Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Slight Hiatus
I've been entertaining a lot, having some crummy health issues and generally been overwhelmed. Regular blogging to return soon.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Another Way Of Thinking
Few people actually think of this, but the cost of driving your own automobile is prohibitive:
LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - April 4, 2008) - The Automobile Club of Southern California's 2008 edition of "Your Driving Costs" shows the cost of driving a passenger vehicle in the United States has increased 1.9 cents per mile in the last year and now averages 54.1 cents per mile.
"While the cost of some driving expenses declined since the start of 2007, higher gasoline prices have more than offset these savings and pushed the overall cost of vehicle ownership and operation higher this year," said the Auto Club's Automotive Research Center Manager Steve Mazor. In 2008, AAA estimates it will cost $8,121 to own and operate a new passenger car driven 15,000 miles per year. This compares to $7,823 per year in 2007; or 52.2 cents per mile.
Vice President Clinton
Yep, it's being floated more and more. It appears that Hillary would be open to the idea.
Would Obama? Would you if you were Obama?
Looks like the first major political test of Obama will be what to do about Hillary.
The Quagmire
Thomas Powers has written a fine piece on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He gives a fine overview of the wars, how we got into them, how we screwed them up and how the U.S. has shifted from international diplomacy to military intervention.
I found this to be a frightening assessment on Afghanistan:
The CIA officer Anthony Arnold, who was stationed in Kabul before the Russian invasion, thinks the penalty of failure [for the Russians after they invaded Afghanistan] went beyond immediate losses and humiliation to include the actual collapse of the Soviet state itself. They were weaker than they knew, Arnold thinks, but the Russians did not give in easily: they killed more than a million Afghans, bombed villages to rubble, machine-gunned herds of sheep from the air, and drove as many as a fifth of all Afghans out of the country, across the border into the safe haven of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Nothing worked and the war ended when the last Russian troops and trucks drove back across the Friendship Bridge into Tajikistan in 1989. It is true that the mujahideen got plenty of material help from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, but it was the Afghans who fought the Russians to exhausted frustration, and have gone right on fighting among themselves ever since.This is the nut the U.S. is up against in Afghanistan.
The real point of Powers review is that we're in a quagmire that seems to dictate one of two solutions, without much in between:
We are committed in Afghanistan. We are not ready to leave Iraq. In both countries our friends are in trouble. The pride of American arms is at stake. The world is watching. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most—get out or fight on.Ugly huh? I think he's right. The next President will be faced with cleaning up Bush's mess, and enduring consequences put into motion by Bush. Like everything else in George Bush's life, someone else will have to be the adult and clean up after the brat. If it's President McCain, I think the outcome is precisely as Powers describes. The remaining question is will President Obama have the guts to get out?
Iraq
You may (or given our media, may not) have heard that there has been a major battle going on inside Baghdad. U.S. troops ... and oh yeah, Iraq military ... have "surrounded" Sadr City and have been attacking regularly inflicting a whole lot of casualties among the 2+ million residents.
It appears the Iraqi government and al Sadr have reached a new "agreement" for a ceasefire. Juan Cole summarizes:
The al-Maliki government and the Sadrists pulled back from the brink in Sadr City on Saturday. PM Nuri al-Maliki had demanded that the Mahdi Army militia that serves as the Sadrist paramilitary give up its arms and dissolve itself. The compromise simply states that the Iraqi security forces would be allowed in to Sadr City to search for suspected medium and heavy weapons. The implication is that the Mahdi Army may continue to exist and may keep its light weapons (e.g. AK-47s), though it has to pledge not to walk with them in public.Ok. I'm sure the Mahdi militiamen will all hand over their large weapons. Right.
The siege of Sadr City is to be lifted and the major roads in and out of it are to be unblocked, according to the agreement.
But this is the key graf in Cole's description:
Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day' in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."Or rather as I like to say, lather, rinse, repeat. And the war goes on and on and on.
You have a sinking feeling that al-Maliki is recycling old announcements in a futile attempt to distract the public from his climb-down in Sadr City. Al-Maliki left for Mosul Saturday along with a few cabinet members and close advisers. Curfews have been announced in some Mosul neighborhoods.
Friday, May 9, 2008
I Didn't Know
I didn't know that John McCain has had four bouts of malignant melanoma? Did you? I thought his face was messed up (the area on the side of his face above his jaw) because of torture or something. Turns out these are scars from past radical surgeries to remove the cancers.
I think a question like the one asked today on Dr. Dean Edell's radio show is relevant: what are the odds of John McCain dying in the next four years, and how about releasing those medical records?
