Obama will see foreign policy crises too

I know Barack Obama sees the economic crisis as his first priority. As I suggest in this article from the Register's Sunday Commentary section, however, he won't be able to ignore foreign policy or postpone some fairly consequential decisions early on. I mentioned the still-widening implications of the Mumbai terrorist attack -- India and Pakistan are edging closer to outright war -- and the crisis in Gaza. I thought it was a pretty balanced article. For my trouble, of course, I got several phone messages saying I was an Israeli dupe who is oblivious to Palestinian suffering, and a couple saying I was utterly unfair to Israel and maybe am a secret Palestinian. Ah, well. Judge for yourself.

Drug reformers hope; I'm skeptical

Perhaps I should be heartened by the fact that Barack Obama simply said he will get rid of the absurd "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military. It's the issue that practically sank the beginning of the Clinton administration, but Obama seems to think attitudes have changed enough for him to get away with it. Maybe he's overconfident but I hope he's right on this one.

So maybe he really will do something about our absurd drug laws. He has promised that he would stop the DEA from doing raids on patients in states with medical marijuana laws (I love it when liberals are federalists; they may be inconsistent, but it demonstrates the charm of a decentralized system in that it can be used by people of various ideological strains). The Drug Policy Alliance and others are hoping he will keep his promise. This Esquire article suggests reasons both for guarded optimism and skepticism.

I think the choice of Eric Holder is a bad sign; he seems to be a fine man, but he has a terrible record on drug law issues. CNN medical commentator Sanjay Gupta, trial-ballooned for Surgeon General (a post ripe for abolition), as a few writers have noted, seems to buy much of the drug warriors' utterly absurd beliefs about the properties of marijuana. And I think Obama's natural caution may keep him from doing something so drastic as pushing for legalizing marijuana -- although rescheduling might be a possibility. He may also think drug reform is still the "third rail" of American politics, even though medical marijuana outpolled him in Michigan (and George Bush in Montana in 2004).

I remember when Clinton was elected, I was at a DPA conference shortly thereafter, and most of the reformers were almost ecstatic with expectation, figuring the guy who "didn't inhale" would at least be sensible about drug policy if not a big reformer. But the feds set new records for marijuana arrests under Clinton and he appointed Gen. McCaffrey as "drug czar" in a step that made the "war on drugs" more literally warlike. McCaffrey peddled nonsense about marijuana and campaigned actively (and probably illegally) against medical marijuana initiatives.

I hope I'm wrong.

A fun dust-up in the classical world

Well, it might not have the intensity of feuds in the rap world. But my experience associating with mostly but not exclusively classically-oriented musicians over the years is that musicians can be a temperamental lot -- they didn't coin the term divas for opera singers for nothing. Here's a fascinating little flap that is ruffling feathers at the New York Philharmonic.

Seems there's this wealthy businessman, one Gilbert Kaplan, who's a music-lover "with an obsession for Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection") -- which I can understand; I've had a similar obsession since seeing it performed at the Hollywood Bowl eons ago -- probably late '50s; there's a place where the horns perform offstage to get an effect Mahler wanted, and it was especially striking outdoors. I have several recordings. I'm partial to Bruno Walter's old recording and Klemperer's is fine too, but I can commend a recent set by David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich.

Anyway, Kaplan, likely in part through making generous donations, has conducted the symphony all over the world, and did so in December at the New York Phil. But some of the musicians rebelled afterwards, suggesting he has little to no ability as a conductor and brings nothing of artistic interest to his conducting. As one of the trombone players put it on his blog: "My colleagues and I gave what we could to this rudderless performance but the evening proved to be nothing more than a simplistic reading of a wonderful piece of music." It became a public stink and Kaplan is not likely to be invited back.

Marvelous! I've played in amatuer bands and orchestras of varying degrees of skill since high school, and I can guarantee the players have opinions about the abilities (or lack thereof) of their conductors, sometimes griping quietly that the dude can't even keep a steady beat, let alone inspire anybody. At the professional level, especially in orchestras that get a lot of guest conductors, I'm sure the opinions are more pungent. Such opinions are usually the stuff of insider scuttlebutt, with a negative opinion occasionally creeping its way into a music magazine article. But in the era of the blogosphere, it becomes something like public record. I like it!

Now, I don't know. Maybe Kaplan is quite adequate. Still, it's a fun flap.

Spending our way to . . . well, you know

Here's the Register's editorial on Barack Obama's speech on economics and the need for an ever-increasing "stimulus" to get us out of the recession. Trouble is, not only must the money be borrowed from an increasingly reluctant China and eventually repaid, it will stoke inflation and direct money away from genuinely productive activities and into politically popular propjects or those with an especially effective interest group behind them. The oldest political trick in the book. So much for "change."

Jerome the Cynical Santa

I didn't get to reproducing this piece from my friend Jerome Stumps before Christmas, for which I apologize, but even after Epiphany I think it has something to say. I have a song from him that I will post as soon as I figure out how. Jerome's pretty hard core, so it's no surprise that the name of the song is "There Ain't No Fix in Politics." Take it away, Jerome!

Political "leaders" throughout the world are turning in their hardly used "fight inflation suits" and are donning instead the well-worn, more cheerful, red and white "feed inflation" Santa suits. Only the stomach padding is not pillows; it's paper currency by the basketful. Those great pillars of wisdom, the politicians, are caving in on the "hold the prices down" line and rationalizing that inflation is the lesser evil, while recession, unemployment, bankruptcies, and falling gross national product is the greater evil. What most people do not know is that politicians now have the power to inflate without limit! Up to now, there were limits -- so it is not correct to compare now with 1929.

Long before this uncontrolled inflationary state arose, an odious brand of Santa Claus economics was spreading throughout the world. By this, I mean the politicians playing St. Nick to all, by way of subsidies, welfare checks, minimum wages, and so-called full employment rules. And such insanity as unemployment benefits that nearly equal employed wage -- with money going to strikers too, so that taxpayers paid for union demands. Other insanities by the government's fairytale financing are foreign aid, and spending in every direction, ad nauseam.

Santa Claus economics brought about a climate of social expectation that in the end cripples the individual, and thus the nation, and now the world. It's what I call the prairie dog phenomenon. In North Dakota there is a national park where signs say: "Please do not feed the prairie dogs because you are only here in the summer, and when you go away they will have become so dependent on handouts they will be unable to fend for themselves, and therefore will starve to death in the winter."

It happens to humans too. Certainly, politicians as well as the majority of other assorted humans do not understand nature's laws. As a result, most people welcome something for nothing and the "not too bright politicians" are willing to offer a supply through campaign promises. These elected "leaders" then proceed to take away from those who produce and give to those who do not produce (the latter includes the politicians themselves). Thus the majority of us come to depend on the handouts; however, in winter economic weather, we shall starve or be killed.

So carry on, oh Santa Claus in every capital, and destroy our way of life itself for many. Treat us like Dakota prairie dogs. But yonder the leaves are turning brown -- and a long winter lies ahead.

As a loyal gesture, I wanted this year to offset the bureaucratic propaganda as well as the traditional Santa Claus concept with the sincere hope of bringing your thoughts and actions in harmony with nature's laws. There is no such thing as something for nothing; therefore, be certain that the recipients of your gifts understand that they have earned them.

More on Obama's CIA blunder -- I think

I wrote a bit more on what I consider the mistake of putting Leon Panetta in charge of the CIA for my Antiwar.com column this week. The political establishment seems reconciled to it now, and everybody hopes Panetta is shrewd enough to master the spook bureaucracy. I'm indebted to Amy Zegart at UCLA, author of the recent book, "Spying Blind," (which I haven't read yet but it's now on my list) for talking with me at some length on the phone. She has made something of a specialty of intelligence policy and organization, so she's quite knowledgeable. She is just plain baffled at this decision by Obama, as am I.

Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute has geopolitical aspect

I guess there's a tentative agreement between Ukraine (with implications for Central and Western Europe) over gas pricing and flow to Western Europe, involving international monitors. So the crisis (if it really deserves that moniker) may be over -- for now. I think most people understand there are geopolitical aspects to the dispute that may well trump the economic aspects (though with the world financial crisis having hit energy prices and Russia's economy pretty hard the economic aspect is not trivial). As this Register editorial explains, Russia's desire to remind Ukraine of its energy dependence is tied to deep-rooted Russian fears about invasion, tied to the knowledge that its borders are not well protected by topography, and what it sees, as in the Bush administration push to admit Ukraine to NATO (which most European countries now oppose, in no small part because of a similar gas cut-off three years ago), as U.S. messing about in what has traditionally been known as the "near abroad," which Russia considers vital to its security. If the push for Ukrainian NATO membership continues, expect more of what might be considered as Russian nastiness toward Ukraine.

I wrote about the gas cut-off back in 2006, for Antiwar.com, explaining the geopolitical aspects in more detail than I want to do in a blog post. Here's a link.

Madoff breaches trust ... or?

The swindle perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, who has confessed to running an investment Ponzi scheme seems almost like an exclamation point to an era of greed spurred (I believe) by a loose-money Fed and other federal interventions. One way or another the country is unlikely to feel as affluent in the next few years as it has felt in the previous decade or so. Anne Applebaum had some especially thoughtful comments recently, suggesting that a market economy to a great extent runs on trust, and Madoff breached trust big-time and in a public way, and it's likely to make people a little less trusting, perhaps a bit less entrepreneurial for a while. I hope she's wrong, but . . .

Incidentally, there's a theory going around the Internet that Madoff actually didn't run a Ponzi scheme but that his hedge fund lost big-time (as others did) and he concocted the Ponzi story, perhaps because his investors could get compensation for losses to fruad from the government, whereas they couldn't have recouped hedge-fund losses. Seems far-fetched (I'll run donw the links in the next day or so), but what do you think?

No winners in Gaza

I haven't mentioned the Israeli attack in Gaza much except to refer to my Antiwar.com article, but I've been reading a lot and talking to a bunch of people. Here is the Register's most recent editorial on the conflict. I'm also finishing up a byline piece for the Sunday Commentary section. I'll be interested to see how it turns out. The thing that strikes me most piquantly about the general topic of Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli issues is how firmly committed U.S. partisans are to the proposition that their side can do no wrong and the other side can do no right. Any criticism of Israel is likely to be branded anti-Semitic and criticism of Hamas or the Palestinians is taken to be evidence of being an Israeli stooge. Ah, well.

Obama's CIA pick absurd

I think Obama's choice of Leon Panetta to head the CIA is the first utterly ridiculous misstep of his transition, though there have been other mistakes as well (hello, Bill Richardson, hello Rahm talking to Blago's people repeatedly). This one is virtually incomprehensible, suggesting he knows nothing and cares nothing about the CIA. Too bad. There might have been a chance to depoliticize it slightly. Here's the Register's editorial on the pick. There wasn't room to mention that the last pick who was more political then professional, the former GOP congresscritter Porter Goss, was disastrous, but he was. It's likely the CIA will remain ineffectual and probably become a more hidebound bureaucracy. Although I'm not sure how badly I would want a really effective CIA, considering its past of having an expansive notion of what it could be doing inside the U.S.

Michigan bureaucrats mucking up medical marijuana

One of the problems with passing a medical marijuana initiative, as Michigan did last November, is that state bureaucrats and regulators get involved in interpreting and enforcing it, making something intended to be very simple and straightforward quite complex. In addition, while it may be unfair to impute such motives yet, our experience in California -- still struggling for proper implementation after 12 years -- is that some regulatory and law enforcement people who opposed the law in the first place will try to interpret it in ways that effectively nullify it.

When I was writing my book, "Waiting to Inhale," on medical marijuana, I interviewed Dennis Peron, the Calif. initiative's author dozens of times, and he made clear that what he wanted was a simple regimen whereby legitimate patients could get relatively hassle-free access to their medicine. Aside from the mistake of including the term "primary caregiver" in the language, that's what he wrote. But some cops wanted to do an arrest-first-sort-it-out-at-trial policy and others refused to return confiscated medicine. Some clearly hate the law and worked virtually openly to subvert it.

You can see some of this in Michigan now, where they are holding hearings on draft implementation procedures and getting flack both from medical marijuana patients and advocates and the police as well. Some of the rules seem just silly -- requiring patients to keep their medicine in a locked cabinet when there are no similar requirements for prescription medications that are literally hundreds of times more potentially dangerous. And they do seem to go beyond the scope of what the initiative asked the Michigan Department of Community Health to do -- set up a patient registry system, not write a bunch of rules and regulations.

Some of this is the result of the ignorance that always comes from outlawing one of God's creations -- people believe all sorts of complete nonsense about the dangers of marijuana. And some is due to the ridiculously over-bureaucratized society we have become, with legions of overseers who think they have a license to micromanage our lives. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

Blago outmaneuvers the respectable ones

I have little doubt that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is at least as crooked as they say, and there's something repellently slimy about him. (I and others may be subject to what psychologists say is a human tendency to place more blame and assume more guilt the higher-up an alleged malefactor is in the political pyramid.) But I confess to a sneaking admiration for the way he has outmaneuvered those who have sought to distance themselves from him, and he has made the leaders of the Senate look ridiculous, which is always welcome.

By appointing Roland Burris, a black former state attorney general who apparently isn't tainted with scandal, he has provoked a latent threat from Senate Majority leader Harry Reid not to seat him. But in this case Blago has the law on his side. He has sole authority to appoint the successor when a senate seat is empty. He may be sleazy, but while he was arrested and charged, he hasn't even been indicted yet. He is legally considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt -- and the case against him might not be that easy to make despite those sinister-sounding wiretap recordings. He hasn't been impeached, and despite the atmosphere in Springfield, that isn't even a sure thing. So there's no remotely legal reason not to seat his appointee.

So Harry Reid has pushed himself into a corner from which he can't emerge without backing away. His knee-jerk reaction was ill-considered and without legal basis. Fun stuff.

Real problems developing

A few weeks ago I suggested that a potentially major crisis involving India, Pakistan and Afghanistan might face the incoming Obama administration, but that otherwise the Imperium’s potential conflict spots seemed to be in a state of relative quiescence. So much for my predictive powers! The Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not really affect the core interests of the U.S., but if it stays in the headlines much longer there will be increasing pressure for the U.S. to get involved one way or another — although it’s hard for me to imagine just what the U.S. could do that would be more stabilizing than destabilizing. When the Bush administration took power, as I remember, it decided not to jump in to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, contenting itself with expressing complete support for Israel but, with the final Clinton effort fresh in memory, simply issuing statements and expending verbiage on a “path to peace.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama admin. does much the same — but my record as a prophet is not exactly pristine.

The empire stands aside

With the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza something like the final nail has been put in the coffin of any last-minute Bush administration hopes that things might move in the direction of a two-state solution before the Bushlet left office have been dashed. It is possible that this is also an "aha!" moment for the American empire as well. Nobody expects the U.S. to be able to do anything constructive, though U.S. minions have been supposedly working for more than a year toward any kind of symbolic rapprochement they might be able to spin into a sign of -progress. Thus the Bush administration winds down with yet another whimper of failure.

Here's my most recent column for Antiwar.com musing on the possible meaning of an impotent empire.

Against football playoffs

I'll be the first to admit that I would enjoy seeing a game between USC and whoever wins the supposed BCS "championship" game next week. I supect USC would win, perhaps handily. Pete Carroll really knows how to get a team operating at close to peak effriciency at the end of the season. But unlike a lot of fans I have little desire to see a true or even semi-authentic playoff system for college football. Why does there have to be an unambiguous single national champion? It would take way too long to do a proper elimination tournament as in basketball. And tournaments can have quirks just as easily as a decentralized bowl system, with a superior team having on off day or an inferior team getting a lot of turnovers or whatever and winning a game it would lose eight times out of ten. With a bunch of bowls, a lot of teams get to revel in postseason success.

Perhaps not incidentally, having a bunch of bowls -- unlikely to change because so many commercial interests are involved -- makes the college football post-season a bit more like economic competition than athletic competition. Confusion between the two is endemic. In athletics competition leads to a clear winner and a clear loser. In economic competition you don't have to have the most market share -- or whatever definition makes you Number One -- to be successful. You just have to have more revenues than expenses (or even just realistic prospects of being there next year), and the Number Seven market-share company might have the highest profit margin. It's nice to have numerous paths to success rather than a pyramid-type tourney in which only one team is the winner and the rest, no matter how much they improved or exceeded expectations, are viewed as losers

The radical aspects of Christmas

It's about a week late, but nonetheless, I thought my editorial on Christmas was pretty interesting. The savior of the world born in a stable? Christianity is more radically positioned against the world as it is than most self-professed Christians ever imagine.

