Ten News Items that Caught My Eye Today

 

Dinner PartySometime, when I sit down at my desk and think, “It’s a brand new day, what should I write about on Ricochet? I get a touch of overwhelm. There are so many stories in the news that seem worthy of a good discussion on Ricochet, but I only get to choose one. Or maybe two, max, on days when the Member Feed is slow and our contributors are unusually quiet. (I don’t like it when I see my own name all over the Main Feed; it begins to look like “The Claire Show,” which would be great in principle, if that’s what Ricochet was supposed to be, but it’s not.)

Basically, these stories caught my eye this morning. They prompted me to think, “I wish one of our members would write a great post about this on the Member Feed. I’d love to read that.”

I offer them with little editorializing — just a comment or two if I felt moved. I hope you’ll do the rest:

1) When you’ve lost David Brooks, you’ve lost coastal America. The New York Times’ unthreatening face of conservatism has written an excoriating column about our strategy toward ISIS titled, When ISIS Rapists Win:

So far the response to ISIS has been pathetic. The U.S. pledged $500 million to train and equip Syrian moderates, hoping to create 15,000 fighters. After three years we turned out a grand total of 60 fighters, of whom a third were immediately captured.

It’s time to stop underestimating this force as some group of self-discrediting madmen. ISIS is a moral and political threat to the fragile and ugly stability that exists in what’s left in the Middle East. ISIS will thrive and spread its ideas for as long as it has its land.

We are looking into a future with a resurgent Iran, a contagious ISIS and a collapsing state order. If this isn’t a cause for alarm and reappraisal, I don’t know what is.

Needless to say, I agree.

2) Simon Johnson, former chief of the IMF, believes The US Still Runs the World:

Every decade, important people predict the end of American power. And there are reasons to be concerned – particularly when some US politicians refuse to acknowledge the nature of America’s global role. For example, the US built the world’s trading and monetary system 70 years ago, but now Republicans in Congress refuse to support change at the IMF – including sensible reforms that almost all other countries favor.

Still, it is the US that is currently leading the push for freer trade across the Pacific and a substantial reduction in barriers to trade with Europe. If America gets the rules right – favoring ordinary citizens, rather than footloose corporations – its trade initiatives will make a major contribution to global growth and its own prosperity.

Likewise, in terms of monetary policy, the major issue for the world over the next year is when and how much the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. As US monetary officials gather for their annual Jackson Hole conclave, they will consider myriad relevant dimensions of the global economy. But the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee will move interest rates based almost entirely on its collective read of US economic circumstances. Once again, the rest of the world will react to what the US does.

What do you think: Does the US still run the world? Arguments for? Against?

3) Paula Dwyer, in Bloomberg, deplores Republicans Misguided China-Bashing:

China’s mid-August yuan devaluation has also confounded the Republican field. The candidates say they want China to follow free-market principles, yet they accused China of currency manipulation when it allowed the market to play a larger role in determining the yuan’s exchange rate. When the yuan kept falling, and China sold dollars to prop it up, the Republicans (and some Democrats) accused China of dumping Treasuries to undermine the U.S. economy. It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t policy.

China-bashing isn’t a novel campaign strategy. As Bloomberg’s Mike Dorning points out in an article Friday, we’ve seen this movie before. Ronald Reagan in 1980 condemned his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, for normalizing relations with China and abandoning Taiwan. As president, Reagan never reopened the Taiwan embassy. Bill Clinton campaigned in 1992 against doing business with the “butchers of Beijing” before negotiating China’s entry into the World Trade Organization as president.

Even candidate Obama played the China card when he accused President George W. Bush of being a “patsy” for not punishing China for manipulating its currency. In seven years as president, Obama has never formally accused China of currency manipulation. Campaign bluster aside, it’s unlikely that a President Christie, Rubio, Trump or Walker would, either.

Fair categorization of the Republican candidates’ positions, in your view? What’s she missing, if not?

