Moral roots of liberals and conservatives

I saw an excellent talk on TED about the psychological roots of liberals and conservatives. Makes the point that despite our innate desire to group with like-minded individuals, both viewpoints bring valuable mindsets to the table and if we want to be a whole country again, we need to understand the other half.

Evolution of Presidential Eloquence

The (Uncensored) Evolution of Presidential Eloquence

by Martin Horn

"My friends, circumstances render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach, and that is to remove to the west. And the sooner you do this, the sooner you will commence your career of improvement and prosperity." - Andrew Jackson, Addressing Native Americans while discussing his Indian Relocation Policy

"Moreover, the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not dwindle away in the presence of the white man...From this point of view the presence of the negro is the real problem; slavery is merely the worst possible method of solving the problem." - Teddy Roosevelt (Source: "Winning of the West" by Teddy Roosvelt)

[Spies] are all Jews. Every one's a Jew. Gelb's a Jew. Halperin's a Jew. But there are bad-Hiss was not a Jew. So that proves something. Very interesting thing. - Richard Nixon (link: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=48623)

"I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

Just for giggles:

"Go f*ck yourself," -- Vice-President Dick Cheney, on the Senate Floor

Found this series of quotes posted in the comments section of the Economist, and found it sufficiently amusing that it deserved re-posting. - Guy

The End of the Fighter Era

A well-written argument by Lewis Page at The Register on why so many people hate the F-35. It's not that it's a great fighter, it's that it's good enough to put a lot of the competition out of business, and that it's good at doing the unglamorous things that modern militaries actually do -- mainly beating up the forces of small nations equipped with second-rate surplus Russian designs, rather than going head-to-head with large numbers of state-of-the-art aircraft.

But to be honest, to an outsider it looks as though this sector could really stand to shrink quite a lot. The militaries of the West, it appears, continue to plough far too much of their straitened funds into exotic combat jets designed for unlikely wars, and not nearly enough into bread-and-butter infantry, surveillance platforms, helicopters, transport planes and so on.

The F-35 has some of the industry worried not because it's a waste of money, but exactly the opposite -- they fear that it could become the Model T Ford of combat aircraft (available in any color you like, as long as it's grey) and wipe out the competing manufacturers.

I still believe even the F-35 is far more expensive than what we need today. A second production run of A-10s would do a lot more good for today's military actions than any new fighter on the market.

Walking While Brown

Yesterday Zach had an encounter with the Santa Clara Police Department. While walking around looking for a nearby park, he stopped and asked an older woman for directions. A few minutes later an SCPD police cruiser rolls up on him and he is stopped and questioned for a while and then released.

A few details may make this a bit more clear:

• It was broad daylight -- around 4PM
• The woman was white
• We live in a predominantly white neighborhood
• Zach is half-Pakistani, but looks Hispanic to most observers

Joahnna called the police and complained about this, and in the ensuing discussion, it turned out the woman Zach asked for directions thought that he looked "suspicious" and called the police.

Joahnna and I are at a loss as to what to tell Zach if he wishes to avoid being periodically stopped and checked. It seems as if the bar for "suspicious" is suspiciously low.

Can't Wait for the Weekend

I'm in Israel this week for a business trip, and that means that for me the week ends today (Thursday). Tomorrow evening I fly back to the U.S.

It has been an odd time to travel to Israel. The airstrikes in Gaza had been going on for a week or so by the time I left, and the ground war started as I was flying over. A number of people asked if it was safe, and I said that I believed so, since the action was confined to the Gaza strip.

In many ways the feeling here reminds me of 2003, just after the war in Iraq started. People were concerned about it, but simply went on with their daily lives. The feeling I get here is similar, but the discontinuity is more pronounced -- it's very odd to get in your car and drive to work, realizing that people are fighting and dieing not two hours drive away.

I Told You So

It would be nice to read articles like these that validate things I have said before, if it weren't for the fact that the validation takes the form of drought and water shortages.

"The demand for water has gone up," Christy says. "The demand has skyrocketed in places like California and New Mexico because they've tried to grow crops in deserts."

Unclear what we will do about it. The farm lobby is very powerful in California, but they can't create water from thin air.

“Given that agriculture accounts for about 80% of Delta water consumption, no economic, environmental, or policy assessment can be complete without a serious examination of agricultural water withdrawals from the Delta,” said Heather Cooley, senior research associate at the Pacific Institute (original article)

Maybe rice and alfalfa aren't such great crops for California after all?

Where My Tax Money Goes

I often have discussions (or perhaps gripe sessions would be a better term) with Jon and others about where all my tax money goes. With sales and income taxes that are both among the highest in the nation, and property tax to boot, it feels like we're getting dinged at every turn.

