A Russian analyst has predicted that in addition to handing the reigns of the global economy to Russia and China, the United States will be so divided that it will actually break up into six states, separated as follows:

the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

While the economic aspect of this projection is probably more accurate than I would like to believe (although I don’t why China, a burgeoning economic powerhouse, would allow the Russian mafia state with no manufacturing or technological capability to be part of its global domination), regarding geopolitics, I think the Russian analyst is confusing US history with his own. While regionally divided on many social and economic issues (although in many ways the division is more urban/rural than east/west), the United States is not the Soviet Union.

The “stan” countries of the former USSR had absolutely nothing to do with Russia. They were simply colonized by the tsar and forced to speak his language. The first real chance they had to separate - when Russia was absolutely at its weakest point militarily - they ran. (And the running is not yet over as Chechnya has sought independence since 1991.) They became Soviets by brute force.

While cynics (and liberals) argue that the United States was colonized in a similar manner, its not as if there are smoldering pockets of natives around the country that are simply waiting for their chance to overthrow the state and return to their nomadic way of life. Whatever else it is, the United States was founded primarily on an idea. Nothing has shown that the regions of the country are no longer committed to the basics of that idea. While the US does have regional, social, religious and economic fault lines, it has always had these fault lines (that’s one reason why we have two houses of Congress). One could argue that these divisions are growing, but I do not believe they are growing to the extent that the central states, for example, will all of the sudden secede and form their own country. Despite our differences, the regions truly have too much in common and too much at stake to break apart. I have absolutely no doubt that, when tested, we’ll bind together.

At minimum it will not occur because the six-state arrangement would place Los Angeles and New York (the only two cities that liberal elites on either coast really care about) in different countries. That alone would cause riots in Hollywood.

Interesting commentary over at Powerline regarding whether or not Obama’s cabinet appointments, thus far give evidence of his intention to govern as a centrist. The main point:

It is fun to throw back at Obama certain of his quotes about bringing in new players, and it is even more fun to chide Obama’s less astute lefty supporters to the extent they complain about a “betrayal.” But it is quite premature to infer from the selection of Clintonists that the left gained little by working to elect Obama or that Obama will serve up a third Bill Clinton term.

My two cents: I believe that Obama will go as far left as the country will allow. While I believe he is a strange mix of leftist ideologue and pragmatic realistic, I believe first and foremost (like most politicians) that he is a popularity hound. Thus, I believe he will govern primarily based on opinion polls and approval ratings more than anything else. In that way I do think his term will appear like Clinton’s (unprincipled); however, I think there’s much more of a calling for a far-left agenda (anti-market, wealth redistribution, pacifism at all costs, environmentalism uber-alles) now, on the eve of Obama’s reign, than there ever was under Clinton in the “vacation from history” known as the 1990s.

Mitt Romney on the Auto Industry Bailout, from the New York Times.

David Yermack’s take on the Auto Industry Bailout, from the Wall Street Journal.

If the government diverts our national savings into businesses that have long track records of destroying investment capital, eventually we’ll end up with an economy like France’s — or Zimbabwe’s.

Wider U.S. Interventions Would Yield Winners, Losers as Industries Realign, from the Wall Street Journal.

Consensus? Let them deal with their own issues in bankruptcy court, like anyone else in the business world would has to. They have brought this crisis upon themselves through poor management, short sightedness, and pressure from the UAW. Instead, it appears that someone (either a lame-duck, congressionally bullied Bush, or a bought off by unions Obama) is going to give them (the unions) what they want, which will merely forestall all three of these company’s inevitable destruction.

Auto Makers’ Rescue Drive Stalls, from the Wall Street Journal. GM doesn’t want to go into bankruptcy, and they list every reason why except that bankruptcy court would allow/force them to renegotiate their contracts with the unions who are sucking them dry, and naturally the unions would rather that not happen. The “customers won’t want to buy products from companies in bankruptcy” argument is pretty pathetic. The truth is that customers don’t want to buy extremely expensive, crappy products, when there are more viable options available. Lots of airline companies have gone bankrupt lately, and yet their airplanes stayed in the air. Cut the BS guys, we all know what’s going on here.

