Level of Certainty

People are asking how certain President Obama is that the tall old Arab shot last night in Abbottabad was in fact al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden? Answer: almost exactly as certain as President Bush was about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's Iraq.

In other words, both believed they were right when they made the claims. Both had great reason to want the intel to be correct.

In hindsight, Bush was proved to be wrong. For the nation's sake, let's hope Obama doesn't have the same bad luck.

Further bin Laden Details

I've been watching some cable TV news channels doing wall-to-wall coverage on the Osama bin Laden killing. We know more about the raid, done by a Navy SEAL team, flying four helicopters, one of which landed hard (i.e., crashed gently) and was destroyed as they left. No prisoners were taken, no SEALs were injured or killed.

The compound in which bin Laden was living was in Abbottabad, 30 miles northeast of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. The compound was built in 2005 and is valued at roughly $1 million. It was far from covert, being the largest house in the neighborhood.

Nota bene: Much is being made of the size and security features of the compound, as though that would have been highly unusual and should have attracted attention. Actually, in poor countries like Pakistan the police aren't reliable; many wealthy families will have a compound like this one, with walls and guards.

There are thousands of wealthy families in Pakistan. Compounds like this aren't terribly uncommon; every city has at least two or three, maybe several. Nobody would pay attention to one more.

bin Laden Thought Dead

News outlets are reporting the death of Osama bin Laden, founder and head of the al Qaida terrorist network. Supposedly he was killed by bombing a week ago in Pakistan. They did a DNA analysis to be sure of the body's identity, hence the delay in announcing the death.

President Obama made an announcement this evening, you can watch it here courtesy of Breitbart. If all this proves to be true, it is indeed good news - a milestone in the Long War. Not a major milestone, but a milestone nevertheless.

Later: Various news sources say the death was as a result of ground operations by Special Forces, instead of by a bomb as noted above. He was found in a compound outside Islamabad. Presumably this means he was not hiding in the "tribal" areas along the border, as had been thought.

Latest reports indicate bin Laden was shot in the head. That is a tidy result; taking him prisoner would have been far less satisfactory.

Quote of the Day

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, writing here for The Washington Examiner, has a different "take" on the commonplace comparisons of Presidents Obama and Carter:

Up to now, comparisons with Carter were a tool of Obama's critics. From now on, they're likely to be a tool of his defenders. Because as bad as Carter was, Obama is shaping up to be worse. Much worse.

Reynolds, also known as Instapundit, is not happy with our president. The quote above is just his conclusion, the reasoning by which he reaches that conclusion is truly depressing.

The Cost of Being Green

Let's substitute home-grown ethanol for gasoline we must import. Sounds like a win-win proposition, doesn't it? Like most policies, there is a contrarian point of view.

This weekend's Wall Street Journal interview is with C. Larry Pope, chief executive officer of Smithfield Foods, Inc., the world's largest pork producer. He is a fascinating amalgam of good ole boy and cost accountant. The "good ole boy" part makes him a fine storyteller and the "cost accountant" part makes his stories highly relevant. All in all, he's a good interview subject.

He says much of the price rise we're seeing at the grocery store can be attributed to the diversion of corn to ethanol-for-fuel production. Corn is the basic livestock food that supports the production of eggs, milk, and meat.

Push up the price of corn - Pope claims it has tripled recently - and producers substitute other grains. At the same time, farmers switch to producing corn. That pushes up the price of bread. Together eggs, milk, meat, and bread make up a serious part of the typical household's food budget.

So...we burn corn-based ethanol in our cars and push up the price of food. But we won't import ethanol so our domestic producers corner the market. That tells you what the ethanol-as-fuel requirement really is - a farm subsidy thinly disguised as environmental protection.

For this farm subsidy we consumers pay twice: we pay taxes to subsidize ethanol production, and we pay again at the supermarket check stand. This feels like a vegan plot.

The History of Pretty Much Everything

Would you like to have a look into the current state of knowledge about the evolution of the universe? Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel of Lewis & Clark University has posted on his blog Starts With a Bang a history of the universe as astrophysics currently believes it to be. It also projects what is believed will happen into the far future.