4) In Commentary, Henry R. Nau tries to explain How Restraint Leads to War:

Why does violence escalate and war often follow? One line of argument says it’s the result of the United States’ acting too ambitiously and aggressively, as some believe it did in Iraq. Obama, among other critics, claimed that President George W. Bush pushed a worldwide freedom agenda and relied too heavily on military force to achieve it. Bush provoked terrorists and other rivals, and they pushed back, thus increasing conflict.

But another line of argument might be this: War happens when the United States is not ambitious or aggressive enough, and more aggressive nations respond by stepping up and attacking the interests of the United States and its allies because there is no one to prevent them from doing so. …

… Why does America cycle between excessive ambition and excessive restraint, always followed by new attacks, which precipitate a much bigger war than might have been necessary earlier? The reasons are many, and some, at least, lie deep in America’s foreign-policy traditions.

Since its origins, America has thought about its approach to the world in three principled ways. Thomas Jefferson introduced the internationalist way, the ambition that America could not only change domestic politics from monarchy to republicanism but also world politics from war to peaceable trade and diplomacy. Alexander Hamilton championed the realist way, advocating national power, alliances, and territorial filibusters to defend the new nation’s western borders. And George Washington advocated the nationalist (in extreme form, isolationist) way, prioritizing independence and warning against both ambition and alliances in foreign affairs. …

… It is time for a fourth approach. What can be done about this cycle? There is no quick fix. But over the longer run, there is another approach that might improve the American debate and from time to time anchor America’s role in the world, moderating the tendency toward cycling.

… In summary, pursue democracy, but primarily where it counts the most: on the borders of existing free countries. Be willing to use force to make sure the adversary takes negotiations seriously, but also be willing to compromise, because military power is a means and not an end. And advocate democracy, but a democracy of choice and varying traditions that preserves national sovereignty and nurtures global civil society, not centralized international bureaucracies. Above all, recognize that wars result when America is too ambitious and when America is too restrained.

So, two questions: Can anyone find counter-examples of his thesis? If you’re persuaded by it, how might you apply it in a specific case that the author does not discuss in this article? One, say, that the next president is highly likely to confront?

5) Refugee death scenes are the West’s moral failure, argues Brooklyn Middleton in al Arabiya:

In late June 2014, the United Nations reported that the world was facing the worst refugee crisis since World War II. A calamity, the U.N. noted, caused mostly by the bloody conflict in Syria. According to U.N. figures, in 2014, at least 219,000 refugees and migrants attempted to reach Europe; approximately 3,500 of those people died or vanished.

This year the number of people attempting to do the same swelled to at least 300,000. Already in 2015, 2,500 people have died or remain unaccounted for. Boarding a boat with your children by your side – in full awareness the likeliness of death is extremely high – is tantamount to jumping out of a building engulfed in flames to avoid being burned alive. Without attempting to provide any sustainable solutions, the West and the Arab world are, unconscionably, telling thousands they should not attempt to flee and should instead burn to death. For the international community, especially the United States, to ignore the plight of asylum seekers as they’ve ignored the plight of trapped civilians in Syria would be yet another stunning failure.

At what point does the West attempt to directly aid Syrian civilins? If not when the death toll skyrockets to 320,000 nor when chlorine attacks continue unabated, then perhaps when those who have remarkably survived such barbarity attempt to flee to safety. Last month, Al Monitor reported that by September the United States, “will have accepted 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement.” Meanwhile, according to UNHCR reports, 1,938,999 registered Syrian refugees remain in Turkey, another 1,113,941 in Lebanon (though official registrations were halted in May) – and over half a million refugees have fled to Jordan. The fact that the U.S. has failed to find a more efficient and timely approach to resettling Syrian families underscores DC’s failure to confront the humanitarian toll of the conflict. At the same time, some Arab states have also failed to shoulder the responsibility; in December 2014 an Amnesty International Report revealed that Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had collectively resettled 0 Syrian families …

… The failure to prevent thousands of Syrians, who miraculously escaped the murderous Assad regime, from drowning or suffocating to death, is a moral failure of the greatest proportions. Every effort must be made to dismantle human trafficking networks whose leaders prey and profit on the utterly vulnerable. At the same time, refugees must not be forced to resort to such horrendously dangerous measures nor be told to stay in their violence-wrecked country and burn to death.

