Archive - Jan 2007

Someone else had to tell me that the Star Tribune ran a letter to the editor today from me (bottom of the page). The subject of it is a situation that I will provide background for in a day or so.

In the meantime, I got published twice today! w00t.

I was disappointed that they changed my key paragraph from:

Its most outrageous claim is that Professor Kenney was using "a taxpayer funded tool not available to competing campaigns. ... It crossed the line into clear advocacy." Not only are we tools available to competing campaigns, we welcome any relevant opportunities to do policy work regardless of partisan affiliation. If you have such an opportunity contact Career Services in the Graduate Programs Office.

to

Its most outrageous claim is that Professor Sally Kenney was using "a taxpayer funded tool not available to competing campaigns. ... It crossed the line into clear advocacy." Not only are we, the students, tools available to competing campaigns, we welcome any relevant opportunities to do policy work regardless of partisan affiliation. If you have such an opportunity, contact Career Services in the Graduate Programs Office.

I liked my version better.

If you pick up today's Star Tribune, you will find a photo that I took at the bottom of the inside page of the sports section under "the daily buzz." The article discusses Macalester's last home basketball games before they build a new gym and they ran one of my photos, crediting Chris Mitchell, Sport Shot Photo.

I think Michelle Bachmann, Republican Rep in the House, is a disaster. She is a homophobic moron who is fulfilling a lot of expectations by acting like a starstruck high school girl at the State of the Union address.

Elsewhere, she has apparently called Bush "buff." Seriously. If you read your history books, you won't be surprised when a house falls on her.

James Fallows wrote an amazing article in the September 2006 Atlantic Monthly that I have long wanted to comment upon. I do so now! "Declaring Victory" (subscription required for full article) asserted that the U.S. has succeeded in Bush's war against terror. This is not entirely surprising as Fallows has previously asserted that we cannot stop terrorism. We can't. And we are doing better on some fronts than you might think.

This is certainly not an endorsement of Bush's policies. Rather, it is the result of some of our natural defenses (geography) coupled with the amount we spend on Homeland Security (it can't all be wasted money, right?) and the nature of the terrorists that target us.

Kilcullen says, “The al-Qaeda that existed in 2001 simply no longer exists. In 2001 it was a relatively centralized organization, with a planning hub, a propaganda hub, a leadership team, all within a narrow geographic area. All that is gone, because we destroyed it.” Where bin Laden’s central leadership team could once wire money around the world using normal bank networks, it now must rely on couriers with vests full of cash.

We are blessed with an enemy that is incapable of recognizing our weakness. Al-Qaeda remains determined to strike at the U.S. with high profile, dramatic attacks. It does not want to settle with the model used by Palestinian terrorists of attacking street markets, shopping malls, and other soft targets that we cannot possibly defend.

Al-Qaeda has attacked buses in Europe, but they continue to obsess over simultaneous attacks which require far more coordination and therefore higher chances of disruption. So long as they focus on the gold and we keep up our guard (I'm not going to pretend we will do the best we can, but I think we can do a sufficient job now that we are focused), I doubt there will be many attacks on American soil in the near future.

This does not mean that Bush's war on terror has succeeded. It hasn't. The premise of the war on terror is that we need to use the military rather than good detective and intelligence work. The military has its place - it was in Afghanistan. Now it is also in Iraq because of Bush's botched occupation. Stopping terrorist attacks is the work of the security agencies - like the ones that stopped the supposed impending attack on the planes from the U.K. to the U.S. last year.

Ultimately, all tactics to stop terrorism cannot protect us all the time. This is the folly of a war on terrorism - just as it is folly to have a war on drugs. We need intelligent policies to protect us from terrorism. When there are safe havens, we need to disrupt them using the most effective response - it may be military or it may be diplomatic.

Bush's response of sending the troops everywhere is clearly hurting us. His policies have created considerably more terrorists than it has removed (by death or imprisonment). So long as these people remain focused on dramatic, simultaneous attacks against us, we will be relatively safe. On the other hand, if they begin sneaking into the U.S. and conducting suicide bombings in public areas, they will create a massive scare. Remember the sniper attacks? I have to imagine considerably more panic if a few malls go up.

