HOT5 Daily 1/5/2011

1. "Putting Some Fight Into Our Friends" Links to an excellent Newsweek article on Afghanistan.

Representative Sample: Unless America wants to extend its stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, it would be prudent to create a professional adviser corps and more task forces like Golsteyn’s in the coming year. The State Department can tackle the Sisyphean task of nation building—while the U.S. military returns to the business of being warriors.

2. "Playing the Violence Card" Don't worry, violence is no big deal as long as it comes from the left.

Representative Sample: Despite a century of good press, the veiled or not-so-veiled threat of violence sits right at the center of left-wing politics. The very word "demonstration" is a euphemism for "show of force." Labor unions have always used the threat of violence. "Community organizing" is what left-wing activists do when they are trying to gin up a rent-a-mob for the benefit of the TV news cameras.

3. "Why Isn't Obama Pressuring the Palestinians?" Good question and points.

Representative Sample: the Obama administration is raising no public objection to the Palestinians' stance. It has not expressed one word of criticism of Abbas, nor used anything resembling the pressure tactics Obama has so freely used against the Israeli side. In fact, Obama did quite the opposite

4. "But I thought it was the body of Christ?" When transubstantiation goes bad.

Representative Sample: Parishioners who received Holy Communion may have been infected with Hepatitis A.

5. "Evidence and theory collide with galactic proportions" New discovery demonstrates how science works.

Representative Sample: Something else must be making these galaxies active; perhaps instabilities inside them, or internal gas cloud collisions, or some other phenomenon. But apparently, at least for the past 8 billion years, it’s not due to collisions on a galactic scale. Mergers don’t feed the supermassive black holes and make them active in the way everyone assumed.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

HOT5 Daily 1/4/2011

1. "Brooke Goldstein: Countering Lawfare" Must-read article.

Representative Sample: The third goal is to frustrate and hinder the ability of Western democracies to fight against and defeat terrorism. Here, lawfare takes the form of a complementary legal campaign to terrorism and asymmetric warfare and seeks to denigrate society’s legitimate interest in security and self defense. As [U.S. Air Force] Maj. Gen. [Charles] Dunlap pointed out in 2001 in his Harvard Law Review essay, ‘[F]oes of the United States’ who are unable to ‘seriously confront—let alone defeat—America militarily’ are realizing their objectives through legal means. Their strategy is to undermine the American people’s support for our troops by making us believe that war is being conducted in an unfair, inhumane way.

2. "A Crude Theory" There does seem to be some correlation between Russian behavior and oil prices

Representative Sample: Oil is once again above $90 a barrel—and the price is rising. And if that's the reason, it's nothing new. In fact, if one were to plot the rise and fall of Soviet and Russian foreign and domestic reforms over the last 40 years on a graph, it would match the rise and fall of the international oil price with astonishing precision.

3. "No Matter What They Call It, It’s Still A Drilling Ban" De-facto ban as oil prices continue to rise.

Representative Sample: The Obama administration says they lifted the moratorium on drilling for oil off the shores of the US. But since they aren’t issuing any drilling permits, or allowing stalled rigs to go back into production, the drilling ban continues. So does the damage to the economy.

4. "The Top Ten Reasons Why Cats are Better than Bibliobloggers" Pretty amusing.

Representative Sample: It's a series of graphics.

5. "For a good cause: Half a million people fund Wikipedia" Impressive fund-raising.

Representative Sample: With an average contribution of $22, they funded the $16 million goal in a month and a half. 2009's fundraiser, by contrast, raised only $8 million from 240,000 individual contributions.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

Obama's Pointless Pandering to Christians

There's an article at Politics Daily called, "Obama Tries to Reassert His Christian Bona Fides, With Words and Deeds." According to the column, along with poll numbers showing that 1 in 5 Americans think the president is a Muslim, Obama has reacted to conservatives using various incidents to question whether he is really much of a Christian.

if the accusations strain credulity, they can also affect public perceptions. So it was likely no coincidence that during the holidays the president seemed to take every opportunity to put the "Christ" in Christmas.

