The World of Foo

This isn't science...

2011-06-22T23:42:00.000-07:00

Little bits at a time, I make my way through Gore's 'article'. It's hard to keep my lunch down.

Comparing skepticism in his beliefs/opinions/'facts' to racism...what is this, amateur hour? Encouraging people who know nothing to be abrasive and/or abusive in every day life? Thanks a lot.
The entire *problem* of 'global warming' is that people who don't know what the heck they're talking about express their opinions as fact.
This is a question for legislators, not a question for activists. We have a *representative* democracy for this very purpose.
If I have a problem that's difficult to understand (effects of pollution on climate *definitely* fits here), I convince lawmakers. If I can't convince them myself, I find scientists those lawmakers trust (who *can* understand the issues) and have those scientists convince the lawmakers.

I *don't* take my case to the ignorant public, because then I'm just attempting to manipulate the public (who has *no* way to evaluate for themselves whether I'm right) into serving my purpose.

At *no* time should scientists (of which Gore admittedly isn't one, but he seems to like playing one on TV) suggest that people stop thinking for themselves. That is exactly the opposite of science.

It's guys like Gore who get students in my class to fish for statements from me supporting global warming. When I tell them that I had reviewed what their physics textbook says about the matter and that I agree with everything said there and would say no more ... they shake their heads in disbelief and disappointment. Why would they do this?????? Maybe the textbook is a little to honest about it, but this isn't religion. It's a regime of thought which is completely orthogonal to faith. In science we require publicly provable evidence and reject ideas which are not openly and reproducibly falsifiable.

I honestly don't feel competent to give an opinion on whether global warming is man made.
I'm not even sure I know enough to be anything other than 'lay-scientist skeptical'.
I've reviewed a lot of what people have said, but my niche was laser-plasma interactions, not atmospheric sciences.
I could spend probably less than a year reviewing literature and come up with an informed opinion on the subject, but only if I dedicated a serious amount of time to it.
I'm completely floored by the sacred cow that global warming has become.

It's just incredible that people would follow Gore's advice here. Yet they do. It's not science, it's bullying.

So how can we make it happen? How can we as individuals make a difference? In five basic ways:
First, become a committed advocate for solving the crisis. You can start with something simple: Speak up whenever the subject of climate arises. When a friend or acquaintance expresses doubt that the crisis is real, or that it's some sort of hoax, don't let the opportunity pass to put down your personal marker. The civil rights revolution may have been driven by activists who put their lives on the line, but it was partly won by average Americans who began to challenge racist comments in everyday conversations.

Osama Bin Laden, Rest In Peace

2011-05-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

America eliminated an enormous threat today with the killing of Osama Bin Laden, who was perhaps the most vile person to live since Adolf Hitler.

We really don't know his story, past, present, or future, or what really turned him to his evil path.
We don't really celebrate his death but we celebrate a new freedom from fear.
Perhaps we shouldn't have been fearful, but outside that ideal world, we really were afraid.
Bin Laden's death doesn't completely remove that fear, but it greatly lessens it, and that is reason to celebrate.

Perhaps if I'd lost family members in 9/11, this would be titled "Osama Bin Laden, Rot In Hell", but I would hope not.

The best part of this, is that my children and their generation will not have to deal with the spectre of Osama haunting the world from dark places.

Osama said it himself in distinguishing his fanatics from people of the west: "They love life, we love death."

Roughly translated, "Al Qaeda" means "The Base". As such, this quote will never be more apropos: "All your base are belong to us."

obamacare

2010-10-05T22:54:00.000-07:00

Ricardo:
Because it hasn’t in any other developed country in the world?Interestingly, Americans spend less than many other countries on durable medical supplies like eyeglasses, contact lenses, wheelchairs and other such things so I was a bit imprecise in saying the increases were across the board.Long-term care is another big exception.This blog series is essential reading for people who want to understand U.S. health care costs better.

I read through the blog series. An effective statement that we have a higher ratio of health care spending to GDP than Europe + South Korea (this is an accurate portrayal of the data presented?) Talks about some of the difference in costs, but leaves a region of approximately 60% or so of the difference between the US and the EU unexplained. I was personally glad to see medical malpractice addressed.

Over all, I agree, but why? I think much of this is because a) we have shifting priorities food+shelter --> health and b) we consider health care 'free'.
Had a kid recently. Did we shop around for a best fit in price and reputation of hospitals? No. We went to the best one in the area. Why? Because employer-provided health insurance covered it.

In both socialized and private-insurance healthcare systems, there is a disconnect between those most directly paying for the goods and services and those consuming. This throws market forces completely out of whack as no individuals are being asked to see how spending hits the bottom line.

This is further exacerbated by not even making a consumer directly pay for the health insurance (which is paying for the goods and services), so consumers are removed from decision-making by multiple indirections.

If Obamacare shifted employer health insurance tax benefits to the consumer while trying to solve the insurance availability issue in some other way, I'd probably be more supportive. At least then, even though insurers don't really care about the costs of goods and services (they can often pass it along so long as there's enough regulation preventing competition), at least the consumer cares about the cost of the insurance. Right now, how much people pay for health insurance gets decided by some HR exec and actual consumers can only see it *extremely* indirectly as a hit or bonus to his/her salary.

In this case, we're trying to invoke the 'hidden hand' by gouging our own eyes out and saying "I can't see the hand, therefore it must be hidden"

things you wouldn't see on LGF two years ago

2010-09-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

"Al Qaeda and their fellow travelers, on the other hand, may be able to commit mass murder, but they do not have the capability to pose a serious threat to America’s existence."

Umm... this is in the context of discussing a nuclear terrorist attack on US soil.
I think that is an existential threat whether we like it or not.
There may be Americans who survive nuclear terrorism, but the U.S.A. may not.

Mexico vs. Iraq

2010-06-16T09:17:00.001-07:00

23,000 claimed killed in government-vs-drug-cartel violence since 'late 2006'.
A quick run through icasualies.org number gives 30,000 killed since Oct. 2006.

The difference is, 2007 was the high water mark for violence in Iraq.

Going to Mexico? Might as well be vacationing in Iraq.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100616/D9GCAVCO0.html

The False Economics of Child Care

2010-05-13T00:48:00.000-07:00

What is child care?
The delegation of responsibility of raising your child to another.

When is child care good?
- When provided by a grandparent, aunt or uncle on a limited time basis.
- When provided by a quality babysitter on a *very* limited time basis.

Where is the false economy?
Dad works full time, pulls in $70K/year. With an additional $50K/year, the family could move to a larger house which better suits the needs of the children. Mom's salary, $70K/year, minus child care costs of $20K/year, leaves the extra $50K/year needed to get that house.

But are children better suited to day-care and the bigger or better house?
How is that $20K/year for child care costs arrived at?
- Economies of scale. Instead of one mom watching three children, one pseudo-mom watches 5, 10, or 20 children.
- Does a child need more than 1/5th of a pseudo-mom at all times?

Economic model validating stay-at-home parent:
- How much would it cost for a 1:3 care/child ratio per annum, which would at least provide adult/child ratios equal to stay-at-home parent?
- What is the cost of motivating a child care employee to provide attention approximating that of a parent?
- Why spend so much of your life seeking the spouse who will properly help raise your children if you're just going to send that person out to plow the fields and subcontract out the child raising anyways?
- Why should your spouse have gone to university and achieved degrees and whatever professional accomplishments if those are not primarily purposed to rear your children in your spouse's likeness?
- I spent all this time and trouble to marry a brilliant spouse with an advanced degree, and then I'll hire a GED or AA graduate to teach my children the skills they need?

Day care makes absolutely no sense!
Drop the second job!
Get the smaller house!
Buy the domestic car!
Live in the mainstream school district!
Eat the chuck roast instead of the NY strip!
Guests can stay on the couch, they don't *need* their own room!
Keep your kids close!

Apple's silliness.

2010-04-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

Dunno... I read Jobs' letter... basically he lays it out as being to Apple's competitive advantage not to allow 3rd party software development tools on their platform.
I don't know why he bothered to write the letter, because that's what all the pundits are saying already.

The best part:

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on "rollovers", which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple's revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn't use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Yes indeed, People's Commissar Jobs. I see no reason why developers shouldn't rewrite all their flash programs in HTML5/CSS/JavaScript either! The Committee has decided that your "mouse drawback" requires the forfeiture of all 3rd party software development tools. It is good of you to begin enforcement of this on behalf of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Cupertino.

Seriously... I can't see how he can expect anybody to buy this crap as though it's some sort of objective opinion. We may all agree that HTML5/CSS/JavaScript *is* better than flash (I think I agree with that at least), but on platforms outside of Apple there is room for a difference of opinion on what's the best way to develop software.

I guess I really dislike it when somebody writes an article from a supposedly objective viewpoint even though he/she has an *enormous* conflict of interest. And it still annoys me even when they acknowledge the conflict of interest (which Jobs doesn't). If Apple needed the market share, Flash would be on the iPhone tomorrow. Jobs should just shut up and let the other people write the opinion crap.

Anybody wanna start writing an objective C compiler/engine for android? Put that out and I'm guessing there will be a convenient new clause added to the Apple developer license. :)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20003742-264.html

please step away from the calculator

2010-04-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

More nonsense statistics hoping to prove something useless. My problem with this comes in the bar graph... which displays what appears to be a shocking difference in IQ between those who are religious and those who are not.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201004/why-atheists-are-more-intelligent-the-religious

... but then I think... why is the y-axis for this graph chosen at '96-104'?

... well, it captures the data I guess... and the claimed error bars...
but why not start at '97'? that would make the difference look even more magnified in the graph.

From a brief look on our internets... one standard deviation in IQ is approximated by about 16 IQ points.... so now we need to envision this data plotted on a y-axis of *at least* 80-120 to get any sense of the scope of differentiation the data is actually meant to convey. Now place normal distributions on top of each data point with a standard deviation of 16... and bang, any differentiation is completely washed out in any reasonably scientific data analysis.

"there are lies... damn lies... and then statistics..." as they say.

UPDATE:
Sorry... I just couldn't help it...

health care (incomplete)

2010-02-27T10:09:00.001-08:00

While this whole health insurance babble keeps getting more and more heated, I don't really understand what the issue is.
I'm going to take the 'insurance' part out of this, because the root of high cost of 'insurance' is the high cost of provision.
Insurance basically just smooths over the differences between people, so instead of one person paying nothing for health care his whole life because he's healthy and another paying $10M because he's not, we combine accounts and divvy things up so the expenditure per person is less 'peaky'.

Either way, insurance cost is generally driven by cost of provisioning. If it's not, then we have something completely different that's screwed up.

So health care costs have been going up. Health care expenses have been taking an increasing portion of people's incomes.
Some are going bankrupt due to having too much money to qualify for poverty care and not enough money to afford the insurance they would prefer. But this is a social problem, not an economic or government problem.

As a society, we are placing a higher and higher value on our health as we become more affluent and are less concerned with the normal trappings of life such as providing food and shelter. How important really is our health when people spend less on health insurance than they do on their car or housing? Whether health insurance is 'affordable' really depends on a) how modern you want your health care to be, b)

does ATT hold time depend on function?

2010-01-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

Hmm.. average hold time... ten minutes.. I'm waiting on 25 minutes... is this because I told the automated guy that I am planning on disconnecting?

Google v. China

2010-01-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

I kinda disagree with this article.... but I kinda disagree with the Bush/Clinton line that trade will just magically open up China.
I would put it more as a matter of trade being like handing China the rope with which it will hang itself.

I'm sure I've harassed you before with my personal opinion that trade with China will develop a domestic bubble there that will put all our bubbles to shame...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e9306da0-0461-11df-8603-00144feabdc0.html

*but*... leading China's government to hang itself isn't done by endorsing their policies of repression, such as what Google and Yahoo have previously been doing. Buy their cheap stuff... outsource outsource... that's all fine... but none of us should have a direct hand in their repression like Google. We need to keep a degree of separation between our economic interests and the chinese government's repression of its people.

yes... buying "Made in China" does indirectly support the regime, but the level of indirection is acceptable... This isn't arbitrary... buying "Made in China" helps the chinese people demand more freedom. Censoring the internet in china does the opposite, and provides a bad example of how companies should interface with totalitarian regimes.

My opinion is that the more we directly assist the chinese government in oppressing its people, the more violent the eventual change of regime.

these toes may need a stepping on

2010-01-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

"If the US participates in an attack on Al Qaeda within Yemen, we'll side with Al Qaeda." that's what these muslim religious leaders are really saying.
They're wrapping it up as a "no foreigners" message, but many of these Al Qaeda people they don't particularly mind having in Yemen are indeed foreigners.
It is a pretty inescapable conclusion from this that these muslim leaders believe Al Qaeda is a legitimate islamic movement. If they didn't, having Al Qaeda operating in Yemen would be pretty much indistinguishable from having US forces in Yemen.
At this point, I think it behooves us to pick a fight with these guys ... *while they're still in Yemen*.

These guys *do* have every right to participate in their local governance without our interference. But they do not have the right to play host to terrorists who are attacking the US from within their borders.

This really isn't about the Yemeni government and the US, this is about the people of Yemen and the US.

It may still make sense to keep our actual soldiers out of it, if the government there really can deal with the situation fairly. But if they're going to go on some murderous Saddam-style purge of their political opponents with our assistance, I'd rather have our forces in there doing the work right.

I think these clerics are really trying to implicitly support Al Qaeda, while attempting to appear mainstream. They've got toes that need to be stepped on right now, so that they mobilize all the idiots that might one day come after us, while they're all still in Yemen and we can bring our military strength to bear on them.

It is my hope that if US forces were necessary in the Yemen conflict, that the people of Yemen would see them for the assistance in driving out Al Qaeda that they are, and ignore the calls of these asinine 'clerics' to fight them.

But I guess the point is, if there is a threat "we're going to attack you", we should act like any rational actor in attempting to preserve ourselves... ie, press our advantage(s) while we still have them. If our massive military technology advantage is outdone by some new technology next year or next decade, we'll be at the mercy of those we could have stopped if we had acted. This isn't a matter of "take it because you can", it's a matter of "take it because its stated objective and intent is to kill you".

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60D12620100114

some people are just so far out to lunch

2009-12-29T12:03:00.001-08:00

You see, the problem of Iranian nukes needs a concerted diplomatic effort backed up by the threat of sanctions.
This guy is just so high on crack I can't see how he can possibly write full sentences.
There is absolutely no way China and Russia are going to support meaningful sanctions (stopping oil) on Iran.
And even if they did, the financial incentives are so enormous that black market deals would be almost guaranteed to render the whole effort useless, like it was with Saddam.
The 'West' has gone the 'diplomacy and sanctions' route for 10+ years now and gotten absolutely nowhere. This route is merely the 'wait until they get the bomb' route with added western complaining.... nothing more.
If there was a will to stop this travesty from happening, it would've been done ten years ago.
I can't believe this trash gets to print, even from a brittish MP.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6907848/There-is-still-time-to-foil-Irans-bomb-plot.html

An idea whose time will come

2009-09-14T14:32:00.001-07:00

Our current conflicts have two problems (among others) which require solutions:
1) We need a better capability of tracking our enemies, whether they are massing for an assault, or simply skulking around planting IEDs for later use against our forces.
2) Our public needs to be involved and support our military in winning these conflicts.

While these two disparate requirements appear far apart, there is a mechanism which could link them together.

One of the most miserable failures in the Iraq war was the inability of the Bush administration to keep the American public on the side of winning the war. Our troops were unparalleled. Our equipment outshone anything in history. Our missions were successful. Yet in the public opinion, we were losing the war right up to the day we won it. How can we reconcile such a dichotomy?

Unfortunately the people of America were never enfranchised into participating in the war to any degree larger than: "support the troops", "continue to consume and pay taxes", and "reelect tough-speaking legislators". The options for someone who wanted to actively and directly help win the war were very few and stiff. You could quit your job and volunteer for the military, but the military wasn't really pleading for help and the administration continuously stated that there were more than enough troops already available.

What we needed in Iraq (and in Afghanistan... and even in Vietnam) was a way for the layperson to assist in actively prosecuting the war. In World War II and prior conflicts, this psychological/social need was provided through a war time economy requiring every worker to 'pitch in' and work long hours to keep tanks and planes rolling off assembly lines. Conflicts including Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan are or were completely lacking a link between average Americans and their every day lives and the successful prosecution of war. It is quite obvious that a public which takes no serious part in executing a war, will quickly tire and turn against it. There is nothing directly and individually invested, so there is nothing lost by defeat. This is readily heard in groups from both sides of the political spectrum decrying each conflict as "This is President X's war!" They are right in some sense, because they haven't directly invested anything into a war, and thus have nothing personally on the line that would be threatened by failure.

Modern peer-to-peer tools have created the opportunity to fix this.

With a network of 24/7 UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) that can be deployed to provide an overview of vast areas of potentially hostile territory, our military is running a deficit in the capability of handling the quantities of data available.

Using modern tools, video coverage provided by UAVs, ULVs, and other reconnaissance tools can be integrated in real time and segmented into tiles for analysis by the lay person, at home, on their computers or TV screens.

