They did it again

The global-warming crowd at NASA-GISS was called out for manipulating data to fit their alarmist nonsense, again.

(For the unitiated, there have been so many instances of errors, data manipulation, and other shenanigans, from global warming alarmists that the rest of us can barely keep up with them; the number of my posts alone on this subject stood at thirty-three; now it’s thirty-four).

In this case, GISS made some “corrections” to the Reykjavik data. The Icelandic capital had particularly warm spell between 1940 and 1965 (roughly). Well, “GISS, as the blue line shows, have magically made this warm period disappear, by reducing the real temperatures by up to nearly 2 degrees” (Not A Lot of People Know That via WUWT).

Chart courtesy Paul Homewood (Not A Lot of People Know That – via WUWT)

Suffice to say, the locals are not happy (emphasis in original):

Meanwhile the Iceland Met Office say that “The GHCN “corrections” are grossly in error in the case of Reykjavik”.

Whoops.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

Gingrich smears Romney on income – again

Newt goes for the soundbite at the expense of the facts, again (National Journal, emphasis added):

“I think you have to live in worlds of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatic $20-million-a-year income with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality,” Gingrich said, jabbing at some of the details of Romney’s self-released income taxes this week.

It’s just abundantly clear that Newt doesn’t get it.

Mitt Romney’s income is far from automatic. There is risk involved in every investment. Sure, risk can be mitigated or minimized in various ways, but it never goes away. Even the “risk-free” T-Bill was downgraded last year.

I mention this because a certain fellow blogger has focused on Newt’s economic policies as friendlier to the supply-side school of economics. From a policy perspective, this is true. However, statements like this make it clear that Gingrich has none of the underlying respect for investments and upper-income earners that are at the heart of supply-side economics. For Gingrich, the private sector exists to fuel his various government schemes; it has no value of its own.

In short, when it comes to economics, Gingrich may know the words, but not the music.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

P.S. and Non-Seq: Read the whole piece (here it is again); Gingrich’s “guest-worker permit” plan reads a lot like full-blown amnesty to me.

Egypt: What’s 12 million phony voters between friends?

More than a month ago, I sounded the alarm about the Egyptian military joining forces with the Islamists to freeze out the democrats – by any means necessary.

This morning, thanks to Daniel Pipes & Cynthia Farahat (National Review Online), we have a better idea just what those means were:

Six parliamentary candidates filed official complaints against a range of officials and demanded that the elections be annulled and redone, reports the newspaper El-Badil in its January 10 edition. One of the candidates, a Wafd Party candidate named Ibrahim Kamel, explained how he acquired government documents indicating that fewer than 40 million Egyptians were eligible to vote, while the current elections included 52 million voters, implying 12 million fraudulent ballots. This increase was achieved, he said, by taking the names and identification numbers of legitimate voters and duplicating them between two and 32 times in other electoral precincts.

To give an idea of what 12 million extra voters can do, keep in mind that neither Islamist party scored that many votes in total in the final party-list tally (Daily News Egypt). In fact - assuming all 12 million phantom voters went with the Muslim Brotherhood’s FJP or the Salafists’ Nour – a clean result would have meant the secular parties would have won about 60% of the vote, at least.

Meanwhile, the Salafists in particular expressed more concern for the safety of the military junta than for the honesty of the election process (Pipes and Farahat):

In contrast, the victorious Islamists, who despise democracy, made little effort to conceal their electoral success through fraud. Some of them went so far as proudly and unapologetically to assert that it’s their Islamic duty to be dishonest. Tal’at Zahran, a leading Salafi, called the democratic system “infidel,” “criminal,” and “out of the Elders of Zion.” He cynically observed that “it is our duty to forge elections; God will reward us for this.”

Revealingly, Zahran also praised Tantawi: “Just as we gave Mubarak the bay’a [the Islamic oath of loyalty], we now support SCAF. If Tantawi decides to stay in power, we will support him until the day he dies.”

