Historical (hysterical) Revisionism in the NY Times

Instapundit and the Mudville Gazette have some great coverage on this NY Times editorial, which among other things attempts this little bit of historical revisionism:

The only plausible reason for keeping American troops in Iraq is to protect the democratic transformation that President Bush seized upon as a rationale for the invasion after his claims about weapons of mass destruction turned out to be fictitious. If that transformation is now allowed to run off the rails, the new rationale could prove to be as hollow as the original one.

Just to add my own comments, I found the intro particularly ironic:

The millions of brave Iraqis who risked their lives to vote in January didn't expect that nearly three months later, their squabbling politicians would still be struggling to form a government.

The Mudville Gazette correctly points out that, in fact, the government is being formed. But what if we ignore that for a minute and say, compare this "nearly three months later" with another case of a government being formed, also from today's NY Times...

PARIS (AP) -- The leaders of France and Germany joined forces Tuesday to try to save Europe's embattled constitution, warning French voters they could set back European ambitions if they reject the charter in a referendum.

French polls have shown a steady opposition to the charter. A poll published Friday, indicated 62 percent of voters will reject the constitution in France's May 29 referendum -- the highest figure so far.

All 25 European Union members must approve the text for it to take effect. A French rejection could spur ''no'' votes elsewhere.

Sixty years after WWII and 15 years after the Berlin Wall fell, the Europeans are still struggling to form a government. This can only mean one thing, quagmire!

UPDATE: Kudos to Reliapundit, for being both ahead of me, and the NY Times. No arguing over which is easier...

Book Review: Freakonomics

At the risk of turning this blog into something resembling a seventh grade English class… I have been doing a lot of reading lately. Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, is a rather interesting little book (barely 200 pages) by the prize winning economist, Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubnar, a journalist who nobody really cares about anyway. Levitt, a “rogue” economist known for his unique approaches to problems, attacks such every day issues as comparing the “Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents” and my personal favorite “Why drug dealers live with their mom?”. Although many of his breakthroughs seem rather obvious, and rather full of himself, I still found the book largely entertaining and informative. His main thesis seems to be to look at the way people interact with their world in new ways, not assume connections automatically, and don’t discard options without looking at them. My main question is, if Levitt, a graduate of both Harvard and MIT, is so darn smart, why does he need a journalist to help him write his book?

Welcome back Chief

Contrary to popular opinion, we don't all know each other. Although his name does sound familiar...

A 58-year-old citizen-soldier on the O'Dea High School faculty and coaching staff is back from the Gulf War.
Andy Slatt, who was wounded in Vietnam, returned safely in March, after 14 months of duty as a logistics warrant officer who spent most of his time in Kuwait. O'Dea students and faculty are all relieved and happy to have him back.

"We missed him when he was gone," said Monte Kohler, the Seattle school's football coach, co-track coach and athletic director. "We are thankful he has returned to us safely."

Fellow track coaches also are happy to have Slatt back for O'Dea's quest for a third straight Class 3A state track and field title. That doesn't stop them from ribbing him, however, about wearing more layers of clothing than anyone else on chilly days as he readjusts from the Mideast.

Slatt is back at O'Dea doing what he loves, but he is just passionate about the mission in Iraq.
"If I was called to go back tomorrow, I'd go in a heartbeat," he said.

Although based in relatively safe Kuwait, Slatt sometimes flew into combat areas to deliver items that were urgently needed. He also made one trip to Afghanistan.

Putin Gets Nostalgic

Vladimir Putin makes an address to the Russian nation, in which he laments the fall of the Soviet Union, calling it the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century". Now I understand that there have been a lot of problems to overcome since the wall fell, but I could think of some other "catastrophes" that happened in the 20th century. Perhaps Stalin, for one. Or the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It looks like Vlad's KGB training is starting to kick back in.

Oddly enough, CNN covers the speech with the rather optimistic headline Putin: Democracy is top priority, and makes no mention of his "catastrophe" statement. Maybe those people who have been calling it the Communist News Network all these years were on to something?

UPDATE: Not to sound paranoid, but doesn't this sound a lot like an old Milosevic speech?

"As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory."

Keep an eye out for Putin to make his Kosovo Polje speech.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers to my humble blog. I am honored to be linked. Feel free to comment. Nobody ever leaves me comments. Even my dad just calls me up asking questions on posts...

