Bill Keller’s per-foreign policy debate column is good for a laugh.  In ostensible purpose of the column is to give advice to Romney about what he should talk about in tonight’s debate.  Of course, before giving that advice, Keller has this to say

I’d describe myself as a qualified admirer of President Obama’s foreign policy. It is reactive and rarely inspiring, but judicious and flexible. Romney shows little instinct for a dangerously complex world. But in the spirit of nonpartisanship, here’s my advice to the challenger.

Keller then goes on to tell Romney to adopt and agree with all of Obama’s foreign policy.  How anyone can be an admirer of a foreign policy where the world’s superpower leads from behind, dithers on Iran, concedes to Russia, is paralyzed on Syria and has lost any credibility in Libya is beyond me.  The only point in Keller’s piece I can get behind is his call to stop bashing China for currency manipulation.  Keller is right – it is an easy line to get applause on (and Obama was no less enthusiastic about going after China in the previous debate), but easy applause does not mean good policy.  China should be viewed as a strategic rival – it is building up its military, has revisionist aims and, economically, is very much at fault for an atmosphere that breeds the theft of U.S. intellectual property – but that doesn’t mean that currency manipulation is our main problem.  In fact, by keeping the currency weak it makes lots of goods cheaper for Americans to buy.

Roger Cohen has a piece in the Times the other day that is hopelessly confused from beginning to end, starting with the assertion that “China is a status quo power.”  The basis of this claim is “It [China] preaches dialogue, noninterference and the sanctity of national sovereignty because it does not want major global disruptions to its pursuit of the economic growth essential to political stability and full development by midcentury.”  That argument flies in the face of reality – China is investing in a blue water navy it has never had before (its first aircraft carrier is beginning to undergo evaluation testing), it is fighting with Japan about the Senkaku Islands and it has invested heavily in “anti-access’ weapons (mines and cruise missiles) that are designed to prevent U.S. dominance in the region.  Cohen misunderstands what China means when it calls for “noninterference.”  What China is saying (and it is not at all veiled) is that the United States should not interfere in Asia (recently with respect to the Senkaku dispute), not that all powers in the region and the world should refrain from wielding influence over others.

Later, in an attempt to paint Romney as backwards, Cohen states that “Russia is also a status quo power — the status quo of 30 years ago” and “[a]s for Mitt Romney, he belongs to Putin’s school of foreign policy.”  Here Cohen, in a truly stunning misuse of language, has conflated antonyms.  Status quo implies continuation of the present, but here Cohen has misconstrued it to mean a return to a past strategic relationship.  Moreover, not only does Cohen misuse the language, he does so in a way which reveals he, not Romney, is the one mired in the past.  If we are to take Cohen’s logic to its conclusion, it would mean that anytime a new strategic relationship between two parties emerges where those parties previously had a relationship of a similar nature – no matter how long ago and what the circumstances –  that they are returning to the “status quo.”  Under Cohen’s logic, when England and France were at war in World War II it was a return to the status quo of World War I, which in turn was a return to the status quo of the Napoleonic wars.  Clearly that is false – different actors, circumstances and motives were at play in each of the disputes.  In the extant example, the criticism of Russia under Putin and its possible strategic threat to the United States is grounded in an entirely different analysis than that of the Cold War.  It is only someone who superficially looks at the surface of the issue (and the names of the participants) who could conclude that the present dynamic is analogous to the Cold War.

I am not a fan of punk music, but I would happily pay to see Pussy Riot anytime they want to play.  Russia’s descent into a lawless, mafia-infested den of corruption manages to continue uninterrupted.

MSNBC’s The Cycle in a discussion yesterday had an exchange where one of the hosts, Touré (I guess he is like Madonna or Cher, no second name) claimed that Romney was a racist.  His exact words were “I know it’s a heavy thing, I don’t say it lightly, but this is ‘niggerization.’”

I am only familiar with Touré from the Zimmerman episode, where he was quick to call racism, and now this.  Given how ridiculous his allegation is in Romney’s case, I really would love to see him take Rorschach test; I bet the results would be very interesting.  As in so many cases, the comments of the commentator are far more revealing about his personality and character than they are about the subject on which he is speaking.

