Ezra Klein at the Washington Post

Ezra Klein begins his new gig as a Washington Post blogger today. He has published an "Introduction" this morning. Now, if you'll notice the slogan next to his picture, he describes his blog as covering "Economic and Domestic Policy, Lots of It." And at the post he says:

Our topic will be the politics and policy of the economy. But that doesn't limit us to the latest unemployment numbers or the wreckage of a freshly collapsed bank. Those are economic outcomes. We'll be focusing at least as much on economic inputs. The forces that decide what tomorrow's economy will look like.

Okay. There's more (Klein says he'll blog on "Anything else that comes up"), but let's focus on "economic inputs" for a moment, since Klein is often feted at an expert on these things.

One of the historic "forces" shaping the economy is the American political culture. About a month ago Klein wrote a post at the American Prospect arguing against our culture of individualism: "The Argument Over Inequality: The Myth of Individual Exceptionalism May Undermine Society On the Whole." Klein, unfortunately, pitches his analysis to the "going Galt" phenomenon, which provides a strawman set-up for his socialist advocacy:

The argument over inequality is, in general, an argument between two camps: One group -- call them the Galtists -- believes that the top percentile is making so much money because they are immensely skilled and tremendously productive. Bill Gates might have an obscene amount of money, they argue, but he gave the world Microsoft Vista (sorry, bad example). We live in a world in which great achievements ensure great rewards, and so much as possible, we don't want to muck with that feedback structure.

The Galtists tend to end up in long arguments with their opposites: the Rawlsian liberals who believe life is luck, and so too with the bulk of achievement. Impressive as a corporate titan may appear, his success is truly testament to a thousand variables far outside his control. Good genes and attentive parents and a smart peer group and a legacy admission to Yale and perfect timing and much else. We live in a world, in other words, where great luck ensures great rewards, and it is the job of public policy to smooth out the jagged edges of fate.

I wouldn't quibble with this so much had not Klein directed his fire at the level of culture rather than a debate between Randians and leftist economists. But no, Klein questions the entire historical understanding of America as an unforgiving frontier society in which personal strength and boot-strapping perseverence meant the difference between success or starvation.

There's no doubt that governmental institutions affect the success of Americans today. But success is not all publically driven. I had loving parents who stressed education, and who modeled hard work and personal initiative. I had the public schools and universities too, the latter made affordable through financial aid. But my own success was more than public support and a little "luck." Indeed, my family faced hardships so many times in life, without public assistance, I tend to think of the best social institutions as those bolstering the individual ethos of personal responsibility embedded in our culture. Hence, I tend to think that the family-level aspects of my own career belie Klein's repudiation of individualism.

The American political culture of individualism precedes Ayn Rand, of course, which is why Klein's analysis is so flawed. I teach this every semester. Individualism is a core concept in introductory American government. For example, here's Thomas Patterson in his text, The American Democracy:

Individualism is a commitment to personal initiative, self-sufficiency, and material accumulation. It is related to the idea of liberty, which makes the individual the founation of society, and is buttressed by the idea of equality, which holds that everyone should be given a fair chance to succeed. Individualism stems from the belief that people who are free to pursue their own path and not unfairly burdened can attain their fullest potential. Individualism has roots in the country's origins as a wilderness society. The early Americans developed a pride in their "rugged individualism," and from this governance grew with the idea that people ought to try to make it on their own.

You can see why Klein conflates extreme wealth and inequality with the "myth of individual exceptionalism." For Klein, the fact of growing income inquality in society necessarily invalidates the concept of personal initiative and self-sufficiency. Klien, in other words, argues the sytem is rigged, and we need redistributive policies to set level the playing field. As he notes at the American Prospect post:

The story of history ... is often told through the achievements of individuals. And to some degree, there is value in that. Society is a collection of individuals. If there were no rewards for innovation, we might find spontaneous invention giving way to its opposite. But we are far from that world. Instead, we have set up a system that lavishly rewards individuals and impoverishes society.

So keep all of this mind when you read Ezra Klein at the Washington Post.

Klein's a socialist and atheist. He's been known to attack people with outrageous charges of anti-Semitism. He was recently in the news as the ringleader of JournoList.

For what it's worth, I have it on good faith from TigerHawk that Klein's a good guy.

But see James Joyner's earlier take on Klein's move to the Post. See also Memeorandum.

Miracle of Life: The Action-Packed Days of Unborn Babies

The abortion debate is picking up again today. It turns out that John Sides is spreading the same half-truths on public opinion and abortion that I debunked previously (see, "Majority of Americans Identify as 'Pro-Life'").

At issue are the recent polls by Pew and Gallup finding a majority of Americans as pro-life. As I pointed out earlier, the recent data confirm a decade-old decline among those who identify as pro-choice. The findings are bothersome to the lefties, especially "scholarly" Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Lemieux has dismissed the results as "outliers," despite the fact that Gallup has been asking the same question since 1995, and the data clearly indicate a decreasing proportion of Americans supporting abortion over time. Pew's data do so as well as indicated by the questionnaire page.

Also at issue is question wording, which is alleged to be "vague." Sides touches on that angle in particular. After a long review of the data he concludes:

Simply put, the Pew and Gallup findings obscure far more than they reveal ... both Pew and Gallup employ vague questions that do not easily map onto actual policy debates. Once more precise data are employed, it becomes clear that opinion strongly depends on the circumstances under which the abortion would occur.

In fact, however, the surveys are quite specific, as I noted previously.

Perhaps Lemieux and Sides want pollsters to ask, say, "do you support abortion in the case of a promiscuous 17 year-old mother of two?" Or, "do you support abortion in the case of a 19 year-old college student with three previous abortions but who now claims rape to garner more sympathy for her irresponsibility"? Don't laugh. These are by no means outlandish circumstances. Indeed, pro-abortion extremism is on the rise: Recall that Planned Parenthood has refused to report statutory rape during abortion consultations for minors, and the Texas legislature has moved to decriminalize infanticide.

Poll respondents are not dumb, in any case. When Gallup asks, should abortion be legal under any circumstances; legal under certain circumtances; or illegal under all circumstances, respondents have no difficulty thinking through the implications of the questions.

