Michael Williams – Master of None

Walter Russell Mead explains how overthrowing Gaddafi limited our options with Iran.

Meanwhile, many analysts agree that the war in Libya, brilliant and strategic though it appeared to the White House at the time, may be making our options regarding Iran more limited. The west made a deal with Gaddafi: stop your nuclear program and we will treat you with respect. He kept his end of the bargain and we dispatched him to his eternal reward. What assurances can we now give the mullahs that would induce them to believe that they will be safe without nukes?

This makes it less likely that President Obama's approach to Iran, infinitely more important for the future of US foreign policy than anything that has happened or could happen in Libya, will succeed. There is no pledge Obama could give the mullahs that can offer them the same protection that a bomb would give them; the "duty to protect" crowd does not believe it needs to honor any sort of pre-existing pledge to a leader it decides is "bad," while reserving the right to strike anyone, anywhere, anytime, should a moral mood befall us. For Iran, the lesson of Libya is that the West will tell you anything to get you to give up the quest for nuclear weapons, but none of the beautiful pledges can be trusted. At the first sign of weakness, they will intervene to overthrow you.

Thank goodness the Bush crowd and those awful neocons are gone.

Of course, as WRM notes, international diplomacy is hard and there often aren't any good options.

I'm not a fan of the "fact check" style, but it's fun when it's aimed at President Obama!

It was a wish list, not a to-do list.

President Barack Obama laid out an array of plans in his State of the Union speech as if his hands weren't so tied by political realities. There can be little more than wishful thinking behind his call to end oil industry subsidies - something he could not get through a Democratic Congress, much less today's divided Congress, much less in this election year.

And there was more recycling, in an even more forbidding climate than when the ideas were new: He pushed for an immigration overhaul that he couldn't get past Democrats, permanent college tuition tax credits that he asked for a year ago, and familiar discouragements for companies that move overseas.

I don't see any "facts" marked as "true" in the piece.

A little over a year ago I wrote about Missouri's tightening pseudoephedrine restrictions and predicted that they would cause all sorts of negative unintended consequences without significantly curbing the production of use of methamphetamine. I was right! Reduced access to pseudoephedrine has caused meth users to move to a new meth production method called shake-and-bake that is much more dangerous.

So-called shake-and-bake meth is produced by combining raw, unstable ingredients in a 2-liter soda bottle. But if the person mixing the noxious brew makes the slightest error, such as removing the cap too soon or accidentally perforating the plastic, the concoction can explode, searing flesh and causing permanent disfigurement, blindness or even death.

An Associated Press survey of key hospitals in the nation's most active meth states showed that up to a third of patients in some burn units were hurt while making meth, and most were uninsured. The average treatment costs $6,000 per day. And the average meth patient's hospital stay costs $130,000 - 60 percent more than other burn patients, according to a study by doctors at a burn center in Kalamazoo, Mich. ...

Larger meth labs have been bursting into flame for years, usually in basements, backyard sheds or other private spaces. But those were fires that people could usually escape. Using the shake-and-bake method, drugmakers typically hold the flammable concoction up close, causing burns from the waist to the face.

Why is this more dangerous method so popular?

Also known as the "one-pot" approach, the method is popular because it uses less pseudoephedrine - a common component in some cold and allergy pills. It also yields meth in minutes rather than hours, and it's cheaper and easier to conceal. Meth cooks can carry all the ingredients in a backpack and mix them in a bathroom stall or the seat of a car.

And the effect on taxpayers? Not only do we need prescriptions for cold medicine, but we're footing the bill for all these burn victims.

Burn experts agree the annual cost to taxpayers is well into the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, although it is impossible to determine a more accurate number because so many meth users lie about the cause of their burns.

Maybe it's time to ease up on the pseudoephedrine restrictions.

Rand Simberg nails the pro-abortion left for opposing abortion prerequisites that pale in comparison to restrictions on guy buyers.

