I've reviewed the 2006 World Cup groups and picked the teams I favor most in each. These are not the teams I expect to win necessarily, but the ones that I want to win (for various silly and not-so-silly reasons).
Costa Rica over Germany, Poland, and Ecuador. I want to go to Costa Rica one day. It seems like a very interesting country. Plus I've inherited from my dad an attraction to the underdog. I know nothing of Poland and Ecuador, while Germany has a brutal, aggressive style of play lacking in style or finesse. They win, but they're not fun to watch.
Sweden over England, Paraguay, and Trinidad. I liked how the Swedes played last time around.
Netherlands over Argentina, Côte d'Ivoire, and Serbia-Montenegro. I like the Netherlands, both the country and the soccer-playing style. Argentina's a powerhouse in soccer, but I don't have much of a feel for them. Nor do I know much about Côte d'Ivoire. Serbia-Montenegro I am explicitly rooting against; Serbian fans are apparently some of the most racist in Europe. I would very much like to see the Latins of Argentina and the Africans of Côte d'Ivoire kick Serbia's ass.
Mexico and Portugal over Angola and Iran. Mexico's our pal, this silly political controversy over immigration notwithstanding. Portugal gave us vinho verde. I don't have a feel for Angola. Iran? Pshaw. I might have been positively disposed towards them under Khatami, but not under this Ahmadinejad lunatic.
USA over Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic. C'mon, is there any question about this one? U! S! A! U! S! A! U! S! A!
Oof. Tough bracket. I pick Japan and Brazil over Croatia and Australia. I liked Croatia in the last World Cup, but they can't compete with Japan and Brazil for my affections. Japan's our pal and entertainingly bizarre. On top of it, their team in the last World Cup was excellent. I was really impressed. As for Brazil, how can you not root for Brazil? They make soccer into the beautiful game.
South Korea over France, Togo, and Switzerland. No question at all. Korea had an amazing run in 2002, getting into the semi-finals before running out of gas and losing the third-place match to Croatia. The team was just fantastic, and I hope they return with the same skill and vigor they showed then.
I have no strong preference between Ukraine and Tunisia. I think I'll go with Tunisia, since I'm guessing they're an underdog. I have nothing positive to say about Saudi Arabia (big surprise). Spain, which will likely win this bracket, has some of the more racist fans in the sport. I would be pretty pleased to see the Berbers and Arabs of Tunisia thump them.
So there you have it, for whatever it's worth. Only one month to go.
You want to see how much the media are intimidated by the Bush Administration, just look at how many people laughed at the lame Bush + double bit, and how few laughed at Stephen Colbert's much funnier, sharper speech.
I linked to Glenn Greenwald's weblog in my post on Bush's law-breaking. Ironically, since I post this on a weblog, I still tend to place more weight on statements like this when they appear in the mainstream media. There are many excellent weblogs like Glenn Greenwald's, but there are also many more that are awful information sources. The mainstream media has many flaws, but they're like McDonald's: you know what you're going to get. A more "independent" source has greater variability in quality. All of that is a long-winded way of saying the Boston Globe has an article analyzing Bush's law-breaking that reaches much of the same conclusions. The article begins:
President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
The article explains why Bush hasn't wielded the veto pen: he's going to ignore laws he doesn't like anyway, so there's no need to formally veto it.
The Cato Institute published a paper earlier
this week detailing the many ways in which George W. Bush has violated the
Constitution and thus his oath of office. You can't claim "liberal bias" with
the Cato Institute. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Heritage
Foundation, though. An excerpt:
The administration's legal position can be summed up starkly: When we're at war, anything goes, and the president gets to decide when we're at war.
Also:
Indeed, the president's lawyers have already informed the federal judiciary
that they regard the entire world, including every inch of U.S. territory, a
"battlefield." That outlandish claim has profound implications for the Bill
of Rights because there are no legal rights whatsoever on the battlefield.
And:
Under this sweeping theory of executive power, the liberty of every American rests on nothing more than the grace of the White House.