Your thoughts?

6) Brendon Bordelon at NRO tells us that Biden Buzz Fizzles at DNC Summer Meeting. “Most DNC delegates,” he writes, weren’t even aware of Draft Biden’s presence at the meeting.” It gets worse for Biden: I didn’t even realize he had a buzz in the first place. Did you?

7) Benedict Carey of The New York Times reveals: Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed, Study Says. Before you say, “That’s so obvious I won’t even bother to read it,” check out the details:

[A] painstaking yearslong effort to reproduce 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals has found that more than half [my emphasis] of the findings did not hold up when retested.

More than half. As in, every report you read about an interesting new finding in psychology is more likely than not to be nonsense. At what point will we find these in the pages of the tabloid press, right below “Your weekly horoscope?”

8)  I think S. E. Cupp as good as nails it on Town Hall when she writes, Blame Liberals for the Rise of Donald Trump:

 I have a different explanation for ascendant Trumpism. It isn’t the result of conservatism but of liberalism. Thanks to unrelenting demands by the left for increasingly preposterous levels of political correctness over the past decade, people are simply fed up. Trump survives — nay, thrives! — because he is seen as the antidote, bravely and unimpeachably standing athwart political correctness.

The new era of liberal political correctness — in which colleges designate “free speech zones,” words like “American” and “mother” are considered discriminatory, and children are suspended from school for firing make-believe weapons — has reached critical mass. If not for the loony sensitivities foisted upon us by the left, someone like Trump would be immediately dismissed as unprofessional and unserious, an incoherent blurter. Instead, he’s the equally extreme response to extreme correctness — if everything is offensive in Liberalville, then nothing will be offensive in Trumpland.

It’s all absurd, of course. Trump says things that are unequivocally offensive, and regularly. But conservatives (and even comedians) have reached their limit on political correctness. And so Trump supporters will justify nearly everything he says, no matter how bizarre or unbecoming.

That’s what I said a few days ago; so technically, you heard it here, first.

9) Then again, Ross Douhat is also on to something, and so is The New York Times editor who wrote this headline: Donald Trump: Traitor to His Class:

So far he’s running against the Republican establishment in a more profound way than the Tea Party, challenging not just deviations from official conservative principle but the entire post-Reagan conservative matrix. He can wax right wing on immigration one moment and promise to tax hedge fund managers the next. He’ll attack political correctness and then pledge to protect entitlements. He can sound like Pat Buchanan on trade and Bernie Sanders on health care. He regularly attacks the entire Iraq misadventure, in its Bush-era and Obama-era manifestations alike, in a way that neither mainstream Republicans nor Hillary Clinton can plausibly manage.

I can’t see the GOP nominating Trump. He probably doesn’t need them, anyway. His appeal transcends party, much like Sanders’.

And he’s coming at all these issues, crucially, from a vantage point of privilege — which his critics keep highlighting as though it discredits him, when in reality it lends his populism a deeper credibility. He’s the Acela Corridor billionaire (albeit tackier than most) who promises to reveal what the elites are really up to, the crony capitalist who can tell you just how corrupt D.C. really is, the financier who’ll tell you that high finance can afford higher taxes. It’s precisely because he isn’t a blue collar outsider that he may seem like a credible change agent: Because he knows Wall Street, and because he doesn’t need its money to campaign, it seems like he could actually fight his fellow elites and win.

He won’t, of course, but it matters a great deal how he loses. In a healthy two-party system, the G.O.P. would treat Trump’s strange success as evidence that the party’s basic orientation may need to change substantially, so that it looks less like a tool of moneyed interests and more like a vehicle for middle American discontent.

In an unhealthy system, the kind I suspect we inhabit, the Republicans will find a way to crush Trump without adapting to his message. In which case the pressure the Donald has tapped will continue to build — and when it bursts, the G.O.P. as we know it may go with it.

Agree with his argument? Do you agree that Republicans seem poised to find a way to crush Trump without adapting to his message? And if so, reckon it will take the GOP down permanently?

