- Eyjafjallajökull
- The Anti-American President
- McVeighing Against the Tea Parties
- Radicalized
- The Obama Banana Republic
- Standing Up for Leviathan
Top News Stories
Commentary by Robert Tracinski
1. Eyjafjallajökull
Have you learned how to spell "Eyjafjallajökull" yet? Have you even tried to pronounce it?
All right, I'll make things easier on you: how about "Katla"?
Eyjafjallajökull is the Icelandic volcano that has been spewing ash into the atmosphere for the past week, disrupting European air travel. But this is just a sideshow to the main event, which is the likely eruption of a much larger neighboring volcano, Katla. The name may be friendlier on the ear and a lot easier to spell, but that's about the only good thing you can say about Katla.
In the land of fire and ice, Katla is a volcano with a glacier on top of it, and the theory seems to be that the weight of the glacier helps hold the lid down, so to speak. But when Eyjafjallajökull erupts, it melts the glacier on top of Katla—and the lid blows off. That could happen again very soon.
(By the way, if I seem well informed on Katla and able to spell Eyjafjallajökull, that's because of Jack Wakeland, who has been excitedly sending me links to this story, like a 12-year-old boy who thinks volcanoes are really, really cool. Which he basically is, and they basically are.)
I don't normally pay much attention to the natural disaster beat—nature is untamed, and there's always something happening somewhere—but this story could have a direct and significant impact on all of us. A big eruption from Katla could lead to several years of sharp global cooling, helping to suppress any global economic recovery.
This underscores some of the important arguments against economic controls intended to "stop climate change." For one thing, it shows how utterly stupid and scientifically ignorant that whole idea is. The climate is always changing, for many reasons which have nothing to do with us. So we could plunge ourselves into poverty in order to "stop global warming," only to have a volcanic eruption in Iceland cause a disastrous global cooling.
More important, several people have made the argument that mankind always faces the possibility of catastrophic natural changes, and the best way to protect ourselves is to accumulate as much wealth as possible, to give ourselves the maximum reserves to help us survive a disaster. Consider, as just one example, the earthquakes that have hit in the past few months. The greatest casualties were in the poorest countries (Haiti, of course, and also China), while the least casualties were suffered in relatively wealthy areas (Chile and especially Southern California).
That's one reason you don't impoverish the global economy because of a phantom fear of global warming: you never know what's really going to hit and when we're going to need extra wealth. Oh, yes, and that's also why you don't bankrupt the nation with trillions of dollars in debt to pay for new entitlement programs.
When Katla blows, we may have to learn these lessons the hard way.
"Global Cooling: What Happens if the Iceland Volcano Blows," Doyle Rice, USA Today, March 25
The potential eruption of Iceland's volcano Katla would likely send the world, including the USA, into an extended deep freeze."When Katla went off in the 1700s, the USA suffered a very cold winter," says Gary Hufford, a scientist with the Alaska Region of the National Weather Service. "To the point, the Mississippi River froze just north of New Orleans and the East Coast, especially New England, had an extremely cold winter.
"Depending on a new eruption, Katla could cause some serious weather changes."
Eyjafjallajokull, the Icelandic volcano that has continued to belch lava, ash and steam since first erupting last weekend, isn't the direct problem. It's Katla, the noisier neighbor, that's the concern. If lava flowing from Eyjafjallajokull melts the glaciers that hold down the top of Katla, then Katla could blow its top, pumping gigantic amounts of ash into the atmosphere.
Scientists say history has proven that whenever the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupts, Katla always follows—the only question is how soon….
Mount Pinatubo pumped ash for two days in 1991, and spewed it 70,000 feet into the stratosphere. This dropped temperatures worldwide about four degrees for about a year.
"When volcanic ash reaches the stratosphere, it remains for a long time," reports Hufford. "The ash becomes a very effective block of the incoming solar radiation, thus cooling the atmosphere's temperatures."
2. The Anti-American President
Speaking of disasters we're not prepared for, a new memo leaked from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates makes official what we already knew: that the Obama administration has no strategy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This is the single most urgent threat to America's interests, and the administration is basically disengaged from the issue.
But they are actively engaged with an issue they apparently regard as far more important: sacrificing Israel. In a new speech, President Obama has described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a threat to the "vital national security interest of the United States."
Mr. Obama said conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up "costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure"—drawing an explicit link between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism and terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
This is precisely the perspective pushed by enemy propaganda—as cover for the real reason our enemies attack us: a religious doctrine that preaches the forcible conquest of infidels by Islam.
Let's be clear: this idea that the "failure to resolve" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "a threat to American interests" really means that Israel is a threat to American interests. And Obama is going to use this as a justification for attempting to impose on Israel a broad surrender of its security.
