It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.

Today, Klein has reversed course. He is now recommending something called “deliberative democracy” in which ordinary citizens are selected at random to make tough policy decisions. His post today even includes this line:

“The public is very smart if you give it a chance,” says Fishkin…

So which is it, Joe? Are we a nation of morons or smart folks?

From what I can see, the chief appeal of “deliberative democracy” is that it allows experts to have a greater impact on results. It’s much easier to control the thinking of a small group of people than an entire populace. It’s not a coincidence that this idea has so far been most widely accepted on the far left, i.e. the Green Party.

Imagine a deliberative democracy approach to global warming. A room full of randomly chosen citizens being berated by environmentalists about why we’d all be better off if, say, the price of gas were to triple. No representative for common sense would be in the room. Indeed, Joe’s post mentions that one of the triumphs of this approach is that, in Texas, “the percentage of people — and these were stakeholders, utility customers — willing to pay more for wind went from 54% to 84%.” I’m sure after three days of hectoring by PhDs with Power Point slides, that seemed like a great idea. I’m not sure their neighbors who didn’t get the re-education effort would agree.

You are probably familiar by now with this infamous graph published by the White House in January 2009 highlighting their expectations for the impact of the Recovery Act on the rate of unemployment. Far from leveling off at 8% and then declining, the actual unemployment rate ran up to 10% by the end of 2009 and has declined only slightly since to 9.5%, largely due to a decline in labor force participation. This in spite of the rapid passage of the massive $787 billion stimulus bill in February 2009. (Geoff at the Innocent Bystanders blog deserves everlasting credit for being the first to point out this disconnect.)

With the White House and other Democrats resolutely sticking to their claim that the stimulus bill “saved or created” 3-4 million jobs, I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that the very same January 2009 White House report also included an industry by industry forecast of where these 3-4 million jobs would come from. Here it is:

Thanks to the inclination of economists to model verifiable data (even when they are pulling numbers out of the sky), these industry categories happen to align perfectly with employment data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus we can easily compare the actual changes in employment to the figures forecast by the White House. In the table below, I’ve calculated the net change in employment by industry from February 2009, when the stimulus bill was passed, to July 2010, using the latest data available from the BLS. (Click row headings for data source.)

The figures speaks for themselves, but note that the difference between the total number of jobs the White House forecast would be “created” and the actual number of jobs lost represents an astounding delta of over 6 million jobs. Six million! Where are the jobs, indeed.

Remarkably, even the total number of government jobs dropped, I imagine due to job losses at the state and local levels. And how can the Recovery Act be considered anything other than a complete and utter failure with over 1.5 million fewer construction jobs than forecasted? In spite of endless propaganda over shovel-ready projects, and the nation littered with roadside signs touting Recovery Act projects.

Most damning of all I think is that the job losses I’ve highlighted occurred after President Obama assumed office, and by and large after the stimulus bill was passed and the money began to flow. These are not “inherited” job losses by any stretch.

Defenders of the White House argue that the economy was in more dire shape than they realized at the time, and that the employment situation would be worse without the stimulus bill. This may be the case, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Administration and their allies in Congress rammed through an unprecedented $787 billion in spending – much of it having little to do with economic stimulus – based on flawed assumptions and overly optimistic forecasts.

It’s simply irrefutable that the Recovery Act has not had the beneficial impact projected by the White House. In fact, based on the data alone it’s arguable that the net impact has been detrimental to the economy, especially in combination with other legislation and policy changes enacted by the Administration and the Democrat-led Congress.

While Democrats would like to blame their declining political fortunes on a climate of fear stirred up by the GOP and conservative media, mainstream America recognizes incompetence and mismanagement when they see it. Saddling our children and grandchildren with $787 billion of debt (plus interest), while presiding over the loss of millions of more jobs – and yet brazenly claiming that they somehow “saved or created” 3-4 million jobs – is a disgraceful legacy of failure and deceit from which there is no escape. November is coming.

Lee, who police say may have explosives, has long protested the Discovery Channel building and has posted a crazed, rambling Internet “manifesto“, calling the human species the “most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around” and insisting that the Discovery Channel air his views. Though Lee is clearly sick, and though the hostage crisis is still ongoing as of this writing, bloggers and partisan commentators have not hesitated in using this incident to score political points.

