Category Archives: Essays

The Dogs that are not barking: Thoughts on the Coronavirus

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When the Coronavirus first came on to the public stage, I was in the “so what, the flu is worse” group of people. I think I am still more skeptical then current consensus promulgated by the great and good.

Given all that has happened since then, it would be fair for people to wonder why. After all, it is a well known human phenomenon that people tend to double down on their initial beliefs and have trouble adjusting to new information. But it is also a fact that people had a natural tendency to go along with the herd. It is far better (from an emotional point of view) to be wrong along with everyone else then to be wrong in your own particular way.

So is my current level of skepticism a result of being wedded to my previous views? Or is the fact that the great and good view this more seriously just a reflection of the pressure to join in with the herd of humanity as it bolts in a random direction?

I have to admit that I would have never predicted that a disaster such as the Lombardy region of Italy is dealing with right now would have happened based on my initial understanding of the virus. On the other hand, I never would have believed that countries would have as much success controlling the spread of it as some countries supposedly have (I thought like the flu it would be pretty much unstoppable but not all that deadly). The obvious take away is that I don’t have a crystal ball anymore then anyone else does.

But even after admitting my failures of foresight, I still can’t help feeling that media is giving people a very skewed idea of the risks. They are ignoring or not putting into to context a lot of things that are going on and focusing on the most sensational things out there. This type of focusing on the sensational things is what cause people to way overestimate the dangers of shark attacks and way underestimate the dangers posed by white tailed deer (who kill far more people then sharks).

I think of the things that media is missing as being the “dogs that don’t bark” after that Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze” in which Holmes notes the importance of the dog that people did not hear. The following will be some facts and figures that you might not have been exposed to if all you have been reading is mainstream media accounts.

Dog That Did Not Bark #1: Death Rates

I have seen a lot of media reports throwing around scary high death rates. A 3% rate is a common figure and certainly certain places in Italy and China have seen some pretty high death rates. If these death rates hold true for the world at large, millions and millions of people are going to die. But this focus on the scary places has hidden the fact that in the vast majority of places Covid has not been all that bad. Let us take China as an example…..

The death rate in Wuhan was 5.8%. The death rate in the rest of China is .7%. That is quite the difference. If you break it down further and exclude the entire province that the city of Wuhan is located in, the death rate is .16%. South Korea is also showing a death rate of around .7%.

Let us take Diamond Princess. This cruse ship is the nearest thing we have to a controlled experiment as to what happens when you introduce coronavirus into a trapped population that skews to the elderly side. Total number of people on the ship that came down with the virus was 696 people. Total dead was 7 for a death rate that was just a little over 1%. That is bad, but not anywhere near 3% bad. More to the point, there was 3,711 people on the ship. You would think that all of them were exposed to the virus but less than a third of them even came down with the virus at all. Death rate on the ship as a whole was only .19%.

Now .19% is pretty bad death rate if it would be applied to an entire nation. If America were just like this cruse ship, there would be roughly 60 million people dead. But presumably the cruse ship is a worst case scenario as it represents a vulnerable population trapped in an enclosed space with the virus.So why has the death rate been so much higher in other places that are not floating petri dishes (and it is worth noting that outbreaks of various type on curse ships are fairly common)?

One answer is that everyone on the ship was tested, but not everyone out in the rest of the world has been tested. So many mild cases have been missed in the real world that make the death rate seem higher then it is. Another common answer is that once the medical system gets overwhelmed, the death rate starts going up.

But I suspect that there is more going on then just lack of testing and overwhelmed hospitals. Most countries have done a bad job of testing but few have the problems that Lombardy has. Furthermore, Italian reported death rates were quite high before their health care system started to be overwhelmed. In an American context, 60% of current US deaths from COVID come from one nursing home in Washington state. These deaths did not come about because the US health care system was overwhelmed, but because the virus got into a vulnerable population and ran rampant.

So what is causing some areas to be hot spots and other areas to see little in the way of deaths?

My personal hypothesis is that transmission rates correlate to the severity of infection. In my hypothesis, populations with high percentages of vulnerable people will have a greater transmission rates because more people will have bad infections. This in turn will lead more healthier people to get the virus then would otherwise be the case. My personal hypothesis is that any area with a median age that is less then 40 will also see sub-1% death rates from the virus. I suspect that in most areas with a sub-40 median age, the majority of the people will not even come down with Covid even in the absence of effective controls.