As an example, Baghdad is roughly 81 square miles in area. If UAV coverage of Baghdad were universal and tiled appropriately, that 2 billion sq. ft. could be broken down into areas of some 20,000 sq. ft., with each section being streamed to 100,000+ personal computers, at which normal civilians would 'contribute' to the effort by monitoring an extra window on their PC or TV for activity which might look like either massing of forces for an attack, smuggling of weapons, or planting of IEDs.

Some immediate concerns:
- How can enemy agents be prevented from participating and providing false positives or negatives?
This concern is exactly analogous to proofing of peer-to-peer networks against poisoning by false content and stopping email spam. Rating systems, Bayesian filters, feedback mechanisms and many other technologies have proofed such systems well in the past.

- Will civilians be exposed to live footage of combats taking place?
Certainly not. While timeliness of intelligence is essential, providing a few minutes of lag between real time and civilian volunteers will allow a layer of military controllers to dynamically block out an area where there is current combat activity. A few minutes lag in identifying an enemy operative planting an IED is unlikely to lower the value of such intelligence significantly.

- Will enemy agents be able to use this system to locate coalition forces?
In the same way that civilians will be prevented from viewing actual combat action, tiled streams which would show the current location of coalition forces would be automatically removed from the pool available for civilian observation. With enough random tiles available for viewing, and only a small percentage removed due to presence of troops, it would be impossible for the enemy to use either the existence or non-existence of a particular tile to determine the distribution of friendly forces. Beyond this, client systems will not selectively choose tiles, but rather be assigned tiles randomly.

- What will motivate civilians to participate?
A very modest level of patriotism would be sufficient to bootstrap the project. From there, user groups and direct accomplishment awards will continue to motivate people. Campaigns can foster local competitions for who can spot the largest or most important tiles. People may even wear their success rating in the effort on t-shirts. It will be an element of pride to be one of the many volunteering their time and effort to directly assist our troops in prosecuting a war.

- What about genuine false negatives or positives?
Tiled streams can be monitored by more than one end user. When activity is suspected by one user, other users monitoring the same stream will be automatically polled. Upon a threshold of agreement, that stream will be promoted to review by a higher echelon of either experienced, reliably correct users, or actual military review.
False negatives can also be tested by substituting in streams depicting actual activity as a test to determine the capabilities of a particular user in identifying activity of interest. The better a user does under test, the more weight is given to that user's reports either negative or positive.

It is important to not get bogged down solely in the efficacy of the project in hampering the enemy. Much of the total benefit of this program would come simply from an increased level of interest and support for the war among the general populace. Right now, we win the war in the theater of conflict, and only lose the war in politics at home. While this project will deliver useful information in combating insurgencies, the predicted increase in domestic support caused by civilians actively participating in a role that directly supports our military forces would be equal or greater than the benefit of enhanced intelligence.

This technology is available today and attempts to address the larger problem of domestic indifference to solving very important international problems such as the stability of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. This piggybacks on counterinsurgency policy in that several non-state actors have made end runs around the goal of defeating the US, by instead attempting to demoralize the US populace directly through expert manipulation of media resources. Effectively this project would be a counterattack in the media/morale combat space.

more fun with healthcare!

2009-08-31T16:01:00.000-07:00

It's hubris for a president to attempt to rebuild a middle eastern country as a democracy... but it's not for a president to attempt to rebuild the some 1/3 of our economy devoted to health care via government fiat?

I had this odd discussion with a girl who thought that obamacare was necessary because it is 'just sad' that the world's most successful country "can't provide basic health care to its people". After it blew my crazy-fuse, I asked "so you don't think capitalism is a good way to run the health care industry?"... "Oh gosh, no I don't!"... "Well this is something we will not agree upon obviously."

This whole discussion is silly... the goal of socialized health care is *not* to provide better health care to the poor... it's to prevent rich people from getting *better* health care than poor people by account simply of their being rich. I guess this isn't really obvious, but it becomes pretty obvious once you start asking people to provide a definition for 'basic health care'.

I wonder if the only difference between the US military and the military forces of Europe is *exactly* socialized medicine.

tips for housebreaking puppies

2009-08-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

1) punishment has unpredictable results... even if you catch them in the act.

2) corrective actions work *very* well... for example, puppy looks like it will need to pee... take it outside or put it on pee pad.

3) crate crate crate - for the first 3-5 months.. puppies need to *always* be in crates unless it's been less than about 20 minutes since they last did the full double potty duty.... that's *zero* minutes if they've recently eaten. Puppies don't want to pee in their crates (provided the crates are small enough that they can only turn around).

4) puppies have to go *constantly*... and the trick is to always anticipate when they will need to pee and *always* get them where they need to be to pee by the time they need to...

the rest is just magic... consistently getting them to where they need to potty shows them how to do it.. and once they learn to do it.. they don't want to do it any other way.

The infamous XML attribute

2009-08-18T15:31:00.001-07:00

Rules for using attributes in XML:

- never use an attribute for anything but a terminal leaf data node in a tree structure

- never use an attribute if you may require multiple nodes with the same name

- never use an attribute for any indistinct data which may require a context markup or status flag

- never use an attribute for string data requiring a lot of escaping <>" etc..

- always use an attribute instead of a text node!

why the focus on exact correctness in computing?

2009-08-18T14:31:00.001-07:00

I think a lot of people are missing the point on correct vs. probably correct computing.

In an interview with Google, I was asked to compile a 'top-1-million' most frequently found strings from terabytes of data.

I really wanted to poll the data at random until I had a sufficient accuracy to say that I knew what the top 1-million strings were. There was an obsession on counting each and every string, beyond mathematical necessity.

Really we should be looking for an accuracy on the order of the probability of computation error.

A probabilistic method could be both faster *and* more accurate. Try telling that to a brick wall called Google.

Health care too important to have 'cost control'

2009-08-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

I'm getting tired of this stupid point:

"I don't want my health care rationed... and that's what will come of this plan."

"This plan will not ration health care.."

"Let's not play games... the government will have to choose allocation schemes for limited health care funds."

"Okay fine... but we're already doing that... it's just up to private insurers right now!"

I've heard this refrain many times now... but currently our health care is only 'rationed' in the same sense that food or housing are rationed. Yes.. you pay for it. If this isn't the opposite of 'rationing', then I really don't know what is.

I was ambivalent about the proffered massive health care reorganization before.. but now I'm back to square one with "show me it's broke before you tell me yer gonna fix it."

I now believe this is an attempt at a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem. Health care is now closing in on *the* top priority of Americans. Most people have housing and food... and with those factors above subsistence levels for most people, our health now becomes a priority. Unfortunately we currently spend a very small fraction of our income on health care, and people are already whining about it.

Sell your house.. or your extra house... or your weekend boat... to pay for that operation... the housing market will go down, the health care market will go up... and before long, the markets will reflect where the priorities of Americans truly lie.

"But I don't want to have to sell my boat or move in with my children just because I got sick and need an expensive treatment."

... then don't get the treatment... reduce the value of health care by sapping demand... and increase the value of houses and boats by opting for these things in preference to life extending health care treatments.

The point of "health care costs are causing bankruptcies" should be answered with "What is more important than health care such that bankruptcies should be caused by something else? Why is housing allowed to be a leading cause of bankruptcies without nationalization but not health care?"

The crux of the matter is that our society is beyond the basic needs of food and shelter... we can get it for really cheap... it just might not taste too good as food or be really cramped as housing. This rearranges our priorities, as before, who really cared about their health care when a) doctors couldn't really do much anyways, and b) extending life through medicine doesn't make sense when the next war or famine will likely kill you anyways.

People now place much more emphasis on health care, and as a result, anybody attempting or expecting 'cost control' while we're spending more on housing, cars, food, and leisure items, is just deluding themselves.... and that's really the scariest point of this movement.

no more LGF

2009-08-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

This LGF post is causing me to no longer frequent the site.

It's been trending this way for some time. I'm not a die-hard conservative, but I feel there's a lot of room out there for compassion that the site has been missing. I'm not sure whether there's something about the author's personal life that's pushing things in this way, but I guess it doesn't matter.

I don't think it's appropriate to criticize someone for talking about their child who grew up with cerebral palsy. I don't think it matters what the context is, even if there are suspicions that the timing of it is a ploy. People with a strong sense of empathy, who can really put themselves into the shoes of someone who struggled to raise a child with CP, would know that it's not appropriate the criticize those comments, even if it means letting the parent 'get away with' a massive distraction. Refocusing on the issue at hand, and not commenting on the issue of a person's CP child (explicitly if necessary), is the appropriate and compassionate course of action.

There has been this slight, consistent drift going on within LGF tilting towards less useful and more acerbic commentary. Gone are the days of identifying the problems extremist islam is causing for the world, and in its place is the elevation of 'creationists', 'creationist agendas', 'abortion killers' and 'right wing extremists' to the 'big boogeyman status'. It rings hollow for me, as I see the threat of right wing extremism in america absolutely dwarfed by more important problems both domestic and foreign.

Which is the greater problem:

1) Whether Sarah Palin's characterization of Obama's health care reform is accurate, or

2) Whether Obama's health care reform is something we should endorse or oppose?

I'll opt for #2 time and again, and #1 is just a distraction.

maybe it's time to post some more

2009-08-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

... since nobody noticed a few years of hiatus.

Recently S. Palin made a comment about "Obama death panels" in reference to her son Trig who has Down Syndrome.

My experience is limited. I grew up with a handicapped sibling and observed the parents of many other handicapped children who were much worse off. It does not surprise me at all that a mother would take very negatively to the imposition of a nationalized health care system. Many of these parents have had to fight insurers for benefits. While that is a reasonable task against a private insurance company, fighting a government bureaucracy for those same benefits would be daunting to most people.

While fighting insurance companies can end up in some cases with going to the press and shaming an insurance company into following through on their obligations, no amount of public shaming should influence the decisions of a government panel. Nationalizing the health insurance economy we currently have will effectively remove one step of possible appeal against the decision of a bureaucracy... which certainly may eventually end up looking like a 'death panel', even if it isn't intended that way.

I'm not characterizing what the final status of a government run health industry would look like in America, I'm just suggesting that the parent of a handicapped child would very reasonably see it as ominous as a 'death panel'.

Tempering chocolate

2009-04-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

I'm following up on comments related to this thread.
http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/155/Tempering-Chocolate

Turns out tempering chocolate is non-trivial... at the same time, it's not too difficult either.
Melt (people recommend 105F), stir, keep occasionally adding diced bits of properly tempered chocolate (small bits of chocolate that you didn't melt), keep stirring... stir until it's under 88 degrees Fahrenheit... I'd keep going until you're afraid it's too thick to mold.... *then* pour/paste into the mold.

The difference is noted here. Two pictures, one has shiny, brittle chocolate that looks/feels like you'd expect from a molded chocolate whatever... the other is flat dull, has the consistency of a paste of hardened frosting, and does not really hold a shape at all.

I melted by turning my oven on 'bake' with the temperature gauge on 'off'. Then I slowly turned the gauge up until I heard the very first 'click', at which point I knew the oven was on. My estimate from a thermometer in the oven was that it would go from 100F to 150F... neither of which is really too hot to melt chocolate. I put a big pizza stone in the oven with it to hopefully help regulate the heat cycles (or at least increase their amplitude).

How severely has Al Qaeda been disrupted?

2007-05-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

Obviously this guy seriously knows his stuff...
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_05_21/article1.html

Yet at the same time, I think he's grasping at straws to make our impact on Al Qaeda smaller than it probably is.
I also think he's making a much broader distinction than is warranted between Al Qaeda insurgent forces and terror attack forces. I've never seen anything suggesting Al Qaeda has that sophisticated of a management structure, nor do I think such a structure would be anything but an impediment to them. I think they run their business like Mullah Omar ran his Taliban government... cash kept in boxes under the bed. Okay.. lots of cash.. but still, not sophisticated management.
I absolutely agree with his analysis that they tend to retreat to a safe haven (in this case pakistani border regions) to return later to 'bloody up' whatever they're planning on taking or re-taking.
This is how it's worked for them in Afghanistan (in the 80's), Chechnya, Somalia, and Iraq.
Except that the four above were immediate responses, not some '7 year plan' as this author claims. He doesn't cite any evidence suggesting that Al Qaeda, as an institution, has that kind of patience for inactivity when it comes to their territory being seized. Certainly they have some patience regarding terror plots (KSM supposedly came up with the 9/11 idea soon after the first WTC bombing).

I also think this guy also believes that Bin Laden/Al Qaeda knew that 9/11 would take the WTC down. I'm pretty confident they were surprised by this, as statements recorded by Bin Laden when it happened suggest. Until the first one started to fall, I really would've thought it impossible myself. The point is, that without actually taking the WTC *down*, we would not likely have removed the Taliban from Afghanistan. So making it out as though Al Qaeda transferred all its assets out of Afghanistan because they knew the US would oust the Taliban is... well... I'd like to see at least some minuscule amount of proof on that one. There is definitely some evidence that Bin Laden and his immediate group moved the night before, and that the move was motivated by the attacks themselves, but that's not much.

One other missing point, is how severely has Al Qaeda's recruitment/movement been disrupted by US military action?

I certainly don't want to underestimate Al Qaeda, but significantly overestimating them could do a bit of damage as well in terms of not allocating precious resources properly.

Still on hiatus... Iraq@Home

2007-04-15T10:45:00.001-07:00

One thing I think the US should have done in Iraq, was 1) setup a massive, secure wireless network, 2) plant security cameras just absolutely everywhere, and 3) provide a screensaver client to allow americans to help monitor what the hell is going on over there and report suspicious activities.

Considering the size of our military budget, there's no reason this isn't feasible, even accounting for sophisticated AI and re-validation of reports. One of the side benefits of this, would be to give americans an opportunity to be more invested in the effort. I have no doubt there have been a lot of americans sitting at home at night wishing they could help. Instead we get this kind of attitude that the war in Iraq is "the administration"'s cross to bear alone... and we get that message both from democrats and republicans, right and left.

There are obviously many details involved.. like identifying false positives, avoiding hostile spam reporting (false positives or burying), attacks on monitoring cameras, hiding coalition troop movements, and others. But all these details have known fixes.

Ideally a massive security camera network could also be used to traceback attackers, including suicide bombers, to their point of origin by meshing together this network and allowing it to be effectively rolled back in time.

Worst case scenario, car-bomb factories end up only churning out one car bomb per location.

I don't think this technology would be easy, but if they threw even $100M at it (chump change in this effort), it'd be pretty easily accomplished. $1B (still kinda chump change) would get it done skunkworks style in a jiffy.

we all knew it wasn't going to last...

2007-02-20T16:10:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6378679.stm

No mention of 'islamists', they probably don't want to be tainted by 'islamophobitry' accusations.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4566842.html

and of course, neither would chron.

They mention that the insurgency occurred after ethiopean-backed forces drove out the islamic courts group, but are being very careful to portray these 'insurgents' as some sort of mystery group. Here's one that *almost* claims the former islamic government is responsible for the attacks on government positions...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article1413036.ece

It's a pattern the same as Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Philippines, Thailand and anywhere else where islam is on the rise. The formula is pretty simple, but not necessarily in this order:
- establish islamic state
- when pushed out, retreat
- when not in power, turn the place into a bloody hell hole
- when in power, ruthlessly beat down any opposition or violence
- convince everybody that only Islam can provide peace

It's as transparent as a freakin children's comic book, but nobody cares.

Are we losing our spine?

2007-01-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

I think we've decided to lose in Iraq.  I think it's over.

What do you think?  Please convince me that I'm wrong, dude.

Heh... yeah... that really sucks... It's really pretty much Kerry's time, yet he's fucked himself up so badly that he can't steal the real show.
I mean... it's the heart of pessimism, and Kerry's pretty much pessimism incarnate...

I don't think it's all lost. The Iraqi government has had enough time to get acquainted with the difficulties of having to deal with other politicians, so I kind of agree that now is a more reasonable time to start 'weaning' them, so to speak. By weaning I mean that they need to have some fire under their feet motivating them to stop arguing over the size of their slice of pie, and instead focus on making sure that they still have a pie to cut.
I do think a lot of Iraqi politicians have not been taking their predicament seriously, and the turn-around by the Bush administration will hopefully force them to cooperate instead of fighting turf wars.

I noticed that Bush' 60-minutes interview actually did get through to my mom, lefty of lefties, hater of everything Bush. She suddenly thought that he was right that Iraq *would become* a huge threat to us if we leave it to chaos. She blamed him for it, but if only other people *suddenly* figure that out...
This near change of heart gives me some hope that with enough focus on the issue, the administration could bring people back behind the effort, and this time for the right reason.

That's the only thing in several months that's made me optimistic. I'm on board with pacifying Baghdad, but at the same time, I think we shouldn't need another 20K troops to do it. I actually do believe that other areas of Iraq are doing pretty well, and if I'm right, then we really should be able to redeploy troops within Iraq to secure Baghdad, without all other parts going to shit.
Probably would be a little more responsible to send in more troops, but if the push for more troops was staking out a position from which Bush can negotiate an extension of the commitment while abandoning the worthwhile attempt at a surge in numbers, it may be worth it.