Recently, the Texas legislature passed (and the governor signed) a law with a seemingly modest requirement -- that any woman getting an abortion in the state of Texas be allowed (and required) to see a sonogram of the fetus twenty-four hours prior to the surgery.

Note what the law doesn't do. It doesn't prevent a woman from getting an abortion. It (at most) slows her down by one day from doing so, should she choose to go through with it.

Contrast this with the hoops that gun owners must often jump through to purchase firearms -- background checks, waiting periods, purchase limits within a certain amount of time. Or the requirement that they undergo training, spending money and investing time, to get a permit to carry their weapons, even in states where it is allowed. All of these are far more onerous than the simple requirement that a woman have an ultrasound picture taken of her womb, and see it.

He is correct in asserting that "pro-choice" is a misnomer: these leftists are pro-abortion. Is there some reason they're hesitant to embrace that? I'm pro-gun, not just pro-the-choice-to-buy-a-gun. Nothing embarrassing about that. Are they embarrassed to be pro-abortion?

Well, to be honest, they should be embarrassed. Abortion is abhorrent and detestable, and so are the activists who promote it and the industry that profits from it.

I didn't watch the State of the Union speech last night, but apparently I didn't miss much.

The WSJ does a great job explaining why Mitt Romney's tax rates are (and should be) low.

Start with the fact that, like Warren Buffett, Mr. Romney said he makes most of his money from investments, not wages or salary. Thus his income is really taxed twice: once at the corporate tax rate of 35%, then again at a 15% tax rate when it is passed through to him as dividends or via capital gains from the sale of stock.

All income from businesses is eventually passed through to the owners, so to ignore business taxes creates a statistical illusion that makes it appear that the rich pay less than they really do. By this logic, if the corporate tax rate were raised to, say, 60% from today's 35% and the dividend and capital gains tax were cut to zero, it would appear that business owners were getting away with paying no federal tax at all.

This all-too-conveniently confuses the incidence of a tax with the burden of a tax. The marginal tax rate on every additional dollar of capital gains and dividend income from corporate profits can reach as high as 44.75% at the federal level (assuming a company pays the 35% top corporate rate), not 15%.

James Taranto points out that inflation also gnaws away at capital gains.

In the case of capital gains--profit on the sale of an asset--there is an additional argument. If you bought stock for $1,000 in 1990 and sold it for $2,000 in 2010, you'd pay taxes on the $1,000 difference--even though part of the appreciation reflects the decline in the value of money. A thousand dollars in 1990 dollars is a bit under $1,650 in 2010 dollars, so you'd pay $150 in taxes on real (after-inflation) income of $350, an effective rate of 43%. Taxing the same income at the current top ordinary rate of 35% would wipe out almost all the gains--and this during two decades in which inflation has generally been low.

The problem isn't that capital is taxed too lightly, but rather than income is taxed too heavily.

So organizers of online internet poker are going to jail while the Department of Justice is busy authorizing states to put their lotteries online.

This kind of double-dealing (ha!) is why many people don't respect the law very much. It's sad that our government looks more like a protection racket for favored groups than a protector of liberty and purveyor of justice.

Megaupload.com is out of business, but not because their business model failed. The founder, Kim Dotcom, seems to have made hundreds of millions of dollars. His only downfall was basing his business in a country with friendly legal relationships with the US government. So, why doesn't North Korea (or another pariah nation) enter the illegal file sharing market? They'd get a huge inflow of foreign capital for minimal cost and no risk of arrest.

Mark Steyn uses the Costa Concordia and "women and children first" as a metaphor for the decline of civilization, which is fine as far as it goes. However, in the case of a literal evacuation, I'm sure it's far more efficient to load everyone based on their proximity to the lifeboats rather than their age or gender. Just imagine the chaos if the crew (or someone?) were to attempt to separate families in the midst of an urgent disaster.

