Obviously, most Americans are ungrateful, racist, partisan hacks incapable of noticing the economic boom that’s as plain as the noses on their faces:

The Battleground Poll of 1,000 likely voters, sponsored by The George Washington University, found that 56 percent believe economic conditions are getting worse or are poor and staying the same. Asked how anxious they are about current economic conditions, 77 percent of likely voters said they’re very or somewhat worried about the economic climate.

At the White House, some of Obama’s top advisers described conditions as decidedly less bleak, expressing optimism about economic progress during the president’s final two years in office, whether a Republican-led Congress collaborates with him or not.

Hasn’t the stock market been booming for the last few months? Doesn’t that prove that the U. S. economy is in fine shape?

Of course, the stock boom could be explained by everyone else’s economies being in even worse shape than ours. I guess that’s thoughtcrime. The world’s tallest midget as it were. Or maybe all of that prosperity just isn’t trickling down to three quarters of Americans. The ingrates. Serves ’em right.

There’s a wisecrack attributed to V. I. Ulyanov, “Lenin”, that a capitalist will sell you the rope you will use to hang him. The media are full of umbrage over the apparent North Korean hacking of Sony’s film division and the subsequent pulling of an offensive comedy by Seth Rogen and James Franco scheduled for release next week:

The U.S. will have to respond in some way, likely in concert with our ally Japan. (Sony is a Japanese company.) This isn’t just an economic loss for Sony, it’s a threat to all American corporations, businesses and individuals.
Was Sony lax about its cybersecurity? Probably. But the company doesn’t deserve all of the financial losses, class-action lawsuits, and humiliation with which it has been hit.
The truth is that there isn’t any kind of cybersecurity that could keep a company safe from each and every hack.
The Internet was designed for openness, and as the pitfalls of this design become more and more expensive, all Internet users will have to make choices balancing openness with security. Smart security design may be the next big Internet boom — not because consumers demand it, but because businesses do.
As for “The Interview,” we urge Sony to release it for home video, at least. The movie deserves a viewing — and North Korea doesn’t deserve to win this fight.

There appears to be evidence that North Korea was, indeed, behind the hacking and blackmail:

Washington (CNN) — U.S. investigators have evidence that hackers stole the computer credentials of a system administrator to get access to Sony’s computer system, allowing them broad access, U.S. officials briefed on the investigation tell CNN. The finding is one reason why U.S. investigators do not believe the attack on Sony was aided by someone on the inside, the officials tell CNN.
The revelation is part of what is behind the government’s conclusion that hackers operating on behalf of North Korea were responsible. The government is expected to publicly blame the reclusive regime as early as Friday. The hackers ability to gain access to the passwords of a top-level information technology employee allowed them to have “keys to the entire building,” one official said.

and there have been some vague threats of a proportional response. Pat Lang has some ideas on that subject. In fine Jacksonian form he declaims:

If it is established that the North Korean government and/or its agents attacked Sony then I say, let slip the dogs of cyberwar. Hacking? You like hacking and destructive cyberwar activity? Hah! We will burn your servers into piles of smoldering kimchi !!

My preference would be for the U. S. to offer bounties to people who can produce evidence that they’ve brought down North Korean servers. A sort of market-based system for cyberwarfare.

There’s an irony in the hacking. The U. S. did invent the Internet after all. North Korea’s Internet connections run through China and Russia. Germany hosts servers for North Korea. If we’re not carefully explaining the implications to North Korea’s patrons, we’re making a serious error.

I don’t have as much time to comment on the Obamas’ remarks on their own experiences with racism as I wish I did. I think their relating of their experiences constitutes what somebody or other referred to as a “teachable moment” that I wish more would heed. I’ve seen quite a bit of smirking about them in the right-leaning blogosphere and punditry.

The reality is that many black folk experience events differently than white folk do. I don’t know what happened at Target that day but I have no doubt of the reality that Mrs. Obama experienced it as she said she did—as racism.

Young black men experience their encounters with the police differently than I, an old white man, do even when the same things happen to us. So there are two distinct things going on: some of their encounters with police are actually different from mine and even when our encounters are the same they experience them differently.

One size does not fit all. There’s no single solution to both of these issues and both need to be addressed.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal’s view of the reaction to the hacking of Sony and the subsequent threats is similar to mine:

Capitulating to the threats of North Korea’s department of global propaganda—and the U.S. government now believes Pyongyang was behind the Sony attack—will not be remembered as a profile in Hollywood courage, and will set a precedent for further bullying of a notably weak-kneed industry.

When you’re defending billions of dollars worth of intellectual property, spending a few tens of millions to do it sounds like a pretty good bet to me. That it didn’t to Sony’s management signals that Sony’s motion picture division has a serious management problem. They’ve relied too much on lobbying the federal government as their first line of defense and there are some threats from which the federal government cannot protect them.

