A molecule captured for the human eye

Above is the actual image of a molecule of pentacene, captured by atomic force microscopy by a team at IBM.

Forgive this science geek’s momentary wonder at the actual physical representation of what we all saw via ball-and-stick models in chemistry. Images like this and those of the Hubble Space Telescope capture the power of science to see into the inner reaches of microspace and the vast unimaginable depths of outer space.

It makes you realize the universe is at once a thing of great order and unimaginable mystery.

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Barney Frank joins Ron Paul in push for Fed audit

At a recent town hall, Rep. Barney Frank told his constituents he planned legislation to restrict the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending powers and to subject the central bank to a “complete audit.” He’s coming late to the party started by Rep. Ron Paul, whose bill to audit the Federal Reserve has the support of over half of the House of Representatives. Indeed, Frank indicated that he’d been working with Paul on compromise language, an indication that with broad support in the House and from bipartisan leadership, the chances of passage for this bill are becoming increasingly likely.

I agree with Barney Frank on virtually nothing, and while I commend Ron Paul for his strict fiscal discpline and respect for federalism and the separation of powers, much of his foreign policy espoused during his 2008 Presidential bid seemed too isolationist to be practical. That said, both men are to be commended for pushing for accountability in the Federal Reserve. No matter how you want to slice it, figuring out exactly how our money is being shuffled around is a healthy thing for our democracy and for our economy.

What would such an audit show? I couldn’t even begin to speculate. Conspiracy theories abound with nefarious plots by the Fed to enrich their board members. While I’m not ready to sign on to those, I have no doubt there’s been at least some level of mismanagement. With a bank system of that size, how could there not be? As a quasi-private entity operating with public funds, it’s my belief that the American people have a need to know what goes on behind the closed doors of the Federal Reserve.

The Fed audit, if it becomes a reality, may become the big story of the fall if health care reform continues to nosedive. In any event, it’s something worth watching, and I’ll be interested to see what, if anything, comes from this push, given more oomph by the support of Rep. Frank, who I am at this point assuming will follow through. That he’s negotiating with Paul on the language indicates to me that he’s at least slightly serious about pursuing this.

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Lockerbie bomber set free for oil deals, leaked docs show

Ever since the release to Libya of the bomber of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland and killed 270 people, the decision has been steeped in well-deserved controversy. Even if you take at face value the claims of the Scottish government that it freed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on humanitarian grounds due to his supposedly imminently terminal prostate cancer, his release was an unconscionable affront to the families of the deceased, for whom al-Megrahi spent just over 11 days in jail for every person he killed. This is in addition to the disgusting hero’s welcome that he received at the airport when he returned to Libya.

 But further doubts arose when it was whispered that al-Megrahi’s cancer wasn’t really that bad, and that some deal may have been struck between the UK and Libya. Those concerns gained even more credence today with a report by the Times Onlineon leaked documents that show Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the Gordon Brown government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make al-Megrahi eligible for return to Libya.

The information is backed up by Sir Richard Dalton, former ambassador to Libya, and Said Gadaffi, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi, who has said repeatedly that the release of al-Megrahi was linked to the BP oil deal:

The fight to get the [transfer] agreement lasted a long time and was very political, but I want to make clear that we didn’t mention Mr Megrahi. At all times we talked about the [prisoner transfer agreement]. It was obvious we were talking about him. We all knew that was what we were talking about. People should not get angry because we were talking about commerce or oil. We signed an oil deal at the same time. The commerce and oil deals were all with the [prisoner transfer agreement].

I thought the release of al-Megrahi was disgusting before, but the craven and greedy motivations of the British government make this a national disgrace for the United Kingdom. The folks in England are right to be angry about this, and the families of the victims are right to be scandalized. This entire episode is a black mark on the Gordon Brown government and a shameful chapter in the annals of international justice. All involved need to wear a mark of disgrace for the rest of their political and professional careers.