"We went from totally believing in Bush to really having our doubts," said Wayne Toomey... "It comes down to his lack of care about gas prices."
Of all the reasons to turn against Bush, they chose such a relatively small issue in the face of so many wonderful and compelling ones, an issue that Bush has little control over and certainly isn't his responsibility anyway.
Also:
And then there is the story of gasoline, which in Florida now averages $3 to
$3.45 a gallon.
...
"It is 60 miles round trip to visit my family," Ms. Meicher said. "It costs me a half a tank of gas and maybe $15 when it used to be $8. I give it a second thought now when the family says, 'Let's do this or that.' We are real close, but now I feel like I am saying 'yes' maybe two out of every three times these days."
You think maybe your problems have something to do with getting less than 14 mpg?
A letter to the advice column in the Austin-American Statesman included the following:
I recently heard that the Citgo company is owned by Venezuela or interests in Venezuela. If Citgo is indeed owned by Venezuelan interests, it is my intention to cease using Citgo gasoline.
There is so much that is stupid about that. One, I doubt the writer really knows why he/she dislikes Venezuela. It's like the France thing a few years back. Two, if the goal is to only buy oil from "nice guy" nations, well, good luck with that. Of the top 14 oil-exporting nations, only Norway, Mexico, and maybe Algeria qualify, exporting a paltry 1/6 of the total exports from that group. Finally, both oil and gasoline are commodities, so it doesn't really matter who you buy from. As long as that seller has enough available buyers for its supply, the invisible hand of the market will keep the money flowing no matter how many people boycott them.
My first issue of The Economist1
pointed out that Iran's military and foreign policy are under the control of Ayatollah Khamenei
2
, not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In other words, even though Ahmadinejad is the one banging his shoe on the lectern, he doesn't have control over the nuclear program or negotiations related to it. However, he does control much of the domestic policy, including government spending on various programs. Those are important for maintaining stability, given the popular disaffection with the ruling clerics and the rampant unemployment. Much of Iran's revenue to finance those programs comes from oil. Every time Ahmadinejad
3
makes an inflammatory speech, the price of a barrel oil spikes, increasing Iran's oil revenues, and giving the Islamic Republic more money to spend pacifying the populace. Their belligerent grandstanding is just about asserting their power or negotiating better relations with Europe and the United States, but quite likely a cleverly calculated ploy to maximize their oil revenue. It's a dangerous game if misunderstood, which I'm afraid this administration is all too likely to do.
3
Who is apparently no dummy; he ranked 130th in Iran in university entrance exams in 1976, and has both a master's and Ph.D in engineering. He definitely is a fanatic, though.
Norm Mineta, Secretary of Transportation, testified to a Congressional committee last week regarding fuel economy standards. Defending a proposal to allow different levels of fuel economy for vehicles of different sizes, he made three main points:
First, a size-based system preserves vehicle choice: Instead of forcing manufacturers to produce smaller vehicles for purposes of regulatory compliance, this approach takes the manufacturers. own product mix projections and then applies separate fuel economy targets to each vehicle based on its dimensions. Under a size-based system, automakers will still be able to build the cars consumers want, but those cars will have to be more fuel efficient across the board.
Currently, we already have something like that. There is one set of fuel economy standards for "passenger cars" and another for "light trucks." The sales-weighted average mileage of passenger cars has to be at least 27.5 miles per gallon (the same as it's been for 16 years). For light trucks, the minimum is 22.2 mpg for model year 2007, a slow rise from 20.2 mpg in 1990. You can find all of these numbers on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration web site.
Have you noticed how small and mid-sized SUVs like the Toyota RAV4, Ford Freestyle, and Honda CR-V are basically tall station wagons with a slightly beefier appearance? They get similar gas mileage to those wagons, but the manufacturers get to classify them as "light trucks." In other words, some simple cosmetic tweaks allow the manufacturer to get away with 25% less fuel economy.
The benefit to manufacturers doesn't come in the form of gas-guzzling compact SUVs, though. Instead, these compact SUVs raise the manufacturers' light truck fleet average mileage, allowing them to continue selling the real gas guzzlers like the Ford Excursion, Hummer2, and Chevrolet Suburban.
