Big Brother George and the Cheny Waterworks

George Bush's Orwellian administration continues to demonstrate its total disreguard for the Constitution of the United States of America and the basic human values that should be a part of how we conduct ourselves, whether at war of at peace. Tony Snow assures everyone that the Vice President, Dick Cheny, was not referring to waterboarding when he talked about dunking detainees to extract information. Is the administration afraid to let the VP speak for himself? As the fictional lawyer, Perry Mason, might have said, "This is not best evidence. Unless Tony Snow is a mind reader, he cannot know what the VP meant or didn't mean."

So if it's not waterboarding they're talking about, what kind of dunking did they mean? I don't think anyone actually believes that the person being interrogated would be placed in a dunk tank(the kind found at fairs and other events) and that if he refused to talk the interrogator would throw baseballs at the target until a lucky hit plunged the victim into the water.

So now we have the spectacle of Big Brother George saying that we don't condone torture or use it, but we will use it if we think that we need to ( signing statement). Doublespeak, doublethink, and total incompetence while life imitates art.

Grover Norquist, Spider

Grover Norquist appears to be a bloated spider at the center of a web of interconnected organizations and individuals whose aim seems to be the complete destruction of the U.S. government. Of course they are not trying to bring it down by armed rebellion, because that would be immediately recogmized by almost everyone as treason. So they seem to be relying on economic tools to do the job. It’s a simple two-step operation: 1) eliminate taxes, 2) bankrupt the government. When a government is bankrupt, it dissappears.

What this is supposed to accomplish isn’t clear. "My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit. Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything," he said . Except he would need government to protect him from all the other self-employed, home-schooled guys carrying concealed weapons. And as a Harvard educated MBA he is surely aware that IRAs don’t exist independently of governments, and money dosen’t exist independantly of governments. So without government he would be free to raise his kids in ignorance while locked inside his fortress home trying to figure out what he can barter for the next month’s supply of food.

U.S. Carmakers are Crazy

The U.S. automobile manufacturing industry is crazy. They've spent a lot of public face wringing their collective hands and moaning about the drop in marketshare they're currently experiencing. They're also spending large sums suing a number of states for requiring cars to have greater fuel efficiency as a result of limiting carbon dioxide emissions by the states in question ( includes California, Oregon, Washington, New York, et al.) Their money would be better spent in research and development and changing their game plan to supply those more efficient cars, vans, trucks, et cet. to a huge market that would have to buy those more efficient cars, vans, trucks, et cet.

If the industry needs ideas, here's one for starters: high efficiency, low polluting deisel hybrid electric cars that can run on petro-deisel or on bio-deisel.

Greenhouse Gas Reduction -- A First Step

I have to admit I don't lie awake every night agonizing over the ever more rapid increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. But, the preponderance of the scientific evidence supports the notion that climate change (global warming) is upon us, and is being driven by the increase in greenhouse gases of which carbon dioxide is the most prominent one. Reflection on the consequences of this unintentional global experiment shows it to be the stuff of nightmares: famines, wildfires, drowning of coastal areas, emergence of new epidemic diseases, accellerated extinction of many species, super storms, etc.
It would seem prudent to act on the side of caution and work to reduce our output of greenhouse gases as fast and far as possible. The national adoption of the California emissions standards would be a good first step since these standards set limits on greenhouse gases as well as other pollutants. The sooner such measures are in place the better.

Big Brother in Portland

A police state in the USA? The FBI was caught with its hand in the cookie-jar today when it tried to recruit a mid-level city employee to report on the activities of city councilmen, other employees etc. When questioned, the FBI admitted that it had no ongoing investigation into illegal activity on the part of the city government of Portland, Oregon. Could the fact that Oregon, and especially the Portland metropolitan area is Blue have anything to do with this?

Time to go metric

It seems that it is way past time to make the final plunge and finish the conversion to the metric system. We started many years ago and then abandoned the effort having managed to convert only soft-drink bottles to metric sizes. Yes, there are some conversion costs for some businesses; but the long-term benefits would more than make up for those costs. Our products would cost less to produce and market in the global economy if only one system was being used. Public education would soon have everyone comfortable with the new units (which are the ones used by our military establishment, for example).