Sunday, April 29, 2007

Baghdad Update

This is the second in a series of reports on war in Iraq from our good friend Lt. Col. Dave McCarthy, USMC. (See “Greetings from Baghdad” 4/17/07). Some of my readers don’t know Dave and have asked for a bit of background. Here, in his words, is the McCarthy family.

Greetings, All. Very early tomorrow I take a C-130 to points far northof Baghdad. My previous messages have told you about my life here in Iraq and now, before I leave, I wanted to tell you about the home front.


Joseph (17-years old) has gotten a job at Islands restaurant and enjoys it very much, however that means that he doesn't visit Carey,Connor and Trevor as much as we'd like. We understand that between work and school it's difficult. Joseph is an absolutely super kid who everyone likes; His brothers Connor and Trevor idolize him. When I speak with his guidance counselors and teachers they all rave about him. He's been accepted to several colleges. He would like to be a U.S. Marine, and is weighing the pros and cons of enlisting in the Reserves while he's in college and then getting commissioned or doing the Platoon Leaders Course. Either way he'll make a fine Marine. For years he has studied the Guidebook for Marines and the Marine Officer's Guide, and he knows the 11 Leadership Principles and the 14 Leadership Traits.

Twins Connor and Trevor are a barrel of monkeys - a loveable barrel of monkeys but a barrel of monkeys nonetheless. They play on Basketball, Little League and Soccer teams and do quite well. Like Joseph, they're very well-mannered and polite (they're my boys - they damned well better be). Cullen is our Irish Terrier, and he is one crazy dog. When he has extra energy he tears around the house at breakneck speed - I find it hard to comprehend how anything can go so fast in such a confined space - and Connor and Trevor just jump up on the couch to get out of his way and they shout in unison, "GO CULLEN GO! GO CULLEN GO!" Most of the time, the three of them tear around the house like a hurricane.

As for Carey, where do I start? She works almost full time in a demanding job, takes the boys to all of their sports practices and games, their after-school tutoring and all of their appointments. She reads to them and with them every night and does endless math problems and other studies. Carey is an amazing, wonderful wife and an amazing, wonderful mother. I honestly don't know how or why God saw fit to bless my existence on this earth with her, but I thank God every day that he did.

This current vacation in Iraq is my fifth deployment since 9/11; the first four were back-to-back, so after 9/11, I was gone from home for over two years. It is a testament to Carey's strengths - physical, mental and spiritual - that she managed with twin boys who were 18 months old when I left and almost 4 years old when I returned. This time is not any easier for her and in many ways it is more difficult. What she did then and what she does now is immeasurably harder than what I do. Heck, it’s easy getting shot at and having bad guys trying to blow you up.

Take care and be well.
Semper Fidelis,
Dave

Colonel McCarthy’s previous message of April 24 tells about the daily life of a “garden-variety Marine Ground-Pounder/Bullet-Stopper.” Dave explains that because he is a lawyer in civilian life “some people back home think what I do for the Marine Corps is lawyering, with the Judge Advocate General Corps. However, I don't practice law in the military and I have no desire to (I'm allergic to desks and offices). I went to law school after I left active duty a hundred or so years ago, so I never practiced military law.”

One of Dave’s more humorous experiences was an encounter with a wolf aboard a Forward Operating Base. He sent a truly frightening picture of the wolf (or his brother) and notes “the resemblance between a U.S. Marine and a wolf.”

On the subject of life in the war zone: “I will tell you that we can handle hunger, filth and the deprivation of all manner of comforts. What is a killer, or at least has the potential to be, is the sleep deprivation that we sometimes are subjected to by mission necessity. It's akin to the stress that I previously wrote about in that we try not to think about the stress or the lack of sleep, but we're likely internalizing it. I suppose if we thought consciously about stress and lack of sleep we'd go nuts. Then again, this whole place is nuts. One of our expressions here is NORMAL is a cycle on a washing machine. One thing that would likely seem abnormal to a normal person is how we are accustomed to explosions and gun fire. There are generally 140 attacks per day in Iraq, and 60 per day in Baghdad. Every night and much of the day the sound of small arms fire and machine gun fire is all around us, and yet if it isn't in our immediate area we don't even pay attention.”