From a common sense perspective, a Ford Escape is a passenger car, but Ford (and the other manufacturers) game the regulatory system to get it classified as a light truck, as the Ford Escape's decent mileage would pull down the passenger car average and provide zero benefit to the highly profitable light trucks. Without those smaller SUVs, they couldn't sell the big ones without running afoul of regulators.
Creating more categories as Mineta proposes will just lead to manufacturers doing similar things to "promote" fuel-efficient vehicles into the next category, allowing them to sell vehicles with below average mileage for the class. If the boundary between small car and mid-sized car is 3,000 lbs, you can bet there will be a lot of 3,000 lb cars. Your gasoline consumption may be low due to driving such a vehicle, but you make it possible for someone else to buy some 14 mpg road pig.
Furthermore, the above ignores that larger vehicles require more steel and labor. Manufacturing a vehicle is an incredibly energy-intensive process, what with smelting the steel, molding the plastics, welding the joints, manufacturing the tires, assembling it all, transporting it to the customer, etc. The bigger the vehicle, the greater those costs. We want to reduce all energy consumption, not just gasoline, because every energy source is (roughly speaking) substitutable for every other one.
Mineta goes on to say:
Second, a size-based system eliminates the perverse incentives for manufacturers to produce smaller and more dangerous vehicles instead of introducing fuel-saving technologies.
Here, Mineta repeats the common fallacy that larger vehicles are safer. That's only true to a point. Your friend and mine Malcolm Gladwell destroys that myth. The short version is that there are two types of safety, passive and active. Passive safety describes the characteristics that protect you when an accident is certain. It's like wearing a helmet when you box. If it's a given that you're going to get hit, you want as much padding as possible.
Of course, that generally only applies when hitting a smaller vehicle, as bigger vehicles have just as much momentum as you, negating the benefit of extra crumple area. If you wear twice as much padding, but your boxing opponent hits you twice as hard, you haven't gained anything. Overall, though, large vehicles are generally better when it comes to passive safety. There's just more stuff between you and whatever you're hitting. Of course, passive safety is only part of it.
Active safety refers to the characteristics that keep you from having the accident in the first place. It's like just not entering the boxing ring in the first place. It means your car is a smaller target. It means being less likely to turn over. It means a shorter stopping distance, quicker acceleration, and better maneuverability, so you can react more effectively and avoid the accident in the first place.
So how do these two factors balance out? It turns out that active safety matters more. To invent some numbers, let's say passive safety characteristics of a Dodge Durango decreases your likelihood of death by 50% compared to, say, a Honda Accord. Its reduced active safety might mean you're three times as likely to get into an accident in the first place. The net result is that you're substantially more likely to get into an accident and die. That's just a hypothetical example, but the statistics support that conclusion (PDF warning).
Of course, if everyone drives a large vehicle, the active safety advantages of small cars will get eclipsed by the heightened risk and severity of accidents due to those other people. In such a case, everyone's active safety is worse than an equivalent setting with everyone driving smaller vehicles, as accidents are more likely, but the gains in passive safety are erased because all combatants are bigger. The policy proposed by Mineta will make us all less safe compared to where we could and should be with a more sensible scheme. That's what's perverse.
Finally, Mineta's third point:
Third, a size-based system ensures that all manufacturers are introducing fuel-saving technologies, not only the manufacturers of larger vehicles.
That's just plain disingenuous. Why does Hyundai need to introduce fuel-saving technologies? They're already using the best technologies of all: smaller cars with smaller engines. Hybridization is not worth it (roughly speaking) for any vehicle that gets 30 mpg or more unmodified. On top of that, the goal is not introducing technologies, the goal is using less gasoline. The 4-cylinder Honda Accord gets 26/34 mpg. The 6-cylinder hybridized Accord gets 25/34 mpg, just slightly worse. Guess which one is better for the environment and our national security? Now guess which one gets the $3,000 income tax credit? I'm already doing the right thing by driving a Toyota Corolla and 4-cylinder conventional Honda Accord. I'm not the problem, but Mineta seems to think it's a good idea to make small cars more expensive for minimal gain, while giving a free pass to the already-expensive and much more wasteful large vehicles.
