Great blog post.

> Obama sidesteps the acute state
> of affairs in the Islamic world
> with flattery, failing to
> encourage accountability

It's not just that he pandered (uselessly) to his audience. It's that he dishonored his own tradition, and ignored his own tremendous discipline. I hate when people do that. Obama himself would never have permitted the intellectual and social horizons of his own life –nor those of his daughters– to be as diminished as they are in Islamic cultures. He's not being true to his school.

----

Now, y'know, one thing that pisses me off on this blog is when people talk like anyone who lived before the moment they were born was just an asshole. People like to flatter themselves and think that all the decency in the universe came to life in the instant that they took their first breath.... Before that there was nothing but slavery and oppression of women and torture of gays and xenophobia and worse.

Well, that's not true! All the good stuff was in the current of civilization no less than the bad stuff.

To automatically and baselessly ascribe cruelty to warm-appearing faces in our past speaks mostly to the weakness in our own souls. And to be perfectly clear, you can't just pick a person randomly out of human history and assume he was a racist or a bigot. It's not just that it's unfair; it's almost certainly factually incorrect.

I mean that!

But still... To look at the man in the photo at the top of this page is to dream of being a time traveller with a Good News / Bad News joke.

"Hey buddy, I got good news and bad news!"

"What's the good news?"

"Your great-grandson's going to be a beloved President of the United States!"

"What's the bad news?"

~

Another thing being airbrushed out of Obama's pretty picture is the severe racism and oppression of blacks among Arab Muslims, the Darfur situation being only the most recent of a long, ignoble history.

And the slave trade to the Arabs dwarfed the trans-Atalantic slave trade... and on, and on, and on.

Crid is wrong. Obama is being perfectly true to his own tradition. Obama is a neo-Marxist. His early childhood mentors were neo-Marxist, his close associates are neo-Marxist, his mother and father were neo-Marxists. O! is a "friend" and close associate of an admitted neo-Marxist terrorist who planted bombs right here in America, who actually planted bombs For twenty years, O! attended a church that advocates just about every critique of America taught at al-Azhar.

O! has worked all his life to undermine the classical liberal basis of US society and governance. He has tirelessly promoted the idea of collective justice for black people and collective punishment of white people. He has argued ceaselessly for the eradication of capitalism. He is a strong advocate of identity politics and racial preferences enforced by the government.

Given all that, crid is not only wrong but positively fucking stupid. Obama's speech was typical Obama. That's precisely why it was a bad speech.

Actions speak louder than words.

Was there a speech that mentioned the issues that Sultan and so many others raise that could have been given that would have encouraged dialog and progress?

I don't know. I'm not a diplomat, politician, or warrior. I just don't know.

I think the President could have been more straight forward and more critical, and I don't know if that would have made it easier or harder to get actual change in the mideast.

Actions speak louder than words. If Obama praises them to high heaven but makes substantial changes in US Foreign and Energy policy that get us off oil, and encourages democracy and human rights in the Arab and Islamic states, than maybe I am okay with his silk glove speech.

but makes substantial changes in US Foreign and Energy policy that get us off oil

How do you imagine this is to be accomplished? There's no magical energizer bunny to be pulled from a hat that will replace oil. The options are all known: nuclear, coal, oil, gas, solar, wind. The only ones of the above capable of making any dent in our oil demand are nuclear and coal. Both are leftist bugaboos, and Obama is a leftist, or, at the very least, deeply beholden to them.

"The only ones of the above capable of making any dent in our oil demand are nuclear and coal. Both are leftist bugaboos, and Obama is a leftist, or, at the very least, deeply beholden to them."

Well, I concede then. It's best we do as George W. did and just kiss our Saudi Masters while warring against the Arab states based on a tissue of lies. That is surely a way to get peace in the mideast and movement of Islamism towards peace and modernity.

While I think nuclear is worth looking into, I think many people who actually post their degrees and cvs on the internet and just don't take the handle of a puffed potato pastry respect actually disagree with you on what solar, wind, and other forms of energy can do to get us off foreign oil.

