Monthly Archives: March 2007

Food, Fuel and Fools

Corn - food or fuel?
/. has an interesting article.

The US Dept. of Energy is stating that corn based fuel is not the answer. From the article, “I’m not going to predict what the price of corn is going to do, but I will tell you the future of biofuels is not based on corn,” U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said in an interview. Output of U.S. ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, is expected to jump in 2007 from 5.6 billion gallons per year to 8 billion gpy, as nearly 80 bio-refineries sprout up.
Slashdot | Dept. of Energy Rejects Corn Fuel Future

What is so interesting about this is that this severely truth-challenged administration has issued an opinion which is harmonious with modern scientific and environmental thinking.

Meanwhile, The New York Times has an article today highlighting farmers’ intention to plant more corn this year than at any time since WWII, mostly to support ethanol production.

Then we have Fidel Castro lashing out yesterday in an editorial, his first since his surgery last July, blaming the US and it’s biofuel plans for exaserbating world hunger:

Castro said more than 3 billion people in the world were condemned to die prematurely of hunger or thirst from plans by his ideological foe, the United States, to convert foodstuffs like corn into fuel for cars.
Fidel Castro writes first editorial since surgery – washingtonpost.com

Corn based ethanol is a losing proposition, as it yields little or no more energy than it takes to produce, as opposed to cellulostic sources, such as Bush’s famous switchgrass or sugar cane. Problem is that Iowa, with its first in the nation caucuses has managed to preserve the sanctity of ethanol for many years due to the quadrennial panderfest of Presidential politics.

So, be prepared to see the US maintain its fascination with corn-based biofules for the foreseeable future while other countries find true efficiencies in other materials, such as Brazil with sugar cane.

Epilog: By the close of trading corn futures had dropped by 5% and the stock of Archer Daniels Midland (the largest biofuels producer) had fallen.

My whack neighborhood

Here’s a couple of photos from FortuneLand, to show you, the able reader, just how strange real life can be.
Chimera
See what happened here? Some fool prefers your average conifer to the locally prevalent deciduous trees, so they denuded a friendly pine and strung its balls (as it were) from this lowly bush. So they have unwittingly created a kind of hybrid tree, a chimera if you will. How insanely modern.

Fashion!
Here we see what happens when elitism goes horribly awry. These people have obviously spent a lot of money to inhabit this expensive lakeside home, and to purchase formidable statuary, and even more to have these very fashionable leather frocks custom made for that statuary. See how nicely they fit? Multiple fittings cost money too, you know. Let’s applaud this show of taste on Milwaukee’s East Side.

Donald, say it aint so

>Imagine this head bald<
http://www.hossli.com/2005_portfolio/images/DJT-Headshot-JPEG.jpg
“A lot of people want to see it shaved,” says Trump of hair

Irrelevance is a theme in FortuneLand of late. Pawn sees no point in even bothering to document the latest imbroglios and revelations coming out of the Bush administration, so his attention has drifted to irrelevant celebrities. In his latest act of radical irrelevance, Donald Trump has made a bet with another vastly irrelevant chap, World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon. Whomever loses must lose their locks as well.

Couldn’t happen to two less relevant guys, or two worse heads of hair.

Trump has 50 percent chance of losing hair – CNN.com

Epilog: Trump won McMahon lost

Gonzales and a case for Ignorance

A new week has begun and Attorney General Gonzales must be feeling very claustrophobic. He is slowly, but increasingly hemmed in by Department of Justice documents, which are limiting his options to reinterpret statements he made in the past. An examination of the most recent Department of Justice documents, disclosed on Friday, shows Gonzales and his aides held a meeting on the Nov. 27, to discuss the dismissal of the U.S. Attorneys. Sen. Arlen Specter, a ranking Republican stated the documents “appear to contradict” Gonzales denials of participating in discussions involving the dismissals. On another front, Tasia Scolinos, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, confirmed Gonzales was in attendance at the Nov. 27 meeting where the topic was the dismissals of U.S Attorneys, but that is not inconsistent with his past statements. Sen. Specter and Ms. Soclinos statements are offering a little wiggle room for Gonzales, by suggesting the problem of Gonzales credibility may lie in what was meant by ‘participation’ and ultimately by the nature of information he received.