Funny, I don’t remember Mubarak touting the Salafists’ oath to him as he presented himself to be the only obstacle to their seizing power. Plus ça change, plus ça mème chose.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

An open letter to Mitt Romney

First of all, sorry for such a tough night. Defeat is never fun. That said, there are lessons to be learned, and I hope you learn them.

There have been many people asking you to explain your role at Bain Capital; so far, that explanation hasn’t been satisfactory, but perhaps not quite for the reasons you have heard.

Most of us in the Republican Party are prepared to defend free enterprise, even if that includes various dislocations required to sort out economic efficiencies and move people from jobs where they are less productive to jobs where they are more productive, and we’ll gladly wear the bus tracks from those arguments as badges of honor.

There is only one problem with that: you still get hit by a bus - and South Carolina just ran over you.

So, FWIW – and keep in mind, this comes from a friendly and supportive voice – here’s what yours truly would rather hear from you on this point.

• Bain Capital wasn’t in the business of destroying companies; it was in the business of rescuing them. Bain Capital was in business to help firms adjust to market changes and prosper, instead of capsizing to those changes and collapsing.
• Not every rescue succeeded, of course; no one is perfect; but many of them did, and because of that, Bain saved companies and jobs across the board; some even added jobs (that last part you have down cold)
• If Bain’s record was so awful, or cruel, why would the Olympics ask me to rescue them – a rescue that spectacularly succeeded? Somebody thought Bain knew what it was doing.

In short, you need to stop acting like Gordon Gecko – because you weren’t him. What’s more, you know you weren’t him.

The tax issue is even simpler: my 2011 returns will be filed and released in April. I’d rather just release them all then. Thank you.

I happened to see your South Carolina speech tonight. It was very well done, and an excellent start to your recovery; but it needs more. It needs the above, at least that’s how I see it.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

How will the GOP keep Ron Paul in the fold? It’s easier than you think.

The state of the Republican nomination contest seems to be headed toward two realities: Romney will likely be the nominee, and Ron Paul will have enough delegates to be an irritant at the convention. The question that flows from these projections is this: how can Mitt Romney keep Ron Paul onside in the general election? Based on what I’ve seen, that might be a lot easier than folks realize.

To understand why Romney and Paul are closer to rapprochement than they appear, we have to look at the four key pieces of the puzzle: foreign affairs, economic issues, social issues, and personalities.

Foreign affairs: Contrary to popular belief, Romney and Paul are not that far apart. The American military deployment in Iraq has already ended, and the withdrawal fom Afghanistan was predestined not by Paul, Romney, or Obama, but Hamid Karzai, who wants our troops out yesterday (this is also why I have refused to hit Obama too hard for this). Oddly enough, Romney can probably score points with Paul by asking for a faster withdrawal than the President has planned. Paul and Romney’s biggest differences are Iran and Communist China, but if Romney stresses aiding dissidents (as in the Reagan Doctrine) plus a quicker Afghanistan withdrawal, it could do the trick.

Social issues: Romney and Paul are probably closer to each other on these than to anyone else running. Romney would probably prefer that most (if not all) social issues disappear, and Paul doesn’t think the federal government should have a role in them anyway. The only matter in which either would dramatically alter the status quo would be regarding judicial appointments, a matter I’ve already addressed here. In short, this is the area of least disagreement.

Economic Issues: This is something else entirely, of course, but more importantly, it is where Paul has the most leverage. On economic policy, Paul speaks for much more of the party than Romney does and he knows it. Odds are Paul will focus more on monetary issues; that said, if the Fed decides to pull a QE3, Paul may be one of the milder critics of the Fed descending upon Romney.

Personalities: Thinking of the above paragraph, I’m reminded of the line from Hoffa: “A grievance can be resolved; differences can be resolved. But an imaginary hurt? A slight? That motherf**ker’s gonna hate you ’til the day you die.” For three of the four opponents to Mitt Romney, this race has gotten personal. Ron Paul is not one of those three. In fact, on the issue that has affected Romney personally the most (Bain Capital), Paul has defended Romney, not attacked him.

