Needlenose

I’ve been airborne more than usual recently, and in a recent flight, stumbled across a ‘Wired’ magazine.  And I rediscovered why I stopped reading that Tired Libertarian-leaning rag many years ago when I hit the article about Patri Friedman, the arrogant scion of the pseudo-intellectual Libertarian David Friedman (who was in turn sired by the pseudo-economist Milton Friedman) and his Seasteading Institute, the latest word in Libertopias.

In the early days of this blog, I sneered at a movement to relocate hundreds of thousands of asshole Libertarians to some low-populace redneck state, in the hopes of taking over from the locals and creating an Ayn Randian ‘utopia’ where they could ‘prove’ to the rest of us how much better they’d run things under their extremist ideology.

Well the biggest flaw with their plan is that trying to get a bunch of selfish, self-righteous blowhards to agree on anything, much less organize a community, is pretty much of a non-starter.

So here we are in 2008, and spoiled little rich kid Patri Friedman (a pale shadow of his famous wacko gramps Milton) wants to create a bunch of floating offshore platforms where fellow egotistical blowhard assholes can make money just outside the 200 mile economic zones by running such creative businesses as:

(horribly polluting) Fish farming and aquaculture. Prisions…Gold warehouses. Brothels.   Cryonics intakes. Gene therapy, cloning, augmentation, and organ sales. Baby farms. Deafeningly loud concerts. Rehab/detox clinics…Abortion Clinics. Ultimate ultimate fighting tournaments.

Well this did give me an excuse to air a fantasy I’ve been contemplating for months now, inspired by watching the new documentary series Whale Wars on Animal Planet as well as the continuing success of the pirates off the coast of Somalia.

In Whale Wars, a hard-core eco group harrasses Japanese whalers in the Antarctic using non-lethal weapons (stink bombs. slippery powder and propeller-fouling gear) and the Media.  And we all know the story of the plucky Somali pirates, who continue to manage to kidnap major trade vessels under the eyes of the world’s navies, and successfully get paid handsome randsoms with apparently little repercussion.

I was thinking how nice it would be to buy one of those new super-quiet diesel subs the Chinese are putting out, create a base on an uninhabited volcanic island in the S. Pacific, and go around sinking eco-criminals such as whalers, poachers and shark-finners around the planet.  But how much more fun, I thought, if Patri were actually able to establish numerous floating platforms just out of national waters (and protection), and stock them chockablock full of Libertarian assholes…can you picture a more worthy torpedo target?

Girls don’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.  Boys don’t let gays into the clubhouse.

Boys clear-cut and sell off donated wilderness areas.  Girls sell tasty cookies.

Girls pay their own way.  Boys take government hand-outs.

Sugar & spice versus slugs and snails.  Pretty clear-cut if you ask me.

We’d like to offer this chart in case Sesame Street is looking for new material.

“Can you find it, kids? I know you can.”

Statue built in Tikrit in honor of GW Bush, or rather, Bush’s shoe thrower.

For the last two years I’ve been begging the Dem majority leadership in the Senate to use every tool to smackdown the vile Repugs.  It looks like Harry Reid or somebody in the leadership has finally grown a pair and is playing hardball!  I’d like to see more of this!  Somebody should fly former California legislative leader Willie Brown in do D.C. to run a series of seminars on how to partisan smackdowns!

I never bought the whole ‘bipartisanship’ BS – after all, most of the Repugs are holdovers from the ‘date rape’ bipartisanship of the 4 years prior.  However, by the same token, this new WWF spirit needs to be tempered with actual change in the way Congress does other business.  In other words, we need to see an end to the corrupting special interest lobbying, pork barrel politics and earmarks buried in other legislation.   Otherwise, we’ve just substituted one set of venal pigs for another.

What with the election & new administration and all, as well as more work required to keep gainfully employed, I’ve been neglecting posts on ‘green’ subjects.  It’s depressing anyway, as some of the latest news reflects.

Although the chorus of ignoramus global warming doubters continues unabated, the news from the fact-based community is very bleak: scientists have confirmed that the Antarctic is warming significantly, its ice sheets melting far more rapidly than expected, a trend that will most likely kill off the Emperor penguins much as the established trend in the Arctic is doing in the polar bears.

The warming-driven acidification of the oceans is now demonstrably adversely affecting coral growth, a horrible development as coral reefs are critical to nurturing grounds for numerous oceanic species (including many already depleted commercial fish).

It galls me to admit it, but the vile Repugs have got a point – the ‘stimulus’ bill is overladen with pork.  It’s just another bloated omnibus spending bill like the Repugs spewed out over the last 8 years, business as usual.  

I don’t buy the complete Foxublican spin, that pork items such fixing State Department computer systems or cleaning up the National Mall won’t create or preserve jobs – of course they will!

But the nation is looking for national stimulus, targeted at Joe Sixpack’s home town, not at the offices, home towns and garages of our overpaid politicos.

Likewise, while I am a firm believer in better healthcare, familiy planning services, and child care for our troops, these items have little or nothing to do with stimulus; our fat & lazy politicos should get off their asses and create and debate legislation specifically for these items.

