Train Madness

Okay, this high-speed rail madness needs to get addressed.  Most of the opposition to HSR attacks it either as a wildly expensive boondoggle, which it is, or comes from people who aren't concerned about the fundamental expected benefit of HSR, emissions reduction.  But HSR doesn't work even on its own merits.  Adding nationwide HSR would increase net emissions.  Let me explain.  A friend of mine recently shared this infographic from Yglesias:

Yes, but. The thing missing from this infographic is that these numbers need to be broken down by BTU per passenger mile per pound and compared to the other things they're replacing, that is, the marginal cost of what else we could be using those rails for. Air travel is fuel-inefficient, so we only use it for lightweight, time-sensitive cargoes like passengers and priority mail packages.  Rail is very efficient, but isn't currently very fast, so we generally use it to move the heaviest things that need moving, i.e. bulk goods and freight.  All the HSR proposals out there right now are trying to get comparatively lightweight passenger trains onto our rails and make them go faster than freight trains currently do, but none of these proposals address the reality that this will displace several times that weight of freight onto comparatively inefficient trucks on our highways, multiplying net emissions. Even if we built brand new dedicated rail corridors for HSR (which is what we'd have to do if we actually want shiny 200mph bullet trains, instead of just 90mph express trains like we had in the 1930s) we'd still reduce more emissions using those new rails for heavy freight than for  light passengers. We'd save a lot of money on highway maintenance, too, since semis are responsible for the overwhelming majority of wear-and-tear on our roads.  If we really wanted to be preventing emissions, we'd certainly be looking at ways to encourage and expand use of our nation's railways, only for freight rather than passengers.  We would also be looking at what it would take to get our canal networks back into commission, since barges are an order of magnitude more efficient even than trains. As it stands, the current advocates for HSR are more interested in seeing shiny, sexy new passenger trains (and handing multi-billion-dollar construction contracts to political backers in the case of the politicians) than in actually reducing net emissions.  It is fundamentally unserious.

On Flags and Freedoms

Now that I'm back up and running on this whole regular blogging thing, I fear I'm obliged to make a comment on this Florida Koran-burning brouhaha.  Firstly, I'll make perfectly clear that this so-called pastor's plan to celebrate 9/11 with a ritual Koran-burning is both un-Christian and thoroughly contemptible.  It would be entirely appropriate for fine dining establishments to refuse him service and for elderly ladies to curse him in the street.  I do not think it appropriate, however, for a US general to advise a civilian on the proper use of constitutionally-protected speech.  Yes, if this church goes through with their imbecilic plan, US soldiers' lives will certainly be further endangered.  But there are all manner of ways that adherence to the Constitution makes the military's day-to-day work more difficult.  We could save more soldiers' lives if we set aside the fourth through eighth amendments, for example, but the Constitution of the United States is the very thing that we soldiers have sworn an oath to defend.  That is the fundamental mission of the armed forces, and that doesn't change just because a particular exercise of that constitutional freedom is foolhardy and reprehensible.

On Congressional Incompetence

Does it strike anyone else that there's insufficient outrage about the complete sham the Congress has become? It has become routine for Representatives and Senators to debate and vote on bills they cannot possibly have read. Congressional leaders sneer dismissively when legislators suggest they'd like a chance to do so. This is appallingly antirepublican, undermining the people's sovereignty and replacing it with a shadow oligarchy of congressional staffers. It's been going on for a long time, of course, but it seems to have reached a new level with the national embarrassment that was the "debate" over the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

Pushing for a Read the Bill Amendment seems over the top at first, but then again, an entire branch of our government has more or less abdicated their responsibilities, so perhaps a constitutional amendment isn't overkill. It would certainly have some nice follow-on effects, since it would greatly increase the incentive for concision in legislation, and force legislators to spend more time actually considering legislation and less time at bare-knuckles politicking.

Transformers Gets Dretful Review

My favorite sort of movie review is the kind that totally pans a movie, but somehow makes you want to see it even more. i09's review of the new Transformers movie is just that sort of review:

And the true genius of Transformers: ROTF is that [director Michael] Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane.

Every single performance is so ridiculous that it looks down on "over the top" as if from a great height.

In a sense, it's the first war movie ever to convey a real sense of the fog of war, the confusion that comes with battle. Somewhere around hour nine, you will understand why friendly fire happens in wartime.

I need to see this movie.