10) Finally, at Reason, Don Bailey asks an interesting question: not “Why are there so few jobs,” but “Why are There Any Jobs Still Left” — at all?

The advance of massively more productive machinery has clearly not led to mass unemployment. The number of people employed in advanced economies has never been higher. For example, since 1950 the number of Americans employed has nearly tripled, rising from about 58 million to nearly 149 million today. During that time the proportion of adults in the civilian workforce rose from 55 percent in 1950 to peak at 65 percent during the dot-com boom in 2000. The ratio has now dropped to 59 percent, but the lower rate is widely understood to reflect the fallout from the Great Recession, Baby Boomer cohort retirements, and younger individuals spending more time in school.

Given this history, why are so many professors, pundits, and politicians worried that this time it’s different? That automation, chiefly ever more effective and productive information technologies, will soon produce vast unemployment? …  while machines have eliminated millions of jobs, they have also conjured into existence many more. Even better, living standards dramatically improved as the technological destruction of old jobs proceeded.

How?

First, technology substitutes for labor, thus raising productivity and lowering prices. …

Second, the sectors that are the sources of innovation expand, boosting the demand for labor. …

Third, technology improves outcomes in areas such as medicine, leading to increased demand for labor in those areas. …

Fourth, technology lowers the cost of production and prices, enabling people to shift their spending to other goods and services, thus boosting demand for labor in those areas. …

As the MIT economist David Autor has shown, automation has taken over a lot of the routine physical and intellectual tasks that once were done by middle-income workers. This process has resulted in a more polarized economy, where highly skilled workers in such fields as infotech and biotech are richly rewarded while a greater proportion of the workforce toil at relatively lower-paying service jobs. Will this continue?

Autor doubts it, because he foresees a rising demand for services, involving non-routine tasks in which workers have a comparative advantage over machines—ones requiring interpersonal interaction, flexibility, adaptability, and problem-solving. Work, he argues, is evolving away from assembly-line rigidity and back toward a more pre-industrial paradigm populated by “new artisans.” Perhaps more chefs will prepare fine meals in the homes of clients, dramatists devise elaborate virtual environments as entertainment, tailors create one-of-kind bespoke garments. Who the hell knows?

Who the hell knows, indeed? But if his argument is correct, what will the social effects of this “more polarized economy” be? Might we be seeing them already?

Anyway, if anyone wants to comment on these items, I’d love to see a sensible discussion of any or all of them on the Member Feed.

Take it away, Ricochet. As you see, the table’s set. Sit down! I’ll just be in the kitchen watching the pasta to be sure it doesn’t boil over. Dinner will be ready as soon as you get the conversation started. Anyone’s drink need freshening up?

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  1. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Respectfully disagree with point about S.E. Cupp’s.

    The left is aligned against Judaeo Christian values and individual liberty, this isn’t news. The left has recently blatantly extended their war on liberty and individualism further into free speech and expression. The tactic and/or battlefield is new, but the cause predates all of us on Ricochet. This did not give rise to Donald Trump.

    Donald Trump has a wide open field to operate because we’v been told by McConnell, Cornyn, McCain, Graham, Boehner, P. Sessions, et al that all we had to do was give them the House (done), give them the Senate (done) and they would do everything in their power to stop Obama’s agenda. They got the trust, the votes, and shredded the promises.

    That combined with the relentless pursuit to ensure illegal immigrants suppress wages is what opened the door to Donald Trump. I know republicans desperately do not want to think their flaccid performance has anything to do with the rise of Trump, but it isn’t so.

    • #1
  2. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    This is a very nice post. You dug up some articles most of us may not previously have reviewed.

    • #2
  3. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    Claire Berlinski, Ed. I don’t like it when I see my own name all over the Main Feed; it begins to look like “The Claire Show,” which would be great in principle, if that’s what Ricochet was supposed to be, but it’s not.

    Actually there’s something comforting knowing that Claire is on the job. :)

    I could comment on all ten items but let me restrain myself to 1 & 4.

    I’m glad I’m not the only one who was emotionally shaken by that sex slavery story.  I don’t always agree with Brooks, but kudos.

