Big doings in Libya

The New Neo Posted on by

It would appear that the Gaddafi forces are collapsing, although it’s impossible to know for sure. It also appears that, as so often is this case in these situations, the turning point may have come when Gaddafi couldn’t motivate his own defenders to fight for him any more:

Euphoric Libyan rebels raced into the capital Tripoli on Sunday and moved close to center with little resistance as Moammar Gadhafi’s defenses collapsed and his regime appeared to be crumbling fast.

Associated Press reporters with the rebels said they moved easily from the western outskirts into the regime stronghold in a dramatic turning of the tides in the 6-month-old Libyan civil war. A rebel leader said the unit in charge of protecting Gadhafi and Tripoli had surrendered and joined the revolt, allowing the opposition force to move in freely.

I wish I felt more hopeful about what will replace the abominable Gaddafi.

[Update here.]

[UPDATE II: The prognosis:

[Gaddafi’s] decades of iron-fisted rule have produced a country, analysts say, that is devoid of credible institutions and any semblance of a civil society ”” a potential source of trouble in the months and years ahead…

A senior American military officer who has been following the developments closely, and who has been in contact with African and Arab military leaders in recent days, expressed caution on Sunday about the prospects for Libya even if the Qaddafi government should fall. Even if Colonel Qaddafi is deposed in some way, the senior officer said, there was still no clear plan for a political succession or for maintaining security in the country.

“The leaders I’ve talked to do not have a clear understanding how this will all play out,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly…

American officials say they are preparing contingency plans if and when Colonel Qaddafi’s government falls to help prevent the vast Libyan government stockpiles of weapons, particularly portable antiaircraft missiles, from being stolen and dispersed.

Untold numbers of the missiles, including SA-7s, have already been looted from government arsenals, and American officials fear they could circulate widely, including heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles that could be used against civilian airliners. “What I worry about most is the proliferation of these weapons,” the senior military officer said, noting that the United States had already been quietly meeting with leaders of Libya’s neighbors in Africa’s Sahel region to stem the flow of the missiles.

The officer said that small teams of American military and other government weapons experts could be sent into Libya after the fall of the Qaddafi government to help Libyan rebel and other international forces secure the weapons. ]

Chronic fatigue syndrome activists…

The New Neo Posted on by

…have made threats against researchers who dare to suggest that even part of their suffering might be due to psychological reasons.

Now, has that convinced you of how psychologically stable the activists are?

[Researcher] Crawley has spent years trying to unravel the causes, but her refusal to accept that the condition is a result only of organic external factors has resulted in her being deluged with hate mail from extremists. “You evil bastards ”¦ time is running out for you so you have [sic] better start denouncing your flawed inhumane therapy and pray to God for forgiveness,” said one.

“To those who are responsible for preventing us sick ME sufferers from getting the help we need … you will all pay,” stated another. “It is depressing to receive emails like that, but I make sure that it does not get me down,” said Crawley. “I do check packages that are sent to my office, however.”

Many of the extremists’ claims are bizarre, said Professor Simon Wessely, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. “They say I am in league with pharmaceutical companies in order to suppress data that shows a link between viruses and the syndrome. But why on earth would drug companies do that? If they could link the condition to a virus they would be well on the way to developing lucrative treatments and vaccines. It is crazy.”

Wessely has installed speed dial phones and panic buttons at the police’s request and has his mail X-rayed. He gave up his research on chronic fatigue syndrome several years ago, though he still treats patients.

In the last few decades, patients have felt increasingly empowered to advocate for themselves. This is ordinarily to the good, but it can get out of hand. This, combined with scientific illiteracy (which I’ve written about before, here) has created a phenomenon that, paradoxically, stifles research that might actually help conquer the diseases from which they and/or their loved ones suffer.

Science used to be about the search for truth; now a lot of people seem to think it’s about validating their own agenda. Many people also seem to think that a solution should always be found, and soon—and that if it isn’t, scientists are either corrupt or lazy, or both.

Paul Tsongas has something to tell us

The New Neo Posted on by

Despite my interest in politics (or perhaps because of it?), there haven’t been many presidential candidates over the years who’ve roused much enthusiasm in me. In fact, the single exception might have been Paul Tsongas, who ran for (and lost) the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992.