Creeping Totalitarianism Isn't Funny

There was a time not long ago when it was utterly beyond the pale in American politics to suggest, for example, that one's habitual claims of being one election away from emigration might not be the strongest evidence of a citizen's patriotism. Dissent is patriotic, we were incessantly lectured, even the sort of patriotism that only considers your country worth living in when your team is in charge. Well, that's all out the window now, as Wanda Sykes, in a "comedy" routine at the White House Press Correspondents' dinner, (in which the comedians traditionally roast the sitting president), blusters that Rush Limbaugh is a treasonous terrorist who ought to be tortured. Oh, and she wishes he would die. Painfully. All this because he has stated that he hopes Obama fails. I genuinely can't understand why the Obots have such a hard time understanding this: did these people spend eight years dutifully wishing success upon the policies of George W. Bush? Did any of us expect them to? Good grief! Sykes:

Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. So you're saying, 'I hope America fails', you're, like, 'I don't care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq'. He just wants the country to fail.

Leftists blithely equate one politician's ambitions with the entirety of the American enterprise, yet seem completely baffled when people suggest there's something creepily totalitarian about this. This is the definition of totalitarianism, after all, the idea that the entire nation is represented in this one man. I fear for the future.

Grumpy Old Brits on the Nanny State

The BBC's "Grumpy Old Men" share their dretful scorn regarding the British Nanny State (via Professor Bainbridge). Welcome to the future (PG-13 for language) :

I'm Not Sure "Disappointed" Cuts it, Madame Secretary

"Disappointed"? Really? That's the strongest language our Secretary of State can conjure in her statement on Iran's conviction of an American journalist on trumped-up charges of spying? Oh, sorry, she's "deeply disappointed". Good grief.

CNN in Chicago

And this is the state of American media today, a "reporter" contemptuously badgering a "tea party" demonstrator, cutting off the point he was making so she can get on her own soapbox, and then commenting on the "threatening tenor" when other demonstrators tell her to let the guy speak. Appalling. (Via HotAir).

I think my favorite part is where she interjects, as the man is explaining how Lincoln stood for self-reliance and individual responsibility, that Illinois is going to receive $50 billion in stimulus funds, as if that somehow rebuts his point. They just don't get it.

It Is Time We Remembered the Subjunctive

Geoffrey Pullum learned something new about the English language today. The idiomatic construction "it is time that noun verbed" is increasingly showing up in the vernacular as "it is time that noun verbs". This particular instance is new to me, too, but I don't exactly see why such a distinguished linguist is so surprised. "It is time that ____ were true" is just a variant of "would that ____ were true!" or "I wish that ____ were true!", which is to say, it's an introduction to a subjunctive clause, one expressing wish or possibility. Thing is, the subjunctive mood is disappearing all over the place, even in its most formulaic extances. "I wish I were ___" is sounding positively quaint these days. Part of me really wants to rail against this linguistic sloppiness, but I know there's no hope. I can shake my tophat and cane and glare disapprovingly through my monacle all I please, but linguistic prescriptivism gets us nowhere. Sadly.

On Demonstration and Radicalization

Apparently I'm a dangerous right-wing radical. There's a better-than-even chance, dear reader, that you are, too. Do you favor local or state authority over federal authority? Do you have strong feelings about abortion, or illegal migration? Then you, dear reader, might just be a right-wing radical. But don't worry, so am I. On two counts, no less, on account of being a "disgruntled veteran" ready to "swell the ranks of white-power militias". Oh, and so are the legislative and executive branches of the government of the state of Texas. So you're in tolerable company.

Oh, and if you read all the way through the Washington Times piece, on page three they've got the parts where the authors of the report explain that this is actually a fairly standard report, similar reports referring to threats from left-wing extremists have also gone out recently, and the concern about veterans was only that their combat skills would be valued by extremists, so law enforcement should be aware that veterans might be specially targeted for recruitment. Huh. That's not nearly as fear- and hatemongering as the lede. Good thing I and everybody else who saw the story read the whole thing, right? Right?

The media are pushing the "scary dangerous right wing" meme as hard as they possibly can, because they so desperately want it to be true. The reality is a bit different, as we've seen today with the Tax Day "Tea Party" protests around the country, in which thousands of anti-big-government "extremists" milled around with signs for a few hours, listened to some speeches, and then went home. Practically Nuremburg 1938, I know. Despite dire warnings and whisperings whether we'd need to bring out the Guard, the closest thing to drama was the dispersal of the White House Tea Party after a "suspicious package" went over the fence. It turned out to be, go figure, a carton of tea.

This brings us to the issue that's been bugging me all week, with all the buzz leading up to today's demonstrations. How is it that the American Left, so enamoured of mass demonstration, is so aghast at the idea that conservatives would dare to embrace the technique? I don't know how many variations of "you lost, deal with it!" I've heard in the last few days, as if the opposition is supposed to sit quietly in the corner until the next election. Because, you know, that's what the Left did during the Bush years, so it's only fair, right? Right? For that matter, the message of these demonstrations is directed as much at the Republicans as at the Democrats. RNC Chairman Michael Steele's offer to speak at the Chicago Tea Party was turned down rather sharply, with the suggestion that he'd be welcome to attend and LISTEN: "This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."

