Random Reaction

This whole discussion of immunity for collaborators with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping is important, yes. But I am amazed that there doesn't seem to be much discussion of what I consider the main issue, which is the warrantless wiretapping itself . No, the companies should not get off scot-free for breaking the law, but why are we allowing the warrantless wiretapping in the first place?! A friend suggested it might be because we have some super secret and powerful tool to monitor communications, and they don't want that brought out into the public. If so, I suppose that is OK, but I want to know that it is not just a free-for-all, and someone besides the fox is watching the hen house.

In listening to the primary and election coverage, I am amazed (re-amazed?) that we have a system that is so complicated that the news anchors don't even try to explain it, or make some half-hearted attempt before saying that the bottom line is that Clinton and Obama are effectively tied. Is it just me, or shouldn't we have a system that is easily explainable to the general public? Really it should be easily explainable to a 5th grader (or whenever it is that they are first exposed to civics). Super-delegates who have no responsibility to cast their ballots with the popular vote? Huh? Not to mention the Electoral College! How unbelievably stupid and undemocratic are these institutions? We tell people that their votes count and that they should vote because their votes matter. But unless you are in a closely contested state, your vote really doesn't matter. So in the primaries, we have a system that is too complicated for media to explain to the public, and then we ...

A Better Way To Travel I came across the poll in this week's issue of Parade magazine saying that an incredible 97% of people think we should be doing more to improve our rail system. Well, duh!! Again, something I have been saying for years, way back to the early nineties when they were doing the rails to trails conversions. Anyway, it was ironic that I saw this poll (I missed the original Parade article) this weekend, as I was returning home from a week in which I traveled to West Virginia by train, mainly to avoid dealing with the weather. It was great - relaxing in expansive seats without seatbelts, cruising down the tracks while using my computer, reading, and watching the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon series on my iPod (more on that later). Anyway, the weather became a non-issue. Washington's Union Station, where I had a couple of hours layover while I waited for the train to Martinsburg, was fairly pleasant. Total cost was $120 one-way including busines...

In Bob Herbert's recent editorial , he skewers the country (really only those stupid enough to vote for Dubya), the political process, and especially the media for acting like 3-year-olds: "Mr. Bush came to mind because, for all of the obvious vulnerabilities he exhibited in 2000, it was not him but Mr. Gore who was mocked unmercifully by the national media. And the mockery had nothing to do with the former vice president’s positions on important policy issues. He was mocked because of his personality.In the race for the highest office in the land, we showed the collective maturity of 3-year-olds.Mr. Gore was taken to task for his taste in clothing and for such grievous offenses as sighing or, allegedly, rolling his eyes. It was a given that at a barbecue everyone would rush to be with his opponent." My contention is not that we were acting like 3-year-olds, but that we were, are, and continue to act like high schoolers, with the mean girls and boys (especially the right-...

Bill Moyers Interview with E.O. Wilson This is Bill Moyers' interview with E.O. Wilson, and I find it a bit depressing. Ed Wilson is one of my heroes, but he doesn't do a very good job of presenting a compelling case for why biodiversity preservation is important. He says not preserving biodiversity will result in disaster, which of course I agree with, but he doesn't compellingly describe how and why it is going to happen. If one of the preeminent scientists and writers of our generation cannot convey this in a concise, compelling manner, then who can? Even being in the field of conservation, and believing it to be a very important cause, I cannot easily describe why biodiversity preservation is important.  Global warming, of course, is another matter entirely, with the potential to create ecological collapse. But the preservation of individual species is a more difficult case to make, even when I work for the agency responsible for enforcing the Endangered Speci...

New Orleans' Rebuilt Levees "Riddled With Flaws" - National Geographic Not to beat a proverbial dead horse , but is this really news? Is anyone truly surprised by this? Nothing against NGS of course - they are investigating and reporting, but I am just stunned at the level of denial in New Orleans, and indeed around the country about what has to happen on our coastlines. I understand that a traumatic event happened to their hometown, and people want to make it like it used to be, but that is denial of the highest order,and satisfies the pop culture definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Face it: New Orleans either needs to be moved or restricted to higher ground (I understand this is why the French Quarter suffered relatively little damage). I didn't mention it in my last post, but do they think rebuilding New Orleans below sea level is going to become a better idea with global warming leading to sea level rise? No...

Paul Krugman gets close to a concept that I thought of from the very beginning of the sales job leading up to the Iraq War: "I wasn’t really surprised by Republican election victories in 2002 and 2004: nations almost always rally around their leaders in times of war, no matter how bad the leaders and no matter how poorly conceived the war." He doesn't quite go there, but to me, the next logical step to this, cynical as it sounds, is that war can be a useful tool for the party in power to get re-elected. The whole changing one's horse in mid-stream concept. It is a staggering thought that one of the main motivations for going to war in Iraq under false pretenses was to maintain power, but this administration has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that politics and maintaining power trumps everything else. I mean, it has been well-documented that the president was telling everyone he wanted to link Saddam to 9/11, within days of that tragedy, even though everyone knew it...