Moreover, unless I miss my guess, Dr. Paul and his supporters have focused much of their ammunition towards Romney’s other opponents, not Romney himself. It is almost as if Paul has presumed Romney will be the nominee, and is looking for the best deal with him that he can get. This should neither upset nor demoralize his supporters; Paul is playing a long game. As the Libertarian nominee for President in 1988, he has seen how weak a cause outside the two parties can be; so he’s looking to build the cause within the Republican Party, then perhaps hand it over to his son, Senator Rand Paul.

If I’m right about this, then Ron Paul will be far more helpful to Mitt Romney than anyone realizes. We shall see.

EU aims for the messenger, Part II

Standard and Poors finally pulled the trigger on the (not nearly) Great (enough) Eurozone Downgrade. Nine eurozone countries saw their ratings hit, including the biggest casualty, France, which lost its AAA rating. Italy and Spain were downgraded two notches. Moreover, as ZeroHedge noted, S&P had the gall to expose the nudity of the Brusselian Empire (emphasis added):

We also believe that the agreement is predicated on only a partial recognition of the source of the crisis: that the current financial turmoil stems primarily from fiscal profligacy at the periphery of the eurozone. In our view, however, the financial problems facing the eurozone are as much a consequence of rising external imbalances and divergences in competitiveness between the EMU’s core and the so-called “periphery”. As such, we believe that a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating, as domestic demand falls in line with consumers’ rising concerns about job security and disposable incomes, eroding national tax revenues.

Accordingly, in line with our published sovereign criteria, we have adjusted downward our political scores (one of the five key factors in our criteria) for those eurozone sovereigns we had previously scored in our two highest categories. This reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of European policymaking and political institutions have not been as strong as we believe are called for by the severity of a broadening and deepening financial crisis in the eurozone.

In other words, the EUreaucracy doesn’t have a clue.

S&P also made note of the fact that a long term solution isn’t exactly popular with anybody:

Governments are also aiming to put greater focus on growth-enhancing structural measures. While these may contribute positively to a lasting solution of the current crisis, we believe they could also run counter to powerful national interest groups, whose resistance could potentially jeopardize the reform momentum and impede the recovery of market confidence.

Really? Who would have guessed?

S&P also takes aim at the European Central Bank’s notion of hosing member banks with funds in the hopes they buy peripheral debt (good luck with that); the growing realization among private sector bondholders that “haircuts” will look more like scalpings (and that several may be coming); and that all around, no one has any confidence that this will end well, period.

At present, four “core” nations still have AAA ratings, including the great Planet Londinium of them all, Germany (yes, I have come to the conclusion that Firefly unwittingly predicted the future of the EU), but the downgrade of Sihnon France puts the entire continental-based bailout scheme into question. But don’t take my word for it (same link, emphasis added by ZeroHedge):

Following our placement of the ratings on the eurozone sovereigns on CreditWatch in December, we also placed a number of supranational entities on CreditWatch with negative implications. These included, among others, the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the European Union’s own funding program. We are currently assessing the credit implications of today’s eurozone sovereign downgrades on those institutions and will publish our updated credit view in the coming days.

Uh oh.

Of course, the EUreaucracy’s response is to take aim at the messenger one more time, and throw in a bunch of straw men for good measure (Daniel Hannan):

In Die Welt, the EPP’s Elmar Brok claims that the US has launched an economic war against Europe. For those who can’t read German, here is a rough summary of his argument. The US ratings agencies, he says, had no conceivable reason to downgrade nine eurozone states last week. What this is really about is a political project aimed at advancing ‘Anglo-Saxon interests’ in Europe. Americans have been becoming increasingly anti-European, as Mitt Romney’s campaign shows. (I have no idea either, but that’s what he says.) Then again, it’s not really their fault, since they’ve been fed lies by Anglo-Saxon media moguls for decades.