Which gets us back to Obama's speech. What speech should he have given?

I always like people who have been on both sides, giving their life experiences.

When I listen to talk radio I hear people who have lived in Russia or Cuba or parts of Central and South America call-in and say they can't believe the people in the U.S. don't realize they are moving toward socialism and/or possibly worse. They can't believe we aren't putting up a fight and what we are losing.

Same with nationalized health care. People call from England or Canada and tell horor stories. What do we do? We just go about with our heads in the clouds saying "everything will be okay. People are just over reacting."

That's why people should really pay attention to people who have lived both experiences.

> not only wrong but positively
> fucking stupid

You havin' a bad weekend over there, Pilgrim?

> If Obama praises them to high
> heaven but makes substantial
> changes in US Foreign and Energy
> policy that get us off oil,

I don't think those policies are his to change. It wasn't some clown in a government office who gave us an economy that runs on cheap energy... Everyone in the country for the last two centuries has toiled to build the systems that put us in this position. Problems like these are great problems to have. One reason that Obama's so drunk on his own magnificence is that there are people who really imagine that he can just write a memo and poof, we're not a modern economy any more. But all the food and clothing and shelter and medicine and education and comfort that's enriched the lives of billions of people has come from an oil economy, and we shouldn't talk about that like it was a mistake.

> There's no magical energizer
> bunny to be pulled from a hat
> that will replace oil.

Exactly. And not only that, if (if) there's some grand transition coming, it's going to be unpleasant no matter what. We are heavily (and I think correctly) invested in an oil economy. If-if-if the oil were to simply dry up, the smartest people in the world would come up with something better, because they know we'd pay them dearly for it. Our neediness is a central component of human progress, and it can't be avoided.

(For the record,I don't think we're going to run out of oil for a very, very long time.)

Nobody likes making war in the Middle East, or any of the other problems that come from our energy needs. But when people talk as if transitions of this magnitude can be neatly and painlessly managed, they're not thinking clearly about civilization's propulsion, which is not a top-down process. They're letting their daydreams about their own lives corrupt their politics.

Listen, if you want to take command of your own life in a centralized, make-a-list-and-do-it kind of way, so that you can avoid a few bad outcomes –poverty, divorce, weight gain, etc.– then good luck to you. Your ego and discipline may very well protect you.

But you can't apply that mentality to other people, for two reasons:

• It doesn't work: You're not that smart.

• It's immoral: You're not that decent.

We will not run out of oil.

Maybe you won't always pay exactly the price you'd prefer to pay... But that's a different problem, isn't it?...

"I don't think those policies are his to change."

There are some he could certainly change (with Congressional approval of course.) Right now we subsidize oil by not charging foreign oil consumers for the increased costs of national security, and not charging all oil consumers for the increased costs of pollution and health care.

"Maybe you won't always pay exactly the price you'd prefer to pay...."

That's right, and when oil costs "enough", we'll get our solar, wind, nuclear, hydrothermal, microwave energy.

The difference between now and then is in someways attributable to the learning curve and economies of scale. As a society, we have paid and subsidized a huge amount to bring down the learning curve of oil technology and bring it very far down the economies of scale curve.

What gov't could do for alternative energies is to help bring us down the learning curves (research) and bring us down the economies of scale (by guaranteeing so many joules of any alternative will be bought by the feds.)

If we see a cliff coming up on our highway, a highway that lets us do 75, and we pass by alternative roads leading away from the cliff that currently only allow us to drive 20, it seems somewhat crazy to continue driving up to the cliff at 75, hoping that at some point we'll find a road that lets us do 50.

Oil is that cliff. Foreign Oil especially.

> guaranteeing so many joules of
> any alternative will be bought
> by the feds.

Bought by the who? With what, that is to say, whose money?

We're five months and four trillion dollars into the Obama administration anyway... You want to pay top dollar of energy that doesn't exist?