So the Obama administration is working hard to develop a strategy for defeating Israel, our ally—but has no strategy for defending us against our sworn enemy, Iran.
That's what you get when you elect an anti-American president.
"Gates Says US Lacks a Policy to Thwart Iran," David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, New York Times, April 17
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course….
One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as "a wake-up call."…
He wrote the memo after Iran had let pass a 2009 deadline set by Mr. Obama to respond to his offers of diplomatic engagement….
Mr. Gates's memo appears to reflect concerns in the Pentagon and the military that the White House did not have a well prepared series of alternatives in place in case all the diplomatic steps finally failed.
3. McVeighing Against the Tea Parties
The smear campaign against the tea party movement as violent anarchists and racist rednecks reached a kind of crescendo in the past week with the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. And oh yes, we've also been reminded recently of the 11th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. Who commemorates 11th anniversaries? Someone with an axe to grind.
Of course, April 19 was actually Patriot's Day, the 235th anniversary of the "shot heard 'round the world," the beginning of America's armed rebellion against a tyrannical government. To use that date instead to commemorate the Oklahoma City bombing is an attempt to reverse the meaning of the day: to discredit any resistance against oppressive government.
That is precisely the goal of Bill Clinton's wistful celebration of the anniversary in the pages of the New York Times. Clinton famously used the bombing to smear the Republican Revolution of 1994 by trying to pin the bombing on advocates of liberty. As he puts it below, the bombers "took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them."
This is a fabrication. Timothy McVeigh was not an advocate of small government. He was inspired by a racist novel that advocated terrorism in a delusional attempt to set off a race war in which white supremacists would subject the nation to their own reign of terror. This had nothing to do with the Republican Party and nothing to do with advocacy of small government or free markets.
(The other big whopper: that after Oklahoma City, Clinton helped "develop a stronger and more systematic approach to defending our nation and its citizens against terrorism.")
As I recently observed, when the left denounces "hate speech," they are correctly identifying the emotion they feel and its object, but they're lying about the real relationship between the two. What is really going on is that they hate our speech, and they are itching for an excuse to suppress it. Or as Jack Wakeland put it to me, "hate speech" isn't a noun; it's a sentence fragment.
"What We Learned in Oklahoma City," Bill Clinton, New York Times, April 19
[W]e should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them. On that April 19, the second anniversary of the assault of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, deeply alienated and disconnected Americans decided murder was a blow for liberty.Americans have more freedom and broader rights than citizens of almost any other nation in the world, including the capacity to criticize their government and their elected officials. But we do not have the right to resort to violence—or the threat of violence—when we don't get our way. Our founders constructed a system of government so that reason could prevail over fear. Oklahoma City proved once again that without the law there is no freedom.
Criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy. No one is right all the time. But we should remember that there is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws….
Fifteen years ago, the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.
4. Radicalized
I've been arguing recently that the bailouts and stimulus and the government takeover of banking, auto manufacturing, health care—the whole spectacle of the Obama Banana Republic—has radicalized the right on economic issues.
Here is another sign: a straw poll conducted at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference was nearly won by former fringe candidate Ron Paul, who lost by only one vote.
First, a few notes of caution. Straw polls are not indicative of actual voter support, and in this case Paul's near-victory (as well as a previous straw poll victory at another Republican gathering) was won by packing the event with "Paulnuts," his small but fanatical band of young supporters.
And this vote may actually say more about Mitt Romney's weakness. At a time when the vital top item on the Republican agenda is to repeal ObamaCare, Romney still refuses to renounce the nearly identical plan he imposed in Massachusetts.
On the other hand, being able to mobilize a band of fanatics is a measure of political strength. And Paul's son Rand Paul is doing very well in a Kentucky Senate race. It is not true that Rand Paul was named after Ayn Rand. (His first name is Randal.) But a reader did spot campaign stickers in Kentucky that read "I'm a Rand Fan"—a phrase more commonly used to refer to avid readers of Atlas Shrugged.
Why the surge for Ron Paul? Because he was criticizing the Federal Reserve before it was cool. Because he was the only candidate in 2008 who was strongly focused on defending economic liberty—Giuliani actually campaigned as a pretty staunch pro-free-marketer, but he didn't last long—during a primary campaign in which Republican voters largely ignored the issue, with disastrous results.
That doesn't mean that I support Ron Paul. He has too much of the wacky Libertarian about him—and he is absolutely disqualified by his quasi-pacifist, blame-America-first foreign policy. But he seems to be serving as the symbol or figurehead for a swing back toward free markets within the Republican Party.
"Mitt Romney Wins GOP Presidential Straw Poll," Brian Montopoli, CBS News, April 10
Mitt Romney won the straw poll at the Southern Republican Leadership conference here Saturday….Romney triumphed by a single vote over Ron Paul, who took second place 439 votes to 438. Both men won 24 percent of the vote. Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich essentially tied for third with 18 percent of the vote each….