There are also a couple other possibilities:
1) perhaps they're more ready than we know, or perhaps when faced with the reality of losing their government to brigands, they will actually step up. From this perspective it may be that we've been giving the Iraqi government *too much* support.
2) perhaps we can turn America's opinion by showing progress on US casualties.

One thing that has been a constant thorn in *my* side, is this insistence on solving Iraqi problems with US military power. If you'd asked me for a tactical plan for post-regime change Iraq, I would've built US military bases out in the desert and stationed *all* our forces there, leaving Iraqis and their government to largely fend for themselves, with limited engagement from our forces in order to pick winners, secure voting rights, and a few other important tasks.
Building stuff, reconstructing things, protecting infrastructure and people, I'd send money, but not a drop of blood from US soldiers.

My main point here is that we all *knew* that the US populace would not stomach the loss of US soldiers in exchange for Iraqi freedom or democracy. The people of the US don't care one bit how many Iraqis die, but they care quite a lot about *any* US soldier killed in action. We *all* knew this, so there's just no excuse for having the administration let our soldiers get nickeled and dimed into a total of 3,000 troops dead over four years. It's a *stupid* policy that's gotten us here. If we completely disengaged like in my model, yet still technically had a presence in Iraq, the US would support our intervention there indefinitely. And what you need when beating down an ideology like we're facing in the arab world, is a guaranty that we're a force that's going to stay. Due to US casualties, everybody in the world *knows* that this is not the case.

On the other hand, we still have that as an option. There are ways to reduce troop casualties, and if Bush was a little more responsible with his oversight of republican politics, he would've implemented the required policies in order to win these last elections, even if it meant throwing some Iraqis to the wolves.

My point here is that if we had lost 300 soldiers instead of 3,000 soldiers, there wouldn't be any question in anybody's mind about whether we're going to remain in Iraq. And in that case, we'd have much better leverage against our enemies globally.

Let's go have a par...err protest

2007-01-28T16:05:00.000-08:00

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24188_Its_a_Puppet_Show!&only

My new theory... to decrease the number of antiwar protests, simply increase the number of "Burning Man" events.

It's just incredible... these people don't care much about Iraqis dying in Iraq or US soldiers dying abroad. They care about drum circles, statements, slogans, group-think, chanting, singing, and their 'creative ways of protesting'. Being 'anti-war' is only incidental.

The west postures to Iran... again

2007-01-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-28T163354Z_01_L27922772_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-NUCLEAR.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C1-topNews-7

I know I disparaged this as juvenile before, but who could possibly expect this to pay some sort of dividend?
We imposed wrist-slap sanctions on Iran for nuclear development, and even those are unlikely to be enforced (...still searching for evidence of UN sanctions actually working to resolve problems, if anybody knows of any examples, please give me a shout).

Iran: Give us some time, let us think about it and finish our centrifuge work, then we'll tell you 'no', okay?

Iran has been the *only* consistent voice in this dispute. They have steadfastly maintained their commitment to building nukes. It's the west that's been shuffling its feet and pretending to come up with different propositions, all of which end up being a form of "How much can we pay you to stop this?"

Acquiring nukes is not about money for Iran, they've got plenty of money. It's about the very survival of the theocracy. Without nukes, they are doomed to be overthrown.

It has long been my opinion that there is not sufficient will in any power capable of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons to actually prevent them from doing so. China and Russia will never support meaningful sanctions on such an important economic ally. The rest of the world is far too gun-shy since the Iraq invasion to undertake any form of military intervention. Consequently, it would be wisest to invest more of our time and attention to issues that potentially have a solution in which western powers can participate.

Iran is unhappy with us

2007-01-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

Iran is 'upset' that we're going to crack down on their interference in Iraq... but this quote made me laugh.

“This is support for terrorism. It is against all recognized international treaties to order the death of nationals of another country in a foreign land,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of Parliament’s Foreign Policy and National Security Committee, said on state television.

Uhh... I'll bet it's not against NAFTA, for one.
My apologies, but the quote was really *begging* for it.

Kerry on a foreign rampagehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2007-01-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

http://keyetv.com/nationalpolitics/politicsnational_story_027111946.html

What's more sketchy about Kerry's European traipsing is how familiar it sounds. This reminds me quite a bit of his non-dept-of-state meetings with Vietnamese communists in Europe during the Vietnam war.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Kerry is *trying* to harm America. I think he believes that he's smarter than he actually is, and that he is effectively advocating for a 'separate peace' between our enemies and the left, by saying "hey, it's not my country, Bush and the republicans are causing the problems".

Whether he thinks that's true or not, he shouldn't be saying that to either our supposed allies or our enemies, both of which were in attendance in various forms.

I think this comes down to a serious difference in viewpoint.

By electing the US government, the American people as a whole are fully responsible for the actions of that government.
Foreign powers cannot pick and choose. If they hate the US government, they hate the American people. Obviously Ahmadinejad & Khamenei don't understand this, considering their many overtures and claimed attempts to split the American people from its government. This is similarly opaque to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, who thinks he can break the people from democracy by offering cheap heating oil to people in the north east.

They don't understand this because it is *always* possible to separate a dictator from the people he rules. They are merely attempting the same tactics that others use to target them, without realizing how asymmetrical the situation is. We didn't invade Iraq to kill Iraqis, we invaded to remove Saddam. In a dictatorship, there is no acceptance of liability by the people for the actions of the government. In that case, one can actually dislike or hate a government, without disliking or hating the people controlled by that government.

I think it will be a long time before the dictatorship world will learn that they cannot hate the US government without hating the people of the US. I think the reason for this slow learning curve is simple. They're dictators. You don't get to be dictator by being smart, you get to be dictator by being brutal and mastering deception.

I'm not going to argue about a definition of 'smart' here, suffice it to say that I'm using this word in a certain context.

Comps Finished!

2007-01-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

Finished my comprehensive exams (physics) last week, after a month and more of studying and freaking out. I clearly understudied for some subjects and overstudied for others. One note about them, and then back to vents on political travesties.

Our comprehensive exams consisted of:
1) Mathematical Methods for Physics (2.5hrs)

Didn't do as well as I wanted to here, but I understand it well. I think I hosed up a Laurent Expansion problem, as that was my weakest point going into this exam. Another day of focus on this subject probably would've saved me.

2) Classical Mechanics (2.5 hrs)

This was a relatively trivial test, but there was a rotations problem that many others perhaps didn't get, and a question which was effectively "Do you remember this diatribe I went on in class?" I happened to remember it, some probably didn't.

3) Electricity and Magnetism (2.5 hrs)

Felt pretty confident coming out of this exam, though I made a few mistakes. It was probably the most technically difficult part of the comprehensives.

4) Statistical Mechanics (2.5 hrs)

Definitely the weakest subject for me in this exam. The questions made little-to-no sense, their numbers didn't come out cleanly, and they were largely focused on Thermodynamics. There were a few questions which likely tricked me as well. Others taking the test also felt stat mech was the most obscure exam.

5) Quantum Mechanics (2.5 hrs)

I think I nailed this one. Understood all the questions and almost all of them worked out cleanly with reasonable numbers. I know that some of my calculations didn't work out exactly right, but they certainly weren't far off. I have more confidence in this than any other portion of the exam.

6) Modern Physics (2.5 hrs)

This was a joke. Essay questions and conceptual problems. It was difficult to take this portion of the exam seriously.

The unreported problem of holocaust denial

2006-12-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

Yes, there is the unimaginable desecration of the memory of those who died in WWII, both combat, civilian, and jew. In effect, holocaust deniers are casting aspersions at the allied forces which liberated German death camps following WWII.
On a much larger scale, holocaust deniers are attempting to subvert the gains in moral stature made by America when it selflessly sent its troops overseas to fight a war on foreign soil, sacraficing almost half a million soldiers to stop the spread of fascism and put an end to the death camps and other atrocities being perpetrated by the Nazis.
The goal of holocaust denial, on its public face, is to undermine Israel. But the effective result should the deniers triumph, intended or otherwise, is to undermine America's resolve to fight for its liberties and the liberties of others.
Of the 20th century conflicts, WWII is the only conflict for which Americans consistently remain proud. Pushing the holocaust into the memory hole will go a long way towards eliminating any evidence of anything good ever having come about through American sacrafice for freedom.
The next stop on this path, for those revisionists, would be the civil and revolutionary war.

Every time you think they're getting smart...

2006-12-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/12/7/72759/5888

So... while comparing a war to a gameshow is already quite a bit... well.. nevermind, but what caught my eye here is that there is a special emphasis on Bush picking numbers *in sequential order*... rather than "mixing it up" or "taking a different approach" after the first few sequential numbers failed to pay off.
Exactly what is the author inferring? That if you pick numbers in some non-sequential order, that you are more likely of getting the correct random sequence? That if you pick sequential numbers, and it's not paying off, that you are an idiot in your strategy of picking sequential numbers? Uhhh... welcome to remedial probability for dipshits.
This is the same kind of logic that would get me laughed at if I went in to buy a lotto ticket with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
What are the odds of that? Uhhh... same damn odds anybody else has.. :-)

Okay.. enough of the rhetorical crap.. back to business.

Reform of Islam

2006-11-29T15:41:00.000-08:00

One of the stark contrasts I've noticed, particularly between christianity and islam, is that practitioners of islam are much more inclined towards the "book is perfect" philosophy. I'm guessing that the predominant reason for this, is that while the Bible was pieced together from many sources and translated many times, the Quran is still considered absolutely pure... ie, the purported original document written by those scribing mohammed's words is actually in arabic and in the hands of islamic clerics in Saudi Arabia. There are muslim students in my department here who describe the Quran as a 'perfect text'.... yes.. with a straight face... and yes.. PhD physics students.
This is coupled with the way mohammed effectively check-summed his work by requiring that the Quran be the only source for learning about islam, and that it can never be read in a translated version. Muhammed goes on at length in the Quran about how 'the jews rewrite the holy books to serve their purpose', so it's not surprising he put this in as a safeguard to his religion. As a result, muslim scholars will never refer to one of the several Quran translations with the term "Quran".

What this makes very *very* difficult, is any attempt to reform the religion. It basically puts Islam, by itself, into a 'take it or leave it' category.
If you have a beef with catholicism, you can take that beef up with the catholic church. And if you are compelling, you could actually have catholicism change.
I do believe that no such reformation will ever reach islam. I say this because to my knowledge, there has yet to be any reform in islam's 1400 year history. There's an offshoot in shia beliefs, but it's a very small minority (something like 10:1 population-wise), and they don't claim the Quran to be up for interpretation either.

Soon after 9/11, I really thought muslims needed to go through an 'enlightenment'-like period in their cultural evolution, but the more I read and learn, the more I think that Mohammed effectively locked out any possibility of that occurring through particularly deft maneuvers in his text.

This really bothers me, because it suggests that we eventually will face a war of extermination between 'everybody else' and 'islam'. ie, it's not just that nobody has convinced me that there are people reforming islam, but rather, nobody's convinced me that there is any possibility of reforming islam.

Here's hoping that I'm wrong.

These excuses are tiring...

2006-11-28T09:15:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061128/ap_on_re_mi_ea/pope_turkey

Hint... if muslims want to prevent "islamophobia", try reining in yer damn terrorists... but they're not going to do it like this:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23480_Why_We_Rarely_Hear_from_Moderate_Muslims&only

I'm just really really tired of muslims inventing a persecution complex to justify why they aren't willing to condemn and crack down on islamic terrorism. A muslim can't make common cause with non-muslims against other muslims, even if those other muslims are the drugged-out head-chopping type. It's just sick.

Mainstream muslims need to once and for all agree to either support or reject islamic terrorism. I'm not certain I really care which choice they make.

Been a while

2006-11-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html

The last thing I want, is for our prospective elected and appointed leaders to personally fear retribution from foreign powers for doing what they were elected to do.

One principle I developed a while ago, is that leaders elected and appointed democratically, should *only* be criminally behelden to the democracy which they served for things they do while in office. If the democracy isn't going to prosecute a leader, no foreign power has any business doing so.
This works both ways. A democracy can't abdicate that responsibility either.

This would not apply to non-democratic states, obviously.

Military Commissions Act of 2006 and judicial review.

2006-09-30T02:18:00.000-07:00

I was recently sent this, and I think we'll be seeing it a lot.

The new law very clearly asserts itself to be above the petty jurisdiction of the courts...

`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.

And paragraphs 2 and 3 aren't really any help.

I was a little curious, so I checked out this "Military Commissions Act of 2006" in original form. On page 58, *right* nearby the quoted paragraphs:

950g:
In general, except as provide in subparagraph B, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of a final judgement rendered by a military commission ...

Obviously if a law is specifying the appellate jurisdiction of that law, it's not going to say: "Or anybody else who decides they want to claim jurisdiction." They specify how the rules are setup, and those rules can be declared unconstitutional. But if not, they specify exactly how any of these actual individual military commission decisions (status or guilt) make their way up to the supreme court. There is no curtailment of judicial power here.

Yeah, the analysis was obviously disingenuous at the source, and that disingenuity has been propagating through the indignant left who haven't read the bill themselves. I don't blame them. If I wasn't suspicious, I wouldn't have looked through all 86 pages myself.

Did Bush 'lie', or are we lying to ourselves?

2006-09-11T23:58:00.000-07:00

Analysis of an "Iraqi detractor" given screen time on MSNBC.
http://newsbusters.org/node/7553

I don't get it... I didn't think Saddam had really anything to do with 9/11. I didn't think Saddam had very much to do with Al Qaeda either. I didn't think Saddam had a significant stockpile of WMDs, yet I found all the other reasons for invading quite compelling both before invasion and now.
The whole Saddam/Al Qaeda connection was generally appropriately couched in intelligence obfuscatory wording... basically, you could apply the same quotations to a lot of other governments, so it's not really significant. There were times, however, when Bush' wording on WMDs made me wince.

That said, I don't know anybody who a) thought Saddam was privy to any important Al Qaeda information, or b) had a significant stockpile of WMDs.
So I ask, why are people who claim they were 'lied' to so pissed off, when they didn't believe such statements in the first place? It's not like *they* were betrayed. I don't know anybody... *anybody*, who says "Well, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, being commander in chief, and now I feel betrayed." Might as well tack on a "... because I was to lazy or stupid to pick up a god damn book, read the *first* thing about our enemies, and realize that there's zero probability that Saddam had any knowledge of the 9/11 attacks."
Seriously... I know a lot of people who just weren't interested, and didn't care much... but they're not going off all the time now about how terrible it is that *they* feel like they were lied to.

As much as we like to feel like we're the center of the world, and that what we do wrong or right dramatically affects the rest of the world in some mysterious way, it doesn't. The jihadists with whom we are at war, don't give a shit what we say or do, unless it's a mass conversion to islam and complete submission to *them*. There are going to be more of them whether we invade another middle eastern country or not. There are going to be more of them whether Bush is an idiot or not. And there are going to be more of them whether we divide this country in half in a war of who said what and when and why, or not.

I don't understand what the problem of this picture is. Why is America still blind to this massive threat? Why haven't we bound ourselves together and beat the shit out of our enemies first, before turning on each other? We should have republicans and democrats competing to show us how aggressively they'll wage war upon this sick ideology if elected, rather than trying to prove how sensitive they are to the feelings of muslims around the world. I guess the only conclusion that may eventually be drawn, is that a capitalist democracy may be an inferior form of government to an islamic theocracy, in that it cannot bind its people together to recognize an existential threat.

Fixing what isn't broken.

2006-09-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks8sep08,0,1173986.column?coll=la-opinion-columnists

I just stumble across lines like these, and it makes it extremely difficult to continue reading:
-- Right after 9/11, America had the world's sympathy. Since then, anti-U.S. sentiment has increased sharply.

First off, the world's sympathy doesn't do *anything* to protect us against our enemies. The US has never relied on the sympathy of diletantes and dictators before, and it never will.

-- Militant Islam used to be a "niche ideology," ... But today, thanks to the invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration's nasty little habit of torturing detainees, militant Islam is an ideology with millions of adherents

Uhh.. yes.. hard core "militant" islam used to be a niche ideology, but that was much further back, around 700AD. Radical islam (or somewhat justifiably called 'real islam') drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan (with Pakistani help), pushed the russians out of Chechnya, launched several wars against Israel, and more. At every turn, the appropriate leaders have told us exactly what their plans are, to re-establish the greater islamic nation encompassing all muslims.
This is nothing new. Even the muslim brotherhood, the forerunner and brother organization to many islamic terrorist groups started close to a hundred years ago.

-- (talk of torture by Bush admin)... Do we think this is going to win any hearts and minds in the Islamic world?

Again, the US should not, and hopefully will not place the security of our country in the hands of foreign powers, and *definitely* not the "Islamic World". We can only bargain with such aggressive powers from a position of strength. That's the way the US always has approached conflicts in the past.

-- We went to war in Iraq because Iraq, like Mt. Everest, was there. And we approached the Iraq war as if it were 1941, not 2003. We had a fine plan for pummeling the Republican Guard, taking Baghdad and ousting Saddam Hussein — but no plan for preventing postwar Iraq from deteriorating into civil war or becoming a terrorist training ground.