Hill's Difficult Weekend
She's about to have one:
A big ouch to the ongoing fight. Is the cascade building steam?WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama all but erased Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-imposing lead among national convention superdelegates on Friday and won fresh labor backing as elements of the Democratic Party began coalescing around the Illinois senator for the fall campaign.
Obama picked up the backing of nine superdelegates, including Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who had been a Clinton supporter.
The Usual Lies
Your U.S. government in action.
As Kevin Drum points out, this quote comes from a LA Times journalist blog, not a news report. Wonder if we would have heard about it otherwise?
There was something interesting missing from Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner's introductory remarks to journalists at his regular news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday: the word "Iran," or any form of it. It was especially striking as Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman here, announced the extraordinary list of weapons and munitions that have been uncovered in recent weeks since fighting erupted between Iraqi and U.S. security forces and Shiite militiamen.
....A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin.
When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.
Prius
I would have purchased a Toyota Prius if they weren't so damned ugly. We ended up buying a hybrid Camry which is performing beautifully.
But take a look at the new Prius and it's features. Lookin' good!
Big News On Housing
Wow. It looks like the falling prices in housing are actually bottoming. How would I know this? Because, like Barry, I believe in contrary indictators:
This guy is the economist for the National Association of Realtors. He's been wrong in every prognostication on housing for years. So to me, this is proof that the bottom is very near if not in.*Economist David Lereah was once the housing market's biggest cheerleader. Now he says the bust isn't near over, and home prices still have a long way to fall.
"We're not at the bottom," he says. "[People] want it to be near the bottom, but we're not there yet. The leading indicators are still very bad. Pending home sales are still in bad shape. Mortgage applications are low … There's still supply out there in abundance … This thing is going to get worse before it gets better."
*Barry cites that Lereah is still recommending people buy now and that obviates the bottom call. I disagree. I think Lereah would be fired if he didn't say now is a good time to buy. His statement is about as close to the edge of termination that he could get.
Done Deal
I never really thought of it this way, but isn't this true?
The LAT's Joel Stein sets out to buy some medical marijuana and finds the whole process surprisingly simple. "I always wondered what would happen if marijuana were legalized for anyone over 18," Stein writes. "It seems it already has been, and nothing happened."I mean, other than the justice system and prisons being clogged up by those cases that are brought against marijuana dealers/users, aren't all the purported "bad effects" of marijuana legalization already ingrained in our country? Doesn't look to bad to me.
Just Another Land Deal
What good is it to be a Senator if you can't help your constituents?
The WP fronts a look at how Sen. John McCain pushed a land swap deal through Congress that will "directly benefit" one of his top fundraisers. After approval of the legislation, which will allow an Arizona businessman to exchange remote land for valuable property owned by the federal government, SunCor Development was hired to build thousands of homes in the area. SunCor Development is run by Steven Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the Arizona Republican's presidential race. Betts denies he ever talked to McCain about it, but besides that connection, there are plenty of other eyebrow-raising aspects to the deal. McCain wasn't very eager to support the swap at first, but that all appeared to change after the businessman who owned the remote land hired a group of lobbyists that included several people who once worked for McCain.We. Desperately. Need. Public. Financing.
Period.
Burma
The humanitarian situation in Burma is a mess. The government there seems to be really unreasonable in not allowing aid into the country. Yet at the same time, isn't there such a thing as sovereignty? I really haven't a clue of just what should be done beyond diplomatic efforts and international public pressure to allow aid to come in.
Because One Isn't Enough
Because no self-respecting blogger can have just one blog, I'm in two. My lovely wife Jan and I have started a culinary/hobby-like blog about our self-indulgences living in the Sonoma County wine country. Please feel free to drop by anytime and above all, comment!
Thursday, May 8, 2008
More On The Real Votes
You've got to wonder if Hillary stays in the race as a way of doing a big fundraiser. Either way, she's up against a big number:
U.S. News and World Report: "Experts disagree on whether or not Clinton will actually stick in the fight until the Democratic National Convention in August. But the date looms large for another reason -- at least, if she hopes to recoup any of the millions she has sunk into the campaign. Thanks to a little-known provision in 2002's McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, a campaign must repay the loan to a candidate before Election Day. In this case, that's the nominating convention. After the election has passed, a bankrupt campaign is limited to gathering just $250,000 from contributors, which means that modest sum is all it can give back to a candidate. In short, Clinton stands to lose $11,150,000."
Expose'
I think it's time for Frontline to due a new piece on the Great War On Terror POW's.
Like this instance, it seems to me that every single government case against detainee's has been unable to stand the scrutiny of an honest to god justice system. Honest folks can debate whether civil liberties take a back seat to security. But giving up civil liberties for no good reason and getting zilch in return is plain stupid.
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