Funny Funny
This makes me laugh a lot.
More here.
Cost Of War
Holy….
The cost of the war in Iraq will reach $320 billion after the expected passage next month of an emergency spending bill currently before the Senate, and that total is likely to more than double before the war ends, the Congressional Research Service estimated this week.
The analysis, distributed to some members of Congress on Tuesday night, provides the most official cost estimate yet of a war whose price tag will rise by nearly 17 percent this year. Just last week, independent defense analysts looking only at Defense Department costs put the total at least $7 billion below the CRS figure.
Once the war spending bill is passed, military and diplomatic costs will have reached $101.8 billion this fiscal year, up from $87.3 billion in 2005, $77.3 billion in 2004 and $51 billion in 2003, the year of the invasion, congressional analysts said. Even if a gradual troop withdrawal begins this year, war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to rise by an additional $371 billion during the phaseout, the report said, citing a Congressional Budget Office study. When factoring in costs of the war in Afghanistan, the $811 billion total for both wars would have far exceeded the inflation-adjusted $549 billion cost of the Vietnam War. (emphasis mine)
“The costs are exceeding even the worst-case scenarios,” said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Such cost estimates may be producing sticker shock on Capitol Hill. This year, the wars will consume nearly as much money as the departments of Education, Justice and Homeland Security combined, a total that is more than a quarter of this year’s projected budget deficit. Yesterday, as the Senate debated a $106.5 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ongoing hurricane relief, 59 senators voted to divert $1.9 billion from President Bush’s war-funding request to pay for new border patrol agents, aircraft and some fencing at border crossings widely used by illegal immigrants.
more here.
and here.
Stupid Me
Gosh, I go to school for 4 years to learn how to work these new fangled Com Pu Tors and here I forget for TWO days how to add a hard drive to an NT file system. You may all take away my nerd card. If it is any consolation I did finally figure it out.
ACLU Meeting In Depth
I recently attended a meeting set up by the ACLU. It included Carol Rose the head of the MA ACLU, William Delahunt, Democratic Rep for my area, and none of other than Bob Barr, former republican from Georgia.
The topic of the nights meeting was restoring the rule of law. It was an emergency town meeting, and the turn out was really good. Almost 200 Cape Cod residents showed up.
The panel covered the Bush administrations domestic spying without a warrant, the use of torture, and the use of renditions (moving a prisoner to another country to be tortured there.)
The evening progressed with a video laying out the basic lies the administration has used to cloud these issues, followed by the three panelists debunking these lies. I was very impressed with Carol Rose, she was on top of her shit, and really knew what she was talking about. She was to the point, and even took some hard questions at the end.
Bob and William, however, well … let’s just say that I was not as impressed with them. They are your typical politicians with typical politician answers. The day before Delahunt had just had 6 peacful protestors arrested, and then spends the evening talking about how our civil liberties and our freedoms are in danger from Bush. Mr. Pot meet Mr. Kettle. And Barr, don’t even get me started, he lead the fight to impeach Clinton for getting blow jobs…Hardly a moral compass to follow.
But I was happy with how aware and active the audience seemed to be, they were furious with our president, and they wanted to know why the hell Delahunt wasn’t doing anything about it. I was the first to ask a question during the question and answer section and I stood right up and asked Mr. Delahunt “If we are in such danger, why have you not introduced articles of impeachment” to which he basically said “It’s not a good time politically.” And while I can understand with the midterm elections coming up we don’t want to “fire up” the republicans base by making it seem like there president is in trouble, I was disappointed with the answer I got.
What I wanted to here was, “The Democrats are going to do it after we win the mid-term election” or “that’s the first thing we will do once we take back the senate” or “here are the three things we need to do in order for that to happen.” Instead I got some wishy washy answer about how it’s not the right time etc etc. I don’t want to hear about the motion getting burred in committee, or how you need a majority to pass these things or whatever, I know these things, I want to hear a plan of action about how we will achieve these goals. To all honest men and women in congress, please stop being punks and figure out something, anything that will fix this shit hole we find ourselves in. Make a plan, sell it to the American people, and then make it work.