But if the leftists insist that both Pew and Gallup are methodologically flawed, that's their play. I mean, sure, it's true that a bare majority of 53 percent supports Roe v. Wade in the Gallup poll. Yet, that's hardly robust given the fact that Americans are considered less supportive of the pro-choice position since Barack Obama assumed the presidency. Leftists, frankly, are simply in denial about the public's growing skepticism of the abortion-on-demand agenda.

In a related note, the New York Times reports that President Obama called for dialogue on abortion in his commencement address at Notre Dame. And the Washington Post has the text of Obama's speech.

I'll simply close with a reminder on the bottom line on abortion: It kills. Leftists continue to spin slanderous tales about how conservatives are determined to suppress the rights of women. But what they rarely discuss are questions of sanctity of life - and that's because it's an argument they just can't win.

I just read an astonishing essay at Psychology Today on the science of fetal development in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

The title of the article is indicative: "A Fateful First Act: The Action-Packed Days a Baby Spends in Utero Influence Her Emotional and Physical Makeup for Years to Come."

The essay recounts the science showing that even within the first 40 days of pregnancy, the development of a fetus is powerfully influenced by environmental factors like environmental noise and the mother's oxygen levels. Difficulties in a fetus' brain development could later have consequences for cognitive impairment and susceptibility to disease. What is most interesting about the story is how scientists conceive of a fetus not just as a living organism, but as a developing person; and thus such a consensus makes even more grisly the arguments suggesting that fetuses are "brain dead" or other such nihilism we hear routinely among abortion-rights absolutists (for example, right here).

Note this passage from the Psychology Today piece:

Until recently, doctors believed that the journey from fertilized egg to baby followed unwavering genetic instructions. But a flood of new studies reveals that fetal development is a complicated duet between the baby's genes and the messages it receives from its mother. Based on those signals, the fetus chooses one path over another, often resulting in long-term changes—to the structure of its kidneys, say, or how sensitive its brain will be to the chemical dopamine, which plays a role in mood, motivation, and reward.

This new science of fetal programming, which investigates how in utero influences cause physiological changes that can linger into later life, is producing clues to mysterious disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as well as evidence of the very early effects of stress and toxins. Scientists still don't know all the hows and whys of these fetal cues, but the when is very clear: earlier than we ever thought.

A Delicate Project

Our first nine months resonate for the next 70 or 80 years because the fetal enterprise is so enormously ambitious. In just 270 days, a single cell becomes trillions of diverse and specialized cells—that's more cells than there are galaxies in the universe. As in any construction project, events unfold in a highly coordinated sequence. Each cell not only has its own job to do, it spurs other cells to action—sending out chemical signals that tell its neighbors to divide like crazy or to self-destruct. So when something goes wrong it can set off a domino effect. Cells might not travel to their intended destination, or they might stop multiplying too soon, or, in the case of brain cells, they might fail to establish the right interconnections.

"We pass more biological milestones before we're born than at any other time in our lives," says Peter Nathanielsz, director of the Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "If we do not pass them correctly, there is a price to pay."

Well, we can't pass those biological milestones if the little lives of these human miracles are destroyed. And thus the obliteration of the moral soul is the ultimate "price to pay" among pro-choice extremists.

From conception to term, abortion is murder. Our goodness as a society rests on how we protect the unborn.

Obama Won't Rule Out Military Move to Secure Pakistani Nukes

I'm trying to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt on his Afghan policy (see, "Obama's Neoconservative Pragmatism"). It's hard, considering his lame national security appointments, such as Rosa Brooks as a top Defense Department advisor. But it's becoming increasingly clear that realpolitik has imposed caution on this president, and you get a feel for it in Jon Meacham's interview with the president at Newsweek.

Obama offers the obligatory handwringing on the decision to authorize a surge of troops in Afghanistan, but in an especially crucial admission, Obama confirms that he will not rule out the use of force to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal in the event of political instablility in that country:

Moving to Pakistan, would you be willing to keep the option alive to have American troops secure those nuclear weapons if the country gets less stable?

I don't want to engage in hypotheticals around Pakistan, other than to say we have confidence that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is safe; that the Pakistani military is equipped to prevent extremists from taking over those arsenals. As commander in chief, I have to consider all options, but I think that Pakistan's sovereignty has to be respected. We are trying to strengthen them as a partner, and one of the encouraging things is, over the last several weeks we've seen a decided shift in the Pakistan Army's recognition that the threat from extremism is a much more immediate and serious one than the threat from India that they've traditionally focused on.

Read the entire interview at the link, via Memeorandum.

Not One Red Cent for NRSC

I wanted to give readers the heads up on Robert Stacy McCain's new blog, "Not One Red Cent."

Stacy's launching a boycott of the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC). Last week Senator John Cornyn, chair of the NRSC, endorsed Florida Governor Charlie Crist for the GOP primary in the Sunshine State. The problem is that, as moderate Reihan Salam confessed, "Crist is not a conservative." And as I noted earlier, the Florida primary is emerging as a key test for the future of the GOP."

Here's Stacy's sidebar anouncement at Not One Red Cent:

On May 12, 2009, The National Republican Senatorial Committee betrayed its mission, betrayed Republican voters, and betrayed the Reagan legacy.

The NRSC sided with an establishment candidate, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, in a Senate primary against young conservative leader, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Republicans across the country were outraged by this action, which is only the latest betrayal of grassroots conservatives by the out-of-touch GOP elite in Washington.

The word went forth among conservative activists: Do not give money to the NRSC. The current chairman, Sen. John Cornyn, must resign. His replacement must pledge to keep the committee neutral in contested primaries. Let Republican voters -- not party elites -- choose Republican candidates.

This is where the conservative grassroots rebellion begins. When the NRSC asks you for money, tell 'em:

NOT ONE RED CENT!

See also, John Brodigan, "Marco Rubio and My Jihad Against the NSRC."