I should add, not all the Left is displaying their irrational hostility toward the Tea Party movement: some are channeling it into pure snark, and pretty low-grade snark at that. I get the joke, Rachel Maddow, teabag = degrading sex act. Ha ha ha. And I got it when you used it again. And again. And every ten seconds or so for the next seven minutes. Thing is, the demonstrations are being called "tea parties", not "teabaggings", as you prefer it, and if the phrase "tea party" has you and your audience thinking of scrota rather than Boston 1773, well, I guess that's a personal problem.

On Military Privatization

[Just found this post from a few weeks ago orphaned in my 'drafts'. Thus the out-of-date news story.]

I've got some mixed opinions about military contractors in Iraq. I think it's manifestly clear that the unaccountable triggerhappiness of some of the mercenaries private security contractors has made the task of victory tougher and more dangerous for constitutional American forces. On the other hand, the privatization of many support operations to contractors like KBR has raised the standard of living at US bases in Iraq to unimaginable levels. I lived and ate better in Iraq than I could even dream of on a base in the US. Behind the build-your-own panini line, Mongolian barbeque and ice-cream sundaes, however, some truly worrisome safety issues have come to light (from CNN, via hilzoy).

Thousands of buildings at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have such poorly installed wiring that American troops face life-threatening risks, a top inspector for the Army says.

"It was horrible -- some of the worst electrical work I've ever seen," said Jim Childs, a master electrician and the top civilian expert in an Army safety survey. Childs told CNN that "with the buildings the way they are, we're playing Russian roulette."

Childs recently returned from Iraq, where he is taking part in a yearlong review aimed at correcting electrical hazards on U.S. bases. He told CNN that thousands of buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan are so badly wired that troops are at serious risk of death or injury. He said problems are "everywhere" in Iraq, where 18 U.S. troops have died by electrocution since 2003.

Most of these bases were built by the much-maligned KBR, which has been such a liberal punching-bag I instinctively want to defend it. But I've seen how they operate, and so this story is all too believable. KBR keeps costs low by employing "third-country nationals" or TCNs, mostly from South Asia and the Philippines. I've got no problem with these guys cooking my dinners and cleaning my bathrooms, in fact I'm quite grateful for it. But if they're going to be wiring my hooch and plumbing my showers, KBR ought to be expected to hold them to first-world safety standards. And the contractor's non-apology makes sympathy difficult:

What is important to remember is the challenging environment in which these issues exist.

The electrical standards in Iraq are nowhere near those of Western or U.S. standards. Add to this the challenges that exist in a war zone. We have been and remain committed to fully cooperating with the government on this issue.

Except that we're talking about bases that KBR has built from the ground up, powered by grids built by KBR and fed by generators supplied by KBR. I don't honestly know what they're trying to pull.

America 1, Pirates 0. Also: Terrorism?

Yay for America. Boo pirates. And I'm tired of hearing about it already. The captain seems a stand-up fellow, so hopefully he'll resist the siren song of the cable "news" circuit and endless inane interviews recounting minute-by-minute how he was feeling throughout the crisis.

All this talk of pirates, (with the requisite jokes about peglegs, eyepatches, and parrots) has of course awakened a desire among some to give them a more 21st-century name. They're terrorists! after all. Maritime terrorists!

Count me with Yglesias in saying: puh-leeeeze. These guys board ships to either steal the booty outright or ransom the ships and crews. They've not expressed a moment's interest in advancing any particular ideology, and how their activities could possibly do so is beyond me. They're not attacking civilian populations with the intent to further their political goals. They don't meet any coherent definition of "terrorists" other than that we don't like them and they happen to be Muslim. Then again, that's uncomfortably close to what passes for a definition these days.

"Terrorist" is one of many words in danger of being overused into meaninglessness. There are plenty of terrorists in the world. And there are also Muslim extremists fighting us who are not terrorists by any reasonable definition. Most of the Shia militias in Iraq that fall under the Jaysh al-Mahdi/Sadrist umbrella, for example, are guerilla fighters who targeted uniformed soldiers of the enemy (us) and took reasonable care to avoid civilian casualties. By definition they are not terrorists, and it confuses the issue to conflate them.

For the Children

Yes, it's for the sake of the children that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has axed the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, just weeks after this year's cohort had been informed of their acceptance into the program, and well after the deadlines to apply to D.C.'s better charter schools or for transfers out of the district. See, since Congress will be debating the program sometime within the next year, it's not in the students' best interest to let them into a program that might get cut for next year. Of course, in geopolitics this is what we call creating "facts on the ground". I fully understand that as a successful voucher program in our nation's worst education district, and right under the government's nose, this program absolutely had to be killed. But when you're throwing 200 students to the wolves to reward Big Education for their unwavering support, spare me the pretense that you're doing it for the students' sake.

