What You Won’t Read
Two of the Three in the Axis of Evil — Korea and Iraq –seem no longer to be acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Throw in Libya as well, and the end of Dr. Khan’s proliferation business, and things have gotten at least a little better. I say that because I keep reading about nuclear proliferation and America’s asleep-at-the-wheel posture, when in fact we alone supplied the pressure to stop a lot of it. Meanwhile, the Iranian theocracy will continue to issue existential threats to Israel, hint that it is nearing completion on enrichment, and rattle more sabers in hopes of creating continuing tension that helps spike oil prices and land it another $10 – $15 million a day in revenue.
And You Won’t Read This Either
That the World’s Saint, Mr. Gore, who lectures on carbon emissions and green behavior, built an ecological monstrosity of a castle that gulps energy at gargantuan rates; while the world’s villain, George Bush, built an eco-friendly, far more modest house that uses a fourth less power than the average home. But then when one compares the Kerry homes, the Edwards playhouse, and all the other liberal mansions, it makes sense. Modern liberalism for our elites is really a psychological state, in which an individual crafts an all-encompassing world view in the abstract to offset a rather materialistic and self-centered desire in the concrete. Here in California Sens. Boxer and Feinstein, and Rep Pelosi live like the privileged they are, while decrying the plight of the less fortunate. Someone who forbids drilling in ANWR rarely decides to down-size her home. A Senator Dodd who rails at the mortgage lenders’ greed has no problem taking a cut-rate loan from them–if it is a question of buying appropriate homes for his sixty-something efforts at establishing a young family. Hypocrisy is a human, not a political sin per se, but something about the combination of neo-socialist politics and extremely elite personal tastes suggests that there is a direct rather than an accidental connection—in the mind at least the former making possible the latter.
Dreams From My Grandmother
Is the title of a brief essay I wrote on Obama for NRO next week. I think as the general election unwinds, Obama will no longer omit mention of the grandmother who raised him in preference to dreaming about the African father who abandoned him—much less again throw her under the bus to save Rev. Wright by making the morally equivalent argument that her private (and confidential) fears of young black males on the streets were the same sort of prejudice as were his Rev.’s open and public denunciations of whites, Jews, Italians, etc. Now that it is no longer a question of establishing one’s racial fides in Chicago, but rather of winning hearts and minds in fly-over America, expect this modern Proteus to change shape yet again and become the child of the Midwest, his grandmother as essential to his identity as she once was an embarrassment in Chicago ward politics.
Not So Liberal
This is the apparent current logic of much of environmentally sensitive America:
a. It is ecologically wise to forbid safe drilling off Santa Barbara but OK to count on dangerous extraction off Nigeria? Don’t drill off Florida but mine coal all you want for America’s electricity in West Virginia? Please save the Alaskan tundra, but sell as much messy Siberian oil as possible?
b. Gas prices aren’t all that bad since it will force us to buy Priuses–which only the affluent can afford? I have no doubt that a lot of SUVs, Crown Victorias, and F-250s will come on the second-hand market cheaply in the near future–and will be about the only automobiles the poor can afford for small trips to the store. Not drilling in the US was about the worse thing anyone could have done for the lower classes. 3-4 million barrels a day more would indeed have lowered both the price of gas in real terms here, and cooled down the psychological climate that spurs on speculation
c. We would rather take hard-earned US cash and hand it over to Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. than invest in American infrastructure by earning (soaring) federal revenues for gas and oil leasing in known areas of easily recoverable oil?
d. By any sane measure—reducing the trade deficit, bolstering the dollar, earning revenue for cash-strapped states, keeping billions out of the hands of lunatic regimes, ensuring the independence of American foreign policy, helping our own poor to afford transportation, preserving the ecology of the planet—it makes sense to drill, use coal cleanly, develop tar sands and shale, and build nuclear plants, until we transition to Obama promise of “wind, solar, and millions of new jobs in green industries!”
A Modest Proposal
Before we listen to any more sermons from actors, in the interest of intellectual seriousness and saving the planet, Hollywood celebrities should take a voluntary vow neither to fly on a private jet nor to engage in silly facial surgery. The one is energy selfishness, the other proof of intellectual lightness.
