George II Lying on Camera

My contempt for George II frankly knows no bounds, I will write a later post to try and factually outline all the reasons for it. 

However, one subject in particular is now rather obvious.  In this video, George II can be seen trying to justify the use of torture, while the counterpoint from the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee Report contradicts his statements at almost every point:

Thanks George and Dick!

There is no way to say for certain if Iraq would have fallen apart on its own by now, but there is very little doubt that the Molotov cocktail thrown into the country that accelerated things tremendously was George II's ill-advised, probably illegal, and trumped-up invasion of Iraq.  Not to mention the huge toll it took and is still taking, and will be taking on this country for decades to come.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27789229

A Poignant Picture for Two Nations

Photojournalism at its finest.

Despite my prior post...no this is not in the US.  This is a polling place in the Ukraine.  I certainly hope that is a toy weapon that innocent little girl is holding, and not an "adult" weapon carelessly put aside while voting.  Still -- it makes for a thought-provoking picture from several perspectives doesn't it?

Credit: Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters

Real Climate Change Kinda Sucks, Don't It?

• There are those who think climate change is not real: they are called Republicans.
• The most idiotic of them seem to come from Oklahoma and Kentucky - two states that will vanish in a blaze before any ocean overtakes them such as Florida and Louisiana  needs to worry about. 
• There are those who think climate change doesn't hurt anything: they are called American citizens.
• There are those who think climate change is solvable politically: they are called Democrats.
• There are those who know climate change is not only factual, but serious and here right now: they are called scientists.
• There are those who are intelligent voters and vote according to facts and not ideology: they are called Independents.

Which group are you in?  How will you vote?
 
It is getting serious folks, I probably won't live to see the real outcome of all this but my daughter or her children will...when will we finally make a stand...for humankind?

Canada Does the Right Thing - Again

Living so close to Canada as I have my whole life you get to know a lot about the country and meet a lot of the citizens (who are pretty universally delightful and warm people). 

There are also a lot of things they do right (sometimes absurdly simple) that we can't seem to manage in this country.  One was getting rid of paper dollars a long time ago, and now they are aggressively phasing out the penny, both are among the most worthless extravagances that Americans still hang onto. 

If there is so much "fiscal conservatism" and "old fashioned economics" on the loose in Washington DC (although I defy you to show me any actual proof of same), why aren't the penny and the dollar bill (and possibly the nickel) not gone already?

And Now For Something Completely Different

Sometimes I think Thomas Friedman gets to have all the fun!

Time to Call BS on Congress...Again

I long ago gave up on anything said by anyone who is a member of a political party, much less a member of Congress.  But it turns out that Congress in particular has been lying to us with greater vigor than normal about taxes (and so have several "anti-tax" groups).  

There is collective rotten-egg-on-the-face today of every member of Congress who has ever (falsely) wailed about the "tax burden" on the poor US.   It just isn't so folks...the only place we have to go is to join a couple of sterling, role model countries...Chile and Mexico. 

Besides, everyone knows, the rich corporations that support your campaigns don't pay taxes anyway !

The Beginning...No I Mean the REAL Beginning!

This is getting close to some pretty incredible stuff.  One of the basic problems/quests of astrophysics has been to discover evidence of the theorized "Big Bang" birth of the universe.  It looks like now they are a big step closer (sorry any Bible-thumping "the world is only 6000 years old and probably flat" types):




If you have seen "Close Encounters of The Third Kind"...yes, this is also evidence that Einstein was "one of them".

Just Don't Talk About the Weather

This is a fairly balanced view of the strange weather the country has been having the last couple of years.  In reality, getting "stuck" in a weather pattern for an extended period of time or unusual patterns as we have been seeing is one of the primary predictions of those who study global climate change.  It should be no surprise that we are seeing longer, sustained storm systems since via altering the temperature of the planet, humanity has altered the all-important weather driver, the jetstream.

So...rather than just talking about the weather, get your lazy, ignorant Congressional representatives to do something, and get the US onboard with international efforts to reduce pollutants and the general spewing of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, relying on the 1920s attitude of "they just blow away".