UPDATE: Even Pravda runs the headline Vladimir Putin: The Fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. How sad it is when Pravda is more accurate than CNN?

Graduate Reading Room


It was such a nice day out I decided to take a walk around the U. I brought along my camera, since I am still trying to figure out how to use it correctly. I have always been a fan of Suzallo Library and the graduate reading room. It is so gothic, you feel like you must be able to think of something profound there.

Suzallo Library 

Ducks in the Shade


It was so warm out the students had to hide in the shade outside of the HUB. Too bad Mrs. Chief couldn't join me, as she is a big duck fan.

Chief's Rules of Conspiracy Theories: Rule 6

I already posted my Rules of Conspiracy Theories, but have updated them due to a discussion I had on an online forum with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

Rule 6

The Law of Infinite Permutations. Even in the case that an infinite amount of statements are proven wrong an equally infinite amount of new statements can be made.

For example: in the discussion I had the moonbat asserted that no black boxes were found from the 9/11 crashes. When I pointed out that the black boxes from the pentagon and Pennsylvania crashes had in fact been found, he changed his argument to "OK, well 2 of them have been found, but the data has not been released". I then pointed out that in fact they played the cockpit voice recorders to members of the families who requested. His argument then changed to, well they were probably faked. And this of course can go on ad infinitum.

In mathematical terms:

Conspiracy Theorist (CT) states 2 + 2 = 5
Level Headed Republican (LHR) proves this is false 2 + 2 = 4
CT counters, no 2 + 3 = 6
LHR proves otherwise, 2 + 3 = 5
CT counters, no 2 + 4 = 7...

And this of course goes on forever. Thus CT can never actually be proven wrong.

Me Want Cookies!

A hilarious editorial by Jonah Goldberg on political correctness and the Cookie Monster.

The producers of "Sesame Street" have decided that Cookie Monster is gay.
Hold the phone. I'm kidding. But try to hold onto your reaction for a moment because what they've really done to Cookie Monster is worse - they've taken away his reason for being.
Since my copy of "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius is in storage, let me explain by paraphrasing Hannibal Lecter's famous dialogue with Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs." Imagine Lecter isn't a superhuman cannibalistic serial killer and that, instead of being a doe-eyed feminist naif in the FBI, Ms. Starling is a doe-eyed feminist naif at the Children's Television Workshop.
Lecter: "First principles, Clarice. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this creature you seek?
Starling: He entertains children..
Lecter: "No! That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does? What need does he serve by entertaining children?
Starling: Social acceptance? Personal frustration?
Lecter: No: He craves. That's his nature. And what does he crave? Make an effort to answer.
Starling: Food?
Lecter: No! He is not a "food monster!" He is a cookie monster!
But not according to the well-meaning social engineers of PBS. After three decades, they've announced he's not a Cookie Monster at all. In the interests of teaching kids not to be gluttons, CTW has transformed Cookie Monster into just another monster who happens to like cookies. His trademark song, "C is for Cookie" has been changed to "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food." And this is a complete and total reversal of Cookie Monster's ontology, his telos, his raison d'etre, his essential Cookie-Monster-ness.

Book Review: Conspiracy of Fools

I just finished reading Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald, an informative, entertaining, if somewhat fictionalized account of the Enron scandal. By fictionalized, I don’t mean falsified, but that it is written in the style of a novel, where all the characters glare at each other emotionally and the reader knows their every thought through dialogue on the page. While this may lessen its historical credibility somewhat it does tend to make some of the more drier subjects, namely corporate accounting, more readable.

As far as the story itself, Eichenwald largely portrays Andy Fastow, the CFO of Enron, as the arch-villain behind the whole scandal. The author details how he set up Special Purpose Entities (SPE) as special off book investment funds with the intended benefit of helping Enron dump bad assets, hedge investments, and used tricky accounting measures to hide losses and create false income. He also managed to then manipulate these entities and make tens of millions of dollars off them. Who says crime doesn’t pay? Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, the off and on CEOs appeared to have largely been willing dupes of Fastow’s manipulation. From other accounts I have read this seems to a fairly accurate portrayal, although they certainly were “willing” dupes, and should have known better.

In a more general business sense this brings up the issue of corporate earnings and earning targets. Much of the trouble Enron got into was because they used shady dealings and accounting measures to manipulate earnings. They would do things like sell an asset temporarily with an explicit agreement to buy it back, then count that sale as quarterly earnings. This of course was unsustainable, because then the next quarter they could not only not count on that “income” but they then had the additional cost of buying back, at a loss, the asset that they had owned in the first place.

