After Action Reviews

Keys to a good After Action Review meeting:

0. Only include the people who took part in the action (including planning it)

1. No names, no ranks - everybody speaks their mind, and past performance is referred to by title or position, never by name. No ego, no fear, just truth and openness. Everybody is subordinate to the mission.

2. Focus is on fixing the future (not assigning blame for the past)

3. Put the needs of the firm above your need to be right, to be perfect, to be safe - approach the task of improving our process with humility and candor.

4. The seven stages of the debrief are STEALTH:

[S] Set time, location, and prepare
- assign roles: timekeeper, scribe, data input person, discussion leader (same as mission planner)
- inform everyone what they need to bring
- prepare the room with flip charts, clean table tops
- start on time / keep on schedule / end on time
[T] Tone is nameless, rankless
- lead by example; be open
- talk in the third person - never "I" or "you" but "the lead carpenter", "the estimator"
- don't care about WHO is right - care about WHAT is right
[E] Execution vs. Objectives -
- were objectives SMART?
- reconstruct the sequence of events
- did we accomplish the mission?
[A] Analyze execution
- list errors and successes
- for each error/success, list cause(s)
- identify underlying root cause(s) of each
[L] Lessons Learned
- prominent or recurring root causes
[T] Transfer Lessons Learned - make part of future process
[H] High note - positive summation


Source: "Flawless Execution" by James D. Murphy, ISBN 0-06-083416-1
(http://www.afterburnerseminars.com/ )

Massanutten Military Academy. The Leader in small Military Schools in Virginia. The finest co-ed, college prep, boarding, military school.

Massanutten Military Academy. The Leader in small Military Schools in Virginia. The finest co-ed, college prep, boarding, military school.

Daughter #2 is interested in this school. Can she handle it, though?

Banks Gone Wild - Krugman deconstructed

Banks Gone Wild - New York Times:

“What were they smoking?” asks the cover of the current issue of Fortune magazine. Underneath the headline are photos of recently deposed Wall Street titans, captioned with the staggering sums they managed to lose.

The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed. And they were encouraged to make socially destructive decisions by a system of executive compensation that should have been reformed after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, but wasn’t.

So opens former Enron advisor Paul Krugman's column, a study in how not to persuade. Krugman buries his good ideas under a layer of over-simplification, asides, and self-congratulation.

Over-simplification
"The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed." The answer. The one, single answer. The only possible answer. The alpha and the omega. As soon as I read the sentence, I feel Krugman trying to be too sweeping. He seems to be implying that the answer is to abolish greed, which is as likely to work as abolishing selfishness, hunger, or self-aggrandizement by newspaper columnists.

Self-congratulation
Krugman writes:

In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump.

This slump was both predictable and predicted. “These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t.

Whee - Krugman works in his own brilliance. So how does this expand my understanding of the current situation? It doesn't feel like it does - rather it seems like a gratuitous bit of self-love. More persuasive would have been for the author to show us the external signs of doom that the fools didn't see. Because he doesn't offer that, Krugman seems to be saying that the only way to avoid future disaster is for everyone to listen to him - hubristic, especially coming from a former Enron advisor.

Asides
In fact, the entire sub-prime mortgage debacle is tangential to Krugman's real point - that corporate titans who make bad calls don't pay for it. This is a great point and deserves serious treatment, which Krugman fails to give. It's also a point that transcends the current crisis. Dwelling overmuch on subprime lending obscures that more universal point.

When he makes a good point - for example:

...[T]here’s a pervasive loss of trust, which is like sand thrown in the gears of the financial system. The crisis of confidence is plainly visible in the market data: there’s an almost unprecedented spread between the very low interest rates investors are willing to accept on U.S. government debt ... and the much higher interest rates at which banks are willing to lend to each other.

...it's easy to overlook because of the chaff. Yet it's a great point, and he quickly backs it up, not by quoting himself predicting it, but by offering us a look at "the market data" - score one for the otherwise slumbering economist trapped deep inside Krugman.

And finally, he gives the market the finger by suggesting that the way to fix the underlying problem - that "[t]he huge rewards executives receive if they can fake success are what led to the great corporate scandals of a few years back" - is some sort of vague "political" solution.

Right. Campaign finance legislation has been profoundly ineffective at driving the money out of politics, so we should do what - copy that failure and try to legislate away greed? Krugman, having filled the column with fluff, can't or won't say. The only strong conclusion he even implies is that there is no market based solution. A curious conclusion for an economist, but par for the course for a former economist turned emotion-based, second-rate political hack.

Dear Mr. Krugman, please raise the bar on yourself. This column is beneath your abilities.

TIME Magazine's Loaded Language

Shooting Deer for the Homeless contains heavily loaded language - so biased it might as well be an editorial. Here's an analysis of the first part of the opening paragraph.

"Hunting may seem a cruel and heartless activity to animal-rights activists and many Americans. But hunters are trying to show they can be compassionate people too. A growing number of American hunters are donating part of their bounty each year to people who need it most, the poor and the homeless, through nationwide campaigns like Hunters for the Hungry, which delivers game meat to local food banks and shelters. In Georgia, where the group was founded 15 years ago, more than 1,000 hunters delivered 5,000 pounds of meat in 2006, making 25,000 meals. Nationwide, the group is on track to deliver its one-millionth meal in December."

Let's look at these crucial opening sentences:

Hunting may seem a cruel and heartless activity to animal-rights activists and many Americans. The author uses two adjectives - "cruel and heartless" gives her two bites at the apple, reinforcing the wickedness of hunters. Ending with "...and many Americans" reinforces an impression that this is the majority opinion, implying without saying "most".

But hunters are trying to show they can be compassionate people too. Too? Why "too"? Meaning hunters can be compassionate alongside being "cruel and heartless" or meaning that hunters can try to approach the compassion levels of "animal-rights activists and many Americans"? And "trying to show" implies that they haven't succeeded - that the jury is still out. One gets the image of cruel, heartless hunters engaged in some clever scheme to slap compassionate-looking whitewash on their underlying evil.

The article goes on to give the animal-rightists yet another crack at the hunters, but at this point the damage has been done. There can be little doubt that the author is leaning personally towards the "cruel and heartless" angle - and seems to be struggling to bring a biased person's impression of "balance" to the piece, through a sort of rote he-said/she-said formula.

Writing like this makes me glad I don't subscribe to TIME any more.

Lieberman condemns Democrats' far left

Lieberman: profoundly wrong:

"…there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

"There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base—even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime."