Quick summary: the Earth began to exist about 9.5 billion years after the big bang. Life began on Earth about 0.4 billion years later. Another 0.8 billion years later Mars dies.

Life really explodes some 12.5 billion years after the beginning. Humans set foot on the moon 13.7 billion years after the big bang. Another 1.3 billion years and the Earth becomes too hot to inhabit. Siegel believes the universe will burn itself out in 10 to the 15th power years.

Bottom line: Don't hold your breath.

Top Ten BHO Gaffes

The editors of Human Events have come up with a Letterman-style top ten list of Obama's most egregious screw-ups. Each of the ten has an explanation you'll want to read.

Their Top 10 Barack Obama Blunderings are: 1. Tone-deaf priorities. 2. Doesn't know when to shut up. 3. Slow to react. 4. Partisan rants. 5. Leisure-time overkill. 6. Campaign missteps. 7. Can't communicate. 8. Out of touch. 9. Protocol gaffes. 10. Insensitive to middle America.

I don't find much in that list with which to argue. I might have substituted something about misdirected foreign policy.

Shribman on 2012

David Shribman is the executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and his column is here reproduced by Yahoo News. He writes about the political fortunes of presidential candidates who were "nobodies" before winning the nomination.

Shribman includes in this category the last two presidents, as well as JFK and Jimmy Carter. I believe Bill Clinton also belongs in this group, but apparently Shribman does not agree. In all these cases a relative nobody became a somebody as a result of winning the nomination, and went on to win the presidency.

He has done an interesting piece of analysis. The point of the analysis is that the relative obscurity of the potential Republican candidates is not a crippling defect, he concludes:

The person who knows that better than anyone on Earth is ... Barack Obama.

AP on the President's Father

The Associated Press weighs in on the story about the President's father getting sent home without a degree by Harvard University. Here is their report of how the documents reached the public.

Meanwhile it appears Harvard is engaged in CYA as today nobody wants to remember that we once took a dim view of married men "running around with several girls" and engaging in polygamy. Now that behavior is only disapproved of in politicians.

Harvard knew that the serious library and computer facilities Barack Obama, Sr. needed to write an economics doctoral dissertation almost certainly would not be available to him in Kenya. Therefore, their "conclusion that you should terminate your stay in the United States and return to Kenya to carry on your research and the writing of your thesis” was code for "go away, we are finished with you."

Blade Runner Echoes

There is a General Electric medical ad on cable TV in which a man talks about the most beautiful thing he's ever seen was an image that showed her doctor that his wife's cancer was treatable. The lines leading up to that are:

I've seen beautiful things.

I've seen the sunrise on the painted desert.

Witnessed snowfall on the first day of spring.

Those lines remind me very much of the following from Ridley Scott's iconic SF film Blade Runner, spoken by Rutger Hauer who plays the replicant Roy Batty:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.

All those moments will be lost in time...like tears in rain. Time to die.

Great dialog creates echoes in the minds of creative people.

2012 Myths Debunked

Jay Cost does political analysis for The Weekly Standard, and is writing some interesting columns as the 2012 presidential race begins to move. Here he argues that Democrats' hopes of a weak Republican candidate are overblown.

He makes four points: the GOP has serious candidates, a harsh intra-party battle is unlikely, a "fringe" nominee is also unlikely, and an enthusiasm gap shouldn't be a problem. You should read his reasoning for reaching those four conclusions.

Points he doesn't make, but perhaps should have, include the following. Obama isn't generating, as President, the enthusiasm he did as a candidate. He is, however, generating lots of enthusiasm among those who want a different president.

Also to be considered, the President will have to try to make independents fear that four years under the Republican will be worse than the last four years under Team Obama. As former governors, the likely GOP nominees don't seem to lend themselves to that sort of demonizing.

Brownstein on the 2012 Dilemma

Ron Brownstein, who writes for National Journal, observes the dilemma implicit in the President's recent emphasis on the deficit:

Many of the groups that Obama needs to turn out most enthusiastically in 2012—particularly young people, African-Americans, and Latinos—are still suffering the most as the economy crawls back from the Great Recession.