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Health care bill to give union health plans $10 billion

Earlier in the week, the Detroit Free Press reported that HR 3200, among its other provisions, gives $10 billion to the health plans of unions, which supporters say still isn’t enough. It’s yet another huge reason why the current health care reform proposal is unacceptable and another unnecessary bailout of an industry that has had a few already, and it’s why the Detroit News’ editorial board ripped the inclusion and urged its expulsion from any health care reform package being concocted. Here’s what they had to say:

One reason the public so distrusts the health care plan being considered by Congress is that so many troublesome details keep bubbling out of the massive legislation.

The latest example is the $10 billion taxpayers will be asked to shell out to prop up the United Auto Workers’ retiree health insurance program.

That provision is tucked deep into the bill passed by the House.

In effect, it would ask every taxpayer, regardless of whether they’ll have health insurance coverage themselves after they retire — and most won’t — to chip in to maintain the UAW’s coverage, which even after the union’s givebacks is still better than what the average American worker receives.

The helping hand is a recognition by Congress that the union’s volunteer employee benefit association, or VEBA, can’t possibly stay solvent if it is asked to cover all of the union workers taking early buyouts from the Detroit automakers.

So the union’s supporters added language to the House’s gargantuan health care bill that requires the federal government to pick up most of the cost of catastrophic claims for union retirees age 55 to 64.

The biggest beneficiary would be the UAW, which got $60 billion from the Big Three in exchange for taking on the obligation for retiree health care.

… Taxpayers should not be stuck paying for union benefits they didn’t negotiate and, for the most part, don’t enjoy themselves.

It’s hard to argue with the logic of that last line. It’s an obvious political payback for the loyally Democratic labor unions like the UAW and the AFL-CIO, who have, no surprise, vigorously supported the current health care reform bill and have organized counter-protests at the August town halls. Unions simply cannot expect the American taxpayer to help bail them out once again, and without question this provision needs to be removed from any final form of the health care reform bill.

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Honduras makes Zelaya an offer he can’t refuse

In a move designed to both end the political standoff and box in the deposed leader, Honduran interim President Roberto Micheletti has made a surprising offer to the exiled Manuel Zelaya. Under the terms of the offer, Zelaya could renounce any claim to the office and return as a private citizen with no fear of prosecution. Micheletti would also resign from public office, and new elections would take place as soon as possible under the monitoring of independent foreign observers.

The offer is a brilliant stratagem that puts the ball firmly in Zelaya’s court. As Ed Morrissey correctly analyzes, there’s no way that Zelaya can refuse without solidifying his image as a man only in search of power in the mold of his friend and ally Hugo Chavez. This deal gives Zelaya and the international hand-wringers what they ostensibly want – Zelaya back in Honduras and the head of the “coup” government out. To balk at the deal is to give away the ulterior motives of those involved, which is something Zelaya may still do, but at the risk of losing what international support he has currently.

I have to give credit to Honduras. Throughout this whole crisis they’ve played their hand very well, acting judiciously and not overreaching or overextending themselves. As a result they’re in a favorable diplomatic position and may come through this whole ordeal with the rule of their law intact, which is a huge step in showing other would-be dictators that it’s not always as easy as it looks.

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North Korean weapons seized on the way to Iran

The United Arab Emirates seized a ship carrying weapons made by North Korea that were on their way to Iran. The weapons, disguised as oil equipment, includes rocket launchers, detonators, and munitions for rocket-propelled grenades (Gee, you think Iran would be using that stuff against us in Iraq?) This is quite obviously a huge breach of the UN sanctions imposed on North Korea, and it doesn’t make Iran look all that great either.

However, I’m sure both nations will just receive a strongly worded warning from the international body before they go about their business. Can’t get too tough with them, now can we? Why, that make them walk away from diplomacy! I don’t know what tougher sanctions you could impose on the two nations short of blockading them, but between nuclear tests, missile launches, and now this, it’s clear these two nations pose no mere idle threat.