Keep Counting
FISA, NAFTA, campaign financing, Iran, town hall debates with McCain, Jerusalem, handgun control, death penalty applications, Rev. Wright— the list of Obama’s inoperative statements continues to grow. His advisors worry that the Hope and Change mantra is wearing thin (have you noticed that more and more crowds seem to roll their eyes when he gets into the sermonizing cadence when talking about the mundane?). But they worry more that when he gets specific, he says silly things or something that flips from what he said earlier–about what one would expect from someone who has very little experience, but enormous confidence in his powers to convince by his oratory.
Is San Francisco the Future?
I spent some time speaking in San Francisco recently. In crude and exaggerated terms, it reminds me of H.G. Wells Eloi and Morlocks. There are smartly dressed yuppies, wealthy gays, and chic business people everywhere downtown, along with affluent tourists, all juxtaposed with hordes of street people and a legion of young service workers at Starbucks, restaurants, etc. What is missing are school children, middle class couples with strollers, and any sense the city has a vibrant foundation of working-class, successful families of all races and backgrounds. For all its veneer of liberalism, it seems a static city of winners and losers, victory defined perhaps by getting into a spruced up Victorian versus renting in a bad district, getting paid a lot to manage something, versus very little to serve something. All in all, I got a strange creepy feeling that whatever was going on, it was unsustainable–sort of like an encapsulated Europe within an American city. The city seems to exist on tourism, and people who daily come into the city to provide a service, get paid–and leave. One businessman tried to assure me my anxieties were misplaced: “We are a revolving-door city: young people want a year or two in the “city” to have fun, so flock here, take menial jobs, cram together in an apartment, enjoy our night-life, and then leave wiser and ready to start life somewhere else in the real world. In the meantime, they are willing to work hard for us for little pay.” I think that about sums up the city.
I remember SF in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a kid visiting with his parents. A much different place altogether of affordable homes, vibrant docks, lots of construction—and children everywhere.
I wouldn’t be too quick to include North Korea in the “two out of three” category, yet, Dr. Hanson. Given that they’ve broken every agreement they’ve ever made on the nuclear issue, and given that we know they outsourced their program to Syria (cut short, thanks to the Israelis), it wouldn’t surprise me they’ve given up Yongbyon because it just wasn’t that useful to them anymore. They could afford to sacrifice it. Odds are, they have secret enriching programs going on elsewhere in that gulag they call a state.
I like George W. Bush quite a bit, but his policy toward North Korea, especially in his second term, has been accomodationist and weak.
Oh, and I have memories of San Francisco similar to yours. My favorite city in California has been ridden into the ground by the loony Left.
Born and raised in San Francisco, I now commute to work there. We are staying in S.F. this weekend for my eldest daughter’s birthday at my parents, who live near downtown, but we will leave before the parade. The City has become what you describe, Doctor. The children like visiting the grandparents and the City, but prefer country life, even when it comes to college.
1950′s trips to SF were part of our family getaways from Sacramento. Threshold was the Oakland Peir, a wondrous trainshed with sooty steam locomotives sliding in, and cheery white SP Ferryboats churning out, over to the Ferry Building. Looking up at the steely underbelly of the Bay Bridge was along the way, with a rumbling Key Unit if you timed it right.
Dr. Hanson is on page with James Howard Kunstler with impression of a mid-century American City, a 1950′s mixture of manufacturing and entertainment, commerce & education. Peaking Oil is the fly in the ointment, a trap we may barely survive.
Because we have not maintained domestic energy production in tune with the shift away from the rail based economy of the mid 20th century, we are now running for our lives. Please examine “The Association For The Study Of Peak Oil & Gas” (peakoil.net)articles 374 & 1037), in ASPO Newsletters 42 & 89, respectively.
It is fortunate we have ability to redirect some of those heaps of scrap steel heading overseas, to domestic rail rolling mills. And, the dormant rail corridors not completely obliterated are at hand in sufficient de-minimus quantity, to rehab a very sparce but skeleton rail matrix to keep victuals & necessities of life moving as trucking breaks down. ASPO article 1037 will illuminate this thought.