With regard to the photo of me last message, military friends have felt compelled to tell me that in a tactical situation I shouldn't be wearing the Silver Oak Leaf rank insignia of a Lieutenant Colonel - it makes me a juicy target for a sniper - that instead I should be wearing the blackened Oak Leaf that is intended for tactical situations. For the record, I am well aware of tactics and tactical garb, however I don't care for blackened rank insignia, and while I have no aversion to others wearing it, I don't wear it; I never have and, unless I'm ordered to, I never will. Fortunately for me one of the senior ranking Marines here is Major General Moore, who also dislikes blackened rank insignia and who also never wears it. I half-jokingly tell my men that they should be grateful: I'll draw the sniper fire so they won't.

The children of Baghdad are much like children anywhere in theworld in that they run and play and are generally amusing to watch. I wish I could climb out of the Humvee and kick a soccer ball with them or have a catch, but if I did likely I'd be killed and they might also. Of course the kids here in Baghdad more often than not are dressed in clothes that have seen better days. We often take up collections and give the money to the Chaplain to buy clothes or shoes or soccer balls for the kids. Of course with the millions of residents of Baghdad we can't even make a dent, but something is better than nothing. You may recall what the Chaplain told us: We cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good we can do.

Dave’s message goes on for several pages, all of it riveting. If anyone wants his complete email just let me know.

God protect Colonel Dave McCarthy and all our troops in the war zones.

Ps It looks like our grandson Johnny Walton is not going to have his second tour of duty in Iraq extended due to the latest surge.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Happiness Tips

We all know that happiness is a Constitutional right and that government is responsible for making sure we have enough of it. Like many conservatives, however, I believe in volunteerism and think it is my duty to spread some happiness to combat the liberal gloom. Thus, as a public service, your happy PalosVerdesBlog will regularly provide suggestions to improve your happiness. Here is the first installment.

I. HOW TO START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK


1. Open a new file on your computer.
2. Name it “Hillary Rodham Clinton”
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your PC will ask you, “Do you really want to get rid of Hillary Rodham Clinton?”
6. Firmly Click “Yes.”
7. Feel better??

Next week we'll do Nancy Pelosi, then Harry Reid, and so on... Thanks to Pam, David and Sharon for sending me this tip. As a minor improvement, before step three throw all the liberal crap from your inbox into the “Hillary Rodham Clinton” folder, than send it to the trash. I regularly dump my New York Times (the free electronic highlights) that way.

II. MORE FUN WITH HILLARY

Simply click here for No Ways Tired:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4HZWOMGiIs

and here for Kentucky Fried Hillary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu9TQq0C3Ac

Turn up the volume and enjoy.

III. LAUGH AT THE CROW

By now everyone has heard about the latest environmental initiative. Noted humanitarian Cheryl Crow has called for limits on loo paper. Singer Crow has suggested “using only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required.”

Apparently Crow has other ideas as well. Crow thinks paper napkins “represent the height of wastefulness” so she has designed a clothing line with what she calls a “dining sleeve” that can be removed and washed before reuse. “Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development,” she explained, “they are, in my mind, worth investigating.” In her mind!

One of her groupies who is not so sure about the single square of loo paper is Rosie O who took a moment on “The View” to express her incredulity at the supposedly enviro-friendly suggestion. “HAVE YOU SEEN MY ASS?!” bellowed Rosie. NOT a pretty sight! Barbara Walters was good enough to warn viewers not to use their sleeves, another of Crow's helpful suggestions.

For even more fun with toilet paper, click here:
http://www.funofun.com/toiletpaper.htm

I think that’s enough happiness for one installment.

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Sunday, April 22, 2007

Sense and Sensibility

I want to thank all the readers who answered my opinion poll dealing with the Virginia Tech massacre and the Supreme Court abortion ruling. I’m happy to report that PalosVerdesBlog readers are smarter than your average bears.

On the question about the likely source of the killer’s rage, Cho’s personal evil was the 100% response. The purpose of his acts was to get on television (93%) and he should rot in hell (85%). There was one respondent who could not make up his mind on any question, who saw “complexity and a variety of possible answers.” Of course this is precisely the moral relativism which is plaguing our society. When dealing with questions of right and wrong, good and evil, moral relativists are incapable of making value judgments.