I blame Bush for having started the partisan divide on the war in Iraq, but I blame its depth and intensity on these Democrats that Lieberman so courageously identifies - they hate Bush more than they love their own country.

The Presidential Leadership Project - Blogging for President

The Presidential Leadership Project - Blogging for President is a post by Jim Kouzes discussing his research (with Barry Posner) about what people say (or claim) they want in a leader.

As Kouzes puts it:

For people to follow someone willingly, the majority of constituents believe the leader must be

* Honest
* Forward-looking
* Inspiring
* Competent
Taken by themselves, these four characteristics are useful. Write them down and take them into the polling booth with you. Put them next to the names and then vote. But what is more significant is what these qualities mean when taken as a whole. Three of these four key characteristics—honest, competent, and inspiring—make up what communications experts refer to as “source credibility.” More than anything, people want leaders in whom they can believe. Credibility is the foundation of leadership. Period. Full stop. Put another way, if you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.

My only quibble with this is, it's what people say they do, which often differs from what people actually do. (Everybody says they want more mass transit - just not for themselves. They want the other drivers to take it and get off the road.)

Waterboarding and Hiroshima

Waterboarding and Hiroshima - Did the Allies in World War II "lower themselves to the level of their enemies"?

Bret Stephens looks at the tough choices war imposes - to perform evil acts (waterboarding, bombing civilians) in order to accomplish better ends (vastly reducing total casualties). A good discussion that leaves the wishful thinking of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton looking childish.

Oh, that's right - there's no amount of innocent blood that a good Leftist wouldn't shed, to coddle the guilty.

Why actors and models love to hang out with Hugo Chavez

Why actors and models love to hang out with Hugo Chavez. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine

Applebaum captures beautifully this ugly facet of Hollywood-style leftist narcissism - the horrid willingness by infantile actors and the like to embrace a thug in order to make themselves feel good.

The comparison to John Reed and the Bolshevik Revolution is inspired.

Podcast on Socially Responsible Investing

This podcast pod-wsjcui.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object) covers many of the pros and cons of "ESG" - Environment, Social, and Governance - investing, or what used to be called just "Socially Responsible" investing.

Unlike vapid terms such as "Social Justice" where the word "social" negates whatever follows it[1], there's some potential upside, logic and sense in at least some forms of ESG or Socially Responsible Investing.

Listen to the podcast - the interview subject has a bit of an accent, but is clearly very sharp and informed. Great content.

Mark Abrams doesn't understand capitalism

The otherwise reasonably intelligent lefty radio host Marc Abrams (Kremer and Abrams on KXL AM-750, Sundays 9 to 11 am) blew it today big-time.

Oh, you people who think the private sector is better are so wrong, Abrams crowed. Yet look at Merrill Lynch - they let their chairman and chief executive, Stan O'Neal, go - and paid him $161 million after the guy lost them $8.4 billion.

Here are some of the ways Abrams gets this wrong:

1. Nobody said capitalism was error-free, any more than government is error free. That's a straw man argument. The real difference lies in things like, how are errors handled? What are the incentives? Whose money is it, and who makes the decisions? In this case, the guy responsible for blowing it was canned. He won't be around to continue to make mistakes for the next 4 or 8 or 20 years. Compare that to say Oregon DMV where a Director can blow $88 million and get a promotion. Notice how many of these examples - 10 of 13 - are from government (look under "Notable Project Failures").

2. Paying O'Neal $161 million to leave was some sort of sweet deal - he should have been kicked to the curb. Whose money was it? Private money - not taxpayer money. If you don't want your money used that way, don't own Merrill Lynch shares. It's not yet clear from the news reports if the $161 million is what his contract calls for as his severance.

3. Yes O'Neal lost the firm $8.4 billion this year. Over the last two years he made them $12 billion, and increased the firm's cash by $17 billion. He did that by risking private capital, not taxpayer dollars. By creating wealth.

Find me the government program that creates that kind of wealth, without risking tax dollars, and that actually holds people responsible for performance, and I'll start to think maybe the government is coming close to being as good as the private, capitalist sector at being efficient and effective. Until then, you can go stand in a DMV line.

OpinionJournal - Amazonian Swindle

Daryl Hannah goes to Ecuador and gets in over her head.

In the latest installment of Liberal Myopia meets Opportunistic Plaintiff's Lawyers, we see a capitalist entity being sued for the crimes of a different, state-owned entity, and the wacky left doesn't care about the facts.

Once again, the "narrative" is more important to self-indulgent, emotionally driven eco-greenies than facts, data, or reality.

Junk like this makes it impossible to work towards a truly cleaner environment. You can't partner with irrational people and make progress.

MarketBeat Blog - WSJ.com : Is the Surge Working? Ask the Bond Market.

MarketBeat Blog - WSJ.com : Is the Surge Working? Ask the Bond Market. I'm a fan of good news from Iraq - this isn't it.

I'm also a fan of looking at markets to see what they tell us people are thinking and believing. It looks from this data that the insiders - the "smart money" - are betting against the "surge" in Iraq leading to lasting stability.

Clearly if folks want to disagree, here is a way to make some money - buy these underpriced Iraqi bonds and rake in the dough. However, if the "surge" does not lead to long term stability, the holders of these bonds will own zero zilch nada.

Here's the difference in the two narratives. Narrowly and militarily, the "surge" seems to be working to bring a lower level of bloodshed to Baghdad and Iraq. Broadly and politically, the "surge" is not delivering on the political changes that will allow for long term peace and stability in Iraq. The lower bloodshed is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for peace. Looks like it's not enough, at least not yet.

Notable & Quotable - WSJ.com - re: Climate Change

Notable & Quotable - WSJ.com: "And when we build -- and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets -- we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place. For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum." [emphasis added]
--John Christy of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize) responds to questions by CNN anchor Miles O'Brien

Challange with my Treo 650/ error message - TreoQuestions.org

Challange with my Treo 650/ error message - TreoQuestions.org
User experienced this:

"When i start up my treo i receive the following error message; Please Load Library SAMgr.Lib. When i hit the Ok message, the treo reboots and brings me back to square 1

This occurred after my IT person attempted to delete numerous blank contacts that had appeared on my phone.

Unfortunately i am not able to hotsync nor do anything else. Suggestions greatly appreciated."

I had the same problem on my Treo 700p and spent an hour with multiple Verizon and Palm techs, none of whom could figure this out despite multiple hard-resets of my poor PDA.

