Tangled Webs

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A Quick Anecdote

Related to the stupidity below, I have a short story for you.

I have a friend who just installed solar panels on his 1800 sq. ft. house. The cost, after rebates was pricey at $22,000, although that's about average for the purchase of a new car. But he now is energy independent. In fact, he returns electricity to the grid on a net basis.

Now what would happen if the U.S. (like Germany for example) committed to solar power? Suppose all new construction was required to be energy independent via solar power? At least two things would happen. First, the cost of solar installations would fall precipitously (see: flat screen tv's, DVRs, etc.). Second, our energy demands would fall through the floor. Oh, and btw, our mercury and CO2 emissions would also fall precipitously.

But noooooo. Let's go with ethanol!

Ethanol

From Today's Papers:

The energy bill also mandates a five-fold increase in ethanol production by 2022

Sigh .....

This particular movement is a poster child for two key elements in U.S. policy making. First, the power of corporations to push their agenda in Congress via the power of regional interests to thwart the needs of the whole. Big agriculture loves this provision because it will boost the price of corn big time while the midwest, which really probably shouldn't be farmed at all, is the recipient of a big Federal wet kiss. Bush's ethanol initiative has already caused a huge price increase in corn with a resulting inflationary response in all food prices.

The second element is ignorance. Making ethanol out of corn is horribly inefficient. The best case scenarios have the energy output barely equaling the energy input to produce ethanol (unlike sugar which is used to great effect in Brazil). But never mind the science, see element number one above.

Let me give you an investment tip. If this bio-energy movement continues, and it looks like it will for the foreseeable future, invest in agricultural commodities. Moo is one of my personal favorites.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Lie As Easily As They Breathe

You know that meme floating around that torture actually works? Of course it's all a lie.

Added: By the way, the evidence is that not a single terrorist plot has been stopped by the Bush administration. Nada. And why would terrorist actually launch any attack when they have such a thorough self-destruction occurring while they release video-tapes?

In A Nutshell

Perfectly asked:

Is the Great Awakening inside the Sunni Arab community the road to Iraq's stability, or is it just a pause for Sunni rearmament and reorganization? Is it a means to secure American military bases inside an emerging Sunni client state generously supplied with cash from Saudi Arabia, a kind of cordon sanitaire along the fault line that separates the Sunni Arab world from Shiite Iran and its beachhead in southern Iraq? Does this development mean America wins when our former Sunni Arab enemies regain power in central Iraq? Or—here's the most disturbing question—will the presumed successes of today be catalysts for yet bloodier civil war inside Iraq or, worse, larger regional war?

Good News

Keeping in the spirit of shouting out good news, New Jersey residents and politicians had to good sense and moral rectitude to outlaw the death penalty!

What Atrios Said

First edition, shamelessly copied in full:

Jane has a good rundown on the absurdity of Reid's claim that Dodd's actions had nothing to do with the pulling of the telecom bill. And I want to highlight this bit from Glenn:
The most important value of victories of this sort is that they ought to serve as a potent tonic against defeatism, regardless of the ultimate outcome. And successes like this can and should provide a template for how to continue to strengthen these efforts. Yesterday's victory, temporary as it is, shouldn't be over-stated, but it also shouldn't be minimized. All of it stemmed from the spontaneous passion and anger of hundreds of thousands of individuals demanding that telecoms be subject to the rule of law like everyone else. And this effort could have been -- and, with this additional time, still can be -- much bigger and stronger still.
One of my pet peeves has long been a certain strain of defeatism. Understandably we all feel defeated at times, but there's a certain kind of defeatist out there on the internets, people who spend most of their time chastising others for thinking it's possible to have any influence and attacking the "stupidity" of those who even bother to try. Maybe those people are right. Maybe there never is anything to be done. But if that's the case, get a new goddamn hobby. It's rather odd to spend all your time following political news and blogs if the only reason to do it is to provide justification for your view that All Is Lost. Just go out and have some fun instead.

Yep. But it's not always easy when you've been bathed in defeat to keep up optimism. But I trudge forward anyway ......

Strange

How strange is it that the U.S. provides intelligence for Turkey to attack a country that we occupy?

Factoid of the Day

John Cook blogs for Radar Online: "Federal spending on paper shredding has increased more than 600 percent since George W. Bush took office."

How much of that, I wonder, was done here?

A Victory .....

In other news out of Capitol Hill, everyone notes that the Senate Democratic leadership delayed considering a new eavesdropping bill that would have given telecommunication companies retroactive immunity. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to remove the bill after it became clear lawmakers wouldn't be able to work out their differences before the break. The bill will probably be debated again when Congress gets back to work in January.

My guess is that Reid is hoping the heat will calm down, and Chris Dodd will settle down, if he hides the bill for awhile. This means that we'll have to remain vigilant for when he brings it back to the floor.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Well Put

Kevin Drum made a statement today that is so right on I must reproduce it here. It's so fundamentally correct yet so misunderstood that it's pathetic:

[Bob] Kerrey wasn't suggesting that electing Obama would have any direct effect on hardcore al-Qaeda jihadists. But terrorists can't function unless they have a critical mass of support or, at a minimum, tolerance from a surrounding population. This is Mao's sea in which the jihadists swim. Without it, terrorists simply don't have enough freedom of movement to be effective, and their careers are short. It's why the Red Brigades in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany lasted only a few years, while the IRA in Ireland has lasted decades.

So-called "hard power" (as used by Drum) is the last resort, the resort of fools who have screwed up the real tools to eliminate extremism. Unfortunately we have many fools running our government right now.