Obama on Detention and Interrogation

Be sure to read Karen Greenberg's, "Detention Nation." This is outstanding essay on the continuity on detentions and interrogations from the administrations of President George W. Bush to Barack Obama. Greenberg details what most people would find as grisly treatment of captured enemy combatants. What's interesting is how Barack Obama, for all his "moral" bluster," is perfectly fine with his predecessor's policies:

IT CANNOT be denied that, on some crucial points, the Obama administration stands where its predecessor did. There is no language to define the detainees, no established court procedure by which to try them, no signs of plans to proceed with trials in Article III courts—i.e., the federal-court system. The overt signs that this new population of detainees will be treated any differently from the detainees that came before them are yet to come, though there is the assumption that this Justice Department intends to act within the law. Importantly, however, there is no real sense that the rationale for detention (which purposefully keeps prisoners outside of the court system) will come under reconsideration.

It is no surprise then that former–Bush administration officials continue to predict that the president won’t find it so easy to repudiate and replace the detainee policies of the Bush years. In an interview with the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, former–Attorney General John Ashcroft held that “President Obama’s approach to handling terror suspects would closely mirror his own.” In Ashcroft’s words, “How will he be different? The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-B-A-M-A,’ not ‘B-U-S-H.’” Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy under Bush, voiced a similar sentiment recently when he described President Obama’s allowance of one year for the closing of Guantánamo as “effectively endorsing a large part of what the Bush administration did.” While the intentions of the Obama administration seem to be aeons away from those of its predecessor, the defenders of the Bush team take the delay in visible changes as a validation of their own policies.

Moreover, if you scratch the surface, it becomes clear that there is a great continuity of personnel. With Secretary of Defense Gates as a holdover from the Bush era, it is no wonder that his Pentagon would produce a report defending conditions at Guantánamo. Nor that the presiding judge in one Guantánamo military-commission case would defy President Obama’s edict that the commissions be halted.

This continuity is not just a matter of delay due to the confirmation process. The president seems intent on—or reconciled to—preserving some continuity between the Bush administration and his own. All three special task forces that followed the executive orders of January 22 will be led by government lawyers who served in the Bush administration—Matthew Olsen for closing Guantánamo, Brad Wiegmann (along with a yet-to-be-named DOD representative) for detention policy, and J. Douglas Wilson for interrogation and transfer policies.

We too may see continuity in our treatment of prisoners. The U.S. military—deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan—still faces a military guard culled mostly from reservists whose primary training has been focused on strategic rather than operational missions. “These are infantry troops, artillery men and tank drivers, not guard forces—and only on the eve of deployment has supposedly relevant ‘just-in-time’ training been provided to them,” according to Charles Tucker, a recently retired U.S. National Guard major general. In February, Tucker witnessed the deployment of the army’s 32nd Infantry Brigade—about 3,500 troops from the Wisconsin Army National Guard—to Iraq, all destined not for the sort of strategic-reserve duties they had primarily been trained to perform, but instead called up for more tactically oriented detention operations.

Like it or not, the Bush administration’s war on terror succeeded in moving the conversation—and the policy—about detention to a point from which it cannot be easily or fully pulled back.

Our prisoners in the war on terror still do not have an acceptable legal denomination. And though all indications are that the status the Obama administration gives them will not be one we used prior to 9/11, this is less about change than about acceptance. Even human-rights advocates and international-law experts have suggested that, in fact, the Geneva Conventions may need to be amended to grant some legally recognizable status to transnational nonstate actors engaged in armed conflict with nation-states. As Professor David Golove of the NYU School of Law notes, “The existing Geneva Convention regime did not contemplate this new kind of armed conflict and does not provide adequate agreed-upon standards to guide government in this difficult area.” If Geneva is amended, then the premise that the Bush administration embraced at the beginning—that the laws as we knew them were insufficient for the threat at hand—will come to define the new policy as well.

It is not only international law that is at stake. In the matter of setting a precedent, the applicability of domestic law is at issue as well. No one has yet gone on record with a viable solution regarding what to do with those individuals who seem to pose a danger so formidable and imminent as to preclude their release and who cannot be tried either for lack of evidence or because the evidence cannot be admitted in a court, having been extracted by torture.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Greenberg is the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days. And given the evenhandedness of her analysis, the book looks worthwhile.

Related: Compare Greenberg's treatment to that of the hysterical Frank Rich, "Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush," via Memeorandum.

California: The Broken State

The Economist has the best analysis I've read on California's governing crisis, "California: The Ungovernable State":

ON MAY 19th Californians will go to the polls to vote on six ballot measures that are as important as they are confusing. If these measures fail, America’s biggest state will enter a full-blown financial crisis that will require excruciating cuts in public services. If the measures succeed, the crisis will be only a little less acute. Recent polls suggest that voters are planning to vote most of them down.

The occasion has thus become an ugly summary of all that is wrong with California’s governance, and that list is long. This special election, the sixth in 36 years, came about because the state’s elected politicians once again—for the system virtually assures as much—could not agree on a budget in time and had to cobble together a compromise in February to fill a $42 billion gap between revenue and spending. But that compromise required extending some temporary taxes, shifting spending around and borrowing against future lottery profits. These are among the steps that voters must now approve, thanks to California’s brand of direct democracy, which is unique in extent, complexity and misuse.

A good outcome is no longer possible. California now has the worst bond rating among the 50 states. Income-tax receipts are coming in far below expectations. On May 11th Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor, sent a letter to the legislature warning it that, by his latest estimates, the state will face a budget gap of $15.4 billion if the ballot measures pass, $21.3 billion if they fail. Prisoners will have to be released, firefighters fired, and other services cut or eliminated. One way or the other, on May 20th Californians will have to begin discussing how to fix their broken state.

Spend a few minutes reading the entire article. With the exception of the discussion of Democratic and Republican officeholders as "extremists," this is a much better overview than you'll find in day-to-day reporting at the Los Angeles Times or elsewhere. This chart was also handy:

I had lunch with the president of my college, Eloy Oakley, on Thursday. The meeting was an informal brown-bag luncheon with interested faculty. Perhaps forty professors were there. Eloy spoke for about 20 minutes. Things don't look good for community colleges. Eloy just wants to make it through 2011 without too much pain, i.e., layoffs. After that, economic projections suggest an economic turnaround and perhaps growth in the state's revenue picture.