I don’t believe I have ever read a piece by Adam Kirsch before, but I just finished “Gore Vidal’s ‘Burr’ Is Antidote to Tea Party Myths” and I am less than impressed.  The gist of the article is that the Tea Party’s portrayal of the Founding Fathers is wrong, the Founding Fathers were essentially unprincipled rouges just looking to feather their nests and that we should therefore dismiss the Tea Party as dupes who believe in fairy tales and fantasies.

The problem is that Kirsch doesn’t make that case by actually looking at the backgrounds of the Founding Fathers (none of whom were perfect, to be sure).  Instead he chooses an utterly ridiculous means of attacking the Founders – he reviews Gore Vidal’s book “Burr.”  What is Burr?  It is a FICTIONAL account of Aaron Burr, the Founding Fathers and their political interactions.  To hold up work of fantasy and claim that it forms a basis for challenging history is absurd.  All that Kirsch has “proved” is that if Gore Vidal’s fantasy about the Founding Fathers was correct then the Tea Party’s love of the Founding Fathers may be misplaced.  However, even if that were correct, the Tear Party’s love of the principles that the Founding Fathers espoused would not be called into question.  So, in the end, we have one writer who loves another writer’s fantasy and thinks that that fantasy forms the basis of an intellectual challenge to the limited government movement because the people who first provided the intellectual foundations of the movement may not be as perfect as its adherents believe.

Kirsch should either stay away from commenting on politics or stop using fantasy as the basis of his arguments.

The only downside is he won’t be Secretary of the Treasury.

According to this story, the United Nations wants to put into place a global tax on billionaires.  The World Economic and Social Survey 2012: In Sear of New Development Finance, is a document designed to find ways for the international bureaucracy to extract wealth from other people that the UN can use to support whatever redistributionist cause is the flavor of the day.  In addition to proposing a tax on billionaires, the report advocates taxing air travel, currency transactions and greenhouse gas emissions are proposed as being potential “innovative” solutions to raising funds for the UN.  Here’s a nice little chart of what the UN calls “innovative sources of development finance,” which I would call other peoples’ money:

In short, the UN wants to take from rich countries to give to poor countries.  It wants to do this through any means it can, and thus has proposed a slate of taxes in the hopes that some of them will go through, creating more “revenue” for the UN to spend.  Given the UN’s record of managing and spending money, why on Earth would we ever want to give it more.  Billions have been wasted, much of it through fraud and corruption.  Where there hasn’t been fraud and corruption, greed and waste have ruled the day, with UN officials staying in five star hotels and living lavish lifestyles at the expense of United States taxpayers and the countries that are supposedly being “aided” by the UN.  When money does make its way to poorer countries, it is often handed to dictatorial and corrupt regimes, who use the money to finance their own projects.

If the United States – or any other Western country – wants to help the poor countries of the world, they should start with getting rid of dictators, implementing fair and sound laws, including laws which protect investors and signing free trade agreements.  And, if money must be given away, it should be done at the national level where there is, at least somewhat, accountability to the voters of the donor countries should the money be massively wasted.  Once any money passes to the UN, there is no control over how it is spent and the UN officials have shown, ad nauseum, that they cannot be trusted as fiduciaries.  As soon as they get money they are incentivized to spend it, no matter how bad the ruler of the country, no matter how much waste and no matter how much fraud.  Worst of all, they will spend the money even if the effects on the people they are supposed to be helping are negative, such as giving it to an oppressive dictator who then uses the money to feed the machinery of his dictatorship.

Statements from Ray LaHood, the Secretary of Transportation are, in a word, incredible.  Incredible in the truest sense of the word – beyond credible.  LaHood, echoing the position espoused by Thomas Friedman and Andy Stern, believes that the United States government could learn a few things in efficiency from China.  In China, according to LaHood, wonderful things in public transport are happening because there is an autocratic regime that doesn’t have to bother to listen to citizens.

