Politics

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

By Kevin on Thursday, December 9 2010

A few nights ago (but I just watched tonight) Jon Stewart had General Hugh Shelton on for the interview segment. It went long and they put the full interview on the web (and in the iTunes episode, which is how I watch them.)

One of the topics they discussed is Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT). General Shelton was against repeal of DADT right now, saying it needed to be studied a bit more. His reasoning for saying it needed a bit more study was because the Marine Infantry and Army Infrantry, when surveyed, were the most likely to say it would affect unit cohesion. And because the infantry units are the core foundation those arms of the military DADT should not be repealed until further study into unit cohesion in the infrantry is complete.

I think the General is wrong, but we'll get to that in a minute. I just want to say that General Shelton had the best argument for a delay in this whole moronic debate. He had a reason for the delay, he had facts from the study, he presented it well. Meanwhile John McCain is over in the senate acting like he's terrified of the gays and desperatly grasping at straws for reasons to delay (the economy was the last reason. Are you effin serious?)

The reason I think General Shelton is wrong is because he's really arguing against gays being in the military at all. DADT doesn't keep gays out, but it forces those gays that do serve to lie (and lies of omission are still lies), and it creates taboo subjects for military to talk about. When people in military units are keeping secrets, I'm pretty sure that has an affect on unit cohesion, right now. Delaying the repeal just keeps the lies coming.

Other affects of DADT affect the security of the nation, making gay service personal keep secrets just gives more ways to blackmail. Being able to start a witch hunt against anyone by making implications they're gay is another good way to threaten unit cohesion. All around DADT is a bad policy. It was the delay needed to study the affects of gays being in the military, and it's pretty clear that except when they're hounded and hunted down, or can't take lying to their fellow soldiers anymore, it works out pretty well. Take away the lies.

Interview from the Daily Show (DADT part starts at 11:20):

Hiroshima & Nagasaki - A biased opinion

By Kevin on Friday, August 6 2010

Today is August 6th, 2010. The 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. In 3 days it will be the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Many claim these bombings should not have taken place, or been done in different locations, specifically that a demonstration on an empty island should have been done first. I disagree, I think that these bombings were necessary both to end the at-the-time current conflict, and to provide a warning to future generations exactly what it was we had developed.

I'm not unbiased in my opinion. My father and his family were held in Japanese concentration camps. My grandfather and many of my older uncles were forced into Japanese slave labor, mainly in mining. My grandfather and several uncles died in the mines. I remain convinced that greatly shortening the war saved several of the lives of other family members.

Did the bombings really shorten the war? I think the evidence is pretty clear on this. The Japanese didn’t give up anything without losing a lot of blood over it. Every island in the island hopping strategy was a fierce battle. I think how much worse the battle in the Pacific was is just coming out now, with HBO’s “The Pacific” being a good example.

Six months of continual fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities had killed 500,000 people, with little apparent result to the Allies. The atomic bombs killed around 123,000 in the first day and 2x total. How many more months and more hundreds of thousands would’ve been necessary to bring the war to a conclusion? Would an invasion by the allies been required, how many lives would that have cost? Great Britain never surrendered to an aerial bombardment alone, would the Japanese have done so?

Would selecting a different target have had less of an impact? Would a demonstration have proved effective? We can never know for sure, but I think the indicators are pretty good that the emotional impact the bombs produced would’ve been greatly diminished.

Many say that more military targets should’ve been selected. World War I and World War II put an end to a clear delineation between military targets and civilian targets. All major cities were housing to military manufacturing centers, ports and rail hubs are vital to the logistics of war. Major military bases are located near cities. Hiroshima had a number of military bases by it, including the headquarters of the army in charge of the defense of southern Japan. Nagasaki was a major military manufacturing center and seaport. I don’t think locations of significant military importance, but not near a civilian city would have worked; they may not have even existed.