Tsongas might be considered a strange choice for enthusiasm. For one thing, he was exceptionally low-key, and famously lacked what’s usually thought of as political charisma. Who cares? I certainly didn’t.

Do you remember him? If you listen to this excerpt from a speech he made in 1993, you might recognize some themes that resonate even more strongly today [by the way, the George Bush he’s referring to at the beginning of the quote is George H.W. Bush]:

Here is Tsongas’s record; pay special attention to his stance on the economy. And here are some reminiscences after he died, by those who knew him:

JIM LEHRER: …Mike, how would you describe Paul Tsongas?

MIKE BARNICLE, Boston Globe: Well, I would describe him, Jim, I think as a nice man, a smart man, and I think most of all in my mind someone who, it sounds corny, but someone who literally never forgot where he came from because he couldn’t, because he never left where he came from. I was struck today watching the President in his inaugural address, and I can recall when he ran, he was billed as the man from Hope, Arkansas. And I think he was in Hope, Arkansas, for, you know, maybe three months or so. Paul Tsongas lived on a hill in an old mill town in New England, Lowell, Massachusetts, a hill where the rich people in town always used to live. He made it up to the top of that hill in a beautiful home. And from that home you could look down on a clear day in the Meramac Valley in January and see where Paul Tsongas lived as a child. It was that close and yet that far away from his roots. His father was a dry cleaner. His mother died when he was quite young. And Paul Tsongas literally knew everyone on Main Street in Lowell till the day he died. And I think it’s an unusual sort of person who can achieve the United States Senate and run for the presidency of the United States and still maintain those roots and the strength of those roots as he did.

JIM LEHRER: Mike, a lot of people said that he was almost too good to be true. You just saw the interview he did with–

MIKE BARNICLE: Yeah.

JIM LEHRER: –with Judy, and you think, my goodness. I mean, politicians don’t talk that way. Was he really that way?

MIKE BARNICLE: You know, I think he was. He could be, you know, he could be kind of smug and arrogant at times. I don’t think there’s any question about that, especially with the media, but we deserve to be treated that way. But I think his cancer changed him a great deal. I think the fact that he combated it successfully gave him the opportunity to realize and to articulate publicly during the course of his presidential campaign that there was a tremendous market in this country for truth. And when he ran for the presidency, having faced death, he was certainly unafraid to tell the truth as he saw it. And I think to us that might make him seem unusual, but I think to the average person it would make him seem someone with just huge amounts of common sense.

The present-day politician who most reminds me of Tsongas is—of all people—Chris Christie. Physically, they couldn’t be more different; Tsongas was slight, a bit frail-looking, and Christie is a man of heft. Christie is also a much more aggressive in-your-face type of guy. But otherwise, they’re the only two politicians I can think of who project such a strong aura of straight-shooting no-BS talk.

In 1992 I was very disappointed that Tsongas faded after some early success and that Clinton won the primaries; I thought Clinton was far inferior, although I voted for him in the national election. Anyway, it turns out that, sadly enough, Tsongas would have died in office two days before the end of his first term—not from a cancer recurrence, as some have erroneously stated, but from a different disease that arose as a complication from his earlier aggressive cancer treatments. He was 55.

But if he were around today, he’s probably the only Democrat I’d consider voting for again—although I’m not so sure he’d be allowed in the Democratic Party any more.

Hating economics

The New Neo Posted on by

The article “Why Americans Hate Economics” caught my eye, for obvious reasons.

Here’s a quote:

Christina Romer, the University of California at Berkeley economics professor and President Obama’s first chief economist, once relayed the old joke that “there are two kinds of students: those who hate economics and those who really hate economics.” She doesn’t believe that, but it’s true. I’m surprised how many students tell me economics is their least favorite subject. Why? Because too often economic theories defy common sense. Alas, the policies of this administration haven’t boosted the profession’s reputation.

The problem is manifold. Much of what economists say is indeed counter-intuitive—especially if we use our own most familiar circumstances, managing a household’s finances, as a guide. For instance, stimulus spending by the government is going to help the economy? Doesn’t seem quite right. Raising taxes might not always yield more revenue? Why not?

