The Academic Concept Of Pathological Altruism & Explaining The Left

At the WSJ, James Taranto is effuse in his praise for Barbara Oakley:

We don't think we'd ever heard of Oakland University, a second-tier institution in suburban Rochester, Mich., but Barbara Oakley, an associate professor in engineering, may help put the place on the map. Earlier this week Oakland's Oakley published a fascinating paper, "Concepts and Implications of Altruism Bias and Pathological Altruism," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper is a concise summary of an innovative idea that informed Oakley's two recent books . . .

The PNAS paper has the virtue of brevity, running only eight pages despite including 110 footnotes. Yet it's remarkable for its breadth and depth. It introduces a simple yet versatile idea that could revolutionize scientific and social thought.

Oakley defines pathological altruism as "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm." A crucial qualification is that while the altruistic actor fails to anticipate the harm, "an external observer would conclude [that it] was reasonably foreseeable." Thus, she explains, if you offer to help a friend move, then accidentally break an expensive item, your altruism probably isn't pathological; whereas if your brother is addicted to painkillers and you help him obtain them, it is.

So, I clicked over to read the paper - and now agree with Mr. Taranto. What Oakley has posited is not new. Indeed, it has been perhaps the primary complaint as regards the acts of the left for decades, if not centuries. But what Ms. Oakley does is raise that complaint to academic acceptability. She puts it in the language of academia, explains it with clarity, and provides thorough documentation. This from Ms. Oakley:

The bottom line is that the heartfelt, emotional basis of our good intentions can mislead us about what is truly helpful for others. Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others, at both personal and public scales, is not immediately or intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own potentially self-serving interests. Indeed, truly altruistic actions may sometimes appear cruel or harmful, the equivalent of saying “no” to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit. However, the social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced “helpful” behavior and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions.

Pathological altruism can operate not only at the individual level but in many different aspects and levels of society, and between societies. Recognizing that feelings of altruism do not necessarily constitute objective altruism provides a new way of framing and understanding altruism. This previously unrecognized perspective in turn may open many new, potentially useful lines of inquiry and provide a framework to begin moving toward a more mature, scientifically informed understanding of altruism and cooperative behavior. The thesis of pathological altruism emphasizes the value of true altruism, self-sacrifice, and other forms of prosociality in human life. At the same time, it acknowledges the potential harm from cognitive blindness that arises whenever groups treat a concept as sacred.

Think about virtually all of the legislation that has come from the left over the past half century or more that has proven to be disastrous in the long run. Take for but one example the creation of the housing bubble, caused by social engineering and from which we have still not recovered. And indeed, Ms. Oakley does in fact address precisely that:

Ostensibly well-meaning governmental policy promoted home ownership, a beneficial goal that stabilizes families and communities. The government-sponsored enterprises Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae allowed less-than-qualified individuals to receive housing loans and encouraged more-qualified borrowers to overextend themselves. Typical risk–reward considerations were marginalized because of implicit government support. The government used these agencies to promote social goals without acknowledging the risk or cost. When economic conditions faltered, many lost their homes or found themselves with properties worth far less than they originally had paid. Government policy then shifted . . . the cost of this "altruism" to the public, to pay off the too-big-to-fail banks then holding securitized subprime loans. . . . Altruistic intentions played a critical role in the development and unfolding of the housing bubble in the United States.

The implications of "pathological altruism" as an academic theory and area of research are far reaching indeed. It is a concept that would require a level of rational analysis now routinely shouted down by the left. In a larger context, it would provide a challenge on every level to the left's post modernism. It would elevate objective facts as a counter point to pure emotionalism.

Taranto ends his column with this thought:

Oakley concludes by noting that "during the twentieth century, tens of millions [of] individuals were killed under despotic regimes that rose to power through appeals to altruism." An understanding that altruism can produce great evil as well as good is crucial to the defense of human freedom and dignity.

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WSJ Goes Into Full GDS Meltdown

Gingrich Derangement Syndrome is causing a complete melt-down among many of the Republican elite, but few can match the meltdown we see on the pages of the WSJ today from Brent Stephens.  I will not link to this piece of excreta.

Mr. Stephen's has become so overwrought at Gingrich's victory in South Carolina - and Romney's weaknesses exposed - that it has led him to pronounce that "Republicans deserve to lose."  As to those idiot voters in S.C., Mr. Stephen's has this to say:

That's my theory for why South Carolina gave Newt Gingrich his big primary win on Saturday: Voters instinctively prefer the idea of an entertaining Newt-Obama contest—the aspiring Caesar versus the failed Redeemer—over a dreary Mitt-Obama one. The problem is that voters also know that Gaius Gingrich is liable to deliver his prime-time speeches in purple toga while holding tight to darling Messalina's—sorry, Callista's—bejeweled fingers. A primary ballot for Mr. Gingrich is a vote for an entertaining election, not a Republican in the White House.

