Hard target

I hope that when the immediate crisis of Gustav has passed, there will be enduring interest in public and private agendas for hardening infrastructure against hurricanes, terrorism and whatever.

Governor for 2 years

Jim Manzi points out a correlation between successful presidents and ones who entered office with executive experience as governors. I agree with his gist, and add this historical footnote:

Theodore Roosevelt was elected vice president when he had less than 2 years of experience as governor of New York.

Sullivanizing Palin

Andrew Sullivan, who has become the pundit I most love to hate, is now in the process of throwing anything and everything he can think of against Sarah Palin. Now he accuses her of being anti-Republican, of all things, by quoting, with no context, Palin via a New Yorker piece:

“the Democrats also preach individual freedoms and individual rights, capitalism, free market, let-it-do-its-thing-best, let people keep as much of their money that they earn as possible."

And Sullivan adds this sneer: "Rush Limbaugh approves of this message?"

But what Palin was saying, in context, is that Democrats in Alaska often share political views that elsewhere are commonly associated with Republicans. Further, she was pointing out that she has been aggressive in countering what she refers to as "the Party machine," meaning the entrenched Republicans in Alaska who feasted on pork and tried to build the Bridge to Nowhere.

Palin's words reflect laudable tendencies -- a willingness to find common ground with the opposing party, and to find fault with particular tendencies in one's own party. That Sullivan, who postures as an equal-opportunity critic of left and right, should criticize her for not mindlessly falling in line with Republican power brokers is pundit-malpractice of a high order.

It will be enjoyable, if and when McCain-Palin wins, to watch smoke come out of Sullivan's ears.

UPDATE 10:05PM: In the hours since I wrote this post, Sullivan has actually gotten worse.

Mailbox goslings

Our new mailbox, hand-painted by my wife:



And its inspiration, from our backyard:

Basement to gym

My wife has transformed our basement into a gym, rapidly. Pull-up bar to come.



This is what it looked like this morning.



The bag hangs too low, and will be adjusted. A gung-ho friend holds it for me.



The action begins.

Palin = Roslin

In choosing Sarah Palin, McCain is targeting not just the Hillary vote but also another constituency: Battlestar Galactica fans. An impressive woman with reformist credentials entering high office with limited experience -- it sounds pretty familiar to me.

Not having a record

Well, I watched Obama's speech and found it fairly unremarkable, though I see some people were impressed. What stood out for me was this line:

If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

Could that have been something from one of his speechwriter's memos?

Islamic finance

My Research magazine article on "The Rise of Islamic Finance" is now available online. Excerpt:

Islamic finance is a fast-growing sector that seeks to conduct financial practices in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law. It is a field that has gained considerable enthusiasm among Western financial institutions, as well as in the Islamic world. And it is an area that financial advisors and their institutions increasingly will have to grapple with, as it holds both significant attractions and worrisome quandaries.

Islamic finance carries a demonstrated ability and vast potential to attract an important client base — primarily Muslims, including the Muslim-American community, but also non-Muslims who are interested in an alternative approach to socially responsible investing. But Islamic finance also is increasingly controversial, as critics raise questions about the field’s legal, regulatory, political and ethical ramifications.

Morning commute

On the PATH train this morning, a young street-wise guy (he turned out to be 27 but looked younger) told me the problem with his generation is that they're "dumb as bricks." The problem with the boomers, he said, looking at a picture of Hillary in my newspaper, is that they think they're entitled (and he mistakenly thought I'm a boomer). He's for Obama, he told me, but emphasized that the problem with his generation, including the Obama supporters and the hipsters in Williamsburg, is that they're dumb as bricks.

By Zeus

I'm beginning to wonder if the reports about Obama giving his speech from a faux Greek temple are just a brilliant fake-out, such that he'll actually show up in a normal, even understated, setting, and all the mockery now cascading toward him will look like overblown hype.

UPDATE 2:54PM: Nope.

Orange Hillary

I thought Hillary Clinton gave a pretty good speech last night, asking her supporters to vote for Obama without pretending that they or she should be particularly enthused about it.

As for the orange pantsuit, while some argue it symbolized caution, orange also is a color associated with Europe's Christian Democratic parties, which would suggest Hillary is trying to portray herself as center-right, and that she's subliminally telling her supporters to vote McCain.