We’ve learned a lot since the tragedy about the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, and about those who tried to deal with him. Cho’s English class examined contemporary horror films and literature, and the students were required to keep what were known as fear journals. “We had a whole discussion on serial killers,” said one student. (This is the crap they are teaching in the humanities at major universities.) Professors saw the images of persecution, revenge and anger in his writings and found themselves struggling to define the line between a legitimate work of self-expression and one of violent or sick imagery that needed to be restrained. Political correctness is going to get us killed.

Eight of his professors, while trying to “balance the freedom needed to be creative against the warning signs of psychosis,” formed a task force to discuss how to handle him. They reached out to university officials but no action was taken by school administrators in response to their concerns.

To me the overlooked story is the heroic act of Professor Liviu Librescu, a 77 year old holocaust survivor who sacrificed his life to save his students in the shooting rampage. When the gunfire got closer to his classroom, Librescu fearlessly braced himself against the door, holding it shut against the gunman in the hall, while students darted to the windows of the second-floor classroom to escape the slaughter. All the students survived. Librescu stayed behind to hold off the crazed gunman. He died to save his students.

“He realized he had to save the students,” said his daughter-in-law Ayala Schmulevich. “That was the kind of man he was.”

I have to wonder what was wrong with the male students in Librescu’s mechanical engineering classroom. In comparison to the twin disasters of feminism, rampant abortion and the decline of the nuclear family, one tends to overlook another tragic outcome, the feminization of America. Manliness, as Prof Harvey Mansfield explained in his book of that title, is on the decline in America. It is telling that the hero of the Virginia Tech tragedy was a member of the Greatest Generation.

The other significant story last week was the Supreme Court upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban passed by congress and signed into law by the president. I think my question about what the Court ruling exhibited confused some folks, since only 50% answered that it showed judicial restraint. The point is that the Court saw no reason to interfere with a duly passed law. The implications for Roe v. Wade are being debated. The ruling expresses respect for the dignity of human life (93%) outlawing a procedure (“intact dilation and extraction”) that is nothing less than a gruesome murder (100%) of a child.

For the feminist’s side of the issue, I turn to Anne Hendershott, professor of sociology at the University of San Diego. “The court did not talk about big concepts and issues like privacy, but about the small, gripping details of how abortion works,” said the professor. “Focusing on such details,” she said, “is how so-called incrementalists are trying to chip away at the availability of abortion.”


I guess the devil is, literally, in the details.


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Thursday, April 19, 2007

PalosVerdesBlog Opinion Poll

The drive-by media have been bubbling over with balderdash the last couple of days dealing with the Virginia Tech massacre, the Supreme Court abortion ruling and other items. I’d like to know what my blog readers think about these matters. Take the poll; “answers” to follow.

Cho Seung-Hui Killings

1. What was the source of the killer’s rage?
a) Inability to process serotonin
b) Childhood brain injury
c) American injustice
d) His personal evil

2. The purpose of his hateful acts was to:
a) Rail against the use of alcohol
b) Live up to his father’s Saudi Arabian leanings
c) Die like Jesus
d) Get on television

3. What is the appropriate reaction to the murders?
a) Compassion for Cho
b) Banning hand guns
c) Anger at the Virginia Tech police
d) Hoping that Cho goes straight to hell

Supreme Court Upholds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

4. The Court ruling exhibited:
a) Judicial restraint
b) Judicial activism
c) Stare Decisis
d) Have no idea

5. The ruling expresses:
a) Respect for the dignity of human life
b) Disrespect for lower court rulings
c) Belief that women are flighty creatures who must be protected by men
d) Disdain of the Bush administration for women’s reproductive rights

6. The banned procedure described as “intact dilation and extraction” is:
a) A gruesome murder
b) Necessary to protect the life of the woman
c) Ok, if birth could lead to post-partum depression
d) Unlikely to cause mental anguish in the mother

Media Mania

7. The most politically biased newspaper in the US is the:
a) Wall Street Journal
b) New York Times
c) Washington Post
d) Los Angeles Times