I'm not torn about this at all. I'll vote against all the ballot measures except 1F, which will freeze legislative salaries. We have a budget "crisis" in California every year. I'm tired of "ballot-box budgeting" because it's so irresponsible, and for all the benefits of direct legislation and citizens' activism, the initative process in California helps to destroy republican government. Actually, the initiatives exacerbate the constitutional dysfunction, especially the 2/3 requirement for both tax increases and budget approval. The Economist suggests that Calfornia needs a consitutional convention to deal with these structual issues. I'm all for it. The essay makes clear the potential for interest groups and hyper-partisans to hijack a convention. The idea is thus to require only budget issues to be addressed (keeping hot-button social issues away from the body).

Whatever happens, the article made me a little upset to think that the state that literally blazed the trail to progressive government in the United States, roughly 100 years ago, now has the most ungovernable political system in the union.

More later ...

Image Credits: The Economist.

I Bring You Everything That Floats Into Your Mind...

I spent the day chauffeuring my kids to their activities. This, of course, includes listening to my oldest son's radio station. So, while some youngsters might like Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me," I think I'll hold off one that one for now. (Although Pitbull's hotties might qualify for some "Rule 5" action!).

Instead, please enjoy one of Sheryl Crow's all-time best recordings, "Anything But Down" (the song begins shortly, after the advertisement):

The song appeared on Crow's 1998 CD, The Globe Sessions.

I remember when I bought the disc. It was a Saturday. I was with my oldest - and at that time only - son. I couldn't remember the name of the song, and I remembered hearing "Anything But Down" only vaguely. But I knew I really liked it. So, I popped in the disc in the changer, and started going down the tunes. My son kept shaking his head no until the it started (the song's #7 on the CD). He doesn't remember, but it's one of those "daddy" moments I'll never forget.

(Side Tech Note: The lyrics to The Globe Sessions were included on video at the CD, and thus were available when played on a PC. This was 11 years ago, and pretty cool at the time ...)

Sheryl Crow has a few other excellent songs ("The First Cut is the Deepest"), but some of her stuff became way too commercial ("Soak Up the Sun"). On balance, though, Crow would be on the top of my list to get a backstage pass to one of her concerts.

More later ...

Hateful Intolerance at LGM? Shocked, Shocked!

You've just got to love the nihilist lefties sometimes!

It turns out that Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money (a.k.a., Lesbians, Gays, and Marriage) is shocked - shocked! - to find hated-filled intolerance in his comments section.

Farley, apparently, just returned from Seattle. While gone he had Professor Charli Carpenter write a guest essay. Professor Carpenter's an expert on gender and humanitarian intervention in international politics. She also a co-blogger at Duck of Minerva.

Well, she took a hit from Farley's regular commentocracy at her guest essay, "Careless Warfare or Lawfare? A Pointless Debate." Farley then wrote a chivalrous post to defend her. He writes:

I'm a bit befuddled by the apparent influx of an army of trolls in my absence ... I was extremely disappointed by this comment thread, and in particular that one of my favorite regular commenters saw fit to mount his high horse and dismiss Charli as "a technician of empire" for making a set of entirely reasonable claims about airstrikes in Afghanistan ... Regular commenters incur some responsibility for civility, but more importantly they have a responsibility to behave as if the bloggers and the other regular commenters are acting in good faith. This means that you can't simply denounce a blogger as "a technician of empire," and thus unworthy of engagement, after a single post. At LGM we ban people because of arbitrary drunken whim; no one is safe. That said, consistenly treating the bloggers and other commenters as idiots who act in bad faith (and to be sure, I don't think that the commenter in question has established such a pattern of behavior; far from it) is, in the fullness of time, likely to get you banned.

Oh poor Robbie! The faux outrage is exquisite! And boy, how about that determination and resolve: "No one is safe!" My God, what would life be like without posting privileges at LGM! A poor soul's life would be ruined to meet such a fate!

"Be not so long to speak. I long to die"!

Seriously, that's offensive? Suggesting that Professor Carpenter is "a technician of empire" raises old Robbie's hackles? Actually, that's nothing compared to the regular bile the spills off that page.

No doubt too that Professor Carpenter's a big girl and she likely can handle the abuse, or she wouldn't be blogging. No, what's funny is that if you cruise through some of the other comments at the post you'll feel as though you were at an organizing meeting for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party.

Check it out:

Somehow we need to reestablish the principle that the only time using military force abroad is justified is in response to an immediate, direct threat to your own country -- which in the case of the United States means pretty much never. The alternative, which we've got now, is simply imperialism.

Ahh, let me think ... "an immediate, direct threat" to our country is "pretty much never"?

Never say never, as they say:

And how about this one:

Invading Afghanistan was a monumentally stupid idea. Remaining there remains stupid.

Yep, invading Afghanistan was such a "monumentally stupid idea" that 98 U.S. Senators and 420 U.S. Representatives authorized the President of the United States "to use all 'necessary and appropriate force' against those whom he determined 'planned, authorized, committed or aided' the September 11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups."

But hey, we want Charli Carpenter to feel welcomed!

Wouldn't want to lose the one professor at LGM who actually has a shred of scholarly credibility.

Remember, Robert Farley is the professor who bagged $1000 to write a book review while simultaneously twiddling his Johnson and sipping a few whiskey sours!

How Alan Mulally is Saving Ford Motor Company

I think readers will enjoy Fortune's new cover story on Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford Motor Corporation: "Fixing Up Ford." I enjoyed the piece as a premier case study in corporate leadership; but also as one of personal success for Mulally, who at 63, sounds like a man possessing the vigor of someone half his age.

CEO Alan Mulally challenged his designers to build a cool Taurus and this is what he got. Combining "Bold American" and European "kinetic" styling, it's more of a personal luxury sedan than the workaday four-door it replaces. That will mean lower sales volumes but also higher profit per unit.

