drewish.com

woot google maps for public transit

yet again, i'm proud to be a portlander. triment, the local transit agency, has teamed up with google to put together a kick ass trip planner. now if they'd only run the max from the airport to my house in time for the last soutwest flight of the night...

the mahdi army explained

in the middle of a post explaining how muqtada al-sadr had completely outwitted the dim wits running the war in iraq, juan cole used a great analogy to describe the mahdi army:

Muqtada has so far cleverly outwitted and outflanked this American attempt to marginalize him on the political stage. Although his ghetto youth gangs, which are not really a Mahdi Army or army of any sort, are easily defeated by US troops in firefights, they cannot be made to disappear permanently by this kind of foreign pressure. If foreigners occupied Los Angeles and engaged in some clashes with ghetto gangs like the Crips and the Bloods, do you really think the gangs could be wiped out by these foreign military incursions? Of course not. The foreigners don't have a prayer of uprooting a phenomenon even local police could never crush.

syria?

in an effort to further distract from stories of our abuse of iraqi prisoners bush has announced that we're imposing further sanctions on syria. bush had a couple of brilliant things to say. calling syria an "unusual and extraordinary threat" one might wonder how the president's comments could been any stupider. i suppose he could have accused the syrians of systematic abuse and torture of their prisoners.

round up of abu ghraib news

i highly recommend kevin drum's round up of links about abu ghraib. it's enough to make you sick.

the amazing dick cheney with his talking georgie boy

i've finally had a good reason to link to the gad flyer. they have the funniest recreation of george and dick's testimony ever. don't forget to check out that photoshoped flyer.

taking over for sadam

maybe you haven't noticed but some of our troops are taking over where sadam left off. the new yorker has (less censored) photos of the torture going on in sadam's old prisons. we only know of one rape and two murders but sadam had 35 years to get where he was. we'll catch up soon enough.

got to see kucinich

denis kucinich was the celebrity judge of the cookie bake off put on by foodfight, portland's vegan grocery store. he's vegan--the only one o i know of in congress--so it was fitting that he was the judge. the best part was his anecdote about traveling around the us campaigning and coming to portland and finding vegan marshmallows.

i got a quick interview with him that i'll turn into a a news story for kpsu. i'm going to peg it on the story of how the whole event came together. the food fight people had been planning an event to celebrate the opening of their new neighbor, otsu, so when kucinich's campaign manager came down to buy more of the marshmallows they were like "damn we know what were' gonna do" and it just came together.

on a personal note, i was really impressed with him, he was funny, well spoken, and in touch with the issues. if i was a registered democrat (and right now i'm wishing i was) he'd have my vote in the primary.

photos from iraq

go check out these photos from iraq. some are pretty fucking gruesome

what have we done.

bush's capitulation to all of sharon's demands is just sickening. i don't know what to say. i'll just point you toward billmon's comments.

bush's press conference in 30 seconds

criticalviewer has a 30 second summary of the press conference bush gave last night. it's eerily similar to what he actually said drop all his clichés. two funny non-answers:

Q: You have said we'd be greeted as liberators, that Iraqi oil would pay for the war and that we'd find WMD in Iraq. Why were you so wrong on all of these counts?

A: September 11th. Threat. Saddam, threat. Intelligence told me so. I told UN to act but they didn't so I did. Saddam could have made WMD. Danger. Oil? It wasn't destroyed and its flowing. Iraqi's are happy...the silent majority supports us...Iraqi's are happy.

Q: Several thousand FBI agents wrote you today begging you to not split up law enforcement and counterterrorism but you said today you might. Will you?

A: Lets talk. The war will be long. Our enemy is ruthless. It will be long. We should learn from mistakes. A free middle east will be hopeful. Free. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. We are a great power. We feed North Korea, we fight AIDS in Africa. I am leading and making the world a better place. We'll stay the course. Stay the course. Soldiers are dying in Iraq for freedom.

loosing the "hearts and minds"

if you're interested in reading how bad the occupation has been go read "bremer has destroyed my country"

make those liars squirm

moveon has an amazing video of donald rumsfeld getting caught up in the bush administration's web-of-lies. i think they ought to be running that on all the major networks.

the problem with this sort of playing policeman to catch them in the middle of their lies is that in the time it takes you to catch them, they've been busy spreading a whole new batch of lies and deceptions. dave johnson at see the forest says it pretty well:

Listen, there is something we all need to get through our heads. They just lie.