Obama Hears a Giant Sucking Sound, from the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to read this one just based on the title. Obama is looking at some pretty rough seas ahead, especially as someone who had hoped/does hope to dive into his first term with FDR style programs and spending.

Zogby won’t duplicate Obama poll, from Politico. Looks like another casualty of political correctness. Zogby doesn’t want do do another poll, despite liberal blogs screaming for it, apparently because of what the results might show, and the ensuing firestorm that would occur afterward. If you’ve somehow missed this whole thing, scroll down a few articles and watch the movie I posted, then read this, from the man himself.

Elton John: Where Prop 8 went wrong, from USA Today. Prop 8 is all about changing the definition of the word marriage. I didn’t say it, Sir Elton did. Get mad at him, not me! Ok, I admit, I’ve been saying that all along too, but naturally his opinion holds far more weight than mine does. He did sing Tiny Dancer and Your Song, after all.

Thomas Sowell has a new article up at National Review regarding the new American right: the right to win. It covers a nice smattering of issues all relating to the leftish notion that if someone isn’t happy, then somehow injustice has been done.

As the election approached, pundits warned that, if Obama lost, there would be riots in the ghetto. We will never know. But since when does any candidate have a right to win any office, much less the White House?

The worst of all the reactions from people who act as if they have a right to win have come from gay activists in the wake of voter rejection of so-called “gay marriage,” which is to say, redefining what marriage has meant for centuries.

It’s good stuff. The Liberal/Libertarian notion that “you can do anything you want until it begins to invade my rights” doesn’t really work in a reality where we all generally have to share the same streets (and neighborhoods and schools and land). At some point, in areas where people’s lives intersect, society as a whole must decide between what behaviors it believes are detrimental and those that it believes are beneficial to the common good.

I was listening to the radio on my way to work the other day and they played a clip from a woman who was losing her house due to foreclosure.  The woman had chained herself to her house and stated on record that she did not want the bank to be able to take her home and hoped the politicians would “do their job” and help her to keep it.  Now, I feel bad that she and her husband are losing their house.  I understand that people are going through bad economic times.  However, since when is it the government’s “job” to protect us from our own decisions?  The problem is, this reliance on government for bailouts and handouts is not unique to individuals.

Recently the government passed a $700 billion bailout package.  $700 billion–our national annual budget is currently about $3 trillion.  Nearly a third of our national budget for a massive bailout of stupid financial decisions?  Also, the big news today is about the big three auto makers here in the United States lobbying Congress and the President to take action and come to their rescue.  They are requesting up to $25 billion in government aid to avoid a failing domestic auto industry.  I thought the United States won this ideological battle with the Soviet Union and other communist regimes–central planning and government ownership does not work. I guess someone forgot to tell our own citizens that we “won” this ideological battle.

However, with the election of Barack Obama we’re seeing a resurgence in demands for government help.  Not the Constitutional help we’re used to like national defense, but help from our own dumb choices.  When will people return to what made this country what it is today?  Taking responsibility and building their own future without an inefficient and soulless government there to redistribute assets and catch us when we fall. After all, there is always a price for government intervention. Always.

I voted for Proposition 8. I voted for Proposition 22 in 2000 to make marriage between a man and a woman. Please do not commit this atrocity of governmental bullying and overturn Proposition 8.

If you do, you show the utmost disrespect to the will of the people, to morality, to our country, and to yourselves. You will be nothing more than spoiled, out of touch ideologues forcing your values on your helpless constituency.

Interesting commentary with lots of poll data about why American Jews instinctively vote with the Left, despite the seemingly obvious danger in which that places the state of Israel. The key paragraph:

To the question, ‘Would you support or oppose the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons,’ 47% of Jews said they’d oppose America moving to save Israel from nuclear annihilation, 42% would support it, and 11% were unsure.

This is perhaps the clearest indication that a significant segment of the Jewish community either doesn’t give a damn about Israel or is delusional.

A few personal anecdotes (for whatever they’re worth):

I went to high school with many ethnic Jews (about 22% of my school in fact) and while many brought unleavened bread to lunch during passover week, most could not tell me what passover was all about. They knew the ethnic side of the story, at least the food part of the deal, as many, understandably, complained the entire week - but the ones I spoke to did not know its history. Being an evangelical Christian, I knew all about the lamb’s blood on the door post and the angel of death “passing over” these homes on the eve of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, but most thought I was crazy and just looked at me with blank stares as if to say: “Lamb’s blood? Whatever man, I just know I have to eat bad food during this week.” Some even commented that I was dead wrong. “Passover had nothing to do with that,” they said.