Finally, I think there is another aspect to these bombings that is important to consider – their impact on future generations. Serving as a warning to future generations is never a justification for using wepons of mass destruction. But these bombings brought the very real power of them to the forefront. If they hadn’t been used in WW 2, I’m convinced they would’ve been used in a later war – with far more powerful bombs, and with far less true military significance. Demonstrations just aren’t visceral enough for this. The first hydrogen bomb was detonated at Bikini Atoll. This bomb was orders of magnitude larger than the atomic bombs used on Japan. It pretty much wiped out an entire island and produced radioactive contamination over many more islands. Yet when speaking of the dangers of weapons of mass destruction we point to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The dead of Nagasaki and Hiroshima must be honored and remembered. The enormous power and ease of use of our greatest weapons must not be forgotten. But I remain unconvinced there was another or better way of achieving what was needed, as quickly and with a lower cost in lives (on either side).

We haven't learned

By Kevin on Monday, July 19 2010
one comment

Argh. I wrote this back in 2006:

More Analysis Not More Data

Information gathering is certainly needed, but that isn’t what we’ve been lacking. We’ve been lacking good analysis of the information we do have. Why the administration insists it needs the ability to spy on anyone/anywhere without warrants when they can’t even analyze the current information they have is beyond me.

Now the Washington Post has an indepth look at this building and building and building of intelligence agencies to suck in more data but not actually analyze it. Complete waste of time that is just waiting to explode into huge scandal of abuse and cover-ups.

Top Secret America

Global Warming -- asking the wrong questions

By Kevin on Tuesday, December 15 2009

NPR ran a story on the Copenhagen meeting on climate change this morning and talked to Bjørn Lomborg. Lomborg is not a climate denier (those that refuse to believe that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming and that if it does the human contribution doesn't matter.)

Lomborg's stance is that climate change is a minor issue compared to disease and poverty in the world, and that money spent on trying to curb CO2 emissions is better spent on disease and poverty. I don't agree with this, but do agree that this should be looked at -- risk/benefit analysis should always be done on problems and potential solutions.

The problem I have is that the NPR reporter's question to Lomborg's economic view of the problem was "what is the economic value of the last polar bear?"

This is idiotic. Humans are selfish. Sure we care about polar bears, but ask most people what the economic value of the last polar bear is and you'll probably get an answer of "0". Same as the value of the last Dodo and the last Passenger Pigeon. If you want humans to care about saving polar bears, or taking action on climate change, you have to relate why it's important to them. Polar bears being cute, or it sad to watch them swim for miles to search for food is good for many people, but not enough people to really make an effort.

The real question for Lomberg is -- "what is the economic cost of expanding malaria carrying mosquitos by 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%?" or "what is the economic cost of increasing the number of droughts in the US by x%" or so on. These are questions with real meaning to humans.

These of course might be offset by "Increased CO2 increases plant growth, what is the economic benefit of this?" (this isn't necessarily a benefit though, the increased CO2 benefits weeds as well, does this mean we have to spend more on weed killers?)

Until reports on climate change start showing the actual costs to humanity we're never going to get past this low support for climate issues.

More analysis not more data

By Kevin on Wednesday, March 22 2006

Read stories about what we knew about the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11 and most of them read like this:

Moussaoui Trial

Over and over again it is shown that red flags were thrown up about people taking airline training, interested in flying but not take-offs/landings, etc….

Pretty clear that we had the information in front of us that something was going on but that we failed to connect the dots and see what was being planned.

Unfortunately since 9/11 all the administration wants to do is gather more dots, not actually spend time putting the dots together. More dots actually clouds the pictures, especially when most of the dots gathered aren’t relevant to the picture.

Information gathering is certainly needed, but that isn’t what we’ve been lacking. We’ve been lacking good analysis of the information we do have. Why the administration insists it needs the ability to spy on anyone/anywhere without warrants when they can’t even analyze the current information they have is beyond me. Add in the bogus information gathered from library records and internet search data and e-mail sniffing and the system is going to bog down in unuseful data and miss the next plans again!

And now a miracle occurs

By Kevin on Saturday, September 10 2005

There is an episode of South Park where the Underpants Gnomes explain business to the boys. The Gnomes have a business plan that consists of 3 steps:

Step 1 – Collect Underpants
Step 2 – ???
Step 3 – PROFIT!

Unfortunately nobody knows exactly what step 2 is, only that it leads to profit, and that it will occur.