VDH,
Your view of Frisco is spot on, but its basically a description of urban California. I was so thankful to grow up there in the 60s and 70s, but wouldnt want to raise my family there now as there is no middle class. No muiddle class is the liberal dream. The limosine liberals get richer and live like Gore all while trying to represent the poor, who continue to seem poorer because there is no middle class, which keeps them in power. Liberalism is a great philosophy for capitalists who want to limit competition.
Unfortunately the posts here are indeed spot on about the disdain of some elitist leftists for the middle class. San Francisco has become, to too great an extent, an adult theme park.
One thing that is sad is to see it happen in one’s own lifetime. I knew southern California from childhood, in the 1960s, but my first encounter with San Francisco was in the winter of 1983-84. It was already getting very expensive, and going in annoying directions with its self-consciousness, but it still had an accessible charm then, and a sense of being not a carnival with a fun-house, but a city.
The Navy having a variety of other plans for me, I didn’t get back until 1996, and was astounded at the difference in the whole area, which had unfolded just as VDH describes.
There is, of course, a middle class in the Bay area — it just largely can’t afford to live in San Francisco. One way California’s liberal elite lives out its dream is allowing the safety valve of the mushrooming exurbs, safely in from the coast, with their rows of insta-mansions arrayed like tank divisions, their big box stores, newly-planted stick trees, streets laid by wink-nudge labor — and mass army of taxpayers. That’s where the children are.
So many people have a negative attitude these days and I have to remind them that the last 7 years has been great to them. And my friends and family aren’t rich by any means.
The president of Iran just doesn’t seem to care about worldly consequences. But most of all, I think he’s a psychopath.
One more day, one more gaffe (more like goof) for Hawaii Hussein. It’s getting too big to excuse or ignore. They guy’s not ready. He’s truly out of his league. It’s been fun but his slide is not going to be nice to watch. Most Americans aren’t dumb. They can spot a phony. On one hand it can’t come soon enough. On the other hand it will be sad.
I don’t think the Clintons are totally out of it. I learned never to underestimate them. She’s been compared to Glen Close coming out of the water. They’re so far gone now, it’s going to be like ‘Night Of The Living Dead.’
My boss compared my skeptcism of man’s responsibility for global warming to holocaust denial. I couldn’t believe he said that. He drives the coolest Acura NSX.
I wonder what Granny thinks about her grandson. Where’s the press on this? I don’t think she’s got one word on the record. She could have the cover of any magazine in any supermarket. What gives?
I’ve never been to San Francisco although I play guitar and I do ‘San Francisco Bay Blues.’ Now, I only see pictures of Code Pink and the recruiting office on the internet. The gays can marry each other now. Yawn.
But I remember hearing about a mythical place way back in 1967 called Height Ashbury. It was the Summer Of Love. Stephen Stills and Neal Young used to cruise around in a hearse. Guys started growing their hair down to their shoulders. Bell bottom jeans. Pot.
I went through a stage once and joined the Sierra Club. Meetings were at the library on the 3rd Thursday of the month. You got a magazine every quarter. Great pictures. But that was then and this is now and this thing with oil seems so simple. Just drill you dopes.
Older white folks’ private (and confidential) fear of young black males has already doomed the Obama campaign. My Mother-In-Law, who has voted for any-and-every Democrat since Roosevelt, just announced she isn’t voting for young Barack.
Back in the late eighties, her apartment was robbed and vandalized by a group of “poorly socialized, poorly supervised young black males” (I have another word for that group of young black males). Back then, cities often grouped senior housing with public housing. Not a great idea.
But since then, she’s held a deep suspicion of young black men, regardless of their credentials. And to my amazement, she views Obama as just another young black man she does not trust. From what she says, a lot of her fellow seniors share her suspicion and won’t vote for him, either.
I believe this private (and confidential) fear is widespread and will cripple Obama where he really needs votes: Michigan, Ohio and Florida. I’d shiver and call it “racist,” but Obama’s views on Rev. Wright have convinced me that people are entitled to their own views on race. And besides, I’ve been trying to get her to vote Republican for many years.