If the Bush people did a focus group and found out that people would vote against him because he owns a miniature green Chinese monkey with an earring, THEN WE WOULD BE HEARING THAT KERRY HAS A MINIATURE GREEN CHINESE MONKEY WITH AN EARRING! They are making it up, they are lying, they are going to say and do ANYTHING. OK? They just lie. Get used to it.

They just lie. So don't be surprised and don't be shocked. And most of all, don't start responding by trying to disprove their charges and going through all the points and specifics and particulars! YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT THE CHARGES THEY WILL MAKE TOMORROW AND NEXT WEEK ARE FALSE. OK?

further evidence that friedman has lost it

thomas friedman, the nytimes columnist that i once admired, has a new op ed discussing the reasons we don't need to fear outsourcing to india. if you boil it down he seems to be saying that they're uncreative and they live in poverty. aside from the semi-racist overtones, the question i've got is "how long will that last?". in the 1950s the only thing that came out of japan was cheap junk. that's changed.

the real gem is this line:

What would Indian techies give for just one day of America's rule of law; its dependable, regulated financial markets; its efficient, noncorrupt bureaucracy; and its best public schools and universities? They'd give a lot.

people in this country would give a lot for it too.

the new world order

billmon has yet another excellent piece. this time he lays bare the us's coldwar system of "imperialism by remote control". he argues that we can't forget 9/11 because it is exactly that system, and americans' indifference to it, that caused 9/11.

What's most needed is for the American people to understand that the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.

To be completely blunt about it: The USA simply cannot fuck with rest of the world with impunity any more. There's now a very real, and potentially huge, price to be paid for playing the role of global cop (or global empire) while indulging in an essentially isolationist mindset at home. Little items like America's dependence on foreign oil, or its lockjawed support for the state of Israel, or the arrogance and corruption of the IMF, or the relentless drive to open up foreign markets to international trade and capital (what conservative scholar Andrew Bacevich calls the "ideology of openness") -- these all have consequences that extend way beyond the small coterie of intellectuals and interest groups that have traditionally dominated the U.S. foreign policy debate.

Ever since the end of the Vietnam War -- and even more, since the end of the Soviet Union -- there's been an unstated assumption in the American political sphere that U.S. interests abroad (whether geopolitical or economic or both) could be protected and advanced at relatively minimal cost to, or involvement by, the American people. A small, professional, high-tech military, heavily geared towards special forces and the application of air power, would permit narrowly targeted military interventions in the peripheral world, without the need for a large citizen army. A cadre of diplomats and technocrats would concentrate on opening economic doors -- and making sure they stayed open. Wall Street and the multinationals would provide the financial muscle, and supervise the care and feeding of local elites, while the intelligence agencies watched for any signs of a political backlash against the globalization agenda. Terrorism, if it was conceived as a threat, was seen as a threat from the left, motivated by economic or political grievances.

If all else failed, there were always those special forces.

a message from god?

i guess ashcroft can cause too much trouble while he's in the hospital but maybe he'll recognize that it's a message from god that he needs to change his sinful ways... nah, i'm sure he'll be back on his feet, stomping on freedom in no time.

even saffire slams the passion

i was shocked to read william safffire coming out against gibson's religious snuff flick. i haven't seen it yet, i'm downloading it off the p2p networks. i really don't want to give gibson any money.

fuck ralph nader

man, it's clear nader is a total ego maniac. the dems don't want him to run, the green party doesn't even want him to run, about the only people who do want him in the race are republicans (oh, and pat buchanan what ever party he's with now).

i guess i'm just bitter because i voted for him in 2000 (not that it made any difference in nevada). it's hard to look back at the last three years and say that there would be no difference between bush and gore. i doubt we'd be in iraq and we probably wouldn't be facing down record deficits.

billmon has a great article that examines the way that the differences between democrats and republicans will affect the global warming issue. some of the comments link to some pretty scary topics.

the peak oil link has me a bit freaked out. the short of it is that oil production follows a bell curve. the initial production is the easiest and cheapest creating a growing demand. once the peak it hit it becomes exponentially more expensive to produce oil but because of a lack of alternatives, demand can't decrease. the big question is when we hit the peak. the alternative fuels can't sustain our economy. nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, the won't work in planes, boats or cars and they can't be used to make fertilizer or plastics. if some magic energy source came along tomorrow we'd still have to convert all our infrastructure over to it. it's real easy to get from here to a mad max scenario.

with that kind of epic problem it is pretty easy to say well democrat or republican it's doesn't really matter. the point that billmon makes in his article is that, yes, it does matter. the democrats may not do much but the republicans' actions have bordered on willful negligence.