Although I certainly don’t propose using such methods, I believe part of the problem lies in culture of Wall Street. Corporations are under such ridiculous pressure to bring in predictable earnings by investors, no matter the business environment. At its most harmless it just leads to the silly expectations games that Microsoft plays every quarter, where immediately after they release their earnings they start downplaying their next quarters earnings (we aren’t selling a thing, we suck) so that they can manage to come in at or above earnings the next quarter. For some businesses though, this pressures them into more illicit activities, lest they be punished by Wall Street for missing their targets. More on that later.

Why I paid attention in Russian class

It happens to the best of us. You get rusty after time. I still say McCain-Rice 2008 would be the ticket to beat, although McCain has had some strange votes lately. I looked this up on some Russian news sites but could find no mention of it. I guess they didn't find it interesting. They did talk about, however, how Condi laid into Putin for his despotic tendencies. Apparently they found that rude.

MOSCOW - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried out her rusty Russian in a Moscow radio interview on Wednesday, only to get caught out by a question on whether she might run for president.
"Da (Yes)," Rice answered in Russian, before realizing her misunderstanding and hastily adding "Nyet" (No) — seven times.
Rice's interview on Ekho Moskvy radio turned into a linguistic ordeal when the Soviet expert and former provost of Stanford University fielded a schoolgirl listener's question on how she achieved her career success.
"It's too complicated to answer!" Rice, in Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin, started out in English. "It is an opportunity for me to come back to Russia, a place I love very much. I love the culture and the language."
She then switched into Russian, but quickly hit trouble.
Apparently meaning to say that she would like to do her next interview in the language of her host, she chose a verb that sounded more like "to earn money" than the Russian for "to do."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7573100/

Jimmy "Moonbat" Mac Speaks

In the Times, right above my letter to the editor sadly (why they give this congressman more space than me is a good question) Jim "Wiretap" McDermott attacks a previous Times editorial supporting federal laws giving military recruiters access to high schools. Supporting federal laws, there is a radical concept! The incredible thing about it is he brags about his military service, then criticizes stop loss, in a vague and misleading way, then complains that recruiting is down, and then he still manages to call for making it MORE difficult to recruit. Could this man have a coherent position on anything?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002246361_mcdermott20.html

Some gems:

Buried in the fine print of Santiago's recruitment paperwork eight years ago was a provision called stop-loss. It is meant to ensure that America has enough soldiers to defend itself in time of national emergency, but the Pentagon under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has perverted the use of stop-loss because military recruitment is significantly below goals.

If 120,000 soldiers in Iraq, and another 19,000 in Afghanistan doesn't fit the definition of "national emergency" I am not sure what could, short of Canada invading.

Stop-loss now affects 50,000 soldiers. Santiago could end up serving until Christmas Eve, 2031, 37 years after he signed up — a virtual lifetime.

Of course this is intentionally misleading, and I am sure McDermott knows it. I already addressed it here:

The Seattle Times casually tells its readers that a student can sign a form to opt out. The reality is that young people have lost their right to privacy and The Times is stone-cold silent on restoring this fundamental right in a free society.

He just admitted they can "opt out" of being contacted. What exactly is this right to privacy? Somehow when our founding fathers were running from town to town trying to raise an army during the Revolutionary War, I can't imagine them considering that knocking on people's doors asking them to fight for freedom was a violation of their "right to privacy" and thus enshrined in our constitution. And even if they don't opt out what is the worst that can happen? They aren't drafting you, a recruiter might call them! The horror. At least it isn't someone calling to ask if you want to change your long distance provider.

Meanwhile, don't blame the recruiters. These people were selected because they are role models, the best of the best to represent the military. Now, they suffer under a quota system, and recruiters are under increasing pressure to find soldiers. Army National Guard recruitment plunged 31 percent in February and fell another 12 percent in March.

OK, recruiting is down. Here is a solution, make recruiting more difficult!

HB 1174 Changing veterans' tuition waiver provisions

I heard about this on Bryan Suits show last night. Apparently the legislature has passed a tuition waiver for veterans. I am not sure how this varies from the one that they already have for the National Guard, but it sounds like good news. Any lawyers out there want to explain?

http://www.leg.wa.gov/wsladm/billinfo1/dspBillSummary.cfm?year=2005&billnumber=1174

Chief in the Times

Well after being jilted on the McKay piece the Times published my letter to the editor. Although they chopped it down a bit. The other two letters on the same subject are well done too. Mine is just more pithy.