The editors of the Washington Post have come out against President Obama’s announced plan of measures to normalize relations with Cuba:

On Wednesday, the Castros suddenly obtained a comprehensive bailout — from the Obama administration. President Obama granted the regime everything on its wish list that was within his power to grant; a full lifting of the trade embargo requires congressional action. Full diplomatic relations will be established, Cuba’s place on the list of terrorism sponsors reviewed and restrictions lifted on U.S. investment and most travel to Cuba. That liberalization will provide Havana with a fresh source of desperately needed hard currency and eliminate U.S. leverage for political reforms.

As part of the bargain, Havana released Alan Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development contractor who was unjustly imprisoned five years ago for trying to help Cuban Jews. Also freed was an unidentified U.S. intelligence agent in Cuba — as were three Cuban spies who had been convicted of operations in Florida that led to Cuba’s 1996 shootdown of a plane carrying anti-Castro activists. While Mr. Obama sought to portray Mr. Gross’s release as unrelated to the spy swap, there can be no question that Cuba’s hard-line intelligence apparatus obtained exactly what it sought when it made Mr. Gross a de facto hostage.

[…]

The Vietnam outcome is what the Castros are counting on: a flood of U.S. tourists and business investment that will allow the regime to maintain its totalitarian system indefinitely. Mr. Obama may claim that he has dismantled a 50-year-old failed policy; what he has really done is give a 50-year-old failed regime a new lease on life.

The experience with China should be enough to call the notion that political and economic relations will necessarily impel political reforms, an argument I’ve been seeing quite a bit of lately.

I’ve thought that we should be normalizing trade relations with Cuba for decades. I guess time will tell just how significant President Obama’s announcement will be. There isn’t a great deal that the president can do without Congressional cooperation. He can announce it and he can direct State Department personnel to go there but he can’t fund an embassy or consulate in Cuba and he can’t liberalize trade with Cuba without cooperation from the Congress.

We’ll see whether the whole thing is just a photo op or not. This move is another example of something I’ve criticized the president for in the past: he’s not laying the groundwork for future progress. Poking a stick in the bull’s eye is not a good way to encourage cooperation from the bull.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal make a good point:

We should stipulate that 20 years ago these columns called for lifting the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. We did so to assist the impoverished Cuban people and perhaps undermine the regime.

But we also stressed that “no U.S officials have to dignify Castro’s regime by sitting down at a negotiating table” with Cuban officials: “The whole point is to continue to oppose Castro’s government while allowing succor for Cuba’s people.” Mr. Obama’s approach will provide immediate succor to the Castro government in the hope of eventually helping the Cuban people.

Photo ops are easy. Diplomacy, especially diplomacy that actually advances your interests, is hard.

You can block the release of a major motion picture using tools you probably have around the house. Just

1. Hack into the computers of the studio who made the picture. It’s easy. They don’t do much to prevent it.
2. Release some embarrassing information about the studio and its execs. There will be plenty of it. And you can get your very own copies of movies that haven’t even been released!
3. Send some vaguely worded threats in broken English.

And before you can say “Pink Flamingos” the movie will be withdrawn!

I’m guessing this is a pretty good time to be a sales rep for a company selling security solutions and a pretty bad time to be a studio exec. Under the circumstances I suspect that this will not turn out to be a loss that’s covered by insurance although it will probably be litigated for years. Which means it’s a pretty good time to be a lawyer who works for motion picture studios, too.

It certainly sets an intriguing precedent. It’s hard to think of a movie that’s been made over the period of the last half century that hasn’t offended somebody.

Update

You can even prevent movies from being made:

XCLUSIVE: The chilling effect of the Sony Pictures hack and terrorist threats against The Interview are reverberating. New Regency has scrapped another project that was to be set in North Korea. The untitled thriller, set up in October, was being developed by director Gore Verbinski as a star vehicle for Foxcatcher star Steve Carell. The paranoid thriller written by Steve Conrad was going to start production in March. Insiders tell me that under the current circumstances, it just makes no sense to move forward. The location won’t be transplanted. Fox declined to distribute it, per a spokesman.

The people of Pakistan and, indeed, the world have been horrified by the recent Taliban attack targeting schoolchildren that has taken place there. The editors of the Washington Post remark:

It was, as President Obama said in a statement, a “heinous” act that underscored the “depravity” of the Taliban, who deliberately targeted children in the first through 10th grades at a military-sponsored institution. No hostages were taken: The attackers’ sole aim was to murder as many youngsters as possible. It was the bloodiest terrorist attack in Pakistan since 2007, one that was meant to derail modest but real progress by the army and government in fighting extremism.