Underpants Gnomes

Equally unfortunately the more I observe the operation of the Bush administration the more I think their planning is equally inept. Their planning for Iraq seemed to be:

1. Defeat Army!
2. ???
3. Democracy!

When they got to step 2 they just kind of assumed we’d be the heroes and liberators of the populance and ignored any non neo-conservative planning that had been done, and the neo-conservatives had done none of their own planning other than protecting the oil ministry. So while the military stood around with its thumb up its butt (not the military’s fault, they aren’t supposed to do anything without orders) the looters take over and all the good will and momentum we had build up faded away.

The plan for disaster recovery seems to be:
1. Catastrophe!
2. ???
3. Medals for everyone!

Again, no real plan after the very first initial stages. Mostly just standing around waiting.

I’m not sure why they are so bad at this. Sometimes I think they’ve watched too many after school specials where, at the last minute, something miraculous occurs and everything turns out ok in an hour.

Other times I think they’ve got too much religion. A little praryer and everything will turn out ok. I guess they’ve forgotten that “God helps those that help themselves.” We’ve got to exert some effort, it’s not like prayer takes anything away from physical exertions.

Then I get totally cynical. FEMA seems to be doing a pretty good job elsewhere, New Orleans is a democratic strong hold in Louisana, all of Bush’s appointments are based on political favors, not ability, maybe this is how politicalized disaster recovery works — your “friends” get help, your “enemies” don’t. I don’t really belive this, but to be honest nothing freaking surprises me about the Bush administration anymore.

Why I'm not voting for George W. Bush

By Kevin on Sunday, October 31 2004

you probably assume from the domain name for this web site that i’m some sort leftist liberal that would never vote republican, but the truth is the domain name is more of a joke, and I have voted republican in the past.

I voted George H. W. Bush and on other occassions in lower races. I’m a big believer in split government, the more congress, the president and the judiciary argue the less gets done and the less governement that gest done the better off we all are.

Of course, from the statement that I believe in less government one would assume I would vote straight rebublican, after all they claim to be for a smaller government. Unfortunately I’ve found this claim by the republicans to be bogus. The republicans aren’t for smaller governement, neither are the democrats, republicians are just for increasing the size of different areas of government than the democrats are (quick name a republican president that actually reduced the total number of government employees or spent less money at the end of their presidence than at the beginning.) So where the democrats might decrease the size of military and increase the size of social services departments, the republicans are for the opposite, decrease the size of social services and increase the size of the military. Unless of course you’re GW Bush, in which case you pass everything that’s presented to you (by a republican congress no less) AND ask for more and more money, AND cut taxes. All of which adds up to a fiscal irresponsibility that makes the typical American’s credit card addiction seem minor. Perhaps the President should enroll in a Consumer Credit Counseling service.

My next complaint with Republicans in general is their claim that they fight for the freedoms of American’s. Frequently they point to the “political correctness” crap of some left wing people, especially on college campuses. The republicans are raising an old issue from the 90’s that rarely occurs any more. Additionaly they seem to miss the fact that the supposedly leftist organization the ACLU fought these issues (the ACLU’s 1994 article on campus regulations about hate speech: http://www.aclu.org/StudentsRights/StudentsRights.cfm?ID=9004&c=159). Finally in a completely hypocritical turn about school students today are frequently being expelled or punished for wearing anti-republican clothing: http://www.aclu.org/LesbianGayRights/LesbianGayRights.cfm?ID=15675&c=106, http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeech.cfm?ID=13913&c=87. And yet at the same time this leftist organization continues to fight for pro-republican issues too: http://www.aclu.org/StudentsRights/StudentsRights.cfm?ID=15680&c=159. Not to mention all the anti-free speech proposals/amendments the right likes to offer around campaign times such as outlawing flag burning.

And again the president has managed to take a typical hypocritical republican stance that the left is anti-free speech and taken it to the extreme. Expressing any opinion against the president brands you, at worst a terrorist, at best anti-american. Simply to attend a campaign rally requires signing a loyalty oath and wearing a Kerry/Edwards shirt will get you kicked out. So much for free speech.