Bob Barr talked a good talk, but he is no longer a politician, and everyone in the room seemed to have forgotten about his role in the impeachment of Clinton. Now that his political livelihood is not in jeopardy I guess he can say whatever he wants. It’s almost as if after reading the PATRIOT ACT he woke up and found religion. “Gosh this is a horrible rape of the American people’s freedoms; I should do something about this.” Only by then he was out of office and no longer influential. When Bob figures out that gay people should have the same rights as straight people, maybe then I will listen to what he has to say about civil rights, and freedoms. Delahunt on the other hand is a pretty ok guy. Other than the fact that he doesn’t support the Nantucket sound wind farm project, he really is not that bad.
The real star was Carol Rose, more than once I was highly impressed with her answers. A man in the audience asked about the ACLU’s defense of a NAMBLA member, and she was right on top of it. Explaining that the ACLU will defend all people’s whose rights are being stepped on, not just the ones that are popular. If everyone in office had half the guts and brains she did we would be fine.
It was an interesting night and I learned a little more than I knew about just how badly we are getting fucked over by the Bush machine. To the voting machines people (the ones that still use paper at least, the electronic ones are a bit iffey) we must vote for new, better candidates or we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
I’m Famous (Sorta)
I made the paper, I will let you figure out what seat I am in. More to come about this soon.
Monday Confessional
Work work work, seems I am very busy lately. Got to make money to buy food, got to pay bills, got to feed car… I know I am being silly but maybe having my own little place in the woods and just farming and gathering wouldn’t be so bad. Too bad I don’t know enough about either to live…but maybe I could learn. Been doing yard work to make extra money. The cash is not very good but it pays the bills. If some good web design jobs come through soon I should be OK, I have a couple good prospects. Want a website built, I do good work. Been doing a lot of good things at work lately, we might be installing some really large turbines soon, going to make a lot of good renewable energy. WOOT! Also I have been having a really good time with my friends and life seems to be going pretty well. Thats about it for me, happy Monday, and a merry El Tuesday.
Footprint
Leave as little a footprint as possible on our environment so that others may follow your path.
Earth Day 2006: Canal Clean Up
I celebrated earth day today cleaning up the cape cod canal with the lovely folks at AmeriCorps Cape Cod, and some very committed volunteers from the area. We cleaned up over 1000 pounds of trash and had a great time doing it. Lean more about the history of earth day here. As it happens every earth day people talk about their Eco Foot Print. That is the amount of land you use up in comparison to the amount of land that would be available to you if everyone got an equal share.
my foot print is as follows:
CATEGORY ACRES
FOOD 2.2
MOBILITY 0.2
SHELTER 4.9
GOODS/SERVICES 4.7
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 12
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.7 PLANETS.
Not bad, but not good either, I need to drive less, conserve more energy, eat more local foods, maybe even grow more food on my own. Its horrible that I use half what a normal American uses and I still use 3 times what I should be. Its sad, but I am working on it.
Want to check your footprint? Try myfootprint.org
Earth Day
I remember the first Earth Day way back in April 22, 1970 and there was a rally held in a park next to the college I was attending at the time. The main speaker, a well dressed bearded scholar, was lecturing us poor uninformed folk about how bad pollution and our way of living was and how it was destroying our world. After the rally I had some questions to ask this knowledgeable leader of the environmental movement. So I followed him out to his car and tried to ask my questions, but he said he was in a hurry and couldn’t spend the time with me. He then drove off in a cloud of black smoke billowing from the tailpipe of his Mercedes diesel.
I learned a good number of lessons on that day. Practice what you preach. Even back in 1970, as it is today, it was hard to find anyone who does. And another lesson learned was Experts don’t know crap! You just got to keep an open mind and evaluate what knowledge you accumulate, because you’re responsible for what you do and how you live. So on this Earth Day go and checkout what these Experts are driving! Oh and by the way, my homes electric is powered by solar panels.
What can you do right now? Get rid of those dang incandescent bulbs and use Compact fluorescent lights that use 75% less energy. Now go and yank them out of their sockets and toss them. Even if you have to be in the dark tonight! Thanks for reading! //bob
New Blogger
Some of you might have noticed that we have a new author here at The Sietch. Please welcome Bob to our blog author list. His inagural post is below. Lets hope we hear a lot from him! Welcome Bob!
Do you want to add your voice to this blog. Sign up now for an account its fun and easy.
RSS XML Feed
