Contrarian indicator

US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in his big Jackson Hole speech today --

As you know, the downturn in the housing market, which began in the summer of 2005, has been sharp. Sales of new and existing homes have declined significantly from their mid-2005 peaks and have remained slow in recent months ... A substantial increase in lending to nonprime borrowers contributed to the bulge in residential investment in 2004 and 2005, and the tightening of credit conditions for these borrowers likely accounts for some of the continued softening in demand we have seen this year ... The problems have been most severe for subprime mortgages with adjustable rates: the proportion of those loans with serious delinquencies rose to about 13-1/2 percent in June, more than double the recent low seen in mid-2005.The adjustable-rate subprime mortgages originated in late 2005 and in 2006 have performed the worst, in part because of slippage in underwriting standards, reflected for example in high loan-to-value ratios and incomplete documentation.

His predecessor, Alan Greenspan, in 2004 --

American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. To the degree that households are driven by fears of payment shocks but are willing to manage their own interest rate risks, the traditional fixed-rate mortgage may be an expensive method of financing a home.

It's tough on the people who took their financial advice from Alan Greenspan (as did George Bush, in a different context). At least Greenspan's successor is, if opaquely, calling him out on it.

One night in Kuala Lumpur

Another segment from Bush's pre-APEC interviews --

Q So what are your outlook and hopes for U.S.-Malaysia relations, and especially with Malaysia being the 10th largest trading partner?
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I do believe we ought to have -- take this notion of trade and have meaningful discussions with a potential free trade agreement with Malaysia. Secondly, I respect Prime Minister Badawi, admire his leadership. When his wife died I tried to call him early just to let him know I cared about him.
Q He has remarried.
THE PRESIDENT: Has he? Good. I'll congratulate him. Thanks for giving me that heads-up. Don't put that in the article that you had to tell me that. You can put it in there if you want. (Laughter.) I'll be glad to -- I'm going to congratulate him. That's neat.
MR. WILDER: You did, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: What?
MR. WILDER: You did congratulate him.
THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. I'm going to congratulate him again. (Laughter.) I'll double the congratulations. (Laughter.) That's right, I did write him a note. I forgot. Did I call him or write him a note?
MR. WILDER: You wrote him a note.
THE PRESIDENT: That's right, yes. Sent him a couple flowers.

Bush down under

In one of the series of interviews he did before heading to a locked-down Sydney next week, George Bush's interview with Sky News Australia (also here) shows that his war on terror is rhetoric is a moving target and does seem to respond to criticism of earlier vintages. In particular --

See, here's the interesting thing that I hope the people of Australia understand, there are two forms of extremism that have now converged on Iraq, one Sunni extremism in the likes of Al Qaeda. These people in Iraq swore allegiance to the very same person that ordered the attack on the United States of America.

Significant because he has dropped the "they're the same people who attacked us on 9/11", which of course was not true. But it's always the curate's egg with Bush --

We the free world has got more work to do, and I believe those of us who live in liberty have a responsibility to promote forms of government that deal with what causes 19 kids to get on airplanes to kill 3,000 students.

To state the obvious, none of the 19 were from Iraq, and nothing going on in Iraq now is making political liberalisation in the countries that they were from more likely. His mangled statement at the end is merely symptomatic of a much deeper strategic confusion.

The excuse trifecta

From the Pentagon announcement that George Bush will conduct a major Iraq meeting with his generals tomorrow --

Army Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock ... warned, however, that a number of factors may dare the enemy to increase attacks. With the pending report to Congress, the beginning of Ramadan next month, and the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, "we can expect the enemy to try to accomplish more high-profile, highly visible attacks to flavor how those reports are received," he said.

i.e. anything bad that happens shouldn't count as lack of progress and/or is all the fault of people wanting these pesky progress reports.

Speaking of the 9/11 anniversary ...

