The Great Divider

Today's New York Times Editorial highlights a trend in President Bush's speechs that makes me queasy:

In Mr. Bush’s world, there are only two kinds of Americans: those who are against terrorism, and those who somehow are all right with it. Some Americans want to win in Iraq and some don’t. There are Americans who support the troops and Americans who don’t support the troops. And at the root of it all is the hideously damaging fantasy that there is a gulf between Americans who love their country and those who question his leadership.

This rhetorical device, that somehow anyone who doesn't agree with him is at best unpatriotic, and at worst, treasonous, is extremely dangerous and divisive.  While Bush can't actually produce any of these straw men who want the U.S. to fail, he always attempts to make it seem like anyone who questions his actions or policies is anti-American.

What really frightens me, is that he might actually believe what he's saying.  For if, his political opponents support terror, as he insinuates, then what's the next step? 

If Mr. Bush truly believes that his political opponents want to to encourage terrorists, want the United States to fail in Iraq, and that want our soldiers to die, then why isn't he imprisoning them?

Are we a democracy or a dictatorship?  Do we treasure the free exchange of ideas and differing opinions, or are those who would dare to question him going to be declared enemies of the state?

The Beginning of the End of America

Keith Olbermann continues to be one of the loudest voices opposing this administration, and the damage done to the writ of Habeas Corpus:

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens "unlawful enemy combatants" and ship them somewhere--anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare you an "unlawful enemy combatant" and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant"--exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

Midwestern Mythmaking in Iowa

Since Jim Nussle, our crappy congressman, is now trying to be our next crappy governor, that has left our congressional seat open, and a really nasty campaign is now underway to fill it.  The non-partisan Factcheck.org weighs in with reality checks on the campaign commercials of our two lead candidates, which are both bad, though I'd argue that Whalen's (R) commercials are worse than Braley's (D).  An out-of-context quote is pretty shitty, but calling someone a Communist and attempting to make a pre-9/11 defense budget strategy seem like a current plan to gut the military is prime Republican sleaze.  And, frankly, a candidate has no control over who "endorses" him.

So, I hereby form a group called "The Coalition to Force Our Children to Be Gay Atheist Terrorist FemiNazis" and I'm endorsing Mike Whalen as our choice for Congress.

If yogurt is outlawed, only outlaws will have yogurt.

My wife muses on the ramifications of disease-fighting yogurts.

Hydrogen: A Red Herring

While I'm glad that President Bush has stopped pimping for Big Oil long enough to endorse hydrogen as an alternative energy strategy, I have to point out that hydrogen is not an energy source. How do you get hydrogen? Well, that's simple, you run electricity through water and collect the hydrogen, right? Then, you burn the hydrogen in your car. How much energy do you get from burning it? Less than you used to separate it from the water in the first place, quoth Wikipedia:

It is currently very difficult to obtain hydrogen gas without expending energy in the process. The process of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen using electrolysis consumes large amounts of energy. It has been calculated that it takes 1.4 joules of electricity to produce 1 joule of hydrogen (Pimentel, 2002). If oil or gases are used to provide this energy, fossil fuels are consumed, forming pollution and nullifying the value of using a fuel cell. It would be more efficient to use fossil fuel directly

That said, I think hydrogen could be useful to power our cars, as long as we use nuclear, solar, or wind energy to get it from our water, with nuclear making the most sense. So now, to power our fleet of hydrogen cars, we just need a bunch of new nuclear plants, which most "green" activists won't abide. So now what?