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Greetings from Baghdad


Every day I think about my grandson in Iraq and pray that he will be safe. But there are only around 10 million Americans who are closely related to the US troops deployed in the war zones. The remaining 290 million Americans need to be thankful for what our brave soldiers are doing. One way for me to remind people is to post blogs about some of the heroes. This one is a message from our good friend Dave McCarthy, a Marine Special Operations Lt. Col who is back in Iraq. When Dave is not fighting for us he is a City Attorney, husband and father of three boys. Dave says that for the first time in 20 years he got a Marine Corps “High and Tight” haircut. Here are excerpts from his “Greetings from Baghdad.”

Greetings All. I trust this message finds everyone well and in good spirits. How are things there? Karen and Wick - tonight is brownie night and I can't wait! Bill - thanks for the postings on your blog; I loved the one about Thomas Friedman. Brian - some of this message is for civilian eyes, so you'll just have to skip over the parts that are old-hat to you or just bear with me.

Before I left the US I had to spend a few days in Tampa at MacDill AFB with Marine Forces Central doing some required pre-deployment stuff like taking a refresher on my SERE training (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape) and filling out new Personnel Recovery Data so that if you're captured or become separated from your unit the National Joint Recovery Agency can verify you're who you say you are before they send in a rescue team - to insure they don't send a team into an ambush. Once in Kuwait I got myself from Kuwait City to Ali As Saleem Air Base where I was issued weapons and other toys. From there I hopped on an Air Force C-130 flying to Baghdad Airport where I jumped on an Army convoy that was headed to the Forward Operating Base.

My very first day here I received a nice welcome from the insurgents: three rockets landed inside our compound. Two of the rockets didn't do any real damage, but one landed on a vehicle, destroying it; fortunately no one was hurt. This should be an interesting tour of duty. The temperature is OK now but is starting to heat up and this summer is projected to be wickedly hot. I'm wondering if I'll break my personal record of being in 127 degree heat which I experienced last time I was here. The heat itself might be bearable, except that when we leave the wire we're wearing full battle-rattle (Helmet, flak vest, gas mask, etc, etc, etc), and that all weighs about 55 pounds.

I will tell you this: Baghdad is vastly different and 1000% worse than my last two tours here. The last time I was here my team and I managed to borrow a regular civilian van so we could travel and operate without drawing attention to ourselves. We drove that van all over Iraq and the van obviously had no armor and it was just us - we had no escort. These days you don't leave the wire unless you're in an armored Humvee and with a full armored convoy. I'm reminiscing about that van now: the one thing I loved about it is that it had sliding passenger doors on both sides and the rear passenger seats swiveled all around; whenever we found ourselves in the middle of a crowded place and the natives were restless we just opened the doors, swiveled the seats and pointed our weapons out - it was like a helicopter gunship at street level and let me tell you, the crowds parted like Moses parting the sea.

One good thing is that the personal protective gear has vastly improved over even just a few years ago. In both Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 and 2004 I had a regular old flak vest, which wouldn't stop a bullet and I’m not even sure it would stop shrapnel. I now have “sappi plates” in the front, rear and sides of my brand new flak vest and they supposedly will stop a 7.62 round (an AK-47 bullet), so that gives me some degree of comfort.

Every time we leave the compound to head out either to downtown Baghdad or to elsewhere in Iraq it is tension-filled. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I leave Iraq with an ulcer and tension headaches, not to mention circulation problems from cramming myself into Humvees - those things were not designed for a guy my size, let alone a guy my size in full battle-rattle.

When I left here after my first tour I left with a hearing loss - not too serious - from exposure to gunfire and explosions. Also, I came home with bad habits, like sleeping with a .45 under my pillow and clearing the house every time I came home (that is, they were bad habits for home; they were darned good habits for here).