Register views the year

In this Sunday's Register Commentary section we three did our look-back-in-wonder thumbsucking pieces. Mark Landsbaum remembers how badly the state is misgoverned, while Steve Greenhut looked back at some local and county developments -- new sheriff in town and all. I suggested the year of big change was really a year of little change: Barack Obama's campaign most closely resembled George W. Bush's and all. Tell me what you think about 2008 finally fading.

If oil stays low . . .

Here's a link to my recent piece for Antiwar.com, suggesting that if the price of oil stays low for the next year or so, it will have mostly a beneficial impact on the United States and to some extent on the prospects for reducing confliuct in the world. Venezuela and Iran will be the biggest losers and Russia will have less flexibility. A fair number of experts think the price of crude will stay below $40 a barrel or even lower and that the run-up earlier this year was the anomaly. Don't know for sure, but I kinda hope so.

Merry Christmas!!

And a Happy New Year! Might blog tomorrow, might not.

Hanukkah celebrates freedom

Hannukah, which began Sunday evening, is in fact a relatively minor festival in the Jewish year, but it is celebrated more extensively in the U.S. than in most countries, largely because of its proximity to Christmas, when some Jewish children feel a bit left out. I'm rather glad of it. With its backstory of liberation by the Maccabees from foreign domination and repression of religious freedom, it reminds us of the imporytance of religious liberty. Here's the Register's editorial.

Detroit's early Christmas

The most remarkable and in fact rather alarming aspect of the $17.4 billion bailout the Bush administration decided to give to the auto industry (though not to Ford, at least not now) is the utterly arbitrary way the Bushlet decided to do it. The $700 billion was supposed to be to buy toxic securities, then to inject money into banks (apparently with no accountability) and for no other industry. Then Congress declined to bail out the Three. So Bush just did it on his own. Such power is more than almost any absolute monarch ever had -- and on a far grander scale, since the U.S. was free enough long enough to build a far larger economy than any past monarchy could dream of.

That was the emphasis of the Register's editorial on the subject. George Will made note of the phenomenon also, suggesting that Congress is becoming more or less obsolete in the era of the Imperial Presidency.

Fed: The smell of panic

The Federal Reserve's decision to cut the interbank loan rate to a "target" of 1/4-to-zero was in one sense simply an acknowledgment of reality and in another a sign of real panic. They've pumped hundreds of billions of funny money into the banks over the last few months, but so far the impact has been slight at best. Esmael Adibi, whom I talked to yesterday, said at the Chapman economic Forecast meeting last week that since the banks have to pay 5% interest (or whatever they're calling it) on much of the bailout money, they'll have to start lending soon. But so far they haven't exactly been eager to lend. In some ways that's not too bad; the trouble started with an orgy of government-mandated and -induced dubious loans, so it's not surprising and probably a good thing that they're tightening up criteria. And the government has been so haphazard, changing approaches every couple of weeks, that the lending environment is more than a little unsettled.

Anyway, here's the Register's editorial on the move, worrying that the government is setting us up for serious inflation is 2010 and 2011, and setting the stage for another boom-bust cycle. If it were up to me I would get rid of the Fed. A central bank is (and has been from the beginning) an instrument for creating inflation to facilitate government growth rather than for promoting genuine monetary and/or economic stability.

Incidentally, Chapman, which called the recession last December (just validated by the NBER) thinks we'll start coming out of it by the end of 2009, but doesn't expect a very robust recovery.

Thank goodness it's basketball season

A few weeks ago, I think during the game UCLA lost to Michigan, Dick Vitale used tentatively used the O-word -- as in overrated -- to describe UCLA's basketball team, which was ranked #4 at the time. I hate to admit it, but he might have had something. Darren Collison is a solid player, and Josh Shipp certainly can be a threat both to shoot the three and to drive, though he can blow hot and cold, and I think has shown some of the same tendencies this year.

Mainly, though the Bruins seem to be counting on four Freshmen, and so far they have validated the observation that Kevin Love was a pretty unique talent as a Freshman. He was obviously the best player on the floor last year from the get-go. Jrue Holliday this year has shown flashes and will no doubt be terrific eventually -- he seems to improve with every game -- but it will take him some time. I'm afraid the Bruins might lose some Pac-10 games, but I expect them to keep improving and to go pretty deep into the tournament, but not to be as dominant as last year.

As for football, I just didn't feel like discussing it after the USC game, although the Bruin defense was reasonably solid. I do think Neuheisel will put together a solid team by next year. The question remains the offensive line, which never came together -- injuries, inexperience, Freshmen thrown in before they were really ready, though it might pay off next year -- this year. I doubt if we'll be ready to challenge USC next year, especially if Mark Sanchez comes back, but we'll beat a lot of people.

All our suspicions confirmed

In a way it's not much of a big deal. VP Cheney tells ABC that the war on Iraq would have happened even if the administration had believed the intelligence (which was there only ignored) suggesting Saddam Hussein had no WMD at all. They were simply determined to go to war. But we knew this at the time. I knew about July 2002 that the administration was going to invade with or without any evidence of a real threat to the U.S., and the trips to the UN, the inspection demands, the inspections (which Bush ended, even though he has repeatedly said, almost never challenged, that Saddam kicked the inspectors out, a lie he has to know is a lie) the scary talk of mushroom clouds, were nothing but pretexts designed to fool the American people. It worked for a while but even with the reduction in violence and the apparent success of the surge, 70-75 percent of the American people think the war was a mistake, which it decidedly was.

And now we have a report from the Senate Armed Services Committee -- with no Republican dissent -- saying that the impulse to torture came from the top, largely from Rumsfeld (though Bush had to be in the loop). It wasn't a few non-com "rogues, and it wasn't interrogators in the field begging to be allowed to use more aggressive methods. It was a bunch of sofa samurai with no practical experience in such matters but with a faux-tough attitude who pushed torture, and it came from the top. Here's my Antiwar.com column on the subject.

What's remarkable is that in almost all of the accounts finally coming forth, it is apparent that those who were most skeptical and cynical about the Bush administration turned out to be right, and they (we) may even have understated the venality and dishonesty af this administration.

More vitamin debunking

I cross-posted this at the Orange County Register's Orange Punch Web site a couple of weeks ago, when this study claiming Vitamin Ca and E had no protective effect against heart attacks or stroke received so much publicity. Whenever a flawed study like this claiming to prove taking vitamins is a waste of money, the "mainstream" media seem to cover it heavily and utterly uncritically. They thereby do a great disservice to the cause of good health in America:

A week or so ago most media outlets heavily covered a report that seemed to debunk claims that Vitamin C or Vitamin E offered any significant protection from heart attack or stroke. As this Life Extension Foundation report demonstrates fairly clearly, however, those studies were severely flawed.

A little background. Several large-scale studies in the early 1990s showed significant reduction in such diseases from rather large doses of these vitamins. The most widely reported was done at UCLA and showed that of 11,348 participants, those that took 800 mg of Vitamin C a day (the Orwellian “recommended daily allowance” is 60 mg) lived six years longer than those who took only 60 mg, and this higher intake reduced cardiovascular disease by 42%. A more recent study done at UC Berkeley(hardly reported outside scientific jourrnals) showed much more hopeful results. Other studies show protection against the onset of Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

The study widely reported last week had four groups of male doctors take 500 mg a day of C, less than the amount deemed to be efficacious. They also took only 400 I.U. of Vitamin E every other day, whereas most vitamin enthusiasts recommend at least 800 IU (natural rather than the synthetic used in the test) every day. In addition, the subjects’ intake was not monitored; they were told to rely on their memories over eight years as to how religiously they had taken their vitamins.

Small wonder that the result was little or no difference between those who had taken the vitamins and those who had received a placebo. It raises a real question as to whether this test was designed to fail. The question was why the media so aggressively reported this study.