The explanations—and there are always many—somewhat suffice. But then there are the counterarguments, and they are seemingly endless as well. The math (which economists say constitutes the proof of the pudding) is so arcane that most people can’t do it or understand it. Nor are we sure the math matters, as we’ve learned from the financial quants, who assured us that the derivatives trade was a-okay and housing could never fall and all that jazz.

And even if 75% of economists agree on something, there’s always that other 25% (or even 10%, or 5%) who just might turn out to be correct. We’ve seen people be wrong, wrong, wrong before, and suffered for it. Prognostications? Don’t make me laugh; the track record is just not good, nor is it consistent.

That isn’t to say I disrespect economics. I don’t (some of my best friends…). Most of them work very hard at a task fraught with inherent difficulties: analyzing what went wrong in the complex system known as our economy, and what might be done to make it right.

If you want to make your head spin, just take a look at the arguments over the Great Depression, and whether FDR’s policies helped it or prolonged it, and what finally got us out of it. If the past is that hard to understand and that controversial, how much more so is the present and the future? And yet so much is riding on being correct.

Perry’s cuts caused the achievement of Texas students to fall

The New Neo Posted on by

Or did they?

One would certainly think so from these quotes from US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

Duncan told Bloomberg Television that Texas schools have struggled under Perry, saying he feels “very badly” for children who attend them.

“Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college,” Duncan said. “I feel very, very badly for the children there.”

But before I start to weep for the children of Texas, where per-pupil spending and teachers’ salaries have been cut, I’d like to know how much the actual education of pupils there has suffered since the austerity measures were instituted. And funny thing, although I read the article several times and also did some supplementary Googling on the subject, the answer was nowhere to be found.

Perhaps when the entire Arne Burbank interview airs on Bloomberg TV, those figures will be provided. Perhaps they will substantiate his claims. But perhaps not.

Texas was not in the forefront of education even before the Perry cuts, although teacher/student ratios are above average there, and students tend to score around average on National Assessment of Education Progress tests. But the reasons Texas has not generally been a leader in education may have something to do with demography: “The state has more poor children than most, with one in four children living in poverty, compared to the one-in-five national average.”

And—okay, I’ll ask the question, because the article doesn’t—how many Texas schoolchildren are illegal immigrants? No one knows, but as of December 2010 the answer appeared to be “somewhere between 3% and 8%” of the total. It is logical to assume that this affects the entire Texas educational system in various ways that are not necessarily positive, including the need to wrestle with the language problem.

Oh, and by the way, speaking of language problems—here’s a message for Arne Duncan, educator-in-chief: it’s not “I feel very badly,” it’s “I feel very bad.” Unless, of course, there’s something wrong with the nerves in the tips of your fingers and your tactile receptors have gone awry, or your emotional makeup is off-kilter. If so, I feel very bad for you.

Economic arrogance on the left

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed a few articles and posts lately from people on the left containing the meme “we know exactly what to do to fix the economy, and the mean and destructive politicians just won’t do it.”

Here’s a good example from Kevin Drum:

Watching the world slide slowly back into recession without a fight, even though we know perfectly well how to prevent it, is just depressing beyond words. Our descendents will view the grasping politicians and cowardly bankers responsible for this about as uncomprehendingly as we now view the world leaders who cavalierly allowed World War I to unfold even though they could have stopped it at any time.

For the moment, let’s suspend the argument on who’s right about the best way to try to jump-start the economy and enhance confidence. Let’s forget about the fact that this is a worldwide problem, and the latest downturn seems to be more about events in Europe than in this country. Forget the argument about whether WWI could have been prevented, or whether even the omniscient Kevin Drum, had he been alive back then and Master of the World, could have foreseen the nature of the war that was to follow and known the exact steps to take to avoid it.

Just focus on that phrase “we know perfectly well how to prevent it.” The mind-boggling, toe-curling arrogance it expresses, the unbounded faith in the human understanding of exceedingly complex systems and human ability to intervene effectively, and the idea that failure to do so is a combination of failure of will and the evil impulse, is unapologetic and monumental arrogance of the classic leftist variety. The Vision of the Anointed in its purest form.

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

A reasonable spambot query:

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Well, why ever not?