So, after a little coffee-time debate at work, I decided to harness the power of the internet and find out. What I found were these links.

First, a study of the California total tax burden versus that of other states concludes that while we pay more than the national average in taxes, it's not a lot more (11.5% versus 11% average for the nation). This article on wikipedia argues that prop 13 has had a disruptive effect on the state economy by making it more advantageous to hold on to your property than to sell it, thus chilling the housing market in many areas.

As for where the money goes, the Governor's budget office has a nice income/expense graph. This shows that, for all their complaints, schools get about 41% of the state budget, with the next biggest item being health services at 25%. Bond funding isn't shown on this graph, elsewhere I found a figure of $4.4B, which would put it at around 3% of the budget. Corrections is also a big chunk of the budget at 7.3%.

However, all of this may be moot if the legislature can't break the deadlock and come to some agreement on the state budget for next year; otherwise the budget for everything will be zero.

How To Run an Election

It seems funny that the U.S. should look to another country about how to run an election, but Brazil seems to have a pretty good handle on how to do a trusted election on electronic voting machines.

The article details how the hardware is provided by a private company (Diebold), but the software is written by the government election office, and is then reviewed and digitally signed by members of both political parties.

This is, in my opinion, the right way to run an election -- the process of how the election is run is completely under the control of the government and monitored by the affected parties. Colluding to fix an election would require the involvement of three parties, one of whom would presumably be harmed by the result.

Bailout or Subsidized Stupidity?

The proposed bailout didn't sit really well with me when I first heard about it, since it felt like rewarding people for making bad decisions, and it didn't help the people that are really feeling the pain -- i.e. the people getting kicked out of their houses.

This is not to say that I think people should get rewarded for buying a house they couldn't afford, but if you're trying to prop up the economy by dumping government money into it, I'd much rather it went to people whose worst mistake is not being able to do math than people who intentionally engaged in high-risk investment and then covered it up with an impenetrable paper trail.

But what do I know -- my expertise is in getting chips to work, not finance. A lot of commentators are blasting congress for not immediately giving Paulson the $700 billion blank check he was looking for, but recently economists are singing a different tune.

Politico summarizes the reaction of a number of economists, and a wide spread of economists signed this letter.

Luigi Zingales summarizes how I feel (with better credentials):

For somebody like me who believes strongly in the free market system, the most serious risk of the current situation is that the interest of few financiers will undermine the fundamental workings of the capitalist system. The time has come to save capitalism from the capitalists.

His full paper is here.

Defconomy

This link is an article about 5 steps (modeled on the "DEFCON" system used by U.S. strategic command) from situation-normal to Great Depression-style economic meltdown.

The steps and descriptions come courtesy of Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics. The interesting thing about this article is that it was originally published in february, and at the time of writing we were at Defconomy 5. Now we're somewhere around 3 or 2, and it's played out almost exactly as described.

Same problem, different continent

According to El Reg, my favorite sarcastic news site, the British are having some of the same problems we are in convincing their Generals to fight the war they are fighting right now, as opposed to some theoretical war in the future that requires lots of fancy toys.

I could almost take my post from a couple weeks ago and replace "F-22" with "Eurofighter Typhoon" and be done with it. They say misery loves company, but for some reason it doesn't make me feel any better to know that another country is blowing their taxpayer dollars on less-than-useful kit, too.

Odd Times

Today has certainly started out on a bizarre note. For starters, you can tell the economy is getting bad when strippers feel the need to drum up business. After all, this is not normally an industry segment that advertises much (outside Vegas), as there is, shall we say, a built-in demand for their services.

Which is why I was surprised (and amused) this morning as I turned on to Lawrence Expressway, and saw two young, relatively attractive women holding up pink signs that said "Kit Kat Club -- $15 Lunch Buffet".

Afterwords I got in to work and began my early-morning work-avoidance routine (reading the news). While doing this I saw this CNN article about the D.C. handgun ban being struck down. There were a variety of supporting and opposing opinions filed by various groups. Coming in on the side of gun owners was not only the NRA, but a group called the Pink Pistols -- a group which promotes gun ownership for "gay, lesbian, bi, trans, or polyamorous persons".

I wonder what the rest of the day has cooked up for me. It's not even 10AM yet.

Not Lacking in Chutzpah

I have to admit, Blackwater has really outdone themselves on this one.

The widows of three U.S. soldiers filed suit against Presidential Airways after Blackwater Flight 61 crashed in 2004 while carrying the men over Afghanistan. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the crash on procedural problems at Presidential.

But the News & Observer says lawyers for the military contractor argued in a recent court filing that the case should be decided based on the laws of Afghanistan.