As we say in Hollywood: Pasadena, babe....

> If we see a cliff coming up
> on our highway

See? See? This is exactly what I was talking about. A folksy, plain-sense, deeply personal metaphor by which you plan to take command over a civilization... Why not? Your rhetoric is irresistible, isn't it? Geez guys, we're 'driving over a cliff....'

by guaranteeing so many joules of any alternative will be bought by the feds

Like they've been doing with ethanol, right? What a huge success that's been.

My uninformed guess is that every year our Federal Government has a huge requirement for electricity for its buildings and facilities.

I may be wrong about that, and perhaps they don't use electricity in their buildings.

(And maybe they aren't the big users of energy I suspect they are.)

So you don't mind if government pays exorbitant rates for energy? How much do you want them to pay for other things, perhaps for services that others on this blog might want to sell to government?... Video editing, advice columns, marketing information, voice performance, those sorts of things?

Raddy handles nuke materials. Is he worth $750,000 a year? I bet that's what he'd prefer to be paid....

I don't think I ever said the government should pay exorbitant rates for energy. I think I said they should guarantee they would buy X joules of alternate energy, negotiated the best way possible from as many sources as they need.

Would that be more expensive than buying foreign oil based energy? Probably higher than the market rate of subsidized oil. Still at market rates for the alternate. (By the way, you probably know this, but the Feds get the bestest rate possible on anything they buy, that's the law.)

I think they can easily get long term contracts to buy energy from various sources, and do that knowing what they are doing is generating enough demand to move us down the scalability and learning curves.

Is it a free market interference? Yes. Just as subsidizing oil's costs all these years has also been a free market interference, or do you think an aircraft carrier comes for free?

Why would we buy video editing services? Are we overly reliant on foreign video editing services? IS that reliance on video editing leading to a less safe America, war, terrorism, and a more polluted planet with worse of health? (I wasn't aware of this, and I thank you for bringing it to our attention. I wonder who the bastards are covering this up. Big Video! I hate Big Video always outsourcing our Video editing and production. Damn them. I wonder how many people they've killed to keep this quiet. Be careful Crid, Big Video could be after you next.)

Oil is that cliff. Foreign Oil especially.

So...you'd be in favor of increasing domestic oil production then?

> I think I said they should
> guarantee they would buy X
> joules of alternate energy

Quit saying "they". You mean "we". You mean we should pay more for energy.

> Still at market rates for
> the alternate.

You promise these producers would have no other tax breaks or incentives? Exactly what information about the world –or the technologies themselves– would be contained in their higher prices? Are those big numbers about anything besides the gleaming compassion of your own sustainable, NPR-lovin' heart?

> Feds get the bestest rate possible
> on anything they buy,
> that's the law.

Sure... No one ever got rich with a government contract: that's why they're so unpopular!

> do that knowing what they are
> doing is generating

The only thing I want "they" to know is that they're spending my tax money as slowly and effectively as they can to complete their assignment. Their interior conditions are otherwise irrelevant.

> enough demand to move us
> down the scalability and
> learning curves.

Jerry, we need you understand that what you're talking about is a fantasy... It's the fantasy of the "soft landing". For a great explication, see this book. Decade after decade, as government stepped in again and again to manipulate economic forces, we saw clever, compassionate men such as yourself and Barney Frank growing ever more confident that all the bumps in life's road could be managed out of existence. It's not true, and the financial wreckage around us is the best evidence. Things are worth what people will pay for them, and it's the fool who pretends otherwise.

Fundamental change in energy practices cannot and will not come from government, any more than the countless (countless!) blessings of our fossil-fuel economy did. It ought not be attempted. Now, you're a sweet, gentle guy; I know this about you; I can feel it in my bones. You're like the woman in the old Onion editorial: "Someone needs to do something about all the problems!"