The Surge In Shovel Sales

Needlenose picks up a very interesting story:

There's no question that violence across Iraq has declined: in December 2006, approximately 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed across the country; this November about 600 were. But the problem—and the reason no one from U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus on down is declaring victory yet—is that those statistics do not tell the whole story: [. . .] militias are making more of an effort to disguise their grisly handiwork—burying bodies in shallow graves, dumping them in city sewers. . . .

In the past two months, more than half a dozen mass graves have been found in Iraq, at least half of them in Baghdad. At one site discovered in late November, in a yard in Baghdad's Saydiya neighborhood, bodies and their severed heads were buried in two separate holes, according to a source at the Ministry of Interior who isn't authorized to speak on the record. An additional 16 bodies were found buried in a ditch north of Baghdad last Thursday.

. . . in the heat of the civil war, militias boldly advertised their slaughter. Bodies—headless, burned, slashed open and perforated with drill holes—were left in plain sight as a message to others. Now, with most Baghdad neighborhoods dominated by one sect or the other, the death squads can afford to be more subtle in their killing. . . .

The strategy also reflects some positive developments in Baghdad. With many more U.S. and Iraqi troops out on the streets, killers cannot be as brazen as before.

Why? Because the fundamental problems in Iraq remain and will remain until they decide to solve it. With the Americans in country, that decision to resolve the internal conflicts can be postponed indefinitely as the U.S. props up one side or the other.

This n' That

Did you know that Boltin' Joe has endorsed John McCain. What a shock.

The other news is that Chris Dodd is going to do a real filibuster in the Senate against the telecom immunity bill today (you can offer support here). Why? Dodd has to do the real thing because the Democratic leadership refuses to honor his "hold" and is ready to roll over. Will Dodd be successful? Probably not. But at least he gets it and is trying. I wonder if Hillary or Obama will go to the Senate to speak for awhile, helping Dodd to filibuster?

I have generally been supportive of Harry Reid. But within the last six months he's lost me. I'm done with him and about done with Pelosi. By the way, Reid honors the hold put on by Tom Coburn, (R, Nutbar-Oklahoma) of a bill with widespread support in the Senate while ignoring Dodd, a member of his own party.

Added: Looks like Huckleberry Graham's holds get honored too. This one to block a bill requiring the military to not torture.

Impeach

Join Congressman John Wexler's call for Cheney Hearings here. Go. Do it.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Sicko

This is some really sick thinking.

It all sounds so logical, but it's pure nuts. Yet, like Kevin Drum, I agree that it's what we're up against and why I contend that we're always about an foot outside the jungle.

To prove this is crap, all you need to do is remember that former Israeli prime minister, and American darling, Menachem Begin once bombed the beejesus out of British troops.

Surveillance State

While we've all been shopping, Congress is giving the telecoms a big wet kiss:

The vast bulk of those on whom the Government spies have never been accused, let alone convicted, of having done anything wrong. One can dismiss those observations as hyperbole if one likes -- people want to believe that their own government is basically benevolent and "tyranny" is something that happens somewhere else -- but publicly available facts simply compel the conclusion that, by definition, we live in a lawless surveillance state, and most of our political officials are indifferent to, if not supportive of, that development.

That's precisely why our political class is about to bestow amnesty on telecoms which broke multiple laws in how they enabled the government to spy on us, even though what the telecoms did -- on purpose and for years -- is unquestionably illegal. Our political leaders in both parties plainly want this limitless surveillance to continue, and they don't think that telecoms do anything wrong even when they work with the government in spying on Americans in ways that are against the law.

And they're saying that explicitly. The legislation jointly created and about to be enacted by Jay Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, Congressional Republicans and Harry Reid -- with a vital assist from the Jane-Harman-led "Blue Dogs" in the House -- is all designed to conceal and protect this state of affairs and to enable it to grow.

And they're doing it despite this:

The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure.

Many bloggers are now wondering if we won the cold war or not?

Pop Quiz

What's going to cost the U.S. more over the next decade: the exploding costs of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare or Bush's tax cuts?

Answer here.

Take The Blindfold

Via Digby, we have a story the perfectly summarizes the Democratic Congressional strategy in dealing with Bush:

Three Jews were going to be executed. They were lined up in front of a firing squad and the sergeant in charge asked each one whether he wanted a blindfold or not.

"Do you want a blindfold?" he asked the first. "Yes," he said, in a resigned tone.

"Do you want a blindfold?" he asked the second. "Ok," said the second.

"Do you want a blindfold?" he asked the third. "No," said the third.

At this point the second leaned over to the third one and said "Take a blindfold. Don't make trouble."

What Digby Said

This is another edition of what Digby said:

For some reason the political class and the gasbags don't seem to get what this means:

If we don't reform the health care system overall, that's what's going to happen.

I'll only add that this chart clearly demonstrates what a "problem" social security is ..... right?

I Told Ya

I told you hell wouldn't freeze over.

Interesting

Why Iowa should be interesting:

Why Edwards Can Win Iowa
For months, John Edwards "has been rounding up support" in Iowa's "rural precincts where the front runners have paid less attention," Newsweek reports.

"While Obama and Clinton have drawn crowds in the thousands in places like Des Moines and Ames, Edwards has been winning over people in tiny towns like Sac City (population: 2,189). That's important, the strategists say, because under Iowa's arcane caucus rules, a precinct where 25 people show up to vote gets the same number of delegates as a place that packs in 2,500. In other words, even if he loses to Obama and Clinton in the state's bigger cities, he can still win by wrapping up smaller, far-flung precincts that other candidates have ignored."

Added: It looks like Edwards lost the Des Moines Registers endorsement due to his stand against corporate influence. That independent media at work again!

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