Yes, Lee is obviously unhinged. You don’t threaten to kill people unless you have problems generally. But apart from his actions, there is little in his “crazed” manifesto that represents his own original thought. Most of these ideas have a long, respectable history on the left going back at least as far as Paul Ehlich’s The Population Bomb. Neo-Malthusian ideas have been repeated many times since then by tenured professors around the globe. I’ve written about some of them here on the site more than once. In fact, here’s a description of one lecture by highly respected University of Texas Professor Eric Pianka:

“He recommended airborne Ebola as an ideal killing virus,” Mims said. “He showed slides of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and human skulls. He joked about requiring universal sterilization. It reminded me of a futuristic science fiction movie with a crazed scientist planning the death of humanity.”

It’s not all that different than Lee’s “crazed” manifesto, is it?

As for Lee himself, he was a devotee of Richard Dawkins and joined the following meetup groups: The Maryland Science and Skepticism Meetup Group, Washington Area Secular Humanist Meetup Group, CFI-DC Drinking Skeptically. In short, he considered himself a rationalist.

Does Max Fisher think someone who holds Lee’s views is necessarily crazed? Or is he referring to the style and not the content?

Addendum: For the record, here are my thoughts on when it is fair to look at someone’s beliefs in connection to their use of violence.

Not all violence is the result of insanity. Some is calculated for effect in a rational way, i.e. suicide bombings. In those cases, some goal is given a higher value than life. This is certainly not normal, but it’s also not necessarily insane. In cases where the killer’s (or would be killer’s) actions flow rationally from their beliefs, it should be fair to point out that ideas do have consequences.

This post is timely once again: In defense of the blame game

Update 2:55PM PST (Morgen): Lee’s Meetup page confirms he was an atheist:

Hello. I’ve been in DC-MD for a few years now looking for some of that ‘change.’ I’m an Atheist and am extremely proud and open about that fact. My favorite authors are Daniel Quinn, Richard Dawkins, and Jared Diamond.

Guess he never found the “change” he was looking for.

[Original story]

This story hit close to home:

A gunman, possibly carrying explosives, has entered the headquarters of the Discovery Channel and fired shots, according to police in Silver Spring, Md…”There’s a guy with a gun in the lobby. Police are swarming in — assault rifles and all,” producer Talal Al-khatib told ABCNews.com via instant message.

One of my best friends in the world (best man at my wedding) works for Discovery as an editor. When this broke, I got worried because, if you knew my friend Henry, you’d know that he would be the guy volunteering to be a hostage so everyone else could leave the building.

I just got off the phone with him. He was home and had just learned what happened from a neighbor who also came to check on him. He checked his company e-mail from home and found this:

We have reason to believe there is an armed gunman at One Discovery Place. All employees should seek protection in a locked office on their respective floors immediately.

According to this site (HT: Chris Moody on Twitter), the guy with the gun is “a disgruntled, aspiring TV producer who has apparently gone off the deep end after having his pitches rejected by Discovery on several occasions.” His website now contains a list of demands. Here’s a sample:

• All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed.
• Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down!
• Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it.
• Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!
• Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.
• Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.
• Also, war must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures.
• These are the demands and sayings of Lee.

The general aura is one of eco-lunacy. The idea that humanity is a plague upon the planet is reminiscent of Paul Ehrlich. The manifesto also echos a lot of the talk coming more recently from John Reid and others on the left.

Of course every time something like this happens, the left assures us that they don’t play the “blame game.” But these same sites weren’t so reticent in drawing conclusions when a Muslim cab driver was stabbed in Manhattan recently. Only violence plausibly emanating from the right is symbolic of larger problems and a “climate of hate.” Violence from the left, well, in that case it’s just another lone gunman.

Update: According to his website, this is video of James Jay Lee throwing money in the air in Silver Spring:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m not sure what the point of this was, but there it is. Here’s a screen grab of him in action. You can see the money in the air:

And here’s a title sequence he created for his proposed Discovery Channel show:

Click here to view the embedded video.

He used “Eve of Destruction” as his theme music. Also note this photo from his MySpace page. The caption is his addition:

It almost goes without saying that he’s an atheist, but I’m saying it because, if he were a Christian, it would be fodder.