And no, I did not come up with that title.

Guarding chickens

William Raspberry is concerned that, because of Fox, readers can no longer trust The New York Times without question. Funny, I thought [disgraced journalist] Jayson Blair was more responsible for that.

Wasn't there a time when a critical analysis of information sources was considered a good thing? Now, apparently it is a threat to the mainstream media.

— James Bennett, Bellevue

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002246351_wedlets20.html

Western Washington Moonbat Watch

This even made Little Green Footballs. We have become the Mecca of Moonbats.

http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20050419/topstories/128458.shtml

The Port of Olympia could become the Peace Port of Thurston County under a petition planned by the Green Party of South Puget Sound.

Party members hope to schedule a November ballot item to rename the port in response to its policy of accepting Iraq war-related shipments.

The port resumed military shipments last year for the first time in 17 years.
"I see this as a referendum on using the port for military shipments and as a referendum on the war in Iraq," Green Party member Chris Stegman said Monday.

The most unintentionally funny quote has to be.

It is unclear whether a U.S. port has ever been renamed using the notion of peace in the title.

Don't Question the Media

I sent the following letter to the Seattle Times. I doubt they will run it, but we will see.

After reading William Raspberry’s column “Fox News Channel: journalism as battlefield”, I am just stunned at what modern journalism has become. Apparently Fox’s greatest sin is not whether it reports the news factually or not, but that it may cause people to question and criticize the news that they watch and read. Raspberry is concerned that because of Fox, readers can no longer trust the New York Times without question. Funny, I thought Jayson Blair was more responsible for that. Wasn’t there a time when a critical analysis of information sources was considered a good thing? Now apparently it is a threat to the mainstream media.

The column to which I am responding follows.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002245299_raspberry190.html

So why would I consider Fox such a generalized threat? It is because I think the plan is not so much to persuade the public that its particular view is correct but rather to sell the notion that what Fox News Channel presents is just another set of biases, no worse (and for some, a good deal better) than the biases that routinely drive the presentation of the news on ABC, CBS or NBC — and, by extension, the major newspapers.

For the Foxidation process to work, it isn't necessary to convince Americans that the verbal ruffians who give FNC its crackle have a corner on the truth — only that all of us in the news business are grinding our partisan axes all the time and that none of us deserves to be taken as serious seekers of truth.

This is huge. As a friend remarked recently, time was when if you found it in The New York Times, that settled the bar bet and the other guy paid off. But if The Times and The Washington Post or any other mainstream news outlet — including the major networks — come to be seen as the left-of-center counterparts of Fox News Channel, why would anyone accept them as authoritative sources of truth?

Semper Fi Marine

Now why is it that the press will drone on for weeks about Jessica Lynch, whose main achievement was remaining unconscious, but they practically ignore stories like these?

U.S. forces have repelled each attack, inflicting large losses on the insurgents while incurring few casualties. The base commander at Camp Gannon, a former Iraqi customs and immigration post at the edge of one of its most dangerous cities, credits Butler with preventing massive deaths here.

"Butler — that day, that Marine — that's the critical error the insurgents made," Capt. Frank Diorio says. "They thought they could keep the Marines' heads down. But he gets back up."
Butler, 21 and an Altoona, Pa., native, fired through the windshield of the first suicide bomber as he rammed a white dump truck through a barrier of abandoned vehicles the Marines had improvised. Barreling toward the camp's wall, the truck veered off at the last moment under volleys of Butler's gunfire.

"I shot 20 or 30 rounds before he detonated," he says.
Knocked down by that blast, with bricks and sandbags collapsing on top of him, Butler struggled to his feet only to hear a large diesel engine roar amid the clatter of gunfire. It was a red fire engine, carrying a second suicide bomber and passenger. Butler says both were wearing black turbans and robes, often worn by religious martyrs.

Amid the chaos of that first bomb blast, supported by gunfire from an estimated 30 dismounted insurgents, the fire engine passed largely undetected on a small road that leads from town directly past the camp wall, according a Marine report.

"I couldn't see him at first because of the smoke. It was extremely thick from the first explosion," Butler says. When the fire engine cleared the smoke, it was much closer than the dump truck had been.