The sub-40 median might seem arbitrary, but what it means is that majority of your population is still under 40 years old. Picking that figure is just a guess, but it does seem that the effects of Covid start to really show up once you go past 40 and really take off once you go past 60. So I suspect that areas that have a population where the majority of people are going to be over 40 years old are going to see more transmission and a greater spread of Covid then areas with more young people who might act as a break in the chain. This logic is dependent on the idea that the severity of the infection drives the rate of transmission. This idea is in no way proven but seems consistent with the available data.

If my hypothesis is in any way correct, the US will see hot spots in localized areas that are pretty bad but the nation as a whole will not see that a death rate from those suffering from Covid that is over 1%. Even though this death rate will be higher then the flu over all I don’t think it will be that bad as I suspect that most of the nation will not even come down with Covid symptoms. I would guess that total number of Covid deaths this year will be less than the US lost from the flu last year in terms of total numbers (I am comparing last year flue deaths to this year Covid deaths because I think Covid will kill a lot of vulnerable people this year before flu gets a chance).

My reason for thinking this is that the US is just under the 40 year median. However, there are parts of the country that are considerable older and those areas may very will be hit hard (New England and some of the rust belt areas are my top pics for US hot spots). Some rural farming areas may be hit hard as well but it remains to be seen how bad transmission rates will be in rural areas as this is something we don’t have a lot of data on yet.

The obvious counter to this hypothesis is Iran. They have quite a young population and seem to be doing quite badly. This could be used to invalidate my hypothesis. However, I am not ready to accept that just yet. I suspect the major reason Iran is having issues is the city of Qom. This is has a large population of Shia scholars whose average age I suspect is over 40. Lots of pilgrims (millions) come to this city so if a hot spot developed in this city it would be a good place to spread the virus.

Furthermore, if you go by the official figures, Iran is not doing all that badly in terms of deaths. Granted, nobody believes the official figures but I think that lack of trust leads people to imagine the worst when that may not be warranted. I personally suspect that the closed caste of elderly Islamic scholars that rule Iran is being hit hard but it remains to be seen how badly Iran as a whole is really doing.

Regardless of whether my hypothesis is correct (and I make no claim to have special insight in this area, it is just my current speculation) you should always remember that news reports are focusing on the worst hit areas and that can give you a skewed perspective on what is normal.

Dog That Did Not Bark #2: Young People Not Showing Symptoms

If you read a lot of media reports, you will come across the fact that young people tend not to die from the virus. Mostly that reporting is accompanied by arguments showing that young people can too get sick from it and they can be carriers even if they are not badly ill themselves. The goal is to make sure young people take virus seriously and don’t spread it around. The problem is that this effort to make sure that young people take this seriously is obscuring one of the biggest mystery’s surrounding this virus. This mystery is the question of why so few children get Covid at all.

For example, if you look at the death rates from China, you will see that children between the ages of 10-19 have a death rate of .2% (this includes Wuhan). This is actually a fairly high death rate and higher then what the flu produces in most adults. But it greatly overstates the risk to young people because it is a calculation of death rate vs the number of children showing symptoms. The problem with this approach is that it seems that very few children (even in hard hit areas) show any symptoms of having the virus at all. And nobody under 10 has been known to die from this virus anywhere in the world.

One of the frustrating things about current reporting is that nobody is talking percentages of various age groups that come down with symptoms at any give hot spot. As we discussed earlier, on the Diamond Princess 2/3 of the people never even came down with symptoms. The constant focus on death rates of people who show symptoms obscures the question of how hard it is to come down with symptoms at all an any given age cohort. All we have to go on are statements like this….

“In general, relatively few cases are seen among children.”

Or this…..

“In fact, through mid-January, zero children in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, had contracted Covid-19. It’s not clear whether that’s because children do not show signs of illness even if infected.”

The question is why is this so? Anyone who has seen a group of kids passing around the cold virus knows that there is nothing special preventing those under 10 years old from coming down with virus. So why does the COVID seem so different?