    Someone should tally up the number of deaths, enslavement, displacement since Obama abandoned middle east and compare it to the Bush 43 years.  I bet Bush 43 comes out smelling much better, and at least we had stability and working toward the Arab spring.  right now we have chaos and atrocities.

    As to years of restraint while engagement I would say the 1950s where we didn’t get into any major wars and yet had a strong anti Soviet policy.  Actually same thing for the Reagan/Bush 41 years.

    • #3
  4. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    BrentB67

    Donald Trump has a wide open field to operate because we’v been told by McConnell, Cornyn, McCain, Graham, Boehner, P. Sessions, et al that all we had to do was give them the House (done), give them the Senate (done) and they would do everything in their power to stop Obama’s agenda. They got the trust, the votes, and shredded the promises.

    But Brent, they have stopped Obama’s agenda.  They just can’t over ride a veto to push back what he has already passed through.

    • #4
  5. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: We are looking into a future with a resurgent Iran, a contagious ISIS and a collapsing state order. If this isn’t a cause for alarm and reappraisal, I don’t know what is.

    Amazingly it took him only seven years to discover a pant crease, no matter how neat, is not in fact a good predictor for presidential caliber.

    • #5
  6. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    Claire, for another (I know, I know) Donald Trump article you can also see this from The Weekly Standard by Julius Krein. As an infamous defender of Trump voters on Ricochet, I recommend it highly.

    It’s also titled “Traitor to His Class” funnily enough, and it explains more clearly and civilly the Trump phenomenon from the point of view of his supporters than those of us trying to defend those supporters have been able to on our own.

    • #6
  7. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Manny:

    Donald Trump has a wide open field to operate because we’v been told by McConnell, Cornyn, McCain, Graham, Boehner, P. Sessions, et al that all we had to do was give them the House (done), give them the Senate (done) and they would do everything in their power to stop Obama’s agenda. They got the trust, the votes, and shredded the promises.

    But Brent, they have stopped Obama’s agenda. They just can’t over ride a veto to push back what he has already passed through.

    What is he lacking? There are many tools to stop what has already been done.

    • #7
  8. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    BrentB67

    Manny:

    Donald Trump has a wide open field to operate because we’v been told by McConnell, Cornyn, McCain, Graham, Boehner, P. Sessions, et al that all we had to do was give them the House (done), give them the Senate (done) and they would do everything in their power to stop Obama’s agenda. They got the trust, the votes, and shredded the promises.

    But Brent, they have stopped Obama’s agenda. They just can’t over ride a veto to push back what he has already passed through.

    What is he lacking? There are many tools to stop what has already been done.

    Such as?

    • #8
  9. St. Salieri Member
    St. Salieri
    @

    Thank you.  This is why I came back to Ricochet after much hemming and hawing.  You set forth a bounty of good things to think about (well, not all good things in of themselves), but I think you know what I mean, good and intelligent ways to think about things good and bad.  Where else will one find such a thoughtful and diverse set of perspectives within the conservative spectrum; and where else could one find such a succinct digest of important ideas?  No where.

    • #9
  10. Concretevol Thatcher
    Concretevol
    @Concretevol

    #10. Short answer…yes.  Automation replaces people primarily in manufacturing but many times other jobs spring up as support for the increase in productivity etc.  The crucial question for the individual is, are you willing to do the jobs that are available or possibly move where the jobs are?

    • #10
  11. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Manny:

    :

    Donald Trump has a wide open field to operate because we’v been told by McConnell, Cornyn, McCain, Graham, Boehner, P. Sessions, et al that all we had to do was give them the House (done), give them the Senate (done) and they would do everything in their power to stop Obama’s agenda. They got the trust, the votes, and shredded the promises.

    But Brent, they have stopped Obama’s agenda. They just can’t over ride a veto to push back what he has already passed through.

    What is he lacking? There are many tools to stop what has already been done.

    Such as?

    The Constitution specifically vests the power of taxing, spending, and impeachment with Congress. To date the aforementioned characters have refused to use any of those to curtail this administration. That they haven’t done so opens room for reasonable debate if those are correct courses of action.

