Feature of the Week
Creationism seems to be in the news lately. It must be that the Right Wing, feeling their oats from Bush’s reelection, are trying to move ahead on their pet projects. They apparently see taking shots at the teaching of evolution in schools as low-hanging fruit. How is that? Remember the phrase “think globally, act locally?” What’s more local than education? If you feeling like acting out on one of your right-wing fantasies, going to the local school board has to be one of the more convenient venues available. That being the case, we’re countering it by making it easier to get to the SherWright content lampooning it. Go to the SherWright.com home page, then look to the right for the “Click if you Hate” link to “Creationism.” You can also click if you merely dislike creationism and feel like a laugh!
02.05.05 @ 08:49 PM EDT [link]

The Crawford Diet
We interrupt the regularly scheduled topic arc on Bush’s Bad Bet to bring late-breaking news from the President’s State of the Union Address. Most listeners focused on what Bush had to say about foreign and domestic political policy, but the most significant item to come out of the speech was his exciting new diet plan. Bush is of course very health conscious and is justifiably well known for his rigorous exercise program. He knows that exercise is not enough and has thus equal interest in diets. Of course, even the President can’t get away with enthusing about his diet ideas in the traditional annual address to Congress and the Nation. There might be just too many eyebrows raised, even when that’s what he’d prefer to be talking about (considering that all that other stuff is hard work.) He thus needs to talk about his diet discoveries using codewords. We at SherWright.com are, to be immodest, noted experts in deciphering coded Dittohead speech and are thus in a position to aid the President in sharing his diet discoveries with the Country at large. So here it is: The Crawford Diet. The objective is to deal with weight gained over four years of pigging out. The diet consists of large daily portions of big rolls with layers of butter, ice cream, cheesecake, cherry pie, and a belly-busting slab of prime rib. In addition, the diet makes allowances for impulse eating, properly recognizing that people have cravings. You can thus eat pretty much anything you want in whatever portion size best suits the moment. Indeed, at some point in the future - say 2042 - you may be hungry, so shouldn’t you eat now when you’re sure you can? So how can all of this be a plan for dealing with weight gain? We now come to the deprivation part of the diet: you have to give up broccoli. That’s all there is to it. For readers who do not see the connection between the literal words of the President’s address and his newly-revealed diet, we’ll now provide a more detailed translation. The ice cream, cheesecake, and cherry pie represent the President’s plans for increased government spending as mentioned in the address, including his tax free heath savings accounts, his energy company corporate welfare program, and money for Palestinians. The calories in the rolls and butter do not need to be counted because they are “off the books,” just like the hundreds of billions of spending on our Iraqi adventure. The big slab of prime rib is Bush code for red-meat permanent tax cuts, the same cuts that in their temporary, partial form added trillions to the national debt. The “impulse eating” portion of the diet is represented by Bush’s desire to move from pay-as-you-go funding for social security to private account finding, a transition estimated to cost about two trillion dollars. What is the broccoli? It’s the decreases in unidentified discretionary spending on programs that Bush doesn’t particularly care for anyway. So what kind of results can you expect from the Crawford Diet? You need to first note that this is not a weight loss diet. The objective is to slow down the rate at which you are gaining weight, just like the Bush Administration’s fiscal objective of cutting the deficit in half. Will the President’s plan and his diet meet their objectives? It really comes down to how the calories in the broccoli equate to the calories in the other goodies. Once cause for concern is that the discretionary portion of the federal budget makes up only 16% of the total, and the broccoli part is a much smaller proportion of that. On the other side of the ledger, Bush’s new spending proposals amount to trillions in new spending. Hmmm. I guess we’re just going to have to chalk it down as the world’s first faith-based diet!
02.03.05 @ 08:09 PM EDT [link]

Bad Bet
We already know that the Bush Administration is made up of high rollers, none so high a roller as their Chief, so how should they be feeling right now about the big bet they made by invading Iraq? I’m guessing that the Right Wing is thinking that it was a pretty good bet. Certainly the Administration is bursting with pride at this weekend’s turn of events. And from Bush’s very narrow perspective, one could argue (if devoid of conscience and morality) that he has hit the jackpot. Exhibit A is his reelection. One might argue that his bet on Iraq put his reelection in jeopardy, but my take is that having a war on was the factor that nudged his nose first over the wire. My Exhibit A would be his Dad, whose lack of the vision thing caused him to goof up by finishing his war too early. Had he not, maybe the White House would have sheltered Poppy, Dubya, and Jeb in succession! In any case, the lack of a single example of an incumbent being voted out during wartime is a powerful statistic. Note that the enormous cost of the war is not likely figuring into Bush’s judgment over whether his bet has paid off. It’s not his own money, after all, and it also isn’t money that’s coming out of the pockets of the people who voted for him, since posterity is picking up the cost of this off-the-books-when-the-budget-is-already-in-deficit war. But aside from the people in the Bush Administration whose paychecks depended on him being reelected, how good a bet was Iraq for the rest of us? Let’s be generous and say we get lucky with nation building. That would mean that we end up with an Islamic democracy in Iraq as opposed to perpetual civil war or an Iranian-style Islamic dictatorship. That’s being very generous, of course, since I happen to believe that the most likely outcome will be the same kind of multi-sectarian civil war that occurred in Yugoslavia with the collapse of the communist dictatorship there. (Remember Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo?) But let’s give the Bushies the benefit of the doubt and say that they start getting much better results with what the Army calls Civil Affairs than they have been to date. Let’s say they end up with the government of their dreams. It would show the Bush bet to be a winner, right? Well, uh, no actually. What matters is not whether a reasonably democratic government ends up in place, but whether it stays in place. There’s actually a good amount of data out there on the likelihood of emerging democracies to stay democracies. It’s worth looking at, because if an emerging Iraqi democracy gets replaced by dictatorship, we’re back to square one (or worse) with nothing to show for it but a tapped out Army and extra interest payments on hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. Tomorrow let’s look at the track record (a term that originated, appropriately, in horse racing) of the political outcomes on which Bush’s big Iraqi bet was placed.
02.02.05 @ 08:42 PM EDT [link]