I think I need to inform the author of the reasons we invaded Iraq. It's amazing that she has failed to inform herself of them in the entire three year time span. We don't have plans for post-war whatever? I'm sure the plans were there, and that they currently are being implemented. I think expecting things to be settled and quiet within three years of the overthrow of a dictator who's been in power for 30 years is a bit ambitious.

-- No, Mr. President, I'm not feeling safer. The administration's war planners are yesterday's men: They talk tough, but they never learned the lessons of Vietnam, much less the lessons of 9/11.

I'm not certain what 'lesson' the author supposes we should have 'learned' in Vietnam? Not to interfere in other people's affairs? Whatever happens in your neighbor's house is his business, whether it results in women with black eyes or not? The hippies will try their best to stop you from finishing the job you started?

Go DK, hate our military

2006-09-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/4/162734/2668

----
Not political, I know. Irwin had two small children. I'll never understand parents who put themselves in such positions of danger knowing that a misstep can leave their children without a parent.
----

I believe this is a slur against our military personnel who have small children at home. It becomes more and more difficult to square the Kos with it's claim to 'support the military, despise the mission' with every such posting.

Lieberman

2006-08-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

From the DK:

Durbin:

"It's clear that this is a race with national significance. People are watching the outcome," Durbin said. "Can a Democrat who disagrees with his party's position - by and large - on the war prevail in a closely fought primary?
"I hope that Joe does prevail," he added. "I hope he is our nominee. If he is not, the question will be asked for other races down the road, what impact does your position on the war have?"

Let me answer that question for Dick, since I thought it was pretty frickin' obvious. But in the DC bubble, apparently clarity of thought is in short supply --

What impact does your position on the war have? Well, if you are in sync with your constituents and are responsive to them, then it doesn't hurt you. If you are not in sync with your constituents and are unresponsive, then it hurts you.

Is this really that difficult to comprehend?

What my esteemed colleague is missing here, is that representatives and senators are not elected to do what the people think they should do. They are elected to *represent* the people who elected them, using their judgement as to what legislation serves the best interests of their constituency and America as a whole. Sometimes this happens to coincide with the will of the constituency, but sometimes is does not.

What Lieberman has done is exercised his judgement, which is exactly what he was elected to do. Calling that some sort of malfeasance or deriliction of his constituency is inappropriate.

Perhaps a Connecticut democrat doesn't like Lieberman's stance on the war, but does that democrat like him as a person? Does that democrat appreciate his judgement on the issues as a whole? These are the important questions to ask, not single-issue litmus tests.

Dems are still in trouble

2006-06-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/25/iraq.troops/

It's amazing that they don't distinguish between a congressionally mandated retreat and an operational decision to reduce forces.
Nobody on the republican side is saying we're going to stay in Iraq indefinitely. What they're not going to do, is pull troops out until Iraq is prepared to take care of itself. Democrats were not asking for a pull out in such a case, but rather a mandated timetable on a pullout, regardless of Iraqi capabilities.
That is pretty accurately described as 'cut and run'.

Kos vs. Democratic Party

2006-06-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/6/22/22310/2106

They eat their own... man.. I read the guy's article about this issue, and he took great steps to make it clear that he still held Kos & Co. in a favorable light overall, but he just didn't agree with this one issue. I think there's some level of bi-polar work going on here, whether it's a personal or group psychological effect. This is basically what's happened with Lieberman... from VP candidate to having his own supporters trying to bring him down over predominantly one issue.
(I can guarranty you that if Lieberman opposed our actions in Iraq, Kos would leave him absolutely alone, regardless of any other trumped up disagreements.)

Lefty bloggers are trying to make the democratic party absolutely inhospitable for anybody who moderately supports either the war in Iraq or the Bush administration. If they get their way, the democrats will certainly lose.
That said, moderate disapproval of the war is quite acceptable within the republican party.

You know who will suffer for the actions of Kos & Co.? Us.. when we have another republican controlled congress and another Bush in the whitehouse in '08. Democracy needs a diversity of opinions running the country. It's the responsibility of politicians on both sides to make or keep themselves relevant.

How exactly does one 'sacrafice a tax cut'

2006-05-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

When in doubt, frame in the contextual double-negative:
"And how do Democrats plan to pay for all this? By repealing the tax cut for the richest Americans. Because the least we can do for these troops who have endangered their lives and mental health is to sacrifice a tax cut for the wealthiest among us."
You don't 'sacrafice a tax cut', because that implies that everything should be taxed all the time, everywhere and at ridiculous percentages. Anything else is a 'tax cut' which can be potentially 'sacraficed'.
In this country, we first assume the federal government gets nothing, and then apportion how much will be paid for by whom by creating tax policy. From this perspective, there are no tax cuts, but rather when a tax is removed, we are moving back towards the normative 'government gets nothing' stance.
This argument is designed to create new taxes while avoiding the dirty words of 'new taxes'. Once a tax has been removed, that removal isn't something that can be 'sacraficed'. No, you need implement a 'new tax'.
It's okay by these guys, because it's only on 'the rich', and even though they're likely part of 'the rich', their business is well served by their purposes of lining up 'for' taxing themselves, as the additional popularity/profits will outweigh the additional taxes in net.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/5/14/12171/9658

NSA wiretapping

2006-05-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

What amazes me, is that people can get things so wrong:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/5/11/1027/61797
"Obviously, they're fighting terror. Because every single American might just be participating in terrorism. So they really need to keep track of all of our phone calls. It's obvious, right? Obvious, but not particularly legal, though since when has that stopped BushCo?"

Part of developing neural networks, algorithms which would provide incredibly valuable information in the war on terror, is being able to feed it incredible amounts of data. If these guys would just look at the theory behind "Total Information Awareness" and other data mining efforts, the effectiveness would be incredibly clear.

Basically you have a computer taking enormous amounts of data, and developing metrics. In order for a computer to be able to 'learn' to flag good events from bad events, there must be an enormous amount of *real* information provided to the system.

The guys in the NSA doing this research don't care that such and such information is about me or you.. we're just numbers.... we're experimental 'white noise' in their analysis. It's somewhat like Risk Management in banks... there are algorithms which will tell you "don't make this loan", even though it cannot give you verifiable reasons or evidence why. What you have is a bunch of meaningless accumulations of data which statistically suggest that X would be a bad loan to make.

Colbert

2006-05-02T23:14:00.000-07:00

This quote from the DK

"I'd like to know which jokes, in particular, Hoyer thought were in bad taste. Colbert, like many of us, is crashing the gate in DC. The natives, not used to getting more than Jay Leno-style good-natured ribbing, don't like it when one of their own gets a serious dose of reality."

See... these guys just *loved* the way Colbert was really 'sticking it to the man/media', regardless of whether this was accurate or happened to be one of the best possible career moves he could have made.
I just really can't stand that attitude of 'oh, you showed him!', like as though an appropriate way to influence people and change their attitudes is to throw a bucket of water over their heads. This is the same criticism I have of the so-called 'Speak truth to power' bullshit.

I understand that these guys are frustrated at not having the government do what they want it to do, but the solution is to write clear, intelligent articles without lame, naked attempts at rhetoric or persuasion. The solution is to work hard, make money, and get elected, not sing songs and chant with naked chicks.

You don't convert people by telling them they're stupid. For one, they're probably just as smart as you are. For two, nobody should accept such childish criticism from anybody.

What Colbert was basically (wrongly, but popularly) telling the press was exactly what Kerry told me all during 2004. "You are stupid and wrong, but I can tell you how to make it all better because I am smart and right." He may have thought he was 'speaking truth to power', but in fact, he was just practicing name-calling (or the art of guilt by generalized accusation, if you will).

Though I would hope Colbert's career would be harmed by this, it's just one of those infinitely unpredictable details of economics and psychology that it probably won't. Either way, he really showed them all... showed them what and ass he can be. Might as well have just hopped up on the podium, dropped trou, and taken a massive dump on the microphone. :-)

More on Iran

2006-04-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

I wonder what people think the west could possibly give the mullahs that would stop them from developing nukes, other than nukes themselves.
Without any incentive, all we've got is Ahmadinejad saying: "We're building nukes, whatchya gonna do about it, huh?"
They don't want money, and we're not going to give them additional territory.

This pretty clearly identifies my problem with the 'diplomatic' efforts going on right now. The basic conversation is going:
France: "Stop building nukes..."
Iran: "No"
France: "How much money do you want in order to convince you to stop building nukes."
Iran: "We are not going to stop building nukes."
Germany: "You need to stop building nukes."
Iran: "No"
UK: "Please stop building nukes right now."
Iran: "No"
Russia: "You are making it very inconvenient for us by continuing to build nukes, please stop."
Iran: "Uhh.. no"
China: "We like your oil, but could you please stop building nukes?"
Iran: "No"
UN: "Please stop building nukes."
Iran: "Or else what?"
UN: "Or we'll be very angry and ask you to stop building nukes again."

There is *no* actual negotiation going on right now, and there hasn't been any substantive negotiations going on for over four years. They've been asking the same questions, and Iran's been responding with the same answers.
Iran has been always consistent about their intentions, so I don't know why the west is failing so miserably to understand them. IMHO the west should either do something about it though sanctions or whatever, or accept Iran as a nuclear armed state. This red herring about negotiations is just wasting time, money, and attention which could be focused elsewhere.

Personally, I'm almost ambivalent over Iran having nukes. While they are a threat to us, they're much more of a threat to Iran itself, so if they want to play with fire, part of me says let them blow themselves up. Their people are the ones who are going to be hurt, as they are not willing to stand up to their own government.
I certainly don't wish anybody to be hurt over this, but I'm just really frustrated at the failure of international politics to deal with this issue. If Iran wasn't sitting on huge oil reserves, Russia and China would have voted for sanctions long ago and the regime in Iran would have backed down. But that all doesn't matter, because Iran *is* sitting on top of huge oil reserves.

Myopia surrounding Iran issues

2006-04-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

The second order, larger threat posed by the Iranian nuclear bomb program is the resultant middle eastern nuclear arms race. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and various other dictatorships will immediately be forced into building nuclear weapons in order to provide deterrent against unilateral Iranian action.
Do we want the hyperproliferation around the world stimulated by possession of nuclear weapons by Iran? Does the NPT really have any practical use anymore?
Would the world really have survived the cold war if there were five or ten players in the Mutually Assured Destruction regime?

From a fatalistic perspective, this isn't a question about whether to do something about Iran's nuclear bomb building, it's a question of whether we want the middle east to be turned into a radioactive waste dump by a nuclear war?

Iran says 'Bite Me' to UNSC

2006-04-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

So... Madnejad & Khamenei have basically said 'screw you' to the UN. While they're pretty much right in their analysis of the UN being completely ineffectual in the past, it is quite a significant departure from Saddam's previous lines.
Where Madnejad & co. say 'screw you' while doing nothing to comply, Saddam previously said 'I am doing everything humanly possible to comply with your wishes' while also doing nothing to comply.
Though the message is the same, the tenor is quite different.
Now, after the complete bypassing of the UN in both Afghanistan and Iraq, at least the bureaucracy of the UN may still wish to remain in some way relevant.
I think there's a long shot in odds that the UN itself may end up doing something about this. Yeah, I know they've never done anything before, but their irrelevance has never been so openly and clearly stated before either. Whereas Saddam was just humoring them, Madnejad is attempting to provoke them.

The trouble with Iran is not just Iran

2006-04-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom is a) Iran is going to get nukes, b) they are pretty much sane enough not to use them, and c) they are not likely to provide such to terrorist organizations.
The myopia of these claims comes from a focus on Iran which is far too tight. The reason we must oppose a nuclearized Iran, is to prevent general proliferation within the middle east.
Without this, we face a return of the cold war. But this cold war will not be two superpowers competing for supremacy in the world, it will be eight dictatorships on the lunatic fringe of the international community, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Syria, Jordan, and others.
The threat is not just the mullahs in Iran, as dangerous as they may be, but the dramatic nuclear escalation promoted by such actions.

The precipice upon which we now stand is one of deciding whether nuclearization of the middle east should be contained through conventional force of arms. This is not only about policy regarding Iran.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Democracy

2006-04-24T10:10:00.002-07:00

Probably the most interesting point:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/bin-laden-criticism-rejected/2006/04/24/1145861285825.html
"He also inveighed against the Palestinians' Hamas-led Government for breaking what he said was a taboo against "joining infidel assemblies" and entering Parliament."

The point here is that islamic movements, according to Bin Laden and the Muslim Brotherhood are not democratic institutions and should not participate in any kind of democracy, as to be part of a democracy is to put man's law over god's law.
As to "Whose god?" Obviously "their's".... whomever "they" happen to be.
I'm certain this is clear and obvious if you share the mental defects Bin Laden has... to me it's just consistency taken to the point of stupidity.

---- UPDATE, someone claimed that "Bin Laden hates democracy" was news to me ----
No, that Bin Laden is against democracy was not news to me. That he would so willingly sacrafice a potential ally in terror and islamification of the world (Hamas), merely because it participated in a democracy, is what is new. It's not unexpected, it's just poor tactics. I would have expected him just not to mention it because it reflects badly on his movement, much like he didn't mention Iraq.

Generals don't make the call for war in this country.

2006-04-22T00:09:00.000-07:00

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-04-21T231924Z_01_N21290903_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-RUMSFELD.xml

Right now, I lean slightly towards Hillary's proposal to have congress perform some sort of an investigation, even if it's a minority investigation only.
I still do not think it was right for these people to air their grievances publically, as they certainly could garner the ear of anti-Bush democrats in congress to go through the proper procedure.
If congress calls these retired generals to testify (and even active generals, perhaps), then it is clearly a case of the civilian government asking questions and making decisions, and not former members of the military pressuring for a change in civilian leadership.

There's a reason our former military members have historically interacted with politics only through official civilian mechanisms (running for office, garnering an appointment, or whatever), and to ditch that precedent really should require extraordinary circumstances. But their indictment carries no smoking gun, it encompasses a lot of things which are both pretty partisan and full of hindsight.
For example, most civilian military analysts were pretty well split on whether to break up the Iraqi Republican Guard, yet that decision was used as part of their rational for seeking the ouster of Rumsfeld. On a partisan example, I would cite the criticism that we did not go to war with sufficient allies.
I think it's true that our job would be a lot easier if France, Germany and Russia were on board, as any disunity in the west is perceived as weakness among the jihadists, but these factors are completely outside their experience. They're not there to decide whether or not to go to war, but rather to give their estimates on what the best strategy would be for winning.

Why guns?

2006-03-29T10:17:00.000-08:00

There's been a long thread of stories about failure of police in europe to respond to rioting and other criminal acts where they involve muslim minorities. I remember reading about police in the Netherlands standing by while such rioters vandalized cars etc.
I think the core of the problem here is the civilian firearms ban in Europe.
Banning firearms is more than just a practical or pragmatic step, it's the adoption of a policy saying: "We the people, are not responsible enough to be trusted with firearms."
At that point, responsibility for maintaining order is completely abdicated by the people.

Do guns play a role in tragic accidental deaths? Absolutely. But they play a much more important role in keeping us tied to reality and keeping us aware that it is primarily the job of the people to maintain order.

Evaluating sources, legal letter.

2006-03-13T16:24:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to evaluate their sources.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18650

Beth Nolan: white house counsel, Clinton administration
Lawrence Tribe: Harvard law school
Curtis Bradley: Duke law
David Cole: Georgetown law
Geoffrey Stone: University of Chicago law
Harold Koh: Yale law
Kathleen Sullivan: Standord law
Martin Lederman: Unknown
Phillip Heymann: Harvard law
Richard Epstein: University of Chicago law (libertarian)
Ronald Dworking: legal theoretician
Walter Dellinger: Duke law
William Sessions: Former FBI director
William Van Alstyne: Duke law

Questions which pop up: How unanimous was the support for this? Lawyers are notorious for detail, yet the letter makes quite a broad condemnation.
If the position is that clear, why aren't there hundreds of law proffessors signing onto this letter?

Misunderstanding Iran

2006-03-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1141858211068&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795
Re: the article: Like Cuba, Iran is a thorn pricking America

The author suggests America has rebuffed Iranian 'peace overtures', when in fact no such overture has been made. Khatami, Rafsanjani, and Ahmadinejad have never been endowed with the authority to negotiate an end to our cold war on Iran's behalf. Iran is a dictatorship run by a clerical head of state who does not meet with foreign heads of state. As such, the rest of the world's diplomatic options with Iran are severely limited.
As an example of how the supposed 'elected iranian government' is incapable of diplomacy, even the Iranian parliament was kept in the dark about their own nuclear program. When Iranian "pseudo-elected" officials claim their nuclear program is for civilian or commercial purposes, they really have no way of knowing whether what they are saying is true.
If Khameni were to actually meet with Blair or Merkel, we could then deal with Iran as we are forced to deal with other dictatorships, held at an arm's length and with a suspicious eye. Until at least that point, we can have no diplomatic relations.

Most persians do not want this theocracy to remain, but there are few with the power to stand up to it. I think the $85m designated to promote democracy in Iran will foster a better understanding of exactly what the persians have been missing since their revolution was hijacked by this theocracy.

