For those of you with short memories...

There were some highly influential people who worked for months to convince us that

• Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction.
• If we invade Iraq our troops would be greeted as liberators (do you remember "roses and sweets....")
• Saddam Hussein worked with and supported terrorists
• Our original deployment of troops would be adequate
• Oil revenues would fund the reconstruction
• Our troops had adequate body armor
• It was NOT about oil, even thought the original name was the freudian-slippage Operation Iraqi Liberation (I'm not making that up)
  
• "5 weeks, certainly not 5 months..."
  
  and the tallest of tall tales
  
  
• Mission Accomplished
  

Granted, it all worked out OK, but....

Those same people have told us that if we don't hurry up and give away a trillion or so dollars to Wall Street's Rogue's Gallery - our nation's most crooked and corrupt - then the world as we know it just might end soon. Kind of like this:


Dilbert.com 2008-11-08

The "hurry up and invade some country" set of, um, fibs - took months of hammering to convince enough people. This time it only took a few days. Same liars, same rubes.

I realize it's a bit late, but to quote our liar-in-chief:
"Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Labels: body armor, greeted as liberators, oir revenues, reconstruction, saddam, terrorists, wmd

(based on a comedy routine by Andy Zaltzman)

Labels: hate us for our freedom, protect, terrorists

Everyone knows that the best way to handle getting stung by a hornet is

Labels: hornet, iraq, mission accomplished, terrorists, victory, wasp

Would you like to help to reduce the grip that foreign nations and terrorists have on us? It's simple and it's free (mostly free). Recycle. That's it. Recycle.

Every recycling action we take reduces the need for purchasing foreign energy sources and foreign raw materials. The less we buy from abroad, the less dependency we have on foreign countries. The less dependency we have from far away places, the less vulnerable we are to the malicious actions of terrorists - and the actions of foreign nations. (Can you say 'oil embargo'?)

Recycling is important. Every day the majority of Americans make decisions about recycling - and reusing - materials. That can goes into the recycle bin; those newspapers go to the Boy Scouts shed in the parking lot at the grocery store; scrap office paper goes to a box in the lunchroom, and so on. That's good, but we as individuals and as a nation need to do much more.

So... in this recycling-conscious world, which material is most likely to be recycled? Paper? Plastic? Pop cans?

Steel is the material that, on the industrial scale, has been recycled for the longest time. In the USA, 4 times as much steel (by weight) is recycled as is the combined weight of aluminum and plastic. 71% of steel taken out of use - for example, wrecked cars - is recycled to make 'new' steel. More 'new' steel is produced from recycled steel than is produced from iron ore. Reason #1: cost. It's less expensive to re-use scrap steel than it is to process ore into iron, and then iron into steel. [ Main source of the above tidbits: National Geographic Films' "The Science of Steel." ]

Need to keep warm? Goose down had long been the the 'gold standard' for insulation in clothing (winter jackets,etc). Nowadays the geese can keep their feathers. There is a material for insulation that beats down every which way. It's lighter, has (pound-for-pound) better insulating qualities, isn't affected by getting wet, and costs less. The material: recycled plastic milk jugs.

Aluminum recycling has been done on a wide scale for for more than a generation. For 35 years or more many states have imposed a "deposit" fee on pop cans. The consumer pays 5 or 10 cents extra per can when purchasing canned goods. Then stores and recycling centers pay that same 5 or 10 cents per can to whomever 'returns' the can. It's a good thing, too. It costs the aluminum smelter 90% less to make 'new' aluminum from recycled post-consumer waste (pop cans) than to use aluminum ore. Besides the cost, there are at least 3 more advantages to recycling aluminum goods:

• National security. That's right, national security. Aluminum is vital to our way of life, and to our national defense, yet nearly 100% of aluminum ore is imported from outside the USA. If we don't recycle aluminum, and therefore use imported ore, foreign nations and terrorists can cripple parts of our economy (and defense) by cutting off the supply of bauxite (aluminum ore).
  
• Trash dumps. Our solid post-consumer waste (the stuff we throw away) has to go somewhere. The usual is the 'landfill' - the 'dump.' Landfills are, well, filling up. In my county, the solid waste disposal organization no longer uses a local landfill, because it is, well, full. The county collects trash, puts it in trucks, and hauls it to a larger collection facility a long distance from here - at great expense in labor AND in precious. ever-scarcer fuel. That larger 'dump' loads our trash onto railways, where a train hauls it to another state - and pays to dump it there. We're not alone in this. New York City and its environs haul much of their trash hundreds of miles by barge. My point: if we recycled more stuff, then less stuff would be hauled away and buried - wasting money, fuel, and land.
  