Mulally moved to Ford in 2006. He had worked at Boeing since 1969. He had been chief engineer for development of the 777, and was later Vice President of Engineering for commercial aircraft. Mulally had no sales experience, and he wasn't a "Detroit car man," much less a car man at all. He sold his Lexus after moving to Dearborn. What's most impressive is Mulally's "results oriented" leadership style. His management is crisp and authoritative, although he defers to the firm's design experts on the minutiae of the product lines. But on the big questions of the company's past mistakes and where it's headed, Mulalley made key decisions that placed Ford in good stead. When Mulally testified before Congress in December 2008, along with GM's Rick Wagoner and Chrysler's Robert Nardelli, he annouced that Ford would be able to survive the recession without a bailout.

For some flavor, here's the paragraph discussing Mulally's decision to revive the Ford Taurus:

The story of how Mulally revived Ford's best-known sedan is a quintessential demonstration of the Mulally method - analyzing a situation using accepted facts and then winning over support through persistence. Here's the story, told by Mulally:

"I arrive here, and the first day I say, 'Let's go look at the product lineup.' And they lay it out, and I said, 'Where's the Taurus?' They said, 'Well, we killed it.' I said, 'What do you mean, you killed it?' 'Well, we made a couple that looked like a football. They didn't sell very well, so we stopped it.' 'You stopped the Taurus?' I said. 'How many billions of dollars does it cost to build brand loyalty around a name?' 'Well, we thought it was so damaged that we named it the Five Hundred.' I said, 'Well, you've got until tomorrow to find a vehicle to put the Taurus name on because that's why I'm here. Then you have two years to make the coolest vehicle that you can possibly make.'?" The 2010 Taurus is arriving on the market this spring, and while it is not as startling as the original 1986 Taurus, it is still pretty cool.

And I like this section of his preparation and leadership style:

Arriving at Ford, Mulally boned up on the company like a student cramming for an exam, interviewing dozens of employees, analysts, and consultants, and filling those five binders with his typed notes. The research allowed him to develop a point of view about the auto business that now frames all his decisions. Its pillars draw heavily from his experience at Boeing: Focus on the Ford brand ("nobody buys a house of brands"); compete in every market segment with carefully defined products (small, medium, and large; cars, utilities, and trucks); market fewer nameplates (40 worldwide by 2013, down from 97 worldwide in 2006); and become best in class in quality, fuel efficiency, safety, and value.

Are corporate mission statements so 1990s? Not to Mulally. To let everyone know what he had in mind, Mulally created those plastic cards with four goals on one side ("Expected Behaviors") and a revised definition of the company ("One Ford") on the other. To Mulally, it is like sacred text: "This is me. I wrote it. It's what I believe in. You can't make this shit up."

"I am here to save an American and global icon," Mulally declares. He drives performance the way he did at Boeing, with the Business Plan Review, a meeting with his direct reports, held early every Thursday. "I live for Thursday morning at 8 a.m.," he says. First up are Ford's four profit centers: the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Ford Credit. Then come presentations from 12 functional areas (from product development and manufacturing to human resources and government relations).

"When I arrived there were six or seven people reporting to Bill Ford, and the IT person wasn't there, the human resources person wasn't there," says Mulally. "So I moved up and included every functional discipline on my team because everybody in this place had to be involved and had to know everything."

The Thursday meetings are held in what's known as the Thunderbird Room, one floor below Mulally's office, around a circular dark-wood table fitted with three pairs of videoscreens in the center. Eight clocks, one for each Ford time zone, are mounted on the wall. There are seats for 18 executives around the table, with additional ones on the perimeter ("Here's where I sit," says Mulally, indicating a chair: "Pilot's seat").

There are no pre-meetings or briefing books. "They don't bring their big books anymore because I'm not going to grind them with as many questions as I can to humiliate them," Mulally says. "We'll see them next week. We don't take action - I'm going to see you next week." No BlackBerrys are allowed, and no side conversations either - Mulally is insistent about that. "If somebody starts to talk or they don't respect each other, the meeting just stops. They know I've removed vice presidents because they couldn't stop talking because they thought they were so damn important."

Mulally instituted color coding for reports: green for good, yellow for caution, red for problems. Managers coded their operations green at the first couple of meetings to show how well they were doing, but Mulally called them on it. "You guys, you know we lost a few billion dollars last year," he told the group. "Is there anything that's not going well?" After that the process loosened up. Americas boss Mark Fields went first. He admitted that the Ford Edge, due to arrive at dealers, had some technical problems with the rear lift gate and wasn't ready for the start of production. "The whole place was deathly silent," says Mulally. "Then I clapped, and I said, 'Mark, I really appreciate that clear visibility.' And the next week the entire set of charts were all rainbows."

Read the whole thing here.

Mulally's story reminds me of why America is the greatest industrial nation in history, but why we will be the greatest industrial nation for decades, if not centuries, to come.

Photo Credit: "Seven Cars for Ford's Future."

Full Metal Saturday: Jessica Simpson

This month's cover story at Vanity Fair features the lovely Jessica Simpson, "The Jessica Question." I've always had a crush on Jessica. And since Robert Stacy McCain stood up for her amid the singer's weight-gain episode, Jessica's story is perfect material for this weekend's "Rule 5" extravaganza!

This is the magazine's cover photo, but see also the slideshow of beautiful Jessica here, "Don’t Mess with Jessica."

And note something interesting from the article. It turns out that Jessica's natural endowment was a hindrance on her singing the church gospel circuit:

As Jessica’s gospel record was being produced, she toured on the Christian-rock circuit. This interlude is interesting mostly for why and how it ended, which, according to Joe Simpson, was because of those determining factors—her breasts—that made her too sexy for the circuit, causing the male parishioners to lust, distracting them from the divine. It’s part of the story the family (including Jessica) tells about Jessica. Too sexy for church, thus forced from the world of Hallelujah to the world of Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

Ooh, the Christian circuit's loss is our gain! And who said Christian men don't love them some breasts?!!