There is another major demographic group in San Francisco that seldom gets talked about: the Chinese and other East Asians. The Chinese live in Sunset and Richmond, and for that reason those districts are the most normal (moderate) parts of San Francisco, but they are also the most dull –- they really should be renamed Engineersville and Accountstown. Asians have small families, as well, which contributes to the bizarre lack of children in The City. Nobody moves to San Francisco, however, to live permanently in fog-ridden neighborhoods like the Sunset and Richmond with dull accountants and HW engineers for neighbors unless you are already an East Asian engineer or accountant. This is a permanent state of affairs: Chinese accountant/engineer households have one or two (at most) accountant/engineer children, who will in turn have one or two accountant/engineer children, who will in turn have one or two accountant/engineer children, and so on, to the end of time. This demographic group is completely static and impossible to change, but quiet and hard-working, and so completely ignored by the media and other noisier (mostly temporary) denizens of San Francisco.
The point I’m trying to get at is that there are other non-liberal demographic groups in SF that contribute to its childless and insulated, incapable-of-change elitism. After all, Bay Area engineer/accountant households easily surpass 200K a year in income, and I’m talking with only 5-10 years experience in either field — they can afford the over-priced properties; they are elite. So even though the moderate Chinese engineers are very different from the young faux-radicals of the Haight or the white yuppie liberals of the Outer Mission, the static nature of the East Asian demographic in SF (among others) nonetheless contributes to the increasingly static nature of SF, as well. And since the Asians are politically non-confrontational, they offer no resistance to the ridiculous policies of the city council and Board of Supervisors. I mean, really, there are people on SF’s Board of Supervisors who STILL have 1960s-era anti-military sensibilities. When last I lived there 15 or so years ago, they renamed ‘Army Street’ ‘Cesar Chavez Blvd.’, or somesuch. While I have no problem with naming a street after Cesar Chavez (even though I don’t think he had much to do with SF), they chose to erase Army Street, a dull but historically significant name given that it passes through what was once an Army base, solely because it had a ‘military’ name. Fast forward some 15 years and they are still attacking the military by banning recruiting at schools.
How, pray tell, can a city call itself progressive, a political moniker, when nothing changes politically? I lived for a number of years in San Francisco, and when I think of it now I think of it as a backwards place. Interesting, with breathtaking vistas depending on how you approach it, but many of the people who live there are profoundly reactionary. It reminds me of Europe in that the kind of people who traverse through or settle in San Francisco have a way of walling themselves off from the rest of the world, from change. For all their talk of tolerance and ‘moving forward’, they are more resistant to change and less tolerant than the supposedly ignorant rubes who live in the Central Valley or mountain counties of California (where I now live).
A liberal San Franciscan is about as hip and progressive in my eyes as an aging, cigar-smoking industrialist in a top hat at a 1967 Grateful Dead concert wailing about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act signed into law: 1930
Summer of Love: 1967
Difference: 37 years
Summer of Love: 1967
Current Year: 2008
Difference: 41 years
Baby Boomer anti-military bias: a political relic of a bygone era, held by aging relics of a bygone era, as represented by San Francisco and the Democrat Party.
Which brings us back to Obama …. Where’s your top hat, Barack?
Regarding Obama, he’ll be toast come November thanks in no small part to the Dem’s foot dragging on oil drilling. In order to make us ‘clingers’ feel good about our lot in life, AlGore et al use the insane excuse of anthropogenic higher gasoline prices.
Regarding San Francisco: although we are just a couple of hours away, we go there but once every couple of years or so. The City gives us ‘breeders’ plenty of hints that we’re not welcome. Try to explaining to a Catholic child why cuss words are celebrated on every bumper and t-shirt.
Thank you for the always-entertaining documentation on current hypocrisy. It’s always amazing to me that local news outlets can so reliably offer fiery lamentations on gas prices, never failing to point out the burden on the poor – and then in the same breath over at the editorial page, robotically repeat the moldy and enfeebled talking points against drilling of any sort. The same “Experts” who are willing to place such fervid devotion to Obama’s magical “New Energy Technologies” visions are the same ones who confidently proclaim that there simply isn’t much oil in ANWR or off the coasts, or that if there is oil, most of it can’t be used for some reason, or that even if it is there and can be used, that there just isn’t enough of it to make the effort worthwhile – and so on, ad infinitum, never perceiving the irony of having placed superhuman faith in what doesn’t yet exist, while brusquely writing off what does.