I still resist the dark conspiracy theory that the big pharmacuetical companies constantly try to debunk regular vitamin usage so people will develop diseases that require enormously more expensive prescription drugs. Much can be attributed, of course, to the enormous scientific ignorance of most journalists. But there’s something going on, and it isn’t constructive.

(Full disclosure: While in college I met and became friends with Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, who went on to write “Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach,” which had a flurry of popularity in the 1970s. Knowing that they were both trained as scientists, having talked extensively with them when they were doing their preliminary research, and having stayed in touch with them over the years, I’m convinced they’re onto something. Consequently I take what most people consider a ridiculous amount of vitamins, including 5,000 mg daily of Vitamin C. Having reached an age when such things are not a bad idea — 65 next month, but you’ll have to put up with me for a few more years before I retire — I recently had a complete physical and came out with virtually perfect health. I’m healthier than most people I know 15 years younger than I am. I’m well aware that genetics and the fact that I generally refrain from doing physically really dangerous things play an important role, and I obviously haven’t been able to do a double-blind test on myself. But I strongly recommend that anybody who wants to live long and avoid debilitating disease get a copy of Durk and Sandy’s book (it’s practically free at Amazon.com now) and take their findings into consideration.

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Second Amendment Book Bomb

I cross-posted this at the Register's Orange Punch blog. David Theroux at the Independent Institute is trying to create special interest in Stephen Halbrook's new book, "The Founders' Second Amendment. A worthy cause:

Got another e-mail from the inimitable and invaluable David Theroux of the Independent Institute noting remarkable progress on their goal of making a thoughtful and scholarly book on individual rights, constitutionalism and the Second Amendment an unlikely best-seller during the Christmas season, the heaviest book-buying time of the year. I read Stephen Halbrook’s earlier book, “That Every Man Be Armed” on the historical relationship between true citizenship and the right to bear arms, which is enough for me to recommend “The Founders’ Second Amendment.”
The idea is to highlight, as an administration not inclined to be friendly to an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment comes into power, the fact that a lot of Americans think that what until the Supreme Court’s Heller decision had been the neglected ugly stepsister of the Bill Of Rights is pretty important. Not that gun rights (excuse me, human rights to keep and bear arms) are the whole of the Bill of Rights, just that they’re important. So you can go to the Website here and pledge to buy one for yourself and perhaps as gifts for your parents, children and Aunt Mildred.

It’s working. When the campaign started the book was at around 200,000 on Amazon’s list, and it’s now at 140. In different categories the result is even more impressive, as David notes:

#1: Law #1: Civil Rights and Liberties #1: Constitutions #1: Constitutional Law #1: Revolutionary and Founding History #12: History #11: Professional and Technical #26: Nonfiction (all)

Keep it up!

Blagojevich sleaze only barely slimes Obama

Here is the Register's first-impression take on the scandals erupting from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich apparently trying to "sell" the appointment to replace Obama as Illinois' U.S. Senator. Notice from the comments that some people are still actiung as if it is mid-campaign, interpreting even the most obvious observation -- some of the slime will affect Obama -- as an unfair and biased attack. If that's the attitude, I guess we'll be getting plenty of snarky comments, given that we consider whoever has power at a given time to be the biggest immediate danger to freedom.

Obama team turns left

Here's a link to the Register's editorial Sunday noting that with his energy and environmental picks Barack Obama is doing a good deal to dispel the image that emerged after his foreign and economic policy picks -- that he plans to govern as a centrist. Stephen Chu (out of his field of physics with his concern about climate change), Carol Browner and the others are hardly centrists. Carol Browner, who headed EPA during Clinton's terms, emerged with a reputation as the farthest left of the Clintonistas -- and on a personal level she has a reputation for being a thoroughly nasty person. Maybe she's grown up a little.

Effects of Mumbai attacks

Here's the column I did for this Sunday's Register Commentary section on (some of) the impacts of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai Nov. 26. The upshot? Barack Obama, who a few weeks ago looked to becoming into office with foreign crises relatively quiescent, or at least capable of holding for a bit while he and his people figured out what to do about them, could facde a full-blown foreign crisis on his first day or two in office. It's certainly not what he had in mind. Krauthammer thinks he picked the foreign policy team he did to handle things in ways that didn't require his full-time attention, as his main ambition is to be a transoformative figure in domestic policy. Since I disagree with most of his domestic agenda, I would hardly welcome this, though it would certainly give me a target-rich environment for editorials and articles. Whatever, it looks as if he'll have foreign-policy problems that will demand something close to immediate attention.

Bush gets the boot

Well, not the boot, actually, but a couple of shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist during a joint press conference with Iraqi prime minister Maliki during a surprise visit to Baghdad. In Arab culture throwing one's shoes at somebody is a sign of utmost disrespect, disgust, disapproval, disagreement and downright contempt. I remember when I was in Jerusalem an incident in the Al Aqsa Mosque where dozens of people threw their shoes at (I think I remember correctly) somebody threatening to do some kind of vandalism to the mosque.

I suspect the incident shows more about how most Iraqis view Bush than the polite words of support and courtesy coming from peoiple in the near-puppet Baghdad government.

Rotting from the head

Maybe it's because the Bush administration is so thoroughly discredited and such a short-timer that it doesn't have carrots or sticks sufficient to keep Republican senators in line. But the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report earlier this week on "aggressive interrogation" (much of it plain and simple torture. It concluded rather specifically that far from Abu Ghraib being the work of a few "bad apples," that the impulse to torture came right from the top. Many committee reports include minority reports, but not a single Republican senator dissented from these conclusions. The report fingers Don Rumsfeld as being most directly responsible, but there are plenty of people responsible who have not been held to account(and most likely never will be). Still, it's nice to know that the cynics/skeptics about the administration cover story were right all along. Here's my Antiwar.com column on the subject.

Medical marijuana implementation: no excuses left

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Orange County city of Garden Grove's appeal of a California appellate court decision ordering it to return marijuana it had confiscated from a patient with a physician's recommendation, in accordance with California law. I don't expect that this will be the end of official foot-dragging in implementing a law passed by the voters 12 years (!) ago, but it eliminates virtually the last excuse these cops and thugs have. The cops and Garden Grove pretended to be concerned that by returning the guy's medicine they would be violating federal law against distribution. But the appellate court told them that when a court orders return of property they are simply creatures of the court; their duty is to follow its orders. If the feds want to try to arrest a judge, let them have at it.

The duty of state and local authorities when there is a question about whether state law conflicts with federal law is to enforce California law unless and until a federal court issues a ruling that federal law supersedes state law. That hasn't happened and it isn't going to happen. It's long past time for those sworn to uphold the law to start doing it instead of trying to undermine it. Here's the Register's editorial on the subject.

Mumbai attacks: consequential and shrewd

The more I think about them (and write about them, which to me is a bit like breathing for normal people) the more I think the terrorist attacks in Mumbai Nov. 28 were the most consequential and shrewd actions by the jihadist movement (whatever the true perpetrators turn out to be) since the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Pakistan and India had been edging toward something approaching a rapprochement, but that's off the table for quite a while. It will intensify Indian-Pakistani hostility, always bubbling under the surface, introduce or intensify divisions in India and perhaps destabilize the shaky Pakistani civilian government, such as it is. And it complicates things in Afghanistan.

Here's the piece I did on the attacks for Antiwar.com. And here's the Register's editorial on the attacks, which ran yesterday.

Obama: more of the same

Here's a link to the piece I did for this last Sunday's Register, on Obama's foreign policy team and his apparent philosophy on U.S. foreign relations. I conclude that he is a standard-issue liberal interventionist, convinced, as were the Clintonite retreads he's picked, that the U.S. is the indispensable nation that must run the world -- though he might pick different places to intervene than GWB has. During the Clinton era it almost became the case that liberals preferred intervention in countries that had little or no relation to U.S. core national interests, viewing ostensibly "disinterested" or " humanitarian" intervention as somehow more noble or moral. Obama's main thetroical commitment is to escalating the war in Afghanistan, which may be less winnable than Iraq. Not much of a change I can believe in. And the left is getting restive.

Unusually fine Christmas music

I have carousel players for CDs, and at Christmastime I load them and put the Christmas music section on shuffle. Most guests like it, as there's a great deal of variety, from the London Symphony to the Gregg Smith Singers to Bing Crosby, Sinatra, and other pop singers. This year I've found a new one that I find especially appealing.