"the war is over"

the register has a great interview with jim griffin, former director of geffen's on the coming end to the copyright wars.

more mariage congrats

i can't help but get a smile on my face every time i think about all those gay marriages in san francisco. go look at these photos, they're great. while it's really more of a publicity stunt (and possibly grounds for future lawsuits) i just love hearing how outraged all the wingnuts get about it. who knew that a few queens in san francisco getting married could cause irreparable to the institution of marriage?

good links i've come across reading comments on blogs

• 12 reasons gays shouldn't marry
• gay marriage or interracial marriage?

let it get lost in the weekend

i've been following the story of bush's missing months of guard duty with quite a bit of interest. they've gone and released a bunch of documents late on a friday night of a three-day weekend where so as it'll drop right out of the news cycle. funniest of all apparently there's nothing new to them but the administration is sure to claim that since they've released everything bush must have completed his guard duty. keep an eye out.

told you so

former un weapons inspector scott ritter gets to say what's long overdue: "i told you so..."

swapping porn for spam

risks digest had an interesting post describing a novel solution spammers found to the captcha problem. captchas are those images of distorted text that sighted people can read but most computer programs can't that are used to prevent bot from signing up for free email accounts. just show them to someone trying to get into a free porn site then use the answer to sign up for free email accounts.

body slamming for dean

i you had any doubts about how cool he was get this: al franken broke his glasses while taking out a larouche supporter who was trying to shout down dean at a rally.

the long haul

billmon wrote up a post just after the iowa caucus that makes some excellent points about the long term view that progressives need to take if we're going to repair the damage that the bush adminstration has inflicted on american democracy:

The task of building a progressive coalition that can turn America in a fundamentally different direction is a vast undertaking -- so vast as to seem almost impossible: as impossible, perhaps, as ending segregation must have seemed to the early civil rights activists of the 1920s and '30s. Under the most favorable conditions imaginable (conditions which we are extremely unlikely to see) the process will take years, if not decades.

... this is exactly what the right did in the wake of Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964. Conservatives spent the next 16 years building on the foundation they laid in the Goldwater campaign -- exploiting new fundraising techniques (direct mail) establishing new organizations (the Heritage Foundation, the Committee on the Present Danger) creating new media (Human Events, Conservative Digest) and building a parallel political establishment affiliated with, but outside of, the Republican Party. When the time came to reach for power -- in 1980 and again in 1994 -- the right was ready.

the post starts with some interesting speculations on the way the race would shake out in new hampshire and the way the media has continually tried to keep the race open.

america the empire

josh marshal has a brilliant article up on the new yorker examining america's empire.

... "During the Clinton administration, the United States employed an indirect approach in imposing its will on other nations." That "indirect approach" might more properly be termed a policy of leading by consensus rather than by dictation. But Johnson is right about its superior efficacy. American power is magnified when it is embedded in international institutions, as leftists have lamented. It is also somewhat constrained, as conservatives have lamented. This is precisely the covenant on which American supremacy has been based. The trouble is that hard-line critics of multilateralism focussed on how that power was constrained and missed how it was magnified.

Conservative ideologues, in calling for an international order in which America would have a statelike monopoly on coercive force, somehow forgot what makes for a successful state. Stable governments rule not by direct coercion but by establishing a shared sense of allegiance. In an old formula, "domination" gives way to "hegemony"--brute force gives way to the deeper power of consent. This is why the classic definition of the state speaks of legitimate force. In a constitutional order, government accepts certain checks on its authority, but the result is to deepen that authority, rather than to diminish it. Legitimacy is the ultimate "force multiplier," in military argot. And if your aim is to maintain a global order, as opposed to rousting this or that pariah regime, you need all the force multipliers you can get.

i'd highly encourage everyone to spend the next ten minutes reading this article.

for everything money can't buy...

i haven't been posting as much about news events as i used to but certain things just can't be ignored. today's announcement that the bush administration is launching an investigation to determine how a document labeled secret found it's way into the 60 minutes interview with former treasury secretary o'neil. as usual, josh marshal sums it up perfectly:

Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days.

Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day.

Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of hypocritcal goons ... priceless.

i'd encourage everyone to keep checking his site to follow the story.

to infinity and beyond!

i'm all for giving nasa a budget increase to get us back into space but i'm a bit suspicious of bush's plan, josh marshal summed up my concerns perfectly:

And where's the money come from on this one? I thought we were halving the deficit in five years.

And who gets the Martian reconstruction contracts?

crying wolf

bruce schneier's got a good piece up on salon detailing how the false alarms that lead to the cancellation of the air france and british air flight demonstrate underlying problems in our intelligence agencies. i couldn't agree with him more.

india, the next super power

talking points memo has a post up with excerpts from an interview with peter drucker. drucker makes the point that india, not china may well be the rising star in asia. josh marshall seizes on what this might mean for us foreign policy. i've always wondered why we were so focused on china and not india. our pakistan favoritism has always annoyed me, do we support the worlds largest democracy or the dictatorship that brought us the taliban (not that we didn't have a direct hand in that)?

no more free apple juice

washington state is starting to crack down on the people who toss urine bottles out the window of their 16-wheelers. i wish oregon start something similar, i've spent many an hour out on tour counting urine bottles out in east oregon:

After that the riding was pretty uneventful. I spent quite a bit of time staring at the side of the road. I'm a bit disturbed by the number of urine-filled Gatorade bottles I saw today. I counted at least 10, there were a few more that were filled with something yellow but I wasn't going to check.

Thinking about it a bit I started to wonder how many of the cars and trucks passing me were being driven by some one peeing into a coke bottle at that very second. Forget talking on a cell phone, this, is distracted driving. Imagine for a second the mechanics of driving an 18-wheeler, holding the bottle and... ummm... operating your equipment, maybe if you use your knee to steer... I guess you have to appreciate that sort of dedication to a job.

pool reporting

nytimes had an interesting article on the whitehouse reporters pool in today's paper. had a couple of cool anecdotes, my favorite was one about the reporter who started his report "'twas the night before christmas", and then did the rest in rhymed verse.

slinking in in the dead of night

juan cole has an amazing rant about how differently bush's dream of visiting iraq was from yesterday's cowardly trip to baghdad:

the President had to sneak in and out of Iraq for a quick and dirty photo op, clearly in fear of his life if the news of his visit had leaked. He did not even get time to eat a meal with the troops. He was there for two hours. He did not dare meet with ordinary Iraqis, with the people he had conquered (liberated).

three hours of power politics

msnbc.com has the blow-by-blow of the house's passage of the medicare package. they focus on the role my congressman, david wu, in the passage. i'm pretty dismaied at his choicec to support the bill. i wish they would have given him the chance to comment on his decision.

trade as a technology

over on ventureblog they've got a really good essay that conceptualizes trade as a technology. like (most?) technologies trade increases productivity. increases in productivity mean increases in production for a given number of workers. or, problematically, the same production with less workers. either means cheaper gizmos but if you're unemployeed that might not be much consolation.

what to do now that our unilateralism is home to roost

talking points memo has a great post pondering the various mistakes that have left is in the position of trying to withdrawal from iraq without looking like we're withdrawing

zoobomb hits the mainstream

zoobomb made it into the willamette week back in june but over the weekend they finally gotten mainstream coverage... well okay, it was only the oregonian but that's pretty big time for portalnd.

american freedom for iraq

choice quote from an article in today's salon:

"How do you define American freedom?" he asked. As I fumbled toward an answer, trying to remember salient quotes from the Bill of Rights, he said, "I will tell you the definition of American freedom for Iraq: America takes our oil and gives us crime."

bring back the draft

salon has a piece up on the bush administration's under-the-radar campaign to fill the draft boards. it's very speculative but one point interested me:

In the last war fought by a conscript army, draft deferments for students meant that nobody who was in college had to worry about being called up until after graduation, and until late in that war, it was even possible, by going to grad school (like Vice President Dick Cheney), to avoid getting drafted altogether. In the Vietnam War era, college boys could also duck combat, as George W. Bush did, by joining the National Guard.