Yet the anti-free speech stance of the Bush administration is nothing compared to the load of crap the Patriot Act put on the American citizens. The 9/11 commission has shown that the failure of the intelligence community in picking up on the plan to hijack planes and run them into the world trade centers was not in the low end finding out significant information, it was in properly analyzing and disseminating that information. So of course the response of the administration was to pass the Patriot Act which simply focused on making easier to spy and gather information about Americans, while at the same time removing checks and balances to ensure these expanded powers are used properly. Simply take a look at one of the first uses of the powers — Tom Delay asking the FAA to hunt down a plane of democratic Texas state senators that had fled the state to prevent a quorum being reached on the Texas redistricting plan (which was then thrown out by the courts anyway….) Oh heck no, wasting Homeland Security personnel on a personal political mission when they should be working on terrorist issues is not an abuse of power.

Additionally I think the Patriot Act will actually reduce the effectiveness in finding the next terrorist plot. In radio systems there is a term called the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), the signal is the part you want to receive, the noise is the unwanted static you want to get rid of. The more signal the better the reception and the easier it is to understand the signal. The Patriot Act will increase the amount of total documents to be analyzed, but assuming the amount of terrorist activity remains the same (an unlikely proposition at the current time in the US as I imagine most terrorists still in the country are currently trying to disappear until some of the heat blows over) then all the Patriot Act has done is increase the amount of noise (or non-terrorist documents) that have to be analyzed.

Additionally neither the Patriot Act, nor the president, has done little to increase the number of analysts, or provide methods for improving analysis (i.e. bringing on additional translators). All this adds up to is a set of laws more likely to be abused for personal gain while making actual findings of terrorists less likely. Yes, the democrats did vote for the Patriot Act, but it is the Republicans that are currently offering extensions to the Patriot Act that extend it’s problems not solve them.

Next up on my list of issues with GW Bush is his appointments. He appointed John Ashcroft as Attorney General. This is they guy who’s department has written such upholding of the American way memos as how torturing prisoners is OK. As passé as the comparison is, this guy is a closet fascist. As a resident of Missouri I’m one of the people that voted for the dead Mel Carnahan over Ashcroft. Only to have the guy appointed Attorney General.

Then there is Dick Cheney, who’s campaign methodology is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt and scare you into voting for him. I’m not going to cower because he wants to tell scary bedtime stories.

Donald Rumsfeld who apparently thinks winning a war ends when the other side surrenders and then magically the defeated country will turn into a right-wing democracy over night. Way to go.

Thomas Ridge, Homeland Security. I’ve no real problems with Ridge, other than he seems to raise the terror alert level everytime there is bad news for the President. I don’t know if he’s trying to pull attention away from the bad news, or like Cheney just enjoys sowing the seed of FUD.

I think my primary problem with George W. Bush is his whole attitude towards the presidency. Actually I think it’s his whole attitude towards leadership. I think Bush wants to be in charge of things, but he doesn’t actually want to do the actual work involved in being in charge. Look at all the businesses he was invovled in, all failed, needing to be bailed out by daddies rich friends, except one. The one was when he was in charge of the Texas Ranger’s baseball team. And that job just inolved him being the front man, the glad hander. He wasn’t making real day-to-day business decisions.

This is the same way he does the presidency. Before 9/11 he spent over 40% of his time on vacation. All reports of his mangement style seem to indicate he surrounds himself with yes men and doesn’t want to hear any negative news. He refuses to read newspapers, claiming they’re “filters”. That leaves him with his news coming from the biggest filter of all — the government bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are great at passing good news up the line while covering up bad news. This means the President hears only good news from underlings, while bad news is covered up until it explodes. The end result is an uninformed President that can’t troubleshoot problems, only react to bad news that comes out at just the wrong times.

In 2000 Bush ran on a policy of not being a nation builder. I guess that’s one promise he kept — since 9/11 he’s invaded 2 countries but failed to build anything successful in either. Afghanistan is back in control of the warlords that ran the place into the ground (making way for the Taliban to take over) after the Russians were driven out. Afghanistan is back to providing a majority of the opium for the United States. Iraq is even worse off. Way to go Mr. President.

The Subservient President

By Kevin on Wednesday, August 4 2004

Yeah, yeah, the subservient chicken was all the rage and now the subservient president is the cute site of the day. but for some reason i find it amazingly entertaining.