How can the United States regain the initiative against terrorists, as opposed to living in a permanent crouch? By recognizing the point that I heard from so many military strategists: that terrorists, through their own efforts, can damage but not destroy us. Their real destructive power, again, lies in what they can provoke us to do. While the United States can never completely control what violent groups intend and sometimes achieve, it can determine its own response.

We need to develop strategies that will protect us as much as possible. This means pursuing policies that create fewer terrorists than they neutralize. You know the rule of holes, right? Stop digging, asshole.

It means that we need to properly fund first responders and emergency services. On the whole, we might be more afraid of terrorism, but natural disasters cause far more damage and loss of life in this country than terrorists have or are likely to. The beauty of natural responders is they help in all those scenarios.

Fallows article reassured me that Bush may not actually have made us less safe in the near term. So long as the terrorists are too dumb to find our weak spot, we are safe. Let's hope it stays that way. Because if it doesn't, Bush has created enough terrorists to end our consumer culture - or at least kill malls and greatly increase online shopping.

In response to a letter responding to this article, Fallows included the following bit:

The flip question is whether a group of infiltrators, having seized control of the U.S. government with the intent of harming America's reputation and interests as profoundly as they could would have conducted the invasion and occupation of Iraq any differently from the way our real government has.

The United States is supposed to be a meritocracy. We have a national mythology centered around the power of the impoverished individual to work hard and life him or herself out of poverty and into a strong middle class or even upper class.

It ain't so.

Many studies have shown that the European countries, with their massive social programs, offer much greater chances of upward mobility to their poor (so long as they aren't Muslim immigrants) than in the U.S.

But what of other aspects of our society? daddYman sent me a link to a great story. This is the sort of story I think we need more of. Radar Online, a site I had not heard of previously, has a report on pundits and their predictions from before the war.

In a meritocracy, those pundits who were wrong should have a lesser stature now and those who were right should be elevated above where they are. This is not a scientific sampling, but the case studies are quite interesting.

I was surprised to see that Fareed Zakaria was on the list of people who supported the war early on. I did not become familiar with him until I saw him on the Daily Show, bashing Bush's incompetence. Until I find evidence that this accusation is not accurate, I will not respect Zakaria in the same way.

But we are left with the astounding fact that one of the war's crucial media proponents—apart from Zakaria's ubiquity and sterling reputation as a foreign policy analyst, his is by far the most prominent Muslim voice in the press—helped craft the arguments that Bush used to take the country to war. Then for 16 months leading up to the invasion, he wrote columns, edited news coverage, and appeared as an analyst on television putatively evaluating those same arguments for his vast audience.

At any rate, the overall synopsis of the piece is that the pundits who were totally wrong on the war are more popular now. Those who were right have either lost their job or have continued to be discounted in the mainstream news. This is not a meritocracy, this is why we make the same mistakes (the word mistakes is not correct, idiotic blunders would be more accurate) time and time again.

Walchka is an old man. Happy birthday!

What a weekend! This is another post from a coffee shop because Comcast has finally arrived at my door, only to tell me that the problem is outside the apartment and the box on the apartment. It was beyond his ability to fix.

So they are going to send someone else. Apparently the signal is too strong - or hot in tech terms. No idea why this is happening, but apparently he is surprised that the cable TV still works. Awesome. I mostly don't watch TV, but I live on the damn net so I'm screwed for another day or two until they get someone new out.

Good thing we don't have some unreliable satellite provider. We have had years without a problem with Comcast (aside from a glitch here or there) but this is really frustrating. If I actually thought Qwest would be significantly better, I would consider switching to them but I I figure we'll have the same problems with them.

In other news, I watch the first episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I think that will be my new obsession. It was a smart, witty show and features some great talent. Loving it.

I shot a bunch of sports yesterday - Macalester basketball and swimming for the U. I wasn't expecting the swimming, but got a last minute request I couldn't turn down so here I am. Now I gotta get into the photo editing and do my homework. Should be a good day.

Finally, I had a great talk with a friend from Mac last night. He has been to several Universities and is now in med school at the U. We talked a bit about academic standards and I think I need to retract some of my criticisms of the Humphrey Institute. While I stand by them, I think it is like criticizing a NASCAR driver for car exhaust.

This is what they do. And as it goes, I think my frustrations are a limitation of the few schools I have attended. I'm frustrated they are not rigorous enough but in talking with others, I think this is a problem with the entire U.S. education system. In thinking about it, I think the Humphrey remains better than most. More than anything, this shows the potential for improvement for everyone.