The answer to this question is likely to make a lot of difference to how COVID turns out. But nobody is really talking about it. Whatever the answer, it likely explains why large numbers of adults don’t seem to show symptoms even after being exposed to the virus.

I personally wonder if it does not have something to do with vitamin D levels as this is known to greatly decrease with age. This study speculates that vitamin D levels had something to with the Spanish Influenza death rates so it not like this idea is not on the radar.

Again, I have no special insight and I don’t really think it a can be boiled down to just vitamin D levels. But I do think it is important to remember that deaths rates of people who come down with Covid are only part of the story. The other part of the story is the question of how many people are susceptible to coming down with Covid even when exposed.

Dog That Did Not Bark #3: Why no large outbreak in Africa?

Nobody in the developed world really cares about Sub-Saharan Africa. Few people know that massive numbers of Chinese workers are scattered all throughout Sub-Saharan Africa working on various projects. Those who do know these things and care about Sub-Saharan Africa would think that Sub-Saharan Africa would be at least as far along as Italy in terms of the virus outbreak. But so far, it seems to be a non-issue in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Is this because Africa has so many other health issues and general poor governance that Covid is going undetected in the noise? Is it because of the lack of a large concentrated vulnerable populations? Luck of the draw?

In general, most tropical countries seem to be doing pretty well so far but that may just because many of them lack exposure to large numbers of Chinese. The reason I focus on Africa is that much of Sub-Saharan Africa has had a lot of exposure to China so that does not seem like it would be the case for them.

However, it could be that hot humid weather reduces transmission rates of the virus. This is certainly true for the flu so one could hope that the same thing is true for Covid. If it is, that is good news for North America and Europe as they head into summer.

Again, Iran is one of the biggest arguments against this hope. But if I am right that Qom is the main cause of Iranian Covid problems, then it should be remembered that Qom is not tropical. Average day time temp for Qom in February is in the low 40s. Average for March is low 50s. On top of that, the Middle East as a whole has been fairly cold this year.

It is to early to answer this question, but the question of how temp effects transmission will make a big difference in terms of how many third world countries will suffer serious effects.

What Difference Does It Make?

It is important to keep in mind that everything has its costs. Past epidemics have shown that taking decisive early action can limit the number of deaths. But “flatting the curve” can also drag out the epidemic and extend the economic pain. The number of lives saved might not be all that much different either way. It is easy to say the people’s lives is more important then money, but for many people on the bottom of the economic ladder, the difference between life and money is not all that clear.

Even seemingly obvious things like shutting down visiting rights to nursing homes can have serious costs. This certainly seems like a sensible thing to do (and I would probably do the same thing if I was a nursing home administrator). But it is likely to raise the death rate of those in the nursing homes even if it succeeds in keeping COVID out. I know people who visit their parents in the nursing homes every day to ensure that they eat. Others just check on them to ensure quality of care is being maintained and to show they care. In the absence of any visits, how many will decided they don’t want to eat from depression or the lack of nursing home staff to effectively follow up? Most likely it will be less then Covid would kill but it certainly not be zero.

We accept hundreds of thousands of deaths from flu every year as just being the price of doing business. What is the magic number that makes it so that we should sharply curtail economic activity so as to prevent deaths to the vulnerable? In the end, when things are not as bad as many fear, will that be seen as proof that we overacted or proof that swift actions saved the day?

My own answer to these questions is that it is good to stress test the system every so often. I think it is good to force people to face the potential problems that come with supply chain disruption. I think it is good for people to face the fact that pandemics can and will occur. So even though I expect that total US Covid deaths this year will be less then total flu deaths last year (comparing last year flu deaths to this year’s Covid deaths because I expect that Covid deaths will cut down on flu deaths this year as Covid eliminates people who would have died from the flu before the flu gets a chance to take them) I still think it is a good idea to treat this seriously.

But I expect that the current hysteria will get so out of hand that the net result will be that in the future people will be even less willing to take things seriously when it might be more important to do so.

Justin Offers A Link

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In a comment on this post, Justin offered the below video as a comment on this link.

I will make the following observations……

1. It is stories like the above that lead to socialism, communism, and other associated ideas having continued support in spite of their bad track record.

