Karl Rove discovers that people care about fiscal responsibility

It would have been nice if Karl Rove had discovered that people care about fiscal responsibility when he had power the ability to do something about it. Instead he only discovers it while watching President Obama demonstrate that Bush was a mere piker when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility:

Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don’t need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.

 

However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.

 

An honest appraisal of the nation’s finances would recommend dropping both of these last two priorities. But the administration has long planned to run up the federal credit card. In February, Mr. Obama’s budget plan for the next decade projected that revenues would equal about 18% of GDP while spending would jump to 24% of GDP, up from its post World War II average of 21%. Annual deficits of about 6% of GDP were projected for years to come.

 

When Mr. Obama was sworn into office the federal deficit for this year stood at $422 billion. At the end of October, it stood at $1.42 trillion. The total national debt also soared to $7.5 trillion at the end of last month, up from $6.3 trillion shortly after Inauguration Day.

No Private Sector Experience Necessary in the Obama Cabinet

This chart from a J.P. Morgan research report shows the percentage of previous private sector experience in cabinet officials over time including secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security.

It’s no wonder the administration is keen on taking over private enterprise—they have never been involved in private enterprise.

“One of the foundational components of the scientific method is the idea of reproducibility”

One of my concerns with some climate “science” is the lack of transparency and reproducibility of the results. For example, as two professors of computer science explain:

 One of the foundational components of the scientific method is the idea of reproducibility (Popper 1959). In order for an experiment to be considered valid it must be replicated. This process begins with the scientists who originally performed the experiment publishing the details of the experiment. This description of the experiment is then read by another group of scientists who carry out the experiment, and ascertain whether the results of the new experiment are similar to the original experiment. If the results are similar enough then the experiment has been replicated. This process validates the fact that the experiment was not dependent on local conditions, and that the written description of the experiment satisfactorily records the knowledge gained through the experiment.

The ability to replicate models and transparency is sorely lacking in in climate science. That’s the real lesson we should learn from the release of the CRU emails. Willis Eschenbach explains this well here. For example Eschenbach writes:

Science works by one person making a claim (hypothesis), and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists attack the work by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.

 

This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.

97 of the L.A. Times Best Thanksgiving Recipes

The L.A. Times has a nice list of their 97 favorite recipes for Thanksgiving here. The one pictured above is Kabocha squash soup with pomegranate seeds and spicy candied pecans

A population problem?

 Too many people or too many Malthusians?:

What this potted history of population scaremongering ought to demonstrate is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything.

 

The extent of their wrongness cannot be overstated. They have continually claimed that too many people will lead to increased hunger and destitution, yet the precise opposite has happened: world population has risen exponentially over the past 40 years and in the same period a great many people’s living standards and life expectancies have improved enormously. Even in the Third World there has been improvement – not nearly enough, of course, but improvement nonetheless. The lesson of history seems to be that more and more people are a good thing; more and more minds to think and hands to create have made new cities, more resources, more things, and seem to have given rise to healthier and wealthier societies.

 

Yet despite this evidence, the population scaremongers always draw exactly the opposite conclusion. Never has there been a political movement that has got things so spectacularly wrong time and time again yet which keeps on rearing its ugly head and saying: ‘This time it’s definitely going to happen! This time overpopulation is definitely going to cause social and political breakdown!’

There is a reason Malthusians are always wrong. It isn’t because they’re stupid… well, it might be a little bit because they’re stupid. But more fundamentally it is because, while they present their views as fact-based and scientific, in reality they are driven by a deeply held misanthropy that continually overlooks mankind’s ability to overcome problems and create new worlds.

 

The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction.

 

The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, really shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future.

Thomas Friedman creates a textbook straw man argument

If you look up the definition of a straw man argument, it’s not likely you will find a better one that this argument from Thomas Friedman’s article in the NY Times:

If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax.

 

But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy — a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases — rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor — just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.

Here’s what Ben Hale, a environmental philosopher has to say about this argument:

Screeeeeech! Say what? They believe that a mass plague is coming? That it is better for America if the world is dependent upon oil? That people in the developing world are happy being poor? He must be joking.

 

I agree that those who claim that the earth is cooling and that America can’t afford a cap-and-trade/carbon tax are making a mistake, but I wouldn’t go so far as to attribute a belief to them. For all I know, they believe almost exactly the same things I believe; they’ve just arrived at different conclusions. Maybe they’re poor reasoners.

 

(Right, I get it, his point is that such irrational beliefs are the “only possible way” of making sense of claims that the earth is cooling and that America can’t afford carbon policies, but there are better ways of making the point than redounding to absurd hyperbole. Making up beliefs of people you disagree with is a surefire way to completely misunderstand them.)

When I read Friedman’s article this morning I was irritated, so I’m glad Hale explained why Friedman’s straw man argument was so weak.

Krugman to the Rescue

I wish I had written this.

It’s always impressive to see one person excel in two widely disparate activities: a first-rate mathematician who’s also a world class mountaineer, or a titan of industry who conducts symphony orchestras on the side. But sometimes I think Paul Krugman is out to top them all, by excelling in two activities that are not just disparate but diametrically opposed: economics (for which he was awarded a well-deserved Nobel Prize) and obliviousness to the lessons of economics (for which he’s been awarded a column at the New York Times).

It’s a dazzling performance. Time after time, Krugman leaves me wide-eyed with wonder at how much economics he has to forget to write those columns.

This is the work of Steven Landsburg, author of the Armchair Economist. Landsburg continues here. 

Candidate Obama Attacks President Obama

Check out Hillary in this video clip. Her expression is correctly calling B.S. on Obama’s claim of not forcing people to purchase health care:

Lady Gaga, meet Christopher Walken

Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is an impressive writer. His last book, The Scarecrow, was published on May 26, 2009 and then he published his latest book, Nine Dragons, less than 6 months later on October 16, 2009. Plus he published another book last year.

Not only does he write quickly, but his work is still good. I give Nine Dragons a B+. It’s good, but not great. If you like police procedurals, you’ll like this book. You probably won’t love it, but it’s a fun read. Unlike The Scarecrow, which is about a newspaper writer, Connelly brings back his main protagonist Detective Harry Bosch. My complaint about many Harry Bosch novels is that Connelly has Bosch do something bullheaded and stupid during the book’s climax. Luckily, this book does that suffer from that problem.

I don’t give this book an A because Connelly didn’t hold my rapt attention the entire novel. He carried me along well, but I wasn’t on my the edge of my seat the entire time.