> I wonder how many people
> they've killed

As if killing were the only product of the oil economy. You're worried about-

> war, terrorism, and a more
> polluted planet with
> worse of health

But those terrors ruled the globe long before we had oil. The healthiest places in the world are the most developed places, the ones that burn oil like nobody's business. Life expectancy essentially doubled in the United States once we learned to burn oil... This is a weird time to for you to complain about health.

Tell you what. If you really have the faith of your convictions, you go first. You personally should lead the way into these markets, sustaining your lifestyle with these precious new technologies, and leave the rest of us out of it. The power of your example will be much greater than any government contract. Good luck out there! We'll be watching!

> IS that reliance on video
> editing leading to a less
> safe America

Sarcasm is not your gift... Keep Questing, Johnny.

If Obama praises them to high heaven but makes substantial changes in US Foreign and Energy policy that get us off oil

How does one follow from the other? Is Obama's ability to "make substantial changes ..." somehow contingent upon praising the Arabs? How?

So...you'd be in favor of increasing domestic oil production then?

Excellent point. There's another perfectly reasonable short-term fix that the Dems ignore and abhor. They'd rather dream their utopian sunbeam dreams of free, abundant, non-nuclear, non-polluting, greener-than-green energy in an oil-free world.

Would I favor increasing domestic oil production?

Of course. And I also favor public investment into alternative sources.

And you?

Crid, I'm not talking (necessarily) about a soft landing at all. I am talking specifically about market based ways to move a new technology down the learning curve and along the scalability curve. And the answer to both those is to simply to produce more of it.

The trick is to get more without screwing the market too much.

And right now we already subsidize oil, which manipulates the market a great deal, and which is why many of us favor a carbon tax, to remove the subsidies for oil and return to a freer market.

Another way is to guarantee a certain number of joules to be bought. Doesn't matter what alternate source is used, the producers can figure out the best technology and compete against each other.

But it's a guarantee that more than one party will be able to take to investors, and use that to increase their capacity.

"You're like the woman in the old Onion editorial: "Someone needs to do something about all the problems!""

It's odd you would say that since I'm the guy proposing concrete market based proposals and you folks are the ones saying,

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

Jerry -

You're missing one key problem to "alternative energy".

Physics.

There is an absolute maximum amount of energy to be had by way of solar and wind. And that energy needs to be moved. The physics of energy conversion require enormous solar and wind installations that are not plausible in population centers. But on the other hand, the existing power grid is not capable of moving mass quantities of power from the vast empty spaces in the middle of the nation where these facilities could be installed.

Not to mention that neither wind nor solar is capable of providing base power.

IS that reliance on video editing leading to a less safe America, war, terrorism, and a more polluted planet with worse of health?

Your analogy is inapt. We were dealing with islamic terrorism before we were using petroleum. Aside from the random islamic freaks, America is safer than it has ever been (thanks to the collapse of the USSR). The WORLD isn't safer, but that's why we need a strong military.

But the most broken part of your analogy can only be answered thus:

Would you rather die of cancer at eighty, or typhus at nine?

> I'm not talking (necessarily)
> about a soft landing at all.

No?

> I am talking specifically about
> market based ways to move a new
> technology down the learning curve
> and along the scalability curve

That would be a soft landing, Jerry. You're unwilling to let these curves happen on their own.

> I'm the guy proposing concrete
> market based proposals

Jerry, snap out of it! If the proposal is market-based, you don't have to force people to buy things at prices they don't like. It's like you're saying 'There's no slavery involved... There's just this one group of people who has to do whatever they're told for a few generations....'

> "Yes," said Eeyore.

Again with the personal warmth... Who's more folksy than Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh?

You think of yourself as a very nice man, but you have some serious coercive impulses. (Golly, I'm just trying to help...)

I think your claim that purchasing energy and other than the rock bottom price of subsidized oil is equivalent to slavery akin to a godwinning....

No one is forcing anyone to buy anything they don't want.

This would be government purchases of energy the government already makes.

