's not done with your lawn. The grill in your backyard provides ample opportunity to engreen yourself as well. She wonders...

... is grilling still “ok” or is the environmental impact and carbon footprint of burning charcoal with a toxic liquid starter the equivalent of flying one person in a Airbus A380 to Paris -- an unforgivable eco-sin?

But relax, good reader. Saint Kim has concluded in our favor here, with a caveat of two...

Yes, you can, in fact, grill greenly if you pay attention to a few do’s and don’t’s:

After that come a few rules indicating that, among other things, you shouldn't use charcoal, or use charring or blackening on your meat, and also don't eat much meat in the first place. Have a great cookout... cooked over propane, without any char lines, and mostly meatless. Just a variation on a persistent theme in the green lifestyle - wringing the joy out of things you love.

Anyway, all that is a long set up so you know who Kim Carslon is and where she's coming from. It gives you a little context for understanding Kim's latest:

A couple of weeks ago it was a polar bear story that created an online uprising with cruel and biting comments about bear rugs and worse. Today, the story that climate change is killing people and causing billions of dollars in damage is causing another onslaught of anti everything green comments and even some bleeped out language from readers. ...

As for the seemingly out of proportion concern about bear rugs, please realize in Kim's world polar bears look like this:



But that's not really important. What's important is how Kim thinks through the groundbreakingly new issue of commenters disagreeing with her on a public discussion forum.

She, who's whole schtick consists of lecturing about how her own "greenness" makes her better than other people, tries to understand why people could possibly become hostile from one teensy reference to their benighted "brown" ways... "killing people and causing billions of dollars in damage." I mean really. She told you about putting fish guts on your yard, didn't she?! She told you to serve crappier food from your backyard grill, didn't she?! She can only assume if you didn't do it you wanted to cause death and destruction. If that's your lifestyle choice, why is it such a big deal when she points it out?

Luckily, Kim has a quick explanation for it... you're afraid of change. And not the sensible kind of fear about change - like fearing climate change. Lord knows Kim wants you to remain terrified of that particular change. No no, you're afraid because you hardly know anyone anymore who doesn't live their life according to Kim's green gospel. Her kind are inheriting the earth, while there's only like a dozen of you "brown"people left. As a result, you're lonely and scared and lashing out at polar bears.

As God and the Star Tribune website are my witnesses, I am not making this up...

I believe that the root of these negative sentiments is that some people can’t cope with change. Our world is changing and some simply can’t deal with it. They are part of a dwindling group of people who are on the brown end of the green behavior spectrum and they are very vocal because they have to be. They are dwindling in numbers and have lost support as people have been waking up to the serious environmental pickle that we have gotten ourselves in. The fact that the planet’s population is moving towards sustainability culturally, economically, and spiritually is threatening to them. The blog comments are the only way that they can make their voices heard. It almost makes me feel bad for them… but for pete's sake, leave the polar bears alone!

It doesn't even cross Kim's mind that there might be some more immediate source of reader hostility toward her new Green piety, with it's special combination of preening smuggery, uncritical acceptance and repetition of any news item castigating the modern American lifestyle, and cult-like refusal to consider alternatives to their emotion-heavy, fact-light view of the natural world. Actually amend that. It's not that she hasn't considered it. It's just that... gosh almost everyone she can think of believes in all that stuff already. It's only a couple dozen old cranks so set in their ways they probably don't adjust their clocks for daylight savings time who could even conceive of another perspective.

Of course, outside the happy green confines of Kim's worldview there is a real world slightly at odds with this perspective. The real world is not as neat and happily green as Kim imagines it to be. And you can tell this because in the real world, polar bears look like this:



And they also make great rugs.

Paul Krugman is concerned about inflation. No... That's not quite correct. He's concerned that YOU are concerned about inflation. In fact he thinks you're kind of a moron who just may be pissing away our unicorn and rainbow dreams in this era of Hopenchange by all your scaremongering about inflation.

The first reason Krugman says you shouldn't worry about inflation is because it could only be a problem if the economy ever actually recovered. But as there's no real indication this is happening (he's not a big believer in those "green shoots" the White House boasts about seeing apparently), forget about inflation. Depression era deflation should be the worry (soming soon: Paul Krugman's column calling you a moron for worrying about deflation).

Okay so... let's say some day in the distant future the economy actually recovers. Inflation could be a problem then, right? I mean... we're accumulating a massive debt "stimulating" our way into the recovery Paul Krugman thinks we needn't worry about. That eventually has to be paid to the people who loaned us all the money, right? And if the debt gets too massive, it could look awfully tempting to inflate the currency so the real value that needs to be paid back becomes relatively less. We should worry about that, right?

No, says Paul Krugman. You know why? Because it's just possible we won't do it, that's why. Belgium, Canada, and Japan didn't after all, when their debt exceeded 100 percent of their GDP. I mean... sure France did once after World War I. And, he doesn't mention, but I will, Argentina did it in the 90's. But look we don't have to do it, so just stop worrying about it. Shut up, that's why.

