Category Archives: Politics

An American Parliament?

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There is an interesting post at the Daily Kos by Mentarch detailing the “Eight Principles of Incompetence“. Now, I’m not sure that this list constitutes a manifesto, guiding light, or even a footnote in a Polysci text of the future.  But the author has cogently reduced to writing some observations that I have struggling to put into words. I tip my hat. 

Much has been said about the growing problem with Cheney.  There is precious little to say about this fascist that is new. Cheney is doing a fine job of self destructing without my input. Mentarch has highlighted many of Cheney’s questionable actions over time with links to www references.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the electorate is collectively incompetent sometimes.

But I would like to observe that the USA might have been well served by a parliamentary form of government, especially in this present troubled stretch of history. I think there are merits to a system that can vote out troublesome and destructive executives like Bush-Cheney without having to wait for the election timer to run out.  Impeachment is not the same as a vote to form a new government.  And if ever the USA needed to have a different executives in government, it is now.

In fact, one has to answer the question of why parliamentary systems proliferated during the 20th century while the American model as set forth by the US Constitution remains largely limited to the USA.  Why hasn’t our system been more closely copied? Could there be a better way?

The US needs a president that is less showhorse and more workhorse. We need administrators who can manage the executive branch more effectively. And we need executives who are not beholden to absolute doctrines and are willing to re-examine their fundamental assumptions on occasion.

The Bush-Cheney epoch has had a retrograde effect on American civil liberties, privacy, the freedom of assembly, and America’s credibility as a leading force for the advance of civilization. This damage will take many people a long time to make right. 

Obviously we will not change the structure of government in the next 25 years. We will not be able to yank bad executives out of office midterm for incompetence.  Bad executives will hold on to their office for the duration, enacting laws that benefit subscribers of their particular creed. They’ll have to commit a felony and be shamed into resignation like Nixon. 

The USA needs better checks and balances to protect the republic and its diverse constituency from Trojan Horse carriers of fringe doctrines and monotonic ideologies.  I’d rather have a president who cracks the books once in a while rather than one whose sole intellectual reflex is to whisper to iron-age deities.  I’d prefer to have a president who thinks analytically rather than devotionally.

Joe “Gumby” Lieberman

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America’s latest cartoon action hero, US Senator Joe Lieberman, has publically stated that the US should strongly consider a bombing strike against Iran as push back in response to their activities in Iraq.  Lieberman cites an estimate of 200 US soldiers killed owing to direct Iranian involvement.

Obviously Iran is up to trouble in neighboring Iraq.  Iran is a state with powerful ambitions and this troubles a great many other nations. It is also a state that has designs on installing Islamic government in that part of the world.  But … bomb Iran????  Didn’t we try that in Viet Nam and Iraq? What does Foghorn Leghorn Joe Lieberman think the Iranians are going to do the day after a night of bombing? Slap their head in V-8 fashion and sheepishly admit to the error of their ways? Does he think that we will face a uniformed Iranian army with armor and close air support?

Bombing Iran will unleash an epidemic of terrorism and anti-American fervor unlike anything we have seen in the past. And they will bring it to North America. 

Liebermans pronouncement on Face the Nation will be taken by Iranians on the street as further validation of the apocalyptic rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The US has been intervening in Iranian affairs for quite some time.  The US covertly engineered the overthrow of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and helped install Mohammed Reza Shah into power.  The Iranians know this and it has helped to instill considerable skepticism in their attitude toward all US actions, even the genuinely benevolent.

Why Joe “Gumby” Lieberman?  Because I have to believe that someone is moving his ams and legs into the pose he has taken.  Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail and that we exhaust other avenues before we fire any warshots in Persia. 

Rootin’ Tootin’ Putin

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We’re approaching full circle from cold war to Perestrioka and collapse of the Soviet Union to re-ignition of cold war fires.  News sources are reporting bluster of the most serious kind issuing from Vlad Putin in response to plans by the US to place ballistic missile interceptors in eastern Europe. 

What motivates the Bush II administration to place anti-ballistic missiles and radar near the eastern frontier of Russia is a perceived ballistic missile threat from so-called rogue states.  The reality of ballistic flight is that missiles launched from the region of Iran will fly over southwestern states of the former Soviet Union (FSU).  In order to best detect and intercept such missiles heading for the EU, equipment would optimally be set up along the trajectory.  Within the logic of strategic planning, the site placement seems consistent with the goal. 

