Memorial day montage

Thought I'd drop some vids for Memorial day.

Memorial Day

Dear Mr. Krystol,

You know what I'll remember? I'll remember the way you cavalierly argued to send our troops to Iraq for no reason other than your cute academic theory. I'll remember the way you sniffed at "torture", "ambivilant" about it, you said.

I'll remember these veterans
who came home to tell us all what a bloody immoral sickness they were sent into.

I'll remember this.

I'll remember this.


I'll remember this.

You bastard.

(I also remember that I took one of the above photos from Sadly, No!, who are the shizz.)

I'm no expert

But it seems to me that looking for IEDs in Massechusetts could be considered a futile expense.

Ok, so for better or worse, we have a gigantic agency called the DHS. It controls, among other things, FEMA, and counter-terrorism budgets for cities and states.

I'm thinking that if I were setting departmental goals, they'd look relatively simple:
- Cities have a clear reporting structure which is comminicated to all first responder agencies and employees: police, fire, hospitals and medical providers, water and power employees, and of course city and county government employees.
- Cities have communications systems for first responder teams which are demonstrated to be effective, and which will work in the event a disaster.
- Cities have evacuation plans for either natural disaster or attack, including alternate routes and means.
- Cities have rescue and recovery plans for situations not addressed by evacuation plans.
- City medical facilities have plans in place for receiving patients, triage, power interruptions, that they are fully linked to first responder communications.

I recently put together OSHA compliant programs for two divisions at my company, one in California and one in Florida. The OSHA and CALOSHA websites provided me with very clear guidelines and requirements, and lots of training tools. And an 800 number one could call if they wanted an OSHA rep to come review the program for compliance. Which I didn't need to use.

It was really pretty simple to decide a few things: who in each office is responsible for various record keeping duties, who does an employee report an injury or a hazard to? Put together the important training materials and give managers a schedule for training their teams. Post info and evacuation maps, and train people on how to use fire extinguishers.

Beyond that, each dept is responsible for having working safety equipment and tools, if required, and for not huffing dangerous chemicals, etc.

It seems to me that this is what local DHS efforts should map out like, on a larger and more complex scale. The DHS should have clear guidelines as to what teams need to know and what sort of plans need to be in place to comply. Like the list I posted above.

Yes, law enforcement needs to understand what an improvised explosive device might look like, but I'll warrant that's not a huge step for them as it is. They do need to have direct lines to the appropriate federal agencies, and FBI needs to be working with everyone and demonstrate the cobwebbed maze where information went to die before 9/11.

And this was a ridiculously long post where all I really wanted to say was that I'm not a small-government reactionary type, but if we're going to invest the money in a broad-based federal agency which often manages life and death in a very immediate sense, well then I would like it to be a smart agency.

Whoa

So, will all of the candidates and everyone in the current admin denounce and renounce and whateverthehell else you're supposed to do to Fox News?

TO Local: No on B

I hate to find myself in the same corner as the Chamber of Commerce, but I'm voting no on local Measure B.

NOT because I find persuading words like "job-killer" or "anti-competition".

I am opposing B because, having spent time at city council and planning department meetings covering various issues over the past several years, I am pretty damn certain that if a resident- or, preferably, a group of residents- has a real, researched, rational, and perhaps most importantly, LEGAL grounds to oppose any development, the council and the commission are there to listen, and can be persuaded to do the right thing.

Most people don't attend meetings, speak, send cards, or even pay attention until something is a done-deal. I'm not sure that sort of apathy qualifies one for voting on a proposed development.

Among the few who do pay some modicum of attention, perhaps even write a letter or attend a meeting, I would venture that 60-75% of them do not research, have no rational arguments, don't care to try for a legally defensible position. They mostly, in my experience, are whiney NIMBYs, who embarrass themselves when they open their mouths, and then scream that the council or the planners are in colusion with developers if they don't get their way.

The remaining 25-40% do their homework, make reasoned appeals, and offer solid grounding for their opposition. And they very often win.

The people who are so crazy about Measure B should instead make a study of that 25-40%, learn how they do what they do and why it works, and then engage the process.

I really don't fancy the panty-twisted majority voting on every proposed development in this city.

Col Ann Wright in TO on Tuesday!