Anyway, let's check around for a couple of other "Rule 5" entries:

* Is the First Lady breast blogging material? No? Think again at Private Pigg's post, "Michelle Obama is On the Maxim Hot 100 for 2009 / Rule 5 Blogging?"

* TrogloPundit has a Carrie Prejean birthday post.

* I'm a little late on this Monique Stuart Katy Perry entry, but check it out: "Rule Five Sunday: More KP Action."

* Stogie at Saber Point's been doing some Atlas Shrugs blogging. See, "Pamela Geller on Fox News - and Looking Hot!"

* And did readers know that the beautiful Kim Preistap of Wizbang is also a hot mommy blogger? Yep. Check out Kim at Up North Mommy!

* More lovlies can be found by way of Suzanna Logan, who introduces us to her friend and newby blogger, Becky Brindle!

* Speaking of lovelies! Amy Proctor's been doing some hot pro-life blogging, so head on over there and give her a hearty hello!

* Also, my wonderful friend Lynn Mithchell is doing so hot pro-life blogging well, especially on the Notre Dame Obama boycott this weekend.

* And my friend Joy, a.k.a. Little Miss Attila, says the weather is warm in Phoenix for the NRA convention.

* Now, for some general, all-around great conservative blogging, check out the "Two Dans": Dan Collins and Dan Riehl.

* Also, Jim Treacher says always remember, "Nancy Pelosi is the leader of the Democratic Party."

* Don't miss my ace commenter Chris Wysocki as well! He's working on the "31 days to Build a Better Blog Challenge"!

* Also, Jordan at Generation Patriot is blogging up a storm!

Finally, I'll conclude this edition of Full Metal Saturday with a referral to Carol at No Sheeples Here! Nobody does Rule 5 blogging better! So check it out, "Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around Saturday For May 16, 2009."

Oh, wait! No blogger worth his salt would forget the obligatory link to Glenn Reynolds!

Also, I'll be in and out all day, chauffeuring my boys to all of their Saturday activities (math tutoring, art class, and a birthday party!). But please e-mail me with your Rule 5 posts and I'll add them here in some updates!

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UPDATE: I just got an e-mail from Mike at The Classic Liberal. Check out his Rule 5 entry, "Emilie de Ravin Presents Rule 5 Saturday!"

Keep the e-mails coming!

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UPDATE II: Pat in Shreveport's got her weekend post up, "Rule 5 Sunday Linkage."

Sigh ... Excoriating Traditional Catholics as Medieval Fundamentalists

If you read enough hard-left blogs, you'll find an increasingly shrill tone of discourse. The goal - now that the left has power - is to smear conservatives as essentially barbarians. Oh sure, both sides do it, but if a conservative is pro-life and favors personal responsibility over governmental handouts and big-government largesse, they'll be tarred as a "reactionary," "racist," and socially apostate.

No wonder the political debate in America is mostly crude and vitriolic, and no wonder that conservatives continue to dig in their heels against the morally relativist tsunami of dread.

I mention all of this after reading James Carroll's essay at the Nation, "Inside the Obama-Notre Dame Debate." I'm not Catholic, but I espouse many Catholic values. So, I take offense at the Carroll's rank slurs against people of tradition, especially the notion that conservatives just can't think, that they're blinded by "irrationalism":

President Obama goes to Notre Dame University this Sunday to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree, the ninth US president to be so honored. The event has stirred up a hornet's nest of conservative Catholics, with more than forty bishops objecting, and hundreds of thousands of Catholics signing petitions in protest. In the words of South Bend's Bishop John M. D'Arcy, the complaint boils down to President Obama's "long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred." Notre Dame, the bishop charged, has chosen "prestige over truth."

Not even most Catholics agree with such criticism. A recent Pew poll, for instance, shows that 50 percent of Catholics support Notre Dame's decision to honor Obama; little more than one-quarter oppose. It is, after all, possible to acknowledge the subtle complexities of "life" questions -- When actually does human life begin? How is stem cell research to be ethically carried out? -- and even to suggest that they are more complex than most Catholic bishops think, without thereby "refusing to hold human life as sacred."

For many outside the ranks of conservative religious belief, this dispute may seem arcane indeed. Since it's more than likely that the anti-Obama complainers were once John McCain supporters, many observers see the Notre Dame flap as little more than mischief by Republicans who still deplore the Democratic victory in November. Given the ways in which the dispute can be reduced to the merely parochial, why should Americans care?

Medievalism in Our Future?

In fact, the crucial question that underlies the flap at Notre Dame has enormous importance for the unfolding twenty-first century: Will Roman Catholicism, with its global reach, including more than a billion people crossing every boundary of race, class, education, geography and culture, be swept into the rising tide of religious fundamentalism?

Those Catholics who regard a moderate progressive like Barack Obama as the enemy--despite the fact that his already unfolding social and health programs, including support for impoverished women, will do more to reduce the number of abortions in America than the glibly pro-life George W. Bush ever did--have so purged ethical thought of any capacity to draw meaningful distinctions as to reduce religious faith to blind irrationality. They have so embraced a spirit of sectarian intolerance as to undercut the Church's traditional catholicity, adding fuel to the spreading fire of religious contempt for those who depart from rigidly defined orthodoxies. They are resurrecting the lost cause of religion's war against modernity--a war of words that folds neatly into the new century's war of weapons.

If the Catholic reactionaries succeed in dominating their church, a heretofore unfundamentalist tradition, what would follow? The triumph of a strain of contemporary Roman Catholicism that rejects pluralism, feminism, clerical reform, religious self-criticism, historically-minded theology and the scientific method as applied to sacred texts would only exacerbate alarming trends in world Christianity as a whole, and at the worst of times. This may especially be so in the nations of the southern hemisphere where Catholicism sees its future. It's there that proselytizing evangelical belief, Protestant and Catholic both, is spreading rapidly. Between 1985 and 2001, for example, Catholic membership increased in Africa by 87 percent, in Europe by 1 percent.