In graduate school I encountered a woman of Jewish heritage who told me that the only reason the United States protects the state of Israel is because the Christian fundamentalists in this country believe that Jesus Christ will return to the temple mount to usher in the end times (as if somehow Christ couldn’t descend from heaven, return to Israel, rebuild the temple, and establish his kingdom on earth without it being in the hands of the Jews or without the United States’ support). She seemed to believe that supporting the state of Israel equated to ushering in a Christ-centered end times, rather than simply supporting the Jewish state’s right to exist. As she didn’t believe in Christ, then she couldn’t support Israel. I found her reasoning rather puzzling. While she can certainly believe whatever she wants about the end times and Jesus Christ, she seemed to believe that the state of Israel was a Christian thing and should not be of Jewish concern.

I think most American Jews share this sentiment. They are ethnic Jews only. They eat unleavened bread, they don’t eat pork, they send their children to Hebrew school to learn the language, they throw bar/bat mitzvahs for their 13 year-olds, but they generally aren’t religious Jews and they largely, surprisingly, do not seem to care about the state of Israel. Or as the article stated, maybe they do care and it’s just not their top priority or they’re delusional.

A hero of mine, my all time favorite talk radio host (now turned documentary film maker), John Ziegler, has just posted footage from his upcoming film entitled “Media Malpractice… How Obama Got Elected.” The official webpage can be found here. Please check out this terrifying video/teaser/trailer.

When we think of Islamist terrorists, doesn’t our reaction frequently boil down to “hey, what’s their problem? Why don’t they just ‘get democracy,’ move into the 21st Century, leave behind all this primitive religious fervor, and quit killing people?”

Basically: what makes them think there’s something worth fighting over?

The idea that Islamist terrorists don’t have something “worth fighting over” is founded on secular assumptions - that no religion is better than another, or at least that no religion is worth spending your entire life’s energy trying to defend and promote. It is the ultimate arrogance, condescension, and insult to their value as human beings to dismissively say to them that what they believe in is not worth fighting for. If this extreme form of Islam is true (as they believe it is), that we are infidels, that it is their God-given duty to convert or destroy us, then it certainly is worth fighting for. Our very act of dismissal provides fuel for their argument that secular western society is ignorant, relativistic, and has no direction but downward.

The problem is not that these “pre-modern” “savages” have yet to be “enlightened” by the modern (or post-modern) secular western world, or that their impoverished conditions have caused them to lash out at our success. The problem is that their worldview is dangerous, wrong, and evil.

No secular means or democratic solution is going to weaken their resolve. And no watered down “can’t we all just get along” line of diplomatic reasoning will ever have any impact on such zealous individuals.

That’s the bumper-sticker I want!

This is relatively old news, but gross misconceptions about the Iraq War continue to pervade the public discourse (primarily on the left, although in fairness the right doesn’t appear to know how to counter the misconceptions effectively). Plus, during the election I believe that it was an area where McCain allowed himself to be tied to President Bush unnecessarily, thus benefiting Obama.

It appears to me that the mantra “Bush lied, people died” has become the common wisdom on the Left and has become the main argument for withdrawing troops immediately from the region. (Note:what passes for truth on the Left generally amounts to a pithy statement about a complicated issue that can fit onto a bumper sticker).

“Bush lied…”

Webster’s dictionary defines a lie as

an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive.

Thus, in order for the “Bush lied” part of the maxim to be true, one of two things must be true:

1. Bush knew absolutely that Saddam did not have WMD

2. Bush believed it highly likely that Saddam did not have WMD

Now, the judgment that Saddam had WMD hung on several points (at least those that are unclassified):

1. The human source known as Curveball, an Iraqi who claimed (falsely as it turns out) to have inside knowledge of Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons operations. His primary claim was that Saddam had reconstituted his chemical/biological weapons program via mobile facilities.