Finally I took matters into my own hands, found "SAMgr.PRC" in my Palm Archive folder on my PC, and re-installed it. Bingo, the error message went away.

We still don't know why the Palm lost that file (and several others) in the first place. But at least I got past the error message and I can make calls again.

Blinders on the Left - why global warming is the new religion

In reading this OpinionJournal piece on the evidence against catastrophic man-made global warming, I became more thoroughly convinced that the political Left in the US - and perhaps most humans - operate on a mental model of

1. figure out what conclusion makes you feel good,
2. select data that supports your conclusion, and
3. ignore or marginalize people and data that contradict your conclusion.

How else do we get such astonishingly named initiatives as "fact based decision making" - unless that's the exception, which apparently it is.

Consider this article that proves beyond reasonable doubt that the shrinking of Mt. Kilimanjaro's snow cap is being caused by an increase in solar radiation - an act of God - not by man-made warming of the air.

Where's the media coverage? No place - the 85% of the national media who voted for Clinton, the herd-mentality media, won't touch anything that contradicts the established and agreed upon conclusion. Only evidence that supports the conclusion will get big media play.

Inner Work Life: Understanding the Subtext of Business Performance

This is an amazing bit of research - not so much for what it says, but for what it implies.

Consider this:

It may stun you, if you are a manager, to learn what power you hold. Your behavior as a manager dramatically shapes your employees’ inner work lives. But the key levers in your hands for driving motivation and performance may not be the ones you’d suspect.

At the same time, so many managers feel powerless to affect their people. So what are these "key levers...for driving motivation and performance"?

It's not mere praise. Rather - and here I'm going beyond the authors of the study - it's a combination of attention and conditional praise.

Consider these employee behaviors and manager-supplied consequences.

Behavior 1 - employee does what he believes is a good job
Behavior 2 - employee does what he believes is a mediocre job
Behavior 3 - employee does what he believes is a poor job

Consequence 1 - manager praises employee behavior
Consequence 2 - manager ignores employee behavior
Consequence 3 - manager criticizes or corrects employee behavior
Consequence 4 - manager pays neutral attention (no praise or criticism)

Here's the resulting grid:

Employee Behaviors, Manager Consequence, and Effect on Employee Motivation

	B1 Good Job	B2 OK Job	B3 Bad Job
C1 Praise	Higher motivation and performance	Lower motivation; feels manipulated	Lower motivation; feels alienated, cynical
C2 Ignore	Lower motivation; Feels neglected	Lower motivation; Feels neglected	Management are idiots; nothing I do matters
C3 Criticize or Correct	Strongly alienated; may become detached, angry	Alienated	Fair enough
C4 Neutral Attention	Okay	Positive	Management are idiots

You begin to get the idea - as a manager you can do the exact same thing, and have wildly different consequences.

In other words, praise alone is not a Golden Ticket.

Fearlessness: The Last Organizational Change Strategy

Fearlessness: The Last Organizational Change Strategy - Great interview of the ubiquitous Margaret Wheatley, who says:

The Gallup Organization did a survey that indicates how people are feeling about their workplace. Last year, more than 70 percent of the American workforce felt disengaged, up from around 33 percent in 2000. That’s what happens if you squeeze fewer people to do more work, give them shorter deadlines, measure their work using meaningless metrics, and, to top it off, treat them with profound levels of disrespect.

This is another person quoting the Gallup survey on employee disengagement.

OpinionJournal - What Happened at Haditha

OpinionJournal - What Happened at Haditha goes over the currently known information about the "massacre" at Haditha, which largely exonerates the US Military and further indicts the American press corps and some anti-war politicians:

Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.

Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made.

This is one of the legacies of the Iraq War, along with the clear incompetence of the Bush Administration: the shamelessness with which the media in particular have selected a subset of facts to fit the day's narrative.

This is why the media are less and less trusted.

OpinionJournal - Al Qaeda's War of Villages

OpinionJournal - Federation: "Al Qaeda's War of Villages Signs that the terrorists are losing in Iraq." I still worry about selective filtering. I want the US to win in Iraq (whatever that means - I have some ideas on that score) so of course I want to believe good news and disbelieve bad news.

Nevertheless, steeling myself against the good news, I still smile when I read something like this. Good to know that things are trending well, and unsurprising that the major media cannot or will not report it.

Let the Sunshine In - New York Times

Let the Sunshine In - New York Times

Oh, the glory of Congressional earmarks. Let's let the NYTimes say it:

One early analysis of House appropriations and federal elections records found that every private beneficiary of Representative John Murtha’s [D-PA] recent earmarks, dished by way of his powerful defense appropriations seat, has requited with campaign cash. That’s 26 separate earmarks in three years costing scores of millions, with $413,250 eventually flowing into the Murtha coffers, according to the newspaper Roll Call and the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

And of course, the Democrats who took over Congress by promising to reform earmarks, didn't.

Q&A on Sharing the Mission

Q: I have employees who have not bought in to the mission here. I care a lot about what we do and I'm excited to come to work each day. A lot of them just punch the clock and do the minimum that's required. How do I get them to buy into a bigger mission than just collecting a paycheck?

A: Fortunately, most people want to work for something more than a paycheck. Your challenge is to tap into that desire.

First, you have to have some sort of mission at work that's worth caring about. It needs to be something noble, something people can be proud of working on and identifying with.

Second, as a leader you need to connect daily activities to that noble goal. When you give praise or make a point of noticing something, say more than "that was good work" - mention also that it was good because it supports that noble goal. (You have to be honest - empty or insincere praise stinks, and is obvious.) It could be "That was a great job - you were very patient with that complaining customer, and kept cool, and were very professional. You set a wonderful example for the newer sales clerks. That's the kind of service that will make us the best shoe store in the world."

Third, you need to have a genuine interest in your people - that creates the relationship between you and them that allows them to care about what you care about. Just as a carpenter needs to deeply understand her tools and materials, you as a leader need to deeply understand the specific individual human beings that make up your organization. And you should find in each one something to like and respect. This is a precondition for getting them to buy in to your vision.

OpinionJournal - Rambo's View

OpinionJournal - Rambo's View: "Dianne Feinstein's $4 billion earmark for Beverly Hills comes at the expense of America's veterans."

An amazing bit of politics. California's senators are actually going to take the opportunity to raise $4 billion away from America's veterans, in order to provide a lifestyle subsidy to the millionaire residents of West LA's mansions.

Because Democrats believe the rich need to be subsidized on the backs of veterans.

