Last night Moyers had an incredible show with tapes of telephone conversations between President Johnson and MacNamara, Bundy, Knight and others discussing the development of the Vietnam war. Incredible! Amazing parallels to present thought process on Afghanistan.
Link to Moyers show below. Will probably take a while unless your high speed is pretty good, but well worth it. You can even hear the airplane droning in the background as MacNamera is talking to Johnson on return trip. Awsome. I had no idea these tapes even existed. They knew they were screwed long before the public did. They were just stalling, while people died, hoping for a compromise that would save Vietnam, preserve the rest of the dominoes (they really did believe that then) and save American prestige.
I think had it not been for Johnson's belief that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of SE Asia would also go communist, Johnson would have pulled the plug when we were still only advisers.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/profile.html
Our mission goal in Afghanistan is fuzzy at best. Certainly we are not engaging Al Qaeda, only the Taliban, who just want us out of their country and are not going to launch any attacks against us. We are the best recruiting tool Al Qaeda has
This excellent article in Foreign Policy makes the point better than I could ever hope to. We gain nothing by staying in Afghanistan except the creation of more animosity and more terrorists. Staying is actually decreasing our security.
Hopefully Obamas "dithering" is a delaying tactic so the Health Care mess can pass, after which he will announce he is withdrawing from Afghanistan and wait for the political hurricane which will probably cost him a second term. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. The parallels between Obama and Johnson are uncanny.
We'll see.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Welcome Bill McBride's Calculated Risk Blog
I just added Bill McBride's Calculated Risk Blog to the RSS feeds on the right.
Huffington Post has just classified him, and his blog, as a must-read economics blogger in their HuffPost Gamechangers ranking.
Or, you can go directly to Calculated Risk Blog here
Welcome.
Huffington Post has just classified him, and his blog, as a must-read economics blogger in their HuffPost Gamechangers ranking.
Or, you can go directly to Calculated Risk Blog here
Welcome.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Afghanistan-Who is in Charge? The Horse or the driver?
Entirely too much has been made of whether or not we accede to General McCrystals' request for more troops. For the second time this week I make a silly Horse analogy. Not the horse, but the analogy.
I was always taught to, first, define the problem, then develop a solution and finally formulate a plan to implement the solution. Decide where you need to go (the driver wants a cheeseburger), decide how best to get there (by cart - it's too far to walk) and finally get moving, to your destination. In this silly story, the horse directed by the driver over the most appropriate path, direct, avoiding dangerous neighborhoods and, perhaps via scenic park drive. This is as a simple process. Deciding what it takes to get the job done before clearly defining the job makes no sense at all.
So, why does it matter what General McCrystal has requested? At least not until we understand clearly where we want to go and how we plan to get there. At this point, General McCrystals input is essential and should be seriously considered.
I have yet to hear a clearly defined reason of what we want to accomplish in Afghanistan except the mushy mealy phrase "defeat Al Quaida". Well, that may, or may not according to some, be a worthy goal. But, if it is a worthy goal, then it requires a worthy definition. Confine them to an area, arrest them all, kill them all, disillusion their followers? What are we trying to accomplish here. Defeat is an awfully big word.
Once we define our mission, which will always be in a state of flux, we need a strategy for implementing our goal. General, McCrystal, and the rest of the military heads can give us some serious input here.
With a clearly defined both goal and how we intend to get there it is time to turn it over to the military. Bearing in mind that we control the reins and need to keep our eyes on the path and make the necessary course changes if the horse wanders or unexpected traffic blocks the path.
This all seems ridiculously simple. If we let the horse decide where to go we will invariably end up eating oats.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Welcome icanhascheezburger.com !
For those of us that just can never remember how to spell icanhascheezburger I have added a link to their RSS feed. You can click on the links at the right to view their newest crazy pics.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Horse Wasn't Taxed Out of Existance, It Was Replaced by a Better Idea
Today George Will joins BBC, Newsweek and many other reputable news sources in questioning our prevailing attitude towards climate change. If you believe passionately that global warming is serious, imminent and caused primarily by human activity, you're not going to like this one.
Read George Wills commentary here
Will points out, as so many shushed voices have in the past, that we are making important decisions based on bad data. The prevailing zealous inertia stands on two wobbly legs, a United Nations study, with narrow scientific representation that was never submitted to peer review prior to being published, and a movie by Al Gore, whose scientific credentials consist of two science classes for which he was awarded a C and a D grade. These two were awarded the Nobel Prize for their efforts on Global Warming, which has gradually morphed into to more innocuous term, Climate Change.
