Edgewise

The Bush Administration's War on Tsunami

The Bush Administration today announced its new policy: to wipe tsunami from the face of the earth. "We will find the tsunami where they live," said one extremely senior administration official, speaking from an undisclosed vacation hideaway. "And we will smoke them out."

If you watch one voter suppression in Ohio movie this holiday season

Make it one of these.

language

what today is dismissed derisvely as "politically correct" used to be called "being considerate."

Lovely, interesting

A 30,000-year-old instrument is uncovered in southern Germany:

His early experimentation suggests that the old flute would have allowed a relatively sophisticated level of musical variation. "The tones are quite harmonic," he says. They don't seem to follow a diatonic scale, he notes, but rather the rules of the pentatonic scale that predominates in Asia.

Here's a melody that the flute would have been capable of playing.

Do Economists Indulge in Parenthetical Witticisms?

Thursday 12/16/2004
-----------------------------------------------------------
RELEASE: In October, Czech retail sales continued to follow the trend of the preceding months and increased...1.1% on a seasonally adjusted month-to-month basis. On a year-ago basis, retail sales advanced 1.7% (not seasonally adjusted).

DKo: A full-year seasonal adjustment? It must make sense somehow, but it does sound funny. Economists don't indulge in parenthetical witticisms. Do they?

I suppose we could make a kind of full-year "seasonal adjustment," if we based it on the Kondratieff "long-business-cycle" (45-60 years, really, look it up), in which case 2004 would indeed feel like a long, pervasive, "seasonal" downturn.

--David

Chilling times

According to an article on MSNBC.com, 44% of Americans "believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans." Further:

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

It's hard to dismiss these numbers. Tens of millions of Americans support requiring a particular religious group to register where they live.

These are chilling times.

How an unconscionable punishment became an enlightened incentive.

DKo: Boldface is mine.

USA TODAY, 6-22-04
On Nov. 27, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved 17 "Category Two" interrogation techniques....He also approved one "Category Three" technique,..."non-injurious physical contact."....Rumsfeld rejected three proposed Category Three techniques: exposure to cold weather or water;...

DKo: So in November, punishment by exposure to cold was unconscionable, not allowed even with special approval.

NYT, 6-22-04
On April 16, 2003, Mr. Rumsfeld narrowed the list of approved techniques. He permitted 24 ..., but stipulated that 4 of them required his explicit approval. They involved using incentives to cooperate, like offering hot showers in the winter,...

DKo: As we know now, prolonged sessions naked, in front of high-powered air conditioners were also in the mix. "Hey, we never laid a finger on the guy!"

They speak of these things as "use of rewards or removal of privileges." Rumsfeld euphemasia --a Kevorkian of American decency.

Don't They Know It Hurts?

"Remember, more than 90 percent of American homes celebrate Christmas. But the small minority that is trying to impose its will on the majority is so vicious, so dishonest--and has to be dealt with."
--Bill O'Reilly, Fox News: Cited in NYT, 2004: The Year of 'The Passion', by Frank Rich

I was reading the Newsweek story this week on the birth of Christ--79% of Americans believe in the Virgin Birth. I was surprised. As I went on through the article, I began to feel it was getting rather rationalistic in tone, not suffciently reverential. Possibly offensive? How would I know?

But then I got that gut fear, dark deep immemorial aching in my belly. Would this stir them up? Would they "come and get me?"

It still hurts. Bill O'Reilly should lay off.

prospects for peace

Interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinean's armed uprising has been a mistake and that Palistineans should pursue independence by peaceful means. This is, I'd say, big news.

The Homosexual Agenda

http://www.lustydevil.com/keepers/agenda.html

Will they ever forgive us?

Grand Forks Herald | 12/06/2004 | COLUMNIST LLOYD OMDAHL : Honoring a Guardsman's request (via Eschaton)

the fish must pay

And so far, the fish owe the farmers of California $26 million for depriving them of their water rights during the drought years of 1992 to 1994, according to federal claims court judge,
John Paul Wiese .