As for San Francisco, I couldn’t agree more that it appears as a shell of some other era, and seems to run only on its own fumes. Although it’s very accessible to me, I stay as far away from it as possible. A city that cannot make the connection between its staggering taxation/entitlement base and its increasingly sub-standard of living for anything remotely resembling a middle class, is doomed to fail.
“But I remember hearing about a mythical place way back in 1967 called Height Ashbury. It was the Summer Of Love. Stephen Stills and Neal Young used to cruise around in a hearse. Guys started growing their hair down to their shoulders. Bell bottom jeans. Pot”
Mythical, except for the jeans and the pot. I started at USF in Fall of 1967, about 5 blocks away. That was the summer the heroin sellers moved in – the Haight became actively dangerous at night, unpleasant during the day.
I now live about 25 miles east, across the Bay. A little baseball, the occasional museum show or concert will drag us over there, but we’d never consider living there. However, _somebody_ does – the SF Unified School District claims ~55,000 students, about 4-5K in each grade K-12.
There may still be a fair number of children in San Francisco, but looking at the population (764,000 in 2007, according to the US Census) and comparing it to the life-expectancy of around 75 to 80 years, one can only conclude that San Francisco should have around 10,000 children in each grade.
They’re not just below the national average on this one but considerably below.
I think they may be below even the California average. CA has roughly 7 million 6-18 year olds in 2005, or ~19% of 36 million is school age. SF also has about 12,000 in Catholic schools – but 67,000 is only about 8% of the city’s population. I’m sure the counts I have are incomplete, but an error of 70,000 or so would be surprising. (That 19% would be 145,000, about 11,000 per grade, in good agreement with the 10,000 estimate.)
Can a substantially ‘adults only’ city survive?
And You Won’t Read This Either
The Liberals have been destroying the poor for 40 years now, at least. Their schools are worse. Their welfare programs encourage drug use and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Their gun controls create inner-city ware zones, and their economic policies erode opportunities. Despite this miserable track record, the Republicans seem incapable of articulating a message that resonates with most lower middle class voters. It would be as if GM made a 100 mpg car that would last million miles and cost under $10k and yet the Japanese took market share with expensive gas guzzlers that constantly broke down.
I. The two most revealing things Obama has said so far was, “cling to Bibles and guns” and his “not unhappy with gas price increases but just the rate of increase.”
Translation: I – the great Barack and my Ivy League buddies – know what’s best for you. You dopes in “flyover country” are too damn stupid and uneducated to know that your self-interest and what’s best for you.
Caribou and Mother Earth are more important than people.
That’s what the Dem party is today, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what your country can do for the caribou.”
II. And we need to call the Dems on this fake “a million bbls of oil a day won’t help.”
Any Econ 101 student knows that a commodity is priced on the last item produced.
If the Clintons and the Greens had let us drill in ANWR, it would be in production today and those last bbls were drive down the price.
Barack also won’t address the supply question. He’s in outer space with fuel cells and whatever.
III. The Barack agenda: (a) Higher taxes; (b) Higher gas prices due to a refusal to drill domestically; (c) Surrender in Iraq.
IV. Lack of children in SF:
(a) Post-modern selfishness;
(b) Lack of confidence in the future;
(c) athesism and agnosticism.
Thank you Victor for your spot on posts that provide a clear view of the subjects you touch.
I apologize if I have missed it, but has there been any detailed discussion as to how Mr. Obama has been elected to his positions in Chicago and Illinois?
There has been a lack of Democratic challengers and lack of Republican challengers once nominated by the Democratic party. It would serve everyone well to examine this point, as he has reached his status less by qualification and more by lack of choices.
More SF trivia.
A long time ago there was an earthquake and a big fire.
There was an earthquake in the middle of a World Series baseball game.
Tony Bennett had a big hit song.