Hard to know what to make of this. A group called "Stop the Islamisation of Europe" is planning a protest outside the European Parliament building in Brussels on 11th September. It's billed as being against the introduction of Sharia law in Europe. It's not clear who, at least who with any size of a constituency is for that, but anyway. Now it appears that the protest has been banned. And at some stage Italy's Northern League had hitched its wagon to the cause, which is perhaps support that they could have done without. And then there's some business about an allegedly "pro-Hezbollah" counter-demonstration.

It really is shaping up as the most contentious 9/11 anniversary yet. With the distance of time the memory of the victims decreases in power relative to the meanings people want to attach to the event.

Worst 9/11 anniversary yet

The anniversary is already going to see George Bush's team from Iraq explaining to Congress on September 11th 2007 why they think the Surge should continue. It will see Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani use the platform of the memorial service in Manhattan. And if Powerline is right, it will see the file of Ted Olson, director of the Bush versus Gore legal effort in 2000, and whose wife was murdered in the Pentagon attack, before the Senate as Bush's nominee for Attorney General. Signs of an administration which feels that it has only one trick left.

2 states of separation

The Wall Street's Journal's lead editorial (subs. req'd) --

The latest twist in the global warming saga is the revision in data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, indicating that the warmest year on record for the U.S. was not 1998, but rather 1934 (by 0.02 of a degree Celsius).

Canadian and amateur climate researcher Stephen McIntyre discovered that NASA made a technical error in standardizing the weather air temperature data post-2000. These temperature mistakes were only for the U.S.; their net effect was to lower the average temperature reading from 2000-2006 by 0.15C.

You could read this and the rest of the editorial and not be told that the adjustment referred not to "U.S." but to the 48 contiguous states -- which matters because Alaska is, like, large, and some global warming implications relate to the size of the surface area affected by it. And as the blogger who found the mistake that led to adjustment acknowledges, rankings of individual year as hottest, which are affected by random variation, are less meaningful than temperature trends, which are clearly upwards.

For more and more people, believing this obscurantist stuff from the Journal is going to require ignoring what's going on outside their windows.

It would damage the town to hear it

Among the phenomena illustrated by Senator Larry Craig's bizarre defence of his actions in his Minneapolis airport cruising bust is the broader attitude of conservatives that legal procedures exist on a plane separate from any underlying actions. Whether it's Craig viewing his guilty plea as implying nothing about what he actually did, the "no underlying crime" chant that greeted Scooter Libby's conviction for lying under oath, or George Bush's claim that accusations of criminal conduct against his Attorney General are just "political theater" -- it's the same perspective that these are just mere processes that distract "good men" from serving their country.

More from Laura

Given the bizarre revelations yesterday about Senator Larry Craig from Idaho and "wide stances" at the Minneapolis airport (if you don't know, don't ask), one has to figure that yesterday was known to be not a good day to even mention Idaho. Hence Laura Bush ...

Mary Bomar, as all of you know, is the Director of the National Park Service, and she's done a really terrific job, including working with Secretary Kempthorne, someone from Idaho, who now is the Secretary of the Interior, and who's very, very aware of the specific treasures we have in the western part of the United States and our national parks, but also the treasures everywhere across our country that represent the very best, both of our most beautiful natural landscapes like Grand Teton, and our most important historical sites like the White House and many other of our national parks that are historical sites.

Which sounds like Laura realized that not only had she mentioned Idaho but a (former) Republican Senator from Idaho and decided she better keep babbling to try and make everyone forget about it.

Perhaps feeling that she hadn't yet erased the memory later down in the speech, she decided to offer a scoop --

Jenna Bush was proposed to in Acadia National Park. (Applause.)

Poor Maine. It's such a nice place to have so many Bushes. But don't feel left out, DC --

Our national parks offer children a healthy alternative to being out -- for their free time. The Jefferson Memorial, even in an urban setting, is, of course, also outside

Probably not a great setting for marital propositions, though.

UPDATE 26 SEP: The site of the Jenna engagement is being reported as news from a Jenna interview even though Laura scooped her a month ago.

Meet the latest Iraq talking point

It's that as long as the US defeats "al Qaeda/in Iraq", it will all be worth it. Christopher Hitchens --

One must not declare victory too soon, but if the United States has in fact succeeded in not only smashing but discrediting al-Qaida in a major Arab and Muslim country, that must count as a historic achievement.

