Too Darned Cold

 Posted by Doc Opp  Environment, Issues  No Responses »
Sep 302006
 

It’s cold in my office. I have to wear a jacket. Now if this were cold outside and the heat wasn’t high enough, that would be problem enough. But this is worse – it’s perfect outside today. Sunny and 70 degrees. The reason I’m cold is that my office has the air conditioning on, and I don’t have a thermostat to control it. All summer, my co-workers and I have been wearing jackets indoors. What a waste of energy. What a waste of money. And what a loss of productivity when my fingers get too cold to type and I have to take breaks.

It gets worse. If this year is like previous years, then as it starts to get cold outside, the heat will be turned up in my office. And just as the building is over-cooled in the summer, it is over-heated in the winter. So people will wear coats outside, but t-shirts inside. And when it gets too hot inside, people open the windows. Again, how wasteful.

I wonder how much money and energy could be saved if schools and companies didn’t waste resources in overheating and overcooling their buildings.

What causes terrorism

 Posted by Doc Opp  Bush Administration, Foreign Policy, Terrorism  2 Responses »
Sep 292006
 

“You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism.”
— George Bush

It depends, Mr. President, on how you fight terrorism.

Terrorism is a strategy. It’s not an ideology. Bush often is heard to say that terrorists hate freedom. It’s possible that some people who engage in the strategy of terror do hate freedom, but that ignores the Tim McVeighs of the world who are engaging in terror to increase freedom from perceived government oppression. Many terrorists don’t hate freedom so much as they hate America. And if hatred of America causes terror, then if you fight terrorism in a way that increases hatred of America, then you do cause terrorism by fighting terrorism.

I’ve often wondered what Mr. Bush believes the root cause of terrorism is. As far as I can tell, he’s never really thought about it. And this, perhaps, underlies his failure in effectively combatting it.

Orwell Was Off By 22 Years

 Posted by Mike  Bill of Rights, Bush Administration, Terrorism, U.S. Politics  2 Responses »
Sep 292006
 

As soon as President Bush signs the Detainee bill just passed by the Senate, this will now be legal in the United States:

Said thinks of himself as a loyal American. He moved to the United States as a child from North Africa. He married an American woman and has three children. He runs a small business. He speaks with a Midwestern accent. There was a time, of course, when he was an angry young man, and like many angry young men he ran with the wrong crowd as a young adult. He went to a few meetings with some Muslim radicals, one of whom ended up going to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. And he met a few men with whom he stays in contact; they are nice enough people when they aren’t talking about religion or politics. They even got him in touch with some charities that give money to Palestinian families. He supports the Palestinian people and opposes the Iraq War, but he is a pacifist at heart and has argued repeatedly with his more radical Muslim friends about the use of suicide bombings and terrorism. As Said has repeatedly said, the ends does not justify the means.

Unfortunately for Said, those connections to radical Islam have put him on an FBI watch list. Eventually, the FBI discovers that one of Said’s old acquaintances has started taking flying lessons. They decide to take action. Said is rounded up with a large number of other people as “enemy combatants”. In other words, the FBI breaks into his house in the middle of the night and arrests him. No warrant for his arrest was ever issued; in fact, his phone has been tapped for months and no warrant for that was ever issued either. He is sent to a military installation to be held. His family is never told where he went, and the FBI will not even confirm that they have arrested him. Said never sees a lawyer or a judge. In the meantime, the President has decided to define torture to exclude only actions that cause permanent physical harm. That definition is classified so the administration continues to assert that they have the utmost respect for human dignity. Said knows better. He is deprived of sleep for weeks at a time, and forced to stand barefoot on a concrete floor for hours at a time. He has no knowledge of the passing of time. And he is forcefully interrogated, using waterboarding techniques and electrodes. He knows nothing, and tells them that. They don’t believe him. Eventually he starts making stuff up, but it is too far-fetched. They still don’t believe him. Six months later the government releases him, weakened and mentally scarred, to go back to his family. No explanation, apology, or compensation is given.

That is a fictional account. But as of today it could happen. And the government would have broken no laws. All because we are afraid of attacks that haven’t happened, and therefore want to give more power to an incompetent administration and more moral authority to a group of people that deserve none.

God bless America, land of the free and home of the brave. Or not.

Economic Debates

 Posted by Mike  Debt and Deficit, Fiscal Issues  1 Response »
Sep 282006
 

One of the hot topics on the political landscape these days has to do with the interpretation of economic indicators. Republicans are trying to argue that the economy is strong, as evidenced by GDP and stock market growth. They also note that unemployment has fallen somewhat lately while inflation and interest rates have stabilized. The message is clear: vote Republican because Republican policies have given us a strong economy.

Democrats, on the other hand, note that there are plenty of reasons to be worried about the economy. Wages are stagnant, and real wages are declining. Stock market growth hasn’t resulted in benefits to the workers of those companies, and most of the benefits of our recent economic growth are going to the top 1% of wage earners. They also note that what economic growth we’ve had since President Bush took office is due almost entirely to an unprecedented housing boom; a boom that has dissipated, and in some places turned into a bust. Finally, they point to consumer confidence (which is low) and the budget and trade deficits (which are high) to say that the long-term outlook of the economy is pretty gloomy. In short: vote Democrat because Republican policies only benefit the rich.
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Lessons Learned From The NIE

 Posted by Admin  Bush Administration, Foreign Policy, Middle East, U.S. Politics, War in Iraq  1 Response »
Sep 272006
 

By Mike (Not Admin)

The current political fracas in Washington has to do with the National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE is a report that the government periodically issues on a particular topic, in this case the spread of anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism, which condenses the best guesses of all of the intelligence agencies into a single document. The most famous NIE of recent years was published about Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs, and it was from that report that President Bush drew the “evidence” he used in his infamous 2003 State of the Union address. Of course, as that incident demonstrates, the NIE is certainly not free from political manipulation, and should be taken with a hefty grain of salt.
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