2. Satellite photos that indicated the presence of heavy-duty flatbed trucks, forklifts (necessary for transporting chemical weapons) and decontamination trailers (in case of emergency) at Al-Musayib, known prior to Operation Desert Storm to have been a chemical weapons facility.

3.The fact that the intelligence community had failed to accurately assess Saddam’s chemical, biological and nuclear programs (which proved to be extensive) prior to the Persian Gulf War in 1991. As the intelligence community had failed to accurately assess his weapons programs previously, analysts overcompensated and made leaps of faith that should not have been made.

4. Saddam relied on various deception campaigns (including the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors). He wanted the West to believe that he had WMD. Obviously at the time, the West did not know that they were deception campaigns, but hindsight is 20/20. (Note: the motive for these deception campaigns is still unclear. In the collective Western mind it makes no sense to fake that you have WMD when the world’s superpower says that it will invade your country and kill you if you have WMD, but clearly Saddam’s decision-making calculus was different. He called our bluff, thinking we would not invade, and it didn’t work out in his favor. We misread him and he misread us. Most believe that Saddam wanted the West to believe he had WMD because he wanted Iran (and his own people) to believe that he had WMD as a deterrent to a threat on his power and as a status symbol.)

None of this is meant to excuse the US Intelligence Community or President Bush from relying on false intelligence reports to invade Iraq in 2003. The intelligence community (and the intelligence communities of nearly every other country in the world) simply blew it. The “slam dunk” clanged embarrassingly off the back of the rim. However, relying on the experts who turned out to be wrong does not amount to “Bush lied.” Ultimately, it is the President who makes decisions, so the responsibility does lie as his feet, but it does not amount to lying as he had no reason to believe that his experts (and those of all his allies) were wrong. His experts simply got it wrong. [As an aside, this amounts to an intelligence error - incorrectly assessing something to be true when it is false - and not an intelligence failure - failing to adequately warn or prepare the executive for a situation that occurred.] Similar to when FDR’s experts failed to alert him to the possibility of a Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, when Truman’s experts failed to anticipate that the Chinese would intervene on behalf of North Korea, or when Kennedy’s experts told him, two days prior to the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, that the Soviets would never attempt to place missiles in Cuba. (Note that all three examples are of Democratic administrations, two of which caused mass casualties and one brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, yet these three presidents are never reviled as “the worst President ever.”  On the contrary, the first two are widely considered to be in the top ten and JFK is held up by the liberal establishment as a great man and wonderful leader, an agent of change if you will.)

Some make the argument that the Bush administration pressured the intelligence community into giving them the answer they wanted to hear, namely that Saddam had WMD. This is a joke.

1.) This would also mean that the intelligence communities of Britain, France, Germany, and Israel (among others) were also pressured to provide “the right answer” to the Bush administration. Seeing as they did not want the US to invade Iraq (and at least Britain provided troops as well), why would they do that? You’d have to believe in really large conspiracy theories (such as “blood for oil” to believe this.

2.) What respectable person in their right mind knowingly distorts the truth simply because they are nagged about it? Just because a question is asked often doesn’t mean that the answer should change if the truth remains the same. (eg. is Churchill dead? Yes. Is Churchill dead? Yes. Is Churchill dead? Yes. Is Churchill dead? No, he’s actually living in my attic.) It’s absurd. Analysts aren’t teenagers at a party bowing to peer pressure to smoke pot, they’re professionals who make these sorts of difficult judgments for a living. Do they have their own biases? Certainly. Do they personally favor policy decisions over others? I’m sure they do. But do they deliberately distort the truth because the President asks them if they’re sure about a particular issue? No.

Other issues to address:

“The war is unjust…”

While there are additional reasons, for the basic reason that it’s never morally wrong to depose of an authoritarian leader who slaughters his own people, I believe the Iraq War is just. Now, one can make the argument that the Iraq War is imprudent, but making the argument that God’s idea of justice would somehow side with Saddam is laughable.