Karolju is done by David Zinman with the BBC Symphony and the Philharmonia Chorus. There's nothing you're likely to recognize here, though you may think it sounds familiar. The main attraction here is a suite of original carols by American composer Christopher Rouse. They were originally written for the Baltimore Symphony, in a variety of styles, from contemplative to jolly, and a range of languages (Latin, Swedish, French, Spanish, Russian -- very characteristic -- Czech, German and Italian -- especially lovely. It all sounds Christmas-y and much of it as if you think you ought to know it. Imaginative and well-done.

The CD also contains a suite of Polish Christmas songs by Witold Lutoslawski, and three very Spanish-sounding pieces by Joaquin Rodrigo, which are definitely worth your attention. But the Christopher Rouse suite is the highlight.

From high to low

Talk about going from an emotional high approaching ecstasy to a low! Over the weekend the Don Morris Singers, which I joined this fall, gave two Christmas concerts, on Friday in Fallbrook with the Westwind Brass out of San Diego, and in Murrieta on Sunday evening. Both concerts were triumphs. (Although I think I contributed capably, that's far from an egoistic statement. Good choral singing is a matter of blend and cooperation; no single voice should stand out. It's not easy to achieve, especially when you have several very first-rate singers with solo-quality voices, as we do, who have to sublimate their individuality to the overall sound.) If I may say so, we achieved it quite consistently, in a variety of genres, from Palestrina to Britten to traditional carols to Don's "snow medley (Let It Snow, Winter Wonderland, White Christmas, etc.). Shame on you for missing it!

Then on Monday, at our wrap-up meeting, after telling us that even the brass players were impressed (instrumentalists generally don't have a high opinion of choirs, although having done both, I contend, as does Marilyn Horne in this interview piece, that singing is more difficult than playing an instrument) and saying this was the best-sounding group he has assembled in 3-1/2 years of the organization, Don informed us that several key singers are having to leave, which will require recruiting replacements and puts a question mark on the future of the group. In a group of 22, just a few holes can throw the whole balance off.

I think the group will stay together and thrive, but we won't know for sure for a while.

Books of the season

Most years the Register's Commentary pages feature a bunch of books just before the Christmas season, hoping we'll stir a little interest. Here is this year's set of recommendations, from Mark Landsbaum and me. I reviewed John Lukacs' "At the End of an Age," Norman Lebrecht's "The Life and Death of Classical Music" (actually about the recording end and including the 100 best and 20 worst classical recordings of all time), Gwynne Dyers' "After Iraq," and John McWhorter's "All Abut the Beat," about hip-hop, from a realistic fan of the genre. Also a well-done spy novel by first-time author (and Sacramento labor lobbyist) Barry Broad called "The Eve of Destruction." I repeat here that they're all worth reading and/or giving as presents.

No Big Three bailout

Here's the Register's editorial (not written by me) on the latest trip to Capitol Hill by GM, Chrysler and Ford, with corporate hats in hand seeking money (just a loan, of course) to the tune of some $38 billion-with-a-b from the taxpayers. We said Congress should send them away empty-handed to face the music resulting from their own decisions and mismanagement. How many entities will be deemed "too big to fail" before the economy is flat on its back and permanently hogtied by federal command and control?

So where was I?

Actually, during the blogless period last week I was in the house, but I didn't go near the computer more than a couple of times. Too many relatives in the house, from Jen's cousin Frank to her brothers Mike and Joe, Joe's wife Alane and their two kids, Jesse and Mandy, our son Steve, nephew Tom, and a few others who drifted in and out from time to time. We ate too much and drank too much, but generally had a good time. Went to the Chargers game in San Diego on Sunday (they lost ignominiously, 22-16, to an Atlanta team that is pretty good but whom they should have beaten; LT didn't seem himself)

On Thanksgiving Day we went out for dinner, and most of us didn't even order turkey. It was wonderful not to have to spend two hours-plus cleaning up the mess. I think maybe we've had enough Thanksgiving dinners in our house to suit us (last year we lost power and had to take the turkey to Angie's house to finish cooking it and it was overdone; a memorable disaster we can laugh about now).

Just to give this a mildly political/philosophic spin, here's Gary Galles with this year's retelling of the New England pilgrims' story, from LewRockwell.com.

One more promo piece

One last time. If anyone reading this is within convenient driving distance of the Murrieta area, I really urge you to come to the concert by the Don Morris Singers (check out some of the songs on the Website, here, here and here to get a pale idea of just how good they were without me), which I joined this fall. We had a rehearsal Monday with the brass players, and they are thoroughly professional. The pieces where we sing antiphonally with them are reasonably spectacular. Unfortunately they are only featured in the Friday, Dec. 5 concert in Fallbrook, for which the adult tickets go for $30. But for $12 ($15 at the door) you'll still get a good display of fine choral singing, including several numbers where we're divided into two choirs and will be singing from opposite ends of the room. Surround Sound. That concert is Sunday evening, the 7th, at Promise Lutheran Church on Madison, behind the Wal-Mart off Murrieta Hot Springs Rd. in Murietta.

I don't think I'm just blowing smoke here. I've sung in choruses all my life, including at UCLA under Roger Wagner, and done a good bit of the choral repertoire (though one unfulfilled wish is to sing the Mozart Requiem before it becomes appropriate for me). This is clearly one of the best I've been associated with.

Venezuelan bluster

Russian and Venezuelan naval ships participated in j0oint exercises beginning yesterday, raising concerns about an incipient anti-American alliance. Is a new cold war imminent and is Venezuela this decade's version of Cuba as a Russian ally in the hemisphere. This Register editorial downplays the potential danger. The action is meant to tweak Uncle Sam's nose, to be sure, but both Russia and Venezuela are states with economies reliant to an unhealthy extent on petroleum products, and the global decrease in oil prices has made both of them weaker. Sure, Russia has showed that if the U.S. can play in its back yard( Georgia), Russia can play in ours (the Caribbean). Geopolitically, however, it doesn't mean all that much . . . yet . . . unless the U.S. keeps trying to pretend it's a unipolar world as its own economic underpinning weakens.

Transportation Secretary choice will reveal much

Most of the buzz has revolved around President-elect Obama's choices for his economic and foreign policy "teams." But a great deal about how the new administration is likely to operate on the ground -- where the rubber meets the road, so to speak -- could be revealed by his choice of Transportation Secretary. A good deal of the Obama cheap-money stimulus package, especially given pleas from governors today, is likely to be for infratsructure repair and conbstruction. Much of that will be done under th aeghis of the Dept. of Transportation. The Register's editorial today, after tossing out for unlikely discussion the dream choice of former Reason president and founder Bob poole, suggests that the worst possible choice would be Rep. James Oberstar, who chairs the House transportation committee and the very embodiment of the Iron Triangle among departments, congressional committees and favored constituencies. The current sectretary, MaryPeters, would be a good but unlikely choice. That leaves Mort Downey and former FAA admininstrator Susan Garvey -- imperfect but almost acceptable choices.

Let GM (or all three? go bankrupt

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the pleas from the private-jet-setting Detroit automakers pleading for another gift from Uncle Sam. Let them go bankrupt and reorganize!

Obama's mixed economic message

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on Obama's announcement of his economic team. We noted the Tim Geithner is thought to be smart and will provide continuity, but also that it's troubling that he has so much experience at bailouts. We worry that he might think it's a normal thing to do. We cheer the prospect of no new taxes but suggest another "stimulus" is not the way to go.

Holder not too bad but terrible on drug war

Considering the universe of politically feasible possibilities, Barack Obama didn't do too badly in picking Eric Holder for attorney general. He doesn't seem like a complete Obama lackey, so he might be able to make the Justice Department a little less politicized and a tad more independent. Sure, he's an old Clintonite, but he doesn't seem to have a lust for injustice. Here's the Register's editorial on his pending appointment. However, as I have noted elsewhere, and as Reason has explored, he is terrible on the drug war. He has favored mandatory minimums in the past, and harsh sentences for marijuana dealers. Obama himself has promised not to keep sending the feds after patients in states with medical marijuana laws, and if he has the gumption to carry it through it should prove to be a popular move. But one doubts if drug law reformers will have a friend in Eric Holder.