While traveling in the Humvees we can expect to draw sniper fire; explosions from IEDs occur, but thankfully aren't as common. We're getting better at either pre-detonating the IEDs with electronic countermeasures or locating them and defusing them. Electronic countermeasure devices are attached toalmost all Humvees. IEDs are still the biggest worry because AIF is gettingbetter at implanting them and they are making them bigger and deadlierthan ever before. “AIF” is “Anti-Iraqi Forces” - the label we affix toal Qaeda, insurgents, Muslim extremists and foreign fighters. The onlybad guys that aren't AIF are the common criminals - tens ofthousands that Saddam Hussein released from prison just beforethe fall of his government (a tactic he no doubt learned from the Cubantyrant, specifically in the Mariel boatlift when Castro let thousands of criminals out of Cuban prisons and gulags to go to the U.S. to wreak havoc on our communities).

Today on our way back to the Forward Operating Base one of the smaller IEDs – perhaps intended for us - detonated ahead of us, destroyed an Iraqi automobile and badly injured a woman inside. Fortunately an Iraqi Army detachment was close by and took the woman to a hospital. War is a horrible thing. What keeps me going and motivates me is the firm belief that there are in fact things worse than war, which is why I'm here to beginwith. I know you're familiar with, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things . . .” and other writings of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine. They might have written during the Revolutionary War, but their writings are timeless.

One thing I feel compelled to comment on is the news reporting in the US. You should take much of what you read, hear or watch with a grain of salt. Most reporters seldom leave the international zone in Baghdad, so they either report third-hand news or they simply make up “news.” If seems that they have a hidden, or not so hidden, agenda and they don't see ordon't want to see the progress we're making here, and if they do see itthey won't report it. Progress here is being made, albeit slowly . . I think. Hey, what do I know, I'm just a Marine Ground-Pounder/Bullet-Stopper. They also editorialize the news in a big way. I'm told that the New York Times reported that there was an anti-American protest in Iraq where “tens of thousands” of Iraqis turned out. I was near that protest when it took place, and in actuality the protestors were so few in number that they barely filled one traffic intersection; it was a non-event.

Are the media back in the states reporting that the insurgents have been including Chlorine in their IED's? That way if the explosion or the shrapnel don't get you the poison gas will. They are complete immoral barbarians; they target crowds of innocent civilians, including women and children. You'd think that both people and politicians would be so outraged they would demand that the US military stay here until the last of the murderers are wiped out. There I go again getting heavy; sorry about that. Getting back to the progress we're making, I'm reminded of something a chaplain told us before we headed out of the compound to go into downtown Baghdad; he said, “You cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do.” We like to think we're doing some good over here; doing good for both the Iraqi people and doing good for the future of America; certainly some of us will die trying and we're willing to do so for a cause we believe in.

Last Sunday I was fortunate enough to be on a Forward Operating Base when Mass was being conducted in the base chapel so I attended. Wouldn't you know a mortar round impacted not far from the chapel right during Mass. My first thought was “what a good time and place to die - at mass and in a chapel.” My second thought was “freaking Muslim extremists - we're expected to bend over backwards to show respect for Islam and for the Koran and here they go shelling us while we're at church.”

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for listening. I'll write again when I can. Please take care and be well.

Semper Fidelis,
Dave (McCarthy, LtCol, USMC, 1 ea.)

Post Script - Just after I wrote the last of this message three 107 mm rockets impacted the Base in the area where all our tents and livingfacilities are located. They were close, but thank God, no cigar. Oneof them impacted not 100 meters from my tent, and a piece of shrapnelcame through my wall - I'll bring it home and encase it in Lucite for anice souvenir.

My grandson Johnny Walton just emailed to say that his Army 82nd Airborne unit has not yet been extended beyond its 12 month tour of duty (John’s second in Iraq) due to the latest troop surge. We’re praying that he will be home safe in the fall.

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Friday, April 13, 2007

Lies, Damned Lies and Global Warming

THE WEATHER CHANNEL (today): Recent cold weather in parts of the country has caused some people to wonder about global warming. But are all cold days the same? For more on that, we turn to the Weather Channel's resident climatologist Tom Durrow. Tom?

“That's a good question, Cynthia. Folks in Cleveland are probably thinking that if their team can't play on opening day because of snow, maybe global warming has gone away. Not so. In fact, Cynthia, Ohioans may have forgotten that Cleveland posted a record high 77 degrees on January 14. So did a number of other cities during the first month of 2007. Climatologists say there is more significance to warm weather in January than cold weather in April. So much so, in fact, that beginning this year, the Department of Meteorology at Harvard University will weight certain days of 2007 differently from others.

