Happy New Year.

Just want to wish all my peeps a happy new year. Another year gone by, another set of adventures chronicled, another post added to the blog. May your New Year be be exciting and joyous!

I just found this to be absolutely hypnotic.


-Cheers

When the rage comes....

I am having one of those days. Rant incoming, spell check and proofreading be damned!

One of those days where virtually all the news I read makes me apoplectic. I managed to avoid most news shows over the extended weekend, but I knew that would not last.

The media freak-out over the Detroit-Airport ("fire-crotch of death") incident, has been something to behold.

One question that the reporters and most pundits never ever even remotely address is, "How much of an inconvenience are we willing to sacrifice for the perception of safety?".

Because that is really the only important question. There is no such thing as perfect security. There is no perfect defense versus a group of individuals who seek to sow mayhem and are will sacrifice their own lives in the process.

The expectation that those who work in the security services (TSA, FBI, Fire dept, Police), have to deal with a startling and oppressive reality. No matter how successful they are on a daily basis in executing their chosen duties, it is the inevitable failure that shall be remembered.

War on Terror? You can not win a "war on terror", with bombs or scanning devices. You win by minimizing the animosity that others feel towards you, and even that is not a perfect solution. There will always be someone, somewhere who wishes you ill.

The simple truth is terrorists and their ilk will succeed in executing some of their plans. But do not forget that their goal is to foment terror. Watch the news and tell me that even though Mr. Abdulmutallab was foiled bringing down the plane, he did not succeed completely on the terror front.

Nate Silver does a wonderful job of presenting the relative statistics.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

Now this is not to belittle the events of 9/11 or any terrorist act, but is meant to show it in its proper context. A lot of what we do works. I actually applaud the President on his restraint. He was calm and in command of relevant facts. Wild histrionics are exactly what the terrorists want.

Something that we as a country have never really come to grips with (though the founders understood this), the price of an open society under the rule of Law is always paid in the blood of its members.

The TSA has a horrible job that they must do. Yet they get no appreciation for the thousands upon thousands of flights that they provide security for. This is not to say that glaring errors are not made and security protocols should not be updated and reviewed. It is merely to point out that the job being asked is one that requires perfect execution, yet will inevitably fail

There simply is no reliable defense versus a person willing to cram explosives up there ass or strap plastic explosives to their genitals or otherwise kill themselves in furtherance of their agenda.

We stop those we can. Make it hard for them to succeed. Those that get by we investigate how they did so and take appropriate steps, not the political theater, meant to make the public believe their elected officials are doing something.

Here is a nice dust-up between Spencer Ackerman and Pat Buchanan, illustrating what reasoned and rational response looks like (Ackerman), and what unhinged histrionics look like (Buchanan).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This exchange is one I very much wish was repeated often (my emphasis added):

ACKERMAN: So you're arguing for torture but with a different euphemism for it?

BUCHANAN: No, I'm arguing for the fact that this is an enemy soldier who's about to try to commit a mass atrocity, and the idea that you're treating him like some guy that held up 7-11, it seems to me preposterous. We are in a war on terror and American citizens is a different thing.

ACKERMAN: Except for -- sorry, go ahead.

GUTHRIE: Go ahead, Spencer, respond to that.

ACKERMAN: Except for all of the hundreds of terrorists that we've convicted in Federal courts over the years. They were able to hold. They were able to incarcerate successfully and they were able to get information out of. I mean, the fact is is that al Qaeda is a dangerous and really important threat. But they're also not a super army of supermen with Muslim Heat Vision and so forth. It's ludicrous to think that we should inflate how dangerous they are because that's exactly what they want us to do.

Yes, lets not give the terrorist what they want, an over-inflated sense of import and the destruction of our free and law abiding society.

-Cheers

Health Care Spending

When we talk about health care spending exploding, it is easy to decry that as fear-mongering. National Geographic (c/o Daily Dish) has a stunning graph (click on for full size) of the United states health care expenditures.

I must concur with Mr. Sullivan we are getting ripped off, and while I am not happy with the bill that has come out of the Senate. It is better then this. It at least is progress away from what you see above. We are being fleeced.

Those that think the status quo is fine are delusional. Though I do not blame them, if you have never bought insurance individually you have very little clue how much it actually costs you. It is almost single-handedly the reason wages are stagnant.

-Cheers

Happy Holidays

Just a quick post to wish everyone a very happy holiday season.

I hope all of you have a relaxing and enjoyable time with your family and friends.

If I see you, we should share a pint.

I will be back to screeching polemic screeds next week. Till then....



-Cheers

A nice Primer on the Filibuster...

James Fallows, over at the Atlantic is working on a big article for the new issue. For those interested I thought I would pass that tidbit along. It was this tidbit, in his post, that caught my attention :

"That topic is supermajority rule in the U.S. Senate-- that is, the need to win more than a simple majority of senators to pass laws. Great checker and balancer though Madison was, this feature of American institutional life would probably have surprised him and might have distressed him....