Obama has been making numerous references to his Christian faith, using biblical quotations, and conducting a couple of church photo ops. Politico claims that there has been a massive upswing in religious-type rhetoric of late.

Obama has publicly mentioned his “Christian faith” more times in the past three months than he has over the past year. He has more frequently cited passages of the Bible, including repeated references to the spirit of Genesis 4:9 — “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper” — which was a mainstay of Obama’s 2010 campaign stump speech. And he’s taken his family to church twice, a shift for a president who has preferred to worship privately since the end of the 2008 campaign.

In my opinion, his actions are completely pointless. People who think he's a Muslim -- despite the evidence -- are unlikely to be swayed by much of anything, since their beliefs aren't exactly based on rational analysis. Conspiracy-theory thinking is immune to real evidence. In fact, Obama's increased Christian posturing will probably be viewed as a transparent attempt to conceal his true Muslim faith.

As for other Christians who question whether Obama is really a serious believer, I doubt that sprinkling in some Bible verses, showing up at church a couple times, and generally acting more religious is going to convince many people. It's going to come off -- rightly in my opinion -- as cynical political pandering. Why even bother?

HOT5 Daily 1/3/2011

1. "NYTimes Nicholas Kristof: Only Big Government can solve “melancholy of the soul” — with more taxes!" No matter what the perceived problem, for the left higher taxes are always one of the answers.

Representative Sample: Kristof, like many Leftists alarmed by the mid-term elections last fall, is scrambling to find another angle in which to maintain and grow an ever intrusive Big Government. Attempts to frame statism as the solution to moral or psychological issues provides yet another glaring contrast to limited-government advocates

2. "Sympathy for the IRS" Workers that is.

Representative Sample: as government becomes more and more controlling of all aspects of the American economy, the same kind of problem that afflicts the IRS and taxpayers today will increasingly afflict all industries, their customers, and their suppliers.

3. "Atheists Never" Things atheists never do.

Representative Sample: If you’re interested in crazy things done in the name of religion, this is the site for you.

4. "Hillary to Hugo: “Use me! Abuse me!”" Too chummy with our enemies.

Representative Sample: Following a short-lived, albeit modest, display of gonadal fortitude, the Obama administration is back to appeasing Hugo Chavez.

5. "Special Review: Deadly Weapons for small UAVs" Interesting review of developments.

Representative Sample: The capability of armed forces to employ ‘Kinetic effects’ by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have evolved in the past decade from science fiction into reality.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

A Response to Sam Harris

Sam Harris is my favorite of the so-called "new atheists." I enjoy his writing and style of argumentation. I noticed that he had an op-ed at The Huffington Post called, "A New Year's Resolution for the Rich." Not surprisingly I was less impressed by his foray into political commentary. His article is long, and does have some good points, so hopefully you will bear with me.

After identifying himself as a member of the rich, Harris writes of the extention of the Bush tax cuts,

those of us who have been so fortunate as to actually live the American dream--rather than merely dream it--have been spared every inconvenience. Now we are told that we will soon receive a large tax cut for all our troubles. What is the word for the feeling this provokes in me? Imagine being safely seated in lifeboat, while countless others drown, only to learn that another lifeboat has been secured to take your luggage to shore...

First, and most obvious, you are not receiving a large tax cut. Tax rates are simply not going up. There's a difference. And the rates affect everyone across the board, not just the wealthy. Second, feel free to voluntarily pay more taxes.

Harris goes on with the typical liberal whine about "income inequality."

We now live in a country in which the bottom 40 percent (120 million people) owns just 0.3 percent of the wealth. Data of this kind make one feel that one is participating in a vast psychological experiment: Just how much inequality can free people endure?

Why does it affect you in the slightest how much other people earn? It isn't something to be "endured" at all. It's also pretty funny that he mentions "free people," since the supposed solution to income inequality involves stealing more money by force from the wealthy. Apparently his idea of freedom is being free to have the state decide what you should earn.