In their shared determination to restore the medieval European Catholicism into which they were born, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI became inadvertent avatars of the new Catholic fundamentalism, a fact reflected in the character of the bishops they appointed to run the Church, so many of whom now find President Obama to be a threat to virtue. The great question now is whether this defensive, pre-Enlightenment view of the faith will maintain a permanent grip on the Catholic imagination. John Paul II and Benedict XVI may be self-described apostles of peace, yet if this narrow aspect of their legacy takes hold, they will have helped to undermine global peace, not through political intention but deeply felt religious conviction.

You can read the whole thing here.

Catholic Church doctrine is not my specialty, but I often look to the Vatican for moral guidance. I was moved upon the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005 to reflect on the powerful role of the Roman Church in defending freedom from Soviet totalitarianism; and on John Paul's leadership in returning the Church to its preeminent role in international politics as a beacon of goodness and light in the world.

I expect nothing less from Pope Benedict XVI.

So I see Carroll's screed as simply representative of the anti-life nihilistic mindset found among so many on today's radical left. I'd rather hang out with people like Michele Sagala and Andrew Chronister any day.

And There Was Nothing Left to Bring Me Back...

I listen to L.A.'s Jack FM 93.1 during my drive time (there are no DJs, just recorded programming, plus the slogan, "playing what we want"). The format's a little stale sometimes. Yet I do like the "trainwreck" sequences, where two songs are played back-to-back in a sequence you'd never hear on traditional radio stations (e.g., Haircut 100's "Love Plus One" followed by ZZ Top's, "Tush", etc). In any case, once in while I'll hear The Plimsouls', "Million Miles Away," one of my favorite songs from my early punk days. Check it out:

More later ...

Majority of Americans Identify as "Pro-Life"

I debated "social scientist" Scott Lemieux the other day, after he suggested that public opinion data indicate strong majority support for Roe v. Wade. Lemieux's key piece of evidence? A five year-old blog post with dead links.

Now, while Lemieux's specifically discussing support for Roe v. Wade, the underlying question is public support for abortion, and I called him on it in the comments. He in turn sent me to the abortion page at Polling Report, which frankly, didn't help his case, as I suggested in another comment:

CNN/Opinion Research April 23-26 shows declining suppport for "pro-choice" position, and 49 percent is bare plurality within the margin of error (i.e., statistically insignificant). NBC News/WSJ September 6-8, 2008, just 25 percent should always be legal. Both the Washington Post and Pew show declining support for abortion "in all cases."

Geez, Scott, that's some ace blogging there, buddy! I can see why you cited a 5 year-old blog post with dead links, ROFLMFAO!

This discussion provides an interesting and pertinent background to the new Gallup survey out today on the declining support for abortion, "More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time."

Just 42 percent identify as "pro-choice" at the discussion, which is precisely in line with the declining trends in the "pro-choice" side found at Polling Report. Gallup provides an analysis of the trends:

With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation's policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans -- and, in particular, Republicans -- seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position. However, the retreat is evident among political moderates as well as conservatives.

It is possible that, through his abortion policies, Obama has pushed the public's understanding of what it means to be "pro-choice" slightly to the left, politically. While Democrats may support that, as they generally support everything Obama is doing as president, it may be driving others in the opposite direction.

The partisan implications are clear: Barack Obama is seriously alienating the roughly 20 percent of voters at the political center who the Democrats need to maintain a viable electoral coalition. And always remember: "Republicans did not lose the 2008 election because they were out of step ideologically with average Americans."

And because of this, hardline leftists are already spinning Gallup's results as unrepresentative. Dana Goldstein, at the American Prospect, argues that "these latest number are, quite likely, outliers."

And then, coincidentally, Scott Lemieux follows up at American Prospect as well, "More on Abortion and Public Opinion":

As Dana says, the direction of public opinion has been solidly pro-choice, although marginal regulations on abortion tend (regrettably) to be very popular. So barring a much more sustained trend, it is indeed pretty safe to assume that the latest Pew and Gallup surveys are outliers ....

One should be particularly wary about poll questions, like the Gallup survey, that ask people to choose between abortion being legal in "most" or "a few" circumstances. Leaving aside the vagueness, the obvious problem is that for the most part such a question is irrelevant to legislative enactments ....

Speaking of concrete questions, for some reason polling firms often don't ask about Roe v. Wade. When they do, however, note that there are always substantial majorities in favor of upholding it.

On support for Roe, Lemieux again links to the same generic Polling Report page as if that provides some kind of powerful support for his argument.

The problem, first, for Lemieux is that Gallup's survey questions are in fact not "vague." As readers can see from the graph above, the question simply asks people of they consider themselves to be "pro-choice" or "pro-life." And only 4 in 10 support the "pro-choice" position. Indeed, if you check the survey, the choices for various question-items are clear and unambiguous. The results show steadily declining support for abortion in America. The poll asks, for example, should abortion be legal under any circumstances; legal under certain circumtances; or illegal under all circumstances:

In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.

There's nothing "vague" about this at all.

Indeed, Pew released a poll on abortion just two weeks ago, asking whether abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances or illegal in all or most circumstances. Just 46 percent indicated that abortion should be legal in "all/most" circumstances, and what's especially interesting is the steady trend indicated at the questionnaire page in the declining support for abortion over roughly the last 15 years.

It's clear that support for abortion in the U.S. is on the decline. Actually, the election of Democrat Barack Obama to the White House has accelerated the drop off in support. Lemieux, second, cites no recent data to indicate continuing public support for Roe v. Wade. But given the more generalized results from a variety of recent surveys, it's clear that Roe v. Wade is barely hanging on for dear life (or "dear death," be that as it may).

See also Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money, "Abortion and Public Opinion."

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Side Note: There's a lot of discussion of torture in the news, but for some real tortured pro-death logic, be sure to check the comment thread at Lemieux's post at Lawyers, Guns and Money I cited above. For example, right here:

I think it would better suit the arguments of the pro-choice movement to define fetuses as humans without consciousness. For instance, arguments are frequently made that those in a vegetative state can justifiably be killed (removed from life support) since they have no hope of regaining consciousness or otherwise enjoying life as most of us experience it. In this instance, human life is terminated on pragmatic grounds--pragmatic in terms of the patient's life and in terms of use of resources.