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After 26 years, Reading Rainbow ends

A PBS staple for two and a half decades, the children’s show Reading Rainbow ended today. Hosted by LeVar Burton, it was the third longest-running children’s show in PBS history. Anyone who watched the show knows Burton’s trademark line before the kids start in with their own book reviews – ” … but you don’t have to take my word for it.”

I watched Reading Rainbowas a kid myself, and I’m a little sad to see it go off the air. It was a great show to get kids interested in books and reading, and as a child I was always fascinated by the different places LeVar would go, always inspired by the featured book of the episode. Reading Rainbow, 3-2-1 Contact, and Square One formed a triumvirate of afternoon PBS shows watched by my sisters and I that reinforced reading, science, and math respectively, and I’m grateful for their influence, as I do believe it helped me in school and in any event made those subjects fun and interesting and helped lead to my comfort with them.

Farewell, Reading Rainbow. This is one chapter we’re sad to close the book on.

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Is the NEA pushing Obama’s agenda?

In a must-read article on Big Hollywood, Patrick Courrielche relates his musing related to conference call on August 10th hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call was aimed at “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!”

During the call, the artists were thanked for their enthusiasm for the Obama campaign, reminded that they have the power to “shape the lives” of the people around them, and urged to create art and art initiatives that bring awareness to “core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”

Even more key is this passage:

Discussed throughout the conference call was a hope that this group would be one that would carry on past the United We Serve campaign to support the President’s initiatives and those issues for which the group was passionate. The making of a machine appeared to be in its infancy, initiated by the NEA, to corral artists to address specific issues. This function was not the original intention for creating the National Endowment for the Arts. 

A machine that the NEA helped to create could potentially be wielded by the state to push policy. Through providing guidelines to the art community on what topics to discuss and providing them a step-by-step instruction to apply their art form to these issues, the “nation’s largest annual funder of the arts” is attempting to direct imagery, songs, films, and literature that could create the illusion of a national consensus. This is what Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.”

I’m with Mr. Courrielchein his recognition of a huge conflict of interest when an taxpayer-funded arts organization joins up with the government that funds it to collaborate on an agenda. Moreover, he’s right to recognize the potential danger of the White House using the NEA to direct art campaigns as a kind of propaganda to sway the masses. If you need further proof, Courrielche provides it with this quote from the call:

This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally?…bare with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…

Political activism and collaboration with the government in disseminating a message doesn’t fit the mandate of a taxpayer-funded arts organization, and to see such a movement in its infancy is disturbing. It goes beyond a conflict of interest and becomes an dangerous game of propaganda, paid for by your tax dollars.

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17% of UK households don’t work, 5M Brits haven’t worked since ‘97

From the Daily Mail comes a set of shocking statistics out of Great Britain that show 16.9% of households have no adult with a job, the highest rate since 1999. What’s more, the Daily Mail’s analysis says 5 million Brits haven’t worked at all since the Labour government took power in 1997. More depressing numbers include the 40% of single parent families that  are “workless” and the 65% of Brits on sickness benefit who are thought to be fit to work. The biggest shock is the 7.89 million Brits classed as “economically inactive” who aren’t working and aren’t planning to do so.

Both the article and the opposition Tory party are putting the blame on entitlement and welfare programs that give people little incentive to work. The global recession undoubtedly is a factor, but it’s hard to come up with another reason to explain the nearly 8 million Englishmen, which is 12.9% of the UK’s population of 60.1 million, who refuse to get a job. The entitlements of the welfare state are illustrated by the article’s example of the Crompton family, who live in a seven-bedroom home and receive almost £33,000 a year in benefits.

I don’t know if you can find a more glaring example of the pitfalls of unfettered government welfare. It’s a reminder that the entitlement mentality ends up creating a massive drag on society as scores of the able-bodied realize there’s no need for them to work. Societal safety nets are one thing – perpetuation of poverty through welfare is quite another.
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Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts has died

Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy lost his battle with brain cancer late on Tuesday night at the age of 77. His death marks the end of an era that saw him serve in the Senate since 1962. He goes to that eternal sleep to be greeted by his brothers, John and Robert, long ago cut down by assassins’ bullets.