The Emperor’s New Security Blanket
Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Redd, King George (affectionately known as “Dub You” for his fondness for making knights) was casting about for a way to reward the Great Lords of Redd who served as his Base. He turned to his trusted Chancellor, Karl of Roave. “O Our wise architect of policy, craft Us a boon for the Great Houses of Redd.” Karl knew full well the King’s commitments to his Base and so had already hatched a plan. “Great King, a mighty alignment of the fates will give us both a boon to the Great Lords even while striking against the Beast.” “Speak on, Chamberlain!” the King implored, and he listened to Lord Roave’s plan with raptness, for his hatred of the Beast was legendary among the subjects of Redd. “Your Highness, the simple common folk of Redd love the Beast because of the warm security blankets spun from his shedding. We must offer them blankets crafted instead by the Great Lords.” “Fool, what fuzziness of math is this! What interest do the Great Lords have in the security of serfs! Have you become a leebrool?” (using the Redd term for idiot.) “Nay, Sire. We will tell the people that if they make their semi-monthly offerings to the Great Lords rather than the Beast, they will get larger blankets with increased coverage.” “The sound of your plan is interesting, Lord Roave, but what of those who have already made a lifetime of offerings to the Beast? From where is their security blanket to come?” “Sire, you know how in our great Kingdom there is one born every minute, and the great multitude of Redds give you their full faith and allegiance. You must proclaim to them they will receive special security blankets financed using Baw Ring, whose magic turns a tiny trickle of gold into a mighty flood of spending. And because Baw Ring gold trickles down through the Nyork Lords of Baw Ring, the Beast is starved.” “That is fine, Lord Roave” said the King, “but what if your magical Baw Ring doesn’t work?” “Simple, my King. We will pretend that your heirs are foresworn to pass out security blankets, telling our trusting Redds that any who think their’s won’t be there are leebrools!"
01.31.05 @ 08:20 PM EDT [link]

The Science Fiction Solution to Our Environmental Challenges
I’ve been working my way through Collapse – the book I referenced recently when writing about the Greenland Norse who paid the ultimate price for the inflexibility of their non-sustainable way of life. I’m thoroughly enjoying it. It starts with a portrait of modern-day Montana. By coincidence, I happened to be wearing my Bozeman Montana shirt, picked up during a memorable visit to this beautiful state. Even more than most states, it’s polarized. On one side are the right wing anti government militia types, many who have ties to the original industries of Montana – mining and timber, whose historical ascendancy created a legacy of environmental poisoning and despoliation. On the other are those who want to preserve the beauties and natural bounty of Montana, characteristics gravely at risk because of historical hostility to any constraints whatsoever to any use whatsoever of available resources. I got a surprise this weekend when I looked over the New York Times Book review of Collapse. Considering that the Times is supposed to be liberal, imagine my surprise when the review took some pretty cheap shots at Diamond’s line of reasoning. These shots are worth examining, since they echo some of the arguments used by the right wing, but, this being the Times, are expressed more elegantly. Here’s a quote from the review: “most people do not live on islands, yet “Collapse” tries to generalize from environmental failures on isolated islands to environmental threats to society as a whole.” The obvious flaw in the reviewer’s argument is that Earth is indeed an island, and that the example of peoples who couldn’t bail out of ecological disaster by moving a bit down the road is the only analogy relevant to modern global society’s environmental challenge. Furthermore, the reviewer says “”Above us in the Milky Way are essentially infinite resources and living space. If the phase of fossil-driven technology leads to discoveries that allow Homo sapiens to move into the galaxy, then resources, population pressure and other issues that worry Diamond will be forgotten.” I just about fell out of my chair when I read that. He’s essentially proposing a science-fiction ending to our ecological challenges. Perhaps I’d feel more optimistic about science-fiction possibilities had I not picked up the book “The Year 2000,” a book that by chance I recently mentioned here. None of the stories in that book even came close to our present-day reality. As someone who has read a lot of science fiction over the years, I can tell you that SF’s track record for predicting advances is not very good. And if the solution to our environmental problems is moving down the road to the next planet, shouldn’t we be making a whole lot bigger investment in the currently undiscovered science that had better be there if it turns out we really need it? Instead, we’re hamstringing science by substituting pseudo-sciences like creationism, and slashing research and education budgets to the bone to support permanent tax cuts. Both of these arguments against environmental action boil down to a single thought, something like “won’t we feel silly when it turns out we didn’t need to constrain ourselves after all!” I for one would take that risk, considering that the alternative is feeling sorry that we courted and then experienced disaster despite the obvious warning signs that the failed societies in Diamond’s important work all should have plainly seen.
01.30.05 @ 08:14 PM EDT [link]