The arrogance and the disdain just drip from the pen of Mr. Stephens.  God forbid that we, the voters who actually own the Republican Party, should think contrary to him.  To the extent that Mr. Stephens requires some reminding of that fact, let's cue up the appropriate non-verbal response.

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A Bad Couple Of Months For "Settled Science"

The theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has gone, in a short period of a few months, from "settled" to "suspect." The reputation of the IPCC, dedicated as it is to propagandizing the AGW theory, has likewise seriously suffered. No need to take my word for it - you can take Hitler's:



The WSJ weighs in on the state of AGW and the reputation of the IPCC in the wake of what seems to be a tsunami (man caused) of negative revelations in the past few weeks. This from the WSJ:

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.

Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there's no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC's headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously. . . .

All of this matters because the IPCC has been advertised as the last and definitive word on climate science. Its reports are the basis on which Al Gore, President Obama and others have claimed that climate ruin is inevitable unless the world reorganizes its economies with huge new taxes on carbon. Now we are discovering the U.N. reports are sloppy political documents intended to drive the climate lobby's regulatory agenda.

The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC's shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.

That scrutiny will occur only over much kicking and screaming. There is still an amazing amount of hubris among the AGW crowd.

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Obama and The War Of Ideas Against The Jihadists

Our war against radical Islam has always been a two front war. We have succeeded to this point in the physical war against radical Islam. We are losing completely in the equally if not more important of the two wars - the war of ideas. We are doing nothing to beat back jihadism on the ideological plane. What was unforgivable cowardice under George Bush has been made worse under the anti-American fantasy of Obama.

Yesterday, Tom Friedman and Fouad Ajami wrote about different aspects of the war of ideas. Friedman writes that the jihadi narrative - that the U.S. is at war with all of Islam and responsible for the many ills of the Arab world - has now saturated the Muslim world. Ajami writes that Obama's prostration before the Arab world, apologizing for the sins of America and whitewashing the Arab world of responsibility for its plight, have fallen flat, not merely engendering no upturn in support for America, but causing disillusionment.

Friedman, writing at the NYT, gives us his opinion of the Maj. Nadal Hassan mass murder at Fort Hood. As he sees it, Hassan was fully infected by the jihadist narrative, and that narrative has now become ascendant in the Muslim world:

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you’d never know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that 9/11 was a kind of fraud: America’s unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the real story, and the Muslims are the real victims — of U.S. perfidy.

Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders.

The Narrative was concocted by jihadists to obscure that.

It’s working. As a Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said to me: “This narrative is now omnipresent in Arab and Muslim communities in the region and in migrant communities around the world. . . .

Ajami, writing in the WSJ, tells us:

[Obama] has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not "unclenched their fist," nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.

There is little Mr. Obama can do about this disenchantment. He can't journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies—he has already done that. He can't journey to Cairo to tell the fabled "Arab street" that the Iraq war was a wasted war of choice, and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands—he has already done that as well. He can't tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam—he, like his predecessor, has said that time and again.

It was the norm for American liberalism during the Bush years to brandish the Pew Global Attitudes survey that told of America's decline in the eyes of foreign nations. Foreigners were saying what the liberals wanted said.

Now those surveys of 2009 bring findings from the world of Islam that confirm that the animus toward America has not been radically changed by the ascendancy of Mr. Obama. In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.

Mr. Obama's election has not drained the swamps of anti-Americanism. That anti-Americanism is endemic to this region, an alibi and a scapegoat for nations, and their rulers, unwilling to break out of the grip of political autocracy and economic failure. It predated the presidency of George W. Bush and rages on during the Obama presidency.

We had once taken to the foreign world that quintessential American difference—the belief in liberty, a needed innocence to play off against the settled and complacent ways of older nations. The Obama approach is different.

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others. . . .

Both of the above articles highlight a theme sounded repeatedly on this blog - it is incumbent on our leaders to be honest with our nation and with Muslims. It is incumbent that they identify the source of radicalism in the Muslim world and honestly name it. It is incumbent that they explain the threat and shine a blinding light on this cancer.

As I wrote almost two years ago:

Without identifying the source of "radical Islam" and shining a light on all of the relevant aspects of the source, we are incapable of developing a coherent national and international strategy to that will meet and defeat this cancer. Identifying the source of radical Islam and explaining about it to America is a fundamental duty of our government. And on this, our government has failed.