And yet over one million American children are now homeless. People on Medicare are being denied life-saving organ transplants that were routinely covered before the recession. Over one quarter of our nation's bridges are structurally deficient. When might be a convenient time to ask the richest Americans to help solve problems of this kind? How about now?

Ask all you want. But taxation has nothing to do with asking.

It is easy to understand why even the most generous person might be averse to paying taxes: Our legislative process has been hostage to short-term political interests and other perverse incentives for as long as anyone can remember. Consequently, our government wastes an extraordinary amount of money. It also seems uncontroversial to say that whatever can be best accomplished in the private sector should be. Our tax code must also be reformed--and it might even be true that the income tax should be lowered on everyone, provided we find a better source of revenue to pay our bills.

Exactly. Having just written these lines of wisdom, however, he then writes,

But I can't imagine that anyone seriously believes that the current level of wealth inequality in the United States is good and worth maintaining, or that our government's first priority should be to spare a privileged person like myself the slightest hardship as this once great nation falls into ruin.

He might want to expand his imagination, and put aside the fetish about income inequality. There are plenty of people who don't see income inequality as a significant problem, particularly because income levels are not fixed, and we have legal equality of opportunity in the United States. It isn't a matter of "maintaining" the situation. It just is. And the nation is hardly "falling into ruins." It doesn't help an argument to include wild hyperbole.

American opposition to the "redistribution of wealth" has achieved the luster of a religious creed. And, as with all religions, one finds the faithful witlessly espousing doctrines that harm almost everyone, including their own children. For instance, while most Americans have no chance of earning or inheriting significant wealth, 68 percent want the estate tax eliminated (and 31 percent consider it to be the "worst" and "least fair" tax levied by the federal government). Most believe that limiting this tax, which affects only 0.2 percent of the population, should be the top priority of the current Congress.

I find this hilarious. Here's someone with a religious-like fetish about "income inequality" accusing people who oppose forcible redistribution of wealth of holding a religious creed. He also makes the mistake throughout this entire article, [pointed out by Mike Farmer in link #3 of today's HOT5.], of assuming that the poor are a static class.

The truth, however, is that everyone must favor the "redistribution of wealth" at some point.

Not true, obviously. There are people against all forms of taxation.

To make matters more difficult, Americans have made a religious fetish of something called "self-reliance."

Apparently anything that gets in the way of socialistic wealth transfer schemes is now a religious fetish. These leads into the typical left-wing argument that the wealthy have had greater opportunity and luck, and therefore "owe" society more of their money. As usual, this argument is combined with an apparent oblivious disregard for the fact that the wealthy already pay by far the most taxes.

But then Harris advocates something different.

Some readers will point out that I am free to donate to the treasury even now. But such solitary sacrifice would be utterly ineffectual, and I am no more eager than anyone else is to fill the pork barrels of corrupt politicians. However, if Gates and Buffett created a mechanism that bypassed the current dysfunction of government, earmarking the money for unambiguously worthy projects, I suspect that there are millions of people like myself who would not hesitate to invest in the future of America.

I have no problem with some sort of voluntary effort by the rich to invest in improving the country. There is already plenty of philanthropy from the very rich. A new major effort would certainly be welcome. Harris advocates spending such a massive donation on two things: education and clean energy. For education he suggests making college free for people who can't afford it. I think that's a bad idea.

A college education isn't automatically a good thing. There are plenty of people in college who learn very little, and basically come away with pieces of paper saying they are college graduates -- creating an illusion that they are somehow more valuable in the workforce. They aren't. It would be much more effective to invest in alternative ideas about education, covering things not normally taught in our schools. People need to be taught how to create wealth, such as how to form and operate a business, take an idea from the idea stage to patent and production, methods of raising capital, real estate fundamentals, and investment strategies. I certainly wish I'd learned those things when I was young.

