Commenter Archive

That there is an adorable puppy.

Seems generally plausible.

I hear you there BlaiseP. My friends who garden around here are utterly apalled. All their leaf mulches and ground coverings have availed them not at all. The ground has thawed and the plants are a-stirring. If the winter makes a come back there could be a flora massacare acros the area.

My Mother, with her endless twisting gardens in Nova Scotia, is sitting in contented contrast with a nice solid foot of snow covering everything.

Yep definitly overreading on both sides of the aisle. That said this event does represent an unusual blow to the normally undeflatable Limbaugh so I wouldn't begrudge the left their enjoyment of this unusual event.

It is fishing 80 degrees (in your primitive American Farenheight scale) here in Minneapolis. 80 Fishing degrees in March!! This is insane! My cold (half)Canadian blood isn't designed to tolerate this.

Odd, I never got that from any of the Goldblog reading I do. What's to hate about Goldberg? He is an adamant supporter of the two state solution and vocally condemns the Israel right settlement entanglement policies.

Fron your lips to God(ess?)'s ear Nob.

Stillwater, I don't see why that arguement holds. All the US needs to assure is that oil flows into global markets and the supply isn't disrupted. Based on that goal neocon interventions into the Middle East have been a debacle.

Evil exists, I shan't deny that.. though in the Tolkien universe that'd be akin to saying Melkor exists (still, clawing at the dark outside the walls of time) but Sauron? An evil force powerful enough to threaten to upend all that is good and happy in the world? I don't see him about Blaise.

I see the canny old Putin fleecing the Russians while bedazzling them with memories of Soviet importance in the mid 1900's.

I see the miserable old Mullahs in Iran sitting uneasily on top of the cauldron of their own country and selling out their faith and empowering their own IRG thugs to retain grip on power just a little longer so their friends and relatives can get rich off the rigged system before it all goes kablooey.

I see that doughy son of the crazy little dear leader troll squatting on top of the poor poor crushed people in North Korea. It's too soon to get much of a gist as to what his position on much is or if he's even got the reins in his hands at all.

I see the cold pragmatic party officials in China trying to figure out if they can land their country on a modern economy before their demographic, political and ecological clocks run down.

But malevolent Saurons with both the desire and the power to throw us all down? I don't see em. Unless they're us. Am I missing something.

I'd submit, humbly, BlaiseP that our modern world is happily short of Sauron level threats. The terrorists would barely qualify in my mind as much more troublesom than the trolls on the road to Rivendell. A problem, assuredly, but one that requires proper highway patrolling (or cockpit door securing) rather than large war campagins to occupy the wilds.

As for Iran and Afghanistan et all; intervention hasn't borne much fruit so far as I can see. I don't see why non-intervention doesn't merit a shot.

Not a bad first commendment for a lot of things, especially things with regards to foreign policy if you ask me.

Maybe if the terrorists could demonstrate even the competance necessary to teach their bombers how to properly ignite their panty-bombs and shoe-bombs I'd give credence to their potential to smuggle in, position and launch STA missiles at UPS hubs. But they haven't and I don't.

I'd submit Katherine that the Libyan intervention was indeed quite cautious. Obama was studious in not putting boots on the ground and dragged his feet on intervening at all until the eleventh hour. Policy wise I would submit that it's been in keeping with Obama's general foreign policy posture which is cautious.

Osama on the other hand was daring, I agree, but I would submit was not so much a matter of general policy but one specific (highly unique) decision. I would agree that Obama took a risk in choosing the method he did but I rather uncharitably suspect that he has several ass covering plans in mind that mitigated the risks of failure in his mind. Osama was, again, a very unique and special opportunity. It is to Obama's credit that he took the chance and it paid off but I still don't feel that it's indicative of his overall policy posture which both domestically and on foreign policy has been over all very incrimental, lead from behindish, deferential to the status quos and cautious.