Focusing on specific technologies is stupid. So is differentiating between different types of vehicles. Why is it acceptable for a farm vehicle to get 10 mpg, but my vehicle, which I require for my job just as a farmer does, has to be at least 27.5 mpg? In effect, I am forced to support other people's waste, to the detriment of us all. Our goal is to reduce gasoline consumption, so we should tax gasoline (or, ideally, oil). Any measure that focuses on specific types of vehicles, fuel-saving technologies, uses, or features will just distract from the primary issue. That invites gaming the system and destroying its effectiveness. Trying to mandate this through regulation is too much work for too much benefit when we have a simple, effective solution staring us in the face.
It is undeniable that higher CAFE standards kill people: Larger, heavier cars have lower death rates in crashes.
And equally undeniable is that larger, heavier cars are in far more crashes.
Because automakers have met CAFE standards largely by reducing automobile weight, traffic fatalities in smaller cars have increased.
I'd attribute that much more to the vastly increased number of larger, heavy
vehicles driven on the roads by people insufficiently skilled to handle them.
In spite of the flaws in that editorial, we still end up in the same place:
As for saving gas, there's little evidence that CAFE standards matter all that much. Americans tend to drive more miles in high-mileage cars, and when gas prices are lower they shift to SUVs and other vehicles that give them space and a greater sense of security. The best gas-saving plan around is today's high prices.
Today seems to be "oil and gas day." Continuing with that theme... it drives me nuts to hear people complaining about Exxon/Mobil's record profits last year.
Does anyone know what Exxon and Mobil's profits in 1999 were? What about 2003? No? Of course you don't. Everyone focuses on the 2005 numbers in isolation. Yes, $36 billion is a lot of money. What if Exxon lost $5 billion in 2000-2004? Would it still be "excessive profit" then? I know they didn't; I'm just making a point. You can't look at a single number over a relatively short period of time and decree that it's too much. That's ridiculous.
Of course, the idea of "excessive profit" is stupid to begin with. It's like "price gouging." What exactly does that mean? Suppose you have the only hotel in town. It can hold 100 people. Now, let's say there are floods and 200 people are now homeless. What do you do? No matter what, you have more demand than you have supply. You have to deny some people. You can do a lottery. You can pick people you like. Or, you can raise your prices until only 100 people are willing to pay. The problem with a lottery is that it doesn't distinguish between the single father with two young children and the college student who can live in his VW bus. It doesn't care who's deserving. Picking who you like relies on an extremely subjective idea of who's deserving. Maybe you don't like Indians, or women, or anyone from the South. That's not exactly fair. Raising your prices, a.k.a. "price gouging," isn't a perfect solution. Far from it. It separates out the people who really need it, though. Maybe some people have friends or family they can impose on. You can't determine worthiness, but you can measure desperation, which is close enough. It sounds mean, and you sure are getting a nice wad, but no matter what, you're going to have to turn 100 people away. Discriminating by price is the worst way to do it, except for all the other ones (with apologies to Winston Churchill).
The idea of "excessive" means nothing in free market economies. The price is agreed to by the buyer and the seller. If either one dislikes the deal, that party can walk away. There are very, very few circumstances where the difference is life and death.
How much profit is too much? There is no answer to that question that is consistent, fair, and specific. It can't be done because it just doesn't make sense in a free market.
Then there's this whole "windfall tax." To me, that is not much different from an ex post facto law. It's just plain unfair to change the rules retroactively, especially in a process so easily hijacked by political whims (or spawned by same, as in this case).
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists has compiled a list of comparative profit margins of large companies in various industries. The oil industry may make a lot of profit in absolute terms, but their margins are nothing compared to Microsoft or Citicorp. I work for a company that made $16 billion last year. That's more than all US oil companies not named Exxon/Mobil. Besides, it's not like that money just disappears.