He was lower down on the chain mail than Ralph Peters --

Although this trend has been reported, our battlefield leaders here agree that the magnitude of the shift hasn't registered back home: Al Qaeda is on the verge of a humiliating, devastating strategic defeat - rejected by their fellow Sunni Muslims.

If we don't quit, this will not only be a huge practical win - it'll be the information victory we've been aching for.

Just one thing: is there anyone in Syria, Jordan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia who thinks that "freedom" looks like an especially good idea right now?

UPDATE: And this line of argument ignores that the fact that al Qaeda could have been defeated at the source 5 years ago if it wasn't for Iraq.

War on Usury

It's not just for Islam any more. National Review's Larry Kudlow --

Cutting the fed funds rate "removes a tax on money" that has weakened the economy and the dollar in recent years. This tax on money has also strengthened the gold price, a symbol of higher inflation.

Apparently the right interest rate is zero. As Kudlow says --

It may sound counterintuitive, but it makes perfect sense in the logic of supply-side economics.

Indeed.

Keeping score

National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez on the departure as Attorney General of Alberto Gonzales --

Paul Clement is on the list of possible replacements, according to Fox (and my understanding is he will at least be interim acting AG). I am a huge Clement fan. I can't imagine the president would be putting him to best use making him attorney general — dealing with the heated politics and the bureaucracy and silly senators. I'm counting on him being the next Catholic dude on the Court. Can you imagine the reaction at the PFAW [People for the American Way] etc? I'd forgive and forget everything and anything and love George W. Bush forever just to be able to see the reaction.

So apparently: there's some sort of religious quota system or priority for getting Catholics on the court, and the purpose of Supreme Court appointments is to irritate the other side as opposed to picking the best person (Catholic or not) for the job. And the elected branch of government with which Cabinet members have to deal is "silly."

Cecilia gave Laura an idea

It's not long after Mrs Sarkozy's mysterious "sore throat" absence from George Bush's non-lobster summit with her husband in Maine. And it's in the season when there have been recurring questions about whether US foreign policy towards East Asia is being completely neglected in the magnet of Iraq. So what was being billed as George's renewed attention to the region, his visit to the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit in Australia next month has suffered a blow --

Mrs. Laura Bush will not travel with the President, as planned, to Sydney, Australia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Mrs. Bush extended her regrets in a telephone conversation yesterday to Mrs. Janette Howard, wife of Prime Minister John Howard.

Mrs. Bush has been treated with physical therapy for a pinched nerve, which she injured while hiking earlier this year. Her physicians have strongly advised her to not travel overseas in order to avoid potential complication and aggravation by extended long distance travel.

It seems to part of the protocol of these things that the ladies call each other to drop out of planned engagements. Whatever about John Howard, one hopes that the rest of the summiteers don't take it as a further snub.

UPDATE: The new theory is that the "pinched nerve" was a cover story for the initial preparations for Bush's SURPRISE! Iraq visit.

Gone native

One can wade through countless press releases from Multinational Forces Iraq which report claims about captured foreign fighters in Iraq, or foreign influence, without ever getting a single bit of identifying information for any of the suspects. Some might say that it's because the alleged wave of foreign insurgents is a trickle, and/or because most of the foreign suspects are from Saudi Arabia.

So one reads with interest a press release that seems to offer a bit more --

Coalition forces detained a foreign fighter during an intelligence-driven operation in northern Arab Jabour Aug. 22.

Intelligence indicates the targeted individual is a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device cell leader targeting coalition forces operating in the Arab Jabour area. He was born in Egypt but came to Iraq in the early 1980s and later joined al-Qaeda fighters. He has Iraqi citizenship and believed to be a former high ranking official of the Ba’ath party during Saddam Hussein’s reign.

