An American Tragedy

The total number of American dead in all our nation's armed conflicts going back to the Revolutionary War is estimated at 1.3 million.... Yet those numbers are dwarfed by another scourge. It’s one we don’t talk about very much in presidential politics, an oversight I’d like to do my part to change.... In the ensuing 113 years [since the first automobile fatality], vehicular traffic on the highways and byways of this country has taken a toll in human suffering that can be accurately described as a holocaust. The total number of dead from that September day in 1899 to this October day in 2012 is approximately 3,573,384.

Horrifying. Yet those numbers are dwarfed by another scourge. Of the 62,947,714 alive in that 1890 census, it is widely believed that all of them are dead. Nor are they alone. Tens of millions more Americans have also lost their lives.

I write today to say that the author of the piece does not do enough in calling for the Presidential debate to include a question about how they will deal with automobile accidents. No, any would-be President must be asked to provide his solution for death!

Striking Coincidences in Foreign Policy

Quite possibly the decision to abandon Benghazi was done for any number of reasons that had nothing to do with derailing the FBI investigation into what happened there. That effect just happens to be an unfortunate coincidence of what was surely done for other, pressing and legitimate, reasons.

Likewise, the sudden deployment of a member of the National Security Staff to Iraq is explicable in terms of the difficulties that nation is experiencing just now. It is merely a coincidence that this particular NSS member happened to be one who corresponded closely on Operation Fast and Furious with an ATF agent who just testified to Congress about that program. The fact that this member of the White House will not be available to answer Congressional questions about the role of the administration in that operation is just a coincidence.

It would be improper to suggest that such significant matters of foreign policy were being subordinated to political considerations. No one would believe the suggestion anyway: it's impossible to imagine the administration acting that way.

More on the Late Maurice Keen

The Guardian has penned an informative obituary regarding the gentleman historian, for those of you who wanted to read more about his life and work.

Airbrush

Wow.

Sometimes Tex and I talk about the dangers of the market. Things sometimes prove to be for sale that ought not to be. Not at any price.

Katrina blues

Did any of you notice that a bunch of Katrina-flooded New Orleans plaintiffs won a huge judgment against the Corps of Engineers in federal court in 2009?  I never heard a peep about it.  Anyway, it went up on appeal to the 5th Circuit, where a 3-judge panel initially affirmed the judgment last March.  This month, however, the same 3-judge panel reversed itself, ruling that the "discretionary function exemption" insulated the federal government from all liability, even assuming the Corps's error rose to the level of abuse of discretion.  Apparently the decision turns on whether the Corps's handling of the levee system turned primarily on public policy discretion or objective engineering judgment; if the former, the Federal Tort Claims Act prevents any liability.  It's unclear why the panel decided to reverse itself, an unusual move, but it may have been persuaded by arguments made by the government in seeking a re-hearing from the full 5th Circuit.  Is it possible the effect of the "discretionary function exemption" simply wasn't stressed in earlier arguments?   If so, then whoever wrote the most recent set of pleadings for the Corps deserves a lot of credit for turning around his client's fortunes.

There is also a 1928 Flood Control Act that shields the Corps from the consequences of the failure of flood protection projects, even if caused by negligent and wrongful acts of federal employees. The lower court had found that the Flood Control Act exemption applied only to a limited part of the Katrina flooding, while other flood damages resulted from the operation and maintenance of the "MR-GO" or Mississippi River Gulf Outlet levee system, which concerns navigation rather than flood control. Under the new 5th Circuit ruling, the Corps is insulated from liability regardless of whether its projects concerned flood control or navigation.

I can't say I disagree with the decision, or that I have any real understanding of the various liability exemptions involved.  I will say that the following is a less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of the Corps's judgment:

The corps's actual reasons for the delay (in armoring the banks and levee) are varied and sometimes unknown, but there can be little dispute that the decisions here were susceptible to policy consideration.

I hate it when this happens

Cassandra posted a piece this week on one of my favorite topics, which is the grave danger of letting people vote for bigger government on other people's nickel.  It's always seemed obvious to me that you'll get not only too much government that way, but runaway deficit spending.

So I was a bit taken aback to read her original source, which tries to establish a causal relationship between the percentage of non-taxpayers and the growth of government spending.  Statistically, it seems the case is not easy to make.

It doesn't change my feeling of impending doom.  I can't see how this can be a good direction to push in.  If nothing else, it just chaps me to have to pay for intrusive government for the benefit of people who claim to support it, but not enough to pay for it themselves.