"Automatic failure for bills not reaching the 60 mark. That is the current Senate practice, and in my view it has aroused surprisingly little interest or concern among the public or even in political science. It is treated as matter- of-fact. One might ask: What ever happened to the value of majority rule?

It was an informative read. I highly recommend it.

-Cheers

A bit of good news.

The President signed the Defense appropriations bill today. This was good thing. It had Sen. Franken's (D-MN) amendment in it. A good piece of legislation to deal with a horrible situation.

-Cheers

-Edit

Yeah....Sen. Lieberman is a Douche....

If there were doubts this clears it up.

[I]n the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. [...]

And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.

"Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it's the beginning of a road to single-payer," Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who's a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, 'This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.'"

So there you have it. "Teh libruls" made me do it!

-Cheers

This is the one where I defend Ezra Klein......

I was going to write a polemic screed on the perfidy, peevishness, and lack of probity of Sen. Joe Liebermen (I-Conn).

But instead of the ulcer that would cause me, I decided to post something in support Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. The young Klein has done a yeoman's work on the health care debate. It is hard to quantify the substantive contribution he has made. For that alone he is worth reading and earned a spot on my blog roll call.

But it is, his most recent post on Sen. Lieberman that has gained my respect. Young though he is, he has shown more gumption then most of his colleagues at the Post.

And for that he is being savaged. I will point out that not a single one of Ezra's points has been refuted. But I do not have to. Ezra does a handy defense of himself here.

At this point you may be asking yourself why defend Klein? Well he did a couple things here, attacked the egotistical motives of a powerful individual and put the issue in stark terms that rarely ever gets done in the liberal commentariat, but more then that he shows the lack of moral rectitude the Senator possess.

This is nothing new mind you. These things have been know about Sen. Lieberman for sometime, as Jonathan Chait points out.

But I think John Cole over at Ballon Juice has the right of it. These individuals now have the knives out for him. He has done good work, and showed the mendacity of a callow individual with many friends and such a great grievance versus "teh libruls" that all he thinks of is satisfying that pique even at the cost of his fellow Americans.

So yeah these are the sort of people who are responsible for our social well being. I do not care who runs against Joe. I will toss 50 bucks to whoever it is. Though I doubt he will. He has made a permanent enemy of many on the left. Count me as one of those.

-Cheers

Now for something different.

Michael Bay, god broke the mold after you sir.

-Cheers

Climategate

I have stayed away from this topic as of late. Not for any particularly good reason. It just makes me unreasonably angry.

Basically for those that are unaware, the CRU research group had e-mails hacked and published.
These e-mails as Brad Plumer details showed a variety of things.

The final straw from me was Sarah Palin getting Op-ed space to burnish her Luddite credentials. That was just a bit too much for this old horse to take. Luckily I did not have to blow a casket and break 8 keyboards, Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic did an impressive job of fisking Mrs. Palin's drivel. In particular this bit was the most resonating:

Now -- the scientists may be guilty of misconduct for manipulating the UK's freedom of information act procedures. There is no excuse for that; that is not how normal science works. Let's assume, for the moment, that their actions do cast doubt on their data, because, perhaps, their motivations are suspect. The global warming consensus minus the East Anglia contributions is still a strong consensus, one that has been regularly, repeatedly and independently verified.

There is just a lot to unpack on this subject, from the "missing" data to just the lack of understanding of basic scientific procedures denialist exhibit.

Again, in a follow up piece Brad Plumer continues to put this kerfuffle in proper context. Also in case it is not clear enough. Climate Change studies and analysis are cross discipline. If there is a grand conspiracy out there explain these guys.

Until AGW (anthropogenic global warming) deniers produce some dis-positive analysis. They should be shunned.

-Cheers

No...I will not let it go!

I have come back to this story several times over the last few months. It seems that the Senate republican caucus is not happy as the Politico is reporting.

The problems seems to be, they are angry that they are getting angry questions from constituents about a vote that they made on the Franken amendment. This would be the main petty take away:

The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.

“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.

“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”

In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle. Soon after Tennessee GOP Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander co-wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper defending their votes against the Franken measure, the Minnesota Democrat confronted each senator separately to dispute their column — and grew particularly angry in a tense exchange with Corker.

People familiar with the Corker exchange say it was heated and ended abruptly — a sharp departure from the norm on the usually clubby Senate floor.

Got that? They are in a snit because people are holding them accountable for their vote. Interestingly enough if you read the article what you will find is, not one single republican Senator who voted against the bill, articulating a reason for that vote.

Craven bastards.

-Cheers

Post Turkey Day...

Took a bit of a vacation from blogging this extended weekend, been immersed in Dragon Age Origins.

But that does not mean that I have not been absorbing some news. So here are a some of the links that have caught my attention or the "Krugman files" as I am calling them.

• Jobs!
• Things to Come
• Greenwald drinks Bayh's milkshake
• Rick Warren, kind of a douche
• James Fallows, making the world safe for journalism
  

Well that should keep you busy for a while. Got a lot of stuff this week. Senate debate on the health care bill, a Presidential speech on Afghanistan and the Stacks birthday. So plenty to keep busy with.

-Cheers