What do you think they're going to do with that money? They're going to give some of it to their shareholders in the form of dividends. The rest of it they're going to hang on to for future investment (i.e., finding more gas for you). Yes, Exxon/Mobil gave former CEO a $400 million retirement package, but the source of that problem isn't Exxon/Mobil profits so much as it is how corporate compensation is just messed up in general. Just look at how much Michael Eisner took home from Disney, or Jack Welch got from General Electric. That's a problem no matter how much money Exxon/Mobil makes.
The same applies to environmental issues, or how oil money supports oppressive governments around the world. The complicity of the oil industry in those actions is a bad thing no matter how much money they're making. The idea of profit doesn't even enter the equation. You know I'm no fan of the oil companies. They supply an unhealthy addiction. However, we're not going to solve the problem by focusing on the wrong issues. That will just hurt us in the long run. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Except then we have to be responsible, instead of blaming someone else
1
.
1
Incidentally, I find it ironic that many of the people who condemn contraception for eliminating the consequences of sex are the same people who want to drill in ANWR or resist raising the fuel economy standards in order to dodge the consequences of profligate wastefulness.
Cruising along on the way home, a woman suddenly pulled out in front of me from a stop. She clearly didn't see me coming. Luckily, I was paying attention, so I could react. I stomped on the brakes, the tires squealed, cloud of black smoke and all that. There was no damage to my car or to me. I stopped before I got scary close, maybe about 15 or so feet away. I know for sure that if I'd been driving a Ford Expedition or similar vehicle, I'd be watching it getting taken away by a wrecker right now, possibly holding an icepack to my airbag-bruised face.
Then moving this site from ye olde server kollektive to Dreamhost succeeded. Let's hope I don't need to use that 97-day money back guarantee, because I have a metric assload of things I keep on these servers.
As much as I believe a gas/oil tax would provide many benefits, I also recognize that it won't happen. On September 12, 2001, we as a nation focused our attention on a single purpose. We were as receptive as we ever would be to sacrifice and radical changes in order to track down the killers behind September 11th. Gas prices were above the historical lows of the 1990s
1
, but nobody considered them painful. Even if they had, the surge of anger and determination following these attacks would have made us all willing. Had Bush proposed such a tax and explained its benefits, Americans would have embraced it, as it would have given the average American a real and meaningful way to contribute.
Instead, nearly 5 years of governmental incompetence and malfeasance have destroyed any semblance of national consensus. The last few years of gasoline price increases have made people fearful of future increases. Raising gas prices from $3/gallon freaks people out while doing it from a base of $1.30/gallon (October 2001) would have been perfectly fine. Even if gas prices decline to those levels again
2
, they would have to remain low for an impossibly long time before people would be willing to raise the taxes
3
.
People are just too skittish about gasoline prices, and they won't soon forget. They don't realize that the era of cheap oil is permanently over. They're too attached too their past lifestyle, unwilling to accept that it is gone forever. We had the opportunity to address this problem without too much pain, so we could meet an inevitable future on our own terms, and even postpone it. Instead, Bush and Congress blew a singular opportunity to create a smooth transition and kill several birds with a single stone. The future is still coming, but now we will be dragged forward kicking and screaming.
1
I paid under $0.80/gallon at least once in Houston.
3
Which they wouldn't, because they wouldn't see the need for it. There's a tiny window between when the fear passes and when the awareness of the need dissipates.
At the exit from my employer's office complex, there is one left turn lane and one all directions lane. As I was leaving this evening, a woman who was turning left was in the right lane. She arrived just after the light turned red, as did I. She could not go until the lights cycled, and there was no way around her, so all the drivers behind her who intended to turn right were obstructed. Had she chosen the left lane, she would have been about 3 cars back.
This is interesting to me because of the asymmetry of cost and benefit. What she gained was about 5 seconds. Maybe. What multiple people behind her definitely lost was at least a minute. I'm not saying we should necessarily do anything. It's just interesting. We see this phenomenon all the time, where one person gains a small amount (or not at all), but others have to pay a greater price. The gay marriage issue is one. The opponents don't really gain anything, because their lives will be exactly the same even if Jim and Jim can call themselves married, but Jim and Jim lose a lot.