I disagree with a lot of the positions of Sen. Kennedy, but at his passing people of all political stripes should be respectful and be at least mindful of his historically lengthy Senate tenure. Was his a perfect life or political career? One needs to look no further than Chappaquiddick for the answer that none of us, even the “liberal lion” of the Senate, can escape our own moral failings or, in Kennedy’s case, escape the shadow of tragedy that hung over his family.

Now isn’t the time for railing against his personal life or his policies – it should be one of somber remembrance. But neither should his death be exploited for pushing a political agenda, as has already been done by Nancy Pelosi, Robert Byrd and Chris Matthews. Let the dead have a moment’s peace before we use their memories in whatever manner we deem worthy.

That’s why today, not as a Democrat, Republican, conservative, or liberal, but as a human being – I’ll take a moment to remember Sen. Kennedy in my thoughts and keep his family in my prayers.

Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrissey, and the Anchoress have similar reflections on Kennedy’s passing.

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Get your drink on – here’s more great economic news

The title of the post says it all, really. The Office of Management and Budget released figures that show, along with an increased 10-year deficit projection of $9 trillion, a doubling of the federal debt by 2019 that will be 75% of America’s GDP. What’s more, unemployment is expected to hit 10% this year and the economy will shrink 2.8%, worse than the 1.2% projection in May. And even better, the Wall Street Journal says that the $9 trillion is actually a best-case scenario because it assumes Congress will hold spending at inflation and actually has decreasing spending between 2009 and 2012, which just ain’t gonna happen.

OMB Director Peter Orszag took the occasion to scold the Bush administration for not following “pay as you go” rules right before urging that a costly health care reform bill be passed to drive down costs. It’s circular logic that dictates that to save money you have to spend money, sort of like the “spend your way out of bankruptcy” crap that Joe Biden was spouting not too long ago. That kind of mindset, which seems to be prevalent within this administration, leaves me with little hope that fiscal restraint and spending cuts will even be considered until it’s too late. No, it’s the Keynesian model all the way, baby!

Here’s the problem for Mr. Orszag – it’s hard to take any of his rosy economic predictions at face value when his agency has already been off by a few trillion dollars. And, I’m sorry, you can’t blame a misreading of that magnitude on “the economy was just worse than we thought.” The inconvenient truth for Orszag is that he admitted back in March that if the CBO deficit projections were on target, then President Obama’s budget would be unsustainable. Well, guess what? With the new numbers, they are and it is.

So will Congress and the Obama administration exercise financial responsibility by curbing spending and crafting measures that help, not hinder, the private sector economy? I doubt it. We’ll see full steam ahead on the President’s domestic agenda, and we’ll finally see higher taxes for all of us to pay for it.

With these prospects, can you blame anybody for getting sauced at the thought of it all? Not me. Drink up, folks.

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Probe of CIA questioning, new interrogation group announced

Continuing the political theater over the CIA and its interrogation practices, Attorney General Eric Holder announced he would appoint prosecutor John Durham to probe several cases where the agency may have violated laws. The move has created tension between the White House and the CIA, with freshly minted CIA Director Leon Panetta involved in a profanity-filled tirade while threatening to quit over the investigation (which Panetta has since denied).

It comes on the same day that the White House announced the creation of a new special interrogations unit, answerable directly to the White House. The group, to be called the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), will strictly follow the Army Field Manual in dealing with detainees and is advertised as demonstration of a further break from the Bush administration’s policies.

