DoctorD's Observations

iPad 3G released today

I got an iPad 3G today.  It allows you to connect to the internet through AT&T's cellular network, just like you do with an iPhone or iPod Touch.  No talking though, this is just for data.

The timing was perfect, as my Comcast internet and wifi had gone out!

The 3G model costs more than the Wi-Fi only version, and you have to pay for a data plan by the month.  There is no long-term "contract" though.

The 3G version also has a full GPS chip in it.  I think both of these features may make it handy for travel.

No more big government? Really?

Boy, they sure are rushing to get all the federal government help they possibly can for the huge oil spill off the shore of Louisiana.  And that includes Republican governor and former Congressman Bobby Jindal, who for a while was viewed as a rising star in the once-GOP.  Jindal opposed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and he had actively advocated legislation to eliminate the moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling over the outer continental shelf.  He wants more, more more, and of course will get it, too.

I have to say, though, why should we who live in Illinois bother with Louisiana?  They are opposed to helping other areas of the nation apparently, and have been whining now over this, on top of Katrina damage.  They are too much trouble, aren't they?  Let them celebrate the civil war if they want, let them secede if they want, let them go off and have a government run by tea-baggers and right-wing talk TV hosts.  Who needs them?  Let them sink into the ocean.

But of course that isn't how it works in America.  The national government does indeed spring into action when the need is great.  Certainly it has been like that since the Great Depression and New Deal.  Or at least it does when it doesn't have a president as unaware and incompetent as George W. Bush, the father of of a whole series of disasters, one after the other.

The other point I would like to make is that BP, the operator of the Deep Horizon drilling platform, clearly doesn't have the resources to deal with this.  It is so foolish to trust the "private sector."  They are in the business of making big profits for shareholders and executives, not for preventing environmental damage, mine disasters, or financial fraud and meltdowns.

I wonder if this will sink in, and the reasons that we have government, that we have government at all, and that we do and must have "big government" in this complex era, will start to sink in to the public at large.

Into the belly of the beast

Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America

John Avlon

Started reading this morning.  I definitely would not put Keith Olbermann, shown on the cover, in the "wingnut" category.  And it can be argued that the term "wingnut" is properly applied to only to right-wing extremists, which he isn't.

Still, the basic premise is accurate:  the lunatic fringe has indeed hijacked America.  

The author is a writer for The Daily Beast, an on-line magazine.  His most recent article is titled "The Phony Centrism of Charlie Crist."  Avolon considers himself a genuine centrist.  You might also want to look at his article, Paranoia on Patriots' Day.

The letter of the law

So-called political "conservatives" are upset about the recently-adopted health insurance reform law, calling it unconstitutional--which it pretty clearly is not.

But the same political "conservatives" aren't upset by Arizona's new racial-profiling-based anti-immigrant law, which pretty clearly is unconstitutional.  Rather, they favor it, and hope more states will adopt similar statutes.  This has unexpectedly forced national immigration reform to the forefront of the political agenda.

I think the hypocrisy is pretty clear.  These are not people who have carefully studied (or even ever read) the U.S. Constitution, and hope that what we as a nation do is true to its meaning.  They are not like Barack Obama, who is in fact a constitutional scholar.  Rather, they are low-information, very biased voters who toss around the phrase "unconstitutional" at anything they happen to dislike.  The same way they use terms like "socialist" or "fascist," simply as insults that they don't understand.

I, personally, am in favor of laws that are constitutional.  Of course.  All Americans must be.  Having a government based on a written Constitution, interpreted to be sure by the judicial branch and subject to an amendment process, is one of our greatest glories and blessings.

Drill, baby, drill

Oil-Spill-Satellite-View_53490467

The above photo illustrates Sarah Palin's preferred energy policy.  It was her answer to the temporarily high price of gasoline in the summer of 2008.

What we need, really, is to have the price of oil to be even higher, so that we will use less of it and have to drill less, too.

Apparently more recent photos from space shows that the spill has actually reached the coast of Louisiana.

President Obama proposed opening more areas to offshore drilling a month ago.  Republicans called his proposal too little and too late.

Jon Stewart on the Goldman hearings

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Who Wants to Beat a Millionaire
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

By their fruits ye shall know them

Boy, talk about a clarifying moment!  Senate Republicans have unanimously voted two days in a row to not allow legislation establishing new regulations for Wall Street banks to even be considered by the "world's greatest deliberative body."