It’s tempting to dismiss Elmar as a buffoon, but he is a senior MEP who, among other things, chairs the EU-US interparliamentary group. More to the point, his views are widely shared. The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, regularly lashes out at the American agencies, and plans to create an EU one instead (as if anyone would believe a word it wrote). Earlier today, the European Commission threatened the agencies with greater regulation including censorship, prompting my colleague Ashley Fox to remark, ‘You don’t get better weather by turning down the forecast’.

That’s right. It’s the ratings agencies and the Americans. Best to muzzle them before the truth gets out.

All of this, mind you, is a desperate attempt to escape the reality that a multinational currency is simply unstable (especially when no one is expected to follow the rules during the boom years).

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

Tsai Ing-wen for President of Taiwan

Taiwan (a.k.a. the Republic of China) will begin voting for its president and its legislature in about 31 hours. The CCP is very happy with its onetime nemesis, the Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party; so yours truly has been a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) backer for over a dozen years. The DPP candidate is Tsai Ing-wen; for anyone in Taiwan reading this, please vote for her and the DPP (or the Taiwan Solidarity Union – TSU) for the Legislative Yuan.

Cross-posted to the China e-Lobby

My more detailed reasons for backing Mitt Romney

This post, save the first paragraph (and with a different title), was originally posted on Virginia Virtucon.

Like most in the rightosphere, I was looking for a candidate who would (1) defeat the president this November, (2) move the country in the proper direction as president, and (3) leave the country safer from foreign enemies and domestic problems when he exits the office. Also like most in the rightosphere, I looked at Romneycare and TARP, and immediately disqualified Mitt Romney. Further, like most in the rightosphere, I watched the other contenders flow and ebb with growing frustration and disgust.

Unlike most of the rightosphere, I responded by requalifying Romney. Once I came to terms that this would be the presidential field, I realized that I would be stuck with a very imperfect candidate of some kind. Thus, Romney could not automatically be worse than the rest of them. So I looked at the field again with a fresh view.

Of course, Romney’s domestic policy problems didn’t disappear, but compared to Rick Perry’s obvious if unspoken support for TARP, Gingrich’s history with health care mandates and Fannie Mae, Dr. Paul’s microeconomic confusion, Bachmann’s vaccine fiasco, Hunstman’s time shilling for all that was wrong with President Obama’s policy towards the Chinese Communist Party, and Santorum’s complete inability to get traction (at the time), Romney did not look particularly out of bounds.

Still, had domestic records alone been the deciding factor, I doubt I would be zigging while the rest of VV zags. There were two other factors that led me, much to my surprise, to backing Romney.

First, he is clearly the best performing candidate in the field. This has actually shocked me. I saw how Rick Perry demolished Kay Bailey Hutchinson in Texas, and I’m still wondering where that guy went. The other candidates seemed to go from gaffe to gaffe in painful fashion while Romney simply continued a campaign so well-oiled that it has become a victim of its own success (complete with runaway expectations and insistence of insinserity from his critics). Moreover, and this stunned even me, Romney has been remarkably consistent in his stands on issues from 2008 to now (even the ones where I’d rather he change his view). Outside of his double-back on preborn life (no small matter, to be sure), it is Romney’s changes in tone (and the vastly different political environment around him), that has fed the “flip-flopper” theme. I will admit I would like a more detailed explanation of his personal journey on the life issue, but if there was ever a time for him to drift back toward his 1990-2005 position, it is now, with this field. It hasn’t happened. I would also note that Romney is also rising in the one place he was never supposed to get traction: South Carolina, and according to Gallup, his national numbers hit 30% this week. Both are signs that Romney’s “ceiling” is not quite as solid as his opponents think.

Secondly, and I’ll admit this matters to me more than most, he is far and above the most anti-CCP candidate in the field. In fact, he is the only candidate to consistently criticize the Chinese Communist Party, which has earned him criticisms from Paul, Hunstman, and yes, Rick Santorum (in fact, Santorum’s support for trade protection except where the CCP is concerned is one of the key reasons I chose to pass on him). Again, he has been very consistent on this over the last five years (in 2008, Duncan Hunter was far tougher on Zhongnanhai, there is no such candidate in the 2012 field).