Bailout in the dark

Not only has Treasury Secretary pulled a bait-and-switch on the public (though the switch may have been to a less-risky, more potentially productive approach), but the $700 billion (plus another $100-billion in sweet pork to buy votes) financial bailout is essentially being conducted in the dark. Paulson and Bernanke resist giving out details about which banks have gotten capital infusions, the administration didn't appoint an Inspector General until last week, and Congress hasn't yet fully formed oversight committees. It should be an open process, with taxpayers being told who's getting their money. Here's the Register's editorial on the topic, calling for a lot more sunshine.

R.C. Hoiles and the prospects for liberty

Here's a link to the piece I wrote for Sunday's Register, to commemorate what we call Founders Day at Freedom Communications -- R.C. Hoiles was born on Nov. 24. I tried to put the remembrance in reasonably current terms, noting that in part because so many choose to blame the financial crisis on the "deregulated" free market, and an administration explicitly determined to have a more activist government is coming into power, the prospects might seem somewhat bleak. But by comparison to what R.C. faced in the 1930s and 1940s, when there were no libertarian think tanks and precious few academics, our resources are much greater.

Hope you enjoy it and find it informative. Leave comments, here or there.

Singers coming together

I'll shamelessly promote this now and at least one more time before the concerts, on December 5 and December 7. I've begun singing, as I've mentioned previously, with the Don Morris Singers out here in Murrieta. We had a rehearsal Sunday instead of Monday this week. (I was late -- apologies -- because I had it in my head that the Sunday rehearsal was next week.) But I didn't miss too much, and the sound we're getting is starting to be quite excellent. I've sung in reasonably good choruses most of my life, but this may just turn out to be the best one. There were a few rough spots yesterday and Don is a stickler. But when he had us fine-tuned, the sound was good enough that even he had to acknowledge it.

I don't know whether live performances in classical (or at least strictly composed) music are becoming a thing of the past or not. The audience is relatively small, and the exigencies of smaller, even very good amateur groups often mean that those who might be interested never hear about something they would enjoy. I think the urge to perform will remain, combined with intelligent efforts to get better at it guided by people with leadership ability and knowledge, however, is unlikely to disappear entirely. Nonetheless, this kind of serious singing is ever endangered.

All this is to say that if you like choral music at all, or Christmas-themed music, you may be in for something of a peak experience if you come to one of our concerts this December. Here are the details:

December 5, at the Fallbrook Performing Arts Center, at 8:00, with brass choir. We thought it was a closed performance, but apparently they're selling tickets, though it's a little pricey at $30. Then on Sunday, December 7, at Promise Lutheran Church in Murrieta (25664 Madison Ave, behind the Wal-Mart) at 7:30 pm. No brass, but more reasonable prices -- $12 in advance, $15 at the door. E-mail me at abock@ocregister.com if you want tickets.

"Cantus" is firmus

I'm ready to make a first recommendation from among the CDs I got from Register music critic Tim Mangan, though there are others I really should mention between now and Christmas, though my tastes are eclectic enough that it might take a rather odd "classical" music fan to appreciate some of these. For example, as a singer myself who considers life rather empty if I'm not singing with at least a very good amateur group, I have an unusual attraction to choral music.

"Cantus" is a group of nine men out of Minneapolis, each exceptionally skilled, and together they make, on their new CD, "While You Are Alive," some of the richest, deepest, most sonorous choral sounds I have heard. All-male groups are not to everybody's taste, and this is a pretty modern group of songs (three world premiere recordings here), but while there are some strange harmonies, most of it is quite tonal. I am especially entranced by "Lux Aurumque," by Whitacre, and "Lullaby" by Nelson. The major new piece, "A Sound Like This," by Hill, a series of original songs, has some really nice places and a few I haven't quite warmedup to yet, though I like even the odd places sound better each time I listen. "Things I Didn't Know I Loved," by Takach, is also sonorous and adventurous, but the whole thing is worth listening to and repays repeated listening.

Friedmans honored at Chapman

I did a couple of posts about this over at the Register's Orange Punch commentary blog, here, and here, but it was such a peak experience for me that I wanted to say a little more. Yesterday Chapman University dedicated the Milton and Rose Friedman Reading Room in its Leatherby Library, and I was honored to be asked to speak both at the dedication and at the lunch that followed. The first talk was about the Friedmans' involvement in education issues, especially school choice and vouchers, to which they dedicated the Friedman Foundation in 1996. It seemed to me that I did rather well, having steeped myself in information and spoken without notes. The university's head librarian told me later that Rose Friedman was nodding and smiling through most of the talk, so that pleases me.

Rose Friedman, now 97, is a phenomenon. She did better with an arm to lean on, but she can still get around, if slowly. She is incredibly tiny. Her mind is still quite sharp. Her mother lived to 103, so I hope the world can enjoy the pleasure of her company for a long time to come. I remember having a fairly lengthy discussion with her, probably in the late 1980s at a Pacific Research Institute function in San Francisco (about what she thought were diminishing prospects for liberty) and thinking that Milton Friedman was a lucky man to have found such an exceptional person as a life partner. The title of their joint autobiography, "Two Lucky People," bore out my intuition.

I first met David Friedman, Milton's son, in 1967, the summer I was a journalism intern at Human Events. One night I went to Dupont Circle, the closest Washington came to having a countercultural gathering place back then, and there was this comnpact, curly-headed young man earnestly explaining to somewhat befuddled but fascinated hippies and longhairs that if they really wanted freedom and self-actualization, they should be fans of free markets. It was David Friedman. I still don't know what he was doing in Washington that summer, but we formed an immediate bond, even though he is one of the few people I have met about whom I think that his brain operates on a rather different and decidedly higher plane than mine. (Among the others are Durk Pearson and Richard Epstein). We haven't been close since then, but run into one another every few years. He at least expressed something like relief in the lobby yesterday at seeing a familar face (though I wouldn't be surprised if he was checking out my name tag to be sure).

The dedication was folowed by a panel discussion, featuring David, Nobel Prize economist Vernon Smith (now at Chapman) , and veteran UCLA profs Harold Demsetz and Arnold Harberger (who told me later that Bill Niskanen was a student of his) on the general topic of "What Would Milton Do?" about the current financial crisis. I'll report further on it in future posts.

Back blogging

I hadn't planned much blogging last night, but then couldn't do any since I got some sort of error message every time I a tried for a Web site, even my home page. So I gave up. It seems to have turned out that my usual remedy for complications in any electronic-type apparatus -- turn it off, then turn it on again and see if it works, which usually does the job for our copier at work too -- was efficacious this time too. So even though we anticipate having a houseful at Thanksgiving and still have some cleaning up/rearranging to do, I'm back at the posting post.

Reason's 40th anniversary

I am very much lo0oking forward to the Reason Foundation's 40th anniversary dinner tomorrow night (actually, it's Reason magazine's 40th -- the Foundation wasn't formed until later, 1978 if I'm not mistaken). I broke out my tux tonight to make sure it's in good shape. Bob Poole, Manny Klausner and Tibor Machan, the three who took over the magazine from Lanny Friedlander early on, are all friends of long standing. I've spoken at a couple of Reason events, attended many more, and was the Washington correspondent for a while in the late 1970s. I've never met Jeff Flake, the congressman from Arizona who is the featured speaker, so I'm looking forward to that as well. Of course I'll see a lot of old friends, and look forward to meeting some new ones.

Reason will give a special award to the Dave Threshie and Dick Wallace families, in recognition of the fact that they have kept Freedom Communications in the family and determined to continue propagating libertarian ideas during a really tough time for the newspaper business. Doing so has literally cost them millions of dollars (although they're hardly hurting for money).

It strikes me as a particularly critical time for the freedom movement. Although the financial crisis was sparked almost exclusively by the government, there's a widespread notion out there that it was the result of excessive deregulation; that comes from the Republicans talking incessantly about deregulation but never doing it when they have power; they get the reputation without the reality. We have our work cut out for us reminding peoiple of reality, and the outcome is far from certain.