So the foreign fighter is, er, Iraqi, and not only that, he's from the former regime and so can't even by classified as al Qaeda in Iraq, which anyway they keep telling us is not really Iraqi except for being in Iraq. So not Iran. Not Special Groups. Not foreign. Just a recalcitrant member of the former regime who now has a specialty in car bombs, a symbol of an unfinished job from 2003.

She let them in

With a blogosphere that always seems primed for "outrage" one's eyes get a tad jaded, but Yes, Irish Independent columnist Kevin Myers really wrote these sentences (via Irland Inside) --

The suicide bombers of London two years ago hadn't been born when this chapter opened in 1979: and such has been the utterly cretinous disregard across Europe for the huge cultural differences between the Islamic and the secular/Christian worlds, that the Continent has since then blithely continued to admit hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

However, true pride of place in the European imbecility stakes must surely go to Ireland, which now has some 60,000 Muslims officially living here, though the figure is probably more like 100,000, the vast majority having arrived since 9/11. Now, just how stupid is that?

There was always an element of Mark O'Steyn about Myers but it's hard to see Steyn writing that sentence. But you never know.

Random reading recommendation

The most interesting opinion/analysis writer at work these days is perhaps David Gardner in the Financial Times. The latest one on Spain is really excellent. The demolition of the US "strategy" in Iraq from a few weeks ago is required reading.

UPDATE 25 NOVEMBER: Beginning almost immediately after we wrote the above, there seemed to be no more Gardner in the analysis page. It turns out he got bumped up to chief leader writer, meaning that one has to now read the FT editorials and discern his touch. He's still doing the occasional book review.

Naming and shaming

Powerline's "Trunk" has a complaint. Not long ago the New York Times published an op-ed by 7 Iraq war veterans. It was extremely critical of the management of the war and called for American disengagement from Iraq.

It's not like this is the only line in op-eds from the New York Times; not long before, pro-war types had been trumpeting an article by Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack on the same pages. But of course the criticism from veterans stung.

Hence "Trunk" links to a Weekly Standard article by another group of veterans which takes the pro-Bush position --

Seven Iraq war vets and members of Vets for Freedom respond to the New York Times Seven, of the 82nd Airborne, whose op-ed column appeared in the paper this past Sunday.

So the 7 critics become the "New York Times Seven" (east coast liberals nudge nudge wink wink) while the Bush defenders are the Vets for Freedom. Perhaps we should be thankful that the first 7 didn't become the Vets Against Freedom. As it happens, the Vets for Freedom have an ad campaign going (unlike the NYT Seven) which calls for the war in Iraq to continue. In its parroting of White House talking points, it suggests that they should be renamed Swift Boat Freedom Veterans For Whatever It Is That George W. Bush Currently Wants To Do.

Anyway, Trunk's complaint --

You have to read to the end to find this item of interest:

This Op-Ed was originally submitted to the New York Times, which declined to publish it.

Why should they? Its authors are an organised lobby group with their own funding -- and access to the pages of the Weekly Standard -- to get out their message. There's no right of equal access for Republicans to the pages of the New York Times, or any other paper for that matter.

UPDATE: The complaint is seconded by Instapundit. It's remarkable. They want the Times to give free space to a funded pressure group.

Vietnam again

Yes this Vietnam-Iraq blogging is going to get tiresome but so are its proponents. Here we have Max Boot in the Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd; alt. free link) assuring George Bush that his only mistake was in not more fully embracing the analogy. Two things. First, Boot answers the question of what the US could have done to "win" in Vietnam --

By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived.

By "lots of American aircraft" and "substantial supplies" he means: bombing Vietnam to smithereens. That was the strategy. Of course it works in that you kill "bad guys" but you completely alienate the civilian population. That's why air force plays so little role in modern counterinsurgency strategy -- strategy that Boot presumably supports in the Iraq context. Indeed, Boot subtitles this part of his argument "The danger of winning militarily and losing politically" -- a distinction that does not exist in the Petraeus strategy for Iraq. There's no military victory without political progress.

Then, of the American "defeat" in Vietnam --

whose ripples spread around the world. In the late 1970s, America's enemies seized power in countries from Mozambique to Iran to Nicaragua. American hostages were seized aboard the SS Mayaguez (off Cambodia) and in Tehran. The Red Army invaded Afghanistan.