“So, on the one hand this year so far ranks as only the 26th warmest winter since 1950 calculated on an absolute basis of temperature averaging. However, according to climatologists at Harvard and other respected universities, this year is actually the second warmest winter ever if you assign the necessary historic weights to the warm days and cold days of 2007. This weighting, “or atmospheric reconfiguration modeling,” gets pretty complicated.


Forgetting the complex mathematics, let's take two days for illustration. On January 14, with its temperature in Cleveland of 77 degrees, scientists have assigned a weighted temperature of 77 plus 14 which equals 91 degrees. Meanwhile, April 3, which had a low temperature of 19, receives a weighted temperature of 19x3, bringing the day's low to an almost balmy 57. So while you may think it was cold this past month, the weather scientists say even the coldest days were actually pretty warm. Cynthia?”

OK, Bill, it is apocryphal... but did I have you going for just a minute?

Greg

Thanks to my good friend Greg who is smarter than your average bear. But is it more outrageous than the lies and hyperbole contained in Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, that “foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide.” Britain's Lord Moncton has challenged Gore to a televised debate? Moncton suggested for a venue the Oxford Museum of Natural History, site of the famous debate between T.H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, because “I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism.” Gore declined.

I could spend a day listing the lies in Gore’s movie and his public statements, as well as the alarmist subterfuge in the latest UN report. (See my post “Anthropogenic or Au-Natural?” 11/24/06)

For example, look at the hysteria over carbon dioxide, that satanic gas. Last week the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision demonstrated that they possess superior intellect in ALL matters (including atmospheric chemistry and physics), deciding that carbon dioxide is indeed a pollutant which is helping to cause global alarming, ...er, warming. Therefore, the EPA is now vested with the mandate to control the amount of that substance that is released into the atmosphere by human activity.

Most of us are aware that we, and our animal friends, “exhaust” carbon dioxide as the culmination of the O2/CO2 exchange in the lungs. The EPA, reacting swiftly, has already announced that, effective July 1st, new regulations will require that all American citizens take one less breath per minute in order to curb the generation of this pollutant. The President has requested that all Americans “make this sacrifice for the safety of the earth,” and has implored the international community to follow our lead.

Sorry,.. I couldn’t resist another spoof.

In actual fact, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is quite low relative to levels in geologic times. One hundred million years ago the level was six times higher than now and the previous low, equal to the current level, was three hundred million years ago. Before that was a peak 18 times the current level about 500 millions years ago. Those much higher levels of carbon dioxide had nothing to do with automobile exhaust. And of our current carbon loading, humans cause less than 4 percent of it. Volcanoes and wild fires cause much, much more and guess how accurately those events can be modeled.

The sad thing about all the lies, damn lies is how many good-intentioned people are sucked in by them. Yesterday at Starbucks a nice lady approached our posse with a pile of New York Times newspapers. She asked if we wanted some, but said that she had removed the Home sections since her article was in there.

Under the headline “To Fight Global Warming, Some Hang Clothes,” there was a picture of Kathy’s house in Rolling Hills with several clothes lines hanging in the back yard. Kathy said she was appalled by her $1100 monthly electric bill last summer so she decided to begin hanging out her wash. She became a clothesline activist and credits the drop of her electric bill to $575 in March as due largely to her (mostly) abandoning the electric dryer.

Poor Kathy is so deluded. The cost of drying a typical load of laundry in an electric dryer is 35 cents compared to 18 cents in a gas dryer. The typical gas dryer costs about $85 to operate annually.
Unless, as Dr. Dave says, she is paying illegals to blow dry her wash, there is no way that Kathy could be spending more than about $15 monthly, assuming she has an electric dryer. Unfortunately, Kathy has not been able to get rid of her dryer. Her husband refuses to use the line-dried bath towels since they feel like sandpaper. Oh, and Kathy refuses to apply for the required clothesline permit from the Rolling Hills Community Association. Liberals don’t have to obey the law, because, in the words of her 13 year old daughter, “It looks beautiful; It looks like we care for the Earth.”