What is less than clear is the excuse for our ham fisted diplomacy with Russia.  Yes, obviously Putin is escalating the bluster and the tensions in a manner that is less than rational. But the decision makers in the Bush administration appear to have been asleep during the cold war.  Evidently the Bush administration didn’t consult with Russia in the run-up to missile site selection.  It was felt that as members of the EU, Poland and the Czech Republic were no longer part of the eastern bloc and therefore Russia’s input was irrelevent.  This was a whopper of a blunder.

The predictable result is that Russia is behaving like Russia, and, outwardly at least, the Bush people seemed slow to pick up on this.  Finally, Bush Jr. is getting some on-the-job-training in eastern bloc politics.

The confrontation with Putin and Russia has begun to spin into something that will force Russia to vigorously protect and promote its interests.  Putin is a lame duck and has to make some kind of stand to satisfy the quiet power brokers behind him.  They can’t accept the placement of ABM systems in Poland anymore than we could allow it in Cuba or Alberta. Doesn’t matter if the initial placement consists of “smart rocks”.  Any missile site can be quietly modified quickly.

There has been a disturbing lack of cultural and economic engagement between the United States and the FSU following the dissolution of the CCCP and the communist party.  This is unfortunate.  Western states should have made a more concerted effort to engage the FSU economically and socially.   

For its part, the US has been curiously lacking in interaction with or even simple curiosity in regard to the progress of the FSU states in their difficult period of reconstruction.  But I think that Russia has been characteristically distrustful of western intentions as well.  Historians will ponder this transition period in world political history and wonder how it could be that even though a society got to push the reset button, the best it could come up with was Putin and the best that the other states could muster was benign neglect.

Iranian Homebrew Fission- Fait Accompli? Rev 1.1

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Iranian progress towards nuclear fuel processing seems to have everyone twittered. Recently on NPR a guest raised the question as to whether or not Iran has enough reactor capacity to consume the potential output of their nascent uranium enrichment program.  Good question.

The refinement of fissile materials offers hazards that are poorly understood outside the actinide community.  One of them is the “criticality” hazard.  In the US nuclear program, there have been a few criticality events leading to heavy radiation dosages and even death in a few cases, i.e., Louis Slotin.  Slotin’s case is unusual in that he was manipulating a subcritical bomb assembly rather than a uranium solution. A recent example is the criticality event at Tokai-mura.  According to the literature, numerous elements (in addition to beryllium) absorb alpha’s and then emit neutrons.

One wonders if the Iranians have the infrastructure to safely perform this activity.  A nuclear state needs a health physics community, sensitive and accurate radiation detection systems, and the ability to handle hazardous radioactive materials that are chemical hazards as well. Then there is the matter of what to do with high level rad waste.  The US is still struggling with its rad waste inventory generations after the Manhattan project began.  Who knows, maybe NIMBY isn’t an issue in modern Persia.

Nuclear weapons seem so secular for hyperorthodox nations. But these things do capture the fancy of many people- even followers of the worlds major Iron Age religions. Among scientists, the explosive runaway potential was considered not long after it was discovered that nuclear fission released two neutrons per fission.  The human brain seems constructed to find extrema.

I wonder how the Iranians will validate their weapon’s design? I assume their program is not an ab initio project.  No doubt they have culled design information from somewhere (Pakistan?).  Eventually they have to assemble their weapon and tighten the wingnuts on the casing.  But how will they know if it has enough thump?  Will they be able to resist performing a test shot?  Israel, to its credit, has not performed a test of theirs, though I have no doubt that considerable super computer time has been dedicated to validating their design.

How will these sons of Xerxes construct the chain of command for the release of nuclear weapons?  What kind of fail-safe mechanisms will they put into place to safeguard against inadvertant or unauthorized arming and detonation? Even martyrs have to be careful.

Nuclear weapons have their military uses, but they are primarily a political amplifier used by states to project their voice on the world stage.  But what happens when a religion gets hold of nuclear weapons?  Clearly, the Islamic Republic of Iran is interested in more than mere self defense.  They seem compelled to promulgate standards and doctrines given to them in the form of revealed truth.  A nuclear weapon is as much about prestige and credibility as firepower. 

The Iranians are very pragmatic people.  They know that the US can easily rain nuclear destruction on them and then bounce the rubble a few times for good measure.  They’ll use the bulk of the uranium for electrical power generation.  But they’ll be sure to use a part of it for politcal power generation.