Income Inequality - Part I

You will be hearing a lot about this as the 2016 campaign prematurely warms up, and President Obama is expected to make it a central theme of his upcoming State of the Union drone (err. I mean speech...yawn).

Unfortunately most of the noise is going to come from brainless politicians who have no relationship with rational thinking or logic.  Fortunately, there are some bright people who are digging into it in a methodical and fact based way:



I will be trying to point out the intelligent resources for thinkers amid all of the political chaff as we move on.  Look for the Economic Inequality tag.

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

Most people's lives are deserving of some sort of an epitaph. Others transcend that and seem worthy of more than we can possibly give in remembrance.

The last page of Nelson Mandela's speech in 1964, just before he spent 27 years in prison.

Rest in peace, President Mandela.  I am the poorer for never having met you, but may your work continue to inspire me and those who follow...

A Tale of Two Institutions

If you have read some of my other posts, you might be able to infer that I have very little tolerance/respect for some of our "institutions".  Political parties would have to be first and foremost -- I cannot for the life of me think why any self-respecting, thinking, rational human being would get within a country mile of one.

Another is "organized religion" -- or any religion with a name on it.  Again many of my reasons are the same as political parties, it is a very humanity-denying and somewhat abasing thing to commit to  a religion...particularly if you were not even given a choice in the matter but were "born" into it.  However, with religions I am a bit more tolerant in terms of respect.  I understand and appreciate that they can serve a useful purpose (thousands of different ones it seems), and are a key part of many people's lives.

I saw something today though that made me think of this again.  The pope has announced that he is willing to discuss moving some of the Catholic church's powers away from the Vatican, and to redefine some of the powers of the papacy.

What struck me is that this is the second major institution to get things completely "ass-backwards".  Churches (particularly the Catholics, but others as well) have this tradition of semi-divine central authority commanding a worldwide religion.  Yet I think that of all the endeavors, religion is best practiced "close to home" (locally) within perhaps some broad guidance.

Now, the second institution is so messed up it takes two levels of government to do it -- the US Government and the state's governments...or more particularly the "states rights" folks.  The Constitution basically says "anything the Feds do not or will not do, is the responsibility of the states".  Unfortunately, our states have massively f***d up their part of the bargain in at least two important areas: education and health care.  They have given us the worst health care "system" in the first world with untold riches for CEOs of the death panel/insurance companies, but costs four to six times other countries and medical results that are in the bottom half of the pack.  

And the (until recently) completely state-run US education system is an unmitigated, long running disaster.  We rank at the bottom of most first-world countries, and yet people howl when they can't use their local school boards to teach "creationism" or to rewrite history so that slavery never occurred. 

      

Wake Up Call

Thomas Friedman has written about a new phenomenon, a new view of the United States from abroad that is not flattering.  I won't steal his thunder, but I actually had a much earlier, similar experience in about 2003 though I could be off by a year.  I was on a business trip to Taiwan and our hosts took me out for dinner to one of the biggest buffet-style "mix and match" restaurants I have ever seen.  All the choices and ingredients were raw and fresh, you chose the individual items, then they were prepared and brought to your table.  The selection was huge, like a large farmer's market.

Anyway, as we sat down at our table the primary host from the company we were working with sat down across from me and asked (in impeccable English since English classes are mandatory from elementary school onward)..."Why did you elect such a stupid President?".

People in other countries tend to look up to the US, and are disappointed/dismayed when they perceive that something "stupid" is happening, which is part of the theme of Friedman's column.

As for me...I foolishly started down the road of pointing out that the American people had NOT actually elected the "stupid president", but then that led to how the Supreme Court in supposedly the greatest democracy in the world had "appointed" a president. 

Fortunately, just when it was getting really confusing (and embarrassing)...the food arrived!     

Saudi Arabian Women Drive!

I went to Saudi Arabia in 2000 on business and saw firsthand what second (or even third) class citizens women are there.  It is pretty shocking to the Western mind, particularly those bold women who have been a part of the advancement and at least somewhat equalization of women in many Western countries.

Some female Saudi pioneers are trying to push the envelope again -- I offer this video mostly because you just have to see and hear the (male of course) argument against women driving at about the 3:00 mark.  It is absolutely Neanderthal, and while I read about it elsewhere I wasn't ready to believe it until I saw this.  




