December 2015 – Ramparts of Civilization

December 20, 2015December 20, 2015

Impressions

The year in review - the year going forward image batangamedia.com — **The year in review – the year going forward** image batangamedia.com

The end of the year and the beginning of another always brings a group of lists. The ten best, the ten worst, the biggest trends, the new year’s resolutions, the people who have left us. The one predictable thing about doing lists that predict future events in the year to come is that they are almost always uniformly wrong. Our best understanding doesn’t remotely approach the effect of unknown forces, inventions, human responses and the ignorance of actions that truly define what happens. We can look back and chuckle at our awkward expert ‘nonsense’ when placed against the reality of outcome. Pollster Frank Luntz, who is still churning data through focus groups in 2015, predicted in 2002 that the inevitable democrat party nominee to challenge George W. Bush for the presidency would be “Tom Daschle, Senate majority leader”. Tom Daschle who? Noble Prize for economics winner Paul Krugman, persisting as an outstandingly wrong way prognosticator for the New York Times, put forth this whopper in 1998:

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in “Metcalfe’s law”–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

The predictions regarding science and innovation are particularly spurious. Take Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold’s 1997 statement that “Apple as a company is already dead.” Apple of course is now worth three times the value of Microsoft.

Those of you who think the climate forecast can be accurately predicted a hundred years from now, might remember the 1970 Earth day predictions of University of California Davis Ecologist Kenneth Watt:

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Not exactly, Kenneth. But, in fairness, even Nostradamus didn’t get it all right. So, Ramparts is too smart by half to suggest the future, but it is fun perhaps to describe some impressions and directions and see what happens – if we prove right, we told you so; if wrong, we can at least claim to be as clairvoyant as a Noble Prize winner like Krugman.

Trump-mania will be a spent force : This is a dangerous impression to start with, if our credibility is at stake. The polls would suggest the Donald Trump as a political force continues to grow ever more so and all attempts to derail have simply strengthened him. But actual elections are why we do not have a President Giuliani, Glenn, Connally, or Hillary Clinton 2008. Trump’s major weakness as a political figure versus political celebrity is Trump. His strength from day one has been his steadfastness as an anti-immigration candidate, and it will be his downfall. Trump, to stay consistent, has had to throw ever wider circles around his anti-immigration invectives that started as reasonable, if infeasible stands regarding the southern border, into progressively ludicrous statements regarding, well just about everything. Bellicosity works when you are convincing those who need no convincing, but as the field of competitors progressively narrows and you need to convince the skeptical voter, the ignorant, conflicting statements you espouse become a progressive problem. Trump needs victories or second place finishes in Iowa or New Hampshire, or bellicosity rapidly becomes a spent force.

2016 will be the ‘hottest’ year on record: It is the last year of the Obama administration and almost all the legacies, from Obamacare to World Peace, are coming to an ignominious collapse. The final legacy is global warming and the billions of dollars linked to securing this legacy demands that no matter what the weather, the measured year temperature will have to be the hottest ever. The industry of settled science demands the narrative be preserved, and so it will be. Put your thermostats away, next year’s temperature is already known, and it ain’t going to be reported going down.

Attendance at major sports venues will be trending down: Big sports and big money have permanently bonded and the direction is ominous for the entertainment value of sports. Ticket prices continue to climb, team loyalty is drying up as teams are leaving for far more economic markets, and television access for the average fan will soon be pay only. Instant replay is killing sorts spontaneity and sports as an omnivorous consumer of are youth is creeping down to the middle school level. When the venue becomes contrived, and the outcome progressively economically determined, sitting in the stands will be a thing of the past. Why bother to freeze to death, when your team has no chance and the game ticket costs a week of salary? If the teams’ make money, whether you are there or not, the die is cast. The money will not be made on tickets supporting your team, but progressively on the internet fantasy teams. Why be committed to a team when everyone’s players can be on your team?

Europe, America, and Russia will all see at least one major terrorist incident: This impression is one of the sadder, but easier, ones. Europe and America are still enthralled with the concept of Frances Fukuyama’s End of History argument and the tragedies that have befallen them since are predictable in that history does not suffer denial easily. Unfortunately, when it comes to philosophic world views, Huntington’s the Clash of Civilizations looks like the more insightful recognition of the world around us. Until the liberal democracies wake up to the threat building against them, they will be vulnerable and prone to the next outburst, and it won’t be a little one. Russia will suffer its tragedy because it is overextended as a world enforcer, at the precise time the homeland is vulnerable and weak, buffeted by stratospherically low energy prices that are the primary nutrient to its one asset economy. Putin’s need to appear invulnerable will only increase his vulnerability. Unfortunately, I think 2016 will be a good year for the bad guy.