On the straw poll ballot, conference attendees were asked who they would vote for if the Republican presidential primary were today. They were asked for a first and second choice from among nine candidates: Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Gary Johnson, Palin, Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, Romney and Rick Santorum…. Some rumored 2012 candidates, including Rick Perry, Haley Barbour, and Bobby Jindal, asked to be taken off the ballot….
Paul's mostly-college age supporters stood out form the rest of the conference-goers and cheered their preferred candidate loudly when he spoke. Many other attendees remained silent or offered only polite applause during Paul's speech. Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference in February on the strength of his passionate if limited following.
5. The Obama Banana Republic
When I talk about the Obama Banana Republic, here's the sort of thing I mean. After more than a year in which government officials who used to work for Goldman Sachs handed out hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money to prop up their old firm—now the administration has launched a bogus lawsuit against Goldman Sachs accusing the company of fraud.
The pattern is: we, the government, have the power to shower down benefits on you—or to throw you to the regulatory wolves. It is a system designed to make businessmen terrified and compliant. It is meant to encourage the kind of businessman who gets ahead by cultivating connections in Washington rather than producing the best product.
Note also that part of this is misdirection. The administration is making a show of cracking down on Goldman Sachs for some very ordinary transactions, in the hope we won't notice that they are about to make bailouts for Wall Street into a permanent feature of our financial system, by way of the Dodd bill.
Yet when it comes to small "angel" investors—the earliest investors in small start-up companies—the Dodd bill introduces provisions that will practically cut off the flow of this crucial form of capital, as described below. Note particularly a provision that requires start-ups to wait 120 days—four months!—to ask the SEC's permission to raise money. That's an eternity in the Internet age.
Again, the fundamental issue isn't whether a particular decision benefits a particular firm or type of firm. The issue is that every company, every investor, every businessman now has to court the favor of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, DC, in order to survive.
"Angels Sing: 'Frankly Ridiculous' Restrictions Might 'Destroy Silicon Valley'," Anthony Ha, VentureBeat, March 26
Angel investors don't usually stay up at night worrying about Capitol Hill. But a financial reform bill proposed by Chris Dodd, the Democrat chairing the Senate Banking Committee, includes new restrictions on startups and angels.Not surprisingly, investors aren't happy about it, saying it's "insane," "frankly ridiculous," and aims to "destroy Silicon Valley."
There are three changes that should have a particular effect on angel investors, a catch-all category which includes everyone from friends and family members who invest in a startup, to unaffiliated wealthy individuals, to side investments made by venture capitalists acting on their own.
First, Dodd's bill would require startups raising funding to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and then wait 120 days for the SEC to review their filing. A second provision raises the wealth requirements for an "accredited investor" who can invest in startups — if the bill passes, investors would need assets of more than $2.3 million (up from $1 million) or income of more than $450,000 (up from $250,000). The third restriction removes the federal pre-emption allowing angel and venture financing in the United States to follow federal regulations, rather than face different rules between states.
Standing Up for Leviathan
With Justice Stevens set to retire from the Supreme Court this summer, expect more of the praise President Obama dished out when he lauded the left-leaning justice for standing up for the little guy.
Except that he didn't. As Timothy Carney points out in the article below, Stevens authored the eminent domain decision that allowed local governments to sacrifice the individual property owner to government-connected corporations.
Even worse is the fact that Stevens wrote the majority opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA, the 2007 decision that requires the EPA to bypass Congress and regulate carbon dioxide as a "pollutant," a form of regulation that logically reaches into every aspect of our economic lives. Stevens' decision amounts to an enabling act for economic dictatorship.
Stevens didn't stand up for the little guy. He stood up for Leviathan, for the all-powerful state.
"Justice Stevens Was No Champion of the Little Guy," Timothy P. Carney, Washington Examiner, April 14
President Obama said his nominee to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court would "be someone who, like Justice Stevens, knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens."Tell that to the "ordinary citizens" of New London, Conn., whose homes were stolen by the government for use by real estate developers at the request of the largest drug company in America—with the approval of Justice Stevens.
[I]n cases involving the economy—and particularly property—Stevens was often on the side of the big business-big government juggernaut trampling on those without wealth or power….
[I]n practice, liberalism often isn't really about the "little guy" as much as it is about central planning. The company and the city, Stevens wrote, had exhibited enough "thorough deliberation" and had "carefully formulated" a "comprehensive" plan—and that was enough….
Legal scholars can debate Stevens' legal philosophy, his coalition-building skills, and his demeanor. But before journalists parrot the White House's line that Stevens was a champion of the downtrodden, they should visit New London where the collusion of big business and big government—with a nod of approval from Stevens—flattened a neighborhood where little guys once lived.
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