“The US should withdrawal immediately…”

The American people generally did not turn against the war until it realized that it would not be an easy victory and that if Saddam didn’t have WMD, they didn’t know why we were fighting it (a communication/leadership failure on the part of the administration). Well, the US should not withdraw troops immediately simply because the war is difficult or because the President relied on faulty intelligence. The reason the US invaded Iraq was to depose of Saddam Hussein who (mistakenly) was believed to have WMD that not only would have destabilized the region, but that he would give (or threaten to give) to non-state actors to use against the United States. Now, as it turns out, that judgment was incorrect; however, now that we’ve deposed Saddam, it would be morally unethical to just up and leave because its easier for us to do it that way. The fact that we have to stay and clean up the mess has nothing to do with the fact that Saddam didn’t have WMD.

Consider a parable: The local police break down the door of a house in the neighborhood, storm into the residence and kill the husband/father as he tries to escape, setting the house ablaze in the process. The police were after the man because they believed that he was the ringleader of a drug cartel. This turned out to be false upon subsequent analysis, but it was discovered that the husband/father had not only beaten his wife over a period of twenty-five years, but that he had also sexually abused their children, their neighbor’s children and had threatened all those in the neighborhood with violence, even killing some in order to establish his authority. Legally, the actions of the police were probably wrong as their judgment (or probable cause) for obtaining the warrant was incorrect. But morally, it’s hard to fault the police as they did away with a horrible man. Nonetheless, the police cannot simply leave the wife and children to fend for themselves because the man they killed (while deplorable) was not the ringleader of the drug cartel as they had initially suspected. That would be morally reprehensible. The right thing to do is for the police to buy the family a new home and seek counseling for the wife and the children while ensuring that the neighborhood is safe and stable enough to avoid becoming a target of nearby neighborhood gangs.

“It wasn’t prudent for the US to invade Iraq…”

Now, that’s an argument with some merit that should be discussed in detail by the American public and by the country’s leaders. Most would agree that this question, too, has nothing to do with whether or not troops should remain in Iraq until the situation is fixed. (If you accidentally break a window under false pretenses, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay to fix the window.) Sadly, this is not the debate that rages in our society today, nor is it the debate that the presidential candidates had on the campaign trail or during the debates. Essentially, the debates devolved to:

Obama: the war was a mistake (for unspecified reasons - presumably either because Bush lied or because it was a war for oil or because Americans are capitalists and capitalists are always imperialists or cynically because it was the message that won him the primary) and we should withdraw immediately, apologizing to anyone within earshot that we’re a terrible nation filled with mean-spirited, angry, bitter people who can’t speak languages other than English.

McCain: the war was not a mistake, because the Iraqi people are now free. It was going poorly until I supported the surge. We should stay there until the job is finished. (However, this completely bypasses what makes Americans the most upset: we entered the war based on faulty intelligence.)

The winning debate answer for McCain: you’re right, we relied on faulty intelligence to invade Iraq (thereby distancing himself from Bush) and that was a mistake [although as an aside, one could make other arguments to support an invasion of Iraq - violating UN resolutions, etc]; however, this does not change the fact that we need to win the war now that it has begun. However, this proves (as does 9/11 and other intelligence gaffes of the past twenty years) that our intelligence system needs to be reformed. Namely, we need to place more emphasis on human intelligence. As Americans, we’ve grown spoiled, thinking that we can keep peace and solve all problems without getting our hands dirty by engaging in the shadowy world of espionage. Some have gotten intellectually lazy, relying on wishful-thinking that the United Nations, a morally bankrupt, feckless organization that can’t and often doesn’t enforce its own resolutions, is the answer to all the world’s problems. Nevertheless, Bin Laden & Co. now view Iraq as the primary front against the free world and we must view it that way as well. We cannot leave, thus handing the war to the terrorists, simply because it did not go as smoothly as we planned and simply because it was not fought properly from the outset. We are a united country today because Lincoln refused to allow the South to secede, despite the fact that he mishandled the war (by appointing feckless generals like McClellan) for the first three years.

In sum: I am not advocating that war should never be questioned. But when questioned, it must be done so responsibly (not done so to undermine a particular policy while US troops are in the field) and the debate must focus on the right questions. “Bush lied, people died” is a ridiculous statement made by the ignorant and intellectually bereft who place a political party and ideology above their country’s best interests. It misinforms the (already ill-informed) American populace and distracts from the necessary debate: was it prudent for the US to use force (as opposed to a combination of other tools of tradecraft) to contain Saddam even if turned out that he had WMD?