This also points out the kind of thing that can happen if church and state are mixed or not completely separated.  This is in reality a religion-based dictate, but the ruling House of Saud is teetering between wanting to be accepted and deal with the modern world, and obeying the dictates of the senior clerics who call the shots in most of the areas where religious law (in their eyes) should apply.

Good Luck to the Aussies

May a fair wind blow the other way (and some rain be delivered) to help in your fight with some massive fires that are getting worse. 

If any American reading this has had the good fortune to spend any time in Australia as I did several years ago, you know what a friendly, warm, welcoming, strong and versatile people they are.   They have been hit with some real bad droughts and fires in recent years and are perhaps the first "first world" country to suffer the effects of global warming.

The Congress That Couldn't, Wouldn't, Didn't

The rudderless, aimless Congress that hasn't done anything for the last four years seems to be circling the drain...unfortunately they are creating a whirlpool that threatens to take the world economy down with it.  I really wish we had the ability in this country to have a 'vote of no confidence' capability.  The citizenry at large is beginning to think the same way I see....

• 60 Percent Say Fire Every Member of Congress
• Shutdown Debate Damages GOP

By the way, Independents are now a larger group than either political party, so the news is even worse there -- the pool that Congress has to draw from if they ever hope to attract more non-thinkers back to their ranks:

21-Point Swing Against Congressional GOP Among Independents

Mother Nature and Iran

This is a very interesting column by Tom Friedman about the challenges Iran is facing (specifically environmental) that don't make the sound-byte TV news or the headlines. 

One of the many things I enjoy about Mr. Friedman's analyses is that he has a keen eye for the complexities of a truly global world (even if US politicians still largely think the world is flat and the US solely occupies the "top" side).  He frequently looks in the 'odd corner' or for other underlying factors that the blonde TV bimbos tend to either miss entirely or gloss over.

Happy Thinking!

The Tea Party Hates the US

The Tea Party heralds itself as some kind of a heroic 'back to the roots' of America type organization, but I and a number of other thinkers I respect believe it is just the opposite.  They are in fact holding us back from the things that need done to undo the damage that has been wreaked on the country by the government and most particularly the "me generation" since the end of the Cold War. 

A Soviet expert on the United States (Georgi Arbatov) was prescient at the time when he said "We are going to do a terrible thing to you.  We are going to deprive you of an enemy."  Oscar Wilde said "In this world there are only two tragedies.  One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

Since the late 80s, the US has turned inward...while the rest of the world took the innovations largely fostered in the US and used them to open up the rest of the world.  In many ways we are now the cloistered, festering, ignorant country that China was before they were 'opened' to the rest of the world. The sad thing is, the Tea Party in particular but all of Washington DC in particular seems to want to keep it that way and nail the doors shut permanently.

The above link is to Tom Friedman's column, and I have just started reading his book (co-authored with Michael Mandelbaum)  "That Used To Be Us".  This linked column is essentially the theme of the book in a nutshell.  Watch this space for a review when I finish it -- it is sobering, yet hopeful reading about the future of the US and what we can yet leave our children if only we can keep the Neanderthals like the Tea Party out of the way.   

Italy Is At It Again

Italy's "form of government" is actually to have no discernible form at all.  Italy in short couldn't govern its way out of a wet paper bag.  Supposedly elected Italian governments are to serve 5-year terms but that has only happened once since 1945.  And now things just blew up again, when the EU is still grappling with the fact that there is only one really strong government and economy in their midst...Germany, who can't be expected to carry all of Europe on its back forever.

As  much as I detest political parties in the US, it is even worse in some other countries!

Hope for Research

The US (particularly Washington DC) seems to be intent on proving the maxim that we are a country "designed by geniuses so it can be run by idiots".  

Thomas Friedman says there is hope however, you just have to look for it....get away from the mindless drivel of Twitter and the banality of most of the Internet and really look for it.  There is a lot of 'hope research' going on in the world.  Not just the US, but the world.  The nature of how things work and even 'work' itself is changing -- the world really is flat, and my only hope is that we clear out the idiots in Washington and their 1930s mindset soon enough so that we can join in as partners, or we will for sure be left behind.