licentious radio

Saturday, March 8, 2003
[7:47:39 PM]

Three years ago (from Monday), the NASDAQ was over 5,000. Now it's at 1,300. March and April of 2000 were Greenspan's pre-emptive strike to squelch the economy enough to give Bush a shot at winning the election.

The New York Times doesn't mention Greenspan. Do you think anyone will remember?

[7:23:35 PM]
Today's news....

There's a report that Chile won't vote for Bush's UN resolution. Kiss that resolution goodbye.

We won't be allowed to protest near the White House any more. 500,000 anti-war protesters are supposed to be a security threat. Right. They just don't want video on TV of protesters at the White House.

Ari Fleischer admitted he scripted the Bush news conference. (Who got to ask questions, in what order.) Apparently the questions were cleared in advance, too.

Maureen Dowd calls Little George the 'Xanax Cowboy'. He's such a bad actor that when he tried not to seem gleeful about his impending slaughter of Iraqis, he seemed drugged. She summarizes the press conference as "Saddam's gonna pay for 9/11". Those of us who remember that Saddam wasn't involved with 9/11 just sputter incoherently. *That* is surely part of the plan.

Jimmy Carter spanks the Dim Bulb over the 'Just War' bit. Only psychotic right-wing religious whackos think invasion is justified. Them and Dumb-bell-in-Chief....

Meanwhile, the New York Times editorial board, Josh Marshall, and even Thomas Friedman join the steady stream of Democrats in saying the cost of unilateral conquest is too high -- that Bush should stand down.

Of course it *looks* like Bush is dead set on going ahead. Despite his drugged public demeanor, word leaking out from the private parts of the White House is that Bush is excited to get his war on.

Oh -- and apparently the US and Britain *forged* the documents they claimed proved Saddam was trying to build nukes. Your tax dollars at work.

[11:37:17 AM]
Little Condi keeps saying stuff like "we know what disarmament looks like", referring to South Africa. Clearly Saddam isn't doing that.

But we also know what disarmament looked like in Iraq after Gulf War I. Inspectors looked forcefully, consistently, and the hard work paid off and huge amounts of material were discovered and destroyed. Saddam was not perfectly cooperative then, either. Yet the inspections went a long way toward destroying Saddam's ability to attack other countries in the region. In terms of *results*, we know that Saddam started two wars before, and used chemical weapons before, but since the UN inspections he has done neither.

The Bush argument against inspections isn't that inspections won't be helpful in eliminating nasty weapons, but that Saddam might someday start producing the nasty weapons again, and might someday pass along nasty weapons to a terrorist. And that's why only conquest is an option for Bush. The point here is: Condi's sniping about what disarmament "looks like" is propaganda to distract us from the proven successes of inspections in Iraq. We could take two or more years, and litter Iraq with bribes for giving evidence to the inspectors.

Sigh. You also have to point out that if Iraq has these nasty weapons now, some Iraqis will have incentive to steal the weapons during the conquest, to sell to terrorists during the chaos. So conquest doesn't guarantee safety, it puts us at immediate risk from sources who couldn't be deterred by threat of invasion. And obviously, if we knew enough to *prevent* the immediate danger due to conquest, we would know enough to find all those bio/chem weapons *now*.

[11:14:14 AM]
Morford [sfgate.com]: The Lie Of The U.S. Military: Tough gritty American soldiers protect freedom of liberal S.F. columnist? Or the other way around?

Morford goes to great length to point out that its questionable whether conquering Iraq is an ideal approach to protecting our freedoms. It is the Conquistadores who seem intent on reducing civil liberties, and *clearly* the Conquistadores are using all their media-leverage to squelch any dissent.

It is the people marching in the streets, writing letters and weblogs, attending Lysistrata, signing petitions -- these are the people who are fighting for freedom our freedoms.

You can, of course, argue that we are safer physically if our army conquers Afghanistan, Iraq, and maybe Syria, Iran, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Pakistan -- for starters. But that's an argument. I could point out that even though Al Qaeda was supported by Taliban control of a nation-state, which in turn was supported by Pakistan, the September 11 attackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia, and were based in the US and Germany.