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Friday, April 06, 2007

Is Thomas Friedman a Flathead?

Since the publication of his mega-bestseller The World is Flat in 2005, Tom Friedman has become the darling of the neoliberal intellectual world. Like many intellectuals who have achieved prominence, Friedman has seized the imprimatur to offer weighty pronouncements on all manner of public issues ranging from environmentalism to tax policy to war strategy. The public response has been nearly uniform appreciation for a guy who seems to know his stuff.

So who is Thomas Friedman, and why are so many people listening to him? His bona fides are impressive. Friedman received a BA in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University and an MA in Middle Eastern studies from Oxford. He was a war correspondent in Lebanon and Palestine and a political reporter during the George H. W. Bush and Clinton years. Currently he is the international affairs columnist for The New York Times, a famous author and a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Thomas Friedman is a passionate missionary for the neoliberal world view (shared with Alan Greenspan and the late Milton Friedman) that sees the free market as the fountainhead of human freedom. He believes that globalization—the ongoing process of worldwide industrialization— is only compatible with capitalism and that this economic system enables humanity to leave war, tyranny, and poverty behind. As such Friedman is a classical utopian intellectual. Replace capitalism with socialism and his views are consistent with the positions expressed by Karl Marx in the The Communist Manifesto.

Unfortunately, Tom Friedman shares Marx's blind spots. “For Marxists and neoliberals alike, it is technological advance that fuels economic development, and economic forces that shape society. Politics and culture are secondary phenomena.” (John Gray, “The World is Round,” International Journal on World Peace) In Friedman’s own words, “I am a technological determinist! Guilty as charged.”

While embracing the weakest features of Marx's thought—its consistent underestimation of nationalist and religious movements— Friedman failed to absorb Marx's insights into the self-destructive qualities of capitalism. Marx viewed the free market as a revolutionary force, and understood that its expansion throughout the world was bound to be disruptive and violent. Just look at Russia today to see an example of Friedman’s myopia.

Globalization clearly makes the world smaller. It may also make it richer. It does not necessarily make it more peaceful or more liberal. Adam Smith, the 18th century moral philosopher and pioneering political economist, was much closer to the truth when he wrote “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” Note that it’s not all about economics; peace and justice are required as well for prosperity to reign.


Taken together, Friedman’s two part paean to neoliberal socio-economic theory [The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999) and The World Is Flat (2005)] tells a compelling story of globalization fueled by advances in communications technology and the Internet. But they naively suppose that globalization leads ineluctably to capitalism and capitalism to harmony, and fail utterly to comprehend the primacy of nationalistic and religious forces. But, what the heck, prominent intellectuals can be as narrow-minded as Joe 6-pack.

That does not deter intellectuals from venturing well outside their areas of expertise. Consider Friedman’s television documentary “Addicted to Oil” shown on the Discovery Channel. He warned that “This is not your parents’ energy crisis” and presented three good reasons: America is engaged in a war on terror with an enemy that it is funding through its reliance on oil; with the rise of India, China, Brazil and Russia there are three billion new global consumers; and as the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom in oil-rich authoritarian countries slows down.

Then he adds the neoliberal carrot: green technology may as a result become the largest growth industry of the new century. “Being green is going to be a source of so much industry in the 21st century, whether it’s green appliances, green design, green manufacturing, and green consulting.” And China is going to have to go green, because they can’t breathe.

This is intellectual utopianism run amok. Never mind the Chinese construction of a new coal fired power plant every week for the next ten years in the current phase of building. Never mind that energy use in the developing countries is going to triple by 2050. Pay no attention to the fact that the energy used is going to be the cheapest available, i.e. coal and oil. Friedman has faith: China will “leap ahead and provide the breakthrough for really cheap solar power.” Sure it will.

Tom shares the primary characteristic of the public intellectual, the belief that social engineering through government intervention will lead to utopia. Thus he is happy to support European-level taxes on gasoline to drive down consumption and Hillary Clinton-style confiscatory takings (“I want to take those profits.”) of oil company profits to fund government development of alternative fuels. Milton Friedman would be appalled.