Update 2: James Lee reviews Al Gore:

I finished reading Al Gore’s book, and inconvenient truth a few days ago. It was very enlightening. However, at the end he didn’t offer any real solutions, as if changing a lightbulb would even put a scratch in the global warming epidemic. The book was half good, which means the part about science was good. The rest seemed like a commercial for sainthood.

I re-read Genesis the first chapter. It was obviously written by a totalitarian farmer.

Here’s another bit of foreshadowing on his MySpace page. Note this is from 2006:

Been having strange dreams.

I can’t seem to stop myself from this venture. I can’t think about anything else except this and this alone. Thanks for ruining my life Shannon.

I am ready to go all the way with this one. All the way guys!

I hope no one is hurt by this lunatic.

Update 3: Think Progress attempts a gainer with a half twist by trying to claim Lee’s manifesto has a lot in common with right-wing anti-immigration groups. Pity the poor junior staffer who was assigned this line of garbage.

So in the midst of rehearsing all the left’s darkest fears about the Bush’s motives, her mic cuts out and she comes back to admit she’s a conspiracy theorist.

Cosmic justice strikes again!

In fact, I found the quote myself a couple days before it exploded on the web and didn’t highlight it for exactly this reason. I also listened to an hour long discussion Rauf had with an interviewer and found most of what he said to be pretty reasonable from a certain liberal perspective. I linked the audio and said as much here.

In short, I have been against the mosque, but not against Imam Rauf. He struck me as a genuine moderate.

Until now.

Nice Deb points out a new piece in the Wall Street Journal today. The Journal has found some letters Rauf sent to the NY Times in the 70s. Here’s a sample:

In a letter published on November 27, 1977, Mr. Rauf commented on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Israel and encouraged his fellow Muslims to “give peace a chance.” That John Lennon lyric sounds good. But he added: “For my fellow Arabs I have the following special message: Learn from the example of the Prophet Mohammed, your greatest historical personality. After a state of war with the Meccan unbelievers that lasted for many years, he acceded, in the Treaty of Hudaybiyah, to demands that his closest companions considered utterly humiliating. Yet peace turned out to be a most effective weapon against the unbelievers.”

He’s referring to a treaty in the year 628 that established a 10-year truce between the Prophet Muhammad and Meccan leaders and was viewed by Muslims at the time as a defeat. But Muhammad used that period to consolidate his ranks and re-arm, eventually leading to his conquest of Mecca. Imam Rauf seems to be saying that Muslims should understand Sadat’s olive branch in the same way, as a short-term respite leading to ultimate conquest.

This is exactly the kind of double-talk that conservatives have been worried about. I think if the mosque is built the line “peace turned out to be a most effective weapon against the unbelievers” should be carved over the doorway.

Later in the letter, Rauf adds “In a true peace, Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority.” In other words, he’s looking for the end of the Israeli state, just like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Granted, this was more than three decades ago. One might think that Rauf had matured a lot in this time. Well, not according to Rauf. He was asked for comment by the Journal:

As I re-read those letters now, I see that they express the same concerns-a desire for peaceful solutions in Israel, and for a humane understanding of Iran-that I have maintained, and worked hard on, in the years since those letters were published.

That doesn’t sound like a retraction to me. It sounds like peace as a weapon of conquest.

I’ll let the AP say it, from their fact-check today:

OBAMA:“Within Afghanistan, I have ordered the deployment of additional troops who — under the command of Gen. David Petraeus — are fighting to break the Taliban’s momentum. As with the surge in Iraq, these forces will be in place for a limited time to provide space for the Afghans to build their capacity and secure their own future.”

THE FACTS: Obama is reciting almost the exact language of the Bush administration’s rationale for the Iraq surge: to buy time and space for the Iraqis to reach political accommodations and to strengthen their own security forces. That’s quite a change from Obama’s stand as a presidential candidate, when he criticized it. Obama seems to be embracing the troop surge logic now, even though it’s clear that the Iraqis have yet to achieve the necessary level of reconciliation to form an enduring government.

Obama got into office in no small part because of his anti-war, anti-surge rhetoric. Now he’s in nearly the exact same position Bush was circa 2006. Only the location of the fight has changed. All that’s missing from this picture is a liberal junior Senator announcing on TV that Obama’s troop surge won’t work. Maybe that’s coming as the fight gets tougher.

This is cosmic justice my friends. Savor it.