There's also the flip side, where a little bit of effort can go a long way. I think being polite and friendly is one of those things. It takes almost no effort, but a kind word can make a real difference. I think that's part of why rude behavior is so jarring. It's so easy to be polite in most situations, and the impact rudeness has on its recipient far outlasts whatever the antagonist gains.
A fundamental tragedy of the Iraq War is that the fundamental idea was a good one. A democratic, stable government in the heart of the Arab world would have undercut terrorists like Osama bin Laden. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable," said John F. Kennedy. Osama bin Laden and his ilk are definitely a violent revolution, as one of their key goals is the overthrow of the current governments of many Arab states.
Of course, Al Qaeda seeks a re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate in the Muslim world, so it can hardly be said that democracies would satisfy them. Nor do we wish to satisfy them
1
. What establishing a free society would do is to cut off their oxygen supply. It would help to dissipate the oppression and helplessness that foster the anger that creates a steady supply of recruits.
What was completely wrong was how the creation of such a democracy was attempted. The doctrine of pre-emption, lack of a UN mandate, the missing WMDs, Guantanamo Bay, the alleged-but-untrue links to September 11, Abu Ghraib, the self-serving policies of the CPA, and American arrogance in general severely crippled and possibly doomed the enterprise from the start. Rather than cutting off the flow of recruits, the United States instead turned a stream into a river. The Arab world cannot believe that America is sincere in the goal of fostering democracy and protecting human rights, and, having seen the Bush administration at work for 5 years, I don't blame them.
My worry is the lesson Americans will learn from Iraq is isolationism. The real lesson is that how you do something matters just as much or more as what you do. When you claim to be doing something for someone else's own good, you must be purer than pure. Anything that you do that makes the intended beneficiaries of your efforts question your sincerity will undermine your efforts. You cannot force a free society into being, you can only create the conditions that make one possible. If one reserves the right to do evil things
2
, endlessly repeating the equivalent of "trust me" will not have the intended effect. The Iraq mission cannot succeed without the cooperation of the Iraqis, but we have made it hard for them to do so. The same is true to varying degrees in the Arab world; we preach freedom, but support oppression in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other nations. We may have unmatched military power, but no amount of military power can change how people think and behave; the fall of the USSR
3
ought to be proof enough of that.
Along those lines, Peter Beinart, editor at large for the New Republic, makes a convincing case that Cold War liberalism is due for a resurrection in a NY Times Magazine article. Some choice quotes:
Americans may fight evil, they argued, but that does not make us inherently good. And paradoxically, that very recognition makes national greatness possible. Knowing that we, too, can be corrupted by power, we seek the constraints that empires refuse. And knowing that democracy is something we pursue rather than something we embody, we advance it not merely by exhorting others but by battling the evil in ourselves. The irony of American exceptionalism is that by acknowledging our common fallibility, we inspire the world.
If cold-war conservatives worried that Americans no longer saw their own virtue, cold-war liberals worried that Americans saw only their virtue.
Rather, they should cultivate enough self-doubt to ensure that unlike the Communists', their idealism never degenerated into fanaticism.
America can be the greatest nation on earth, as long as Americans remember that they are inherently no better than anyone else.
Beinart expands on these ideas in an upcoming book, which is now on my to-read list.
1
A point so obvious as to need no mentioning, but sometimes it's good to state the obvious.
2
Such as torture, domestic spying, or indefinite detention without due process.