Which is what happens when you try to relate diverse events to a single cause. There was other stuff going on in the 1970s. The US backed Shah was getting increasingly repressive, cooking up Shia fundamentalism. Portugal pulled the plug on its African colonies and let the locals duke it out for control. The Somozas kept the earthquake relief money. And that Red Army invasion of Afghanistan worked out real well for them. Overall, it's a dreadful analogy for a dreadful war.

Anonymous spinnning

Here's a strange bit of sourcing from the LA Times (via Dan Froomkin) about George Bush's most brazen Iraq-Vietnam analogy yet --

A former official who left the White House recently said the new communications strategy was based on two arguments the administration has been making for a long time.

"One, we can win. And in past cases, such as Korea or Japan, people who made confident predictions about the impossibility of succeeding were eventually proven wrong. Two, the consequences of failure are so bad we should be willing to pay a price to win," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is no longer permitted to speak for the administration.

What's different, the official said, is that the president is taking a perceived weakness -- historical comparisons to Vietnam -- and turning it into a strength.

"Vietnam has been wrung around the administration's neck on Iraq for a long time," he said. "There are many analogies or comparisons or connections that could cut against the administration's position, but this is a connection that supports the administration's position. . . . They want to say, the last time you took a drastic option like abandoning our allies it didn't work well. Let's take a more measured one. They're setting that up."

Why give anonymity to someone who doesn't need it, since the person no longer works at the White House? Especially when the quotes offered are just the message of the speech itself disguised as analysis of it.

Furthermore, the analysis contains some telltale signs of who it is. "the president is taking a perceived weakness and turning it into a strength." That's the standard description of Karl Rove's political tactics. Now Rove still works for the White House, but his favourite operative, and the one who specialises in war spinning, recently left: Peter Wehner. And he has journalistic perches of his own, including at the National Review -- where was spinning for the speech today.

One hopes that the LA Times has not granted him a noises-off perch to accompany his main performance, especially as his pedigree is from a White House where you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

3 state solution

Two interesting things in the new US National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. First, a signal that the troop surge will continue --

We assess that changing the mission of Coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primary combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq] from establishing a safehaven would erode security gains achieved thus far.

But the more insidious paragraph is the implicit answer to the question of what happens when the preferred counterinsurgency strategy can't be sustained due to troop shortages --

Where population displacements have led to significant sectarian separation, conflict levels have diminished to some extent because warring communities find it more difficult to penetrate communal enclaves.

i.e. "Peace" through de facto partition. Is the plan for the US to stay just long enough to allow that to happen?

Denied the triumph of the will

National Review's Jonah Goldberg --

The mainstream media and a lot of liberal-leaning analysts seem to think it's politically foolish or reckless for Bush to compare Vietnam to Iraq because they have one very specific narrative in mind when it comes to that war: America shouldn't have gotten in, couldn't have won, and then lost. What they have long failed to grasp is that's not the moral of the story in the hearts of millions of Americans who believe that we could have won if wanted to and it was a disaster for American prestige and honor that we lost (whether we should have gone in is a murkier question for many, I think). This is a point the Democrats fail to grasp: being on the side of surrender in a war is popular enough during the war, but if you succeed lots of Americans will later get buyer's remorse and feel like it was a mistake and the next generation will see things very differently than their anti-war activist parents.

Which is useful in enough in bringing out the essential question prompted by Bush's analogy, namely: What else could America have done to have "won" in Vietnam? Nuclear weapons?

Incidentally, those against the Vietnam war weren't for American "surrender." They were for letting Vietnam sort out its own problems.

UPDATE: One more thing. If the Goldberg/Bush answer to what more America could have done to win in Vietnam is more troops, remember that Bush has already said that the war in Vietnam was flawed by its use of a draft.