The UN study was based on a model, a complex version of A + B = Climate, where A and B, along with thousands of other earthly variables, combine to predict Climate. Solve for A, solve for B and Climate is the inevitable result......If the formula was correct. It is not.
In the 10 years since this model was developed we have been able to fill in the blanks for A and B with actual data instead of the previously predicted data. If the model was correct we should be able to look out our window and the Climate would be as we predicted. It is not. There is either a problem with the model or a problem with our window. CO2 levels, temperature and thousands of other Climate variables have radically underperformed the predicted levels, even after accounting for the fact that 1998 was a statistically contentiously cold year.
Worse, the model never worked to begin with. Scientists have gone back 10, 20 and even 50 years for actual data and plugged it in. The UN, and other models, have consistently failed to predict the Climate we live in today. The math just doesn't predict. If we were students our parents would have already been called and we would be on permanent detention. But, that is not the way of the world. We won't fly on an airplane or cross a bridge built with bad math. But, we will alter the entire World economy and starve millions of developing nation citizens based on equally bad math. We continue to stumble ahead as if the math really worked, zealously protecting our new flat earth 11th Commandment.
Al Gore deserves credit for a compelling movie that drew our attention to the fact that Climate is in flux and we should understand more about it. However, his Hollywood ice was thinner, his seas higher and hurricanes stronger than even the flawed UN Council model predicted. His movie was so inconveniently-over-the-top that, in the UK, as a result of a court ruling, students must read a disclaimer detailing 37 totally incorrect statements in the movie, including the fact that the world polar bear population, instead of being almost wiped out, has increased from 5,000 to 25,000. Meanwhile, Al Gore refuses to debate the subject or even appear on the same platform with opposing views. He seldom accepts questions from his audience, usually with controversial results. This, in spite of the fact, that over 700 renowned scientists, some of whom signed the original UN findings, have signed a document detailing their personal doubts about or outright rejection of the UN Study. Math is always tricky in these sorts of things, but it appears that more Nobel Prize winners in related areas have come out challenging the UN results than supporting them.
Climate is changing. It has always changed and probably always will. It is not clear, however, where Climate is headed, how soon,or how much it will change and how it will impact us. The average opinion seems to be it will probably get a bit warmer in the next 100 years with the increase starting in about 20 years. Does that mean a new future for Canadian wheat farmers or does it mean shrewd investors will be rushing to Las Vegas to buy beach front property?
There are, and, have always been, incongruities in our Climate. The Arctic ice is now reducing at an inexplicable rate, in spite of the fact that overall temperature has not increased in the last 10 years. The ice is now thicker at the North Pole than it was in the 50's when a Russian submarine actually surfaced in clear ocean. Where the submarine surfaced there is now a thick crust of ice. However, the ice is rapidly "calving" off the edges and we don't know why or for how long it will continue. Maybe something to do with ocean dynamics. The average ocean temperature has only changed minimally, but the concentrations of hot and cold are apparently switching geography. This may be effecting currents and weather. We don't know why or the net effect of these changes. Ocean CO2 levels may be higher than they have ever been in the past. Is there a relationship? In fact, we know very little about the dynamics of our constantly moving ocean surfaces which make up 70% of the surface of our planet. That is roughly 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons to an average depth of 3,000 feet. That is 46,571,428,571 gallons of water for each of the almost 7 Billion people alive today. That's a lot of water, in delicate balance, with organisms producing and consuming Oxygen and CO2.
There are strong indications that the relationship between CO2, other gases and Climate are complex. Climate has increased and decreased radically in the last several million years, but not always in line with CO2 concentration, although there are also studies that correlate CO2 levels with temperature. The sun, the atmosphere, cloud formations, the cooling of the earth, volcanic activity, the mysterious activities of the ocean and, perhaps, human activity all somehow interact in ways we have yet to sort out. Even the, heat absorbing, dark roof tops and highway surfaces we have built may contribute. Massive amounts of CO2 are also released from mountain rock formations as they roast in the sun. A lot of variables to understand and put together correctly.