A few notes – on the one hand, I’m all for justice and making sure that our personnel are following the law. On the other, it becomes a very dangerous game when you begin to criminalize the policies of previous administrations. And, as Ed Morrissey notes, a further danger lurks in bringing politics even more into the equation by putting the new interrogation squad directly under White House supervision. As far as following the Army Field Manual, it seems like a good idea to have some guidelines in place, but the squeamish should be warned that even that manual can still call for some pretty harsh stuff. And maybe it’s a personal failing, but it’s hard for me to muster much sympathy over claims like that Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s children were threatened during his interrogation.

At the end of the day, it’s politics that driving this, plain and simple. The simultaneous announcement of the criminal probe and the new unit is purposefully designed to take some heat off of the health care debate, which was killing Obama and the Democrats in the daily polls. Now the administration can style itself has more forward-looking and compassionate than its caveman predecessor – except that there’s nothing forward-looking about fishing for crimes in the past administration’s policies and practically screaming “SEE HOW DIFFERENT WE ARE?”

One thing you can be sure about – morale is going to be awful in the intelligence community. One source in the Washington Post article suggested there would be a higher than normal turnover this year as agents in the field and behind desks grow weary of looking over their shoulder, wondering if a future administration might blame them for what they think today is approved policy.

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NYT: 57% of Obama appointments not yet filled

Shortly after the election, I heard several pronouncements extolling Obama’s transition as the smoothest in American history among other accolades, all of which were hyperbolic works of extreme aggrandizement. Never mind the several appointees that had tax problems and other issues, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s interesting is that seven months in, the New York Times tells us that Obama has only filled 43% of his appointments that require Senate confirmation.

To be fair, no President has a full staff up and running right away, and as the article mentions, Obama has a more intact national security staff than Bush had at this stage. But some of the vacancies are more than a bit troubling. No chief has been installed at these important positions:

• head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
• head of the Customs and Border Protection agency
• head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
• head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)
• intelligence chief at the Department of Homeland Security
• top civilian in charge of military readiness at the Pentagon
• head of the Agency for International Development

The Obama administration is coming up with numbers a bit differently, counting low-ranking service positions and officials not needing confirmation to say it’s on track with past administrations. And to be truthful, it’s not like the desks are sitting empty at these positions, it’s just that there’s some person serving as a bureaucratic placeholder that is probably just treading water rather than forming an agenda for the agency.

A lot of the delay has come from increased vetting – which, again, stems from the first round of appointees like Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, and Bill Richardson with embarassing tax or legal problems. But in any event, the heads of major organizations like the TSA, ATF, and the Border Patrol should have been in place a long time ago.

Oh, and there are two more vacancies that have yet to be filled as well, and are quite ironic in their vacancies (Heads-up from Karl at Patterico’s). For all the emphasis on running health care responsibly, via the New York Times, the President has yet to appoint someone to lead the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. Now that’s change you can believe in.

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FactCheck.org – Actually, abortion will be covered under health care bill

In addition to other rebuttals against opponents of the current health care bill, President Obama and other members of the left have laughed off suggestions that abortions will be paid for under the House proposal. The President called it a “fabrication,” and I’ve read many other articles treating the charge as ridiculous as stating the earth is flat.

Though the claim of taxpayer-funded abortions has been reasserted by the National Right to Life and supported by the revelation about the Capps Amendment, the charge gains a damning credence when it’s backed up by no less than FactCheck.org, who provide an intensive and thorough vetting of the argument (Heads-up from Hot Air). The site, committed to digging for the facts behind public statements, has certainly been no friend to Republicans and conservatives – and yet they come to this conclusion:

“As for the House bill as it stands now, it’s a matter of fact that it would allow both a “public plan” and newly subsidized private plans to cover all abortions.”

You should do yourself a favor and read the entire analysis, but here’s another key part of the summary:

Will health care legislation mean “government funding of abortion”?

President Obama said Wednesday that’s “not true” and among several “fabrications” being spread by “people who are bearing false witness.” But abortion foes say it’s the president who’s making a false claim. “President Obama today brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component” of health care legislation, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee. So which side is right?