What this leads to in the context of abortion is a removal of the argument over whether a fetus is or is not human and replaces it with a discussion over the merits of allowing every fetus to come to term. Why is this a good thing? Well, first, it moves the debate towards the real problems solved by legalized abortion: overpoplulation, childhood poverty and/or neglect, abandonment, infanticide, botched non-medical abortions, threats to the health of mothers, etc. These problems are not minor and deserve to be the focus of the abortion debate.

And these kind of suggestions are extremely common on the left. The politics of abortion isn't really about "choice." It's about death. It's no suprise, then, that Americans are slowly but surely turning away from such gruesome far left-wing anti-life nihilism.

New York Times, Nation's "Paper of Record," Rejects Frontpage Coverage of Pelosi Scandal

The Hill's lead headline this morning blares "Storm Center Over Pelosi" (frontpage image here). And today's Washington Post features a couple of A1 stories, "Accusations Flying in Interrogation Battle: Pelosi Says CIA Misled Congress on Methods," and "Speaker's Comments Raise Detainee Debate to New Level."

So, how about the nation's "unofficial newspaper of record"? Nope, Nancy Pelosi's allegations of CIA lies and deception don't rate the frontpage:

In fact, the Times clearly hopes this story goes away, and fast. They've buried their coverage deep inside the front section, at page A20, "Pelosi Says She Knew of Waterboarding by 2003." And the editorial page makes no mention of Washington's biggest news at the op-ed page.

The Los Angeles Times is no better, relegating its coverage of Pelosi to page A15.

In contrast, the Wall Street Journal features a major A3 story, "Pelosi and CIA Clash Over Contents of Key Briefing." And today's lead editorial at the Journal hammers the Speaker, "Pelosi's Self-Torture."

While there's some suggestion of "yellow journalism" in the media of late, we might also see the Pelosi scandal as again substantiating the rise of a new partisan press.

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UPDATE: If I didn't know better, I'd think the Weekly Standard was reading American Power! See John McCormack's nearly identical post, "Pelosi Accuses CIA of Lying, the NYT Reports . . . on Page A-18."

Pelosi Engulfed by Her Own Game of Political Retribution

The tortured debate on enhanced interrogations is getting more tortured by the day.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has now elevated the left's power-hungry hypocrisy to the center of partisan politics. Today's lead editorial at the Wall Street Journal perfectly captures the moment and implications of Pelosi's pursuit of political retribution:

Given House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's acknowledged skill at torturing the Bush Administration in recent years, it no doubt afforded her critics some pleasure yesterday to watch her twist in the wind in front of the press over what she knew and when about the CIA's terrorist interrogations. With mockery even from Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, Mrs. Pelosi has turned herself into a spectacle about a subject that she and fellow Democrats had themselves reduced to a spectacle of demagogic accusation and blame, repeatedly threatening to put Bush officials in the dock for "condoning torture ..."

Whatever one's politics may be, there has to be some recognition that Washington -- the U.S. government -- simply can't function if it is endlessly entangled in the exquisitely argued, one might say absurd, blame-games that she and some Democrats are running against former Bush officials, and that now threaten the political standing of the Speaker herself.

Barack Obama won the election and as President he now has a government to run. With that responsibility comes the necessity to make difficult decisions, as those he has made on prisoner photos and military tribunals attest. If he is to succeed, he needs a capital city of responsible partners, not a running circus with the Speaker of the House at the center, blaming everyone else as she flees from any responsibility for what she heard and did.

As I argued yesterday, Speaker Pelosi should step aside. President Obama should encourage her to do so. As John Hinderaker argued yesterday:

I don't suppose anyone imagines that the CIA was foolish enough to lie to Pelosi and others about the use of waterboarding. On the contrary, it seems obvious that everyone in the chain of command was covering himself or herself by disseminating information about the harsh interrogations of three al Qaeda leaders. Pelosi has now opened the lid on a box that she will not be able to close. The CIA has no choice but to defend itself by demonstrating that she, not the Agency, is lying. Possibly Leon Panetta can save her, but at the moment, it is hard to see how this affair can end with Pelosi remaining as Speaker of the House.

The spectacle has taken politics to a new level, even by the standards of today's polarization. It's utterly astounding to see nihilist leftists attacking folks like Charles Krauthammer with childish Photoshops. And incredibly, James Fallows, the premiere writer at the Atlantic, is arguing that former Senator Bob Graham has "shifted the debate" away from Pelosi's lies (main story on Graham, here).

Amazing ...

Speaker Pelosi Should Step Down

I found no embed code, but the ABC News video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's press conference on enhanced interrogations is devastating. Check the MSNBC video below as well. Pelosi claims she was misled by the agency. Indeed, she accuses CIA officials of giving her "inaccurate and incomplete" information on waterboarding and enhanced interrogation methods:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The New York Times has a long rundown of Pelosi's involvement, and the post says the press conference was "heated." See, "Pelosi Acknowledges She Was Told of Waterboarding in 2003":

"I am saying that the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same time the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction," Ms. Pelosi said.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, inteviewed by NBC's Norah O'Donnell, disputes Pelosi's allegations that intelligence officials lied:

No, on that specific point, I totally disagree. You have to have confidence in the CIA. And over the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve been briefed constantly by the CIA and I’d say that they’ve told me the truth, as they see it.

I think Speaker Pelosi has completely lost the confidence of the American people. As Andrea Tantaros indicates:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told multiple and conflicting tall tales regarding her knowledge of what she knew about the Bush administration’s information gathering tactics, when we know she was told about waterboarding in 2002, did nothing, and now has misled the American people about it.

Thus, until a resolution on this matter is reached in Congress and at the White House, I'm calling for Speaker Pelosi to step aside as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Also, if the clamor for investigations continues, President Obama should appoint an independent, bipartisan committee outside of the Congress to investigate the matter. The Democrats cannot be trusted on these matters, and the partisan witchhunt has gone on too long. Attacks on the previous administration have now reached a level of unacceptable distraction to the important business of the nation.

Speaker Pelosi: Step aside!