How incredibly selfish of the locals, and how un-statesman-like of the politicians.

Dope Smokers - WSJ.com

Dope Smokers - editorial from the Wall Street Journal finds the flaws in the plans to raise tobacco taxes:

"Cigarettes have become every pol's favorite tax target, and last year Trenton raised its cigarette tax to $2.575 per pack -- the highest state levy in the nation. Governor Jon Corzine forecast that the tax increase of 17.5 cents a pack would fetch $30 million in revenue to help balance the state's $1 billion deficit. Not quite. A new analysis by the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey finds that the state collected $23 million less revenue from tobacco taxes in Fiscal 2007 than it did the year before."

Ouch.

Raise the tax rate, and collect LESS in tax revenue. Hmmm.

Q&A on Silos

Q: I'm trying to work with some recruiters in my firm. I need them to help me fill a critical position. The last recruit wasn't a good fit, and we should have eliminated him as a candidate a lot earlier than we did. (We all realize now that this candidate - and how we handled him - was a failure.) I'm concerned the recruiters just don't understand my needs very well. They don't understand what sort of person I need. And I want our process to be different next time. Unfortunately their group and my group are in silos - we don't communicate well and don't understand each other. How can I best proceed?

A: Start first with building rapport. Breaking down the silo is your first job. The other challenges will be a lot easier to take on once you do that.

So, how do you start to reduce or eliminate the silos? One way to start is by increasing your level of trust and communication. (Sometimes humor can be used at this stage, if you're comfortable with that - it can help people to let go of some of their defensiveness.)

You have a silo when members of a group view each other as "us" and the rest of the firm as "them" - as in "they don't understand us" (and we don't understand them or their needs). Frequently, expectations are mis-set, and one of "them" disappoints us, or we disappoint them, and the mistrust grows.

In this case, take advantage of the recent failed recruitment. Call a meeting with your recruiters, and start off with group problem solving: brainstorming what went wrong, all the possible ways to get it right in future, and how to best proceed.

During this brainstorming, it's vital that you mention some things you personally did wrong or could have done better. This works on several levels:

First, when you admit an error, you give others permission to do the same. You're modeling positive behavior.

Second, admitting an error is vulnerable. We trust people who are willing to trust us, and you can demonstrate trust by allowing yourself to become vulnerable.

Third, your problem solving session will only be good if it brings up good issues - and that means you can't hold back. You have to talk about your mistakes.

Once you've finished the problem solving exercise, there should be a higher level of both trust and communication in the room. Use that to move on to the next step - share with them your vision of how the process should look in the future. Tell them what you look for in a recruit, contrasted with the failed recruit if necessary. Give them enough detail that they understand your needs in detail, and tell them why you need it.

One thing you've told me before is that you want to recruit for "soft" skills like the ability to work well with others - you value those higher than the "hard" technical skills. I'm pretty sure the recruiters don't know that, and don't know why you prefer that.

You have to tell them why you prefer candidates with those soft skills. Once they understand why, they can internalize your need and will do a better job finding the recruits who will fit your mold.

Consider the example of the steel workers who visited the bicycle factory. There isn't that much for the steel workers to understand about bicycles. The steel is the same steel it was before the visit. But somehow, seeing the customer using the product makes a big difference in the quality of the work. Workers who go on trips like that come back and do better work. The steel maker who visits the bike maker, comes back and makes better steel.

You need to help your recruiters see the word from their customer's perspective - your perspective.

We Have Met the Enemy, Again

We Have Met the Enemy, Again What the Deutsche Bank building tells us about what's wrong with America.

Henninger is, as usual, spot on:

The hyper-complex requirements and mindset reflected in the public record over 130 Liberty St. mirror the endless debate and litigation we've also layered into efforts to surveil and prosecute terrorists.

Yes, partisanship plays its part, but intellectual hubris and self-regard plays a larger part. We've got a society that's smarter than ever, but maybe too smart for its own good. Whether the problem before us is national security, the environment or protecting baby, we compulsively drive the system now to develop the most exquisite, complex procedures, which allow us to think ourselves both perfectly safe and ethically perfect.

Procedural perfectionism has been raised to religious status.

In other words, it's not the devil that's in the details - God is the details. All hail the details.

One really does get the impression that the Republic could fall and the word be cast back into the Stone Age, and certain (mostly Leftist) procedure freaks would be okay with that, just so long as every detail of the collapse of civilization met their criteria.

This is not to say that procedures are bad - I love good procedures and make my living following them and helping others devise good ones. One of the protections against another Leftist fetish, what Thomas Sowell calls Cosmic Justice, is to be found in the concept of procedural fairness (rather than a perfect fairness of outcomes, which would be unattainable).

The answer is unclear. Perhaps the (perhaps mythical) Icelandic tradition I once heard has it best, that once a year during the winter, the entire law is recited aloud to the people by the eldest and wisest. If a law is forgotten and none correct them, it passes out of the law. Of course, this would require that the law be short enough to read aloud (or memorize and recite) in a single winter, or even a single year. We couldn't even get through the tax code in that time...

Make Up Your Own Mine

Make Up Your Own Mine - An impoverished town strikes gold. George Soros and foreign environmentalists say, leave it in the ground - John Fund writes another excellent article about the angry knee-jerk Left that cares more about their own emotional self-stimulation than about facts or the well being of poor people:

The other side to the controversy is told in a new film that will never be shown on PBS, but is nonetheless rattling the environmental community. 'Mine Your Own Business' is a documentary by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. They conclude that the biggest threat to the people of Rosia Montana 'comes from upper-class Western environmentalism that seeks to keep them poor and unable to clean up the horrific pollution caused by Ceausescu's mining.'

Mr. McAleer, a former Financial Times journalist who has followed the mine battle for seven years, says he 'found that everything the environmentalists were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated or quite simply false.'

Carbon on the Continent - WSJ.com

Carbon on the Continent - WSJ.com Kyle Wingfield writes a caution about blindly following the European lead on Carbon Control and Global Warmism:

Let's assume [...] that most Americans believe global warming is a real danger, that carbon dioxide is public enemy No. 1, and that the only question is what to do about it. Before following Europe's lead in adopting a cap-and-trade system or mandatory renewable energy targets, wouldn't you want to know that those actions will lead to something better than the status quo?

So would I. And the numbers show that if America is the Great Carbon Satan, Europe is certainly no angel.

Since 2000, emissions of CO2 have been growing more rapidly in Europe, with all its capping and yapping, than in the U.S., where there has been minimal government intervention so far. As of 2005, we're talking about a 3.8% rise in the EU-15 versus a 2.5% increase in the U.S., according to statistics from the United Nations.