Those were the factors that, for me, were enough to overcome Romney’s clear weaknesses on domestic matters.

However, the actions of Romney’s opponents have, if anything, reinforced my decision. Mme Lovettesvile has discussed how Romney’s opponents have tried to turn his career as a venture capitalist against him (I would note that Dr. Paul is only candidate not joining in the insane pile-on, which is a credit to him). Santorum, the candidate to whom I admittedly paid almost no attention until he nearly won in Iowa, proceeded to blow his chance to win me over with a call to raise taxes (then I noticed his anti-Romney comments on Communist China, mentioned above).

This is how Mitt Romney became, and remains, the best cnadidate in field as far as I’m concerned. Yours view may (and where the other contributors are concerned, they definitely do) vary.

America’s defense strategy: the good, the bad, and the ugly

While much of the focus on the president’s defense strategy has centered on the reduction to the Army and to the Marine Corps, the overarching strategy changes America’s defense position across several dimensions. Not all of them are uniformly negative.

I will not get into the discussion of overall military spending. Like any other federal bureaucracy, the Department of Defense can be made more efficient. Unlike many of the others, DoD has been focused on efficiencies for many years, and more to the point, cutting the wrong thing can be exceedingly dangerous. However, this should not prevent us from cutting the right thing.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in the new defense strategy.

The good: One can only imagine what it feels like in Zhongnanhai, knowing that the CCP is the only force that will see more of the American military in their midst. In fact, the president has repeatedly shown an unexpected, unadvertised, and thus largely unknown determination to protect and preserve our interests in southeast Asia (in northeast Asia, he hasn’t been much better than his predecessors, but not much worse either). The greater emphasis on our allies in the Pacific received far more attention outside the U.S. than anything else (BBC, twice). For the first time, the United States is making it clear it has concern about the “peaceful rise” of the Chinese Communist regime, and it is prepared to put resources in place to address that concern. That is a change, and a good one.

The bad: Unfortunately, the concern the Administration has about the CCP is only a regional one. The idea that the regime would seek to build its power and prestige outside East Asia is surprisingly absent here. Given that Zhongnanhai has already established alliances with the mullahcracy of Iran, numerous tyrants in Africa, and the Pakistani military (and through them, the Taliban), Washington’s newfound concern for the CCP is thus dangerously limited. Or, as Nadia Schadlow put it in the Weekly Standard:

This geostrategic pivot toward Asia, accompanied by an emphasis on high technology Sino-centric warfare, fails to account for the character of conflict in most of the rest of the disordered world.

One can be certain that the CCP will not “fail to account” for the rest of the world. This leads us to . . .

The ugly: The overall weakening of the American military will make it that much harder to actually achieve the excellent goal of holding the CCP, its tyrannical allies, and its terrorist proxies in check. While Zhongnanhai may find things more difficult in Asia, the regime will likely find eroding American power easier in the rest of the world.

The question then becomes this: will America then weaken itself in Asia to face those other threats abroad? Or will she swallow hard and reverse the manpower and strength reductions that are part of the newly current strategy? This is the question the president, his would-be Republican opponents, and the American people must address – preferably this year.

Cross-posted to the China e-Lobby and Bearing Drift

Rick Santorum, Tax-hiker?

Rick Santorum’s effort to establish himself as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney blows up after one day (Weekly Standard, emphasis added):

Like all senators, Santorum likes to talk; as a consequence, his Q&A sessions tend toward the marathon. He spent nearly 15 minutes, for instance, answering a single query on Social Security, during which time he strayed into think tank territory with a disquisition on actuarial formulas and bend points. (He also explicitly advocated means testing, raising Social Security tax rates, and raising the retirement age.)

Raising Social Security tax rates? Really? Does Santorum really think his other two pieces of reform (which have promise) would survive if he leaves open the tax increase option?

Lest we forget, Social Security tax increases in 1983 were supposed to “save” the system.

How’s that working out?

Cross-posted to VV