But that's all been changed. In a new draft, college students whose lottery number was selected would only be permitted to finish their current semester; seniors could finish their final year. After that, they'd have to answer the call. Meanwhile, National Guardsmen, as we've seen in the current war, are now likely to face overseas combat duty, too.

personally i think that's a great change, put the choice to everyone: 1 year in iraq/iran/north korea or 5 years in leavenworth. that said, i still doubt that anyone with strings to pull will end up in a combat role.

we must be wining

with all this bad news coming out of iraq it's clear we must be winning.

bush on cuba

i guess i shouldn't still be supprised by how stupid george can be but his plan to further isolate cuba got me.

A good soul in America that wants to be a tourist goes to a foreign-owned resort, pays the hotel bill, that money goes to the government. The government, in turn, pays the workers a pittance in worthless pesos and keeps the hard currency to prop up the dictator and his cronies.

we can't go to cuba because the workers being exploited? wow george, i never knew you were such a supported of workers rights. keep talking like this and you might be able to get cuban AND union votes.

Third, our government will establish a commission for the assistance to a free Cuba to plan for the happy day when Castro's regime is no more and democracy comes to the island.

This commission will be co-chaired by the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the secretary of housing and urban development, Mel Martinez.

They will draw upon experts within our government to plan for Cuba's transition from Stalinist rule to a free and open society, to identify ways to hasten the arrival of that day.

i can hope is the george administration can do a better job of planning for the cubans future than they've done for the iraqis.

help out president bush

moveon.org is trying to help president bush figure out who blew the cia operative's cover. it looks like we'll have to use the process of elimination, go sign an affidavit stating that you weren't the one who did it.

taking another go at "under god"

a new lawsuit challenging the pledge of allegiance's phrase "under god" has been brought in texas. i'm all for dropping it. here's an onld slate piece on the history of the pledge.

declaration of independence (and voting machines)

today i saw got to see one of the original dunlap broadsides as part of the declaration of independence road trip. i was really impressed with the way the organization running the tour presented it. instead of just reducing it to a simple patriotic moment they used it as an opportunity to urge people to become politically involved.

ironically enough in the middle of the exhibit they had something that got me all fired up: electronic voting machines. the idea is to provide a user-friendly way to cast your ballot the problem is that unless they're physically printed out it's extremely easy to tamper with the votes. you are literally at the mercy of the company who designed the machinery (one is also left wondering about any allegiances the manufacture might have formed in the process of wining the contract to provide the machines). below is the letter i sent to my representative, congressman wu, who spoke at the opening.

Today I had the pleasure of seeing Congressman Wu speak at the Oregon Historical Society's presentation of the Declaration of Independence. I've written and called several times about various issues but this was the first time I'd seen the Congressman speak. Every time I've seen his views in print I've been pleased to discover that they mirror mine. I'm proud that him as my representative.

I'm writing today about an issue that is central to democracy, the right to have your vote counted. After viewing the Declaration of Independence I came to a set of computerized voting machines donated by Elections Systems and Software. Currently, I'm a college student at PSU studying Computer Engineering. Prior to that I spent four years working in the industry so the equipment interested me professionally and academically.

The machines are designed around an LCD touch screen used present the voter with a description of the ballot item and small blurbs for and against the item. It was a well-designed interface that made the voting process simple and understandable. After making their choices the voter clicks a vote button and is left to assume that their ballot was cast. The problem with the device is that there's no voter verifiable record of the vote. At least with the punch card ballots the voter can inspect their choices and get to see it go into a ballot box. In a purely electronic system the voter can only hope that their vote was recorded correctly (and for that matter recorded at all).

A better solution that is supported by most computer professionals�at least those who aren't selling voting machines�is to use the device as a ballot printer (for more details see http://www.acm.org/usacm/Issues/EVoting.htm). The voter selects their choices on the computer and then after reviewing their choices, their votes are recorded electronically and printed onto a sheet of paper that the voter can review before depositing it into a ballot box. The electronic results can be used to speed the initial counting but the paper ballot is a permanent and record available should the need for a manual recount arise.

As I said earlier this issue is central to the successful functioning of democracy. Citizens don't need another excuse to think that their votes don't count. Say what you will about the debacle in the 2000 Florida election but at least a recount was possible. In a computerized election you're left with only the unverifiable word of the company that produced the machinery. Congressman Russ Holt introduced HR 2239 to remedy these problems. I hope you will join with him in supporting this bill.