In any event, more than 99% of the passengers and crew escaped with their lives. That is pretty spectacular. I don't think that a "women and children first" policy -- even if perfectly implemented -- would have done any better.

As usual the Daily Mail has the best pictures, this time of the capsized Costa Concordia. Yet another reason I will never go on a cruise.

Snail that eats fish three times its size.

(HT: Gizmodo.)

(HT: MG.)

Surgeon in Antarctic removes his own appendix.

One of the expedition's members was the 27 year old Leningrad surgeon Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov. He had interrupted a promising scholarly career and left on the expedition shortly before he was due to defend his dissertation on new methods of operating on cancer of the oesophagus. In the Antarctic he was first and foremost the team's doctor, although he also served as the meteorologist and the driver of their terrain vehicle.

After several weeks Rogozov fell ill. He noticed symptoms of weakness, malaise, nausea, and, later, pain in the upper part of his abdomen, which shifted to the right lower quadrant. His body temperature rose to 37.5°C.1 2 Rogozov wrote in his diary:

"It seems that I have appendicitis. I am keeping quiet about it, even smiling. Why frighten my friends? Who could be of help? A polar explorer's only encounter with medicine is likely to have been in a dentist's chair."

(HT: GeekPress.)

In the early 20th century Albert Kahn financed an amazing collection of color photographs.

Daniel Kahneman argues that people have different earning preferences, and that the amount a person earns is affected by those preferences.

A large-scale study of the impact of higher education... revealed striking evidence of the lifelong effects of the goals that young people set for themselves. The relevant data were drawn from questionnaires collected in 1995-1997 from approximately 12,000 people who had started their higher education in elite schools in 1976. When they were 17 or 18, the participants had filled out a questionnaire in which they rated the goal of "being very well-off financially" on a 4-point scale ranging from "not important" to "essential."...

Goals make a large difference. Nineteen years after they stated their financial aspirations, many of the people who wanted a high income had achieved it. Among the 597 physicians and other medical professionals in the sample, for example, each additional point on the money-importance scale was associated with an increment of over $14,000 of job income in 1995 dollars! Nonworking married women were also likely to have satisfied their financial ambitions. Each point on the scale translated into more than $12,000 of added household income for these women, evidently through the earnings of their spouse.

Bryan Caplan points out that the effects of these preferences seriously undermine the case for income redistribution:

By the way, I take Kahneman's evidence here as yet another counter-example to George Loewenstein's view that happiness research and leftist politics are natural bedfellows. Kahneman highlights an important, neglected reason why some people are rich and others are poor: some people care about money more than the rest of us. People who want to be rich make the choices and sacrifices conducive to that end - and on average they succeed. "People who care more about X try harder to get X and as a result get more X": This hardly seems like a "problem" in need of a political "solution."*

What about the "losers"? Bite your tongue. When you call lower-income people "losers," you're falsely assuming that we're all racing for the same finish line: material success. But to a large extent, lower-income people are just racing for other finish lines. Leftist outrage over income inequality is therefore deeply misguided. To a large extent, incomes differ because priorities differ. And if the poor don't consider their lack of riches a big deal, why should anyone else?

This begs the question: if income should be redistributed by force, should leisure time also be redistributed?

(HT: Greg Mankiw.)

Eugene Volokh argues that in the First Amendment "the press" is the freedom to use a technology, not a freedom only for members of a specific industry.

But other judges and scholars -- including the Citizens United majority and Justice Brennan -- have argued that the "freedom ... of the press" does not protect the press-as-industry, but rather protects everyone's use of the printing press (and its modern equivalents) as a technology. People or organizations who occasionally rent the technology, for instance by buying newspaper space, broadcast time, or the services of a printing company, are just as protected as newspaper publishers or broadcasters. ...

The answer, it turns out, is that people during the Framing era likely understood the text as fitting the press-as-technology model -- as securing the right of every person to use communications technology, and not just securing a right belonging exclusively to members of the publishing industry. The text was likely not understood as treating the press-as-industry differently from other people who wanted to rent or borrow the press-as-technology on an occasional basis.