Bailed-out companies still failing

Here is a Register editorial on the phenomenon that two of the companies presumably "bailed out" by the taxpayers -- AIG Insurance and Fannie Mae -- are doing worse (bigger losses) since the government supposedly "saved" them. The reason is obvious. In a free market companies that waste money and do stupid things face the prospect of losses and going out of business. But if they get an injection of money from the government, the temptation is to postpone necessary restructuring or rethinking. This outcome was almost entirely predictable, as is the certainty that another dose of "stimulus" won't save the economy. There has been malinvestment (mostly but not entirely driven by government mandates and loose money from the Fed). The bad investments need to be worked out of the system, which is what a recession forces -- unless government decides that some firms are "too big to fail."

Obama worse than Bush -- on foreign affairs?

Here's an arresting piece by the Cato Institute's Ted Carpenter suggesting that when it comes to foreign policy, Obama might just well turn out to be worse than Bush. Of course he is far from having fleshed out his foreign policy views and the mainstream media have hardly pressed him on the subject. But Ted notes that he shows no signs of challenging the establishment consensus that the U.S. should intervene widely in conflicts around the world, whether any core (or even peripheral) interest of the U.S. is at stake or not. In fact, during the Clinton administration a number of liberal scholars came close to developing the position that it was somehow more noble or desirable for the U.S. to put blood and treasure at risk precisely in places where no U.S. interest was at stake or even implicated. More humanitarian that way, doncha know.

As Ted puts it, "It will not be an improvement if an Obama administration withdraws troops from Iraq only to launch new interventions in such strategically and economically irrelevant snakepits as Darfur or Burma."

Quote of the Day

"An ideal is a vision of the Ought-To-Be --some good to be attained. An ideal is a challenge to a better life. First we must see it in imagination; then we must long to make it a part of ourselves; then we shall guide our conduct by it, we shall live it. An ideal is is both light and power. It is light for conscience and motive-power for will. It is a standard by which we judge between right and wrong." -- G. Walter Fiske, author of "Jesus' Ideals of Living"

Obama's foreign entanglements

Most of the commentary on the challenges Barack Obama will face as president (I'm getting used to the idea but still as puzzled as most people about how he might operate) have focused on domestic challenges. Toward the end of the campaign foreign policy virtually disappeared from the discourse as the financial crisis dominated attention. There is little question that those challenges will be formidable, and the evidence so far is that most of the initiatives Obama has mentioned as likely are unlikely to alleviate it and might well make it worse. Bailing out the Detroit automakers even more. A "stimulus" package that is unlikely to solve a crisis created in large part by loose funy money. And so on.

However, whetheror not there is a challenge from al-Qaida, some other terrorist organization, or a country bent on undermining the U.S., he will also face a difficult set of foreign challenges, and that was the subject of my column this week for Antiwar.com. From his determination to ramp up the war in Afghanistan to possible related troubles with Pakistan, to the emergence of Russia as a locally aggressive potential Great Power, to likely complications in winding down the war with Iraq, to Iran, his plate will be full. I suggest his honeymoon will be short.

Voting increased only slightly

The word is that after all the talk about how Obama had gotten so many people excited and this was the most fascinating election in recent history, the percentage of eligible voters who actually got to the polls was only about 61 percent, and the increase was only 1.1% over 2004. I consider that a healthy sign that after saturation coverage and innumerable get-out-the-vote drives almost 40 percent of Americans decided they could live without casting a meanigless ballot to support the status quo.

I don't vote because "democracy" to me is simply this era's version of the Divine Right of Kings, a mechanism whereby the appaling people who rule us can claim a shred of legitimacy. I'm hardly alone. Here's an argument against voting and another and another and another.

Don't bail out the auto companies

The word is that when Barack Obama visited the White House for orientation today (well, yesterday by now I guess, and did they have to wear identical suits and dorky-looking blue ties?) he urged the Bushlet to do something to help the Detroit U.S. automakers. This was hardly a new request in that they've already gotten $25 billion in low-cost loans, ostensibly to develop more fuel-efficient and alt-fuel cars, and visited Congress last Thursday to ask for $25 billion more. They shouldn't get a penny of the taxpayers' money, as this Register editorial argues. They have similar problems to as other manufacturers due to the current financial crisis (should every company in the country get a bailout?) but their most serious problems they brought on themselves by assuming the SUV craze would last forever and being almost immune to innovation. There's been more than enough of rewarding failure and punishing success in this country.

Come hear us sing!

As I mentioned a few weeks again, I have joined a new chorus, the Don Morris Singers, directed by the former director of the Temecula Master Chorale. The master chorale was a large choir that was not hyperselective, and Don, who sang with the Roger Wagner Chorale, taught, and has directed numerous ensembles, wanted a smaller, more selective chorus, in this case of 24 members. We've been holding rehearsals for about six weeks now, and I'm getting excited.

Our major concert this year will be December 7 at 7:30 pm at Promise Lutheran Church in Murrieta, featuring Christmas music from Palestrina to Britten to Frosty the Snowman, including several antiphonal works, and I'll be unashamedly soliciting ticket sales (they're $12 in advance and $15 at the door) several times between now and then. E-mail me at abock@ocregister.com if you're even a bit interested. Tonight's rehearsal was esepcially revealing. We've gotten quite good by now, but a few people haven't quite mastered knowing the music cold and Don was unsparing. He says he's not content with good enough or even very good. He wants people to hear this group and think it's the best choral group they've ever heard. I think we'll be close.

We're also doing a concert in Fallbrook on December 5 that we at first thought was a private one for members of the Fallbrook Music Society (this one with a brass ensemble), but apparently they're selling tickets to the general public at $30 ($10 for students). Check out the Website and listen to some of the past performances. This is an excellent group with which I'm proud to be associated.

Some drug law reform progress

I've mentioned this before, but I had to dig a little more to do this editorial for the Register. The brightest spots in the election results had to do with the passage of a medical marijuana initiative in Michigan and a marijuana decriminalization initiative in Massachusetts. Neither is as liberal as I might prefer (but then if I had my way marijuana would have the same legal status as parsley). Dispensaries aren't authorized in Michigan and a caregiver to grow and provide marijuana can be responsible for only one patient. In Massachusetts someone caught with an ounce or less will have it confiscated, but will only have to pay a $100 fine that doesn't become a criminal record. Still, a huge improvement from sheer mindless prohibitionism.

Angry gays: Where were they when it counted?

I just cross-posted this at the Register's Orange Punch blog and thought it might be of interest here also:

We’ll have a piece in either Sunday’s or Monday’s opinion section (I read so many proofs today I’m a bit bleary-eyed), but it echoes some of my thoughts. We’ve seen all these angry demonstrations organized (and/or arising spontaneously) by gays in Los Angeles (and in San Francisco and Long Beach), including one centered on the Mormon Temple in West L.A. It’s not that it isn’t legitimate to criticize the Mormon church, whose members (not all of them, of course) reportedly kicked in about $20 million of the $30-million-plus the Yes on 8 side raised, some in huge quantities from out of state (yes, I recognize contributions for the No campaign came from out of state, and it’s not illegal or fundamentally illegitimate, just interesting). All this was well known before Tuesday. Where were these protesters before Tuesday? I’ll wager they weren’t out walking precincts or making phone calls or donating money or stuffing envelopes. This was a close race. If there had been this kind of enthusiasm — a little more controlled and a little less angry, to be sure — shown before the election I suspect Prop. 8 would not have passed. As it is these after-the-fact demonstrations look a bit like childish rants and I suspect are more likely to discredit the cause than to advance it.

I have a few more criticisms of the No on 8 campaign — from somebody who wanted that side to win. I think it was too timid, hardly ever (at least in the TV ads) uttering the words “gay marriage” or “same-sex marriage,” which to my mind conceded the moral high ground to the other side and made it seem as if the proponents of gay marriage were ashamed of it and maybe even figured others would find it shameful. I think the “teach gay marriage in school” issue could have been confronted more straightforwardly too, conceding that if Prop. 8 were defeated those schools that had marriage in the curriculum would probably have to mention the fact that gay marriage is legal in California, but this wouldn’t be “indoctrination” or “recruitment” or propaganda about how kids had to approve it and love it. Not doig so left the campaign open to charges of being dishonest.