Eric Hobsbawn Passes

The last of the great Marxists has gone to wherever Marxists go when they die.

As the article points out, he also was a great historian. His bias was front and center on the page, so that you could easily filter for it; but his depth of knowledge, and his dogged adherence to the Marxist theory, always made him interesting to read. It is striking to reflect that a man of his obvious intelligence and historical awareness could remain a committed Communist after everything. He was born in the year of the Russian revolution, and grew up during a time when Communism was in its fullest flower as a movement that serious people took seriously: no longer the radical fringe that it had been in Marx's day, nor the small but committed revolutionary internationalists of Lenin's, but a powerful nation engaged in the experiment of trying to move a giant and sprawling nation several centuries' forward in a few short five-year plans.

Even granting the hour of his youth and young manhood, though, it's striking that he remained committed. Past Stalin; past Mao; past the collapse of the USSR, and the revelations of the Stasi. Even if you were to wave all of those off as somehow accidental rather than essential to the Communist process -- and it is not at all clear that you possibly can, for remaking Man and Society whether they like it or not lies right at the core of that process -- it is hard to believe that an intellect could adhere to the clear demonstration of economic inferiority. Marxism was an economic theory first, and Marx was just wrong. The facts bear this out, but if (like a good academic) you aren't satisfied with the facts, the theory bears it out as well.

Feeding the Snake

So we're trying to get Ratbane up to size, in the hope that he can go down and be a good basement dragon. For that reason we've been feeding him baby mice from the pet store. These (I have recently learned) come in several sizes, from "pinkies" who don't yet have hair, to older mice named "fuzzies" and then "jumpers."

The wife got tired of riding all the way to the pet store, so instead of buying just one mouse to feed him live, she bought several and froze them to death. (I would feel bad about freezing baby mice to death, if it weren't for the merciless war I have raged on their kind for the last two years.) Today it came time to feed the snake one of the pre-killed mice, which is more of a problem than it sounds like it ought to be.

Naturally the wife had somewhere to be today, so on her way out the door she asked me to microwave a dead frozen mouse and see if I could get the snake to eat it. "He might not," she said, "because he's never encountered a dead mouse before. But give it a try."

Well, so I did. I warmed up the dead mouse, and dropped him into the tank by the snake. The snake ignored him entirely, and when I came back later the snake was still paying the mouse no mind at all.

"OK," I thought, "clearly I need to get the snake's attention."

So I went and got one of those bamboo skewers you use for making kabobs, and I skewered the mouse through its side. Then, I used the skewer to bring the mouse over to the snake, and slapped him across the face with it.

He didn't seem to like that, so I smacked him with the mouse several more times until he curled up into a little ball. Then I dropped the mouse on him, and went away.

After a while, I got to thinking to myself, "That probably wasn't very mouse-like behavior. Perhaps it would have been more effective if...."

Apparently I'm not very good at simulating a prey animal.

However, when I went to check, the snake was eating the mouse, so I guess it all worked out.

We Get Your Point, Dr. Mead:

Reports that this chimerical Al-Qaeda group sent operatives to work with Boko Haram and enabled it to operate at a higher level of effectiveness should be ignored by all serious people.

The President of Yemen, meanwhile, is thanking the United States for its support for his efforts in his country’s ongoing anti-crime effort against randomly motivated groups of violent criminals in developments that have nothing in common with superficially similar movements anywhere in the world. In what was obviously a slip of the tongue he linked the criminals with “Al-Qaeda” and implied that some sort of international network was engaged in the violence in his country but such crazy talk by a man under a great deal of stress is best ignored. Only rampant paranoia with perhaps a touch of Islamophobia could link events in Yemen to anything warlike or global.

In another completely unrelated and random development, the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia....

Carnies for Romney

I went to the county fair last night. Good crop of beef on display, well-rounded and well-handled. Down toward the midway there was a dunking booth. Now you know how this usually works. Usually if this is a carnie ride, you have a clown who badmouths the crowd as they walk by, so people hate him enough to dunk him. When the local folks are running it, sometimes they get lovely women to agree to suffer sitting on the stool.

Well, this was carnie-run, but there were no clowns to be seen. Instead, you had two guys dressed up in white shirts and black ties, one wearing an Obama mask and the other wearing a Romney mask. I think you got to pick who you threw at, but Romney's shirt looked pretty dry. Every time I went by, the Obama clown was on the stool. Missed shots would be answered with a cry of, "Four more years!"

That's pretty clever. I'm guessing they made good money off that.