Scott old boy you're demonstrating some horrible reading comprehension failure here. Katherine is specifically blaming Obama for failing to correct Bush's abominable policies. But none of Obama's failures absolve Bush (the very minor) ad his chorus line of conservative war-mongering clowns from their historic failures in entangling the country in these foreign quagmires and squandering the country's blood and treasure on these fools errands in the first place.

How many bombs in trash cans in America’s malls does it take before the system shuts down? 

If this starts happening I'm investing in Amazon stock.

Agreed in general, though I have a certain (possibly false) optimism that Obama can't possibly be seriously considering actually commencing an additional war. Of course the whole point of bluffing is that you can't let your opponent know you're bluffing; so obviously neither I (nor anyone else) can be certain an invasion (or strike) is going to happen unless it happens.

I remain hopeful that Obama, who has demonstrated a significant and consistant pattern of cautiousness when it comes to policy (his supporters call it prudence, his detractors cowardice) would be unwilling to go this far with Iran.

True that, but the Walking Dead's zombies have demonstrated generally little more than average human strength (augmented by implacablility and an indifference to pain or fatigue). Walkers can (And have) be wrestled with (with the human winning), it has taken large mobs of them consderable time to bash through a glass door storefront. The only ripping we've seen from them was when the one walker got Dale and it only tore open his guts, a feat that any human could accomplish if they were in the same state of mind as a Walker.

Mike, a major regonal crop failure of the scale you're describing would have the same impact regardless of whether we subsidized our agricultural industry or not. In fact our subsidies arguably make such a very unlikely failure scenario more likely since it encourages monocultures and smaller numbers of crops produces which thus would be more vulnerable to a single biological vector (the most likely cause of such an unlikely whipe out).

Yes Mike, I get that but there're a couple problems.

In order for food to be a security issue the only really relevant threat is starvation. If we were embargoed and had some kind of coincidental crop failure in order for the security of the USA to be endangered we'd have to be in danger of actually starving. With the huge diversified agricultural sector we have even now that's unlikely. Since removal of subsidies would most likely create greater diversity (and I remain deeply unconvinced the removal of subsidies would produce a decline in overall agricultural production) a non-subsidy US would be more resistant to some kind of crop failure black swan event, not less. If the malicious states of the world somehow unified and blockaded the US (and threw a magic force field across the 49th so we couldn't help ourselves to Canada's massive granaries) we still would just flip them the bird and grumble while we ate domestically produced food products. That would be the same in a subsidized or non-subsidized economy. If it was non-subsidized we'd be eating a greater variety of stuff but we'd have plenty to eat. There just isn't a geo-political or geo-economic event or scenario that I can see where the US would be producing less food than it consumes. Worst case scenario prices go up. High prices are nasty and bad but that’s not national security level trouble.

Energy isn’t exactly an apt comparison either; frankly energy security threats are utterly overblown since the US produces enough energy to fuel its military indefinitely in the result of an embargo (the rest of the economy not so much). But energy is something the US doesn’t domestically produce more of than it uses. It does present an apt counter comparison: if Saudi Arabia was paying its oil companies a subsidy to pump oil on the grounds that “if we don’t subsidize it all our oil industry will move into foreign countries and we’ll be dependent on others for energy” that would be a rough parallel to what the US does with food. We are the Saudi Arabia of food.

I understand Mike but I just don't think you've considered the implications or analyzed the data fully. The United States, is the #1 producer world wide of a massive array of crops and especially of staples. We're #1 in cattle, chicken, pig, soy and corn (and many more). We're #3 for wheat (and #2 and 3 for much much more; info here http://www.fao.org/es/ess/top/topproduction.html?lang=en&country=231&year=2005) . On all of these crops and innumerable others the US is a net agricultural exporter. One simply cannot attribute this dominance to subsidies; they're present, they're significant yes but they're certainly not the cause. The primary reason why the US produces so much food is because the US has the infrastructure, the climate and above all else the land to produce this food. You cannot off-shore land. You cannot move 25,000 acre wheat field to India or China or Korea.