Respectfully,
Andrew Morton

the changing view of copyright

yesterday the nytimes did a piece on the views a group of middle school students had toward downloading mp3s and the riaa's lawsuits. the majority of them find no problem with downloading as long as you're not selling it. i view this as a positive sign that in ten or twenty years we'll have a reasonable copyright system in place.

johnny cash is dead

after june carter cash died i didn't think he was long for this earth. i've been a big fan of his since my freshman year in highschool when i came across i walk the line in a thriftstore. i already knew the name because social distortion had covered ring of fire. i fell in love with that album. over the years i've collected every song on that album other than troublesome waters. i've never even been able to find an mp3 of it.

i suppose it's both sad and fitting that his last album the man comes around, has found a new audience in the mtv kids. i hope some of his new found fans will go out and locate his older music, it's all amazing.

the other september 11th

the nytimes has an editorial on the other sept 11th, when pinochet came to power in chile.

the last failed "war on"

reason has a thought provoking piece on the former drug wariors who now say we need to try something different.

As an attorney quoted in a recent Seattle Weekly article about LEAP observed, "The news story is not that the war on drugs has failed. It's who's saying it now."

picking up the pieces of sadam's regime

want to read something scarry? we're now secretly rebuilding sadam's feared intelligence service. sounds like a great idea, no?

roy's rock

ever wonder how that monument just appeared in the alabama courthouse?

In the wee hours of the morning on July 31, 2001, long after the other justices had gone home, Justice Moore and a couple of workmen sneaked the monument into the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court. Chief Justice Moore did not ask anyone's permission. But he did not have to because he was the top judge in the state and custodian of the Supreme Court.

He even secretly dug up blueprints of the Supreme Court building to find a secure beam to support the monument.

laissez-faire electric markets?

the volokh conspiracy considers what a truly free electric market might look like.

more on the blackout

risks digest, a newsletter that examines the dangers inherent in the widespread use of technology from a technologist's perspective, has some great writing on the blackout.

i think patrick lincoln correctly identifies the root cause, our changing expectations of the power grid:

One lesson that can be drawn from incidents like the recent massive power outage is that decreasing margins in all our infrastructures place critical societal functions at greater and greater risk of significant disruptions from rare accidental and malicious acts. Redefining acceptable levels of risks and protections as the world changes is hard work, but need to be done.

Cost pressures and tight engineering under benign assumptions lead to thin margins. Optimized engineering leads to most events being of small consequence (we've engineered systems to tolerate them), but some rare events can cause massive disruption. It would be 'bad engineering' to overdesign a system to tolerate very rare events, if that tolerance costs more than the failures it would prevent (in expected value to customer terms). Fragility to extremely rare events can be seen as good business. It would be surprising if there weren't rare disruptions (like massive power outages) in highly optimized infrastructures.

edward reid expresses my thoughs far eloquently than i could:

Of course, certain technical measures would help. So far, the newspaper analyses of the outages correctly point out limited transmission capacity as a problem. Deeper problems are the anti-regulatory environment, that safety doesn't sell, and the failure to invest in conservation.

Building "excess" transmission capacity has no market incentive. Excess capacity is essential to safety, but safety doesn't sell. The market calls it excess capacity; people call it a safety net. When a critical line fails, parallel lines must have "excess" capacity to take over the flow, and this safety net must remain intact when lines are out of service for maintenance. Safety nets are not cheap.

who will pay to fix the grid? we will.

a poster to the interesting people mailing list brought up an angle i hadn't considered in my rant yesterday.

It's clear that the energy behemoths will view the blackout as their golden opportunity. What better way to get taxpayers to fund the grid improvements necessary for assuring the firms of continuing lucrative income streams?

When the Congressional hearings start, watch for the energy executives to wail how they can't *possibly* take on the task by themselves, and since national security is at stake it's obviously the government's job to pay. That this situation has been largely created by the energy companies' own (in some cases criminal) neglect and manipulation will not be a featured part of their arguments.

go read the rest...

a blackout prediction

i'm going to make a prediction. when all the facts are in about yesterday's blackout in the northeast i suspect a significant cause will be cost cutting that followed the deregulation of the energy market.

first a quick disclaimer, i'm not an electrical engineer or an economist, this is just an application of common sense.