Do you buy everything you buy on basis of cost alone? Do you insist the government buy everything it buys on the basis of cost alone? If not, what factors apart from cost is the government allowed to consider?

I had a father in law who would grumble whenever he saw any government building that wasn't a squat, ugly, plain thing. Is the government allowed to build buildings in the public square that would add to the aesthetics of the square?

Would you agree that a company's managers can get the company into trouble when they look only at maximizing short term profit? That it's better for a company to balance short term and long term strategies than to always take the strategy that maximizes short term profits?

If government and its consultants see a cliff coming up ahead, why do you insist they drive over that cliff when they could spend a few resources and drive around it?

Do you buy everything you buy on basis of cost alone? Do you insist the government buy everything it buys on the basis of cost alone?

No, Federal Law insists that government buy things that way.

If government and its consultants see a cliff coming up ahead, why do you insist they drive over that cliff when they could spend a few resources and drive around it?

Because invariably the government will do no such thing. They will instead dynamite the cliff so that it can be driven over sooner.

> No one is forcing anyone to
> buy anything they don't want.

Of course you are. I don't want the government in the business of generating energy anyway. I certainly don't want them in the business of doing it inefficiently, and I don't then want them protected from the truth about what that energy is worth.

How many layers of coercion are you ready to apply here, Christoper Robin?

> If not, what factors apart from
> cost is the government allowed
> to consider?

Presuming the spec has been met, none whatsoever. Right? Isn't that the essence of honest procurement? Or are you trying to get the congressman to cut a special price for your cousin Winnie?

> Is the government allowed to
> build buildings in the public
> square that would add to the
> aesthetics of the square?

It is, Jerry, so long as you personally are ready to pay for the extra beauty, leaving the rest of us out of it. People get upset that there are no public monuments anymore, but the truth is that grand public architecture is essentially a product of authoritarian culture. The World Trade Center can't be rebuilt because public planners are compelled to consider the voices of the surrounding community in a way they weren't when the buildings went up forty years ago. Dubai's skyline is built on other people's money and slave labor... Are you happy with the result?

> Would you agree that a
> company's managers can

The government is not a company. Profits and careers are not it's purpose. It has responsibilities and powers that are completely distinctive from the commericial realm. It's strange to have to explain this to a guy who, just hours ago, was cracking wise about video editors and other vendors with the power to kill.

> If government and its
> consultants see a cliff
> coming up ahead

Fuck that! Fuck that with a stick. Government has one consultant: The governed whence comes its authority.

You keep pulling white gloves over your brass knuckles and calling it elegance. If you do one more cute-little-boy analogy about cliffs or fuzzy creatures on Pooh corner, I promise to take a piss on your shoes...

Whence come its [etc.] Sorry, haven't had coffee yet

Of course. And I also favor public investment into alternative sources.

And you?

I favor private investment into developing new sources of energy. And let the person (or persons) who develop it reap the rewards of their labors.

Understand one thing, however. Alternative energy is a long way off. We've been working on developing new sources of energy since long before Jimmy Carter's solution to the energy crisis was to tell us all to wear sweaters.

As yet, no one has found as effective an energy source as burning carbon.

So, while we're working on alternative energy, let's exploit the sources we have that won't have us pouring money into terrorist organizations that send illiterate goatherds to murder civilians.

Or would that be authorities? Someone work this out and let us know.

As yet, no one has found as effective an energy source as burning carbon.

Yes we have. Splitting Uranium.

Yes we have. Splitting Uranium.

Splitting uranium is quite costly and produces dangerous emissions. It's also not effective in smaller generation models (automobiles, outboard motors, portable generators, etc.).

Conan -

More people have died as a result of the emissions of coal-fired electrical generation than from the emissions of nuclear electrical generation.

Besides, if we were to muster the public and political will to enhance the grid, we could put nuclear power plants in the middle of nowhere at tens of times the power density of wind or solar, and use the cheap electricity to charge our electric cars.

Of course, with cheap electricity, coal to gas technology becomes cheaper than oil.