This failure has other significant ramifications. It leaves our populace without the knowledge to distinguish between a particularly dangerous ideology and a benign one - both of them being interspersed among us and throughout the world. This will lead to a tendency to lump all Muslims under one banner [note - this is precisely what Obama did in his Cairo speach]. Most critically, it will marginalize and cut off from support those Muslims who would fight against the Salifization of their religion. And indeed, as this is in large measure an ideological struggle, it it the fight they will wage that will determine the future of Islam. We need to insure they win over Salafi Islam.

And there is yet another critical aspect to the the governments use of euphanisms to describe "radical Islam." It falsely implies that radical Islam is merely an anamoly. By doing that, our government provides cover for Wahhabi / Salafi Islamists to continue to spread their ideology free of criticism and publicity. This only allows the problems created by that Salafi Islam to fester and metastasize. It will only compounds the costs that we will eventually have to pay if and when things get to a point where some action must be taken against these purveyors of hatred, death and triumphalism.

If anyone has any doubts that the Salafi/Wahhabi sect is the font of jihadism, please see this short autobiography from former terrorist, Tawfiq Hamid.

Bush failed in his duty, likely because naming Salafism / Wahhabism was considered too impolitic. Obama, on the other hand, seems dangerously clueless. His Muslim "advisors" are, according to Zuhdi Jasser, stacked with "political Islamists" and, indeed, one not long ago spoke out in favor of shariah law. His Cairo speech treating Salafi terrorists and apolitical Muslim as the same - equal members in a single Muslim ummah - was a disaster. He did nothing more in that speech then reiterate the "Narrative" and then excuse Arab regimes for the failings with ridiculous claims of moral equivalence. We now see its resonance.

The bottom line of all of this is that we could stay in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next half century and still not defeat the threat of "radical Islam." We can't because it is an idea, and until we engage in the war of ideas, we can expect the threat from radical salafists to continue to metastasize. Indeed, under Obama, it seems to be growing apace.

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Karl Rove On Dr. Jekyll & President Hyde

The pronouncements of Candidate Obama are glaringly inconsistent with the actions of President Obama. Karl Rove opines on that today, noting that the inconsistency is prevelant in both the sphere of national security and domestic policy - with the former being welcome, the latter being unwelcome, and the sum of the whole telling us some troubling things about President Obama.

Karl Rove begins his article noting with approval that, in contravention to all of his heated and moralizing rhetoric excoriating President Bush over the War on Terror during the campaign, President Obama has essentially adopted the Bush blueprint for the war on terror wholesale. I covered this in detail in a post below, "Candidate Obama versus President Obama in the War on Terror." As Rove notes:

These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

Rove then moves onto the realm of domestic policy:

. . . We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good.

Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget.

However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.

On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system."

Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful.

In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images." All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself." Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.

Mr. Obama's appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America's security interests.

Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.

Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging. America now has a president quite different from the person who advertised himself for the job last year. Over time, those things can catch up to a politician.

Read the enitre article. Perhaps if MSM had actually vetted this deeply disingenuous man, American's may have had sufficient knowledge to make an educated decision for whom pull the lever last November. Instead, many American's pulled the lever for an image that has turned out to be far more shadow than substance. And if the polls are correct, it would seem that many are finding this reality ever more troubling. Caveat Emptor indeed.

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Obama's Pandora's Box & The WSJ

I see that Karl Rove, writing at the WSJ, has reached the same conclusion as I did in the post below - that Obama's decision to criminalize political differences by prosecuting Bush era OLC attorneys for their advice on CIA interrogation methods will create a maelstrom in our politics the likes of which have not been seen in living memory. I would add that it will be a maelstrom not seen since at least April 11, 1861.

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Obama's decision to green light the prosecution of OLC attorneys for what amounts to a difference of political opinion violates his oath to support and defend the Constitution. At a minimum, as I noted below and as the WSJ notes in an editorial today, Obama has poisoned our body politic. The question is, will he act to stop it before the poison takes full hold at tremendous cost to our nation. This from Karl Rove writing in the WSJ:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.

. . . Mr. Obama seemed to understand the peril of such an exercise when he said, before his inauguration, that he wanted to "look forward" and beyond the antiterror debates of the Bush years. As recently as Sunday, Rahm Emanuel said no prosecutions were contemplated and now is not a time for "anger and retribution." Two days later the President disavowed his own chief of staff. Yet nothing had changed except that Mr. Obama's decision last week to release the interrogation memos unleashed a revenge lust on the political left that he refuses to resist.