Lakota Nation Secedes

For the last hundred years or so, we've engaged in a political fiction in which we treated the Native American Nations as sovereign, and they pretended they believed we really meant it. The Lakota Nation has chosen to call that bluff.

It happens that Aaron Two Elk, whom I mentioned recently, was Oglala Lakota. I'm sure he would be proud today. What we must watch is how the US government responds. In the past it hasn't taken movements of this type seriously; it may (and indeed will likely) simply ignore the declaration. What the Lakota Nation does in response, and what we do in response to that, will be interesting to watch.

Speaking of the Forthcoming Games....

...how about some bagpipes?



Rathkeltair will be there, and so will Marc Gunn, formerly of the Brobdingnagian Bards.



I guess Saturdays are when we do the bawdy songs around here. I usually think better of it by Sunday, but this one might survive.

Hostfest

Our friend Lars Walker is apparently kicking ass and taking names: at least, so I judge from these modest words, taken with his usual aversion to self-promotion.

Another good day for the Vikings yesterday, especially in terms of fighting. I found, to my amazement, that I won most of my fights against much younger, faster opponents. I can only conclude (and Ragnar concurs) that all these years of slogging it out, one on one, with a very good sword fighter have borne fruit in a little actual skill.

I don't expect it to last. The young fighters will learn quickly, and they'll learn my weaknesses faster than anything else. I think I can see it happening even now.

Also this:

We have two young couples in our group this year, one of them newlyweds, and a family with teenage boys. This livens up everything.... The high point of yesterday's fights was when I "killed" the new bridegroom, raised my sword, and shouted, "SHE'S MINE!"

I gather that Hostfest is the Norse-American version of the Stone Mountain Scottish Highland Games, which by the way is coming up later this month. I hope to be there.

Any video, Lars?

It's your fault I'm stabbing you

From Theodore Dalrymple, exasperation with a French imam who purports to believe in freedom of expression but blames a French magazine for the violence of protestors:

Freedom of expression requires not so much the exercise of self-control in what is said as its exercise in reaction to what is said.  I can hardly look at a book these days without taking offense at something that it contains, but if I smash a window in annoyance, the blame is only mine—even if the author knows perfectly well that what he wrote will offend many such as I.

Or, as the Queen Latifah character said in "Living Out Loud":  "My husband used to cheat on me, made me feel like I was the crazy one.   One day he told me it was my fault he was cheating on me. I picked up a knife and told him it was his fault I was stabbing him.  I did jail time, but it was worth it."

No WARNing

The WARN Act is supposed to protect workers from unexpected layoffs, by requiring 60 days' notice of planned facilities closings.  A couple of months back, someone in the Obama administration noticed that the timing of the impending sequestration is such that the WARN Act would require notices to go out just before the election to many, many voters who happen to work for defense contractors -- can't have that!  So the Department of Labor issued advisories that under the, er. special circumstances, the WARN Act didn't apply, because, election.

The defense contractors thought about it for a while and decided that it might not be safe to rely on the Labor directive, since workers would have a right to sue under the plain terms of the Act.  So the OMB has stepped up:  now they're promising to indemnify the employers against not only the legal fees they will incur but also the amount of any judgment rendered against them.  Using taxpayer money.  Is the purpose to delay bad news until after the election?  No, the OMB explains that issuance of an unwelcome WARN notice would

waste States' resources in undertaking employment assistance activities where none are needed and creaty unnecessary anxiety and uncertainty for workers.

Including PTSD, no doubt.  It remains to be seen whether the employers will fall for it.  There are public policy restrictions on indemnifying people against the consequences of deliberate violations of law, and it's a big gamble, anyway, on the perserverence of these hacks in their  present positions of authority to dispense goodies from the public funds for their personal benefit.

I'm most interested to see if the White House will figure out a way to impose penalties on employers who decide to play it safe and send the notices anyway.  Penalties, that is, in addition the withhold of their bribe.

Mentioned in Despatches

As most of you will know, the armed forces of the United Kingdom have continued an old tradition called "mentioned in despatches," here "MiD" for short. From a time when dispatches (to use the American spelling) to headquarters were relatively rare and limited to matters of significance, a soldier's gallantry being included was a high honor. It remains one in the UK today.

You can read more about the latest ones from BLACKFIVE, but as Matt notes this one is special.

MiD: Sergeant Mark Moffitt, who stayed in the line of fire for half an hour to foil an enemy ambush after promising his wife he wouldn’t do anything brave in Afghanistan.