There is a theme here - that for Europe (as for American Leftists) it's not actions that matter, but words and how they make us feel.

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan - Hatred Begins at Home

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan - Hatred Begins at Home analyzes a new report, "The NYPD looks at what turns young Westerners into jihadis."

She says: "The view we show of life to ourselves, and to whatever lost young men are watching, is not broad and inspiriting. It is limited and dispiriting. It is every man for himself.

"We make it too easy for those who want to hate us to hate us. We make ourselves look bad in our media, which helps future jihadists think that they must, by hating us, be good."

John F. Kennedy Speech "The President and the Press" (April 27, 1961)

Stumbled across this... Miller Center of Public Affairs - John F. Kennedy Speech "The President and the Press" (April 27, 1961)

Kennedy put it so well:

I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future--for reducing this threat or living with it--there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security--a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.

This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President--two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

How stark is the contrast between Kennedy's candid appeal, and his eloquence, and the bumblings (to date) of George W. Bush.

If ever a President had a reason to call for national unity, for self restraint by the press, or for international cooperation against a common enemy, JFK did, and GWB does.

Is it too late for Bush to turn things around, to start to unite a nation that he has to a large extent helped divide?

I can only say that it is never too late to try to do the right thing. And I hope he and his administration will not stop trying to improve. We certainly need it.

Crime consumed a family, and an 8-year-old is lost - The Boston Globe

Crime consumed a family, and an 8-year-old is lost - The Boston Globe is a detailed story about the crime-riddled family of the late Liquarry Jefferson.

The story is full of the double-speak and bizarre assumptions so common among the liberal media:

1. The mayor "partly" blames the NRA for the death of this child, when everything leading up to that death involves things the NRA loudly opposes - criminals possessing guns; underage gang members with guns; young children playing with loaded guns without adult supervision. This bizarre stance by the mayor is accepted as perfectly reasonable.

2. A collection of government agencies spent over $300,000 in a single year intervening with this one family, to apparently no positive effect. Yet the professional social workers all are quoted talking about the successes they claim to have achieved - all of them completely subjective. The mother was "responsive" - the surviving 15 year old brother is "bright". Is that what we spend money on, so that social workers can delude themselves?

Perhaps it's even worse. These same social workers are the ones who arranged for this dysfunctional and crime-ridden family (mom with criminal record, once charged with stabbing the dead boy's father in the abdomen; multiple "fathers" of the mom's kids all criminals; the children committing crimes) to remain together:

Despite Liquarry's death, caregivers involved with the family say they see something worth saving in Gadson and her children. As a result, prior to Liquarry's death, the state Department of Social Services didn't take the children into custody even when they witnessed or took part in violence.

These folks see "something worth saving" so they keep this dysfunctional group together... why? So they can continue to be dysfunctional and continue to demand high amounts of services that these same folks are then paid to deliver?

3. When the dead boy's father (with a friend) breaks into an apartment and beats and stabs the occupant to death, it's described as a "tragedy...involving his relatives". No, the tragedy involved the dead neighbor. It was a horrific crime of violence that involved his dad as the perpetrator. Oh, but to the liberal media the killer suffers too - the killer is even more of a victim than the victim.

4. The social worker Carrie Clausen describes the incredible collection of mutual assaults and other crimes - from the dead boy's father beating his mother in the face with a barbell to the oldest child apparently keeping a loaded gun where his young siblings (ages 13, 8, and 2) could find it - as among "a whole lot of ... awful things that happened to the family."

No, these things did not just happen "to" the family. But that's the sort of criminal-as-victim, projection of powerlessness that one expects from the pimps of the welfare state. No wonder nobody ever expected any member of this family to behave responsibly. The idea of responsible behavior is foreign to them, social workers and reporters alike.

Immigration Reform Without Deportation or Amnesty

Can we - and should we - reform our immigration policies without wholesale amnesty?

Can we - and should we - reform our immigration policies without wholesale deportation?

My answer on all counts is yes.

As I've said before, amnesty is wrong - it rewards lawbreakers for their lawbreaking, and encourages more. It severely devalues citizenship. It also makes fools of the tens of thousands who have obeyed the law and are, right now, still waiting and working through the legal channels to obtain citizenship "through the front door."

I also believe that wholesale deportation is also wrong, on both moral and practical grounds.

The moral case goes something like this:

Implied Permission
America has been divided internally for 20+ years about enforcing our immigration laws. The Feds have laws against being an undocumented alien, but clearly don't care enough to actually enforce it. The other levels of government have actively assisted people entering illegally, including passing laws to forbid local law enforcement (and state and local bureaucrats) from asking about citizenship status, to agencies holding special outreach events to sign up illegal aliens for state services to which they are not legally entitled. Taken as a whole, there's been something of a welcome mat set out - woven unevenly out of federal indifference and local encouragement.

That internal division, this de facto welcome mat, is not without consequences. Morally, it makes the arrival and the residency of illegal aliens something that America has allowed. We've become complicit.

Consider a very rough parallel with property rights and the idea of "adverse possession." Suppose you own a field, but you allow me to put up a fence on it, you allow me to mow it, water it, graze my animals on it, plant it, and so forth - and you allow me to do that for a number of years. Then, in most states I can make a legal claim to ownership of the land. And I can get the title to that land transferred to me, without paying you a dime.

You thus lose your property rights - because you abandoned them. You allowed me to make use of the property as if they were mine and never complained about it. The law allows you to bring a complaint of trespass against me. You can easily get the authorities to stop me. By choosing not to enforce your rights, you abandon your claim to the property.

Why Adverse Possession is a Good Doctrine
The good side of "adverse possession" is that it prevents an injustice that was depressingly common in the United States in the late 1700s and early 1800s (though the concept was well established in England and Wales hundreds of years earlier). During the homesteading period, a settler could live on and improve a piece of land, and by improving it, lay title to it - the state or territory would transfer ownership from the state to the settler. (Native Americans were of course conveniently excluded from this equation.)

The homesteading deal was conditional - you had to actually improve (farm) the land, not just squat on it. A temptation could arise when someone owned a very large amount of land, having purchased it instead of improving it. If a settler came along and started building improvements, thinking it was unclaimed land, the landowner could sit silently while the settler worked for years to improve the land. Then, years later, the owner would "suddenly" discover this person living on his land and evict him - but keep the improvements (buildings, cleared fields, fences, etc.)