Since fish don't have bank accounts it's the federal government that will have to pay. For depriving farmers of water that is delivered to them via a federally-owned viaduct system built with taxpayers' dollars. The farmers belong to collectives known as Irrigation Districts that negotiate the price of water in contracts with the federal government.

Whose water is it? According to California law, the water belongs to the public, specifically the state Department of Water Resources which holds the rights to the water it diverts for farm and municipal use. Judge Wiese has ruled that the water not delivered to the farmers is, essentially, their property--and they, and not the fish, are the victims of a "taking."

Oh, and it pretty much voids the Environmental Protection Act which allowed for the river water to go to the fish during those drought years. If you want to protect fish habitat (hint: its WATER), you'll have to pay the farmers.

Of course, the federal government could challenge Judge Wiese's ruling that it owes millions to farmers in California. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.), however, has urged the administration not to do that. He's with Judge Wiese, who said that "The federal government is certainly free to preserve the fish; it must simply pay for the water it takes to do so."

Not surprisingly, blogging for the right pays better

Bloggers paid to support Thune, oppose Daschle (Personal Democracy Forum)

gambling on your life

Now that the referendum on war and family values is behind us I think it's time we turned our attention to the center ring in this American circus and take a look at how the Republicans are planning to dismantle our social safety net. I read a little article in the San Francisco Chronicle last Sunday that talked about how those Republican-vaunted health savings accounts are difficult to set up and hardly worth the trouble in a state like California that doesn't give you a tax break for them. Considering how much those tax breaks could cost the state (about $25 million per year, according to the article), I'm not sure we want them.

But say you have no other way to get health insurance and you at least want federal tax break? Well, good luck. You'd probably be better off going to the race track or your friendly local casino than trying to find a bank or other financial institution that will set one up for you. I had to laugh at the article's example (from something called Spidell's California Taxletter - a year's subscription is only $127) wherein our typical resident in need of health care insurance puts $2,000 into said "health savings account" (the maximum contribution allowed per year is $2,600) and the account "earns $250 per year" according to Spidell's experts.

Ok. We can stop right there. $250 on $2,000? Where is this account - at the Bank of Halliburton? I'll have you know my esteemed Washington Mutual "Preferred" Savings Account earns 1.37 percent at the moment - and that's up from somewhere below 1 percent for most of the last year. That means that on $2,000 I earn $27. 40 over one year. Say this wonderous "health savings account" is allowed to be invested in the stock market. Then I might possibly earn $250, or I might lose the whole wad ala Bill Frist's campaign fund.

Say I have no choice but to put $2,600 (the maximum, remember) into one of these accounts and get my federal tax break (say, for fun, it's worth $100) and, at Mafia interest rates, garner an extra $250 over the year. That means I have paid out $2,600 and made $350. But does that pay my health insurance premium cost for the year? Well, in my own case those premiums (for my non-profit health care provider Kaiser) cost over $3,600 per year. And that's with a high co-pay and no prescriptions.

You can see how excited I might be about the "invest-on-your-own social security account."

War goes well, if you watch it on FOX

Quoting from J. Bradford DeLong (Most Valuable Outfielder):

In the Agora wins the most valuable outfielder award with this catch:

In the Agora: Ummm... Reverend Jerry Falwell, guest hosting on yesterday's Crossfire, said that the Iraq war "goes pretty well if you watch it on FOX." You can watch the video clip here. We report, you decide.

Simply wonderful, on many levels.

How to win hearts and minds in Iraq

The following consists of some tactical suggestions for engaging with the population in Iraq from an active duty soldier currently stationed in Iraq who prefers to remain anonymous:

One thing I would do is start taking an honest accounting of collateral damage. Moral considerations aside, refusing to count civilian casualties is blinding us to a serious grievance on the part of the Iraqi people. The insurgency is able to exploit this grievance. In addition, without counting civilian casualties we have little incentive to move toward tactics and technologies that can reduce collateral damage. An increased emphasis on sub-lethal technologies might yield good results. For example, instead of using explosives against an insurgent strong point, perhaps we could use concussion rounds and riot agents, and then follow swiftly with an infantry assault. (Just speculating on specific tactics here - I'm not an infantryman and I don't have a combat-eye view of what's actually going on.)