And shame on the author for selling out promotion of democracy as "subverting the Iranian gov't". The Iranian theocracy has no mandate from the persian people to even exist, let alone claim some right to govern without interference. As an editorialist, it serves no purpose for the author to attempt to mislead people by such falisifications in presenting the Iranian government as legitimate.

We should support the persian people in removing this theocracy and establishing a democracy as best as we can, whenever and wherever they choose. It is our obligation as free people, and we have to have faith that the persian people can succeed in this endeavor. I think this article subverts that idea, intentionally or otherwise.

Saddam, Al Qaeda? Not much...

2006-02-27T00:16:00.000-08:00

My interpretation (which you might agree with) is that Saddam had more of an interest in Al Qaeda than Al Qaeda had in Saddam. Certainly Al Qaeda wanted Saddam dead, just like the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iran, and all other countries in the world. He's effectively the Anarchists' poster boy, whether people know it or not. The existence of human-made law is anethma to these guys.
However, Al Qaeda did manage to drag the spotlight away from Iraq on regular occasion, so Saddam certainly had an interest in keeping them running.
I have no doubt that Al Qaeda would never have informed Saddam of their plans for the 9/11 attacks. From what has been found thus far, they barely even told themselves of their own plan. It's not even clear whether all the hijackers knew they were on such a mission that day.
From what I've read, there were some discussions between Iraqi operatives and Al Qaeda back when Osama was being kicked out of the middle east (in particular I think, Yemen). If he went to Saudi Arabia, he'd be either killed or extradicted, so they let him go to Afghanistan. Apparently one of the options under consideration was Iraq. In retrospect, it'd probably have been better for us if he had gone to Iraq, because certainly Saddam's paranoid patience would've worn thin, and he might've killed him.
But whatever....
To Saddam, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" makes sense. To Osama, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend if he serves Allah in every waking moment".
So no, they were by no means friends.

Either way, the post 9/11 policy has been to brook no state sponsors of international terrorism, period. The message to such states was to be that it's not a question of 'if' we'll do something about it, but a question of 'when'. I make the 'international' disclaimer, because sometimes in civil wars, it can be very difficult to figure out who is who, but when a country supports terrorists acting outside it's borders, that's something we really cannot accept, even if it doesn't target us specifically.
What we do about it (trade war, sanctions, military actions) and when we do it are the difficult questions.

One thing the US has been throughout its history, is pretty much the most ruthless actor in any conflict. I think this is largely because americans see war as a job to do, not an honorable pursuit in and of itself. We've found failure where we failed to pursue overwhelming victory. In the civil war, we abandoned occupation and reconstruction of the south, leaving blacks to wallow under oppression for another hundred years. It would have been extremely taxing to continue reconstruction policies in the south, and there was little care or support in the north, since the blacks were technically free in some respects and the union was preserved. In Korea, we retreated to the south, leaving the communists to pilliage the north for what's going on now 50 years. How much would it have cost us to retake North Korea? That is impossible to know now. How much it cost to not retake it is unfortunately very clear, a nuclear armed rogue nation that exports its technology to any bidder. In vietnam we followed nearly the same policy.
This generalization is certainly undeserved in many ways, as each and every conflict has unique circumstances surrounding it, not to mention the 800 pound gorrilla in the room, the USSR. And I don't know for sure whether taking the conflicts more seriously in terms of understanding it as a fight for survival rather than a fight for ideology would have fixed these situations, but where we did fight like it was for our survival, we succeeded.

The fucked up thing is, that there was serious badness going on in Iraq, and if america really committed itself to fixing the situation, it would probably be much further along towards being fixed right now. Instead we're pointing fingers and trying to determine how to take political advantage of the situation.
Perhaps we do need a constitutional amendment to put war declarations back in the hands of congress. Perhaps if we'd actually declared war on Iraq (which they could have sustained in the house and senate, looking it up - 77 to 23 in the senate, 296-133 in the house), we'd have the resolve to see it through with much less weakness and bloodshed. Perhaps we could have said then: 'What are you talking about WMDs? We're in there to fix the damn problem, not just deal with a symptom or two.'
I'd liken it very slightly to breaking boards with your hands. The moment you are timid, cautious, or less than totally committed, the board wont break, and it's going to hurt like hell. If you punch right through it, it's like it was barely there.

Certainly there are valid arguments that we shouldn't commit to such a war in the first place, being that Iraq was debatably not a direct threat to the US. I can in some ways agree with that, in the sense that if we cannot mobilize the country to support a full scale war, we do run the risk of putting vietnam-like messages out to the world suggesting that we'll withdraw if they just can punch us in the nose once. I'd have voted for the war though, and if we had declared a state of war, I would have expected the naysayers to hold their tongues until it was well done and over.

It just really really sucks that we're so fractured over this... and this isn't a conservative vs. liberal thing, it's an isolationist versus interactive thing. It's the same debate we've had since the founding of the country.

I guess we can hope that the current low-grade civil war in Iraq is showing everybody involved that they're all losing.

Carlyle dragged into DPW?

2006-02-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

So do you know what the Carlyle Group is? It's suddenly hit the news in a huge way, but almost every source I can find on the web about it is either partisan, or insane, or both. The Carlyle Group itself has a few web pages which basically say they're a group of saints, dedicated to making the world better for me personally, and saving lost puppies. Leftist crazies, OTOH, say it's a group dedicated to eating puppies, and funneling bribes from rich terrorists to George Bush so that he'll let them kill me.

Frankly, both views seem too extreme to be true.

Which is one thing that irritates me lately- everybody's got SUCH a partisan view that you can't trust anything. If I saw a web page that said "The Government of the UAE has invested N many billion dollars in various Bush family-related businesses. Those businesses are A, B, and C, and the Bush family owns x, y, and z % of them", then I'd say "Whoa, that bears investigating". But they don't, or won't, just say that. They say "Bush connection to UAE more incestuous than an appalchian village". Which is a cute turn of phrase, but contains no facts, and lets me know that the purpose of the whole article/web page is CONVINCE, not to INFORM. And it makes me suspect what facts there ARE in the article, because a serious partisan trying to convince will cheerfully distort facts, or lie.

So I figured I'd ask you, because you're pretty well informed. Do you know what the Carlyle Group is? Do you think they really represent a meaningful financial link between the Bush family, and the government of the UAE?

Only side I've ever heard to it was that they were part of the Bush conspiracy that led to 9/11. That's not precisely what Moore et al claimed, but close. I think that through the Carlyle Group and a small number of other holding corporations, you could easily link pretty much every single extremely rich person in the world. People are generally allowed to put their money wherever they want. If you have a successful holding company, you are going to have investors who are standup business leaders, oil magnates, shipping magnates, and probably front men for drug lords. Where do you draw the line, and how much research are you required to perform to vette your investors? Generally, if there's nothing directly criminal about the investor, their money can't be turned away.

I think part of this is that most people are looking to preach to the choir, not proselytize for converts. Making converts, or at least earning the respect of your opposition is far more difficult than rabble rousing and making yerself a hero to those who already think as you do. And when you are only trying to preach to the choir, it's much easier to use references to appalacian villages than to actually do your homework and present results, particularly if those results end up being rather specious. Like you said, it's easier just to perform a blanket, tacit conviction.

It goes on on both the left and the right. It's not guilt by association or guilt by assertion, it's guilt by tenuous implication. People do it all the time these days by referring to people or groups by their own pet names that implicitly convict (or exonerate) them of something of which they have not been convicted or even generally accepted by the public as responsible. Dailykos assumes in every post that anybody reading their site agrees not just that this administration is the worst ever, but that the vast majority of americans agree with them in that analysis. The right will do similar things by referring to the gov't of this or that arabic country as 'the terrorist training facility' or some such, when it's clear that even if there is a relationship between said gov't and terrorism, it's not that simple. (There are many other examples of this on the right, some of which *really* piss me off, but that's the one which comes to mind right now.)

It's like people just agreeing that everybody knows that Saddam was not involved in terrorism. This statement is true if you add the expression 'directly targetting americans on american soil'. For some reason however, some want to consistently undercut their own arguments by not making such a distinction. What's crazy is that nobody disagrees with me when I mention that Saddam financially supported the families of palestinian suicide bombers... the evidence has been pretty clear on that. But since that's mainly killing jews, and very few americans, I guess it doesn't matter so much, so we reduce the value of the argument to absolute zero. While not targetting america in terrorist support certainly reduced Saddam's threat, it didn't reduce it to zero.

But the issue here is not that specific argument, but the way nobody is trying to extend an olive branch or be inclusive of those with different viewpoints over such issues. Right there, I staked out a middle ground. I said yes, Saddam wasn't working with Al Qaeda on 9/11, but terrorism was still somewhat of a factor, not a completely bunk lie. Maybe it's not enough for people to invade a country over, but at the same time, it's not something to be dismissed lightly.
When I push that logic on my lefty buddies, I get a sensation like I'm working against some sort of preconditioned wall. Anything about terrorism and Saddam is just a lie, and I'm just deluded. Little to no room for dissent or examination of the question. Basically, they're not trying to help bridge gaps.

Yesterday, one of my housemates asked me to make some sort of statement saying that I would apologize for being an idiot if Iraq fell apart into a civil war and turned into a huge disaster. I told him that I wouldn't do such a thing, and I would expect him not to do such a thing on the other end. We all make our calls on the information which we have available to us. Some of us believe this source over that source, and other vice versa. It's not like either side is just inexcusably retarded. So why would anybody want to have such recriminations? I don't. If/when Iraq turns into a major success, I don't expect to go around trying to make people who opposed the war feel bad about themselves. They made their calls with what they knew at the time, same as those in the administration who made the call on invading Iraq in the first place. Being wrong isn't being stupid, even if it's me being wrong.

This whole issue is exactly why I keep several left and right blogs in tabs next to each other. I always want to be aware of the arguments my prospective opponents are making. Where they have good points, I score well by acknowledging the validity of those points. That allows me to focus my efforts on the points with which I disagree. If I am unfamiliar with their arguments, I will undercut my ability to convince them that I understand their position. And understanding the other position is the first step towards trying to reconcile these seemingly different positions. I find myself more often than not, in complete agreement with that very same lefty housemate, yet when he does something like call american military servicemen 'mercenaries', I am obliged to take him to task over it.

I haven't heard Carlyle Group mentioned since Moore's F9/11 fell off the stage. All I dragged up on it at the time was that some rich people had a holding company... with other rich people, and a whole slew of business directions. Some of those were americans, some were prominent americans, some were saudis. The conspiracy theories seem to abound whenever that name is mentioned, but it's honestly been a long long time since I've heard it mentioned at all.
When I was reading about it (shortly after F9/11 came out the websites were particularly active), it sounded just like another huge holding firm with a very diverse portfolio. The Carlyle Group does not make people foam at the mouth like they once did, nor as they currently still do at the mention of 'Haliburton'. :-)

My two 30-second opinion on Haliburton: Haliburton and the companies they have acquired were making a ton of money and expanding prolificly before GW entered the whitehouse. Expecting them to disolve because the VP used to run them is a little bit unreasonable, yet it's the only alternative to what's currently happened. In most of corporate america, you expand or you are bought. I haven't seen any serious accusations of impropriety on their part. There have certainly been no-bid contracts awarded, which, if there actually were competitors in those fields of services, would merit investigation. But in general, on that scale, few companies have the breadth of services that such a large demand requires.

This kind of thing completely sucks for me, because as a competitor, my little company can't deliver to a city an entire software suite, including financial software, legal software, emergency services, and fleet management software in addition to what we can provide. This really hurts us in certain cases, where the customer is looking for one big software project involving all of their departments. Fortunately for us, there are places where that's not the case... and in some cases, our prices fall under the 'must put out to bid' threshold.

Well, I just want people to try convincing each other, rather than just spouting rhetoric at each other. The internet is a very polarizing place unfortunately.

Just because we can't prove it, doesn't disprove it!

2006-02-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

Posting this in response to an alarmist message I received, warning about the impending global warming disaster. What I do not accept is that rationale "We can't prove there wont be a catastrophe, therefor we must presume there will be one.."

We're looking at a ~2000 year snapshot of an incredibly complex system that's a few billion years old and that our immediate livelihood and wellbeing depend on. And we keep pushing it like it has never been pushed before - all the while claiming that because we don't understand the system, it's ok to continue current behavior. How is that smart?

Sorry, burden of evidence is upon the doomsaryer here. You are the person who wants to remove people's livelihoods. In order to do that, you had better get a case more convincing than: "How is this smart?"
Don't demean your opposition just because you don't understand them or their arguments. Obviously *everybody* doesn't want a global catastrophe to occur, but on the one hand, we have people who want to make incredible sacrifices based on an argument bound in the faith of 'progress is bad' and if we wait, we loose, and on the other, we have a 'wait for better data' approach.
If the threat were actually as clear as the doomsayers want it to be, it wouldn't be a contentious issue. You'd be able to get *real* groups of scientists working on the problem and providing solutions, rather than this 'environmental activists wrapped in lab coats' group called the supposed 'Union of Concerned Scientists'. (Which would be more accurately labelled Union of Partisan Activists)

And on Kyoto

2006-02-01T01:20:00.000-08:00

In America, the Kyoto Protocol is a non-partisan issue. It was dead in the water under a democratic majority under Clinton, and it's dead in the water under a republican majority under Bush. The only person who was ever for it in our government was Gore.
There were a couple issues with it:
It's a huge money grab by developing nations. Basically, it placed penalties on existing businesses operating in the US, while exempting China and India because they are technically defined by the protocol as 'developing nations', regardless of their actual pollution output. So it doesn't actually stop pollution at all, it just takes money from already built-out industrial nations, and gives it to developing nations (which are uncapped), making the businesses in the US and other developed nations compete at a large disadvantage.
The second major reason why we never ratified the treaty (Gore did actually sign it), is that America is about the only country in the world that is actually *legally* obligated to honor ratified treaties. The US constitution grants ratified treaties the status of law, as though congress itself passed it as a law. Most other countries can ratify a treaty and choose when and where, if ever, they want to honor it. China has ratified several human rights treaties which the US has not. It's not because China is even close to the US in terms of preserving the rights of its people, but because they can go ahead and ratify anything, and it doesn't really affect them internally. The US however, would be bound by the sometimes asinine terms of such treaties, and thus must be much more cautious when ratifying such a treaty. The same goes for landmine treaties and nuclear test ban treaties. If we ratify something here, our gov't is in a fuckton of trouble if they don't abide by it.... from our own people.
Those are the basic tenants by which the US senate under both republican and democratic domination has never even considered ratifying the Kyoto treaty. Beyond that, under Clinton, the democrat controlled senate passed a nearly unanimous resolution rejecting Kyoto. So this really is not a partisan issue at all, it's about whether the US wants to commit economic suicide and have a voter revolt as jobs move overseas in numbers that make the current outflow look quite paltry.
They really should call it what it is... global socialism. Take from those who have built something, and give to those who haven't. They're trying to wrap it as an environmental package, yet all it would do is shift pollution from developedd countries to undeveloped countries. This is explicitly endorsed in the protocol in the way they allow an international *market* for pollution credits.

That said, we really do have to do something about many types of pollution. As for global warming, I consider myself a scientist, and I have done the calculations by which they predict certain pollutants will cause global warming. Unfortunately those calculations, as far as I have seen, are based upon a lot of conjecture about the absorbtivity and reflectivity of our atmosphere under certain pollutant stresses. It's extremely difficult to make the case for it, so it's not a surprise that the case is currently not particularly convincing. If it were, the circumstances and approach would be quite clear. No one in our gov't *wants* to destroy the planet our children are inheriting. People are just more or less hesitant to be convinced by the currently presented case.

Explaining the unexplainable

2006-02-01T01:18:00.000-08:00

Got this query from a bright, close friend of mine, who also happens to be my cousin.

I remember you explaining your views on Bush in Iraq a while ago, but I forget most of your points and am finding myself questioning why he is there again... other than to get his hands on more oil. I look forward to reading your blog.

America does benefit from the oil, in terms of stabilization of oil prices. But going over there to *take* oil was never one of our intentions, and absolutely has not been the case. In terms of oil policy, the motivation for going into Iraq was to allow us to *buy* oil from Iraq at a reasonable market price without the money going to Saddam and the gang. So yes, there was an oil policy reason for going into Iraq, but it wasn't the dominant factor, it wasn't an imperial factor, and it wasn't a 'cheat the Iraqis' factor.
There were a couple obvious policy factors behind the invasion which we obviously couldn't state in public.

First, Iraq is effectively our 'terrorist honeypot'. How many terrorists were in Iraq before the invasion? Quite a few, mostly Palestinian training grounds. How many are there now? A whole lot more. Were there terrorists 'created' by our invasion of Iraq? Probably some, but not a significant percentage considering the incredible forces islamofascism had already built against us. We're talking militant organizations dating back to the late seventies during the Soviet expansionist era. Enough militants to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, harry their forces in the central asian republics and chechnya, and they continued recruiting throughout the 90's while we did nothing but cut our military. Thousands upon thousands of Afghani war orphans brought up in Pakistani madrassas being taught nothing other than to destroy western civilization in the name of Allah. It's very easy to underestimate the forces we are facing here.
After 9/11 it became very clear that we were in a very asymmetrical conflict. Al-Qaeda and others could hit us without having to confront our main strengths: economic prosperity and military investment. They bypassed all that and did a quarterback sneak into the end-zone.
It was clear to me soon after 9/11 that we could only win this conflict if we could find a way to match our strengths against their weaknesses. This means making effective use of our military superiority in combating terrorism. Having our military forces camped out at home was only costing us a lot of money and providing little to no benefit in the new conflict.
The job of our military at that point became to pick a fight with these guys, and draw them into a situation where we could at least pit them against our military strengths, rather than our civilians at home.