2. It is common for people who are good at something to think that they can therefore lead or manage a project that encompasses things that they are good at. But often, leadership skills don’t come with other strong skills. In particular, my own experience would lead me to believe that strongly artistic people are rarely good managers. A lot of Mr. Kern’s bad decisions as laid out in the above video strike me as a classic example of an artistic person let off the leash with no oversight. Computer gaming history is filled with similar stories of developers who were an integral part of strong teams but absolutely failed on their own in such spectacular fashion as to make you wonder if they were ever truly good at anything. In my judgement, the common thread in those tails of self-destruction is giving an artistic person a pot full of money with no controls.

3. It is common for people to exaggerate the evil nature of poor leaders and forgive the evil deeds of good leaders. That is to say the failure of leadership skill is often attributed to moral failings while successful leaders are forgiven moral lapses because they get things done. We all have moral failings and I am sure that Mr. Kern has more then his fair share. But I think a lot of what is laid out above is rooted above all else in lack of managerial talent and not some particularly black heart compared to other people in the same industry.

4. It is common for people to point out someone’s hypocrisy or other moral failings as if they demonstrate that that person does not have good points or sincerely held beliefs. A classic case of this is the attempts to delegitimize everything Winston Churchill did because he was a supporter of imperialism. In this case, nothing in the above video really has anything to do with Mark Kern’s points about China or the current management of Blizzard except to warn against turning Mr. Kern into some kind of hero.That is always a good warning to have, but no one should go in the opposite direction and think it demonstrates more then it does.

5. A broader hypocrisy of the west in general is the focus of things seen on TV instead of any kind of tangible yardsticks. For example, what has been done over the years in Tibet have been and continue to be far worse then anything currently going on in Hong Kong. And yet, Tibet has not developed into nearly as big of an issue as Hong Kong is becoming.

6. That said, I think it is truly alarming how determined China is to use its economic clout to regulate what is being said in other countries. It is one thing to control your own country’s internet. It is another thing to try to control what everyone else is saying all over the world. And that does seem to be what China is seeking to do. Imagine the outrage if the American government worked as hard as China has been working to get sport’s people fired for being critical of US policy.

Did an Inuit (Eskimo) woman kill a polar bear with a 22?

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I recently told some people that smallest cartridge documented to have been used to killed a polar bear was a 22 but now I can’t find any proof of that fact. I had a clear memory of reading an article in a print magazine that documented such a thing, but I will be danged if I can find it now. Apparently I am not the only person with this memory as I did find this quote from a forum….

I read an article where an Inuit woman killed one of the largest polar bears ever killed with a .22 rifle. Hid behind a door in the kitchen, when the bear poked its head in the kitchen, she put the muzzle of the rifle in it’s ear and shot; dropped like a rock. They reported it was very difficult getting the bear out of the house.

This report was greeted with considerable skepticism on the forum and I don’t blame them for the skepticism in the absence of proof. All I can say is that I remember reading a similar article a long time ago. But I will be danged if I can find that article now so either I am totally mis-remembering or the all encompassing internet failed to preserve any kind of documentation. Best I can come up with something semi-official looking is the off hand comment in this article that references what my dubious memory recalls saying….

Marauding bears have been killed by .22 rimfire pocket pistols; not very often, but it has been done by an Eskimo woman I happen to know about.

But the article offers no documentation to support that claim so it might be a commonly repeated tall tale. All I can offer in defense of my memory and the undocumented hearsay found on the internet is that it is well documented that a 22 in the hands of native American woman can kill a very large bear. But the bear is question was a very large grizzly and the woman in question was Cree and not Inuit. Her name was Bella Twin and she got into the record books for that particular bit of daring.

The worst of all possible worlds

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They say the New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken. I am sure they are right. I am also sure they have no idea of what they are talking about. I could not stand reading the article, but I made myself finish it.

I guess I sound like I am some kind of wanna be Zen master. But I really don’t know how to express myself to people who have not seen what I have seen and don’t know what I know. And I know that few people want to consider this problem honestly and no one has the brains to figure out a good solution.

It is so easy to play the populist. I would probably play one myself if I didn’t know better.

Let’s play the populist game. Let’s play different parts of the article against each other.

First we have this….

The state spends roughly $210,000 per youth annually, but three-quarters of those released from detention are arrested again within three years.

Then we have this….