The market drops again…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but the good news is: mortgage rates are mega-low! Time to buy a home!

That is, if you’ve got any money left, or a job.

Here are some possible reasons why the market is tanking today.

And only 26% of respondents in a recent Gallup poll approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, down 11% since mid-May. The poll didn’t ask how many people blame Bush. But we know who/what Obama now blames: bad luck.

Obama the blame duck.

On the stimulus

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Krauthammer on the stimulus:

“[Obama] did a huge Keynesian gamble, and it failed.”

But super-Keynesians such as Krugman say it failed because it wasn’t nearly super enough. It should have been bigger.

And Obama says if he hadn’t done it, things would have been much worse.

The beauty of it is that you can’t absolutely prove these statements untrue. You never can. The road not taken stubbornly remains untaken.

Logic would seem to dictate that if a large dose of something doesn’t work, more of the same won’t help. But believers argue that the dose didn’t reach the therapeutic threshold. And with economic interventions—as with all interventions that involve complex systems—it is stunningly difficult to tease out the effects of a single variable.

And so the argument continueth…

Irving Kristol and the Turnings: do we ever learn?

The New Neo Posted on by

A reader alerts me to this essay about one of the early neoconservatives, Irving Kristol. I especially liked this part:

For those of us who had lived through the tumults and frustrations of the seventies, a heyday of ineffective governance and economic torpor, such a litany of top-down, command-economy measures seemed like a return of the repressed, as if all the vital lessons of those dreadful years were being cast aside in favor of a mindless embrace of hoary statist delusions that had already amply proven their inadequacy. How, I wondered, did Irving feel about this development? Were we in fact going backward? Would we have to relearn the same lessons all over again?

“Of course we will!” he exclaimed without hesitation, smiling as ever, eyes flashing. “The younger generation never learns much from the past.” A pause, and then a more direct gaze. “But you hope it learns eventually.” And it struck me both then and now how perfectly these simple words distilled his outlook on life: skeptical, realistic, historically aware, unillusioned, and yet, despite it all, hopeful. I heard no hint of condemnation in his words, since he was speaking of all younger generations, very much including his own. He was stating a fact about the human condition, not hurling moral thunderbolts of disdain or prophetic admonition, and he spoke with a rueful smile, not a bitter snarl or sighing resignation or””least of all””anything remotely resembling despair.

This reminds me of the theory of the repetitive Four Turnings of history, described here:

The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. Old Prophets disappear, Nomads enter elderhood, Heroes enter midlife, Artists enter young adulthood, and a new generation of Prophets is born.

The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. Old Nomads disappear, Heroes enter elderhood, Artists enter midlife, Prophets enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Nomads is born.

The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants. Old Heroes disappear, Artists enter elderhood, Prophets enter midlife, Nomads enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Heroes is born.

The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. Old Artists disappear, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Artists is born.

It may well be that we are still in the midst of a Third Turning. Or do you think we’ve entered a Fourth?

The ominous Obamabus

The New Neo Posted on by

If Darth Vader traveled by bus, this is undoubtedly the one he’d choose:

But it would seem an odd choice for President Obama (I’m hardly the only one who’s used the Vader comparison). The bus has also been likened to an enormous hearse. And of course there have been the inevitable jokes about what and whom to throw under Obama’s bus.

To top it all off, the expensive vehicle was made in Canada.

One can’t help but think Obama was motivated by a desire to outdo Sarah Palin, but that conclusion would appear to be wrong: the million-dollar-plus bus was ordered by the Secret Service in July of 2010, a year ago.

So, was Obama planning this tour way back then? Or was it instead a Secret Service decision independent of Obama? Perhaps the latter, or some combination of the two:

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan emphasized that the bus wasn’t purchased solely for the president and would be used for other dignitaries in the future. He said the agency has not previously had buses in its fleet and was overdue to get some since it’s had to protect politicians traveling by bus for decades.

In the past, the service has had to lease buses and retrofit them for that purpose.

If that’s true, the plain design is because the bus will be used for other candidates and officeholders, too. But if I were Obama, I’d at least be putting some decorative stickers on it. And I probably wouldn’t be using it at all; the visuals are, quite simply, terrible.