Secondly, we had just gone into Afghanistan. That was required in order to staunch the flow of operations of Al Qaeda. A whole lot of people were opposed to it. There were large demonstration all across the world, but a big majority of the US supported it. It's easy to forget these days how many people were against the invasion of Afghanistan, because many have started using it as their token point of moderation in attacking the other side. How many times have you heard protestors against the invasion of Iraq say that they were for the invasion of Afghanistan? I've heard it a lot. But if you actually look back, many of those people I hear using that reasoning now, actually were *against* the invasion of Afghanistan. They've just forgotten that out of the convenient ledge they feel they gain in discussions. Like: "Oh, I'm all for defending the country, but this is going too far.."
Not true. The protests against going into Afghanistan were extremely large. I was quite disrespected in two workplaces for supporting the invasion of Afghanistan, by the same people who now say they supported it.
Anyways, the more important point, which is again not something that could publicly be used as a justification is that Afghanistan was not enough.
The US needed to make it clear to any tin pot dictators around the world, that if they allowed their territories to be used by terrorists to plan international terror attacks, that their little gig as dictator would be up. We needed to make the case that not only are we going to go after those dictators who supported and/or engaged in terror plottings, but that we were going to strike out and start solving the problem before it became a problem.
Terrorists train and attack under the protection of one dictatorship, we remove two dictatorships in response. We needed dictators around the world to know that they were on notice, and that we will respond with near-illogical overwhelming force.
This is largely credited with having convinced Ghaddafi in Libya to declare and shut down his nuclear weapons research program. I'm not so sure it was that, but if it was, good.
So that's the crux of this particular facet of my argument. We can't say that we were going to make an example out of Iraq, yet we really needed to make an example saying that we will act proactively, even possibly illogically (from the perspective of a dictatorship that really doesn't understand democracy anyways, and just considers it a weak form of government) in preventing another mass attack against the US.

A third unspeakable reason was that not only were our military forces doing pretty much nothing about terrorism, we were losing ground against Saddam. Our pilots were being run ragged enforcing the no-fly zones. We had forces getting bombed a couple times a year in Saudi Arabia, where we didn't want our forces stationed anyways. One could say "but those losses were small compared to what we're taking in Iraq". But on the flip side of the coin, our losses in Iraq are in combat, attempting to build a safer future. Our losses in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere were meaningless, stupid, and defeatists to the morale of our military.
We're going to take on the burden of 'containing' Saddam, expending enormous resources enforcing these no-fly zones, and providing deterrents for absolutely *nothing* in return except maintaining the status quo. This may seem like a great idea for Europe, and countries other than the US, being that it wasn't their guys or money spinning their wheels in the way of danger.
We did everything we could in the UN, and the whole time, the UN bureaucracy was arranging to funnel money to Saddam. We expected that if he was cut off by sanctions, he would lose his grip on power and succumb to internal revolt, except the UN worked to maintain the status quo. Honestly, the last thing the UN needs is more democracies. It drastically reduces their relevance, since democracies do not go to war against each other. I'm not saying the UN is particularly against democracy, but that they don't have any vested interest in helping countries attain it, except for the fat US paycheck they would risk if they're ever caught overtly working against democracy. So Saddam was gaining power, and we were losing power.

The fourth unspeakable reason we went into Iraq, was because we couldn't threaten anybody else in the middle east while we still had to deal with containing Saddam. 16 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. That makes Saudi Arabia an enemy in my book. But as it was, we had no leverage for threatening Saudi Arabia at all. We needed our military bases on their soil in order to contain Saddam. If we maintained the status quo, and another 16 Saudis found another way to kill 3000 Americans, we *still* would not be able to respond by attacking Saudi Arabia. Now, we have a whole lot of leverage.
I predict the moment Saudi-supported for Saudi-funded terrorism comes to America again, our military will immediately be dispatched to expropriate Saudi oil fields. From there, the gloves will come off with respect to our tolerance of Saudi funding for the terrorist enemy. I'm absolutely certain the Saudis know this as well, and this buys us time.
Getting rid of Saddam both freed up our military, and put pressure on our true enemy.

These are just the 'unspeakable' reasons. The kinds of reasons that you can't publicly claim, because while they're quite realistic and extremely important, they're not acceptable logic under the prevaling attitudes in the world. Making these reasons public would also make the prosecution of this war more problematic, and the last thing we need is more soldiers dying in Iraq.

whirlwind, this time math and programming

2006-01-30T00:24:00.000-08:00

In one sense, basic calculus is just like 'functional programming'. You have a function(al) called 'derivative', which takes a function as an argument, and returns a function as its result... same goes for integrals... somebody needs to write a 'lisp programmers guide to calculus'... if you do print derivative(sin()), you get 'cos()' as output.. for example.. and print integral(cos()) would output 'sin() + constant' :)
I always had an easier time learning programming constructs than math constructs. Sometimes that might have been because the math was just a little more abstract... but I also think that sometimes it's due to nomenclature.
If you are forced to write mathematical concepts in a way that a computer can easily understand what you are saying, it's probably easier for a human to comprehend as well.
Part of this is implied assumptions that go along with mathematical statements. Things that just 'go without saying' to mathematicians or physicists. As one example, physicists often just make assumptions that the functions they are dealing with are 'well behaved'... as in they don't have discontinuities or go to infinity at one place or another. If you wanted to make that case in a computer language, you would have to explicitly tell the computer that (either in the language design, or the actual code)...

Big blog day today, Chavez and Sheehan

2006-01-29T23:07:00.000-08:00

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-01-30T035516Z_01_N29182851_RTRUKOC_0_US-VENEZUELA-FORUM.xml

I just really don't get it... whose image are they trying to make worse, Chavez or Sheehan?

Other close friends of Chavez include... Fidel Castro. I'm not saying Sheehan == Castro, but I'm saying that Chavez certainly hangs around in bad company.
What kind of a leader actively wants to be associated with the only tyrant in the western hemisphere to keep an iron grip on power for almost fifty years?

Will wiretapping split the democrats?

2006-01-29T23:00:00.000-08:00

So on this wiretapping issue, I think there's a possibility of the Democrats hanging themselves on this one.
First off, nobody has denied that the administration did not inform many congressional leaders of their plans for warrantless wiretapping. Now, the left wants to make it a public and partisan issue, being that they've picked up the smell of blood.
The problem is, any congressional democrat who was informed, is going to be pressured to produce evidence that they objected to this warrantless wiretapping when they were informed of it, or they will be run across the hot coals by daily kos et al.
On the other side, conservatives are going to give their representitives generous leeway on this issue, as they can hide behind the whole 'give bush the benefit of the doubt that he's doing the right thing'.
In essence, this presents a much higher likelihood that the democratic party will suffer schisms over this than the republicans.

This doesn't mean that the left should stop pursuing these issues, but rather, they have to be more focused and pursue these issues in an extremely non-partisan way. If they start saying "It's Karl Rove, republicans, and the Bush gestapo", well, they're going to start roping some of their own in on that... splitting the democrats before the next election.

Hamas

2006-01-29T18:14:00.000-08:00

So... I think we need to (in order)
1) recognize Palestine as a state, with borders that represent today's situation.
2) call on Palestine to cease its attacks against Israel
3) remove US funding for Palestine
4) push through UN sanctions against Palestine

This assumes that Hamas refuses to come to drop its bid for violent destruction of Israel.
Within a few years, either Hamas will relent, or the palestinian people will see that Hamas is only making their lives worse, and the elections will go another way.

I think this formulation, while not speedy, is the only logical course of action.
Do I like Hamas? Absolutely not.
But is democracy more important than keeping members of Hamas out of the Palestinian government? Yes.
Democracy will start to solve the problem in due time. Removing Hamas will only delay the start of the solution.
It's not like there's some simple and easy solution to this problem. This has to play out over time and through democratic trial and error.

Go RIM...

2006-01-29T17:53:00.000-08:00

Pretty good overview story on the blackberry suit..
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060128.wxcover0128/BNStory/Technology/

The patent system is desperate need of reform for a great many reasons. This is one of them. I think patent-holding firms should be abolished, but in order to do that, limitations on unproductive patents need to be created.
In the end, patents need to become a little more like trademarks, where you have to continually use and enforce your rights in order to maintain them.
The whole submerged-patent thing is also completely ridiculous. In essence, this case shows how what's right and what's legal are currently not lining up in our system of intellectual property ownership.

So many flaws, so little time

2006-01-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/28/20658/6235

Based on your knowledge of history - and particularly Vietnam - what parallels do you see now with the war in Iraq?

There were certain aspects of what was going on with Hussein that seemed obvious to me were lies right from the beginning. Even so, I did assume he had some WMD's. It seemed plausible enough that they would have kept some; we knew they had them before - not nuclear but chemical and biological. Saddam seemed to be acting in an evasive way, at least the way it was reported, not cooperating fully with Blix and the others. And our government seemed so sure and so precise about that, that I didn't think they'd stick their necks out to be that positive on the WMD's that they didn't have some fairly solid evidence. So I was assuming they did have that.

What seemed absurd from the very beginning was to say that that constituted an immediate danger to the United States. If they retained even a large quantity of chemical weapons and biological weapons, there seemed no reason to think that they would use those weapons unless they were attacked. By the same token, if they were attacked, it seemed all too plausible that they would use them - in fact, almost certain. It made the decision look, in that respect, terribly reckless to me, almost insane.

What seems even more absurd, is the idea that we would let the question of whether Saddam had WMDs act as a deterring factor in our foreign policy. When someone threatens to kill you, you are obligated by millions of years of evolution to remove that threat as immediately as possible. Sometimes a tactical delay is appropriate, but moving the analogy to Iraq, we already had a 12 year "tactical delay" in place.

That said, one fear we were concerned about was Iraqi WMDs leaking to terrorists, *not* the chance that Iraq may use a WMD against the US directly. This Ellsberg guy might be taken seriously if he were to deal with the *actual* concerns which were important at the time, not his fairyland wishlist of what an idiot would have been concerned about at the time.

Don't avoid the question, Ellsberg, even if it plays popularly on Kos.

Acts of war

2006-01-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

I'm wondering how broadcasting Bin Laden et. al.'s tapes is not an act of war. We've got media outlets around the world (not just Al Jazeera) broadcasting his propaganda, and we're really doing nothing about it.
I don't people mind reporting on the facts, and telling us that Bin Laden released a propaganda tape to prove he was alive and threaten us with more attacks, but many foreign news agencies ran his propaganda footage directly.
This was unacceptable in WWII, but for some reason now it's okay? We even accept it from our supposed allies such as Qatar?
It gives the appearance that we are not serious about winning this conflict.
Somehow we've hamstrung ourselves with political correctness and moral relativism to the point of thinking that freedom of expression for foreign terrorists is as important as our own survival.
Screw that, I'd demand Al Jazeera change its ways or be dismantled, on threat of declaring Qatar an enemy, regardless of their previous status.

It's amazing that in many ways, the US still isn't taking this threat seriously. It's like we've gone back to feeling invulnerable, as though islamic terrorism only affects *other* people.

Where the left has gone wrong

2006-01-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

This is part of a discussion relating to the new ACLU suit attempting to force the USG to allow Mr. Ramadan to enter the US to take up a post at a university. Yes, this is an immigration lawsuit against the Patriot Act, disguised as a first amendment lawsuit.

If they want to argue against the patriot act, they have plenty of opportunity to do so while still following the principles which they claim to follow. I donated to them because I saw a pattern of defending the bill of rights, even when it was unpopular to do so. I have not seen that in quite some time.
Their originally chartered agenda has historically been quite successful, so I think they have just decided to 'extend' it, perhaps out of fear of losing relevance in a country where their principles are now accepted as "core beliefs" by both sides of debate. A victim of their own success, I guess.

I'm not saying they don't have issues to follow, heck, this wiretapping drama definitely requires litigation.

This all kind of reminds me of a discussion on torture which I had with a friend. I said the crux of the problem was that the US is unwilling to have a serious, realistic debate about when and where torture is appropriate, therefor no amendment has been enacted to deal with the issue. His response was: "No other President has ever needed to be constrained by laws on the use of torture before.." which is just such a huge fallacy, I really didn't know where to begin.
The obvious first order points being: 1) it's naive to think our government has never used torture previously, 2) no other President has faced this truly novel threat, so judging their response against that of peaceful times, is irrelevant.

I think it's really difficult for us to put ourselves in the President's shoes. Just imagine that you are elected to office, and eight months into your presidency, *wham*, largest attack in history on US soil. It is completely *your* responsibility and your responsibility alone to seek out and remove this meanace.
At what point would we stop and say: "That's good enough.." At what point would we say: "Those guys really weren't involved, let's forget about them.."

If I were in office, I would not be satisfied with just removing those who planned, executed, or were involved in the attack. What would be required of me, as the solely responsible party for preventing a future attack, would be to prevent the historical circumstances which in any way obliquely led to the attacks from occuring on my watch.
This would *absolutely* take precedence over capturing/killing those who planned this attack, because I would have absolutely no motive of vengeance or hatred towards those who perpetrated or planned the attack. The only way those involved in the attack would appear on my radar, would be as a potential future threat. I would only care about a cold, calculated, rational evaluation of what action would be the most likely the prevent another attack in the long term.

It'd be a big job, and I'd have to start somewhere. I'd spend a lot of time calculating which *somewhere* would be the most effective starting point.

Can honest people fail to understand so badly?

2006-01-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_whi_060112_the_countdown_to_war.htm

I am speechless. How can so many obfuscations and falsehoods be included, hidden, and alluded to in one article?
Perhaps some day I will actually go through a rebuttal.

Most dangerous man in the world

2005-12-14T11:34:00.000-08:00

Iran's "president" is playing 'king of the mountain' with Kim Jong Il as to who can be the "most dangerous".. it's the basis for my new reality TV show "Who wants to be the most dangerous dictator?". It's sad to be grateful that this guy doesn't actually call the shots in Iran. If Iran did have fair, free and meaningful elections, would this guy be in charge now? Somehow I doubt it. Democracies tend to elect sane leaders over conspiracy theorists. Today he's denying the jewish holocaust of nazi germany. Tomorrow he'll declare Japan never bombed pearl harbor. The day after, he'll declare that the US has never had a functional nuclear weapon. After that, it'll be time for the sun to revolve around the earth again.

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/639951

Dictators are fully responsible.

2005-12-08T23:29:00.000-08:00

Classic misconception here.

First off, he or she (I'll call him/her he for now) seems to think 'hearsay' evidence is inadmissable in an Iraqi court. He admittedly gets this notion from an american TV show. Now I'm not certain why he would think this pertains to an Iraqi court, or why this even pertains to an american court (certain hearsay is admissable, in fact).

Anyways, the big misconception is that somehow, because American tactics have in some cases overlapped with tactics used by the former Saddam regime, Bush must be equally guilty of something or other.

Should Saddam be punished for the work of his minions in terrorizing and torturing his populace, while Bush is given a pass on the Abu Ghraib torture abuses? Simply, yes.
There are a few good reasons, but probably the most important part is that Saddam deprived his people of a mechanism for righting these wrongs. From this perspective, his dictatorship is the main transgression, which makes him responsible for the crimes committed through it.

This is vaguely akin to the felony murder law practiced by many states in the US. If you are committing a qualifying crime while someone dies, even for an unrelated reason, you are guilty of murder.

Here, the crime is depriving a nation of its choice of governance. That other crimes were committed by his regime only compounds his guilt. That he was not the triggerman for some crime or another is irrelevent. He was dictator, and is thus completely responsible.

This brings me back to a previous posting, where I pointed out that democracy is the only way of transferring governmental liability onto its people. That is, in essence, why no US gov't official can reasonably tried for such a crime. The American people have both the responsibility and the power to prevent and correct for such crimes. With them lies the sole responsibility as well.

High level hatchet jobs

2005-12-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

Ran across this article.

It attempt to obscure what's really going on in Iraq by refusing to deal with any statistics or other measurable elements. It provides anecdotes alone, which are always the best mechanism for obfuscating an issue. Readers are expected to generalize and accept statements like: "Since insurgents gained control over most of Mosul".
I'd like to see that backed up. Michael Yon would probably beg to differ on that account.

Scheer obfuscates

2005-12-07T02:20:00.000-08:00

From his Nov 30th article

It's really not much of a suprise that he parted ways with the LA Times:

Amazingly, in Bush's Iraq, just as in Hussein's, you're a victim or a victimizer – often both. The grim ironies of this Darwinist nightmare are everywhere. For example, while the military is defending the use of white phosphorus on the battlefield – "shake and bake" in U.S. military slang – by citing chemical weapons restriction loopholes, it can't look good to the world that one of the human-rights crimes Hussein himself is charged with is – you guessed it – shelling Kurdish rebels and civilians with chemical weapons in 1991.

