The Trouble is...

A good quote:

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

- HL Mencken

Dick Cheney - he was right!

Wow. This is incredible footage from C-SPAN from back in 1994. Back then, Cheney was a part of the Project for the New American Century, a controversial neo-conservative think tank that promoted the first Gulf War and American oil interests in the region - and even then he got it right on Iraq.

In this footage, he explains that we had made the right choice to NOT PURSUE sending troops into BAGHDAD to go after Saddam Hussein. Why? Because if we had gone into Baghdad....

.... "we would have been all alone"

...."none of the Arab forces ... would have been willing to invade Iraq"

...."if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could easily see pieces fly off"

...."IT'S A QUAGMIRE"

So remind me again, why was it a good idea less than ten years later????

We Won in Iraq, a long time ago

The following was too good to summarize

"I know this goes without saying, but it keeps coming up.

Remember when our troops marched into Baghdad, took the place over, drove Saddam into a hole and arrested or killed the government. Then we disbanded their army.

When you go to war that's what victory looks like.

Then came the occupation. There is no such thing as winning an occupation. You either continue to occupy or withdraw. It's semantic nonsense to apply the verb "win" to the noun "occupation."

Winning in war or sport is not vague or ill-defined. When the clock runs out in football the team that's ahead wins. When two runners are in a race the first to cross the finish line wins. When you fight a war, when you take the other guys' capital and disband their government and army, that's winning.

As I said it goes without saying, but it keeps coming up in the news, this weird idea that there is such a thing as winning an occuption, when there isn't."

-Dave Winer, The Huffington Post

The world is too dangerous - right?

- Our economy is declining.
- AIDS, Malaria, and other pandemics abound.
- The climate is changing in ways that threaten our way of life.
- We are facing nuclear proliferation and WMD's falling into the hands of our enemies.
- And worst of all, terrorists are everywhere - ready to attack any moment we let our guard down.

Thankfully, we have a government that is standing strong and defending us against all of these pending disasters, especially against terrorism from abroad. And hey, even if the executive branch is overstepping its powers, even if our legislative branch is passing laws that limit our civil liberties, even if the judicial branch is upholding these unconstitutional laws - that's okay, because the world is too dangerous - right?

Wrong.

Do we really think the world is any more dangerous than it has been before? Is our country really facing more threats than we have in the past? It is an insult to those who have come before us to even think such as thing.

We have survived the Depression.
We have conquered Small Pox and Polio with vaccines.
We defended our newly formed country against the British army.
We have fought and won two world wars at the same time.
We have even faced a nuclear war before.

And through all of it, we have retained our civil liberties. Never have we given our own government the right to tap our telephones or go through our credit card bills or our library records.

It is unacceptable and it needs to stop. NOW.

More on the irony Flip-flopping

As a follow-up on McCain, a friend recently forwarded me this link, which documents in detail many of his position reversals. It's a worthwhile read.

Wind Power - take two

This is another ingenious idea of how to do wind power effectively. The design uses flutter - you know, the kind of movement that collapsed the Tacoma Bridge when it resonated with the wind? Anyway, it's inexpensive, has few moving parts, and works on a micro-scale - all of which make it ideal for the developing world.

I don't know how I got lucky enough to stumble across this design, but boy am I glad I did!

Check out the two-minute video here.

Counterintuitive Innovation

This is super-cool. The rules of aerodynamics says that you should have a smooth edge, to maximize lift and reduce rough air flow. Maybe not always. An entrepreneur has started a company called WhalePower that is building primarily wind turbines that are shaped like whale fins which - oddly enough - actually have small bumps on the edge that reduce stall.

It's pretty sweet. I want in.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/11/wind-turbine-whale-02.html

Science v. Bush Administration

So it appears the Bush Administration has been having fun lately, what with the whole illegal-wiretapping-thing and the stay-the-course-thing and the threatening-Iran-with-war-thing. And now it seems we can add one more to the Bush legacy:

Censorship.

More specifically, censorship of scientific information and reports with conclusions that appear to have been deemed "unproven" - aka. uncomfortable. Like global warming's negative effects on human health, the state of our environment, and endangered species, among other things.

This is preposterous and I wonder how they have been getting away with it for so long. It appears Cheney (or at least his office) has been instrumental in all this, but really it comes down to a systemic problem. How have we allowed censorship - real live censorship - of one of the last fields that is supposed to be immune from politics?

Science is based on facts, based on data and analysis, and the scientific method. At least that's what we teach in schools. Call me crazy, call me innocent but I believed that nothing could be called science except conclusions drawn on experiments and rigorous testing and review.

Censorship is absurd and unacceptable. It should not happen in a free and open society. It does not happen in the America I choose to believe in.


Thanks to Erik for bringing this to my attention.

Wall-E for President

I couldn't resist - going to see the movie last week (the trailers did me in) or posting this editorial that compares Wall-E to our current presidential candidates.

The movie was awesome - I never knew you could make a movie that is cute and romantic, simple enough for children and complex enough to address social issues, nearly-silent for a good portion of the movie, and with main characters that are - amazingly enough - two robots! I highly recommend the movie to anyone and everyone who has a few bucks and two hours to spare.

As for the editorial (from which I stole the title of this post), it reminisces about what it means to celebrate our Independence Day. It is quickly apparent that Frank Rich of the NYT is not happy:

"Let oil soar above $140 a barrel. Let layoffs and foreclosures proliferate like California’s fires. Let someone else worry about the stock market’s steepest June drop since the Great Depression. In our political culture, only one question mattered: What was Wesley Clark saying about John McCain and how loudly would every politician and bloviator in the land react?"

He goes on to describe Obama as "small-bore" and "defensive", and McCain as simply "out-to-lunch", revisiting the fact that McCain does not know how to use a computer (a topic for a different time).

He comes to the conclusion that we should elect Wall-E our next president. And you know, in some ways, maybe he's right.

Flip-flopping revisited

So... I don't usually get this upset about Political Candidates. But McCain, while better than his Republican predecessor, is really beginning to grate on me. At the beginning of the Republican race, I didn't know much about his actual political stance on many issues but his reputation preceded him. He seemed like a tough guy who spoke his mind, worked independent of party politics, and generally stuck to his guns. I may not always agree with a politician's ideas, but if they can be honest, upfront, and keep their promises, they have my support.

It seems my trust in him was misplaced. He seems to be a bit confused now about what it is he actually stands for. Let me list a few for you:

1. A grassroots financial accountability bill - first for it, then against it
2. The McCain-Feingold bill for campaign reform- voted against it
3. Said he supported and then opposed Gay Marriage - before and after a commercial break on Hardball
4. Wire taps, torture - One of the reasons I respected him was that he opposed them. That is, until Bush became one of his campaign fundraisers.
5. Supporting the troops - except voting against a mandatory rest period between deployments, or voting against health care for the troops when they come home to become veterans.

And don't forget to check out the ENRON loophole. You know, the one that has forced gas prices up. And one of his main advisors basically wrote.

These are just a few examples of why he has lost my trust. As Americans, we can do better than this. For more info, see Olbermann and his voting record.