In order for the US to be undercut on food security we would be looking at the country going from being a net exporter of all of these crop types to becoming a net importer of most if not all of them. Moreover we'd also have to assert that the US wouldn't become the net exporter of some other crop type that could substitute for the crop types lost. In order to US food security to be a realistic threat the US would have to, in the event of a trade embargo, be in danger of starving. So, in order to justify farm subsidies on a national security basis we’d need to have some kind of indication that the end of farm subsidies would result in a massive de-utilization of the United States’ agricultural land. The United States of America, remember, has more arable land than any other country on the planet. Now I’m not an expert on this Mike but I’m unaware of any historical precedent anywhere at any time of a nation facing so much competition from other nations in food prices that it essentially lets roughly one fifth of its entire land mass (or even a large percentage of that) lay fallow. Frankly I do not myself know any believable scenario where the US would let this massive natural resource simply go idle to the extent that the country becomes dependent on other nations for food. Such a thing happening would fly in the face of everything we know about human resource utilization, market economics and agriculture.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it fantasy but I submit that the idea that the country would simply stop growing crops is near fantasy. There are simply too many mouths to feed on this planet and there’s simply too much production capacity in the US to grow food and too little production capacity in the rest of the world to do the same.

Even the example of manufacturing which you’ve cited before is an empty specter. The US is still the #1 manufacturer of manufactured goods on the planet. Yes some sectors have suffered and some goods have off-shored but others have formed to replace them, all without national manufacturing subsidies and with very little trade protectionism.

The problem is that without the national security argument the case for farm subsidies pretty much implodes. This is without even touching on the abominable distortions that have been created by specific cases like sugar protectionism or corn over-use.

An excellent piece Christopher, I appreciate your personal perspective.

Fukashima is a frustrating problem indeed. On one hand the reactor took a direct earthquake and tsunami hit and in the end it was the konked out diesel engines that caused the disaster. On the other hand clearly there were regulatory and oversight problems that compounded the disaster. It will be very interesting to see, in the long run, what impact the disaster will have on the region. Chernobyl offers little example; the country had the room to simply move everyone away forever. Fukushima is in dense dense little Japan. The pressure to use that space will eventually be very strong. Hopefully a lot will be learned about radiation cleanup and tolerances and long term effects.

Terrible as the disaster was the country still needs elecricity. I personally hope that the outrage takes the form of pressure for better reactor design and oversight rather than some visceral rejection of nuclear in general. They have to get their power from somewhere.

It certainly sounds idiotic as presented and as a supporter of O and the Dems in general I have no problem with saying so.

That's a small difference Kimmi, sure and there're others but compared to agriculture manufacturing remains a much more movable industry.

As has been repeatedly noted agriculture =/= manufacture. All you need for manufacture is a small bit of horizontal land (in any condition) a workforce and transportation and energy infrastructure.

This isn't a question of whether we are the only country that can grow a significant number of crops but rather whether anyone else can grow more than us so much more effectively that they outcompete us. What this map you've linked is showing is that of the top four nations in the world in geographic size (Canada, the US, China and Russia) the US has the highest percentage of arable land. It essentially makes my point for me. So I'll put the question again: what countries have the excess agricultural capacity to eliminate all forms of American agriculture in the absence of farm subsidies (bonus question: why haven't they done so to the agricultural sectors of comparatively unsubsidized western peers like Canada, Australia and New Zealand)?

There's a really big different, Mike, between an African farmer being able to compete with American food (which has to be moved half way around the globe to reach and compete in his market) and that same African farmer being able to not only feed himself and his neighbors but also ship a surplus half way around the globe to outcompete American food in the American market. Subsidies allow American food to undercut african food in african markets. What I reject is that removing subsidies would cause African food to undercut american food in the american market. It just doesn't parse. Also you haven't addressed the question of capacity or land: America has enormous amounts of land. Does the world have the slack agricultural capacity that would allow it to produce a wave of food that'd eliminate all American farming? Where would this wave of cheap food come from? Who'd make it? How would it be so economically superior that it's whipe out American farms?