“These institutions are often sorely underresourced, and some fail to keep their young people safe and secure, let alone meet their myriad service and treatment needs,” according to the report, which was based on interviews with workers and youths in custody, visits to prisons and advice from experts.

What a contrast, eh? How can a system that spends a couple hundred grand per kid per year be sourly underresourced? I mean, how much more do we really want to pay to take care of young thugs?

Yet the system is sorely underresourced. But that does not change the fact that the state cannot afford to spend more money on its prison system.

To explain this sad state of affairs fully would take essay upon essay. But you can quickly grasp the nature of the problem by understanding that the only two “good” choices are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Choice number one: You can shoot every kid who has been convicted of anything that resembles a serious crime with no appeal allowed. This would be very cheap and it would dramatically cut the crime rate.

Choice number two: You can hire the best Drill Sargents that the military can produce and give them lots of discretion and money. This will produce the best chance of turning young criminals into productive citizens as long as you keep the Drill Sargent to youth offender ratio low and hold the Drill Sargents accountable for the results that they achieve.

The disadvantages of the first choice is obvious to the modern mind. The disadvantage of the second choice is that it is hideously expensive. People who have the skills to be good Drill Sargents have lots of career choices. And without significant monetary compensation, most of them are not going to put working with young thugs on their list of dream jobs.

The fundamental problem is that the closer you get to the middle ground between these two choices, the closer you will get to creating a system that is the worst of all possible worlds.

And the worst of all possible worlds is a bureaucracy were nobody has the authority to punish or reward. A bureaucracy where any kind of meaningful interaction with the wards of state is against the rules. A bureaucracy whose only goal is to carry the kids through their term safety so that they can come out more dangerous and hardened then when they went in.

And that is what New York State has now.

Perspective makes all the difference

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Today Sippican Cottage posted an old video showing the twin towers being built. It makes for some very interesting viewing. Sadly, the clip makes for more interesting viewing now than it did before the towers came down.

Watching those great big pieces of steel being lifted into place, one can’t help but think about how they came down. Hearing the announcer describe how the twin towers were being built with a new type of construction that allowed the building to be supported by the outside frame, you can’t help but think about how that type of construction was instrumental in causing the towers to collapse. And watching the propaganda about how these buildings were bringing people together from all around the world…..

But there is no need to belabor the point. Just about anyone who watches the above clip will come up with a similar set of reactions. What I find really interesting about the above clip is not the immediate reaction that it generates. Rather, I think it is an interesting example of how radically our interpretation of past events can change based on events that happen after the fact.

We generally think that we know how we will look back on events as we are living through them. We think we know what will be happy memories and what will be sad. We think we know what we will value and what we will not. But life has a way of changing how we perceive the events that happened in our past.

And in that context, I can’t but help think of Jesus’ story of the beggar and the rich man.

The Mystery Of UP

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Today I watched Up.

I think the thing that struck me most while I was watching it was how much of the movie was written solely for adults. I mean, how many kids watching that movie would have been able to figure out that the old man’s wife could not have kids?

It makes you wonder why Pixar does such things. Granted, it is common wisdom that for a children’s movie to be successful it should appeal to the adults as well as to the children. But it is hard to think of any other children’s movie that has so much in it that goes completely over a child’s head. The only ones that come close are other Pixar flicks.

To be sure, Shrek had a lot of parody in it that a child would miss. But the parody worked on its own terms for little kids. They did not have to get the parody to enjoy the movie. And maybe I am wrong, but I think that there is an awful lot of stuff in Up that kids just won’t get.

That is not to say that kids won’t enjoy the movie, but it strikes me that it will never become a favorite of the little ones on par with Toy Story or Lion King. And if the people behind Pixar have any brains, they had to realize that it was going to be this way when they were sending it out the door.

So it makes you wonder why they do it. You would think they would make even more money if they geared it more toward little kids. I mean, adults watch Pixar’s stuff. But kids would watch it over and over again if they geared it more toward them. Kids have time and loyalty that most adults lack.

The only thing I can think of is that a lot of people in Pixar would rather be making movies for adults, but don’t feel that they can get away with their anti-modernist streak if they did so.

Why Are Gas Prices Jumping?

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A question was asked….