The truth is that bills now before Congress don’t require federal money to be used for supporting abortion coverage. So the president is right to that limited extent. But it’s equally true that House and Senate legislation would allow a new “public” insurance plan to cover abortions, despite language added to the House bill that technically forbids using public funds to pay for them. Obama has said in the past that “reproductive services” would be covered by his public plan, so it’s likely that any new federal insurance plan would cover abortion unless Congress expressly prohibits that. Low- and moderate-income persons who would choose the “public plan” would qualify for federal subsidies to purchase it. Private plans that cover abortion also could be purchased with the help of federal subsidies. Therefore, we judge that the president goes too far when he calls the statements that government would be funding abortions “fabrications.”

As the article mentions, the President himself told Planned Parenthood in 2007 that “reproductive care” will be at the center of his health plan, and that “reproductive services” are essential and must be covered. Did the President explicitly say abortion? Of course not. But it would be beyond disingenuous to assert that it’s not what he’s talking about when his audience is one of the premiere pro-choice organizations in America.

So if it’s true, and it’s such a good idea, then the administration and the left should own it and be honest about it. However, there’s a reason why Obama and others have to downplay the whole notion of taxpayer-funded abortion – it will drive down the popularity of a bill finding fewer and fewer supporters, and with the revelation of a larger long-term deficit forecast, it’s becoming an increasingly tougher sell.

That’s the whole trouble for the administration on the whole health care debate – it’s not contrived partisan anger, but genuine concern over the substance of what the plan actually does that is causing problems and will ultimately force Congress to make it more palatable to the center and the right, though it may cause the strident left to walk away in anger over a compromise that drops the public option.

In any case, I think an apology is owed to those who were accused of fabricating the whole thing. It turns out it’s true after all.

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Obama admin increases deficit projections to $9 trillion

In a Friday news dump, the Obama administration revised upward its deficit projection for the next 10 years by $2 trillion. The old figure was $7.108 trillion, which was awful enough, but the new projected budget shortfalls over the next decade is a whopping $9 trillion. Such a massive disparity is unsustainable if ignored or, as seems to be the case here, increased by more irresponsible spending.

Does the Obama administration have a point when they say they inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush? Of course they do – Bush was no fiscal conservative by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s hard to point the finger of blame at the previous administration when your own does the same thing on a larger scale.

The information has obvious implications for the health care debate as any sort of public option will be a massive increase in the size of government with the requisite cost and inefficiencies that come with it. Estimates of its cost are between $1 trillion and $2 trillion over a stretch of years, depending on who you ask. Either way it’s hard to sell that such a program will be deficit-neutral or that any supposed savings on health-care costs would outbalance the cost of the program itself. Never mind that it’s a bit odd to claim that spending more taxpayer money on health care will actually result in less money being spent on health care, but that’s a different story.

And in any case, the revised projections don’t inspire much faith in the administration’s ability to forecast. As Ed Morrissey notes, they got the unemployment figure wrong on the stimulus, they figured the initial Cash for Clunkers would last three months and it lasted a week, and now they reveal they’re off by $2 trillion in deficit forecasting. But yet their plans for health care reform will be so beneficial for us that we need not question their necessity or cost?

In the bigger picture, there are really only two options for anyone who wants to solve the troubling deficit problem: either raise taxes in a move that will further harm the economy and paradoxically further reduce revenues, or cut entitlement spending. No, cutting military spending won’t ever by itself solve the problem, as it’s Medicare and Social Security that are the major liabilities on the federal books.

Neither choice will be particularly popular, but politicians may end up thinking that it’s easier to simply tax more than to risk the wrath of the various groups currently receiving benefits. In a saying that has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin and may be sadly prescient, we come to learn the following:

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

Entitlements and bailouts are adding to the inevitability of that statement, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. In any case, the focus now should not be on adding on more, but getting the economy back on track and getting our government back to a responsible financial posture. Neither appears to be much of a priority now.

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