It may be hubris to say human activity is responsible for climate change, but is it correct? Picture a steel apple with a hot molten core, a very very thin skin composed of 70% water, floating in a vacuum about 5 feet from a roaring fire. Imagine several billion bacteria on the apple skin holding an apple-wide conference informing other bacteria they are responsible for the temperature changes of their apple and need to change their ways or die.....Sounds like a lost chapter from Gulliver's Travels. On the other hand, what makes beer and champagne so really good is the CO2 bubbles that are the by-product of bacteria reproducing under pressure until the CO2 concentration gets so high the bacteria all die off leaving only tasty beer and dead bacteria. We need to understand a lot more than we do today if we are going to successfully live in harmony with our apple.
The US and most developed countries agree we need to start softening our footprint, to say nothing of the economic necessity of replacing our appetite for dirty coal and expensive oil that stink up our air and deplete our cash. Toward this goal they have mostly elected to follow a carbon rationing policy of cap and trade, exempting the largest abusers from tax, pain or motivation while shoving developing nations and smaller businesses to the edges of the playing field.
Instead of squeezing the existing production that feeds, clothes and shelters people, why aren't we focusing on newer and better ways to make our old dirty habits obsolete? The horse wasn't taxed out of existence it was replaced by a better idea. Coincidentally, that new idea worked out smoothly for Henry Ford and the US economy. At least until lately. Maybe it is time for a new idea. The ideas are going to come from somewhere. The only question is whether we are going to be buying or selling the ideas.
There is even talk of introducing dust, ice, chemicals and other strange stuff into the atmosphere to reduce warming. Don't laugh, China just coerced the earliest snow ever in Beijing and is talking about more efforts to control the weather. This is all sounding a lot like either a bad science fiction or the last bacterial gasp from a dieing bottle of beer. We might want to think this through a little more before we go pumping even more strange stuff into our atmosphere.
Of course, the really smart thing to do would be to cut back on population. A recent study reports that 40% of pregnancies are unwanted. How much trouble would it be to develop a birth control serum we all take at birth and then take the antidote when we actually want to have children? That thought should get the bacteria buzzing.
Read George Wills commentary here
Will points out, as so many shushed voices have in the past, that we are making important decisions based on bad data. The prevailing zealous inertia stands on two wobbly legs, a United Nations study, with narrow scientific representation that was never submitted to peer review prior to being published, and a movie by Al Gore, whose scientific credentials consist of two science classes for which he was awarded a C and a D grade. These two were awarded the Nobel Prize for their efforts on Global Warming, which has gradually morphed into to more innocuous term, Climate Change.
The UN study was based on a model, a complex version of A + B = Climate, where A and B, along with thousands of other earthly variables, combine to predict Climate. Solve for A, solve for B and Climate is the inevitable result......If the formula was correct. It is not.
In the 10 years since this model was developed we have been able to fill in the blanks for A and B with actual data instead of the previously predicted data. If the model was correct we should be able to look out our window and the Climate would be as we predicted. It is not. There is either a problem with the model or a problem with our window. CO2 levels, temperature and thousands of other Climate variables have radically underperformed the predicted levels, even after accounting for the fact that 1998 was a statistically contentiously cold year.
Worse, the model never worked to begin with. Scientists have gone back 10, 20 and even 50 years for actual data and plugged it in. The UN, and other models, have consistently failed to predict the Climate we live in today. The math just doesn't predict. If we were students our parents would have already been called and we would be on permanent detention. But, that is not the way of the world. We won't fly on an airplane or cross a bridge built with bad math. But, we will alter the entire World economy and starve millions of developing nation citizens based on equally bad math. We continue to stumble ahead as if the math really worked, zealously protecting our new flat earth 11th Commandment.
Al Gore deserves credit for a compelling movie that drew our attention to the fact that Climate is in flux and we should understand more about it. However, his Hollywood ice was thinner, his seas higher and hurricanes stronger than even the flawed UN Council model predicted. His movie was so inconveniently-over-the-top that, in the UK, as a result of a court ruling, students must read a disclaimer detailing 37 totally incorrect statements in the movie, including the fact that the world polar bear population, instead of being almost wiped out, has increased from 5,000 to 25,000. Meanwhile, Al Gore refuses to debate the subject or even appear on the same platform with opposing views. He seldom accepts questions from his audience, usually with controversial results. This, in spite of the fact, that over 700 renowned scientists, some of whom signed the original UN findings, have signed a document detailing their personal doubts about or outright rejection of the UN Study. Math is always tricky in these sorts of things, but it appears that more Nobel Prize winners in related areas have come out challenging the UN results than supporting them.