Since both of these actions would harm the economy, and poor people preferentially, they will not happen. They are empty sound bites (or bytes for Tom) signifying nothing. The fact is that an increase in bio-fuel usage might have a beneficial effect. The “Saudis might increase production enough to drive down oil prices, in order to make investments -- investors beware -- in alternative fuels even more uneconomic than they already are.” (George Will, “Let's get real about soaring gasoline prices”)

Even more effective would be to greatly expand US oil production. We currently have a proven reserve of 30 billion barrels (BB) plus 15 BB in the new field 175 miles off the Louisiana coast, plus 10 BB in the Artic National Wildlife Preserve. Yet the US produces only one quarter of the 7.5 BB that we use yearly. If we produced more the world price would drop and the Muslim despots would profit less.

And if you are worrying about running out of oil, don’t. Here is the record. In 1971 the worldwide proven reserves of oil were 612 BB. By 2002 the world had used 767 BB – and the proven reserves were 1,028 BB. The more we look, the more we find.

Netting out Tom Friedman: a classical utopian intellectual, a technological determinist, an ordained expert in fields he knows just enough about to be dangerous, yet a naïve believer in the efficacy of government intervention in financial markets when it suits his agenda -- i.e., a hypocrite, or not as smart as he would have us believe.

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Sunday, April 01, 2007

Heroes versus Stooges

Every once in a while the Los Angeles Times prints something intelligent and I feel compelled to offer a nod of appreciation. Yesterday the lead editorial headline was “Small classes aren't a cure-all.” In the seventh paragraph the stark truth emerged: “There is still no evidence that the multibillion-dollar investment in small primary classes has made more than an incremental difference in achievement.”

The State has been investing $1.7 Billion yearly in class size reduction and it has had, maybe, an incremental (read miniscule) effect on student performance. Meanwhile this “well-intentioned” expenditure of our money swelled the ranks of the teaching profession and has led to fraud at some school districts. In one case, the Santa Ana district fudged the books to make it look as though there were no more than 20 students per teacher in the primary grades so the schools could receive $16 Million from the state for reducing class size. The Times recommends a “public spanking” for the Santa Ana school board and superintendent. How about some jail time?


I have two friends who retired from engineering and went into teaching hoping to make a difference. Roger went to a high school in a tough LA neighborhood. He lasted four years and finally gave it up, quite discouraged. Bob is sticking it out in a school near Watts, but it’s tough. The quality of teachers at their schools was not the problem. The size of their classes was not the problem. The composition of their classes was. If classes could be restricted to those kids who wanted to be there, who did not want to cause trouble, who could spend their time thinking about biology rather than their babies, class size would not be an issue. One partial solution to this problem is school choice.

Friday the Times printed a column about the Los Angeles Unified School District’s decisions on two charter school issues. In the first, the LAUSD board rejected the application by Green Dot Public Schools to build eight new charters in a Watts neighborhood, one of the city's worst. The board members who voted against the charters are allies of the teacher’s union. Despite the promising results Green Dot has produced at its other charters, they remain skeptical of the group's reform model, whatever that is.

In denying the charters the LAUSD board violated state law.

My friend and school board member Mike Lansing, who represents Watts, accused his colleagues of bending to the wishes of the influential United Teachers Los Angeles, which opposes the charter movement, and which donated over $1 Million dollars to the election campaigns of their three board stooges. “It's really disappointing that we keep talking about wanting to do what's best for children first, when without a doubt that vote was about a teacher’s union and three board members not having the backbone to stand up and do the right thing for kids over their ties to the union,” Lansing said after the vote.

For those of you who don’t know Mike, he is the full time director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Los Angeles Harbor.
Like Roger and Bob, Mike is a hero.

In the other LAUSD board decision, it voted to renew the charter of Academia Semillas del Pueblo despite the fact that the unconventional school has had terrible test results for five years. The school’s absurd multilingual curriculum includes Spanish, English, Mandarin and Nahuatl-Mexicano. But the board bowed to pressure from political stooges Richard Alatorre and Jackie Goldberg and Spanish groups to keep it open, the kids be damned. Until the unions lose their hold on politicians and school board members, the kids have little to no chance.


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