 

It is easy to dismiss these statements as nothing more than a public relations campaign to shore up any support Gonzales might have left. But there is a far ranging defense being floated here. One based on the idea someone, presumably in White House, decided on a policy and ordered Gonzales to have it carried out and he in turned farmed out the responsibility to a subordinate. In this case, the subordinate was Kyle Sampson, who at the time was his chief of staff. Gonzales had such faith and trust in Sampson’s abilities, and integrity, the task was given without conditions or guidelines. Sampson had a free hand to operate as he saw fit, with only the most cursory supervision by his boss, Gonzales. This is where the wiggle room for defense comes into play. By allowing Sampson to plan and execute the dismissal policy with such independence, it guaranteed limited access to the information, mainly to those directly involved. Gonzales can claim information he received from Sampson dealt with the progress of implementing the policy, and nothing more. An allusion to the old, “If I had only known” defense, where ignorance is fundamental.

 

While appealing to ignorance, Gonzales may avoid any charges of wrongdoing. At most he can be accused of being inept and having extremely bad judgment, grounds enough for congress to ask him to move on. Without documents or testimony by others in the government to clearly contradict his claim of ignorance, the defense works. The real problem is, a limited success of this defense allows for a chain of ignorance to reach high into government and give other officials wiggle room as well. Best for congress to end ignorance before it spreads and the absolution for all wrongdoing it will grant.

The myth of the CEO Presidency

question-mark.jpg

During the 2000 Presidential campaign we were told that G. W. Bush would approach the presidency as a CEO, he would be the first with an MBA to hold the office, and would bring to it the discipline of a business leader. That the people bought in to this to any extent speaks more to the salesmanship of Karl Rove and the echo chamber of the main-stream media than it does to any sound reasoning.
The myth of the CEO Presidency has a corollary, that Bush was a good businessman. He wasn’t. With the exception of his ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise he was a failure. But in his involvement with that team we can see the kind of business acumen he brought to the White House: cronyism.
Bush was supported and ultimately bailed out in the Rangers by cronies in much the same way that cronies have supported and bailed him out in his Presidency. Time and time again his administration has been marked not by shrewed, decisive actions of a Chief Executive but by the old-boy-network inculcated in college fraternities. From Brownie at FEMA to Gonzales at DOJ, we see the same effect time after time.
An important book which shows just how devastating the effects of cronyism are is Babylon By Bus, by Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann. A chronicle of the radical adventures of two buddies who decide to go to Baghdad on a lark to see if they can get involved in the early days of the American viceroyship following the cessation of major combat operations. They soon takeover an American administered agency which provides aid to Iraqi NGOs. In between their often hilarious antics and drug and drink fueled adventures there is much pathos as they and the Iraqis and American servicemen they befriend try (often in vain) to make a new functioning civil society.
They are bereft at the treatment of those they see as trying the hardest to improve their lot, and are constantly frustrated by the power that be within the viceroyship; L. Paul Bremer and the National Endowment for Democracy and State Department political hacks. Many of these people were in Iraq not because they had specific skills, but because they had worked on Bush’s campaign, or the campaigns of other influential Republicans.
The inept and ultimately severely damaging decisions made by the CPA (as the viceroyship was commonly called) have left as their lasting legacy a badly broken country in the heart of the most fragile region in world politics today.
George Packer, in a recent New Yorker article “Betrayed: The Iraqis who trusted America the most”, examines in-depth the horrendous treatment of the Iraqi civilians hired as translators and aides by the American military, diplomats and civilians. The same theme rings out here, as well: Incompetent cronies making bad or entirely political decisions, leaving in their wake a frustrated and embittered people.
In the current DOJ/US Attorney scandal we see again the actions of political hack employees breaking an otherwise honorable institution, the US Attorney’s office. Or, as revealed by The Washington Post in this article, we have political hackery at the GSA leading to seminars and video conferences instructing GSA administrators on how they can help Republican candidates in the next elections.
Its time for the shareholders in this democracy, the American people, demand that our CEO President stop filing false quarterly reports and take some responsibility for this disastrous modus operandi.

Sex on the mind

Sex and Chocolate

“Hot chick on cell: Yes! Yes! O-M-G! We are sooo going to have a sex-a-thon! Get the girls together, my place, tonight! [To gawking passengers] Sex and the City -athon. Fucking perverts. W-T-F.”
From Overheard in New York, 3/21/2007

What makes me really sick is how New York now looks like a bad imitation of Sex and the City.
Chris Noth, quoted in the Intelligencer, in New York magazine.

Trouble with New York is that here in London, Sex and the City is a comedy. Over there, it’s a documentary.
Anonymous Londoner quoted in New York magazine.

Consider Yourself Warned
Middle school boy: Yo, you ever seen that show Sex and the City on HBO?
Three friends: No.
Middle school boy: I thought there’d be mad sex on it. There wasn’t any! They should call that show ‘White Bitches Talking.’

–Brooklyn Middle School
via Overheard in New York, Apr 5, 2007