Wow- here's another reason I never skip my local paper. How else would I have known that Ann Wright would be speaking at CLU this week?

She is one of my big inspiring memories of Camp Casey. If you're in town, you need to go hear her.

Gas Prices, again

Jess commented:

I'm truly no economist. But if I understand supply, demand, investment and depletion correctly (which I guarantee I do not): This is not (for once) oil companies fault. They suddenly have a limited number of barrel chips to throw in, and they're damn well going to get as much as they can for them. I hardly blame them for this. They're all in. If I was clearly, obviously running out of my product, as was the rest of the clamoring world, I'd hell yeah start charging outrageous prices for it. That's capitalism for ya.

WaPo this morning:

Every time Sohaila Rezazadeh rings up a sale at her Exxon station on Chain Bridge Road in Oakton, her cash register sends the information to Exxon Mobil's central computers. If she raises the price of gasoline a couple of pennies, chances are that Exxon will raise the wholesale price she pays by the same amount.

Which I quote here not to argue with Jess, but to raise his point: if the Exxons and Shells of the world are "all-in", and the product they're selling is about to run out, why wouldn't they make as much as they can right now this minute, against the day (soon?) when they've got no gas to push to market?

And the thing is, again, these companies are not moral beings, they are capital entities. Making the cash is their reason for being.

So when another Exxon franchisee asks,

"Why is the government giving Exxon subsidies and tax breaks when they're making billions of dollars and when they squeeze every dime they can out of every dealer who made that profit for them?"

What can one say, except that I'd prefer our government wasn't in the business of protecting capital interests, which are really quite good at looking out for themselves.

If congress is determined to dole out corporate welfare, it really should come with a lot of strings. Strings which demand that more money is spent researching new forms of energy (and yes, profit,), rather than saving up for the rainy day which most of us are already experiencing.

Sunday schadenfreude- of the primary sort

Finally, on the racism v. sexism meme, Part II:

I'm a woman, I'm a mom, I follow politics and government perhaps a bit obsesively. Further, I'm a church-going "hard-working-white-person", which apparently makes what I think of vital importance when determing whether this country is more racist, or more sexist.

I find it depressing that this is the big deal in the "electability" fights (more on that later), but for what it's worth, here's my Sunday Op-Ed response.

I'm a mama for Obama, am sick of this primary, and am saddened that the campaign is making me tire of the Clintons, of whom I have long been a fan.

My dream candidate for Obama's VP is Jim Webb: hard working, serious, brave, tested, and all of the electability points you could want: Southerner, former Secretary of the Navy, former Republican, son serving in Iraq, and he could really work up a steam in upcoming debates demanding to know why Senator McCain doesn't support the new GI bill, which Webb authored.

All of that having been said: this editorial appeared in the NY Times today:

OVER the last few months, the contest between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination has been compared to the bitter feud between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass, two of the most famous progressive reformers of the 19th century.

I have a real fondness for Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In fact, I have often referred to her as one of my personal goddesses. Of the Stanton-Anthony partnership, Susan B got the profile on our money, and her name is flies to the front of the brain if you recall the fight for women's suffrage. She was tireless and single minded, a devout quaker (although we Unitarians like to pretend she's ours, because she attended a Unitarian church, she was, in fact, a Quaker), no time for marriage or children or simple pleasures. She traveled, she spoke, she railed and she rallied, often humorless and even testy (Ida B. Wells-Barnett remarked that after her marriage, when Anthony referred to he as "Mrs Barnett", she nearly spat the words from her mouth).

Elizabeth stayed at home. She raised her children, she wrote Susan's speeches and much of the tracts and copy for their campaign. She organized, she kept house, she suffered bouts of depression. When they wrote to each other, Annthony would address her letters to "Dear Mrs. Stanton". Elizabeth's were typically adressed to, "My dearest Susan". She was often truly radical.

And back then, moderation counseled that the suffragists should be patient. Let black men have the vote. The women's turn was next. This cracked the abolitionist/women's suffrage alliance, and fractured all of the coalitions who had been working together. And, as the editorial points out, that compromise very probably wasted the momentum for reform, and progress stopped, and the nation regressed in various ways.

