Just a thought

Maybe it's just me, but after that pathetic effort at a giving a pep rally for the Iraq war, does anyone else detect the smell of decay and death coming from the Bush and the Republicans?

Crime reduction, economics style

Check out Nicolas Kristof's editorial in the N.Y Times today. Instead of merely spouting off the usual crap we hear from politicians, he actually makes some interesting economic arguments for how to reduce crime in America. Apparently, Low Jacks have reduced car theft in Boston by nearly 50%. Kristof reasons that "Car theft, it turns out, is a volume business. And so if even a small percentage of vehicles have LoJack, the professional thief will eventually steal a car with one and get caught." Kristof also touches on cost efficiency of adding police officers and reducing home thefts. Anyway, check out the editorial, it is pretty interesting.

"Sure, some of the crime-fighting ideas being bandied about are pie-in-the-sky. But they show how we can think about crime in systematic ways, rather than just grunting about the need for more prisons. We should be at least as creative in addressing crime as thieves are."

Best sports blog ever

If you are looking for an interesting and unique sports blog, then go check out Plunk Biggio. This is the blog dedicated to Craig Biggio, 2nd Baseman for the Houston Astros, and "his (probably unintentional) Quest to break the all time major league career record for getting hit by pitches." It's a fun blog, with interesting writing and plenty of statistics.

Full Court Press

So, I don't know if anyone else watched the sunday morning news shows. If you did, then you noticed that every show had some combination of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and General Abizaid all pushing the message "The U.S. is winning the war, keep giving us unquestioned support and money, etc." Abizaid comments directly about the war were actual pretty honest and informative as far as the strength insurgency and the morale of US soldiers. But ole Dick and Don just get me the usual wave of nausea when they spouted their partisan crap. Still, after watching all these programs, it has become painfully obvious the Bush Administration is sensing danger with all these recent opinion polls about the war, and is trying to push those numbers back up. Fat fucking chance that'll happen.

Six months till serious recruiting crisis

According to retired U.S. Army colonel and now MSNBC military analyst Jack Jacobs in an interview with Keith Olbermann, the Army is about 6 months away from a serious crisis resulting from the problems in recruiting. The Army has overtly lowered its recruiting goals from 8,050 to 6700, and still missed its goals by 25%. According to Jacobs, the Army will start increasing signing bonuses and lowering standards, which means we will have a larger, but less effective military force. Way to go Bush Administration!

"OLBERMANN: To speculate about that time, Army recruiting down 42 percent in April, they lower the quota by 18 percent for May, still miss the quota by a quarter. Can you do the rough math here? At what point do we run out of the personnel required just for the commitments we already have?

JACOBS: Well, I think we‘re probably at the limit now. I think we may have if—another six months or so before things really get dire, and something significant is going to have to be done."

Science under Siege

A new report released by the ACLU details the way science is under siege by the Bush Administration. It is startling how much they are limiting access to information and equipment that is commonly used by scientists doing basic research. The press release from the ACLU points out the following issues as the main points in their report...

The report, Science Under Siege, connects the dots between several different areas where misguided government policies are affecting science. Among the abuses the ACLU examines in the report are:

• moves to overclassify information and designate whole areas of research as "sensitive but unclassified;"
• outright censorship and prescreening of scientific articles before publication;
• exclusion of foreign students from access to research projects;
• suppression of environmental and public health information; and
• increased restrictions on materials and technology commonly used in basic scientific research.

So what's the big point here? That scientific process needs the free flow of talent and information in order to make progress. The Bush administration (almost by definition) suppresses the free flow of information and excludes foreign talent by over zealous use of the Patriot Act.

Bush allies dropping like flies

As one might expect with an election year nearing, Congress has begun to actually listen to its constituents, and is now beginning to turn against the Bush administration's Iraq war. This editorial in the L.A. Times nicely sums up the major Republican players who are now breaking ranks with the Bush administration in calling for a debate on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Here are a few interesting quotes from them:

"Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse... the White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq." - Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee

"Too often we've been told, and the American people have been told, that we're at a turning point," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on NBC's "Meet the Press," as he disagreed with Cheney's absurd claim last week that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes." "What the American people should have been told and should be told [is that] it's long, it's hard, it's tough."