Yes, that's right.  They haven't objected to a specific proposal, they don't have amendments that they want to have debated.  Rather, they don't want the entire issue to be taken up for possible action at all.  

Not "some" Republicans.  ALL Republicans concur!

Here it is, the source of the very problem that caused catastrophic losses throughout the American economy:  of houses, jobs, health insurance, retirement benefits.  And the Republicans want to do nothing about it.  They seemingly aren't sorry it happened, and they seemingly don't care if it happens again.

That isn't necessarily what they say, of course.  They do some hand-wringing and agree that, oh my yes, some regulation is needed.  But that is the insight that Jesus offered in his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.  By their fruits ye shall know them.  Whatever they say, whatever they do, whatever they may be forced to do in the end, Republicans unanimously want Wall Street to remain a playground for the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the broader middle class, not to mention the poor, and the American economy as a whole.  It isn't that they don't care about the past actions of the banks and the resulting Great Bush Recession.  This is what they want; perhaps this is what they intended, a vast raid on the public's pockets and the U.S. Treasury just before George Bush left office.  This is how they like it.

Knowledge in bits and bytes, dribs and drabs

When the sky turns green, it is a good idea to go to the basement, or to some other protected place in the house.  I learned that from experience.  Or, really, from the experience of my first wife, who had grown up in a small town (rather than a city) and was more nature-wise than me.

Tornado sky March 2002

Why is that?  How does that work?  I don't know.  But a green sky means a tornado is likely to form.  In the case I am remembering, it took the roof off of a school a couple blocks away, right up into the air, and then set it down again.

The point that is interesting to me, and that came up in our early morning coffee group the other day, is that so much knowledge is like that, just bits and bytes.  Some of it is conceptual, and some of it is physical (like how to sink a free throw, how to ride a bike).

The issue is that you can have a heck of a lot of knowledge, you can know a lot, but it doesn't automatically or necessarily add up to anything coherent.  It doesn't create an overall picture, a meaningful world view.

And then of course there are perspectives that start the other way, with the heavens as it were.  There is God, God created the the earth, and man in his image, etc.  That's a "big picture" perspective, but it doesn't tell you to hide in the basement when the sky turns green, or how to sink a free throw.

Really, human knowledge is pretty patchy.  Certainly the knowledge that a individual has is pretty patchy.  And actually, I don't think that most people try very hard to do anything about it, and I don't think schools help very much with that, either.

Let's check our math, people!

Slide_6122_82649_large

Joe Stack's "manifesto"

I am posting this here because I am presently watching a tv show about Stack and his murder-by-airplane of government (especially IRS) employees on February 18th of this year.  To be honest, I have only read parts of it myself--it is long, it rambles, and there are sections about the tax code that are very specific and detailed, well outside my own experience.

But there are a couple points that are interesting to me:

--While Stack is apparently a "hero" to many on the right wing because of his murders, his manifesto (or "rant") isn't clearly conservative or liberal, at least not in my reading of it.  He attacks a big variety of things, has many complaints, which don't clearly fit any simple narrative.

--While Stack certainly had great concern about personal financial issues, which for all I know were justifiable, they certainly were not all caused by the federal government or the internal revenue service.

--While he may have been broke (?), he apparently owned an airplane.  You can't be too broke if you own an airplane.  They are expensive!  Even hanger or tie-down space is expensive!

In writing a "manifesto" Stack is kind of like the Unabomber.  In acting essentially alone, but egged on by a much larger "movement," he is kind of like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.  He is kind of like some of the abortion-doctor murders.  But he seems to me unlike the best known school shooters, who didn't have a "political" agenda at all, but resentments of other kinds.

Viewing these murders out of context really isn't accurate, and it really isn't fair even to them.  They believe they are acting as part of broader societal efforts, and hoping in some cases to be the sparks that ignite widespread war against the federal government.  These are not lone wolf/lone nut cases; they are not like people who murder, perhaps their wife or husband.  These are embedded in a confused but still very real "political" fabric, a segment of our culture.  

Something may well be rotten in the state of Denmark.  But for sure something is rotten in the U.S. of A.  We have a lot of crazies out there, and they have guns (or, in this instance, an airplane).