That is: professional journalists have no more and no less freedom than any of the rest of us.

This infographic about Millennials (age ~18-29) is encouraging to me! This excerpt shows why Millennials won't be taking my job:

Hmmm... which sounds more productive: "Technology use & work ethic" or "Technology use & music / pop culture"?

Also good for me, entering the job market during a recession (as Millennials are doing) hurts your long-term career prospects:

Sociologists have shown that being born in a recession dampens your earnings throughout your lifetime, simply because the first jobs you get are the ones that define much of your success in later life. Almost all the wage increases that you'll get arrive before you're 40. Thus, if you enter the workforce and struggle to find a job, you'll be consistently hobbled by a lack of experience and tenure.

So will Millennials continue voting Democrat for the rest of their lives now that they've cut their teeth on Obama? Or will they -- gasp -- grow up as they age? My guess is the latter. Comparing the work ethic of a 30-something generation that is having children to the work ethic of the 20-something generation is kind of absurd. Didn't people use to say that Generation X was full of no-good stoner grunge-rock layabouts?

So maybe I should be worried after all!

Ok, so I like Ron Paul and I'm glad he's in Congress, but you've got to admit he's a little crazy. However he's not so crazy that he actually thinks he can win the Presidency, as his investment portfolio reveals.

Here at Total Return, we've looked at hundreds of the annual financial-disclosure forms in which the members of Congress reveal their assets and trades - and we've never seen a more unorthodox portfolio than Ron Paul's. ...

At our request, William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors in Eastford, Conn., reviewed Rep. Paul's portfolio as set out in the annual disclosure statement. Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe. "This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds," he says.

How would Ron Paul invest if he thought he would win? I don't know, but he would save the economy from the doomsday scenario he has prepared for, right? Or maybe he knows that his investments will be bad if he wins, and they're just a hedge against the off-chance that he won't be our next President.

I'll admit, I counted Rick Perry out after his big "oops" debate flub... but these two endorsements are pretty compelling. First, from Ace of Spades:

First, biographical and character details. Much of the More Informed cohort of the party seems to be giving these factors short shrift. I would suggest to such folks that a certain type of candidate tends to prevail in elections, and that type of candidate tends to have a positive narrative in biographical and characterological traits.

Rick Perry did not marry his high school sweetheart. He married his grade school sweetheart. He has never been divorced as as far as I know there haven't been any rocky patches in his relationship.

Those who discount the importance of that, especially to women voters, are making an error, I think. ...

The media and liberals (but I repeat myself) will attack Perry, predictably, as stupid, but there is a strong rebuttal to such a claim: If he can't perform the duties of Chief Executive, then how is he's been successfully performing the duties of Chief Executive?

America, and especially the Republican party, has long favored elevating governors to the presidency. Governors are, after all, the presidents of single states. They have nearly the exact same duties and functions (including even maintaining and controlling the state national guards). They have similar executive powers and set the agendas for their respective legislatures. In the case of border states such as Texas, they even require some foreign policy making duties.

No job in the world really prepares someone for the Presidency. But one job, more than any other, comes fairly close to doings so.

So Rick Perry cannot handle high executive office?

Then how is it he's been doing just that for 11 years? ...

I remember that, by the third debate, people were complaining that they were sick of hearing about Texas producing 45% of all jobs created in America the last two years, and sick of hearing that Texas has created one million jobs while America has lost two million plus in the last ten years.

I understand that High Information voters, who knew this before Rick Perry announced it, might be "sick" of hearing about it.

But the fact of the matter is: That should have been said more, not less.

Very good points.