    What isn’t debatable is their constant pledges to use every means available to stop Obama and his agenda. If they never had any intention of doing so they should have said that in the campaign. They should not be surprised that their lack of candor has given rise to siginficant movement with a questionable leader in front of it that could cause them many problems.

    • #11
  12. Johnny Dubya Inactive
    Johnny Dubya
    @JohnnyDubya

    I’m disappointed that the Nicki Minaj smackdown of Miley Cyrus at the VMAs didn’t make your list.

    • #12
  13. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Johnny Dubya:I’m disappointed that the Nicki Minaj smackdown of Miley Cyrus at the VMAs didn’t make your list.

    I am confident we will have an entire post dedicated to the events of last evening. Do you think we should tag it under Style and Fashion or 21st Century Musical Interpretation?

    • #13
  14. Freesmith Member
    Freesmith
    @

    Thanks for the information in the al Arabiya article. I found it fascinating.

    Did it mention how many Syrian asylees China, Israel, Japan or South Korea have absorbed? That would be interesting to know – if you believe that the world, especially the most prosperous parts of it, have to pull together to solve this problem.

    Also interesting is that so many Gulf States have taken in zero Syrian refugees. This opens an opportunity for America: Only ten commercial airliners would be necessary to ship all of the 2,000 Syrian refugees we’ve foolishly accepted to Qatar, where they will fit into the society much easier.

    Win-win.

    • #14
  15. david foster Member
    david foster
    @DavidFoster

    #10…it is not at all obvious that today’s robotics, artificial intelligence, etc, represent a radical upward break on the productivity-improvement line, as opposed to simply a continuation of a long-term trend.  Consider:

    *A late-1700s Spinning Jenny, operated by hand or foot, replaced 8+ human spinners.  Power spinning and weaving went way beyond this ratio.

    *Circa 1900-1930, recorded music replaced thousands of local bands and orchestras

    *Dial telephony replaced hundreds of thousands of operators

    *There were once hundreds of thousands of elevator operators; now, all gone

    *Circa 1955-1975, mainframe computers took a big bite out of the massive clerical organizations doing billing, payroll, etc

    *Numerically-controlled machine tools, common by the mid-1970s, replaced skilled machinists in large numbers

    *Automated teller machines became common in the 1980s

    And inspection of the labor-productivity graphs over multiple decades does not seem to support the idea of a radical upward break

    • #15
  16. Buster Chops Inactive
    Buster Chops
    @BusterChops

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: Member Freed.

    Intentional?

    • #16
  17. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Buster Chops:

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: Member Freed.

    Intentional?

    Accidental and now fixed, thank you.

    • #17
  18. John Hendrix Thatcher
    John Hendrix
    @JohnHendrix

    Claire, I particularly liked this post because as I was reading it, it became, at least for me, like a news feed but better; a digest of posts that were profitable reading in their own right.

    Also significant, at least for me, is that it included posts that I wasn’t likely to encounter own my own.

    Thank you, Claire.

    • #18
  19. David Knights Member
    David Knights
    @DavidKnights

    Claire,

    Put a wooden spoon across the top of the pot to keep the pasta from boiling over.

    • #19
  20. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    BrentB67

    Manny:

    :

    Donald Trump has a wide open field to operate because we’v been told by McConnell, Cornyn, McCain, Graham, Boehner, P. Sessions, et al that all we had to do was give them the House (done), give them the Senate (done) and they would do everything in their power to stop Obama’s agenda. They got the trust, the votes, and shredded the promises.

    But Brent, they have stopped Obama’s agenda. They just can’t over ride a veto to push back what he has already passed through.

    What is he lacking? There are many tools to stop what has already been done.

    Such as?

    The Constitution specifically vests the power of taxing, spending, and impeachment with Congress. To date the aforementioned characters have refused to use any of those to curtail this administration. That they haven’t done so opens room for reasonable debate if those are correct courses of action.