(1) Any thoughts on why the price of gas is going up? In my informal tracking, it seems the price of gas may have gone up $0.25 in about three weeks. That seems a pretty steep increase. It just jumped 4 cents today. What is the explanation?

(2) Back during the last gas price surge the cost of diesel sky-rocketed far ahead of gas prices. If my memory serves me correctly, the per gallon cost of diesel was like 1 or 2 dollars more than gas. When I drove past the gas station today I read this: Gas 2.43 Diesel 2.41. I couldn’t believe it. Why is diesel staying so low this time, when during the last spike it went even higher than the gas?

The standard answer being handed out is that the spike in gas prices is a result of the seasonal switch over from winter to summer gas. This is undoubtedly part of the reason for the recent run up in prices. Robert Rapier has an explanation of what the seasonal changeover is all about here and here.

But there may be more to the recent price rise then the seasonal switch over. One of the reasons I say this is that the price of many commodities has been mirroring the price rise of gasoline. (Keep in mind that you should only be looking at the part of the chart that shows the price action over the last couple of months if you want to see why gas has started shooting up. The charts themselves go back to the middle of 2007 but I am trying to get you see the an emerging trend that has started recently) For example, compare the price changes in gasoline with the price changes in copper. Or how about Platinum? Or how about Coffee? What these things suggest is that the recent run up in gas prices is part of a broader phenomenon and not just about the seasonal change over.

Even more telling is the way that the price of many different foreign currency has mirrored the rise in the price of gas. Again, keep in mind that you should only be looking at recent price action. For example, compare the price action going on with gas to how many dollars it takes to buy a Euro. Or how about the much despised British Pound? Or how about the New Zealand Dollar?

What this all suggest to me is that the recent run up in the price of gas has something to do with the loss of the dollar’s purchasing power on the world stage over the last couple of months. I think we can all come up with reasons for why this may have happened.

Certainly these prices increases are not happening because of economic strength. That brings us to our correspondent’s puzzlement over the price of diesel. Certainly he reveals himself to be young. Or at least, not to have been paying attention to fuel prices until very recently. Even in my relatively short life I have seen diesel cheaper then gas often enough that I do not find the occurrence all that surprising. In fact, it use to be normal. Here is the Energy Information Administration’s explaining why diesel has become more expensive then gas….

Until several years ago, the average price of diesel fuel was usually lower than the average price of gasoline. In some winters when the demand for distillate heating oil was high, the price of diesel fuel rose above the gasoline price. Since September 2004, the price of diesel fuel has been generally higher than the price of regular gasoline all year round for several reasons. Worldwide demand for diesel fuel and other distillate fuel oils has been increasing steadily, with strong demand in China, Europe, and the U.S., putting more pressure on the tight global refining capacity. In the U.S., the transition to low-sulfur diesel fuel has affected diesel fuel production and distribution costs. Also, the Federal excise tax on diesel fuel is 6 cents higher per gallon (24.4 cents per gallon) than the tax on gasoline.

So what has changed to make diesel drop back behind gasoline?

The simplest explanation is that diesel is primarily an industrial fuel. Gas is primarily a consumer fuel. Industrial use of transportation has fallen off far more sharply then consumer expenditures. In other words, truckers have cut back on their driving far more than have suburbanites. If I was not so lazy it would be simple to dig up charts that would prove this. But anyone who has been paying attention to the news should realize that fall in manufacturing has been a leading indicator, not a lagging one. In other words, where the truckers go, the suburbanites will soon follow.

Even if I am right about the dollar weakness translating into higher prices here in America, the drop in diesel usage is still going to cause the relative price difference between gas and diesel to change. But there is probably even more at work here than the simple fact that the users of diesel are cutting back faster then the users of gasoline.

Typically, America imports gasoline and exports diesel to Europe. But given that Europe is in far worse economic trouble than America if statistics can be believed, it is unlikely that Europe is buying much diesel from abroad at the moment.

None of these answers has been proved definitively. They can’t be until the question is moot. But hopefully they make more sense to you than the knee jerk claim that oil companies are evil.

Is it time to start blaming the victims?

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As the whole world knows (here is the report from China’s English News Agency) 14 people got shot in Binghamton, New York today. It is just the latest in a long string of such shootings. Undoubtedly we will hear a lot about how we need to improve security or improve gun laws or some such. But when are we going to talk about the proper moral reaction to such an attack by those who are living through it?