As for clean energy, I'm all for private investment in new methods of energy. If a consortium of philanthropic rich people could somehow transform the U.S. into a nation that needs less fossil fuel that would be great.

I am aware that a proposal of this kind is bound to seem quixotic. But what's to stop the wealthiest Americans from sponsoring a 21st Century Renaissance? What politician would object to our immediately spending a trillion dollars on improvements in education and energy security? Perhaps there are even better targets for this money. Let Gates and Buffett convene a team of brilliant people to lay out the priorities. But again, we should remember that they could scarcely fail to improve our situation. Simply repaving our roads, the dilapidation of which causes $54 billion in damage to our cars every year, would be better than doing nothing.

Overall this article offers a major disconnect. Sam Harris starts out with the typical liberal complaints about income inequality and the tax structure, implying that we should jack up tax rates on the rich and redistribute wealth for the greater good. But he ends by calling for a massive voluntary effort by the wealthy to invest in America's future. No thanks to the former, I'm with him on the latter.

HOT5 Daily 1/2/2011

1. "News Headlines We Will See in 2011" Safe predictions.

Representative Sample: I have absolutely no doubt that over the next year, there will probably be several headlines involving a Democrat saying something bat guano crazy about economics. It’s not that Democrats know next to nothing about how the economy works. It’s that they are absolutely, stone cold clueless about the subject. Comparative lit majors didn’t need to take Econ 101 to graduate, so the subject is even less familiar than Mandarin Chinese to most liberals.

2. "Why is America So Bright at Night?" Be glad that it is.

Representative Sample: look at the NASA map stitched together to show what the entire Earth looks like at night.

3. "Old ideas that linger" Something worth pointing out.

Representative Sample: There are many erroneous, old ideas that linger in spite of a reality which constantly refutes the ideas. One such idea has to do with poverty. Most politicians and the media still represent poverty as a matter of a certain class which is static.

4. "The Gathering Storm, Redux" North Korea and the connection to Iran.

Representative Sample: So far, the Obama Administration has given no public indication of how it would react to another nuclear test in North Korea, with or without Iranian participation. Still, there are signs the White House and the Pentagon are hedging their bets.

5. "Islam's Key Quartet" Short but interesting breakdown into categories.

Representative Sample: Over fifty countries have Muslim majorities but just four of them, clustered in a relatively compact geographical region, have special importance in determining Islam's future.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

HOT5 Daily 1/1/2011

1. "The Methodology of Contemporary Progressive Argumentation" A pretty good summary.

Representative Sample: some of the best commentary is at National Review, for example Jonah Goldberg, "The Moral Mush of Pacifism." And especially Victor Davis Hanson, "I, I, Me, Me, My, My — for Pacifism!"

2. "Why You Wouldn’t Find Any Libertarians in 1776" Another interesting argument.

Representative Sample: to an American of the Founding generation, the ideal of autonomy would have contradicted four of the most fundamental physical and psychic facts of life

3. "None Dare Call It Casus Belli" A reminder that we are already fighting a low-level war with Iran. I'm not in favor of a direct attack on Iran, but if there is one -- regardless of its wisdom -- it will be fully justified.

Representative Sample: Iran has considered itself "at war" with the United States for over 30 years. That conflict has flared up numerous times, with actual shots fired and people killed, over those years. There have been attacks and flareups over the years, with fights between their ships and aircraft and our ships and aircraft. But never anything this systemic, this deliberate, this prolonged -- the deployment of ground forces specifically to target and engage and kill our ground forces.

4. "Top 10 UN-believable Moments of 2010" A good video run-down of why the UN has no credibility.

Representative Sample: it's a video.

5. "A Clausewitzian on “Cohesion”" For those interested in military/political theory.

Representative Sample: I think Clausewitz’s speculations on cohesion were, like many of his systemic perceptions in On War, remarkably farsighted and intuitively rooted in a scientific reality that was unknown and untestable in his day.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.