It's Fun to be Aggrieved

The layers of hostile ignorance on display in this training video put out by Penn State University's Counseling and Psychological Services office are beyond my patience to dig through. This is also a must-see for anyone who doesn't believe it's seriously unhealthy that significant portions of our society are completely insulated from contact with military servicemembers.



James Taranto fleshes out the complete absurdity of the vignette. Here's the crux: a veteran student believes he's being treated unfairly because of his service. The narrative of the video tries to present this as completely unreasonable for him to believe, and yet here's the opening dialogue between his professor and her supervisor:

Instructor: Actually, I kinda wanted to talk to you about something else? Um, I'm still having problems with that student I mentioned.

Chairman: The Veteran.

Instructor: Yeah.

There are so many more angles to look at this, but I just get too depressed or angry thinking about it. It's probably my PTSD making me unpredictable and vaguely threatening.

Freedom and Security

The Obama administration continues to double down on the Bush Department of Justice's legal cover for warrantless wiretapping and "sovereign immunity" from prosecution, expanding their scope far beyond that of the previous administration. As I've said before, this is why conservatives ought to have opposed these measures when they were introduced, something I myself am only belatedly realizing. While I might once have considered security justifications to outweigh the encroachment on individual freedoms, I no longer believe they do. Did these measures help keep us safe from terrorist attacks over the last 7 years? Quite possibly. But is that security worth several turns of the ratchet toward Panopticon?

If we have no degree of acceptable risk, if any posited successful attack is presupposed as a negligent "failure" of our intelligence community, what incentive do they have but to seek to know everything about everyone? We failed to "connect the dots" before 9/11, so now our agencies are coached that the "need to share" is as important as the "need to know". But the potential capabilities of a unitary intelligence agency are truly worrying: it takes at most 33 data points to identify a person statistically through mining of open-source data. A nation with a unitary intelligence agency mandated to prevent any conceivable security threat is on a dangerous road to becoming a police state.

And to what end? Should we really be letting the threat of terrorist attack define our society? Nuclear terrorism alone is the one threat toward which we should be putting greatest effort, but we can't seem to get our act together to deal seriously with the world's most dangerous proliferators. Instead, we spend billions on meaningless security theater. John Goekler nails it:

The only things that can truly make us more “secure” are not things. They are the courage to face whatever comes with dignity and intention, and the strong relationships that assure we will face the future together, and find comfort and meaning in doing so.

Imagine, then, what might happen if we simply quit listening to the scaremongers and those who profit from our paranoia. Imagine what the world could look like if we made a conscious choice to live out whatever time we have with courage, compassion, service and joy.

Terrorism is an act of the weak. But so is walking through the airport in our socks.

Blogging at Work!

I can't believe it, I'm blogging from work! I know that for most of you, this isn't a revolutionary concept, but things work a little differently in the wonderland that is Army. See, for the longest time, all DoD internet connections have blocked anything having to do with blogs. Anything that even had "blog" somewhere in the URL was automatically blocked, on the assumption, I presume, that all bloggers are either ne'er-do-wells intent on compromising national security or inane timewasters. Because we wouldn't want our soldiers reading such trash as Tom Ricks, Kings of War, or Abu Muqawama. They should be reading serious commentary such as they'll find on "real news" sites like CNN or FoxNews.

Dretful Scorn

If only we had politicians who could stand up and give a browbeating like this (HT Strange Herring):



I aspire some day to achieve Daniel Hannan's mastery of dretful scorn. Is there any way we could lure this guy over here? Maybe we can offer him asylum if Britain sinks beneath the waves, as seems likelier by the day.

Scandal! Outrage!

Get the torches and pitchforks, friends. Have you heard? AIG spent nearly 1/10th of 1% of their government bailout money to pay previously-contracted bonuses for employees who had no connection to risky securitizations! Scandal! Outrage! Wait, that's not quite how you've heard it on the news? Huh.

Randall Monroe has great commentary, as usual:

Of course, when you live to be outraged, it's a lot more fun to pretend the latter.

Are Ya Serious? : Citibank Falls for Nigerian Email Scam

Well, they weren't quite sending their account numbers to an exiled prince in exchange for a cut of his fortune, but this is pretty close. Really?

Dry Spell

It's been a pretty good while here since my last post, particularly since I had been hitting such a stride. A lot of factors involved, but it's mostly been application of the great kindergarten lesson "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". Also, one of these days my gracious corporate overlords at Time Warner will get around to spending some of their precious time to address my humble petition that they, you know, provide me the service that I'm paying for. It's not like they're in any hurry, I mean, what am I going to do? Just give up the Internet? Some days, I tell ya...