The settler who worked for years in hopes of earning the land now discovers he was working for free to improve someone else's land.

The Parallel
The parallel, though inexact, is this - I think that America has allowed illegal immigrants to come here too easily. We've allowed the federal laws to go unenforced while locals have acted in ways that welcome illegal immigration. We've looked the other way or been (effectively) silent as aliens have moved here and built their lives.

For us now to suddenly decide we want to enforce the laws after all, feels a little dishonest to me.

If the undocumented or illegal alien is really so unwelcome, why did we look the other way for over twenty years? It's not as if our citizens haven't benefited from the arrangement. We have. We've hired them, sold them houses and cars and clothing and food, and taken their tax payments and Social Security contributions. We today live, many of us, in houses built with their labor. We've allowed them (indeed, by discontinuing the guest worker program, encouraged them) to bring their families here and establish lives.

Given where we all are and how we got here, I think amnesty is too much to give, but mass deportation is too harsh to inflict.

So Now What?
Here's my proposal.

Allow illegal aliens with (say) 5 years or more of residency to receive a new visa and stay indefinitely as a legal resident alien, with these limits:

• They can never become citizens
• They will be deported if convicted of any crime
• They must demonstrate within two years that they have paid all taxes they owe
• They can never collect taxpayer funded welfare or medical benefits

No More Anchor Babies
An illegal immigrant parent of a US citizen child may, if facing deportation, either leave the child with a legal resident, leave it with an orphanage, or waive the child's citizenship and take the child back to the parent's home country.

Path to Citizenship
If a permanent resident alien wants to apply for US citizenship after all, they should be allowed to do so under these conditions:

• The permanent resident alien must leave the US and establish residency in their home country
• Every other applicant who has already applied for US citizenship must be processed first
• The existing quotas on US citizenship will still apply

OpinionJournal - Extra - 'It Didn't Happen'

Democrats go soft on crimes against humanity. Two top Democrats are unbelievably complacent about the risk of Iraq descending into chaos: "Mr. Obama's blase cynicism about the possibility of genocide in Iraq is of a piece with Mr. Kerry's denial of the humanitarian catastrophe that followed America's departure from Vietnam."

The Left consistently claims that Bush "ignored the experts" but those same experts warn today that a sudden American withdrawal from Iraq would be bad for both Iraq and America. It would harm America's long term interests. Why does the Left want to harm America's long term interests?

OpinionJournal Federation - Emptying the Humidor

Congressmen push a cigar tax, proving they've learned nothing from history. Democrats in Congress love to do several things at once - pretend to solve problems, hike taxes, and make other problems worse: "A Joint Economic Committee study later found that 330 jobs in the jewelry industry and 7,600 jobs in the yacht industry were lost thanks to the luxury tax. Perhaps the greatest irony was that in 1991 the federal government paid out over $7 million more in unemployment benefits to those workers than it collected in luxury tax revenues."

The dirty secret is that for Democrats, slowing the economy and increasing unemployment is good, because it makes people more dependent on the government, increases the need for social services (and thus government employment), and thus bumps up the numbers of people voting Democrat.

OpinionJournal - The Spitzer Method

His nasty tactics get exposed in Albany: One of the reasons why I think there's an intellectual monoculture among most MSM reporters. This was a big story waiting to be broken, but most papers wouldn't touch it and most reporters wouldn't look into it.

Reporters have an obligation not to be used this way:

"The media are doing their best Claude Rains act over the revelation that the office of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer orchestrated a smear campaign against State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. But far from being a unique, out of character event, the episode is a classic example of the Spitzer political method: nasty and exaggerated accusations fed by selective, politically motivated news leaks. The difference is that this time his targets could fight back.

On Monday, the office of Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a 54-page report on Mr. Bruno's use of state helicopters, allegedly for personal political purposes. The investigation had been prompted by the Governor's office after Mr. Spitzer's communications aide and hatchet man, Darren Dopp, saw to it that allegations of impropriety against Mr. Bruno had found their way into the hands of gullible, pliant reporters.

Only now it is Mr. Dopp who is in hot water, having been suspended without pay for his role in ginning up a non-scandal about the Republican Majority Leader. The AG cleared Mr. Bruno of any wrongdoing, but in the process uncovered Mr. Dopp's unseemly little scheme to plant the story and then use that as a pretext to call for the investigation."

Of course all the red flags were there for years, for anyone who wanted to see them.

Delusions of Honesty - Tony Blair's domestic legacy: corruption and the erosion of liberty

OpinionJournal - Federation provides the text of a City Journal article.

Key quote:

At the outset of his tenure, Mr. Blair said that his government would be tough on crime and on the causes of crime. He wanted to appeal--and succeeded in appealing--to two constituencies at once: those who wanted criminals locked up, and those who saw crime as the natural consequence of social injustice, a kind of inchoate protest against the conditions in which they lived.

Mr. Blair's resultant task was to obfuscate, so that the electorate and even experts could not find out, without great difficulty, what was going on. For example, Mr. Blair's government, aware of public unrest about the number of criminals leaving prison only to commit further serious crimes, introduced indeterminate sentencing--open-ended imprisonment--apparently a tough response to repeat offenders. But the reality was different: the sentencing judges still had the discretion to determine such criminals' parole dates, which, in England, are de facto release dates. The sentences that criminals would serve, in other words, would be no longer than before the new law.

Another way to confuse the public was to corrupt official statistics. Last year, to take one example, the government dropped three simple but key measures from the compendious statistics that it gathers about people serving community sentences--that is, various kinds of service and supervision outside prison: their criminal histories prior to sentencing, their reconviction rates, and the number given prison sentences while serving their community sentences. Instead, it introduced an utterly meaningless measure, at least from a public-safety perspective: the proportion of people with community sentences who abide by such conditions as weekly attendance for an hour at a probation office.

The police also received encouragement to keep crime numbers down by not recording crimes. The crime rate has fallen in part because shoplifting has ceased to be a crime, for instance. Police now deal with it the way they do with parking violations: shoplifters get on-the-spot fines worth half, on average, of the value of the goods that they have stolen.

Reminds me of the classic book "How to Lie with Statistics" - apparently required reading in Blair's government.

Oregon Progress Board and OPPMA

Oregon Progress Board Key Performance Measures: State Agencies - jumps you to the OPPMA entry.

Oregon Public Performance Measurement Association (OPPMA)

The mission of OPPMA is to provide performance measurement and management support to practitioners working in the public sector.