I mean, after 9/11 it was generally agreed that people should never allow a plane to be hijacked again. Whatever it took and whatever it cost, people swore that they would take back the plane. Yet in the wake of multiple mass shootings no such consensus towards mass-murdering gunmen seems to be emerging.

To be sure, the pro-gun lobby will argue that this shows why everyone should be packing heat. But I think such arguments miss what is really wrong in this country. It is not a matter of arms, but of courage.

I remember hearing about a mass killing in California where the gunman made everybody lie down and then he started shooting people at point blank range. Needless to say he killed few people before the police stormed in to stop him. I remember hearing about a woman who survived the killings talking about how she lay there, listening to the other people getting shot, and hoped that the gunmen would not shoot her. Talk about making it easy for the killer.

Now I don’t know what I would have done in that situation and I don’t know enough about what happened in Binghamton to give an opinion on what happened there. But I do know that people don’t have to act like sheep. A man came to where I work armed with a gun, a propane tank, and the intent to kill. He was jumped by a lady in her fifties and he never got chance to get off a shot (granted she was a lot tougher then your average lady, and a man later came to her aid, but still….).

But the prevailing trend in our culture is not to celebrate the ladies who jump gunmen armed with nothing but their bare hands. Rather, it is to celebrate the people who chose to act as passive victims as this post from the Belmont Club makes clear. Moreover, this attitude that celebrates those who value their own lives above all else has even permeated our law enforcement agencies as this article from Paul Howe makes clear (For those that don’t recognize the name, Paul Howe is a former Delta operator who played a key role in the events of Black Hawk Down. He currently teaches tactics to law enforcement officers.)

The US Is Paying Pakistan To Kill US Soldiers

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Something is up. It seems that people in the highest levels of the US and Pakistan governments have decided to tell the New York Times what everyone basically already knows. Pakistan is supporting the Taliban militants who are fighting US soldiers and they have no intention of ever stopping that support. A short quote from the article….

Details of the ISI’s continuing ties to militant groups were described by a half-dozen American, Pakistani and other security officials during recent interviews in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. All requested anonymity because they were discussing classified and sensitive intelligence information.

The American officials said proof of the ties between the Taliban and Pakistani spies came from electronic surveillance and trusted informants. The Pakistani officials interviewed said that they had firsthand knowledge of the connections, though they denied that the ties were strengthening the insurgency.

And later on in the article, American officials say what everyone knows….

Top American officials speak bluntly about how the situation has changed little since last summer, when evidence showed that ISI operatives helped plan the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, an attack that killed 54 people.

“They have been very attached to many of these extremist organizations, and it’s my belief that in the long run, they have got to completely cut ties with those in order to really move in the right direction,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently on “The Charlie Rose Show” on PBS.

The Taliban has been able to finance a military campaign inside Afghanistan largely through proceeds from the illegal drug trade and wealthy individuals from the Persian Gulf. But American officials said that when fighters needed fuel or ammunition to sustain their attacks against American troops, they would often turn to the ISI.

When the groups needed to replenish their ranks, it would be operatives from the S Wing who often slipped into radical madrasas across Pakistan to drum up recruits, the officials said.

The whole article should really be read by everyone. The most interesting thing about the article is that is was high level Pakistan officials who talked to the New York Times reporters. I wonder what caused them to decide to talk? It seems like this article is designed to set the stage for something but I am not sure what.

Regardless, the article highlights the problem with America’s ruling class. They are so degenerate that they are propping up a regime that they know is complicit in ongoing attacks on American soldiers. They do this not because they want American solders to get killed but because they are afraid of what will happen if they stop the support.

They can’t make hard decisions. They don’t have the guts to do anything that might have real costs. And this can not be blamed solely on Obama. These problems were already clear when Bush was in charge. Nor is it solely a problem with the White House. Everyone who is informed in this country already pretty much knew everything in this article. But no “serious” pundit has been willing to lay out the true choices facing America.

The truth that nobody wants to admit is that we have only two choices. We can swallow our pride and leave Afghanistan with all the catastrophic implications that choice has. Or we can give Pakistan a true “us or them” ultimatum with all the catastrophic implications that such an ultimatum would necessarily entail.