Climate is changing. It has always changed and probably always will. It is not clear, however, where Climate is headed, how soon,or how much it will change and how it will impact us. The average opinion seems to be it will probably get a bit warmer in the next 100 years with the increase starting in about 20 years. Does that mean a new future for Canadian wheat farmers or does it mean shrewd investors will be rushing to Las Vegas to buy beach front property?
There are, and, have always been, incongruities in our Climate. The Arctic ice is now reducing at an inexplicable rate, in spite of the fact that overall temperature has not increased in the last 10 years. The ice is now thicker at the North Pole than it was in the 50's when a Russian submarine actually surfaced in clear ocean. Where the submarine surfaced there is now a thick crust of ice. However, the ice is rapidly "calving" off the edges and we don't know why or for how long it will continue. Maybe something to do with ocean dynamics. The average ocean temperature has only changed minimally, but the concentrations of hot and cold are apparently switching geography. This may be effecting currents and weather. We don't know why or the net effect of these changes. Ocean CO2 levels may be higher than they have ever been in the past. Is there a relationship? In fact, we know very little about the dynamics of our constantly moving ocean surfaces which make up 70% of the surface of our planet. That is roughly 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons to an average depth of 3,000 feet. That is 46,571,428,571 gallons of water for each of the almost 7 Billion people alive today. That's a lot of water, in delicate balance, with organisms producing and consuming Oxygen and CO2.
There are strong indications that the relationship between CO2, other gases and Climate are complex. Climate has increased and decreased radically in the last several million years, but not always in line with CO2 concentration, although there are also studies that correlate CO2 levels with temperature. The sun, the atmosphere, cloud formations, the cooling of the earth, volcanic activity, the mysterious activities of the ocean and, perhaps, human activity all somehow interact in ways we have yet to sort out. Even the, heat absorbing, dark roof tops and highway surfaces we have built may contribute. Massive amounts of CO2 are also released from mountain rock formations as they roast in the sun. A lot of variables to understand and put together correctly.
It may be hubris to say human activity is responsible for climate change, but is it correct? Picture a steel apple with a hot molten core, a very very thin skin composed of 70% water, floating in a vacuum about 5 feet from a roaring fire. Imagine several billion bacteria on the apple skin holding an apple-wide conference informing other bacteria they are responsible for the temperature changes of their apple and need to change their ways or die.....Sounds like a lost chapter from Gulliver's Travels. On the other hand, what makes beer and champagne so really good is the CO2 bubbles that are the by-product of bacteria reproducing under pressure until the CO2 concentration gets so high the bacteria all die off leaving only tasty beer and dead bacteria. We need to understand a lot more than we do today if we are going to successfully live in harmony with our apple.
The US and most developed countries agree we need to start softening our footprint, to say nothing of the economic necessity of replacing our appetite for dirty coal and expensive oil that stink up our air and deplete our cash. Toward this goal they have mostly elected to follow a carbon rationing policy of cap and trade, exempting the largest abusers from tax, pain or motivation while shoving developing nations and smaller businesses to the edges of the playing field.
Instead of squeezing the existing production that feeds, clothes and shelters people, why aren't we focusing on newer and better ways to make our old dirty habits obsolete? The horse wasn't taxed out of existence it was replaced by a better idea. Coincidentally, that new idea worked out smoothly for Henry Ford and the US economy. At least until lately. Maybe it is time for a new idea. The ideas are going to come from somewhere. The only question is whether we are going to be buying or selling the ideas.
There is even talk of introducing dust, ice, chemicals and other strange stuff into the atmosphere to reduce warming. Don't laugh, China just coerced the earliest snow ever in Beijing and is talking about more efforts to control the weather. This is all sounding a lot like either a bad science fiction or the last bacterial gasp from a dieing bottle of beer. We might want to think this through a little more before we go pumping even more strange stuff into our atmosphere.
Of course, the really smart thing to do would be to cut back on population. A recent study reports that 40% of pregnancies are unwanted. How much trouble would it be to develop a birth control serum we all take at birth and then take the antidote when we actually want to have children? That thought should get the bacteria buzzing.
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