Purchasing Chemicals from China

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I’m having to search far-off China for raw materials much more frequently these days. The availability of many US manufactured chemicals is slowly falling off.  Especially for really basic materials.  I’m not referring to those mundane elements like iron or soda ash or copper. No no. materials from the folds and deep recesses of the periodic table. Elements with relativistic electrons.  There are short term economic pluses and minuses to this migration of manufacturing.

On the plus side, Chinese prices are often, well,  quite low. Even with multimodal freight charges from across the Pacific. When you pay peasants fresh off the farm $40/month (or whatever insane wage it is), you can undercut nearly everyone in pricing. 

But there is a down side to spot buying from China.  This is to be distinguished from contract purchasing.  In contract purchasing, you work out an agreement with a manufacturer and you lock in quality, price, and delivery in exchange for long term business.  Spot buying, however, is much more risky. What do I mean by that?

Spot buying is where you find a merchant supplier who can furnish material without the fuss and obligations of a contract.  Either they have it in inventory, they can source it quickly, or they themselves will make it pronto.  A supply contract has to be managed or enforced.  For raw materials that are less than critical, finding a spot supplier makes sense. 

Locating a spot supplier in China that you can trust is problematic. I’m not suggesting that Chinese suppliers are dishonest.  I am saying, however, that culling out a supplier from a list of unfamiliar names from the other side of the world without the benefit of a site visit or a Dunn and Bradstreet report can be risky. Spot buying anywhere is risky, but when it is complicated by international transactions, the risk multiplies a bit.

It is relatively easy to find contacts on the web that will reply to an RFQ (request for quotation) by email (often “hotmail” accounts) and make an offer.  But what you find is that you may be in contact with an agent of some description in an office suite in Shanghai, far from the factory.  Indeed, it is hard to tell just what the relationship is between the factory and your contact.  To salve over some of the uncertainty westerners may have, it is common now for these web contacts take on western names. 

Brokering goods is common in some parts of the world and scarce in others.  In the USA, brokering chemicals is fairly uncommon.  Most US companies prefer to do bulk business with the manufacturer or a catalog house.   Sigma Aldrich, for instance, is both a catalog company and a manfacturer of bulk and semi-bulk materials.  Purchasing from a broker (as opposed to a distributor) rather than the manufacturer will add costs to the transaction.  A broker is someone who connects the purchaser with the supplier.  Usually they perform drop shipments to the purchaser directly from the manufacturer.  A broker is a sort of “free agent” sales group.

I have found that there is a greater reliance on brokering in Asia and to a lesser extent, the EU.  The internet has made life a bit trickier for brokers in that a search for manufacturers is a lot less painful than it used to be.

A company will work through a broker for several reasons. Brokers are usually specialists, so a company can tap into considerable expertise in supply chain management.  And, the broker only gets paid if they find a qualifying supplier, so a manufacturer could conceivably keep the head count down. Brokers might be better at the intricacies of negotiation as well.  There are a lot of tough guys running companies out there who are actually poor negotiators.

These agents seem to work in organizations that carry on the sales and marketing activity for a factory or a series of factories.  In addition to unfamiliar business practices, there is the matter of payment.  Many Chinese companies want prepayment- they do not automatically offer 30 days net.  This makes company controllers and project managers nervous.  Since this is an international transaction, customary business laws covering remedies are not applicable. In other words, you can get royally screwed. But from their perspective, it is the same issue.  So settling into a supply relationship can take time.

To the Moon!

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It is hard for most of us to tell but the US is in the early phases of a moon project.  It has adopted the same configuration of command module and lander as the Apollo program.  NASA intends to make a few exploratory missions lasting a week or so and then develop the capability for 180 day missions to the moon. This lunar “base” project is really a local rehearsal for a more ambitious manned Mars landing.  It is called the Constellation Mission. 

NASA has announced the development of two rockets for this mission- the Ares I and the Ares V.  The Ares I uses an in-line single solid rocket booster (SRB) for the first stage and a liquid propellant second stage to boost a 55,000 pound payload into low earth orbit.  Ares I is equipped with a emergency escape rocket in a tractor configuration analogous to Apollo.  As stated in the website, Ares I will be used to put the crew module in orbit for rendezvous with the ISS or cargo modules. 