    Have you ever seen Congress ever stop something purely by eliminating funding without a vote?  The only thing I can ever think of was the funding stream for the Vietnam War, and that didn’t come as a change of party take over, and it would have easily passed a vote.  I don’t know if it is wise to stop spending streams every time Congress changes hands.  And maybe I’m wrong but I don’t recall McConnell and Baehner ever promising to stop funding line items without a vote.

    • #20
  21. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    #7: Part of the problem is that research doesn’t get replicated enough. There’s so damned much published, and funding for replication…. not happening. It’s not just psychology. Hard science has problems, too, more often suppressio veri (and how in the world can you try to replicate unpublished research) than suggest falsi, though that happens too, for example, by not publishing negative results: “We tried this drug 20 times, we got the desired results once, so we’ll publish that one.”

    Even with honesty and good intentions, things happen and “nonsense” isn’t necessarily accurate.

    Methodological problems are very prevalent in psychology, and happen in hard science Published papers in all fields all to frequently don’t use statistics properly (or so I read, not my field.)

    That’s on top of the underlying reality: If you have a finding from a good study that’s methodologically valid, a 95% confidence interval (pretty common in social science IIUC; it means that there’s a 5% chance that your results are due to chance) implies that if you precisely repeat it (not always a trivial problem to do in any field, see cautionary tale below,) let alone one where you have to recruit volunteers) 20 times, one time will get the opposite results.

    Now for the cautionary tale.

    • #21
  22. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    I heard this back when I was in science school. It involved Karel Sláma, a Czechoslovak (yes, it was a long time ago) entomologist who studied the European bug Pyrrhochorus apteris.

     It matures in various stages. Well, when Dr. Sláma brought his bugs to Harvard, they wouldn’t mature. It turned out that back home, he’d been lining his bug dishes with filter paper, and at Harvard, somehow it had been switched to paper towels. Switch back to filter paper, growth back to normal.

     Like a good scientist, he tried to figure out why. It turned out that American paper towels, but not European or Japanese ones, had this effect… because the tree species used to make the American towels had sesquiterpene compounds that mimicked the bug hormones that coordinate maturation.

    We were given this story as an example of the importance of reading the Materials and Methods section of the paper carefully, and the potential difficulties that can arise in replicating research.

    • #22
  23. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Ontheleftcoast: Even with honesty and good intentions, things happen and “nonsense” isn’t necessarily accurate.

    It’s pretty close. “Replication” used to be considered one of the key principles of the scientific method — back before it was replaced by “grant-seeking.”

    • #23
  24. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    8,9: Cupp and Douthat should be read in the light of Victor Davis Hanson’s latest: it’s about immigration.

    Hanson concludes:

    It is alleged that Donald Trump is a demagogue who whips the ignorant up. Perhaps. But on matters of immigration he came late and often in antithesis to his own former positions. The truth is that the illegal-immigration lobby was its own worst enemy, its message couched in racism, illegality, untruth — and finally incoherence.  People tired of being called racists by racial chauvinists, of being dubbed insensitive by unfeeling opportunists, and of being called politically naive by political manipulators.

    If there were not a Donald Trump, he would likely have had to have been invented.

    Trump could not emerge from the Republican elite establishment (yes, the clichéd GOPe) because they for all practical purposes favor open borders. Not in what they say, but what they do and don’t do.

    They don’t do it because the big money in both parties is mostly going that way. Trump has the [CoC violation bleep] you money and has told the Party to get… lost. The interchange between John Yoo and Ann Coulter about birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment on the current flagship podcast is also pertinent.

    It was a bit disturbing, though. I mean, chicks with guns are hot, but Yoo didn’t need to be quite so enthusiastic about Coulter’s “elegance” on the shooting range.

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  25. Tom Riehl Member
    Tom Riehl
    @

    Manny:

     They got the trust, the votes, and shredded the promises.

    But Brent, they have stopped Obama’s agenda. They just can’t over ride a veto to push back what he has already passed through.