Oops!

The Onion Claims Another Scalp

This time, it's the Fars news agency. The original Onion piece is here.

The best part is at the bottom, where they link to a page capture of the news story with the tagline, "For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars."

Foreign Policy

Mark Salter points out that he has been a consistent critic of Mr. Romney's, which should (he appears to hope) raise his credibility as a critic of President Obama's. The offense is significant:

This week the president of the United States and purported leader of the free world breezed into New York City for a quick game of softball catch with the ladies of “The View,” and a drop-by at the United Nations General Assembly to give a speech. Then he was off to Ohio to resume his most pressing engagement, his re-election campaign, having refused to be detained by pesky world leaders whose requests to meet with him were rebuffed en mass....

[Of course m]eetings between the president and various heads of state would not instantly ameliorate any of these problems. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s been designated as a sort of acting chief executive this week, will, I’m sure, manage the responsibility competently.

It's true. If you voted for Clinton, be happy: right now, she's the President of the United States.

This isn't the first time this has come up. The problem is especially large with Israel, for some reason. The Obama administration has committed a series of public, diplomatic snubs of Israeli leadership, which I can only assume are purposely designed to show "the Muslim world," widely presumed to hate America in part because of Israel, that Israel and the United States aren't all that close after all.

The President refused to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister (previous link), but found time for a television appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. (It turns out that the President's afternoon on the day when Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to meet with him is entirely free.) The US delegation at the UN remained seated throughout another Iranian speech condemning Israel, in contrast to long practice of leaving during these speeches (as the Israeli delegation did). Then, our top UN diplomat didn't bother to attend the Israeli Prime Minister's speech.

At this point, we've moved beyond explanations that merely point to the Presidential re-election campaign's internals suggesting a tighter race than he wants to admit. This is a clear policy decision by the United States to at least publicly downplay the existence of a US/Israeli alliance.

Now, having gone back to look at the President's remarks to the UN, I see no actual recognition of an alliance (or even "friendship" or something similar) between Israel and the United States. The President does speak against the actual elimination of Israel, and he says that hatred of Israel, the West, or the United States should not govern anyone's policy. He speaks against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and seems to leave open the door that the US might take some sort of steps beyond negotiation to resolve the matter. Those steps, and what might provoke them, are unsaid.

Still, the main thing that strikes me is this: when President Obama took office, we had four allies in the Middle East. The most important was Egypt, formally a "Major Non-NATO Ally" with whom we engaged in major military exercises. Now, the President says he doesn't consider Egypt an ally, and the President of Egypt says he doesn't think we're allies either. Not enemies, to be sure, but not allies.

The second was Saudi Arabia. One has head nothing much on that front lately, but they cannot be happy about the steady progress of Iran toward a nuclear weapon.

The third was Iraq, with whom we had negotiated a long-term agreement for engagement and support by what was intended to be a major diplomatic effort, based out of the largest US embassy in the world. There were negotiations in process to provide for their protection, as well as a long-term presence of US military trainers to engage and advise the Iraqi Army. Instead the President allowed the negotiations to die, so that our forces had to withdraw entirely, our diplomats were so unprotected that they had to disavow almost all of their intended mission, and Iraqi political leaders were left alone to feel the pull of Iran and the Sunni powers.

The fourth was Israel. At this point the status of that alliance must be said to be unclear. If US military planners are focused on keeping us clear of Israeli actions and their consequences, though, it's dubious whether there is anything like a true alliance at all.

Libya was a good move by the Administration, one that I expect to bear fruit in the medium term. I don't criticize all of what he has done. But our policy in the Middle East -- I do not even include the disaster in Afghanistan -- has been a characterized by a shocking loss of strength and support.

An Unexpected Concession

One thing we rarely see is the admission by a political partisan that he is wrong, his opponent is right, and his opponent's arguments are really much stronger than originally believed. Witness now one Mark Thompson, supporter of Elizabeth Warren:

Professor Jacobson has uncovered this morning a case in which Elizabeth Warren entered an appearance in a federal appellate court as a representative of a Massachusetts client in a case that appears to have clearly implicated Massachusetts law. Although this is still a federal appellate court, because we’re dealing with a Massachusetts client and issues of Massachusetts law, this looks really, really bad for Professor Warren. With this bombshell, I would no longer view the case against her as weak.

He went on to send a personal email commending Professor Jacobson's research and conceding the point.

That's well done, really by both men.

They found them in someone's trunk

Usually we have to wait until after an election for this kind of convenient discovery.