I'm kind of a martinet when it comes to stealing bandwidth. I discovered just now that someone embedded the picture of Cyclone Graham that I posted about in a forum. They didn't link to the post, nor did they copy the image to their own web space. Surely the etiquette about this is well-known and obvious. If not, maybe the replacement image will properly educate this person:
At some point in the next couple of years, we're going to replace Jessica's venerable eMac. Odds are it will be a laptop, so I've been watching developments in Apple's product line. On a lark, I priced the new MacBook, the Intel-ified iBook. The middle one is $1300, while the top one is $1500 (without the Bank of America discount). The only differences that I could find are that the former has an 60 GB hard drive versus the latter's 80 GB, and the latter is black as opposed to the iBook/MacBook standard white. All the other standard hardware is the same, as are the optional upgrades. Upgrading to the 80 GB drive on the middle option is only $50, though, so you can have the equivalent of the top end MacBook for $1350. Are there that many people who are willing to pay $150 just to get their MacBook in black?
A dark floater appeared in my eye this weekend. It seems to be constrained to the center of my field of view. It's hard to ignore like the translucent ones I normally have. On the plus side, just one floater like this doesn't indicate anything wrong (like a detached retina), according to my research. Still, it's very, very, very distracting.
I just discovered a few weeks ago what cell towers look like. Many of the standalone ones in Austin look like the second picture here, except they are unpainted. There are also many cell towers that are integrated with telephone poles and other structures. Now I see them everywhere. I had no idea there were so many of them. What's especially disturbing is how they were there the whole time. It's like discovering you had the wrong lyrics to a song you've known for years.
McIntyre in the Morning is talk radio show in Los Angeles. It's nice to see someone admit he was wrong. I have to be mean-spirited and question a couple of his comments:
None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt.
Emphasis his. I understand why he is reluctant to endorse the Democrats. They have shown few virtues and little spine over these last years, and his point about their lack of vision is entirely right. Nevertheless, to claim that they are bad is simply ridiculous. There's a big difference between Bush & Co.'s ongoing train wreck and most Democrats' cowardly, impotent silence. He also impugns Al Gore unnecessarily, putting him on the same level as Bush. Al Gore has his faults, but nobody could reasonably think that a Gore presidency would have been nearly the disaster that the Bush one has been.
I feel somewhat guilty about this criticism, however. Saying "I told you so" does nothing good. It makes people less likely admit their mistakes when that is the welcome they receive. Nevertheless, I believe Doug McIntyre deserves that criticism because he is either making the mistake of saying they're all the same, or making the mistake of bending too far backward to be fair. Yes, both parties make mistakes, but to claim they are equally responsible is as bad as saying that one party makes no mistakes. That kind of over-simplification is just plain wrong, and perpetuates the fundamental issue that has contributed to our current state, that of rhetoric and bluster passing as reasoned argument.
Nancy Pelosi has said Democrats won't seek impeachment even if they win a majority in the 2006 elections. That is absurd. Impeachment is completely justified, to the point where Congress is neglecting their duty to the country by not pursuing it. This isn't about political tactics anymore, but rather an unobstructed, unlawful grab for powers anti-thetical to the governing principles of this great nation.
The Democrats are afraid of seeming vindictive, but the people who would accuse them of that would call them all kinds of names no matter what. No amount of bending over backward to appear fair will matter to the knee-jerk reactionaries, so they should just ignore them. Mainstream America wouldn't consider impeachment vindictive when presented with the volumes of evidence detailing George W. Bush's violations of the Constitution and (other) federal law. There's no way to appear fair other than by being fair.
The Democrats justifiably don't want to be unfair by being overly harsh, but their attempts to avoid that are taking them down the even worse path of being overly meek. There are real crimes that must be investigated and punished, both for the present and to destroy any possibility of these actions serving as precedent. The right thing to do is the right thing to do. I can hope that Pelosi's statement was meant keep from ruining their chances in the 2006 elections, but I don't really expect them to magically find their spines the day after.
"GM on Tuesday announced a promotion that caps gas at $1.99 a gallon for
one year for buyers of certain full-size sport-utility vehicles and
midsize cars in California and Florida.
Consumers will receive a monthly credit to a pre-paid fuel card for the
difference between $1.99 and the average price of premium gas in their
state."