My religion is to live and die without regret

--Milarepa

Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) introduced legislation yesterday that would authorize $3.2 billion a year for Amtrak over six years in exchange for greater efficiency and increased investments by states.

I definitely think Congress needs to increase funding for Amtrak but I have been torn. Amtrak is one of those programs no one can kill but never gets funded well enough to be effective. Limbo.

With this money, I hope it becomes more effective. I would love to see higher speed rail throughout the midwest eventually. 40 hours to Seattle from Minneapolis is fun - I have done it round trip 2 times. But it would be nice to speed it up. At least through North Dakota, West MN, and Eastern Montana because they are boring and flat.

That being said, Amtrak seems may more effective on the coasts and it offers a signifanct advantage over other forms of travel as oil becomes pricier.

I wanted to post this yesterday, but our Comcast internet has been down for 16 hours. Awesome. Thank you Comcast.

Some comments from Bush's State of the Union speech. If this is too much for you to read, skip to the bottom and read the last 4 paragraphs. Do it for me.

Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on -- as long as we are willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done.

This comes from the administration who has bought partisanship to new levels. In WASHINGTON DC! One teeny example: the Bush Administration would not allow the most qualified State Department officials - who were supposed to go to Iraq immediately after the war to run the Coalition Provisional Authority - to go because they were not strong enough Bush supporters. Many of the people sent to Iraq to create a brand new government following a war were asked two questions: who did you vote for in November and what is your position on abortion. You want a major reason for my ANBAR is FUBAR? Partisanship from the Bush Administration. Even this might be forgiven if he demonstrated that he has learned the lesson, but all indications are that he is telling the Dems to be non-partisan while not changing his ways.

First, we must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes. What we need to do is impose spending discipline in Washington, D.C. We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009 -- and met that goal three years ahead of schedule. Now let us take the next step. In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years.

Balancing the budget would be great. It would be easier if he hadn't decided to launch the worst-prosecuted war in our history while giving tax cuts to the rich. He has no plan for achieving what he claims. His claims for "a budget that elimintes the federal deficit" is based on bullshit numbers and ignores the cost of the war in Iraq and fixing the alternative minimum tax. He is totally full of shit here.

It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply -- and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power -- by even greater use of clean coal technology ... solar and wind energy ... and clean, safe nuclear power.

Here his rhetoric is absurd. We need to diversify our energy supply by building ... MORE COAL! The U.S. gets more electricity from coal than from any other source - and by a considerable margin. Clean coal does not exist. Coal will continue to play a role in generating electricity in this country, but we absolutely need to minimize it as much as possible.

Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years -- thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

Reducing gasoline usage cannot be done without making it more expensive. We can wait for disruptions to global supply to do this or we can increase the gas tax. Ethanol cannot compare to gasoline as a fuel - it carries too little energy and requires more infrastructure to produce and transport.

Additionally, we use so much of the oil on this planet that when we reduce our demand, the price of oil goes down measurably. We have some of the world's oldest oil production facilities. Because we have drained so much oil from our fields (and for other reasons as well), it costs much more to extract oil from the U.S. than it does from other places in this world. Thus, cutting demand in the U.S. will not necessarily affect import levels because economics suggests that the U.S. will stop producing oil in response to lower prices long before other producers. But when has elementary economics got in the way of politicians plans?

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment -- and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.

We have waited 6 years for Bush to say climate change and this is what we get? I want my money back. I have said this before, but I'll repeat it - we do not need technical breakthroughs to address our dependence on oil. Our autos can be more efficient using yesterday's technology (indeed, technology from 20 years' worth of yesterdays). We can build better mass transit now. We are not waiting for new technology, we are waiting for politicans that care more about our children than they do for funds from energy companies.

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in.

The fight we entered in Iraq has been totally transformed by Bush's incompetence. This is like me telling my parents they should buy me a new car (one that costs $300 billion more) because they didn't originally buy me a car just so I could drunkenly drive it into a preschool.

Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq -- because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far reaching.

Is it just me or does this sound like the statement of a spoiled rich brat who has never learned the lesson that you don't always get what you want? I think Bush literally cannot comprehend failure because his father's influence has always prevented him from realizing what a failure he is. The American people could not figure that out in two elections (thanks to a Democratic party that somehow couldn't make it even more obvious) and here we are.