However, their closing statement:

Tuesday’s horrific attack should prompt Pakistan’s leaders to take steps that are still needed to effectively defend the country. Prime Minister Sharif and his army commander must cooperate more closely; the prime minister should beef up a new counterterrorism authority and draw the military into it. Gen. Sharif should deliver on his words in Washington by acting against all extremist groups, including those that have conducted terrorist attacks against India.

The slaughtered children in Peshawar underline a truth that Pakistan’s elite have been slow to fully accept: Islamic jihadism poses a mortal threat to the nation. The best response to the atrocity would be for the army and government to join in an uncompromising campaign against the terrorists.

reminds me of nothing so much as one of those cartoons that used to appear in the newspapers caption “How many things can you find wrong with this picture?”

Let’s list a few. Pakistan isn’t a nation. It’s a place on the map set aside for Indians who demanded religious monoculture. Here’s Pat Lang’s decription:

Pakistan was always a bad idea. It is an artificial state created out of the flanks of the equally artificial British Indian empire, a state summoned into being on the basis of Muslim aversion to a shared existence with the Hindu kuffar. British weariness and exhaustion after the trauma and bleeding of the two world wars set the stage for the creation of a country based on an IDEAL of religious communal exclusivity.

Long ago I read a description of Pakistan that rang true to me: Somalia is a country without a government; Pakistan is a government without a country. The Islamabad government doesn’t even really try to bring the northern or northwest portions of the country (the seat of the Pakistani Taliban) under its control and never has. The southern and southwestern parts of the country have been engaged in a simmering civil war against the Islamabad government for decades. In other words about half the country either ignores the Islamabad government or is in rebellion against it.

Worse yet, Pakistan is a nuclear-armed government without a country.

There is strong evidence that the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, has been supporting the Taliban. That puts us in the surreal situation that the dollars we pay the Pakistani government to allow us to continue fighting in Afghanistan go to support the Taliban whom we are notionally fighting. The drone war we’re waging in Pakistan is mostly against the Pakistani Taliban which doesn’t threaten us but does threaten the Islamabad government.

The Pakistani Taliban isn’t a cohesive group. It’s an agglomeration of radical Islamists. The slaughter of schoolchildren should serve as a reminder that violent radical Islamists are hostis humani generis—enemies of humankind.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal come closer to the mark:

There is no silver lining to a calamity of this kind, but perhaps this is an opportunity for Pakistanis at every level of society to realize that they will not be safe from terrorism until they stop colluding with terrorists of any stripe, including those fighting for the “liberation” of Indian-held Kashmir.

That means treating the democratic governments in Kabul and New Delhi not as adversaries but as allies in a common struggle, which could usefully begin by rooting out the terrorist hideaways in Pakistan that support the Afghan Taliban in its own barbaric campaigns across the border. It’s worth remembering that the ultimate Islamist goal is to gain control of a state, preferably nuclear-armed, and Pakistan is the most vulnerable and obvious target.

I’m not sure how much credence to place in this op-ed from James Dorn on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth:

In a pioneering study of the link between the growth of government and the wealth of nations, which appeared in the fall 1998 issue of the Cato Journal, economists James Gwartney, Randall Holcombe, and Robert Lawson found that a 10 percentage point increase in government spending as a percentage of GDP decreases real GDP growth by 1 percentage point. Thus, if government spending went from 25 percent of GDP to 35 percent, real GDP growth would slow over the longer term by a full percentage point. They also found that a 10 percentage point increase in the government’s share of GDP lowered private investment by 1.6 percentage points.

I will make two points on the subject.

First, there are things that we want that can only be provided by governments. A legal system. Law enforcement. National security. A sound currency. I believe that only fools want to do away with government entirely but the question brings us back to the Goldilocks game: how much is just right? I feel confident in suggesting that as economic growth slows, more government becomes increasingly difficult to afford.

Second, I think there’s a difference between government as such and the regulatory state. How do you measure the effectiveness of a the regulatory state? What is its output? Obviously, regulations. And an effect of regulations is to slow economic growth.

I would suggest that one good measure of the effectiveness of the regulatory state is how much it slows economic growth. And there is a point at which slowing economic growth is a luxury too dear to afford.

While it is possible to imagine a different sort of regulatory state and it is perhaps true that we need a different sort of regulatory state, I think that’s the sort of regulatory state we have.

It is the time of the year for best lists, worst list, most notable lists, etc. RealClearScience produces its list of the worst examples of junk science for the year 2014. It’s a pretty broad field. I’m not sure how they narrow it down.

If you’ve seen any good, bad, or weird best/worst/most notable lists, please leave them in the comments.