So here's what I'm saying this morning. Although I've of late been rooting for an Obama-Webb ticket, I also said, back on not-so-super-Tuesday, that I was thrilled that the Democrats had two really strong candidates, and that either of them were fit to hold the office. And while I still don't know that Hillary and Barack are all that well matched, we could do worse than to put two such dedicated and talented people in the White House at once, shattering two historic barriers in a single moment.

And Webb would make a fine Sec Def, anyway.

Sunday schadenfreude- of the primary sort

Part II

To appease, or not to appease? As has been pointed out by plenty of people with brains, memory, and a
basic knowledge of 20th century history, appeasement and dialogue are not synonomous. Not even a little tiny bit.
So it should go without saying, but just in case my republican friends are still unclear on the concept:

All of which begs the question: in regards to the current Middle East and Iranian crises, what would Reagan do (WWRD)?

Aides to and biographers of the nation's 40th president universally note that he had a preference for one-on-one engagement. And in describing the foreign policy of their former boss (or subject) they employ language that reflects, almost point by point, much of the rhetoric coming from the Obama campaign.

In fact, I'll go even further: the next line of the article:

But when asked if he would, if he were alive and in the Oval Office today, meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the bag is mixed.

"I think the same strategy would apply to Iran as currently applies to say North Korea. Reagan would always indicate a willingness to talk but you'd have to have an indication of sincerity on the other party," said Richard V. Allen, Reagan's National Security Adviser. "Reagan would not negotiate with an Iran that had been implicated in the killing of servicemen in Iraq. He would want that stopped and he would use it as a means of getting a negotiation."

Which sounds good until you remember that Reagan's administration secretly sold weapons to Iran after the hostage crisis and while Iran was at war with our then ally, Saddam Hussein.

So, yes, I think Reagan would have talked with Iran. Like Kennedy talked with Kruschev, like Isreal's talking to Syria. He might have even talked to the head of the government, Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini-KHAMENEI, instead of endlessly fretting over the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad.

Sunday schadenfreude- of the primary sort

Part I

I really don't believe that Hillary meant to evoke threats to Barack's safety when she talked of RFK's assasination. In her tired tin-eared way, she was trying to make the case that Bobby was still in the race heading in to the summer, and the nominating process was still way up in the air.
And yes, it is entirely plausible that he was just on her mind. The Kennedys are on a lot of our minds this week: Ted's diagnosis, Bobby on the cover of
Vanity Fair, and many of us hoping that we're headed for a new frontier.

So enough about that, already.

For Jess: a note on peak and Hillary

Hillary's comments this week on "Elite Opinion" disgusted me because they smacked of anti-intellectualism and pro-truthiness. Andrew Leonard disected the remarks in depth, though, and says,

"The question is: Who is doing the manipulation? What the man from Exxon-Mobil was likely referring to is the impact of speculation by hedge funds and other institutional traders upon the price of oil. No one knows how much of the current price is due to traders' bidding up the price -- estimates ranges from 20 percent all the way up to 60 percent. We don't know because a huge percentage of energy trading is done on unregulated electronic exchanges that don't have to report big market moves to the government -- because of a law, signed by Hillary Clinton's husband, that exempted those exchanges from close government scrutiny. If Clinton really wants to start cracking down on oil market manipulation, the first place to start is in regulating energy futures trading to the point that the government actually knows what's going on. In the long run, that would be far more meaningful than a gas tax holiday or even a windfall profits tax.
Which is not to say a windfall profits tax is necessarily a bad idea: The oil companies are obviously benefiting phenomenally from current high prices; why shouldn't they share some of the pain everybody else is going through? But in normal circumstances, when the price of oil rises, the likes of Exxon and Chevron and BP do their best to boost production. But the most telling aspect of the current oil market is that they have been unable to do so. As David Strahan, author of "The Last Oil Shock," wrote in an Op-Ed piece in the Telegraph, the "righteous indignation over the level of profits reported by Shell and BP ... entirely misses the point. These issues are trifling compared to global oil depletion."
[...]
The most charitable way to interpret Hillary Clinton's position is that she wants to provide Americans with some short-term help while engaging in a long-term plan to address the challenges of "foreign oil dependence." But the problem with that defense is that any serious long-term plan to address the two great challenges of the 21st century -- climate change and the energy crisis -- will require that the price Americans pay for energy goes up. There will be pain. The sooner we start biting the bullet the better. "