Defending Churchill

The Villadom Times, a local New Jersey newspaper, ran a column by staffer John Koster extolling Pat Buchanan's view that Churchill was to blame for World War II. I wrote a letter to the editor, which the paper has run. Neither it nor the column is online but here's my letter:

John Koster’s August 13 column “Was this trip really necessary?” grossly distorts a broad swath of 20th-century history. Notwithstanding the German aggressions that led to World Wars I and II, Koster thinks both wars were “prompted in part by Churchill’s insatiable lust for personal glory.” Tellingly, he neglects to specify anything that Churchill did prior to World War I, and he glides over the fact that Churchill was out of power during most of the 1930s. Koster blames Churchill for the prolonged blockade against Germany as World War I ended, when in fact it was Churchill who, alone in the British Cabinet, argued for rushing ships loaded with provisions to Hamburg.

In the run-up to World War II, if Churchill’s anti-appeasement advice had been followed, the war may well have been prevented; German officers were ready to overthrow Hitler in 1935 if the Allies resisted his remilitarization of the Rhineland. Nor is it plausible that Churchill “shrugged off” the Soviet massacre of Polish officers, when in fact he was the Allied leader most determinedly opposed to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. At the end of his essay, Koster throws in an irrelevant swipe against Charles Darwin, perhaps just to show that no illiberal conceit is too inane for Koster’s embrace.

Delaying shuttle retirement

I've long been a non-enthusiast of the space shuttle. But it's better than nothing, and better than dependence on Russian rockets. (And having a cosmonaut recently take pictures of the war damage in Georgia from the International Space Station adds insult to injury.) Space policy tends to move with glacial slowness, so it's gratifying that some legislators, including John McCain, are pushing to stop the dismantlement of shuttle infrastructure now. (Via Rand Simberg.)

Moo north

Evidently, cows can sense Earth's magnetic field.

Editing Petraeus

Clearly, the import of what Gen. Petraeus is saying here is not that the surge was unnecessary:

Petraeus is careful not to credit all the progress to the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. The sea change came last year from a series of movements now known as the Awakening, when Sunnis, organizing around traditional tribal leaders, decided to turn on Al Qaeda as "an organization that embraces an extremist ideology, employs indiscriminate violence, and practices oppressive social customs," in the general's words. One of those customs was a ban on smoking. "That was the turning point when they cut the fingers off the first person who was smoking," he jokes. "Can you imagine an Anbar sheik being told he can't smoke?" So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes, but the surge came at that time and helped empower Sunni leaders, paying their fighters and backing them up on the streets. This is where Seneca the Younger comes in: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

There was also what Petraeus refers to as the "intellectual piece," a counterinsurgency strategy building on years of lessons learned the hard way, and intense coordination of military and diplomatic efforts. There was also, Petraeus says, "a civilian surge—[U.S. Ambassador Ryan] Crocker has seven ambassadors on his staff" and in the economic section of the embassy alone, staffing went from 130 to 200 this year with State Department augmentees; for the first time, all of the American Embassy's vacancies are filled, and with volunteers rather than draftees. And Iraqis have had an even bigger surge in their own security forces.

And here's Andrew Sullivan truncating the above to score a cheap political point:

Petraeus is careful not to credit all the progress to the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. The sea change came last year from a series of movements now known as the Awakening. […] So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes.

I guess Sullivan ran out of pixels.

Barr movement update

The Bob Barr juggernaut rolls on.

A rally by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps featuring Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr drew just a few dozen people.

The man managed to attract a few dozen people to Lolita Bar a few months ago. But then his momentum stalled.

The second time as farce

Via Instapundit, here are some of history's losers railing against their fate. But are these people historically literate enough to even know what the outcome of the 1968 election was? (And do they know enough Marx to understand the headline of this post?)

Paul endorses Young

The cruel hoax that Ron Paul has perpetrated upon people who thought his goal was advancing the cause of limited government is now complete:

Former Republican presidential contender Ron Paul has endorsed Don Young in his bid to win an 18th term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

That's the Don Young of "Bridge to Nowhere" fame.

So what has been Ron Paul's major goal? I'd say, to build up his fundraising apparatus so as to perpetuate himself in congressional office. Mission accomplished. And, as a bonus, getting a chance to air his troglodytic view of the world, in which immigrants are a threat, trade pacts are nefarious, evolution is dubious, and neocons and the Federal Reserve (what? not the Templars?) cause most of the country's problems. With those priorities, what are billions in earmarks between friends?

Nothing to hear here

"No, an alien radio signal has not been detected." From an absorbing space-focused website called Astroengine. (Found via Carnival of Space.)

Biden veep

I think Joe Biden was a good choice. It's extremely important that the top people in the White House know something about foreign policy -- and if the president doesn't, at least the vice president should. Moreover, I'm rather pleased that my official prediction is still holding up.