• Energy. That 90% less cost mentioned above: a lot of that expense saving is in the form of less energy - electricity - consumed. Less electricity used at the aluminum smelter means more electricity available for other purposes, meaning lower costs to the consumer, and less fuel (coal, natural gas, and petroleum) that has to be bought and transported from far away places. Besides, it's no secret that energy supplies have become an issue of national security.

Everything mentioned above for aluminum applies to

• glass bottles for beverages. The same process - charging 'deposit' fees for pop bottles and beer bottles - occurs in many states.
  
• steel, paper, plastic, and many more recyclable materials
  

Recycling is a win-win-win-win-win proposition for America and Americans. Of course, foreign nations and terrorists would prefer that we don't recycle. No doubt they wish I wouldn't write persuasive articles about the topic. Tough.

Find out more at Recycle America! and at your local recycling center.

Labels: alternative energy, aluminum, coal, electricity, glass, milk jugs, national security, natural gas, paper, recycle, steel, terrorists

"The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
-- John McCain, 2008.06.13

Really?

Does that bonehead really think protecting the right to be heard in court is...

• worse than locking thousands of Americans in internment camps because they had Japanese ancestry? (Korematsu v. United States -- 1944)
• worse than forcing African Americans to sit at the back of the bus? (Plessy v. Ferguson -- 1896)
• worse than slavery? (Dred Scott v. Sanford -- 1857)

Does John McCain

• think it was OK for North Vietnam to hold him without a real trial before an impartial court in which he could defend himself against his accusers and the evidence?
• mind that they tortured him?
• have a problem with resolving problems (such as - has this person performed, attempted to perform, or conspired to perform acts of terrorism?)
  

There is a lot of misunderstanding about that recent Supreme Court decision.

That decision confirms right basic human right that says if you are accused of a crime, you have a right to a hearing before an impartial court.

That's all. No more, no less. If we are going to detain people SUSPECTED of illegal behavior, then we have to put them on trial.

That decision does not send lunatic terrorists out into the streets with no restrictions on what they want to do. It simply says that the accused has the right to a trial. Period. Well, not period. It also says that such human rights have been established for a thousand years (10 centuries, 100 decades, 500 generations), and that it's not appropriate to dump that right just because the government is running a fear campaign against its citizens.

How many 'detainees' have been convicted of any crimes connected to terrorism? None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Given that track record, I'm inclined to think that your gubmint knows that it can't convict very many - if any at all - of those detainees. If they're not guilty, why are we holding - and torturing - them? The government has had 6 1/2 years to build cases against those suspected terrorists.

Let's get a grip on this. Those people are suspected terrorists. The government has shown no inclination to prove that those detainees are guilty of anything. Innocent until proven guilty, yada, yada, yada. Flag, apple pie, Mom, baseball, and the best legal system in all of the time this species has been on the planet.

I say we should put them on trial. If they're found guilty in a legitimate court, put 'em in a hellish prison. If they're not guilty, well, we made an oopsie. A one-way ticket home would be nice, an apology with the ticket would be nicer. No, wait. I forget. We're supposed to be a nation built on Christian principals. WWJD?

Does anyone remember how we got the detainees to detain?

1. Some were actually caught in situations where it was reasonable to arrest them and try to build a case against them. It's time to put them on trial and resolve it: guilty or not guilty?
   
2. Some were completely innocent of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were rounded up by US troops or intelligence agents.
3. Most - this is so outrageous - were rounded up by bounty hunters and handed over to US troops with no evidence that they were bad guys . Again, wrong place, wrong time. The bounty hunters were Afghan tribesmen who worked on piece-rate. They got paid by the head, but didn't have to show any kind of evidence against the people they sold to the US government. Piece-rate with no quality control is a disaster waiting to happen, whether the product is clothes, cars, or humans.
   
   By the way, trafficking in humans- isn't that slavery?
   

Again, the recent decision by the Supremes doesn't free anyone from prison or overturn convictions or anything else nefarious. It's no more than an affirmation of human rights.

It also says to the US government that it's time to put these people on trial - or release them. Do something or get off the pot!

If those people really are terrorists, it shouldn't be hard to convict them. A speedy trial is the best thing for all Americans and for America's place in the world. After all, why should we try to out-do such dictatorships as China, Burma, the old USSR and Chile and Argentina, and dozens more rogue nations?

Let's regain some of the basic decency for which the USA had always been famous.

Labels: bonehead, bounty hunters, detainees, magna carta, mccain, slavery, supreme court, terrorists