In other words, the true danger of September 11-like attacks comes from small groups of terrorists that are specifically *not* directly controlled by any government -- because we can *retaliate* against a government, as the Taliban found out. If we spread chaos and ill-will around the globe, there are likely to be more small groups of terrorists. We don't want to see suicide bombers attacking cafes in Washington DC and New York.

So let's stipulate that our soldiers *want* to protect us from physical harm. But let's be aggressive in defending our rights, and recognize that a soldier is not in a position to aid in this internal political discussion. And let's insist that Bush's approach of conquering all enemies is risky at best, and so shrouded in propaganda and distortions that a reasonable discussion is nearly impossible. And let's insist that a reasonable discussion about such an important question is the *essence* of democracy. The administration should stand down from its propaganda, and make their true case to the American people. We will likely decide to veto Bush's approach, based on his actual arguments and evidence. And this is how Americans fighting for our freedoms will defend the lives of American soldiers -- by preventing the insane, dangerous, endless war that Bush is so intent on.

[10:22:34 AM]
You want Shock and Awe? I got Shock and Awe.... That is, I'm *in* shock and awe. (There was a pre-emptive strike, too.) The economy is spinning down and down. The internet industry was destroyed as if by a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb. California generally was extra-wrecked by the big-time Republican Energy Corporations -- cheated out of billions of dollars. But *all* of the states are spinning down: job losses reduce revenue, force spending cuts by state, hurts the general economy, reduces revenue even more.

Meanwhile, we know what got us into trouble under Reagan/Bush, and we know what got us *out* of trouble under Clinton. And of course Little Bush isn't doing what it takes to get us out of trouble. He's repeating the 'mistakes' made under Reagan/Bush -- only doing them in a vastly bigger way. It took two years after Poppy Bush before the economy started to recover. The damage from Junior may take a *lot* longer to repair. So we're talking about 2007 at the earliest if Bush gets booted out of office, and 2010 if a non-crook takes office in 2009.

In other words, give up all hope if you aren't in a position to buy politicians to shovel money at you and protect you from competition (and prosecution). Grab any job you can get, forget about saving much, and forget about spending much. And follow Ari's advice and watch what you say.

[9:55:59 AM]
Too cool!

Next exit 0.5 Million Kilometers [caltech.edu]. These guys have figured out that there are (sort of) orbital tunnels through space that you can ride for *very* little energy. They're slower, and they work better when you have more and larger gravity wells.

But it gives you a slow and cheap route to the moon from Earth, and if you were already at Jupiter, you could tour its moons easily, or get to Saturn.

They speculate the asteroid that nuked the dinosaurs was on one of these slow, cheap paths. I contend one usefulness of intelligent life is preventing asteroid and comet strikes. This new understanding of orbits may tell us where to find many of the dangerous ones, and may give us an easy way to push them into safer orbits.

Meanwhile, the solar system is full of extremely valuable chunks of rock and metal. This suggests that with just a tweak or two we could bring a bit rock -- safely -- to our neighborhood.

[12:17:46 AM]
Powell is again saying he has evidence of Iraq's bio/chemical weapons. He claims he has evidence that they are being moved routinely to avoid the UN inspectors.

Powell's previous UN report was full of distortions are false statements. A false statement is a lie, only if the speaker knew it was false. But what about someone who doesn't check the facts before speaking? Either Powell is a bozo, or he's a liar. Either way, he is without credibility. It's hard to find any honor in his distortions and wrong assertions.

Of course the more serious point is one step less obvious. If Powell has this newly asserted information, and it is accurate, then we are back to the story that Powell and Bush are purposefully *obstructing* the mission of the arms inspectors.

Let's say the motivation is to protect our spies in Iraq. Let's say Bush thinks it's useless to turn over information that would lead to the destruction of a small amount of biological or chemical weapons. We're *still* left at the point where Powell claims to have evidence that could lead to a breakthrough in inspections, or a breakthrough in world support for the conquest.

The White House doesn't care about world opinion, apparently. And they don't care about inspections. That is, Bush would be perfectly happy for the UN to melt down, and successful inspections would not satisfy Bush, since Saddam could re-arm at some time in the future.

What conclusion shall we draw from this? Bush's cronies clearly have a certain logic about the situation. The madness is only revealed when you look a little wider. A pre-emptive attack on Iraq fundamentally destabilizes the international community. That may be in Bush's cronies' interests, but most of the rest of us would prefer to have peace and prosperity.