The Ares V uses two SRB motors strapped to a liquid first stage engine in a fashion similar to the space shuttle. But the crew module will not be on this system.  Ares V is a cargo lifter and will carry 286,000 lbs of mass into low earth orbit.

NASA will be retiring the space shuttle system in a few years. The next man-lifter will be Ares I.  Evidently their faith in the SRB system is high.

That sucking sound heard around NASA these days is the sound of money being pulled from all over the agency and being dumped into this program. We’re going back to the moon, but with no real increase in funding.  Program managers are nervous. 

Alberto Gonzales as Jungian Archetype

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For a good essay on the Alberto Gonzales mess, see The Smirking Chimp.  Th’ Gaussling has been searching for a Jungian archetype representing people who are “never in doubt, but frequently wrong”.  Maybe Gonzo is the man. 

There have been many possible nominees in the Bush II administration- POTUS, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc. But Gonzo seems to be the most tragic of the lot.

Note to future generations: I was going to further criticize POTUS, but given that he is sure to be savaged by historians, I’ll just stand clear and let experts have at it.

Dammit. The three horses I bet on in the Kentucky Derby all lost.

Sacred Cows Make the Best Hamburgers

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I suppose I have lost more frequently than I have won in my lifelong avocation of taking on sacred cows in the battle of wits.  But, truly, sacred cows make the very best hamburgers.  Pass the A1 …

Some new blogs have been given a place of honor in the blogroll.  Good writing and laser sharp insight are the keys to this ascendency. If the dear reader is conservative and prone to weeping or bed wetting, it is probably best to click along at this point.  

There is a hilarious post over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money called Birthday Girl.  Side note: A lawyer friend is fond of saying “Lawyers, guns, and money- pick any two”.  

And then, what can I say about Jesus’ General?  Read General JC’s letter to the Secret Service re Cheryl Crow.  If you are keen on some serious in-your-face-atheism, check out Hellbound Allee. Then there is one of the best Christian evangelical lampoons ever, Landover Baptist. 

The Huffington Post is a recent find and is a treasure trove of political blogging at its finest- well, if you are a liberal.  Read the open letter to Rudy Giuliani by my fellow Coloradoan, Gary Hart. 

Then there is the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society.  The post on the Do-Nothing Machine is particularly amusing.  The reader may recall Th’ Gaussing’s previous post on the Katzenklavier. 

Finally, The Agonist has some interesting insights into politics and is well written. I also like Goosing the Antithesis for its skeptical stand against belief in the supernatural.

Jane Goodall

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Went to a public lecture by Jane Goodall last night. The arena was packed.  She and members of her institute have found a type of formula for combining conservation and economic growth.  At some point she realized that you can’t sell conservation in a vacuum.  People who live near fragile preserves like Gombe have to make a living.  They need food and firewood. 

Human population pressures also threaten the shrinking wildlife preserves all over the world and in Africa in particular. One way to encourage lower population growth is to look after public health and, in particular, the welfare of women. They’ve noticed that families naturally tend to have fewer babies when infant mortality rates lower. Lower mortality rates can be achieved through the application of very fundamental improvements in hygiene and health care.

One of the critical approaches they are taking in Africa is to improve the life of women through micro loans.  This has proven effective in many other parts of the world and Goodall reports it is having a beneficial effect in Africa as well.

As I sat and listened to the lecture, I was overcome with the futility of our ever increasing consumerism.  Take our collective response to the increasing scarcity of petroleum.   The big ideas seem to involve finding new ways to sustain high consumption- e.g., the replacement of petroleum with ethanol or hydrogen.  The idea that we might have to throttle back our per capita consumption of stuff extracted from the ground is ignored.

Well, of course the national stage isn’t filled with people promoting reduced consumption.  There is no money in reducing demand. Who wants to hear that? 

Minimally, the USA must go the way of Europe in terms of lower average consumption.  Higher population density combined with higher priced energy will lead to more modest consumption of goods due to lifestyles adjusting to scarcity. 

Bush II. Sphericated or Flaticular?

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Here along the front range of the Rocky Mountains we have a few alternative newspapers available- you know, the kind not owned by Rupert Murdoch. They tend to be a bit Bohemian and consequently are shunned by righteous Dittoheads. Other parts of the country have them as well- college towns mostly. They cater to those of us who aren’t afraid to be known as liberals.  These papers run a syndicated cartoon called This Modern World by a guy known as Tom Tomorrow. 

Because of copyright issues, I’ll have to link to the site rather than paste an image.