Purposes:
a. Facilitate a common understanding of performance measurement best practices
b. Improve performance management skills
c. Foster open discussion of credible performance information with interested citizens
d. Provide collaborative venues for performance management practitioners

I'm proud to have been part of the Steering Commmittee and now on the Executive Committee.

A Gate-Crasher's Change of Heart - washingtonpost.com

A Gate-Crasher's Change of Heart - washingtonpost.com relates the very odd story of a "robbery gone right".

Short version: robber with gun walks in on dinner party, demands money. Diners invite him to join them; he agrees, has a bit of cheese with his wine, then asks for a hug. Yes, a hug. Then a group hug. Then he walks away without any money, having hurt nobody.

Several interpretations come to mind. The first is that Gavin De Becker is right - intuition is very powerful and can be your friend in a time of crisis. I'm betting that there was something in the robber's demeanor that the first diner picked up on, that the words "join us" would be a strategy that would work with this particular armed man at this particular time.

Having read De Becker's "The Gift of Fear" I've become persuaded that any sort of hard-and-fast rules about dealing with dangerous situations - to always do this, to never do that - are probably bad.

I doubt anybody's list of "what to do when confronted by an armed robber" would include "invite him to join you for a glass of wine".

Having said that, I'm sure there's a starry-eyed pacifist out there somewhere who will seize upon this incident as "proof" that all conflict can be resolved peacefully.

Other interpretations - the robber may well have been bipolar or suffering from some other mental disorder, as the shift from robbery to hugging seems abrupt and unnatural to me. At the very least he doesn't seem like a hardened career criminal, who (I imagine) would be more task-centered. Dangerous, yes, but not acting like someone pursuing a goal - he was too easily distracted for that interpretation to seem valid to me.

Also, it reminds me that I need to carry my own gun even in my back yard, and to remember to lock the gate.

Hat tip to National Review.

Iraqi Neighborhood Watch

On the page Reason Magazine - Hit & Run we find this video:



It's unsurprising to me that local people would band together for self protection, so I find this video to be plausible, and in a way uplifting - all the MSM reporting out of Iraq seems both negative and focused on the moves of the people at the top, not on what normal people are doing to make their own corner of the world better.

We're Number One, Alas - WSJ.com

We're Number One, Alas - WSJ.com - an overview of corporate tax rates across Europe and around the world. It points out that the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates, yet gets less revenue than other countries with lower rates. Good explanation of the Laffer Curve.

The Fight for Urban Accountability

The Fight for Urban Accountability - Stephen Goldsmith relates the story of San Diego and it's financial implosion, followed by significant reforms.

What Transformational Leaders Do

What Transformational Leaders Do - a column by Babak Armajani - offers good advice for the aspiring leader, echoing much of what Peter Drucker, Larry Dennis and others have said. Well written.

Bush's Failure with Immigration Reform

I'll come up with some constructive ideas on immigration reform later. For now, consider Bush's failure to craft a passable immigration reform bill, and his fracturing of the GOP base in the process.

We know that Bush doesn't change course easily, if at all. We know he likes to pick a direction and stick with it, ignoring critics and shaking off course corrections. He's done it with the Harriet Miers nomination, with Iraq multiple times, with his failed Social Security reform.

A more successful approach would have been that of a Reagan or Clinton - both were at least aware of public opinion (Clinton perhaps to excess). Both were willing to actively court critics and naysayers, and to find ways to tweak proposals to address their concerns and gather support.

Bush's weaknesses as a leader - his inability to persuade skeptics, his inability to compromise when it would help - have now overwhelmed his strengths.

It's been said that Ronald Reagan, in his first month in office, made more phone calls to Democratic US House Representatives than Jimmy Carter had made in his entire term in office. I'm guessing Bush has followed Carter's lead more than Reagan's.

Who's Really 'Sicko'

Who's Really 'Sicko'

In Canada, dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week. Humans can wait two to three years

Excerpt from the article:

"In Britain, the Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients wait more than a year for surgery. Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves."

A compelling read, and a good counter-weight to the hype around "Sicko". Too bad Moore doesn't care about facts.

Pork Project (OpinionJournal)

Pork Project - An earmark lesson for Washington from the states: shame.

Details the state-level move towards transparency and the political capital to be gained from opposing pork-barrel spending.

Harry Reid hopes to help unions deprive workers of their right to vote

Card Trick - Harry Reid hopes to help unions deprive workers of their right to vote.

Wow - it seems that many organizations eventually come to undermine the goals they originally claimed to serve. In this case, labor seeks to victimize workers instead of empowering them. Ugly.

OpinionJournal - Featured Article

OpinionJournal - Featured Article - a cautionary tale of lawsuit abuse that apparently cannot be stopped short of a change in the law. Frightening.

Housing security in Hillsboro fades with economic growth - OregonLive.com

Housing security in Hillsboro fades with economic growth - OregonLive.com - an amazing story of supply and demand!

Why it's so hard to be open minded

Most of us have noticed how human beings tend to react to "consonant" (agreeing) and "dissonant" (disagreeing) data on a topic where they have strong emotions.

The recent findings of Drew Westen et al. are that humans, when faced with data that contradicts their strongly held positions, essentially "stop thinking" (the reasoning part of the brain shuts down). Humans also, when faced with data that supports their position, "feel good" (the pleasure center of the brain lights up).

This explains the enduring popularity (in some circles) of everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Michael Moore: we humans seem to have an inexhaustible appetite for being told things we already believe.

It makes phrases like "fact centered decision making" less laughable. I think we really do need to take extraordinary steps to remain open minded on topics we care a lot about - from global warming to transit to the War in Iraq.

Look at the bottom half of this article, and also here and here.

The Need for Victims

Some time ago Camille Paglia wrote about the Democrats' (I would say Leftists') singular world view - that every situation (as I recall her saying) had to be boiled down to a three-sided morality play, containing an oppressed victim, an oppressor, and the brave (Leftist) savior who saves the victim.

Every single major Leftist hot button is couched in this form, it seems. And it carries with it a strange set of imperatives.

For one, if your world view requires victims, you're always looking for someone to play that role, whether they really fit the role or not.

If a person or group starts to become strong and self-reliant, that violates the world view - they must be pushed back into their victim role. A black person who is too successful "isn't really black". Women perpetually earn less than men because of "discrimination" not career choices.

The need for a victim is so strong that it overrides common sense and can lead to an infantilizing or dehumanizing of the target - as when Palestinians disastrously vote for Hamas, and Leftists blame it on the Israelis and President Bush.