What to do when those hurting most are the very ones you need to turn out to vote for you? Worrying about the deficit means spending less and doing less to stimulate the economy. That's Obama's dilemma. The whole article is worth your time.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

Go here to see a fascinating collection of university and State Department documents concerning the history of the President's father, as a graduate student in the U.S. These immigration documents were obtained by others, using the Freedom of Information Act, who posted them at Scribd.com.

Quote of the Day

Mark Steyn, writing for National Review Online:

The entire Middle East is a giant clogged septic tank of toxic waste.

Not a bad description.

Firefly

The Science Channel is rerunning the Joss Whedon SF series called Firefly. Other than their absolutely bogus identification of the episodes as "new," I support rerunning this excellent piece of "western set in the future."

Firefly is in many ways a cross between Gunsmoke and Wagon Train. The ship's captain is played by Nathan Fillion who even looks something like James Arness.

If you haven't seen Firefly, give it a look. BTW, the entire series is available as a boxed set of DVDs.

Second Verse, Same As the First

Several decades ago, as an undergraduate research assistant, I worked with a Professor Porter who studied the lives of Stanford MBA graduates. He determined that those who worked their way through college did less well in later life than those who did not work.

After mulling over the potential cause and effect relationships reflected by that correlation, he came to an interesting conclusion: students who did not work their way through college came from more money, had better connections, and, because of those better connections, started in better jobs after college.

Graduates who started ahead in the race of life, all other things being equal, stayed ahead. Not to mention that students who came from wealth had a reasonable chance of inheriting the family firm, becoming a CEO at an age when others were only dreaming of doing so.

Now here we see a USA Today story reporting the same findings for high school students. Those who work more hours in high school are less likely to finish college. Once again there is speculation about the meaning of the findings.

I suspect the meaning is the same. Those who work are less financially favored, and come from homes where there is less emphasis on education and consequently more emphasis on work and/or idleness.

The Trend Continues

As regular readers know, COTTonLINE often features demographic research. An example of this, more women have been getting bachelors degrees than men for over a decade. Now the trend has taken the next logical step.

For the first time in U.S. history, the Associated Press reports newly released census data showing more women have gotten advanced degrees than men. On the other hand:

Women still trail men in professional subcategories such as business, science and engineering.

It will be interesting to observe the societal implications of this shift. I would be particularly interested to see a breakdown of education data by gender and race/ethnicity.

My hunch is that the observed gender imbalance is greater among African-Americans and Hispanics than it is among non-Hispanic whites and Asians. If the census doesn't emphasize this difference, it won't surprise me.

Boys More Competitive

Studies done with children in Germany appear to show that boys are more competitive than girls, both at young ages and when they are older. See the article from the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph which reports research presented at the Royal Economic Society's 2011 annual meeting.

One interpretation of these findings suggests boys' additional competitiveness may explain some of the typical gender-based wage gap. I daresay NOW will not accept this possible causation.

Behind the Tree

Long time Senator Russell B. Long was famous for his definition of tax reform. According to BrainyQuote, Long said tax reform means,

Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.

Our nation faces a serious deficit, hardly anyone disagrees with that conclusion. What to do about it? If you are a Democrat, your answer is to raise taxes. Not broaden the number of people who pay taxes, but raise the rate on those who do. Meanwhile the Associated Press reports nearly half of Americans pay no federal income tax.

Why raise taxes? Because Democrats would like taxpayers, who coincidentally are mostly Republican voters, to pay more taxes and reduce the deficit. Go here to see that point of view defended by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

I don't believe Krugman mentions that the taxed folks behind the tree are mostly Republicans.

African Jihadi/Crusaders

We wrote yesterday about modern Crusaders, the jihadi. We were too limited in listing their targets as being places with European culture.

Here is an article in Nigeria's Daily Independent which indicates the Boko-Haram jihadi/Crusaders have brought their "my way or the highway, sharia or else" culture clash to Nigeria. A hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.