The Arab Winter will claim at least one more government – Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia: Admittedly this is the most ‘out there’ impression, but the pattern has been established. The Arab Spring was the hope of the Middle East joining the modern world, but the early momentum collapsed into the dangerous chaos of the Arab Winter currently fanning out from the calamity in Syria. The ugly stepchild of the Arab Spring, ISIS, now threatens its Sunni providers in Saudi Arabia, and with the stalemate in Yemen and the collapse of oil prices, the sheiks are in a progressively intolerable vice. Their response to the absent American presence has been to build a league of 37 Sunni nations to ‘defeat terrorism’, but it is really pointed at their sworn enemy Iran, and one wonders if the forward projection will make them vulnerable from within. Jordan lives as long as Saudi Arabia can support it, and Egypt is at the same mercy. If the there is no American support, the edifice of power will likely collapse from within in one or more of these countries, and the Middle East will become an even more unstable place (if that’s possible).

The strong foreign policy candidate will win the 2016 American presidential election: The Trump phenomena reveals a progressive uneasiness in America regarding the future, and, God forbid, a significant terrorist event were to occur, that would seal the deal.The world abhors a vacuum and President Obama’s obsessive need to reduce America to an also ran, puts us squarely in the sites of those who would do us harm. The need for Hillary Clinton to tie herself to this progressively vulnerable foreign policy position will be her undoing, and it won’t be close if trouble occurs.

If Republicans do not win the Presidency, the party will split and cease as a national party: The wins of 2010 to gain the house and 2014 to gain the Senate have reflected back as a complete waste of effort to the conservative voter. The national party runs afraid of looking obstructionist and proved it again with a calamitous budget agreement that secured for President Obama and large business interests everything they wanted. The final strike of losing the Presidential election will be the third strike, and conservatives will never again associate themselves with a party of spending apologists. The threat that three parties will never knock the liberal agenda from power will be immaterial; the national Republican agenda has no respect for its base, and this with a loss, will be finally and justly reciprocated.

There I said it. And when you say it on the internet, you say it forever. Hopefully I’m no more accurate then the prognosticators that have had their impressions dashed upon the rocks of history. The negative nature of my future impressions deserve a real rock dashing. There just seems to be a sense that we are just hanging on, waiting for some sign that it is okay to be ourselves again, to be prosperous again, to be spiritual again, to be strong again as Americans. It won’t be under this sad wisp of a President. With a little luck, maybe we can survive his Presidency to thrive again under a truly positive force. America, it’s your last chance. Don’t be fooled by the demagogue or the liar. Anyone else, we got a chance.

December 11, 2015December 13, 2015

Happy Birthday, Frank

The Voice - Frank Sinatra — The Voice – Frank Sinatra

December 12th is the 100th year celebration of the birth of the scrawny kid from Hoboken that for all time is known as the Voice. Ramparts has no intention to achieve some definitive coda to the gift that was Frank Sinatra to the world of song – the event of his centennial birth is bringing forth magnificent tributes that remind all of us the multi decade contribution of a singer that defined music, without ever being able to read a single note of it. For instance, the don’t you dare miss contribution of Mark Steyn, writer extraordinaire who becomes even more extraordinary when he focuses his story telling virtuosity to music. Steyn has spent the past year detailing the wonderful contributions and stories behind Sinatra’s Greatest Hundred Songs(per Steyn). Pick your own hundred favorite songs. There are hundreds to choose from. Sinatra’s treatments transcend almost anybody else’s attempt to define the songs, and ring in our memories whenever we think of them.

They are the epic performances of one of music’s most complicated artists, who brought real meaning to the juxtaposition of true professional — and major pain in the rear. Despite being borne of immigrant surroundings, minimal schooling, and the rawest of vocal training, he proved to be a performance perfectionist with legendary phrasing capabilities and a trinity of voices that included brassy tenor, mellow midrange and vulnerable baritone. Musicians loved to perform with him and arrangers wanted to interpret with him. Almost no one wanted to cross him. A smoker, drinker, and carouser, he treated his musical instrument, his magical voice with impudence, and in the late 1940’s nearly destroyed it forever. The gift recovered, however, and the 1950s and 1960s would prove that the vocal changes occasioned by the period of vocal chord failure made for an even more spectacular interpretive vocalization. Sinatra, doing it his way,

Sinatra was of a time of song interpreters, and he was the best. He drew out of Ira Gershwin, Sammy Kahn, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen, and Lorenz Hart and other great lyricists sound images that transformed their best works and raised the lyrics to the level of poetry with his phrasing and word play. When tied to the great arrangers like Nelson Riddle, Billy May and Gordon Jenkins the music evoked real emotions and life enhancement. You may not be able to live the life of Sinatra, but he would help you live yours, in brandishing exuberance for life, the pain of loss, the sensual nature of attraction, and the vulnerable sadness of the memories fading away. The generations of Americans that grew up with him, the adoration Bobby Soxer teenagers of the 40s, the confident young adults of the post WWII America, the on top of the world masculinity of the 60’s, and the chastened and circumspect parents of the 70s all heard in Sinatra the chimes of their own story.

The most powerful memories that define musical Sinatra are the Capitol Record years with a mature Sinatra bringing his own peculiar mix of machismo and vulnerability to a string of albums that flexed between swinging exuberance and the depths of despair. Albums like Come Fly With Me, In the Wee Small Hours, and Nice and Easy. Sinatra knew how to swing better than anyone, and he knew how to breathe better than anyone, and it made both up tempo and extended ballads ring with peerless excellence. He studied the lyrics and poured over the arrangements until they achieved a synthesis he could be happy with, and given his sense of accomplishment of task was achieved at a level that few could match, for that, we will always be eternally grateful.