in its current incarnation the electrical grid is not well served by a capitalist system. our current unified grid offers the consumer little or no choice as to how their power gets to them. competition is central to a properly functioning market. with no competition there's no way to influence the utilities to provide a more reliable system. i don't know enough about engineering to know if we could even have two independent grids but that would, obviously, be a very expensive undertaking. it seems to me that the solution is a federalized interstate transmission infrastructure, at least someone would be paying for the upkeep.

not that it'll happen with washington's current ideological. i'm sure bush's solution will go something along the lines of a) a tax cut b) more deregulation c) .

privatizing the people who get shot at

paul krugman has another one of his brilliant critiques of the bush administration's misguided policy. he focuses first on the rhetorical but not financial support of the troops (note a pattern strikingly similar to the unfunded mandate known as no child left behind). krugman then turns his attention to the republican urge to privatize all functions of government and it's effects on the troops in iraq. i only wish the times editors would have given him enough words that he could do more than just hint at the "patronage" behind the privatization (a quick note on that last link: dan briody, the writer, has done some great research. everyone ought to listen to the interview he did for fresh air.

sharon's new troubles

salon's got a piece contemplating what ariel sharon's corruption investigation could mean for the peace process. what interested me it is the fact that it's written by a ha'aretz contributor but the tone sounds exactly like one of stratfor's free analysis (is that the plural?).

identiy theft

everyone should make a little time to read the washington post's amazing feature on identity theft. after reading i'm just amazed that for all our talk of "securing the homeland" nothing has been done to make it harder for terrorists to create a new identity either raise money for or commit attacks. makes it real easy to believe that business interests will trump real security everytime.

no more powell?

the washington post is reporting that if bush gets another term powell won't be there.

"rumsfeld is an arrogant asshole"

salon's got a great interview with retired col david hackworth that's worth reading if only to see rumsfeld called out.

ignoring americorps

i'm going to link to this nytimes editorial discussing how little it would take to save americorps and how much less bush and the republicans are doing so that the next time compassionate conservatism comes up it'll be apparent what a load of shit it is. (from rc3.org)

the enemy combatant label as a stick

phil cater, who runs intel dump an excellent military/foreign policy blog, has a post detailing the ever expanding usage off the enemy combatant label.

allowing felons to vote

reason has a great article on why ex-convicts should be given back the vote.

i think it's a bit of a no-brainer. if you've served your time and finished your parole you ought to be able to vote (but probably not own a gun). hopefully, it'd cut down on the number of tough-on-crime-let's-not-bother-with-rehabilitation politicians and stupid drug laws.

free wireless at the ball park

the local free wirless group personal telco has unwired pge park (the local stadium where the psu teams play) and in the process freaked out the park's management. i guess they were worried they'd piss off, comcast, one of the other sponsors. heck, now i can go out and support the team and get some work done at the same time.

bad planning

thomas friedman call the bush crime family to task for it's bad planning.

As one Marine officer said to me: There is something to be said for doing war on the cheap, but if you want to do war on the cheap, "pick a country that doesn't matter."

no ranger left behind

i'm really excited about howard dean's bid for the presidency. i like his rhetoric, his policies are sound and even if he doesn't win i like to think he'll help shift the democratic party back to the left where it belongs. and at this point, as one person put it, i'd vote for a trained dolphin if it'd get bush out of office. so the last thing i want is some republican-lite like dick gephardt up against bush. was it harry truman who said that given the choice between a republican and a democrat that acts like a republican the people go with a republican every time?

well, i'll make a little confession, in 1999 the thought that bush could become president seemed laughable to me. the idea that a drunk driving, draft dodging, awol, coke addict who got into princeton on his father's coat tails with a sat score 600 points below average and graduated with a c average could be come president seemed so ridiculous that i felt safe voting for ralph nader. at least nevada was so solidly bush that my vote made no difference. i sure hope that it's clear by now that there is a difference between the republicans and democrats. maybe ralph will do us all a favor and sit this next one out.

this time around i'm not going to underestimate that little moronic son of a bitch. if you're not already worried, read this. bush is looking to raise $20 million in the next two weeks:

Members of both major parties said Mr. Bush might, in those two weeks, come close to matching the $26 million raised by all nine Democratic candidates during the first three months of the year....

...Republicans involved in Mr. Bush's campaign said they were expecting to raise $170 million...

i'm going to let you in on a little "secret". most of that money won't be coming from mom and pop republicans