In his remarks, LaHood reveals the fundamental flaw of liberal economic policies.  This is best summarized as an equation: more spending = greater progress.   LaHood nicely sums of his thinking: “Two years ago, between 50 to 60 Republicans were elected to the House of Representatives to come to Washington to do nothing, and that’s what they’ve done and they’ve stopped any progress. Those people don’t have any vision about what the government can do. That’s been a real inhibitor in our ability to think outside the box and think big.”

In LaHood’s world, having the government direct and spend money is a de facto positive situation.  We know this because high-speed rail is unprofitable in virtually every place it operates, including environments that are far more amenable to high-speed rail than the United States.  It is the definition of irony for LaHood to use as his example of progress via government a piece of infrastructure that costs taxpayers billions of dollars for something they don’t want.  Every prediction made about the costs and ridership of trains has been so wildly inaccurate (and always below the true cost and the true number of riders) that they cannot be taken seriously.

We also know that LaHood is simply unwilling, or unable, to understand that people do not agree with him.  According to LaHood: “There’s no turning back on this. We’re not going to turn back. And you know why? Because that’s what the people want. That’s why… there’s no stopping high speed rail.”  LaHood’s remarks are belied by the fact that clearly many people DO NOT want high speed rail.  The evidence is those 50 to 60 Republicans who were elected by citizens who think the government is spending too much, as well as the governors of Wyoming and Florida who recognize the enormous expense that the taxpayers will incur if they allow high-speed rail to go forward.  In LaHood’s mind, however, such objections are irrelevant.  According to LaHood “Doing nothing is not acceptable. Don’t be coming here and telling me it’s not acceptable if you don’t have an alternative. It’s coming to California,” LaHood exclaimed. “All the studies show, if you build it they will come.””  Thus does he nicely sum up the liberal philosophy – it doesn’t matter if it’s cost-effective or serves the peoples’ needs, government must spend money and build things because it can and, because if it didn’t, people like Ray LaHood would be unable to justify their jobs and their power.

This passage reminded me of my own little bit of frustration with thoughtless TSA/airport security rules last month.  I was taking a plane out of Newark Airport and I had some letters with me which I forgot to drop in the mailbox on the way there.  After I cleared security, I asked someone working there if there was a mailbox around, to which she replied that they had all been removed following September 11.

The obvious question this raises is “why?”  Clearly, a bomb inside a mailbox is a very dangerous thing.  When it explodes, in addition to the explosive fores of the bomb itself, it can transform the mailbox into a deadly projectile.  That is why they are removed during parades and other events that might be the target of terrorism.  However, what is the logic in removing mailboxes from airports post-security?  If a terrorist takes the time and effort to construct a bomb and to take it through an airport, his target is not going to be the mailbox post-security.  He is much better off putting such a bomb at a mailbox in a crowded urban environment, like a mall.  The chances of getting caught at the airport are higher (though just how high is debatable) than they are on a random street in a major city.  Therefore, the only reason to take a bomb through airport security is to target the airplanes so that one may cause panic about air travel, thereby causing massive economic damage to the country and making people nervous to fly.  Blowing up people while on the ground does not have the same effect.  Is it really too much to ask that our security officials stop, think and use logic to determine security measures more than a decade after 9/11?

I think it would be hard to find a more blatant example of propaganda and bad journalism than this AP “article” on the recent weather and global warming.  Here is the third paragraph:

These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it’s far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.

And here are 8 through 11:

“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level,” said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.”

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn’t listen. So it’s I told-you-so time, he said.

As recently as March, a special report an extreme events and disasters by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of “unprecedented extreme weather and climate events.” Its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said Monday, “It’s really dramatic how many of the patterns that we’ve talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now.”

“What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. “It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters.”

In sum, the article’s main points are: The weather is catastrophic. There is no evidence global warming had a role to play. No credible scientist will say global warming is a cause of the weather. Yet, let’s take this opportunity to take those same scientists who won’t say it is global warming and let them imply that it is by using the conditional tense and maintaining that the recent weather is what global warming ‘would look like.’