. . . [H]e is trying to co-opt his left-wing base by playing to it -- only to encourage it more. Within hours of Mr. Obama's Tuesday comments, Senator Carl Levin piled on with his own accusatory Intelligence Committee report. The demands for a "special counsel" at Justice and a Congressional show trial are louder than ever, and both Europe's left and the U.N. are signaling their desire to file their own charges against former U.S. officials.

Those officials won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.

Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.

. . . Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.

Read the entire article. I really think that Karl Rove stops too short here. I will reiterate my concluding analysis from the post below:

I blogged on my analysis of the legal memos here. I read them in full and with an open mind. I know more than a little about the law. My conclusion regarding the OLC memos was that they present colorable legal arguments that the enhanced interrogation techniques fell short of the legal definition of "torture." I also concluded that there were some weaknesses in the analysis such that reasonable people could disagree. That said, as of yet, I have heard not a single principled argument in disagreement. I emphasize that because quite literally everyone I have seen and heard on the topic has cited no opposing precedent to support their conclusory assertions and labels that the interrogation techniques were unlawful torture. At any rate, what Obama, Soros and the far left want to do now is, as they indicated prior to the election, criminalize their disagreement. I could imagine no greater threat to the fabric of our nation. Even the attempt to do this is going to set off a maelstrom the likes of which we have never seen in this country since 1861.

It does not end there. As I see it, if Obama and his far left base succeed in successfully prosecuting the attorneys over this, then President Obama will have abandoned his most sacred duty - to support and defend the Constitution. That is the day the far left crosses the Rubicon and we cease to be a free nation. The day any one of the OLC attorneys are marched into prison because of a political disagreement can and should be the day a true civil war - one that involves violence - starts in this country. Trust me when I say that up until three days ago, never did I think it the remotest possibility that those words would ever pass my lips.

Obama may be intelligent, but he is incredibly unrealistic and naive if he does not recognize the forces he is unleashing. He would be very wise to end the threatened prosecution of the OLC attorneys immediately. This scenario could very easily spiral far out of Obama's control and it could do so quickly.

The painting at the top of this post is "Pandora's Box" by Howard David Johnson.

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Pork 'n Palindemonium . . . At The Wall St. Journal?

The WSJ is a conservative paper and a fair one - but today it tosses out the intellectual honesty for which it is famous and jumps on the bash Palin bandwagon. If she is deserving, that's one thing. But that is far from obvious in an incredibly poorly written piece by Laura Meckler and John Wilke. In their bill of particulars against Gov. Palin, the authors completely obfuscate the difference between a legitimate spending request and that corrupt bane of our modern Congress, the earmark that passes outside the normal legislative channels to become law without debate or vote.
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The WSJ has today what amounts to a hit piece on Gov. Palin. The authors claim that, because Gov. Palin has requested funding for specific projects, she is not a fiscal reformer and, indeed, is every bit the porker at the public trough that Obama is. You can read the article here.

There is a lot of confusion surrounding the term "earmark." Historically, the term has meant no more than simply designating funds to a specifc project. In recent years, the term "earmark" has also come to refer to a corrupt practice whereby funding requests are inserted in committee reports, never being debated or voted upon, yet treated as having the force of law.

I wrote about this the other day here when it was clear from the questions he was asking that Charlie Gibson, in his interview with Gov. Palin, was unable to tell the difference between an earmark and a legitimate spending request. And indeed, in justifying her claim to being a reformer, that is precisely what Gov. Palin explained to Charlie Gibson. You can watch it here.

If you want to see how the corrupt version of earmarking works, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin provides the example. He is about to get $5.9 billion dollars worth of earmarks sent out of his committee in the Defense Appropriations Bill. None will be debated. None will be voted upon. They represent a wholly broken and corrupt process.

But as mentioned above, not all specific spending requests that fall within the generic definition of "earmark" are of the corrupt kind. Quite often, specific spending requests are to fund spending required of the state by unfunded federal mandates. And there are host of other reasons that justify reasonable specific spending requests that every state requests. They are not pork and they are submitted through the normal legislative process. All of this is ignored in the horrendous article in today's WSJ. The authors of that article lump together every spending request made by Gov. Palin as the Governor of Alaska and label it all as earmarks. To call this sloppy and biased reporting is a grotesque understatement.

It is beyond dispute that Gov. Palin has drastically reduced the spending requests for federal dollars made by the government of Alaska. As Gov. Palin wrote in an op-ed in an Anchorage newspaper some months ago:

[M]y administration has recommended funding for specific projects and programs when there is an important federal purpose and strong citizen support.