He is comparing the gassing of populated villages with mustard gas among other WMDs, to using white phosphorous rounds to 'smoke out' insurgents. It's highly unlikely that US forces killed mor e than a few people in this fashion, while Saddam's atrocities are exactly that, atrocities.

There really is no comparison to make here. Forces in Fallujah were not exercising collective punishment, a favored tactic in the Saddam regime.
The lack of parallel is quite striking. I'm guessing this obfuscation is disingenuous by nature.

Lieberman vs. Kos

2005-12-06T20:28:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I don't quite understand articles posted at the Kos.

Funny thing is that he thinks he's helping Israel out by supporting this "transformation" in the Middle East, when all this war did was replace a secular dictator with an Iran-style Islamic regime and Iranian ally.

I'm not certain how the case can be made that a 'secular dictatorship' is in any way preferable to a 'theocratic democracy'. But I don't want to just make that allegation and leave it hanging. I need to explain.
I have taken it upon faith now that a capitalist democracy is the best system of governance yet invented. It espouses the individual rights of people to choose their government, while allowing them the opportunity to gain personal status and recognition without resorting to violence.
There can be no dictatorship (even the most benevolent true dictatorship imaginable) that even approaches the capacity to govern of a liberal democracy. The beauty of democracy is that it delivers a true mandate from the people. With a mandate of the people, a government can make commitments which the people of the country all should and will abide by. No other form of government can effectively transfer responsibility and liability for its actions to its own people.
When it comes down to it, those who hate the US government hate the people of the US. Those who despise the former regime in Iraq can only legitimately despise the former regime.

If Iraq wants to have mullahs from one sect or another determining laws on how they should run their lives, that is *their* business. The only business of Democracy (whereas in this context Democracy = all real democratic nations) is an obligation to defend the most fundamental rights of the Iraqi people that allow them to choose to change their government.
This would include the right to political association, freedom of speech, and freedom to participate in an elected government.
This is our mission in Iraq. Our mission is not to make a christian-friendly state out of Iraq, or even a shia-friendly state. It is only to guaranty that Iraqis will always have the power to choose their government free from the influence of overwhelming violence.

North Korea and brinksmanship

2005-12-06T00:46:00.000-08:00

I don't understand how people come to these conclusions.

This quote disturbed me:

To overcome present-day hurdles, the United States could announce it will cancel the next round of annual joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which continue to rile the North Korean regime. If North Korea reciprocates by suspending activities at Yongbyon

One second. This has been done before. As the author mentions earlier in the article, Bush Sr. did exactly this. Much later North Korea announced that it had been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program the whole time. If this approach is taken, North Korea will be free to continue developing clandestine nuclear weapons.

It continues:

the United States might also pledge to withdraw some of its strike aircraft from the region to demonstrate its commitment to its pledge in the Joint Statement that it has no intention to attack or invade the North.

But again, we are dealing with a dictatorship which has consistently failed to live up to its agreements. What is the motivation for abandoning our strongest military ally in the region? Does South Korea want us to remove forces from South Korea? No, they do not. We should not be bullied into abandoning our allies.

And there are other flaws present:

Despite the breakthrough agreement in September on a Joint Statement of Principles outlining a series of action-for-action steps to denuclearize North Korea in a verifiable manner, the main antagonists are again at odds over the substance and sequencing of the deal.

Notice the portrayal of the US merely as one of the 'main antagonists' alongside North Korea. The implication is that the US and North Korea are equally legitimate governments, and should be dealing with each other as though both were fair and reasonable legitimate governments. The author cannot make any inroads into objective opinions, until he is able to clearly differentiate between which involved power is actually legitimate.
There is only one 'antagonist' here. The US only cares because it is vital to global security, a point with which everybody generally agrees, but at the same time, nobody else is going to do anything about it.

Several mistakes are repeated:

Enough already. To break the cycle and test Pyongyang’s seriousness, President George W. Bush should borrow a page from his father’s playbook: unilateral, reciprocal actions that demonstrate the good faith of both sides and improve the likelihood of success.

The author gives no justification for why the US should unilaterally effectively appease North Korea, he merely alludes to an anecdote. However, North Korea's inability or unwillingness to follow through with those reference commitments is precisely why this failed mechanism should not be attempted again. The author needs to make clear what he believes the difference is this time. Why are these unilateral concessions going to succeed where all previous unilateral concessions have failed? (Both the Bush Sr. and Clinton actions were met with subterfuge and continued nuclear weapons development. If that is of contention, we need to compare facts.)

Notice in the following quote, how the author refuses to acknowledge blame in the collapse of previous nuclear agreements with North Korea. The implication of the text is that these failures had no cause, as though it was some sort of natural occurence that agreements like this collapse. In fact, the North Koreans never took these agreements seriously in the first place, as evidenced by their continued development of nuclear weapons. The North Koreans kicked out inspectors and restarted Yongbon. The North Koreans acknowledged their clandestine work on nuclear weapons during time covered by the agreement. This author loses a lot of credibility by avoiding placing blame for this failure squarely on the shoulders of the responsible party. Instead, the article leaves the issue floating in the wind, as though the breakdown of previous agreements was an unavoidable act of god, when it was merely an unavoidable act of Kim Jong Il/Kim Il Sung.

We cannot give security guarantees to dictators. Among other problems with this concept, it represents an unconstitutional limitation upon the powers of the executive branch as commander in chief of US armed forces. And there obviously will be no constitutional amendment guaranteeing such a thing for North Korea.

We are in a real bind here. There is no peaceful solution to the stalemate, and the involvement of nuclear weapons makes military action quite a difficult undertaking. The solution is not nearly as simple as this author attempts to make it, primarily because a solution does not exist.

Breaking through to the other side.

2005-12-05T23:36:00.000-08:00

I can score a few points these days with my left-leaning housemates when talking with them about how this administration is the first to put democracy ahead of short term gains at the hands of a dictator. But it's really not enough.
What I think I really need, in order to make significant inroads, is a way to explain to them the magnitude of the problem and risk we are facing. Let them come to their own realization that yes, Bush was wrong... or maybe, just maybe he was spinning the evidence... doing a salesman's job... but that all pales in comparison with doing what is right abroad, and genuinely encouraging the spread of democracy.
How do I convince someone that when it comes down to it, democracy is not just our best weapon, but it's pretty much our only weapon in this struggle? Convince is not the right word. I cannot convince. I can only show them my reasoning. They may choose to convince themselves.

From nothing to Israel in 60 years.

2005-12-03T15:17:00.000-08:00

Instead of studying this morning, I spent it reading about various perspectives on the formation of what has become Israel. Many of these were British government papers and opinions varying from the late 1800's through the '48 war.
What I don't see, is any well documented version of the supposed 'palestinian side'. I can certainly read between the lines and see where the authors on the israeli side are meticulously choosing their words to avoid things that are probably facts working against them, but in general, they're well written and easy to follow. The numerous palestinian sites were all laced with incredible amounts of rhetoric and absolutely lopsided hysterical comments. It takes little guessing to know that neither side of this conflict was peopled entirely with angels, so that attitude really doesn't fly.

From what I can tell, the british accounts, while attempting to be equitable to both sides, were just hopelessly misguided. They almost never reference any democratic principles, instead leaving the style of government and guarantees of rights to whoever wins the power struggle.
While we certainly defeated the british, they absolutely failed to learn anything from that defeat.

Over all, one author put it best: Israel is an international affirmative action program for jews. Many people supported this out of general support for the jewish culture... while others supported it out of antisemetism.
But everybody in the world seemed to be quite supportive of this. Even most arabs apparently were, until they realized that they had sold too much of their land too cheaply.

The jewish affirmative action program is still ongoing in Israel. This is implemented in terms of demographic control through segregation through immigration. It's not fair, but the world has thus far felt this affirmative action program to be necessary.

2005-12-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

From the article:

Even on Wednesday, Bush was at his least persuasive when he tried to justify the war. "If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle," he said. "They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders." This is an unknowable assertion of course, and not very convincing in any case. The invasion of Iraq has caused thousands of Muslims who otherwise might merely have disliked the United States to take up arms against us. That's not an apology for the insurgency or its disgusting tactics. It's just true.

But isn't the rebuttal 'caused thousands of Muslims ... take up arms against us' also an unknowable assertion?
Judging the intentions and motivations of our enemies is extremely difficult. We have to step into their shoes and realize that many in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere are fed a constant stream of propaganda. As such, those "joining the jihad in Iraq" could be joining for all kinds of reasons, even complete misunderstandings of our intentions in Iraq (there are at least a few confirmed cases where captured foreign terrorists actually did not know that the US did not want to continue its presence in Iraq).

Over all, the quoted article is pretty decent. I'm just trying to make sure people's assumptions are clearly defined.

Ramblings on propaganda and persuasion

2005-12-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

Though I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, it's very difficult to believe that these misinterpretations of events were not deliberate. I'd really rather think of this authors as being uninformed rather than openly devious. This showed up on news.google, of all places:

Response to Bush' latest speech at the naval academy

Here we go:

Bush continued with his Tal Afar fairy tale by saying:

Iraqi forces not only cleared the city, they held it.

But if you're measuring "progress," you have to keep in mind that just around the time Bush gave his speech, insurgents were blasting the hell out of Ramadi, directly attacking U.S. bases and government offices in that city just west of Baghdad with mortars, rockets, and riflemen.

This comes just 15 days ahead of the next scheduled election in Iraq. But the smoke in Ramadi didn't get into Bush's eyes.

One confirmed mortar round does not justify a 'blasting the hell out of' tagline. Just the whole tactic of using temporal proximity of events is bunk in itself. It's just a cheap ploy that wont float in even the most slightly critical perspective.

This does represent a larger problem. Many people are no longer attempting to persuade their opponents. Reading the rhetoric of the Daily Kos or Little Green Footballs, you find direct appeals to outrage and other emotions targetting the existing core audience of each site. Do either one of them appeal to the middle, or attempt to lure over their opponents through education? Not hardly. It's just flame after flame after flame.

The only legitimate tool of persuasion is education. To educate someone, you must put their interests first and relate the material to them, not yourself. You must also be disciplined in teaching without being condescending, resorting to rhetoric, or resorting to generalizations.

It guess part of the problem involving the two aforementioned sites is that their continued relevance and incomes are dependent upon the furthering of friction between the two sides.

Even Chavez cannot trump the US Constitution

2005-11-23T02:28:00.000-08:00

It's all under the guise of 'humanitarianism'. More accurately, it is an attempt to undermine the US Constitution. Unfortunately Chavez and his associates are not so motivated. It's clear to anybody with the slightest reading of constitutional law, that a state cannot enter into an agreement with a foreign country. Either the media is misrepresenting the situation, or it is blatantly unconstitutional.
That said, the goal of Chavez and his allies within the US is more likely to embarrass the administration by forcing the US government to exert its authority to "deprive the poor of cheap oil". I think they're underestimating how seriously America and americans take the Constitution. This PR stunt will be seen for what it is.
It's a sad day when our elected officials team up with foreign leaders against our own leadership.

Al Qaeda's key fallacies - 1

2005-11-22T09:14:00.000-08:00

By means of understanding the precepts upon which Al Qaeda derives its motivations, we can get a better sense of the steps they will take in executing their war.
The foundations of Al Qaeda spawned from the mujahedeen's expulsion of soviet forces from Afghanistan in the '80s. This apparent success, as many other apparent successes have done before, falsely emboldened those who innappropriately felt responsible for that success.
It's much like the lucky dotcom receptionist-turned-millionaire, who became rich for no other reason than accidentally being in the right place at the right time. As many of those lucky millionaires found out later, after many unsuccessful business ventures draining their luck-money, it was not their skill or competence which brought them that initial success.

Similarly, the mujahedeen did not succeed in Afghanistan by themselves. They were openly supported by Pakistan's ISI, which was further funded by the CIA. This provided them a base of support by which, when combined with the mujahedeen's 'commitment to war', leveled the playing field against the russians.
However, some leaders and participants of the mujahedeen saw their victory in Afghanistan as a sign from Allah.
Years later, the initial bumbling russian failures in Grozny further enhanced the mujahedeen's false sense of competence. Thus, it was really no surprise that the mujahedeen felt they would succeed similarly in Fallujah and greater Iraq.
However, the mujahedeen has never before fought with so few allies. Even the Saudi royals are unwilling to assist them overtly now. The mujahedeen finally found themselves overmatched by their enemy to a point where the 'commitment to war' factor does not level the playing field. Barring the entrance of another major power to support the mujahedeen, their plans for Iraq are doomed.

The key fallacy here is that success must be attributed appropriately in order to retain a realistic sense of your own capabilities. This is but one of many fallacies within Al Qaeda (and similar movements) still to be explored.

Strange timings cannot be a coincidence

2005-11-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1132475588009&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Rumor has it that Zarqawi is dead. If this turns out to be true, it could mean multiple things. One of the likely possibilities, is that Al Qaeda's targetting of civilian muslims have actually turned traditionally non-intervening 'arab moderates' towards cooperating with the destruction of Al Qaeda, rather than tacitly supporting them. The anger at Al Qaeda within Jordan appeared to be quite strong, considering the multi-hundred thousand person protests.

It's also possible that Jordan's intelligence services actually knew more about Zarqawi that they let on... and just started cooperating more fully with the US and Iraq as a result of the latest bombing.

Either way, if Zarqawi is truly dead, the timing of the Jordan bombings are unlikely to be a coincidence.

[Addendum]

While this is no reason to slack off in the GWOT, it should be recognized that this is the direct result of Al-Qaeda agenda of failure.
These days Al-Qaeda operates within the fringes of muslim society. They thrive because a lot of muslims believe Al-Qaeda has a legitimate gripe with the west. Thus many are willing to kind of look the other way, whether by choice or under threat. Unfortunately for Al-Qaeda, their goal of a pure islamic state in Iraq forces them to attack the so-called 'collaborator civilians' throughout the middle east. They are also required to attack 'targets of opportunity' rather than 'targets of choice'. This erodes their support within their not-quite-base, as civilians get blown up everywhere.

But Al-Qaeda is in dire straights. They cannot stop targetting civilians, otherwise democracy will flourish quite easily in Iraq. And for an organization bent upon theocratic domination of the world, that is unacceptable. Therefor they neccessarily must continue to erode their not-quite-base of support.

[Addendum]
Looks like it was likely a mistake. Too bad.

Torture soup

2005-11-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

This is the blogger from whom I initially picked up the notion of explicit versus nonexistant policies on torture.
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/11/be-he-neer-so-vile.html

Have read about it in many other places... and it really is time the US and other western countries really start to take this issue seriously and stop pretending that it doesn't exist. Unfortunately we've never cared before, because what the CIA did abroad, stayed abroad. I have no doubt that the CIA has been using tactics which would fit into many definitions of torture for a long time. They have certainly rendered suspects into torture by other regimes. Congress should demand a full accounting and start treating this issue with some transparency. They should learn exactly what we will be forgoing if we do completely ban 'torture', before we impose that ban.
This is an actual place where the administration could really lead, much as they've done so in beginning to dismantle the support structure for foreign dictatorships within the US government. Maybe this is where McCain wants to lead us. I just hope it's not a knee-jerk reaction by someone to far too intimate an experience with real torture.

Who did Bin Laden vote for?

2005-11-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

I spent some time meandering through my thoughts about which '04 Presidential candidate would be the worst for Bin Laden. In particular, I wondered who he wanted to see in the US Presidency.
All statements he made prior to the election of neccessity must be ignored, for he will say whatever is most likely to achieve his goal. If he felt it in his interest to have Kerry in power, he may have threatened people who are considering voting for Bush hoping to cow them into voting for Kerry, or he may have threatened people considering voting for Kerry, in expectation of a backlash against him. So obviously any statement he made must be completely discounted.
Moving on to more relevant factors, which candidate was in his best interests? Was it Kerry, because a less aggressive foreign policy would give Bin Laden breathing room to regroup and recreate his terrorist infrastructure? Or was it Bush, because his aggressive foreign policy allowed Bin Laden to better recruit malcontents within western countries?

To settle this factor, I evaluated the two candidates based upon their plans for removing the threat. Bush proposed an aggressive expansion of democracy. We can all agree that expansion of democracy is a good thing, but we all disagree on whether such an expansion can be successfully driven by agressive foreign policy.
To me, Kerry's plan involved treating the conflict as less of a war and more of a criminal enforcement. There are a lot of ways to shot easy holes in the 'war on terror' by asking simplistic questions like "Wars must end, when will it be over?" But much like the "War on Poverty", the "War on Terror" is not something which will have a definitive ending. It is in the nature of some humans to seek a disproportionate voice in the political arena. For most, this means participating in the democratic process. But for some, this will involve the exercise of political violence. So no, the "War on Terror" will not end, but our war against Al Qaeda may end.
So yes, I think it's a war, and not a criminal enforcement, therefor I was highly skeptical of the plans laid out by the potential Kerry administration. I think a lot of people were. For the most part, these plans consisted of vague statements, references to allies, attacks against the existing doctrine, and not much substance.