Next, from Mike Flynn:

Supporters of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have to face one inconvenient truth; they both failed when given the chance to govern. Gingrich rode an historic GOP wave into the Speakership in 1994 only to be ousted by his fellow Republicans just four years later. It was one of the more spectacular flame-outs in political history. Hastert and Pelosi lost the Speaker's gavel when the voters rejected them and their parties. Newt lost his when his GOP colleagues rejected him. He was given an unprecedented opportunity to reform entitlements and reverse our nation's fiscal rot and...he blinked. His subsequent "consulting" for Freddie Mac, support for the largest expansion of entitlements since LBJ, an individual health insurance mandate and TARP, among other things, only further disqualifies him. I'm not at all certain that he has the core conservative convictions or beliefs that could withstand the daily dramas of the Presidency.

Mitt Romney only served one-term as Governor of Massachusetts because he wasn't going to win reelection. Keep in mind that Romney's term followed twelve years of GOP rule on Beacon Hill. Massachusetts voters were in something of a habit, since 1990, of voting for Republicans for Governor. That streak ended with Mitt. And, there were fewer Republican state legislators when he left office than when he entered it. ...

There is also a fundamental political problem with either a Gingrich or Romney nomination. The GOP wouldn't be able to campaign against the Wall Street bailouts nor the individual health mandate. They both supported these at one time or another. Does the party really want to remove those arrows from its quiver? Those two issues are a large reason why 60+% of Independents align themselves with the GOP now. I know people joke that the GOP is the "stupid party", but really? They really don't want to make those arguments against Obama? Aren't these two issues the defining issues of the upcoming election? ...

Perry has clearly been a good Governor. He has not, however, been a great candidate. His early campaign was too Texas-centric. We all know about his debate performances. He has positions I disagree with. And his campaign has made some steps I also disagree with. But, I believe he could be a great President. He understand the limits of government, the power of the private sector to create prosperity and the dangers government policies pose to that. And, I believe he understands these principles in a more fundamental way than the other candidates.

Read the whole things to get all the arguments for Perry. These endorsements changed my mind to the extend that they've put Perry back on the map for me.

Just because proportions and probabilities are measured with the same units (percentages) does not mean that they're equivalent or convertible. A proportion is a measurement representing the size of a subset relative to its whole. A probability is a measurement of the likelihood that a given event will occur. If you flip a coin ten times and get four heads (proportion = 40%) that doesn't mean that the probability that the next flip will be a head is also 40%, or 60%, or any other percent.

I say all that to point out the shoddy analysis of a recent Associated Press poll about President Obama by Ken Thomas and Jennifer Agiesta. The key offense is here:

Entering 2012, President Barack Obama's re-election prospects are essentially a 50-50 proposition, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. It found that most Americans say the president deserves to be voted out of office even though they have concerns about the Republican alternatives. ...

The poll found Americans were evenly divided over whether they expect Obama to be re-elected next year.

For the first time, the poll found that a majority of adults, 52 percent, said Obama should be voted out of office while 43 percent said he deserves another term.

1. There's a huge difference between (a) "Americans say the president deserves to be voted out of office" and (b) "Americans were evenly divided over whether they expect Obama to be re-elected". (A) is a question about what should happen, in the mind of the individual being polled, while (b) is a question about what the person believes will happen based on the votes of millions of people. For example, it's very possible to think that Obama should win re-election but will not.

2. 52 percent to 43 percent is not "evenly divided" by any stretch of the imagination. If there is any 50/50 data in the poll that the "evenly divided" is referring to the authors never mention it. A 52%-43% election would be an historic landslide for the victor. (In 2008, Obama beat John McCain 52.9% to 45.7% in the "popular vote", a seven-point spread.)

3. If 52% of people really think that Obama should not be re-elected and 43% think he should be, that doesn't mean that Obama has a 52% probability of losing the election and a 43% probability of winning. If the poll response accurately represents the view of the people who show up to vote, then Obama has a 100% probability of losing the election. If Obama gets 50% of the votes minus one, and his opponent gets 50% plus one, Obama will 100% lose.

4. Journalists really need to understand statistics before they "analyze" them.