After securing agreements in Iraq that their employees there should not be subject to Iraqi law for their actions, it wants this case tried under Sharia law because the plane owned and operated by a U.S. company operating for the U.S. government carrying U.S. soldiers happened to crash into Afghani soil.

When trying to be despicable, they really pull out all the stops, don't they?

Pretty, But Pretty Useless

It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of the current administration, but it seems like defense secretary Gates has got his priorities straight. He is seeking to curtail production of advanced fighter aircraft like the F-22 and focus on the needs of immediate conflicts, which run more to UAVs and transport aircraft.

Gates has often singled out the cutting-edge Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor as a prime example of what he deemed misplaced military priorities. "The reality is we are fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater," Gates told a Senate committee in February.

Gates sacked current air force head General Mosely and his suggested replacement will be the first head of the air force in 25 years who is not a former fighter pilot.

Like most large institutions, the Air Force fights for its own aggrandizement rather than looking to the good of the whole, and is actively trying to increase the amount of porkfunding going its way. But the reality on the ground is that the Air Force is increasing irrelevant for modern conflicts -- airpower over the battlefield is most likely to come from a carrier, or from ground-support aircraft like the A-10 or attack helicopters (which the Air Force hate). Strategic bombing is passe for modern low-intensity conflicts, our nuke inventory is being gradually reduced, and cyberwarfare is much-hyped but of improbable use on an actual battlefield. So the Air Force needs to find a new mission or risk being downsized into a military version of UPS.

Would that be a bad thing? Perhaps not.

Muddy Water

I generally don't expect to stumble across political controversy when I'm reading my morning aviation news, but this morning read that Blackwater is apparently expanding the scope of its operations by purchasing Brazilian figher aircraft.

This implies that Blackwater is branching out from the basic security work it did previously and planning on being a full-fledged army, including air support. They already manufacture their own APCs.

Most disturbing is the almost complete lack of oversight of a group whose actions represent and reflect upon the American people. Blackwater contractors are not accountable under military law (as they are civilians), are exempt from Iraqi law (by executive order of Paul Bremer), and may not even be accountable under U.S. civilian law (proper jurisdiction, evidence may not meet U.S. evidence requirements). Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?

Moving to Canada

From the I-can't-believe-these-people-also-live-in-my-country column, a coalition of right-wing commentators and columnists forced Dunkin' Donuts to pull an online ad because it supports Islamic Terrorism features Rachel Ray wearing a scarf.

The idiots defenders of our freedom claim that Rachel is a terrorist apologist because she showed up in the commercial looking like this:For reference, a keffiyeh looks like this:


Note that the keffiyeh comes in a variety of colors and patterns; the key element seems to be that it is worn on one's head (I will confirm this after tracking down one of our local Lebanese).

I'm a little unsure as to the logic chain followed here, but I'm guessing that it goes something like:

1. Terrorists wear keffiyehs
2. A keffiyeh is a square piece of cloth
3. A scarf is a square piece of cloth
4. Therefore, anyone wearing a scarf is a terrorist

From The Other Side

Interesting article from Der Spiegel about militants making Quassam rockets in the Gaza strip. From the article:

"The other guys are over in Egypt, shopping," he says, adding that the militants are just ordinary people who want to experience the open border with the neighboring country. Will they be looking for ingredients for building the Qassams? "Hardly," the oldest of the group laughs. "They are buying potato chips. We have enough raw materials to last for a few years."

On Engineers

Joahnna sent me this link about an Engineer's Mind and how it works, which was pretty funny. I also dug around and found a couple other links. This one covers engineers and why they are not usually involved in politics, at least in the U.S., whereas this one responds to some research that purports to show that engineers and terrorists have the same mind-set. The comments on the last article seem to be more insightful than the original research.

Band-Aids for Bullet Holes

When I first heard about Clinton's proposal for a gas-tax holiday, I thought "It's a gimmick. Gas is $4/gal, what good is knocking off ten cents going to do?" I had a lot of respect for Obama standing up and calling shenanigans. These types of proposals are the kind of election-year pandering that bloat the budget and have the tax-code looking like swiss cheese.

After I read this Huffington Post article about supporters of the gas-tax holiday (among economists, it's batting zero), I started to wonder who actually came up with this idea.

Which of the two is more offensive to you: A candidate that's dumb enough to think this will help the economy, or a candidate that thinks we're dumb enough to think this will help the economy?

China Understands Capitalism

A coworker pointed out this article, that the flags being used to protest the occupation of Tibet were made in China. Anyone think they don't understand capitalism?

Along the same vein of "people who don't understand economics", a good commentary on U.S. immigration. Unfortunately the ones who don't understand economics are the public. From the article:

A quick rule of thumb: If it fits on a bumper sticker, it's not a workable policy.