Tears of a clown

From the Times (UK) about the Sarkozy campaign book by Yasmina Reza --

In Washington last autumn Mr Sarkozy received revealing advice from Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador whom he has appointed as his security adviser. When meeting President Bush, he should do as Mrs Merkel and show friendship, Mr Levitte said. “You will find him strong and welcoming but behind the façade you will find a man in a state of distress.”

Pre-emptive debunking

Later on Wednesday, George Bush is going to give a speech (link) to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Kansas City Missouri comparing Iraq to Vietnam and in particular the events that followed US withdrawal from Vietnam with a claim for what would follow with a withdrawal from Iraq.

Audience members and/or the press corps will presumably be ready with the following points --

US engagement in Vietnam was motivated by a theory of global retreat if it wasn't there, specifically that Communism would take over the region and the world. That didn't happen. The entire region is now de facto capitalist.

US withdrawal was opposed on the grounds that Vietnam would implode if it left. It didn't. Bush himself went on a harmonious visit there last year.

There was genocide in Cambodia following the US departure from Vietnam. But this was a consequence of military strategies pursued by the US while it was still fighting the Vietnam war, which weakened the government of Cambodia. Had the US gotten out sooner, or never taken the baton from the French in the first place, it's hard to argue that the Khmer Rouge would still have happened.

And, by the way, the US supported the Khmer Rouge and punished Vietnam for getting rid of them.

August shouldn't be an opportunity for bogus historical analogies to get a free pass.

UPDATE: Based on the White House Fact (sic) Sheet for the speech, it will also argue that Vietnam war opponents enabled al Qaeda --

Some Argue That Our Withdrawal From Vietnam Carried No Price To American Credibility – But The Terrorists See Things Differently. In an interview with a Pakistani paper after the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. They must do the same today."

The speech is also oblivious to the USSR's role as an ally in World War II.

Projection

George Bush just now (at the Montebello QC press conference) condemned a style of politics where some people

lay out a conspiracy and try to force people to prove it doesn't exist

Er... Osama, Saddam, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, al-Qaeda (/in Iraq), Iraq, Hamas etc?

UPDATE: Here's the full quote --

And I'm amused by some of the speculation, some of the old -- you can call them political scare tactics. If you've been in politics as long as I have, you get used to that kind of technique where you lay out a conspiracy and then force people to try to prove it doesn't exist. That's just the way some people operate.

[The context was claims that the countries are working towards excessive integration; all three leaders chose to deal with the most outlandish versions of the theory i..e. a North American superstate]

Dublin in the rare old times

Ormond Quay then: one of the dowdier northside quays.

Ormond Quay now: an unregulated Dublin-based conduit/pass-through off-balance sheet vehicle of German bank Sachsen LB with €12.57 billion in assets as of June 30 of which residential mortgages are €7.09 billion, all financed through lower yielding commercial paper against assets which are now potentially seriously impaired.

But that doesn't matter because it has a cool Irish name.

UPDATE: There was also a George's Quay. At least in that case they were looking out the window of the International Financial Services Centre at it.

The oldest scapegoat

The White House press briefer explaining why it just so happens that the testimony of General David Petraeus to Congress about the continuation of The Surge will take place on 9/11/2007 --

MR. JOHNDROE: Yes. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will testify in open hearings on the Hill. Administration officials are reaching out to Hill leadership today to discuss with them the potential dates for that testimony. Given the tight schedule leading up to September 15th and the congressional recess with Rosh Hashanah coming up, the likely dates for testimony are September 11th and 12th.

Q That's really just because of the tight schedule and not because it's September 11th?

MR. JOHNDROE: That's right. Congress is not -- as of right now, based on the last we checked, Congress is not in session because of the Rosh Hashanah holiday, very much the week leading up to that Saturday, September 15th.

Canada is a very wide country

Here's a tale doing the rounds of the right-wing blogs. A woman in Calgary was pregnant with quadruplets. Labour began early and it was determined that the hospital best equipped to deal with the situation was in Montana, which is about 300 miles away. The issue was the need to have 4 spare neo-natal intensive care (NIC) beds available at once. The babies were delivered successfully and are now back in Canada.