Rice a Roni… the San Francisco treat.
Steve McQueen in Bullit.
The Golden Gate Bridge is orange.
BJ Honeycutt in M*A*S*H was from Mill Valley.
Good question, John. San Francisco doesn’t appear to be very healthy from a demographics point-of-view. Good thing for them that they have other things going for them, like the view, but how that can be sustained is a good question to ask.
Living in the Valley, I sometimes go to S.F. for a game, a play, etc. If all the world’s a stage for players, then the City must be center stage. Each character category: urban professional, gay, fringe drop-out, street person, 20-something person in flipflops airily supported by invisible means, whatever…they are all there strutting their identity. Full agreement here–rarely do I see parents with kids-in-tow except in the outlying districts and not many there.
Nope, mostly just lifestyle players by vocation busily being their assumed S.F. identities. Despite his noisy company, I’m happy to return to my working class neighbors with their teeming kids and generous “lifestyle”.
My Lord the revisionism is in full tilt today.
The United States is enjoying the greatest amount of “Free-access” in the last 100 years of history. Okay, forget that we used to make the Chinese buy our goods, we have the “free-trade” economy the Utopian-Free Traders promised us.
And all it has gotten us is $$$t. Sorry, but I remember the promises that Newt, Clinton, Bush, Lott,etc., made to use about how all those “deals” would be great for America.
What hog-wash. By industrializing India and China-”Just think of all those consumers just waiting to buy all our Hummers and Caterpillars”- all we’ve done is put the energy noose around our neck. The American dollar is near 50 year lows in value, gasoline is regressively destroying what little income/equity the lower and middle class has and all the “Free-traders” can do is incorrectly re-call the mistakes of “Smoot-Hartley”.
Sorry, besides the bogus “free-trade” agreements (now we know why they didn’t attempt to pass them as treaties, the light of day being shined on them in the Senate hearings would have revealed the folly of these scams), we had a mortgage industry running wild in a manner not seen since, oh the stock market crash of ’29. Yep, you can buy a house, no money down! Just like buying stocks with only 10% down in ’29. Any moron could have seen a repeat of this crash coming.
And finally, you can’t have free-trade without open borders my friends.
You wanted cheap goods from China? Well how do you think we can compete with that if not by importing millions of illegals?
Happy now? You sold your birthright as Americans for cheap goods from China and for your lawn to look nice.
Now you have nothing but $5 a gallon gas and a crash that will replicate 1929 if we’re unlucky.
Oh yeah, and now the Republicans are going to get their hat handed to them and we’ll have raging socialists in their place.
Thanks Free-traders.
Yet another disgrace to the great state of Arkansas, General Wesley Clark, stepped in it this weekend. Gen Clark, former Clinton supporter now Obama surrogate, called into question McCain’s qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief, “refuting the argument” that his time as a POW gives McCain special expertise in national security matters. Defending his remarks on CNN tonight, Clark sounded like he was running for president himself, mentioning his tour as NATO Commander during that little war in the Balkans. As I recall, Bill Clinton relieved his fellow Arkansan for upstaging him during that time period. I’ll skip the pro forma “while I appreciate his service to our country” bit and simply call Clark what he is, an ambitious self-centered idiot. It’s McCain’s 20 plus years in the Navy, 24 years in Congress involved in national security affairs, and dedicated study of history that gives him his understanding of security issues. His time as a POW merely shows what one man can endure when he is fortified with the faith of his fathers, an absolute dedication to duty, and an uncompromising belief in the greatness of his country. Of course, for the liberal Left those are not necessary qualifications or even desirable characteristics in a President.
Clark is running for, and will probably get, the VP nomination.
“you can’t have free-trade without open borders”
Nonsense. Japan, Switzerland are obvious counter-examples. High capitalization per worker countries such as these (and the US) can trade perfectly well with cheap labor countries on a sustainable basis. Check out David Ricardo.
Brett,
Is it your contention that Japan’s markets are open?
I do not believe this
Once I originally commented I clicked the -Notify me when new feedback are added- checkbox and now every time a remark is added I get four emails with the same comment. Is there any means you’ll be able to take away me from that service? Thanks!