This year, we have requested 31 earmarks, down from 54 in 2007. Of these, 27 involve continuing or previous appropriations and four are new requests. The total dollar amount of these requests has been reduced from approximately $550 million in the previous year to just less than $200 million. . . .

Patterico takes a look at many of the requests made by Alaska under Gov. Palin:

. . . if you look at the document that Smith links, you quickly get feel for the fact that many of the earmarks are requests for funding that are completely legitimate, and many relate to unfunded mandates imposed upon Alaska by federal legislation like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Several examples are set forth after the jump.

Here is the link to the document setting forth the Alaska appropriation requests. Here are a few examples of the justification for the request:

“Meets the increased needs under the Magnuson-Stevens Act for developing regional fishery coordinated databases.”

“This is an ongoing effort to collect data on the recreational hailbut fishery that is conducted by federal agencies though relying on the state for data.”

“Provides state funding for management of federal fisheries, including Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands king crab and tanner crab, weathervane scallops and groundfish.” . . .

Read the entire post. As Patterico notes, taking even the most jaundiced eye towards the spending requests made by Gov. Palin, none come close to asking for a $1 million earmark for her spouse's employer which just happens to coincide with a tripling of her salary. And indeed, you can compare the requests made by Ms. Palin with the list of earmarks released by Obama during the Democratic primaries. Go ahead. Do a little research - and be a bit more discening than the WSJ has been today. More links to posts on this at Memorandum.

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Biden - Experience Does Not Equal Competence

Obama's pick of Senator for Life Joe Biden as his VP pick was a choice made from weakness. Obama's naivety showed on foreign policy and national security, thus he chose the second most long serving Senator who was also the Chairman of the Sentate Foreign Relations Committee. As I have pointed out before, Biden may have years of experience, but those years have not brought him a scintilla of judgment. To the contrary, as WSJ points out, Biden's foreign policy and national security "experience" is a resume showing one disastrous position after another.
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This from the WSJ:

decade after decade and on important issue after important issue, Mr. Biden's judgment has been deeply flawed.

In the 1970s, Mr. Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government in its war against the North. Congress's cut-off of funds contributed to the fall of an American ally, helped communism advance, and led to mass death throughout the region. Mr. Biden also advocated defense cuts so massive that both Edmund Muskie and Walter Mondale, both leading liberal Democrats at the time, opposed them.

In the early 1980s, the U.S. was engaged in a debate over funding the Contras, a group of Nicaraguan freedom fighters attempting to overthrow the Communist regime of Daniel Ortega. Mr. Biden was a leading opponent of President Ronald Reagan's efforts to fund the Contras. He also opposed Reagan's efforts to send military assistance to the pro-American government in El Salvador, which at the time was battling the FMLN, a Soviet-supported Marxist group.

Throughout his career, Mr. Biden has consistently opposed modernization of our strategic nuclear forces. He was a fierce opponent of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Mr. Biden voted against funding SDI, saying, "The president's continued adherence to [SDI] constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft." Mr. Biden has remained a consistent critic of missile defense and even opposed the U.S. dropping out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty after the collapse of the Soviet Union (which was the co-signatory to the ABM Treaty) and the end of the Cold War.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and, we later learned, was much closer to attaining a nuclear weapon than we had believed. President George H.W. Bush sought war authorization from Congress. Mr. Biden voted against the first Gulf War, asking: "What vital interests of the United States justify sending Americans to their deaths in the sands of Saudi Arabia?"

In 2006, after having voted three years earlier to authorize President George W. Bush's war to liberate Iraq, Mr. Biden argued for the partition of Iraq, which would have led to its crack-up. Then in 2007, Mr. Biden opposed President Bush's troop surge in Iraq, calling it a "tragic mistake." It turned out to be quite the opposite. Without the surge, the Iraq war would have been lost, giving jihadists their most important victory ever.

On many of the most important and controversial issues of the last four decades, Mr. Biden has built a record based on bad assumptions, misguided analyses and flawed judgments. If he had his way, America would be significantly weaker, allies under siege would routinely be cut loose, and the enemies of the U.S. would be stronger.

There are few members of Congress whose record on national security matters can be judged, with the benefit of hindsight, to be as consistently bad as Joseph Biden's. It's true that Sarah Palin has precious little experience in national security affairs. But in this instance, no record beats a manifestly bad one.

Read the entire article. Lunch bucket Joe may have a lot of experience, but it is not the kind which qualifies him to be allowed within a mile of anyplace where serious decisions on foreign policy and national security are being made. Indeed, his experience makes him less qualified for the Vice Presidency than the tabula rasa that is Palin.

(H/T Weapons of Mass Discussion)

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