Sometimes a particular person or group can play both roles at once, as when US soldiers in Iraq are wickedly oppressing the victimized Iraqi people, but become victims as soon as they return home and lapse into PTSD-driven alcoholism.

Why else is it that Leftists only love US soldiers when they are the drug addled, dysfunctional Vietnam veteran of so many Hollywood stories? A brave soldier who serves well - is strong and might be a threat. Such a soldier can only serve as an oppressor, or perhaps a hero (if part of a Leftist armed group).

Any US soldier - one who is strong, competent, and not furthering a Leftist cause - is a threat to the Leftist cartoon universe. So is any person or group in a victim role who starts to show signs of growing or maturing into a non-victim.

Turbo's Leadership Development Lab

I'm pleased to be working with Larry Dennis and Turbo Leadership Systems. I'm extremely impressed with the quality of the leadership training.

It's hard to describe the training itself, and I get enthusiastic when I try. So instead, here is a video of some students recently graduated from the Leadership Development Lab:



Check out the comment at about 1:41.

It's Not Easy Pleasing Greens

It's Not Easy Pleasing Greens asks the question - are environmentalist against capitalism or against pollution?

Me, I think they're against capitalism, and their posture against pollution is just a convenient excuse. But I'm happy to be proved wrong.

Failure in Iraq as Political Chemotherapy

I've struggled to understand why so many otherwise sane Democrats are so eager for America to lose in Iraq, despite the obvious dangers that would increase for all Americans if we did.

I think I figured it out. It's like chemotherapy.

In chemotherapy, you purposefully take into your body something poisonous. You do this because the poison, while harmful to your body's normal cells, are much more harmful to cancer cells. You get sick, but the cancer dies. The sickness is the price you pay for (you hope) winning a battle to the death against cancer.

For Democrats, losing in Iraq is certainly bad for America, but it's much more bad for Republicans than Democrats. So they are purposefully seeking to harm America in order to win their domestic political struggle against Republicans.

Here's a test of whether this makes sense: are there any Democrats who hate George Bush more than they hate Osama Bin Laden? Are there any who would prize a victory over Republicans more than they would an American victory over Al Qaeda? If so, then the chemotherapy strategy may be a valid model for what they are doing.

What side is the Mainstream Media On?

In World War II, American journalists were allowed to cover the war. They could even ride along in American bombers to watch those brave crews in action.

But there were no passenger berths in a B-17, so a journalist who wanted to fly along had to first qualify as a door gunner and fly as a fighting member of the crew, wearing an American uniform, shooting at German fighters.

I think those journalists knew which side they were on. I think they knew which side they wanted to win.

Here's a test. Which side is THIS modern journalist on? This modern journalist is covering a struggle between A and B. He selectively reports:

• The recruiting successes of A, and the recruiting failures of B
• The military successes of A, and the military setbacks of B
• The reasons why A is justified in fighting, and the reasons why B is morally wrong to be fighting
• Glosses over the civilian casualties inflicted by A, even when deliberate, and focuses on the civilian casualties inflicted by B, even when accidental
• Attributes the actions of A to prior actions by B

I think you would be justified in saying that this modern journalist was on side A.

What I Saw in Iraq, by Joe Lieberman

What I Saw in Iraq
Iran remains a problem, but Anbar has joined the fight against terror.
BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN

Article by the leading strong-defense, pro-American, anti-terrorist Democrat (okay, former Dem) on his first hand experiences in Iraq.

Vote now: Which Tom do you prefer?

Vote once on which Tom you prefer, using the only truly fair voting site on the Internet. You'll have to register. Results will only be reported when voting has closed.

Tom clean-shaven

Tom clean-shaven
Originally uploaded by tbcox23

And lo, here I am mere minutes later. Which do you prefer? Feel free to vote on this over at CrowdRules.

Tom with the beard

Tom with the beard
Originally uploaded by tbcox23

This is me with the beard (okay, the goatee).

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Inside Castro's Prisons | TIME

Inside Castro's Prisons | TIME - looks like Castro has a higher percentage of his population in prison than the wicked Americans do. Will the Left notice?

Give Us DDT - WSJ.com

Give Us DDT - WSJ.com "Give us DDT" is another overdue indictment of overzealous Green-ism.

Management bibles are not gospel - Yahoo! News

Management bibles are not gospel - Yahoo! News - voices skepticism about such business books as "Good to Great" and "In Search of Excellence." Good, cautious advice for the wise manager.

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation: Honor the Victims of Communism and Those Who Love Liberty

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation: Honor the Victims of Communism and Those Who Love Liberty - looks like a good source of information on the evils of Communism. Never forget.

Korean Shipbuilders Take Novel Construction Tack - WSJ.com

Korean Shipbuilders Take Novel Construction Tack - WSJ.com - great story of innovation - subscription required.

The Little Engine That Could - WSJ.com

The Little Engine That Could - WSJ.com - subscription required - an article touting the supposed economic benefits of TODs, Transit Oriented Developments. I'm marking it for now but hope to come back and critique it closely.

Extremes don't help debate

Bless the Tribune for picking up this slightly revised version (Extremes don't help debate) of an earlier column written for the Forest Grove News Times, a part of the same media family.

I have to thank John Schrag, the F-G News Times' publisher, for encouraging me to write.

Victory for Harrington for Metro

A belated recap of the election:

You can't say she didn't earn her victory - the final official vote count was 24,756 (44%) for Cox and 31,328 (56%) for Harrington. The under-vote - people who turned in ballots but chose not to vote for either candidate, totaled 24,506.

My strategy, to try to reach the folks who historically ignore the Metro race, didn't pay off, or didn't pay off enough to make the difference. (If you run the percentages as total votes available instead of votes cast, it comes out as 39% Harrington, 31% Cox, and 30% no opinion.)

There's no question in my mind that Harrington (and her husband, both retired) worked a lot harder than I did on her race - I know she knocked on more doors, and she certainly raised more money.

Interestingly, despite being recruited by the outgoing Councilor Susan McLain and supported by the status quo forces at Metro, Harrington ran a very centrist campaign, even claiming publicly to support a West Side Bypass freeway - the completion of the I-205 beltway around the region - which is anathema to her base.

So at this point it's up to her to show us how centrist she'll be in office, and up to us to give her the chance to live up to those promises. I'll certainly work with her on ways to increase regional mobility.

Apologies to those who have been asking about my blog - I just fell out of the habit of posting, and hope to pick it back up.