But then he gets to the heart of the matter... the shadowy reason he suspects all this nonsensical inflation scarin' is spreading around like Swine Flu... Because not everyone has embraced the free spending ways of the Lightbringer In-Chief...

But it’s hard to escape the sense that the current inflation fear-mongering is partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy. And their goal seems to be to bully the Obama administration into abandoning those rescue efforts.

I don't know. Call me a skeptic, but I have a feeling the inflation fear is not so much about whether or not the deficit comes from tax cuts or massive spending increases, but rather because folks see a bit of a difference between hundred billion dollar deficits sitting as the outliers of an economic plan and a projected stream of trillion dollar plus budget deficits with no plan to ever resolve them. You know... kind of like they looked at this old chart (which, I should point out, erred on the optimistic side by presuming the economy would be growing again by the end of the year - Krugman says we needn't "worry" about that):


click for larger image



That's either one loooooong rescue, or just maybe we've got a spending problem that's going to catch up with us sooner or later. So we don't inflate when the debt hits 100 percent GDP, eh? How about when it hits 200 percent? 500 percent? What is the president's plan to prevent that from happening?

He hasn't given one yet. But it apparently has to do with creating a new health care entitlement to cover every American. Does that sound like deficit reduction or even more massive debt to you?

In other words, yes Mr. Krugman, there is some fear of inflation out there. And no, your assurances that all will be okay aren't quite the reassuring tonic for our nerves you seem to believe.

The code of the Aggressively Opinionated Political Blogging Association suggests that I am required to opine about President Obama's nomination of some judge named Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. No matter how fervently I may protest that I don't know anything about the nominee and only have a hazy understanding of proper qualifications for such an appointment, the code insists. Just click around the blogosphere if you doubt me. It's got a full range of opinions about this matter ranging from knee-jerk all the way to official political party talking points. You think that kind of uniform agreement to cover something just happens on its own? No, no. It's the demanding AOPBA code forcing all of our bloggy hands.

To that end, here is my opinion on the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:

Ever since the Democratic Party broke from precedent and politicized Supreme Court nominations with their infamous "Borking" of President Reagan's nominee in the 80's (by some cosmic coincidence he was actually named Judge Bork!), these things have become ever more naked exercises of pure political muscle. The process isn't yet quite debauched enough to get a barnyard animal appointed to the nation's highest court, but it's headed down that same path. The kind of intra-party revolt that greeted the last president's nomination of a good personal buddy with few serious qualifications to a Supreme Court vacancy is a rarity I expect to get rarer over time.

Besides, most of the opinions getting generated over this matter have only a tangential relationship to the nominee in question. Partisan rivals are mostly looking for reasons to expose flaws in one another rather than seriously considering the merits of the nomination.

Democrats are writing articles about how the Republicans better not oppose her. Why? Because she's eminently qualified and carrying impeccable credentials, the integrity of which would shame any critic into silence? No, no. Because she's Hispanic and a woman. And if Republicans try to oppose her their opponents will label them racist and sexist and attempt to destroy their ability to get votes from either of those demographics. So that's one version of responsible vetting for the most powerful unelected position in the land.

Republicans, by careful contrast, are looking for evidence in the nominee's record that she holds liberal political views and allows them to influence her judicial decisions. In other words, they're looking for evidence that the nominee might be someone a liberal president would be inclined to nominate. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is out.

Still there are other lines of careful vetting going on... like trying to find any possible angle that would make undecided voters see their opposition as something other than a knee jerk partisan reaction. This will go on with great enthusiasm for some time. But let's try to put it onto a bit of context.

The Democrats don't need a single Republican vote to confirm the nominee. And they need only one - none if Al Franken is seated in the Senate shortly - to overcome a possible Republican filibuster. Also the Democrats, with very, very few exceptions, couldn't care less what any Republican thinks about this nominee. What they care about is how they might be able to use what the Republicans do and say in the course of the confirmation process against them. And the feeling across the aisle is mutual.

So what we are engaged in here is just another exercise in posturing, positioning, and grandstanding. A Supreme Court nomination is involved here to the same extent that a football game is involved with the Tournament of Roses Parade. Neither one really requires the other, but it's become a venerable tradition to hold them together.

Oh, as for Judge Sotomayor herself? I hope she's well qualified for the office; that all her judgey experience looks properly judgey and experienced; and that she isn't caught on tape somewhere engaging in strange and/or illegal personal hobbies. If all that's in order she's going to be seated anyway so I don't see the great need for me to get worked up about it. I'm under no expectations that His Presidential Coolness made this pick with any intention of pleasing me. And should this nomination fail he'll just nominate another with more or less the same kind of views. So forgive me if I don't bother to look too deeply into the matter.

If you're disturbed by this kind of judge getting onto the Supreme Court, ignore all this confirmation kabuki and try to get someone more to your liking elected president to make the nominations next time.