Over 10,000 miles in a year for a 16 mpg SUV with an average $1/gallon subsidy, that works out to be $625 paid out by GM, which doesn't have the money, the buyer would have to fork over $1250 for the rest, which is more than they'd pay without a subsidy in a sensible car. That's without counting the premium just for buying a full-sized SUV in the first place, as well as the remaining life of the vehicle after the first year. GM is stupid to do this, and anyone swayed by this is even more so.
The perfect quote was provided by a Sierra Club director: "I have never heard of an addict getting off their addiction by having someone subsidize their fix."
I suggest a simple answer to the question of when to leave Iraq: when the Iraqis want us to. At least once every year and/or parliamentary election, there should be a referendum where Iraqis can simply check "Yes" or "No" to a continued American military presence. After the first election where a majority
1
of Iraqis vote "Yes," United States forces will commence a withdrawal ending some fixed amount of time after the election
2
. This should be a loudly and frequently stated commitment.
The advantages of this policy are numerous. First of all, from a moral perspective, it inches us back to the high ground. The United States is not an imperial power. Self-determination is a right we recognize that all peoples have, be they Kosovar Albanians or Soviet Tajiks
3
.
Secondly, it would subdue
4
the controversy domestically about an exit strategy. It would also put pressure on us to get things right, as it may be the Iraqis ask us to leave before we think is best. It would also give us a face-saving way to get out without the country being fully stabilized.
Finally, and most importantly, it would send a clear message to Iraqis that they are in charge. Instead of focusing on what they dislike about the American presence, it would make them think about what we do to help them. It's easy to rage against something you cannot control, but once ordinary Iraqis have to deal with the possibility that they could push out the one force preventing all-out civil war, I expect that their attitudes towards the United States would ease up. It gives them the (self-)respect they deserve as free people, something they don't have today.
Our current Iraq occupation is not accountable to the people it supposedly helps most. Accountability is the best way to ensure success, as it gives them a stake and keeps us honest
5
. Giving the Iraqis the choice is the best way of defining an exit, saving face, and aligning the interests of ordinary Iraqis with ours, and vice versa.
Thanks to some generous assisterance from an anonymous source, the lady wife and I were able to duck out to see X-Men: The Last Stand last night. We had our expectations on stun after seeing the reviews, but it was actually decent. Sure, there were parts that were clunky, other parts that were rushed, and various and sundry minor flaws that would not have happened with Bryan Singer at the helm, but Brett "Rush Hour" Ratner did not embarass himself. It was not the equal of X2, but I consider that one to have been nearly perfect. If you enjoyed the first two, the third one is an acceptable finish to the series. They didn't go out with the bang I hoped, but neither was it a fiasco on the level of the Matrix sequels. Still, Superman Returns had better be pretty good.
I dislike the increasing use of interactive voice response (IVR) systems that require you to talk rather than use the keypad. Part of it is that I feel weird talking to nobody. I understand that is a personal opinion, and that some people feel more comfortable speaking words rather than using a numeric keypad.
The more important concern I have is that it makes the call less private. I'm sure the service providers are good about making sure highly sensitive information like passwords or social security numbers are entered through the key pad, but I still say somewhat sensitive information when I work through the menu of a health insurance or a financial services company. I don't necessarily want people in earshot to know that I'm calling to check on my claim or checking my bank balance.
A corollary is that others nearby might not want to hear my business regardless of its content, so being able to conduct as much of the call in silence is the considerate thing to do.
One can respond by saying I shouldn't be making such calls where I'm concerned about privacy or disturbing others, but that's not very helpful. The whole idea is that these systems provide valuable and convenient services, so suggesting I work around an inconvenience is missing the whole point.
Before X3, we were "treated" to a preview of the upcoming "Ghost Rider," yet another Marvel comic-turned-movie. This one stars Nicholas Cage and looks just plain stupid. The IMDB plot outline states:
Based on the Marvel character, stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze gives up his soul to become a hellblazing vigilante, to fight against power hungry Blackheart, the son of the devil himself.
Apparently, at night, Nicholas Cage's character turns into a burning skeleton, his motorcycle catches fire and gains the ability to stick to walls, and he gets some kind of (also flaming) whip. Woot. Is Marvel's barrel that empty?
