government

I simply cannot have been the only one who watched the vice-presidential debate tonight and thought that Palin’s answers were eerily similar to this famous speech. I mean, really? Really? Nucular? Poliferation? Infastructure? Here’s a random quote I grabbed from the transcript:

John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That’s a positive. That’s encouragement. And that’s what John McCain meant.

It’s a shame that Biden didn’t win this debate on the merits of his arguments, because in general they were pretty good. He won it simply because his opponent failed to speak in logical, complete sentences. Here’s another good one:

I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

Am I alone in asking, “WTF?”

Although I don’t agree completely with the essay, there was a brilliant quote in the NYT this morning:

“I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.” — Thomas L. Friedman

That was the clock in 2007, now it needs another digit. (Note: Not a joke, now it needs another digit.)

It took the United States 209 years, from the founding of the republic till 1998, to compile the first $5 trillion in national debt. In the decade since, $6 trillion in debt has been added. This means the United States has borrowed more money in the past decade than in all our previous history combined. Almost all the borrowing has been under the direction of George W. Bush — at this point Bush makes Kenneth Lay seem like a paragon of fiscal caution. Democrats deserve ample blame, too. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leaders of the Senate and House, have never met a bailout they didn’t like: Harry and Nancy just can’t wait to spend your children’s money. Six trillion dollars borrowed in a single decade and $1.5 trillion borrowed in 2008 alone. Charles Ponzi would be embarrassed.

In addition to one of the standard Surgeon General’s Warnings, packs of Natural American Spirit cigarettes are labeled:

Made with 100% additive-free, whole leaf, natural tobacco. No reconstituted sheet tobacco. No processed stems. Up to 25% more tobacco than other king size cigarettes.

All of that would, in some convoluted way, probably lead a smoker to believe that these cigarettes are “better” for you than — one would assume — all the other brands of cigarettes. But the fact that these cigarettes profess to contain more tobacco than competing brands is somehow made to seem like a good thing. So the company helpfully adds:

No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette.

Their website is actually running a promotion right now asking people to send them “Smoker’s Stories”, cute little anecdotes about how much fun people have had smoking, sharing cigarettes, and loving the joy of being a smoker. Conveniently absent are any stories about not being able to climb a flight of stairs, bad hygiene, watching someone you love battle lung cancer, or wasting thousands of dollars on a terribly unattractive habit.

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Retired Gen. George Washington Criticizes Bush’s Handling Of Iraq War (via BrainLog)

Vote Nathan Petrelli for Congress

Washington — At least two federal government agencies are refusing to upgrade their computers with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system, citing concern over costs and compatibility issues.

In a Jan. 19 memo to staff, Dan Mintz, the Transportation Department’s chief information officer, imposed an “indefinite moratorium” on upgrading desktop and laptop computers with the new operating system, Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7.

Mintz wrote that there is “no compelling technical or business case” to upgrade to the new products and specific reasons not to upgrade.

Think I’m crazy for saying there’s no reason to go to Vista right now? At least a small village’s worth of friends and family have asked me if I’m upgrading to Vista, when I’m upgrading to Vista, whether they should get Vista on their new computer, and why the hell am I not all excited about Vista. I’ve told each and every one of them that I’ll upgrade to Vista someday, but not in 2007. XP works just fine for me, thank you. I don’t have the time or the patience to spend half my working hours for the next six months installing service patches and emergency updates. I’d never buy the first year of a new model of car and I’ll not upgrade my OS the same year it’s released. My operating system is probably the only thing in my life that I choose not to have on the bleeding edge. Sometimes it’s just not worth it to be an early adopter.

Words cannot describe how frustrating is it to drive anywhere in Los Angeles. The part that really slays you is when you realize that the problem is not bad drivers. (Warning: It will take you at least a solid year to come to this realization.) The real problem is the traffic infrastructure: traffic lights, stop signs, road configurations, and construction. I’ve written before about the supreme idiocy of the Santa Monica Boulevard Transit Parkway Project. Today I was quite upset to learn that in 2005 the Federal government — not money from my California tax dollars, but from my Federal taxes — granted $1,611,962,012 to the California Department of Transportation. And yet it still takes 30 minutes to drive 5 miles.

Despite a growing public revulsion and overwhelming bi-partisan political support, a few members of Congress — notably Texas Republican Congressman Henry Bonilla — have managed to stall federal legislation to outlaw horse slaughter.

from an episode of Dennis Miller on CNBC:

Dennis Miller:  When Clinton was President, I found him to be a really reprehensible human being. I didn’t like him. … But on a day-to-day basis, him being President never really bothered me. I thought, “Well, listen, Bill, it’s a tough job. I’m behind ya.” I didn’t like him. I thought he was a bad guy, but I remember thinking, “I’m not gonna whine about it too much because it’s a tough gig.” If Bush is re-elected, will it upset your day-to-day life?

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The domain name says it all:
johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com

US President George W. Bush has been Google bombed. A search for “miserable failure” on the popular search engine Google brings up, as the first link, the official biography of Bush provided by the White House.

This can be done because Google does not only search the contents of web pages, it also counts how often a site is linked to, and the words which are used.

Hence it possible for a group of net-savvy individuals to influence the result of a Google search - a process called “Google bombing” - by linking any number of sites to a chosen one.

Do you have sticky notes on your monitor? Post-It© notes? Of course you do. Here’s a good one for you. Write it on a Post-It and place it on the edge of your screen so you can see it all day. If you work for the federal government, get it tattooed on your forehead.

Insufficient Resources <> Inefficient Use of Resources

I heard for the umpteenth time this morning a representative of my government using the phrase “insufficient resources” to explain why his department was incompetent. In this instance it was the head of INS and he was telling dear NPR listeners that his IT department wasn’t capable of handling the new stresses of post-September 11 security because of “insufficient resources”.

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Last year the U.S. consumed seven billion barrels of oil. Fifty-two percent of that - more than ANWR’s entire economically-recoverable reserves - was imported. Put another way, 3.2 billion barrels from ANWR represent only about a 166-day supply of crude for America’s gluttonous consumption. Amory and Hunter Lovins estimate that if the refuge were opened to drilling and truly contained 3.2 billion barrels of economically-recoverable oil, it would yield 156,000 barrels of gasoline a day, enough to run 2% of the cars and light trucks in the U.S. That much gasoline, however, could be saved if automobiles were made more efficient by just four-tenths of a mile per gallon. If automobiles, SUVs, and light trucks became four miles per gallon more efficient, it would be equivalent to developing an oil field 10 times the size of ANWR.

“The proponents of drilling have a difficult argument to win,” says Representative Markey, whose provision calling for increased fuel efficiency from 24 to 27 miles per gallon within five years was defeated in the House last August. “They’re saying we should drill in a pristine reserve, but it would be wrong to ask the automobile companies to increase fuel efficiency by three miles per gallon.”