I would also push translation capability down to the lowest level possible. In many cases translators, if they are available at all, are often tied up at staff levels instead of going out on patrol with the grunts. If I had my way, every platoon would get a good translator to help the platoon read the street and the situation. Currently most of those translators would be contractors - there simply aren't enough trained military personnel to fulfill that role. Concurrent with this effort I would be seriously revamping the Arabic language program at the Defense Language Institute - and implementing new programs in languages like Kurdish and Pashtun, which are still very under-represented. In fact, the Army historically has an absolutely lousy track record when it comes to linguistic capability. Case in point: Guess by what percentage the Arabic faculty grew at DLI after Gulf War I? Zero percent, that's how much. I still can't wrap my head around that.

In addition, I think we just need more soldiers here. The Pentagon claims we have plenty of soldiers, but I've yet to meet a guy in uniform who believed that. If we have all these soldiers available, where the hell are they? There are generally not enough troops in place here to actually provide both meaningful stability and contingency force projection into trouble areas. In other words, if we need to go on a major offensive, we get spread rather thin. The Pentagon continues to argue against a permanent increase in force structure, saying that those soldiers may not be needed in the future and would be expensive to maintain. So we continue to tax our regular Army and Marine units with repeated tours (my own unit will be returning to theater within nine months of going home) while attempting to plug the gap with poorly trained and equipped Gaurd and Reservists. To me this like maxing out your credit card while simultaneously failing to put up good long-term investments. Only instead of money, it's blood.

I also think there needs to be a sea change in the way we equip our forces, starting from the ground up. In many ways our military is still focused on high-tech, maneuver warfare style weapons. Technology does have it's place - we are making a rather good thing of UAVs, for example. But the battle is really being won or lost by the grunts on the ground, and that's where we should be focusing our efforts in my opinion. We are doing this to some extent - the Rapid Fielding Initiative here in theater went a long way toward providing soldiers with things like better boots and sunglasses, things they would ordinarily have to shell out their own cash for. (I personally got a great pair of boots.) Weapons improvements have also been part of the RFI. But I think we need to do more. For example, the body armor is still really damn heavy. We might also do more with microelectronics - I wonder, for example, if a PDA-based translation program would be useful. I know such a system has been tested here, but I have yet to see it in wide use. And finally, I think we need to relook some of our basic weapons systems, even taking lessons from the insurgency. Every bad guy and his brother has an RPG here. Why not? It's light, it's cheap, and it's effective. We, on the other hand, have the AT-4. It's heavy, it's expensive, and you only get one shot - after firing it, you dispose of the tube. Kinda stupid. We need our own reusable-type RPG.

And of course, we need more HMMWV and other trucks which are hardened against RPGs and IEDs. The Army is also trying to do this. I am also seeing some very novel (often homemade) gun truck arrangments. Typically a truck has only one crew-served heavy weapon. Now we are seeing trucks which have two crew-serve weapons, one at the front and one at the rear. It makes sense.

Also, I would change the focus of our civil affairs work. According to my understanding, the civil affairs guys now go out and survey an area for local needs, and then attempt to find local contractors to build the needed service. However, this is still kind of a money-and-technology heavy focus. While that has its place, I would also look right at the dirt level for small but effective ways to improve the lives of the poorest locals. The idea here is appropriate technology. I would love to see Army guys teaching small-scale water purification or fired-earth housing technology, for example. It would be great if US military forces or associated NGOs could set up small remote communities with their own renewable power systems instead of relying on large centralized power plants.

And finally, we really need to be winning the perception management battle among Arabs and other ethnic groups in this area. (That includes Persians and Kurds.) This will require, among other things, more public presentations of the way we are helping the Iraqi people. And just using photo ops isn't enough, we need to be actually doing this in a big way. We already treat some local nationals in US military hospitals - that stuff needs to be on TV a lot more, and on Arabic channels instead of just western channels. And there needs to be more of it - I would say a crash program in creating and supporting local clinics, probably in conjunction with various NGOs, would help a lot. I don't think there is any such thing as healing too many people.

Those are a few tactical ideas, anyway. Don't know if we'll ever get to that point.