Thursday, November 27, 2003
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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QUICK FISK
Royce Dunbar does a mini-fisk of everything that was on the Des Moines Register editorial page today.
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Wednesday, November 26, 2003
WHERE’S THAT CAT?
A few weeks ago on NPR’s Marketplace, Paul Krugman seemed astounded by the news that GDP in the 3rd Quarter had grown by 7.2% growth:
…something is wrong. I -- I -- I have to say, we -- all of us who watch this sort of thing -- and this is -- this is wearing my professor hat...are just scratching their heads and saying, 'Is there something wrong with the data? And if so, which part of the data?' …We seem to have gone into the Twilight Zone. We don't know quite what's going on."
(Hat tip Don Luskin.)
Well, yesterday we learned that the revised GDP number is 8.2%.
Today we learn that weekly jobless claims dropped again, by 11,000 from the previous week, and by 10,000 for the four week moving average.
That cat is going to have a long, hard fall back to earth!
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BUSH AND SUPPLY SIDERS
My new column at the American Spectator.
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Tuesday, November 25, 2003
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…
The Des Moines Register attempts a defense (a pretty limp one, in fact) of NAFTA. I’m not going waste my time or yours reprinting parts of it here. You can read it for yourself if you want. Or you can just take my word for it that they don’t really argue that NAFTA created jobs in the U.S. Of course, to do that effectively you need a basic understanding of economics.
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SAME NONSENSE, DIFFERENT EDITORIAL
Also on the editorial page yesterday was the Register’s prescription for how to get Iowa moving again: more spending on education, more spending on state services, more money for the Grow Iowa Government Values Fund and Blurry Vision Iowa, let the state incur lots of debt and raise sales taxes to fund it all, and Republicans should bend over cooperate with Governor Vilsack to get it done.
Lots of original ideas.
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Sunday, November 23, 2003
IN OPPOSITION TO WAR, NO ISSUE TOO TRITE FOR REKHA
I’ve been trying to swear off takedowns of the writer of the Des Moines Register’s Worst Column Ever, but Royce Dunbar made a bit of a plea on his website, and who am I to turn down a fellow Iowa member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy? So fasten your seatbelts folks; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride over distortion land.
Some might say Spc. Tommy Thompson is one of the lucky Iowa National Guard members fighting the Bush "war on terror." He didn't come home from Iraq in a body bag. He has no battle scars to show, hasn't even seen combat and isn't in Iraq. He's helping to mop up the target of our first strike, Afghanistan.
Got that “Bush” war on terror, with the war on terror in quotes? Sorry, Rekha, it is America’s War on Terror. It became America’s War on Terror after about 3,000 Americans were vaporized by terrorists on September 11.
If you missed out on the joy of schoolyard taunting when you were younger, then this next paragraph is for you:
Remember Afghanistan? We bombed there after Sept. 11, angry that the ruling Taliban wouldn't or couldn't hand over Osama bin Laden. We installed our own guy as president in place of that illegitimate regime. But we never did find bin Laden, and now we're battling forces who believe an American puppet president is the illegitimate one.
That “wouldn’t or couldn’t” is a flat out distortion. The Taliban was demanding heaps of evidence that would be handed over to the Afghan Supreme Court. They could hand over bin Laden, but instead they just found ways to drag their feet. They only agreed to even discuss the idea after the bombing began. I realize that Rekha thinks that most brutal tyrants are really misunderstood folks who would stop their errant ways if they just had access to a bit of psychotherapy and awful U.S. foreign policy would stop forcing them to be mass murders. In the real world however, we know that tyrants are, well, tyrants, and only make concessions when confronted with force.
Rekha also engages in her usual moral vacuity. We expel a regime that is illegitimate, and install our own leader, Hamid Karzi, who forces we are now fighting view as illegitimate. So we’re just as bad because we’ve replace illegitimacy with illegitimacy. Of course, our “illegitimacy” doesn’t hang people in soccer fields, shelter terrorists, and keep women from education and health care. And who are the people that we are fighting who do view Karzi as illegitimate? Why the Taliban! You know, the folks who do hang people in soccer fields, shelter terrorists, and deny women education and health care. Years ago, someone who had too much time on his or her hands created the concept of “emotional intelligence.” I think a more useful pursuit would be the creation of “moral intelligence.” On a Moral IQ test, Rekha could probably get a negative score.
Meanwhile, more Taliban swarm in from Pakistan, al-Qaida is said to remain active in the country and Afghanistan, like Iraq, is becoming more than the United States bargained for.
Afghanistan has all but faded from people's lips in the distraction of another pre-emptive war with its mounting casualties. Among the forgotten are the troops we sent over there to make things right.
Perhaps Rekha thinks we’ve forgotten about Afghanistan. Actually, the Bush Administration is trying out a plan called “Provincial Reconstruction Teams.” And they’re having success in driving out warlords and installing professional police forces.
Here is the crux of Rekha’s argument (and I use that term very loosely):
[Thompson’s grandmother] lived with the Thompsons at one time and, at another time, Tommy Thompson moved in with her. When she was in the hospital before, he was at her bedside 24 hours a day for a week, says his father, Harlan Thompson. "Anytime she needed anything, he was there on the double."
Now Tommy Thompson just wants a chance to say goodbye. But he's been turned down for emergency leave…
His family is just one of the many affected by the two wars and the heavy financial costs of Bush's anti-terrorism strategy. Of course, when you join the military, it's a tacit agreement to serve, no matter what you think. Being away while babies are born, or family members die or jobs are filled with other people is typical wartime stuff.
But those are particularly painful burdens when they come with the uneasy sense that there is no noble cause. That you send your young off to make these sacrifices and miss final goodbyes and other life passages they can never repeat, yet Americans will be no better off and no freer for it in the end.
Rekha, here is a newsflash for you: PEOPLE ARE UNABLE TO BE AT THE BEDSIDE OF DYING LOVED ONES ALL THE TIME! I know, because it happened to me. In 1998 my grandfather took a nasty fall that led to his death barely a day later. He was in California, I was in Iowa. By the time I was told what was going on, it was way too late for me to book a flight to be there. I regret it to this day, and only take solace in the fact that I was able to attend the funeral.
It is tragic, and I feel for Mr. Thompson. He appears to be the victim of bureaucratic indifference, but it is hardly a sufficient reason to oppose out efforts in Iraq. If it was, it would have to be a reason to oppose all wars.
“Oh wait,” you may be saying, Rekha gives herself an escape hatch by saying that such sacrifices are not worth it when there is an “uneasy sense that there is no noble cause.” Hmmm…let’s see here: We’ve driven a brutal dictator from power, a dictator who put thousands of Iraqis in mass graves, and children in prison. We’ve stopped a dictator who had WMDs, and had aspirations to get more of them. We’ve given many Iraqis their first taste of freedom. Perhaps it depends on what your definition of “noble cause” is.
Or maybe it depends on who has the “uneasy feeling.” That would be Rekha and her intellectual cohorts in groups like International A.N.S.W.E.R. Clueless fools who see every little stubbing of the toe as the most serious of reasons to oppose the War to Liberate Iraq.
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