Click for the subservient president

Things I’ve found he’ll respond to:

count to ten
give the bird
dance for me
tell me a secret
pray
kill reagan (actually i think anything with reagan in it does this)
vote kerry
get osama
do a magic trick (same as get osama)
how can i win the war on terror (same as osama)
find wmd
give speech
raise money
laura
drink
what should I do to the prisoner

Reagan (now with 100% correct spelling)

By Kevin on Sunday, June 6 2004

Ronald Reagan was the first president I paid attention too. I wasn’t old enough to vote for him, but I was old enough to begin paying attention to politics. The fact that I rode with my father to a bus stop in downtown kc to catch a city bus to go to high school, and that my father listened to NPR’s Morning Edition the whole way probably had a lot to do with this (why I turned out more to the left than my right-wing father is unknown.)

I never liked Reagan. Listening to him, I always thought I was being sold a bill of goods. This was even further cemented during the Iran-Contra trials where I thought everybody was pretty much lying to cover Reagan’s involvement. Or at best if everything was true, then Reagan wasn’t in control of his government, and couldn’t remember anything.

Listening to all the retrospectives playing his famous speeches, he was indeed a good speaker and his voice was much stronger than I remember from the end of his presidency.

I think about the only thing he did right was to recognize that the time was right to apply the final push to the Soviet Union. To claim he brought down the Soviet Union on his own is a big mistake, a concept I think the current Administration believes and has led to a extremely bad foreign policy. Reagan’s policy worked because of the years of containment policies of past administrations. Reagan applied a well placed, well timed final blow — but it wouldn’t have worked without the hundreds of blows (economic or otherwise) in the past that had weakened the Soviets.

[updated – nothing says “I’m an idiot” more than misspelling a president’s name. Except maybe when it’s your father that points it out.]

Electronic Voting

By Kevin on Saturday, March 13 2004

As big a tech geek as I am, I’ve always distrusted electronic voting systems. Especially the current ones being sold. And internet voting is right out.

Voting has some particular requirements. Voting requires both authentication and anonymity. Authentication because you don’t want people voting that aren’t supposed to. Anonymity because you don’t want to be able to track a vote back to the person that cast it.

Openness of the process is another requirement. Voters should feel that the process of voting, moving votes to the counting location, and counting votes is reliable and trustworthy. In any well designed system (computer or not) the weakest link is almost always the people involved. So the system should have checks in place to help keep the people involved honest.

Accuracy, of course, is a huge requirment.

Speed would be nice, but isn’t a huge necessity.

The problems with current e-voting systems are not limited to just having devices that don’t print out a physical record of the vote, although that is a key factor in the process i’m about to describe.

So here’s how I think e-voting should work:

authentication must be kept seperate from the voting booths and the voting system. The current system (in Missouri, at least) is a table you identify yourself at and are issued a ballot that you then go to the voting machine with to cast your vote. This seperation should be maintained in any new system. You should NOT authenticate yourself to the voting machine, authentication MUST be seperate from the vote itself.

the electronic voting machine itself can be of several varieties, touch screen probably being the most flexible. The device MUST include a device for issuing a human-readable paper ballot. However, I do think multiple methods of encoding the paper ballot should be used. For example, in addition to the human readable ballot a 2d barcode can be printed at the bottom for a machine countable ballot. So I think recounts would be handled in the following order: * Initally transmitted count * Machine count of bar code on printed ballots * Count by people of human readable porton of printed ballots

printed paper ballots are collected in locked voting boxes, as the system is done now for regular ballots.

voting machines can transmit data back to the central location, but it must not do this over the internet (so the phone system would most likely be used.) In addition a method of preventing bogus machines from reporting data must be instituted (one way that comes to mind is issueing each machine a key that encrypts and authenticates the data in transmission. The keys would be changed for each vote.)

the central location would have methods in place of protecting the count on the collection system. Some simple steps include — no connection of the system to the internet, or even any system of remote control (so support would always have to be on-site). Don’t keep data in databases that can be manipulated right on the box. Robust unalterable logging (i.e. to a printer and/or write-only cd-rom)

One thing I didn’t mention was the software used in the machine. How do we know we can trust that? Although I prefer the software be open source (preferrably GPL), I don’t think it has to be required. What does have to be required is the source code MUST be available for review by any that request it. It can still be proprietary and protected by copyrights, but most be reviewable by any that wish to.

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