    A judge put a slight dint in amnesty, PP is still spending my money to kill children and sell their parts, Obamacare has full funding, Lois Lerner is not in jail, Neither Clinton is in jail, the border is more open than ever.  Congress’ cajones are missing in action.  All it took to shut down their promises was fear of the media’s focusing on the ludicrous idea of government shutdown, wherein about 10% of their nearly innumerable legions have a temporary pay discontinuity.  Only true conservatives like Cruz have the innards to challenge our current dictatorship, and they are sadly lonely.  The power inherent in control of the peoples’ purse is incontrovertible and unstoppable, if exercised.

    Trump and Cruz are essentially alone in their fight to save our country.  They are tired of “just can’t override”.  Cruz is the solution at this point, but if the electorate chooses Trump, I won’t be one of those fools who sits out the election because they didn’t get their way, the poor beleaguered darlings, them retire to their fainting couch.

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  26. Tom Riehl Member
    Tom Riehl
    @

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Ontheleftcoast: Even with honesty and good intentions, things happen and “nonsense” isn’t necessarily accurate.

    It’s pretty close. “Replication” used to be considered one of the key principles of the scientific method — back before it was replaced by “grant-seeking.”

    Peer review is supposed to capture the most egregious errors, at least.

    • #26
  27. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Concretevol:#10. Short answer…yes. Automation replaces people primarily in manufacturing but many times other jobs spring up as support for the increase in productivity etc. The crucial question for the individual is, are you willing to do the jobs that are available or possibly move where the jobs are?

    Great point.  Economists used to talk about the “cost disease of the service sector.”  Historically, it has been easier to increase productivity in manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and transportation, compared to services.  But, of course, people can switch jobs relatively quickly, so wages for people in different industries, of comparable talent and education, cannot diverge for long.  Thus, wage increases are less than the corresponding productivity increases.

    Now there have been important productivity improvements in services.  ATMs and bar code scanners are examples.  But overall, service job productivity has grown less than productivity in other areas.  In many service jobs, there’s a limit to the amount of improvement available.  In schools, for example, you still need one teacher for every 25-30 students.  Improved computer-based education might change this, but this far there has been relatively little impact in this particular area.

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  28. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Re #4:  I think that Walter Russell Meade’s four archetypes of US foreign policy (Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian) capture the truth better than Nau’s three (Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington).  Bill O’Grady has an excellent summary of Meade’s thesis here.

    The discussion is tricky, because Meade’s Wilsonians correspond to Nau’s Jefferson, and Meade’s Jeffersonians correspond to Nau’s Washington.

    I think that Rau’s thesis is correct — i.e. that US weakness abroad typically leads to more problems, and more wars, than US strength.

    The US entry into WWII might actually be a counter-example, though in retrospect I think that it turned out for the best.  From the 1870s through the 1930s, the Japanese fought several expansionist wars against Korea, China, and Russia.  These culminated in the 1930s with the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), an undeclared war with the USSR on the Mongolian border (1938-1939), and the invasion of French Indochina (1940).

    The US retaliated with strong action in July 1941, cutting off the supply of oil to Japan.  This made it imperative for Japan to either regain American oil supplies through diplomacy, which failed, or to seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies and the US-ruled Philippines (to protect its supply line to the Dutch East Indies).

    Arguably, then, the strong US oil embargo forced Japan’s hand, resulting in US entry into WWII.

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  29. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    5) Refugee death scenes are the West’s moral failure, argues Brooklyn Middleton in al Arabiya:

    Yes, though not just the West’s.

    More broadly, the flow of refugees (only a minority of whom show up on Europe’s shores, and whose presence is probably far more destabilising for immediate neighbours like Lebanon or Jordan) is an inevitable outcome of letting the bad guys continue to duke it out in Syria.

    The only way to stop the flow is to ensure that there are enough places within the country where it is actually safe for them to remain and where they can make a living without becoming permanently dependent on aid.

    This means working with the Assad regime and the YPG, not undermining either of them in favour of some mythical moderate Sunni Syrian group which doesn’t as yet seem to exist.  If Assad or the YPG fall, the flow of refugees will become a torrent.

    I cannot imagine a ‘safe zone’ working (in the North or the South) without actual boots on the ground to keep it from being taken over by some ISIS equivalent like the Jabhat an Nusrah.

    [Edited to add: fantastic map, click through twice.]

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