There was no way to get rid of the footage of Moron Mayor Gavin “whether you like it or not” Newsome of San Francisco, which I think was the single most effective thing the Yes on 8 people had going for them. But all those “taking away a right” commercials without mentioning what the right was confused people, I suspect. It might not have been a bad idea to have a few couples interviewed on just what marriage meant to them. I think the No campaign underestimated the tolerance of the people of California and that’s part of the reason it lost — besides the fact that a lot of gays who could have been involved sat on the sidelines until it was over.

Bruins: Time to get serious

Oregon State beat USC, a team it really had no business beating, so it would be poetic justice for the Bruins to beat the Beavers tomorrow. Actually, if you just look at the history, it shoudl be almost a foregone conclusion; UCLA has beaten Oregon State the last 10 times the two teams have met in the Rose Bowl. Looking at this season, however, it's got to be something of a longshot, and the Beavers are favored by 8 points. Add in the fact that 3 of UCLA's already-shaky offensive line have been suspended for this game -- breaking team rules, the unconfirmed rumor having to do with drugs -- and it could be a long afternoon.

However, I have my guacamole and my UCLA T-shirt and cap ready. I'm hoping the Bruins -- perhaps jolted by the suspensions? -- have made good use of the bye week and settled down to some serious work on avoiding careless mistakes. And it might just be that this is the week Kahlil Bell, who has shown signs of being a really good back but has been sadly hampered by injuries (as well as bad offensive line play) this year, is ready to break out and show that he's more than just potential. It is his senior year and he still does, despite all the tough luck he's experienced, have NFL dreams.

Bushes Doles and Clintons out

My old colleague John Seiler makes the point that at least the election result means that after 28 years there's no Clinton or Dole as either president or vice president -- though Hillary, of course, is still in the Senate and probably planning for 2016 as we speak. Another interesting point several others have made is that with the defeat of Liddy Dole in the North Carolina senate race, this is the first time since 1948 -- 1948! -- that there hasn't been either a Bush or a Dole (or both much of the time) serving in an important position in the U.S. government.

And we thought we were getting away from dynasties and monarchical tendencies when we broke with Old Blighty!

So much for the Bradley Effect

Before the election there was a great deal of talk about the so-called Bradley Effect, referring to the fact that former L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, a moderate black Democrat, ran for governor in 1982 (against George Deukmejian) and the polls showed him ahead up until the day before the election, but he lost. The Bradley Effect is supposed to bne white voters telling pollsters they support a black candidate so they won't sound bigoted, then going out and voting against him.

I was in California, writing editorials for the Register in 1982, and I remember a few things some have forgotten. Also on the ballot that year was Prop. 15, a gun-control measure whose details I have forgotten, but I'm about 98% sure Bradley supported it. Anyway, it brought out the pro-gun people in more force than usual to defeat it (I think it was leading in the polls too) and while they were at it they voted against Bradley. I'm reasonably sure race had little or nothing to do with it. Jerry Brown was running for the Senate that year and leading in the polls, and he lost also.

Political Class Dismissed

I can't know everything going on out there in the blogosphere, but I should have surmised that James Ostrowski, veteran libertarian attorney in Buffalo, would have a blog with lots of interesting stuff on it. Found out because he linked to one of our items on the Register's Orange Punch blog. And what a wonderful title: "Political Class Dismissed" If only! Check it out.

Obama's plate

When Joe Biden said that Barack Obama would likely be confronted with some sort of international crisis within months of assuming office it was widely treated as a gaffe, but it more closely resembled the usual statement the political class regards as a gaffe: an inadvertent piece of truth most people in the ruling class would rather didn't get out. Of course Obama would be challeneged. McCain would have been too.

Few expected, however, that reminders of the messiness of the world outside our borders would come so quickly, long before he even took office, with Russia announcing it would plant some missiles near Poland if the U.S. went ahead with putting anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic, Afghan puppet Hamid Karzai trying to break his strings by protesting about the U.S. bombing weddings (the nerve!) and North Korea releasing photos purporting to show that Kim Jong-Il is really alive and well. Heaven knows what will be in the cards when he actually takes office.

OK, those aren't really major crises, and they're not Obama's to deal with yet. But one dubts that the timing was strictly coincidental. Here's the Register's editorial today on some of the things we already knew the new president would have to face: two wars, a financial crisis, a Democratic Congress eager to tax and regulate, and other aftermaths of the years of a dysfunctional administration. He may have little choice but to have a modest agenda and govern "from the center," whatever that means.

Quote of the Day

"I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse. It is, paradoxically, dangerous to draw nearer to God. Doesn't one find in one's own experience that every advance (if one ever has advances) in the spiritual life opens to one the possibility of blacker sins as well as brighter virtues? Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil. Satan was an angel."
C.S. Lewis

Drug reform: two steps forward . . .

One of the more disappointing aspects of election night in California was the defeat of Proposition 5, the incarceration reform measure put together by the Drug Policy Alliance, which would have offered treatment instead of incarceration to most non-violent drug offenders and according to the nonpartisan legislative analyst saved the state $2.5 billion in prison construction costs. The prison guards union donated $1 million to defeating it.

It was especially disappointing since, on the same night, Michigan passed a medical marijuana initiative and Massachusetts passed what was essentially decriminalization of marijuana -- a $100 fine and no criminal record for simple possession of an ounce or less. (Here's a link to the Register's editorial on various state initiatives across the country.) The sentiment for drug law reform is out there, but we couldn't get it done in California (the Register was the only major newspaper to endorse Prop. 5).

Tuesday night's results make me wonder if working for simple decriminalization might be a more productive path. Prop. 5 was carefully, almost exquisitely crafted, with carefully balanced criteria for which offenders would be eligible for treatment. But it would have earmarked money fro treatment programs and it was long and fairly complex. It's not unusual for voters simply to vote No on propositions they don't quite understand, especially if some valid-sounding doubts have been raised (Dianne Feinstein did commercial against it). But the Massachusetts result suggests that voters might be ready for simple decriminalization, at least of marijuana. That would ease a host of law-induced social problems.

Which Obama will we see?

I don't think Barack Obama is a closet radical, I think he's a shrewd politician who knew how to use people on his way up -- perhaps the most intelligent and calculating politician to occupy the Oval Office since Richard Nixon, for whatever that might be worth. But his resume is thin and he has downplayed his associations with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers and their ilk, so it's legitimate to wonder how he will operate in office. Here's the Register's editorial from today asking the question. Obviously, given his background and his party it would be unrealistic to expect him to govern as a laissez-faire free marketeer, but he did campaign as a pragmatic centrist and we hoped that's the way he will govern. In some sense his vagueness about what "change we can believe in meant during the campaign, which drove some of us inclined to be wonkish crazy, gives him great flexibility once he assumes office. It will be fascinating to see how he operates. He's disciplined and his campaign indicated some organizational skills, but the federal government is a more unruly beast.

No new foreign policy

Here's a link to my most recent column for Antiwar.com, written before the election, in which I doubted whether the next president, whoever he might be, would have a more modest foreign policy than we have now. I hold to the idea. If anything, Barack was more militant than McCain on doing raids inside Pakistan with or without the Pakistani government's permission or foreknowledge, and on ramping up the war in Afghanistan, the graveyard of several empires. It's time for a new foreign policy of strategic disengagement, but it doesn't look as if we'll get it anytime spoon. You're invited to nag me about progress on the book I'm writing on the subject. I haven't been as diligent as I might be.

Obama torpedoed gay marriage in California?

If you have any fondness for irony, this should appeal to you. It looks as if Barack Obama's campaign was a big key to the (apparent) success of Proposition 8 in California, which eliminated the right of same-sex marriage to be recognized by the state, even though Barack Obama himself late in the day said he was against it.. It seems blacks supported Prop. 8 by a 69-31 margin according to exit polls (whites opposed it 55-45 and Hispanics were evenly divided) and an unusually high number of blacks voted on Tuesday because Obama was running for president. If that hadn't been the case Prop. 8 would probably have lost.

I'm sad that this is a political issue at all. If I had my way the State would not be involved in marriage at all, but it is, at many levels. I do wish Prop. 8 had been defeated.

Live-blogging the election results

Along with my colleagues Mark Landsbaum and Steve Greenhut, I will be live-blogging election results tonight over that the Register's Orange Punch blog. Tun in if you want to see how premature our judgments are.