As the driver accelerated past the "Welcome to Iraq" sign inside the camp's perimeter, Butler says he fired 100 rounds into the vehicle. The Marines later discovered the vehicle was equipped with 3-inch, blast-proof glass and the passengers were wearing Kevlar vests under their robes.

Pfc. Charles Young, 21, also of Altoona, Pa., hit the fire engine with a grenade launcher, slowing its progress and giving Butler time to recover. Without breaching the camp wall, the driver detonated the fire engine, sending debris flying up to 400 yards and knocking Marines from their bunks several hundred yards away. Butler, less than 50 yards away, again was knocked down by the blast, which partially destroyed the tower in which he was perched. After he crawled for cover, a third suicide bomber detonated outside the camp. That blast caused no damage or injuries. Sporadic fighting continued for several hours.

Meanwhile, Cpl. Anthony Fink of Columbus, Ohio, 21, fired a grenade launcher that the Marine unit says killed 11 insurgents. The Marines' "React Squad" swiftly deployed against the remaining insurgents.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-04-17-iraq-hero_x.htm

Update: This got me thinking. There have been quite a few of these types of attacks recently, and in most of them the terrorists get their heads handed to them. While you can find a lot of complaints about military policy, they have done quite a good job learning from the politically correct ROE that lead to hundreds of dead in Beirut and the Khobar towers. Let's hope that keeps up.

The Big Mac Index

Another interesting comparison of international economies. This supports my contention that the Euro is overvalued. The Eurozone is facing serious problems, with a shrinking population, zero growth, and high unemployment. Their overly tight monetary policies make it even worse. All so that they can have bragging rights over having a stronger currency.

The Economist's Big Mac index is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the idea that exchange rates should move to equalise the prices of a basket of goods and services across different countries. Our basket is the Big Mac. For example, the cheapest burger in the chart is in China, at $1.26, compared with an average American price of $3. This implies that the yuan is 58% undervalued relative to its Big Mac dollar-PPP. On the same basis, the euro is 25% overvalued, the yen 17% undervalued.

http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3503641

Hat tip Johnny, UW MBA 2001, and international economist extraordinaire.

The EU "At least we are above Arkansas"

It is fashionable nowadays to bash the US as collapsing economically while Europe is a prospering socialist paradise. While there are certain advantages to the European lifestyle, I personally would love 6 weeks of vacation a year, one thing that many people miss is that there salaries are no higher than ours, while their expenses, and certainly taxes are much higher. I have spoken with many Europeans who complained about how expensive things have become, especially after the introduction of the Euro. The NY Times, in a rare moment of honesty, has a good article on this:

All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise. So did a paper by a Swedish economics writer, Johan Norberg.

Contrasting "the American dream" with "the European daydream," Mr. Norberg described the difference: "Economic growth in the last 25 years has been 3 percent per annum in the U.S., compared to 2.2 percent in the E.U. That means that the American economy has almost doubled, whereas the E.U. economy has grown by slightly more than half. The purchasing power in the U.S. is $36,100 per capita, and in the E.U. $26,000 - and the gap is constantly widening."

www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/weekinreview/17bawer.html?ei=5090&en=44ea05b3e068feb5&ex=1271390400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&position=

The Ward Watch

I find this guy fascinating, in a sort of, "rubbernecking horrific car accident" sort of way. A writer for the Weekly Standard spent a couple of days with him, and he tells us a lot about this crackpot, as well as those who admire him.

"He's fighting against terrorism," the other says. "We are destroying whole peoples, nearing levels of genocide, that's how bad the U.S. military is." The kids are excited, but are calmed down a bit when a cooler head interrupts. Daniel Burton-Rose, a guy with hoop earrings and an AK Press T-shirt, is sitting in a nearby chair, reading a book on Chinese medicine. He is himself the author of Confronting Capitalism, and when I carelessly identify him as an anarchist, he corrects me, saying he's an "anarcho-daoist." Clearly I've reached the rarefied strata where even people's shorthand IDs contain dialectical disputes.

To grossly dumb down Daniel's argument, which would take several pages to replicate, Churchill is precisely the galvanizing public intellectual the anti-globalization movement needs. For while many elements of the movement seem contradictory--the neo-Marxists agitating for a transformed and all-controlling state, the anarchists espousing the obliteration of the state altogether--all sides, including the boutique'ers in between, are unanimous on one tenet: America, as it's presently constituted, sucks.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/496cjzrn.asp