Hence it's worth having a healthcare system that leaves about 15 percent of population uninsured and inserts a massively expensive bureaucracy -- insurance companies -- between the other 85 percent and whatever healthcare they need.

That apparently is meant to be point of the tale. Here are the latest OECD statistics on total healthcare spending as a share of GDP. See Chart 3. The US spends 15.3 percent. Canada 9.8 percent. That's a 5.5 percent difference, which is huge. You could run a long messy war on that amount of money. And, apparently, it's all worth it if you keep a bit of spare capacity in neo-natal intensive care units -- all for the highly unlikely event of quadruplets.

And there's a lot they're not telling us. For instance, what are the odds that a major city hospital in the US would have had 4 spare NIC beds? So the issue is demand as well as supply. What percentage of the Montana hospital's business comes from the US government? And think of how many extra NIC beds they could have if so much of patient spending on healthcare wasn't going to support the administrative expenses of insurance companies.

Incidentally, all the expenses of the quads birth in the US were paid by the public Calgary Heath Region, meaning that the family didn't have to deal with getting the intensive care pre-approved by an insurance company -- or the experience of getting a massive bill if they didn't get pre-approval.

Finally, illustrating the sad spectacle that is right-wing argumentation these days, the comment thread on the original propagator of the story, Don Surber, soon attracted complainers wondering whether the US government had paid for illegal immigrant births, who would then be citizens. Apparently the extra hospital capacity is worth 5.5 percent of GDP, but not 4 extra citizens from up north.

UPDATE: The Surber comment thread continues to be good for a laugh. Some of them don't understand that the size of a city affects the demand as well as the supply of healthcare facilities -- especially in the context of the oil boom in Alberta. And God forbid anyone bring up the statistical theory associated with arrival processes and whether it's optimal to carry excess capacity for low probability events. By the way, the provision of healthcare across national boundaries in scarce event cases happens in Europe, the land of socialised medicine, every so often.

Proof that Cheney is in charge

On a day when he might be issuing statements about the earthquake in Peru or volatile financial markets, or Iraq, George Bush finds time on his holidays to issue an executive order --

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Purpose. The purpose of this order is to direct Federal agencies that have programs and activities that have a measurable effect on public land management, outdoor recreation, and wildlife management, including the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, to facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat.

Sec. 2. Federal Activities. Federal agencies shall, consistent with agency missions:

(a) Evaluate the effect of agency actions on trends in hunting participation and, where appropriate to address declining trends, implement actions that expand and enhance hunting opportunities for the public;

And it goes on from there. Basically a recipe for guns blazing on public land. Is this one last Rovian nod to the base?

Dublin's real crisis

It's been hard to get Dublin-based people too worked up about Shannon airport losing its Heathrow landing slots to Belfast. But now those cute northerners have found a new niche that's much more likely to provoke outrage --

The Swedish furniture retailer, IKEA, has confirmed that its first store on the island of Ireland will open outside Belfast this year

The 29,000sq.ft store on the outskirts of east Belfast will open its doors on 13 December.

There are plans for a second IKEA store in the Dublin area, but it is unclear when construction of it will begin.

It'll be an interesting test to see the alacrity with which the government is screaming for an expedited planning process for the Dublin store compared to their duck and cover approach to the Shannon crisis.

Operation Prester John

Not that one needed the evidence, but today brings confirmation that the US "sponsors of terrorism" designation is just for any country with whom the US has geopolitical policy disagreements --

The United States is mulling putting Eritrea on the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list, which would impose some U.S. sanctions, for its permitting arms to flow into Somalia, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

"We are looking into it," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer told reporters, saying the United States had been collecting data on whether Eritrea should be on the list. "Frankly, the information so far that we have collected is fairly convincing about their activities ... in Somalia."

Those "activities" in Somalia consist of, at most, supporting one of many clans battling for power in the instability left by an Ethiopian alliance with one grouping, an operation which achieved swift initial success but then failed to impose lasting order. Sound familiar? They're making Eritrea into the Iran of eastern Africa, the scapegoat for their own policy failures in the region.

UPDATE: More here, via Atrios.