In a lot of ways, this is just a result of good strategy by Bush. The administration took as many steps as possible towards removing the terrorist threat. The administration can be accused of being overzealous in its ambition, but anything less would have left the administration facing even tougher questions.
"Well, you claim to be tough on terrorism, yet Hussien, an acknowledged terrorist financier, trainer, and supporter still has the run of Iraq."
"We had 2700 deaths on 9/11, and you invaded Afghanistan. Does this administration really think that is *enough*?"

Personally, I do not think Bush would have had a chance at reelection without invading Iraq.

Put your mouth where your money is.

2005-11-09T17:40:00.000-08:00

As part of the impertubable effort, I am soliciting links to the very best arguments people can find proving that Bush lied in regards to WMDs and Iraq. Of the naysayers, I have chosen the following article, which I do think best represents the case that Bush did not lie. But I hear 'lies lies lies' so often, and all the facts have been out for so long, that I assume someone has put together a comprehensive, calm, clear case showing the facts and implications.
I'm not asking someone to quote Bush saying there are WMDs in Iraq, and then say "but there aren't, QED", because that only proves his statements were innaccurate, which we can stipulate to some degree at this point.
Please send me the very best case you can find!

Torture, take III

2005-11-09T10:53:00.000-08:00

There's a conflict between the executive and legislative branch over torture these days.

I think a lot of this is just the simple adversarial system that was designed into our society and government. Police chiefs always ask for more resources and authority, and the people always attempt to limit such grants of power.
That said, the case has not made that torture is inneffective or immoral in all cases when it comes to the new conflict we face. Until that argument can be made convincingly, there's no case for banning torture outright. Beyond this, torture must be specifically defined, not just bandied about as an ill-defined term.

Can we deprive prisoners of their holy books? That is not torture in my opinion. Can we hold a prisoner's head underwater until he has almost drowned? That is *definitely* torture, and in general I would say no. But I think further investigation is necessary.

I'll tell you one thing... the same day torture gets an Al Qaeda operative to reveal details which were otherwise unobtainable about where that nuke has been planted, is the day I will switch to not just endorsing torture in very specific cases (should probably require judicial approval), but I would demand exactly that.
That's really hard to argue against, unless you are a nihilist and would rather watch society be destroyed than compromise on such a principle. I can vaguely respect that, but I'm here for my own survival, and the survival of the ideas and people I hold dear. Not being a ruthless, cruel, torturing bastard is something I value very highly, but I'm not sure I would condemn all of america to death to avoid it.

Don't get me wrong, I do not think I am taking torture lightly, I am taking nuclear terrorism very seriously.

The "chinese buying us conspiracy"

2005-11-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a good piece of FUD:
Our government is being purchased

Quoting one of the most misleading statistics I've seen in a while:

According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.

How does this compare to "relevant" numbers?
US National Debt as a percentage of GDP

Well, the national debt isn't great. But it's not the end of the world either. For unsecured debt, it shows that people pretty well trust the US government.

A very odd coincidence (which I cannot call a correlation yet) is that advances against tyranny have come during budget deficits. WWII, end of the cold war, invasion of Afghanistan (by USSR negative and USA positive) and Iraq.
Notice the reccession of both the national debt and democracy during the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon administrations as the US failed to show its resolve against the vietnam and other tyrannies.
The first and most obvious things which do not correlate here are Bosnia and Kosovo.

This suggests that the US being in greater debt (at least to some limit) is good for the world as a whole.

More on torture

2005-11-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

While I don't realy care very much about perception, I do care very much about appropriate levels of tranparency. I think having a stated policy about torture by intelligence operatives (which no administration has previously commited to, as far as I know), is better than saying "we don't do it, but we don't guarrantee that we won't do it".
9/11 shook the foundations of our democracy. It absolutely required us to re-analyze everything we know, lest the next terrorist attack be a nuke rather than a couple planes. Hopefully banning torture explicitly (with solid definitions of precisely what that is, not some fuzzy UN definition which only the US is required to observe) will be an acceptable option, but I think it's probably still too early to make that call.

Misinterpreting the riots of Paris

2005-11-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/11/why_is_france_b.html

I think this guy is making a very honest misinterpretation... I think he really just doesn't believe strongly enough in democracy and the rule of law. He seems to suggest that only understanding and sensitivity and associated appeasement will bring peace to the ghettos of paris. But nobody can accept unelected forces of violence determining domestic policy. If these groups want to have a say in the government, they have to approach it in the same way everybody else does. They're not to be treated specially, just because they're willing to resort to violence to get their way, they're just criminals.

Many other groups in history have achieved their goals through the democratic way, and denizens or gangs of parisian ghettos cannot be allowed to short circuit the process. Maybe it's not the kind of process their supposed 'culture' embraces, but it's democracy, which trumps culture in importance time and again.

I'm not advocating that nothing be done about the plight of parisian ghettos. I don't really know how bad they are, and perhaps government policy should be changed in their regard. However these policies must be changed through elections, not through intimidation, and it doesn't matter whether these gang members feel 'disenfranchised'. France is a verified democracy.

Torture

2005-11-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

The following statement: "America is the only country in the world that asserts a legal right to engage in cruel and inhumane treatment." - McCain

One other point on this, is that asserting a legal right to do such a thing is/would be actually a step forward. There are no laws against torture being applied to non-POW, non-US citizens outside of the US. I'm glad McCain is pushing this issue. It is something that absolutely must be discussed now that the stakes have dramatically changed. There are a lot of constitutional issues which have had judgements deferred because they really weren't an issue before, and judges generally despise setting new precedent without extremely important grounds. Well now we have those very important grounds.
One case involved in this is a drug dealer who was captured on US soil, and FBI agents then participated in a raid in mexico which siezed evidence of his guilt. His argument is that the FBI did not have a US warrant to search his domocile in Mexico, even though their mexican partners did have a mexican warrant.
Precedent here is pretty murky and far between, because for the bulk of US history, we haven't been able to just get up and go to another country.

This filters back to the GWOT in the question of what actually are the limits to which the CIA or other governmental agencies can go when they are operating outside of the US and against illegal enemy combatants? How limited *should* they be?

The current situation is unacceptable. Our soldiers in gitmo are *required* to wear gloves when handling copies of the Koran, because we agree with the militants that US soldiers are too unclean to be allowed to touch a Koran. On the other side, we have military interrogators using techniques of fear (dogs, temptation, etc) to ellicit intelligence from captives.

One discussion I had with a friend here devolved into a discussion of whether torture *can* tell us anything of value. My opinion was that yes, it could, but we probably don't want to pay the price it would exact upon our people and our country. His opinion was that you can't get anything out of torture because when tortured, people will tell you whatever you want to hear. True enough, but among those things told to the interrogator under duress will probably be some elements of truth.

On a related note, I will never say "torture is always wrong", simply for the fact that there are too many different opinions of what constitutes torture. Some people believe screaming epiteths at someone, or insulting their culture or religion is torture. You won't ever get me to agree with that.

[Addendum]
The problem with the quoted statement is that no country has ever legitimately asserted the right to treat prisoners in a fashion considered to be 'inhumane'. Every country which openly practices torture blatantly pretends such crimes do not exist. This does not advocate inhumane treatment of prisoners, but were a democracy to properly adopt laws allowing torture, assuming this does not hamper the peoples' ability to repeal same law at another time, is not just legitimate, but it's the definition of legitimacy.
Real power comes from the people. If the people want torture to be used in certain circumstances, there is nobody in the world with the 'moral authority' to deny it.
What *is* sacrosanct in a democracy, is the ability for the people to freely choose their government through referendum. Anything else is sacrosanct only in the case where it enables the former.
Perhaps it's the case that any society enlightened enough to make democracy sacrosanct, will also be enlightened enough to outlaw torture, but it's not a fundamental principle of democracy.

Where we should be focussed.

2005-11-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

Right now, our entire country should be up in arms *DEMANDING* an end to the world's dictatorships. And instead, what are our people doing? Bitching about intelligence failures and what our President might or might not have been *thinking*.
*This* is what really pisses me off about this so called 'liberal' movement. They're only committed to liberty for themselves, and to hell with everybody else. This is a travesty of humanity.
Personally, the rights of some american I do not know, are not significantly more important to me than the rights of Iraqis, Iranians, or Zimbabweans. A lot of people don't care, because they're not *us*. But I do.. for reasons both idealistic (it's just wrong) and pragmatic (chaos leads to disaster).

I don't even think we should be restrained about it. Just the mere existence of a tyrranical dictatorship gives democracies the right... or more accurately, the *obligation* to overthrow them. It's just sad that it's so acceptable for us to do nothing.
"Go ahead and beat your wife, it's none of my business, we're just neighbors."

It's just sickening. Maybe we can't fight everything all at once, but we have to try, and we have to be willing to make sacrafices. And most of all, we have to win.

[EDIT] Okay, I *really* apologize for this post. It is not in keeping with the tone I wish to disseminate here. I will not retract this, but I do promise to be more vigilant in the future.

Let's build a wall...

2005-11-05T10:16:00.000-08:00

What's sad, is in five years time, our leading antiwar politicians, Kerry, Frist, Dean, (long string of others all calling for timetables and immediate withdrawals) will have their transgressions forgotten. They will quietly stop acknowledging their forceful opposition to reforming Iraq. They will amazingly forget how they tried to abandon Iraq to Al Qaeda when they found the CIA's limitations on intelligence.
I wish they would memorialize their dissent right now. Build a wall, etch all their names on it. Place on it the quote: "We wish to forsake Iraq, because we had flawed intelligence on WMDs in Iraq... because we personally think our leader was disingenuous. For that, iraqis must pay a price." When we look back in five years time and say "Who didn't want Iraq, our #2 democratic ally in the middle east to be democratic?", the answers should be quite clear.

It's just really sad that they're going to whip up the moonbat sentiments, spout incredibly misleading policies about leaving Iraq to the wolves, and then they'll just walk away from it in five years time when reality becomes inconvenient... ah well... that's politics I guess.

A whole lot of this really is the after effects of the vietnam syndrome on the US psyche. Vietnam is the only 'success' story in the leftist cause. It's the only time democracy has been dragged to its knees and forced to repent. And the people who really suffered from this? No, not the tens of thousands of relatives of deceased vietnam era KIA, millions upon millions of vietnamese since have paid for it. But screw 'em.. they're not us, right?

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23402,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

the next few months

2005-10-29T01:58:00.000-07:00

I'm predicting that over the next few months, the administration will continue to make exactly the same statements and speeches it has in the past. Each of these will be heavily scrutinized to pickup the 'post-indictment' change of tenor. There will be no change in tenor, yet the left and the media will invent changes within it.
The primary reason behind this is the wrongful expectation that when faced with your own faults, you must back down. ie, "Now we're caught them red handed doing something bad, they will be forced to apologize and compromise!"
Such "logic" only prevails for those people who are not guided by their own strong principles, but instead seek to adopt those of others as needed.
What we will see in the future from this administration is exactly what we've seen in the past: a commitment to the democratization of the world, and an unyielding rejection of tyranny.

The legacy of Abu Ghraib

2005-10-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

Much like turning Iraq into the battlefront with Al Qaeda could not be a publicly discussed reason for going into Iraq, the legacy of Abu Ghraib is one whose resulting effect upon opinions within the middle east may be better than expected.
Nobody would wish for such actions as were taken during the Abu Ghraib scandal to occur. But at the same time, the manner in which America and the west has dealt with this issue has sent a message to the middle east.
Leaders should apologize to the people for improper actions which are inevitably their responsibility. Scandals such as these have and should be dealt with openly and with transparency. Procedural changes must be undertaken, again with transparency, to ensure such things do not occur again. And punishments should be meted out each accordingly to his or her culpability.
A dictatorship may refuse to acknowledge the issue, or blame it upon international conspiracies. They may also refuse to apologize for the wrongs which have been committed, after all, as unimpeachable leaders, they need not apologize to anybody for anything. A dictatorship, in the unlikely event of acknowledging such a problem, may also not make changes to prevent such occurences in the future.
Of the governing systems available today, the one most likely to prevent a recurrence of such a problem is clearly a democracy.

The message and legacy of Abu Ghraib is: "Look, here is how a real government deals with failures such as this, compare it to how you are being treated now."
For most of the population of the middle east, that's a difficult question to swallow. They ignore it, play it down, lambaste its context, but the question is still there.

The net effect of Abu Ghraib could be positive. This in no way excuses what those soldiers did, or the failure of policy an leadership which contributed to it. It is only an observation of the potential reality of the situation.

Perhaps this concept should remain undiscussed, ie, the crimes committed are so horrible, that the very slim chance of this being interpreted as an 'excuse' is unacceptable. I have not yet concluded whether or not that is the case.

Accusations are enough

2005-10-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-21T201708Z_01_FOR173008_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-USA-BODIES.xml&archived=False
"The U.S. military -- already under fire for the handling of Afghan detainees and desecration of the Koran in Guantanamo Bay, which provoked angry protests in Afghanistan -- has ordered an inquiry into the footage shown on Australian television."

You mean.. the baseless allegations which were retracted by the rag which led with them?
I just have a difficult time believing they printed this.

It shows that allegations, even refuted ones, are sufficient to keep a story going well past its validity, so long as the message is what people want to hear.

Notice this doesn't mention 'discredited allegations', but direct assumption of the truthfulness of already discredited allegations.

Amazing

It's time for some alternatives

2005-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

One thing we're not getting, is alternatives to the looming disasters like the International Criminal Court and the attempted UN takeover of the internet. We need a new multinational body, operating completely separately. It must have directly elected representatives to handle these kinds of international issues.
Yes.. only democracies are going to be able to play.. but we need to hand over the ICC and the control of the internet to such a body, to resolve conflict between democratic states.

mastermind or puppet?

2005-10-18T21:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5352146,00.html

I'm pretty confident this article offers a mischaracterization of the subject in question's relationship to the Taliban. The heads of the Taliban came from Pakistan and were ethnic pashtuns, generally from the afghani/pakistani border area they've been calling 'warizistan'... (yeah.. sounds like they're ready to create their own country of death). I remember talking to a pretty well informed pakistani lady back in 1998 about the Taliban, and was asking her why Pakistan was supporting them. She said it was considered by most of Pakistan (the more reasonable areas like Lahore) that the Taliban was being expelled from Pakistan. A lot of them were Afghan refugees who'd stayed in Pakistan since the end of soviet occupation... but a great many of them were soviet-occupation era war orphans. So.. Afghani problems... meet Afghanistan... don't let the door hit ya on the way out...

There were a great many people who, like the vichy regime in france, attempted to collaborate with the taliban. That's generally what happens when you are under occupation. If someone steps up, promises that your people wont cause trouble and will pay their 'taxes', they'll have some tendency to leave you alone. Bamiyan province is not part of the pashtun region... they're shia... It's just incredibly unlikely that this guy was anything other than what he says... a puppet head.

We do need to get rid of all the remenants of Al Qaeda, and their harboring cohorts, the taliban... but if we arrested this guy, it would probably be most like the proverbial baby-bathwater thing. Perhaps this guy should be arrested, but he would have to be arrested for collaborating, not calling the shots.

Zimbabwe: who knew a park was dangerous?

2005-10-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

It's always entertaining to consider the incredible flights of fantasy people around the world take, with respect to the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101400653.html

"The ambassador must consider himself very lucky that he is dealing with a professional army that the Zimbabwe National Army is," Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba said in a statement published by state media on Friday.
"Elsewhere, and definitely in America, he would have been a dead man. His adventure is really dangerous."

I don't think Zimbabwe understands how america operates. We don't just shoot people who stray into classified areas, and we don't stick classified areas in the middle of public parks.
What caused this?

"During an October 10 recreational visit to National Botanical Gardens in Harare Ambassador Chris Dell inadvertently wandered into a poorly marked military area located in the middle of the of the park,"

Makes you wonder... it was close to Mugabe's home.. but it was still a military area in the middle of a park. Makes ya wonder why it's there.. and why our ambassador chose to go there?

Daily Kos vs. Miers

2005-10-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

At it again... when you are afflicted with BDS, there is *always* a rationale for opposing Bush... you just have to stretch for it..
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/12/133917/76

They've got it aimed *straight* at their foot right now.... all they have to do is pull the trigger.

Sorry for that... I just don't understand why Bush' reasons for nominating Miers should be held against her in any way shape or form? Don't we want to find out whether she's a reasonable candidate for the position, rather than what's going on in Bush' head?

This is endemic of the left these days, focussing on what's inside Bush' head, his motivations, when they (we) should focus far more on his actions.

Why or why not the UN?

2005-10-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

The most crucial problem facing the UN in its quest for 'moral authority', is that true power is only derived from the people a government hopes to govern, not from the agreement of various dictatorships and oligarchies.
True UN reform would involve worldwide representative elections, a constitution, and commitment to building a bureaucracy to run its institutions.
That's not going to happen in the next fifty years, so we might as well accept that since their precious moral authority can only be granted to it thorugh democracy, they will never have it.

The UN is built on the premise of states being equal. That premise is violated in some cases such as the security council, but for the most part, the UN attempts to treat nations as equivalent, whether they are western democracies, Togolese or Zimbabwean dictatorships, or fascist China. But nation states do not have equal rights, democratic nation states do.