A performer always, he lingered in the 1980s and 1990s beyond what his vocal gift could bear, and the later performances are often gruff and at times, forgettable. But even late in life he could summon up greatness, in the life defining song My Way, or the late hit New York, New York. In the final years, he might botch a lyric or forget a stanza, but he would pick himself off the mat and become Sinatra for at least one or two songs, and the audiences adored him.

Then again, we are all the sum of our best memories and Sinatra, at his best, made life seem just a little special. The Sinatra of the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of his vocal powers could crackle and sizzle like the ebullient and confident American Century he epitomized, and helped us feel there was a natural order to our optimism. Given our current funk, Sinatra would grab us and shake us, until we woke up and got it back together. Emoting the words of Dean Kay, Sinatra would have set us right…

That’s Life
That’s what all the people say
You’re ridin’ high in April
Shot down in May
But I know I’m gonna change that tune
When I’m right back up on top in June…

Happy Birthday, Frank

December 6, 2015

Saving the World : 2 Degrees Celsius

COP 21 - Paris Global Climate Conference 2015 photp : 24heuresactu.com — COP 21 – Paris Global Climate Conference 2015
photo : 24heuresactu.com

The world is meeting in Paris to discuss great threats to world stability and civilization, and it has nothing to do with the ongoing calamity in Syria, or the recent slaughters in Paris or San Bernardino. The enemy is temperature – specifically rising temperatures – and the red line that the civilized world is willing to stand behind, to marshal all its resources, to form the greatest coalition the world has ever known to defeat the agreed upon greatest threat to the world we have known – is two degrees Celsius. Climate change in all its described forms has progressively flexed its muscles the last 30 years on the concept of global warming, and the assurance that despite the multiple thousands of periods of global warming intervals in the past, this period of warming is special, human caused, and inexorable. According to the missal, the world is warming out of proportion to every other climatic period, and the selected point of no return is 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The solution is to be government mandated regulation to save us from ourselves, and will require the greatest redistribution of wealth from private individuals to government coffers ever known.

The warmist in chief is the President of the United States, who has determined that the trends in warming are responsible for such defuse events as drought, hurricanes, economic downturns, and even terrorism.

“What we know is that — as human beings are placed under strain, then bad things happen,” Obama told CBS Friday. “And, you know, if you look at world history, whenever people are desperate, when people start lacking food, when people — are not able to make a living or take care of their families — that’s when ideologies arise that are dangerous.” – President Obama

The collected mass of sycophants in Paris will battle the rest of us who wish the world’s destruction by willing the world to accept the settled science. CO2, the trace gas, is the underlying satanic culprit having increased measurably over the last 100 years from the high two hundreds to 400 parts per million. CO2 of course is problematic in that it is an essential gas, critical to all living plants securing the means of making sugars through the process of photosynthesis making as byproducts oxygen and water, essential for all living animals. It is unfashionable however in that it is created by the greatest discovery for human individualism ever known, the identification of the byproduct of hundreds of millions of years of decaying organic matter forming carbon fuels. Carbon fuels have permitted the capacity of humans to live in hostile environments, develop economic vitality, achieve individual comfort, create fantastic inventions in transportation, plastics, medicine, and information that have forever changed the world. What carbon has done that can not be forgiven for, is creating a world of individual choice and initiative, and therefore, variation in outcomes between peoples. This has proved more potent than any of the egalitarian philosophies meant to defeat individual choice, fascism, communism, and religious totalitarianism.

The final weapon available to the statists is to declare all the usual weapons of freedom, common sense, objective fact, and circumspection inviolate. Despite the highly questionable sources of temperature measurement and the unfortunate lack of measurable warming over the past 18 years, now cloyingly referred to as the global warming hiatus, the continued alarm demands the painting of a future of sea levels 5 to 7 feet over current, massive droughts and increased weather severity, starvation, and wars. It is the language of religious revelation, defining man as an original sinner that unless deflected from his sinful course, will invite the coming of the Apocalypse, engaging the end of man. This was according to the prophet Al Gore, to have happened by 2015, but the prophecy has had to be discarded to a later date, because the climate did not cooperate with the alarmist projections. So now the red line, the projected timeline is 2050, with the world by changing its entire economic and political conceptualization, will slow the current warming of 0.89 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years under the arbitrary tipping point of 2 degrees Celsius.

The statists came close to grabbing global economic power with the 1995 Kyoto treaty, but the ludicrous goals proved too onerous for established economies, and emerging nations saw it for what it was, a removal of their individual striving and improvement. Every several years another attempt to own the future presents with massive governmental participation in world conferences, and now we have Paris. The rational development of strategies for cleaning water, cleaner air, and efficient management of resources is not on the docket. It is the need to own the future, and President Obama, so visibly deficient in managing every other tidal historical force, will go to the wall to own this future with the other statists who find the present world an untidy caldron of individualism, inequities, and uncontrollable initiative.

The statists never quit, until they own your future, and they will change the narrative until you believe, and finally submit.