What we are doing right now is not a sane choice no matter what your ideology is. We are sending Americans in who will die trying to create a stable Afghanistan when we know they can never succeed as long as ISI is supporting the other side. We are wasting blood and money simply because our political caste is composed of cowards who want to kick the can down the road until a solution magically appears. In the end, though, we are either going to have to leave or else fight Pakistan. All the money and blood that was spent to try to avoid that choice will have been wasted.

In a way, the New York Times article is almost a good sign. At least the political caste is starting to go on record as admitting to things that everyone already knows to be true. I don’t know what they are trying to set the stage for, but acknowledging the facts is a move in the right direction.

China is not looking for assurances, they are giving a warning

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From The New York Times…

The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, spoke in unusually blunt terms on Friday about the “safety” of China’s $1 trillion investment in American government debt, the world’s largest such holding, and urged the Obama administration to offer assurances that the securities would maintain their value.

If that does not worry you, read the Wall Street Journal article…..

The Obama administration rejected China’s concerns that its vast holdings of U.S. assets might be unsafe, in an unusual diplomatic exchange that underscored the global importance and the potential fragility of the Sino-U.S. economic relationship.

In a coordinated response to blunt comments from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, White House officials said Friday that Mr. Obama intends to return the country to fiscal prudence once the crisis passes.

“There’s no safer investment in the world than in the United States,” said presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Every time during this current crisis someone has claimed that something was safe, it has run into trouble within six months. But such worries are old hat. If all there was to this story was somebody expressing worry about the ability of the Untied States to handle its debt load I would not even bother posting it. But what is more interesting about this story is how everyone seems to be willfully misinterpreting it.

This story has been all over the news, and yet everywhere I go people are talking about how China is looking for assurances. But that does not come close to passing the smell test. You don’t have a leader of a country seek assurances. You do that through private diplomatic means. When a leader of a country speaks, it is to shape public perception and to warn the world about actions that might be forthcoming.

Yet everyone is bending over backwards to convince themselves that this is nothing more than China looking for assurance. Every article on the subject is filled with experts who assure us that China has not real choice and that it must continue to buy US assets. I think Brad Setser falls into this trap when he says…..

1) China both wants to maintain the RMB’s link to the dollar and avoid adding to its already large dollar exposure. Yet so long as China pegs to the dollar and runs a sizable current account surplus, it is hard to see how China can avoid adding to its dollar holdings.**

2) China is torn between its interest as a creditor and its interests as an exporter. China’s commercial interests would be best served by an even larger US stimulus, one that helped spur US demand for China’s goods. China’s reserve managers though worry that the US won’t be able to finance a large stimulus and thus are worried that a rise in Treasury supply would reduce the value of China’s existing Treasuries.

The problem with Mr. Setser’s analysis is that he assumes that the question of what is best for China’s economy and the question of what is best for the value of China’s reserves are two separate issues in the minds of China’s policy makers. But while this was certainly true is the past, there is no reason to assume that this is true today.

In the past it was clear that China was willing to sacrifice the value of its reserves in order to facilitate economic growth. But that was back when China was exchanging the value of its reserves for a booming trade surplus. Today China’s trade surplus is falling like a rock. In January, China’s trade surplus was $39.1 billion dollars. In febuary, its trade surplus was only $4.84 billion dollars. If China’s trade surplus keeps falling at its current rate, China will swing into a trade deficit next quarter. If that happens, China will need to sell some of its dollars assets to fund its imports.

This scenario is currently regarded as unthinkable by most commentators. But it is the logical result of China trying to stimulate domestic demand. In fact, if China wants to prop up domestic demand (like it has promised to do) without running a huge fiscal deficit (like it has promised not to do) then they have no choice but to engage in a massive sell down of their reserves.

So the reason that China is making it very public that they expect the US to insure the value of China’s investments may have something to do with the fact that China is starting to think that it may need those assets to keep its own economy afloat.

Regardless of whether I am right or not, the idea that that Prime Minster of China is looking for assurance is bunk. The US government has already committed to standing behind the agency debt. The treasuries have it in writing that they are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. How are more words going to assure the Chinese? There is something more going on here.