We would need three things to make nuclear power workable in the US (assuming we can get past the NIMBY and Three Mile Island bullshit, that is): 1: Standardized design. Worked for France. Unlike others, I have no problem learning from other people's success. 2: Smackdown of the unions. Unions were directly responsible for cost overruns at Seabrook that made it cost 3 times what it should have. They were following hazardous waste procedures for tools on site years before any radioactive material was ever there. 3: Streamlining of regulation. I had a friend who worked for ABB. He said the NRC regs were probably the thickest in the government. Tens of thousands of pages. Simplify.

Of course, the reality is that the movie The China Syndrome may have permanently destroyed any hope of nuclear power in America.

brian-

I agree with you on nuclear power as a means of generating lots of power. It's one of the non-terrorist-supporting sources that I think we should exploit.

But nuclear power doesn't completely remove the need for carbon-based energy sources...and won't for a long time to come, if ever.

Dreams that we can replace oil in the next few years are just that...dreams...whether they come from the nuclear right or the wind and solar left.

Nuclear won't replace liquid fuel, nothing will. It CAN replace imported oil.

Extracting oil from oil shale is a very energy intensive process. It's still net energy positive, but requires much heat.

From what little I know of the extraction process, that heat can certainly come from electricity.

Same thing with coal gassification. Requires loads of up-front energy to do the conversion, but is still net positive.

Both cases are, at present, not viable with oil below $x/bbl where x varies depending on the source and the tech. Alberta oil sands supposedly hit at around $75/bbl.

If we built enough nuke plants to get that down to $50/bbl or $25/bbl, we could tell the Saudis to eat their oil.

"Raddy handles nuke materials. Is he worth $750,000 a year? I bet that's what he'd prefer to be paid...."

Oh, yeah. Here in the Cheap South, it's a little under a tenth of that. Thank you, taxpayers. Please be assured that I do more than is required by my job description, too.

"If we built enough nuke plants to get that down to $50/bbl or $25/bbl, we could tell the Saudis to eat their oil."

Irony? OPEC was formed because of a hike in the price of American grain.

Do not forget, in the energy biz, that moving an individual passenger car is one of the most inefficient things one can do. Also, do not fail to realize that most of the current practice of making a "knowledge worker" travel to work is unnecessary. Commute, to type at the computer? Totally bogus except as a power exercise.

You'll get no argument from me, Rad. however I will say that sometimes I work much better when I'm on site than when I'm in my home office.

Today for instance. If I was coding on site, I wouldn't have spent all day here arguing with a dipshit.

But a great deal of the whole anti-telecommuting thing is bosses who need to have their minions present so they can feel like they have an empire to rule.

Nuclear won't replace liquid fuel, nothing will. It CAN replace imported oil.

No, Brian.

An abundance of cheap nuclear energy can only make possible the replacement of imported oil by making the extraction of gasoline from coal or oil shale more economical.

By itself, however, nuclear power will not replace imported oil. Having fewer oil-based power plants will help alleviate our dependence on foreign oil sources, but will not eliminate it.

The simple fact is that the US is going to need gasoline for the foreseeable future. And, as I said before, exploiting all non-terrorist-supporting sources of that gasoline needs to be done.

That exploitation will, in the short term, include inconveniencing a few Hollywood egos with an oil rig or two spoiling their ocean views.

In the long-term, it means more nuclear power plants and non-traditional methods of extracting fuels.

In the extreme-long-term...?

MIT students have already proven the viability of Nikola Tesla's concept of broadcast electricity. They've only managed short range broadcasts and the long-term effects on children and plantlife still need to be studied. But it means an electric car useful for more than a trip to the groery store may be only a few hundred years away.

Having fewer oil-based power plants will help alleviate our dependence on foreign oil sources, but will not eliminate it.

The large majority of power plants do not use petroleum or natural gas. Most are coal fired. The efficiency/cost ratio isn't there to use petroleum.