The stimulus package must stick to core infrastructure investment and development, those things that the venal Repugs of yore were too corrupt and stupid to address, such as improving our transit systems (rail, road & bridge), investing in local, regional and national mass transit, assisting local governments in mixed-use, urban infill development, modernizing our archaic national ‘grid’ and making it distributed, renewable green-energy ready.

This type of spending would cover the U.S. and provide local and regional jobs from unskilled to professional type.  It would address the neglect of previous misAdministrations, mitigate future disasters (bridge collapses?   train derailments?), and start moving the economy to sustainable jobs (wind & solar energy, local business in mixed-use development).

And it would only be a start.

On the flip side, somebody should tell the vile Repugs to shut-the-fuck-up about more tax cuts.   We don’t need to repeal the AMT, we need to adjust the salary limits to account for decades of inflation.  We should rescind the Shrubyian tax cuts for the rich.  In fact, to my first point, all the tax shit should be stripped out of this bill, and the lazy-ass politicos should deal with these tax change issues in a separate bill.  While ramming the changes down the throats of Boner and his cronies.

Now is not the time for timid half-measures, or more groveling to Billo the Clown and Limp Boy.  Nor is it time for Congressional pork barrel politics.  If Obama doesn’t get in front of this cart, he’ll find himself being dragged behind it in 4 years, watching his squandered mandate transform into Shrubyian approval ratings.

True to his campaign promises, Obama is moving ahead with his broke-ass ‘surge’ in Afghanistan.  And Shrubya left-over Gates will continue lobbying militarily ineffective, civilian-killing missiles into Waziristan. 

I’ll give them credit in that they understand that the real ‘insurgency’ is in Waziristan, where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders are laughing at us, fueling the insurgency with drug and weapons smuggling while living large in their Wazi safe houses.  I’m sure they are also aware that the Pakistani government has zero military control over the region (having gotten their asses kicked by the Waziban several times over the last few years).   And finally it should be apparent to them that unless the Al-Waziban are defeated on the ground, the insurgency will continue.

So Obama is indicating that he is signing up for a long-term ‘containment’ quagmire, hoping that by keeping some critical mass of troops in the country and by blowing up the occasional Waziri household, he’ll be able to prop up the Karzai government at a low-enough cost that people will ignore the conflict.

Not much of a plan.  NATO troops will still die.  The conflict will gradually heat up.  The missiles will undermine both Obama’s new pro-Muslim ‘messaging’ as Al-Jezeera airs pics of dead kids, and the Pakistani central government (such as it is).  It will drain money out of the economic reconstruction.  And guess what?  We haven’t withdrawn from Iraq yet!  Who knows what might develop there that could slow down or halt our withdrawal?

Long-time Needlenose readers may remember that while I opposed the Iraqi debacle on both ethical and practical grounds, I largely opposed the A’stan invasion largely because it was a fucking stupid idea – there is no way we can prop up Karzai if we can’t stem the flow of Hashshashin and weapons from the hostile and anarchic Waziristan.

Obama would be better off biting the bullet now and starting the withdrawal when he has significant political capital, rather than at the end of his 2nd term, when his legacy will be tainted by the abject failure of his escalation policy.

With all the hubbub about the inauguration, it took me a few days to catch up with overviews by Reuters and Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post regarding the coming provincial elections in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq.

Visiting areas where various factions are strong, Shadid interviews supporters of Moqtada as-Sadr in Nasiriyah and notes that they also govern the province of Maysan (whose capital is Amarah).  Further, he notes dissatisfaction with the religious parties of the national government in Basra, where as Reuters explains, “the Fadhila Party is in charge.”

All this was in the back of my mind when I read yesterday’s Reuters story about the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison, and caught these passages:

[Deputy Justice Minister Busho] Ibrahim said the newly renovated prison would house just 13,000-14,000 prisoners, including 3,500 with long sentences who would be gathered from all over Iraq. . . .

“This prison will solve many problems for us — huge problems,” he said.  “We are suffering from inflation of the prison population in Nassiriya, Basra, Amara and some Baghdad prisons. All those people will be brought to this prison.”

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the places Ibrahim described as having overflowing prisons were pockets of opposition political support.  Or maybe it just falls under the heading of how the national government is “preparing” for the upcoming elections.

Via the news pane at TPM, the Wall Street Journal‘s Washington, D.C., blog reports this afternoon:

The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.

But… challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”

Kind of nice of him to remember that, isn’t it?  But wait, there’s more:

… other Democrats echoed the sentiment. As he left the White House, House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina was asked about Republican complaints that Democrats aren’t listening to what their GOP colleagues have to say. “We’re responding to the American people,” he said. “The American people didn’t listen to them too well during the election.”

Good for Obama and the Democrats.   A clear test is being applied by the GOP and the Beltway establishment to see whether the new administration has the stomach to make “change” more than just a slogan.

If Obama & Co. define bipartisanship as simply accepting whatever crumbs the Republicans will allow them, they’re doomed.  If, however, they define it as understanding the center of where the country (rather than the D.C. elite) is politically, then pushing to accomplish what needs to be done regardless of partisan obstacles, they might be able to pull it off.

When Obama proclaimed in his inaugural address, “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them,” my reaction was, well, fine, but he better bring the earth-moving equipment with him — because his opponents aren’t going to believe the ground has shifted until they see it firsthand.

Less than a week into his administration, it’s already become time for Obama to back up his claim.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)