Here’s what’s likely going on. The Post, having looked at the book, decided they could no longer pass Milbank off as a straight journalist, so they offered him another position where his liberal cheer leading won’t be a liability. Fellow Postie Howard Kurtz even offers him space to set up his own coming out:

“Anybody reading my column would make an informed judgment that I’m left-of-center, and I wouldn’t quarrel with that,” he says. “But strongly ideological people on the left do not recognize me as one of their own.”

Yes, Dana, we all know you’re a liberal. We’ve know, well, forever really…at least since you wore the orange hunting outfit on TV. But it’s nice that after six years the Post is finally willing to admit the obvious.

But this really begs the question…just what is in this new book that helped push this liberal out of the journalism closet? It must be pretty good. And with the book coming out in a mere month, I’m sure there are plenty of reader/review copies floating around. So I’m asking someone who got one to send it to me. Use the contact e-mail in the menu and I’ll reply with an address. Your name will be kept strictly confidential of course. And, no, I will not publish large portions of the book or anything likely to get me sued. I will however offer some analysis and fact-checking of the full contents. Fact-checking Milbank is something I’ve gotten pretty good at.

And, hey, I’m sure Milbank won’t mind. It’s free publicity, right?

Today was the biggest chunk of votes. Murkowski has cut Miller’s lead from 1,668 votes to 1,469 today. That’s not nearly what the Murkowski campaign had hoped for.

“We all know that this has been a long week, a terribly long week,” she said at campaign headquarters while conceding. She said that while there were still outstanding votes, “I don’t see a scenario where the primary will turn out in my favor, and that is a reality that is before me at this point in time…And for that reason, and for the good of the state of Alaska … I am now conceding the race for the Republican nomination.”

Here’s the video (note the weird tire spin out during the moment of concession…):

Click here to view the embedded video.

The big political story here is that Miller was a long shot candidate picked, and helped to win, by Sarah Palin. In fact, as I pointed out the other day, liberals were setting down markers in anticipation of a Palin-connected loss. But that’s not what happened. Yes, part of this is just the tempo of the times. The energy is with the right now, just as it was with the left in 2007. Miller is to the right of Murkowski, so he wins. But whether as help or harbinger there’s no doubt Palin had a role in this.

Now back to the big picture. Ann Coulter is right that overconfidence is the enemy. It is very possible to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 60 days. But if conservatives can remain calm and focused, I think we have a chance at a real landslide here. The house is as close as we ever get to a sure bet. I’ve been unwilling to make predictions about the Senate because the math to get there seemed so formidable. I’m not sure that’s true anymore. I believe we could take 11-12 seats (assuming we don’t screw it up). So here’s the gameplan people…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stay. On. Target.

For those who don’t know what the target is, it’s the economy, the health bill and the arrogance factor. If it’s not one of those three things, you shouldn’t be talking about it between now and November.

But Obama famously predicted that the surge would be a failure. This was during the darkest days of the war in early 2007. Casualty numbers were up. Liberal demagoguery was up. And Barack Obama said the surge would be ineffective.

He was wrong and never admitted it, even when confronted directly on a number of occasions. In fact, when confronted about it on 60 Minutes, he said that it was speculation whether or not Iraq was better off with the surge than without it.

This is outrageous.

There is one person responsible for the fact that we can leave Iraq in relative peace, rather than fleeing as we did in Vietnam and that person is George W. Bush. Yes, Gen. Petraeus had the strategic plan and our military carried it out, but Bush made the tough call when no one believed it could be done. If the current President fails to credit him for that display of courage there can only be one reason: naked partisan politics.

Obama’s failure to credit Bush during the election of 2008 while shameful was at least understandable. He couldn’t credit the man against whom he was running his entire campaign (McCain was an afterthought). But that excuse no longer holds. President Bush has been respectfully silent in the past 19 months, as he should. It’s time for Obama to stop acting like a candidate and act like an American President and a statesman. If he can’t do that much, if he fails to credit Bush and the surge in tonight’s speech, then he reveals himself to be a petty partisan unworthy of the office. If on the other hand he steps up and calls it like it is, then I think he will have risen above the worst elements of his own party and shown some real Presidential dignity of the kind he said was needed during his campaign.

I’m really hoping it’s the latter, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Related: Byron York is wondering the same thing. He suggests it doesn’t look good.