Nuclear weapons-- Peace through strength

It must be nice living in the fantasy world that Obama lives in:  His push for eliminating nuclear weapons is a good idea in theory, but it won't work too well in practice.

Obama is suffering from the same delusion as some of the scientists on the Manhattan Project did around the time the Trinity test occurred:  He's thinking we can put the genie back in the bottle. We can't.

The notion that we can reduce our stockpile to "hundreds" instead of "thousands" neglects a scientific reality of nuclear weapons:  Time.  The circuits aboard the missile, ranging from navigation to detonation, are subject to the ravages of time.  Given enough time, the nuclear material in the warhead can decay to the point where it is no longer sufficient to produce the critical mass necessary for a nuclear explosion.  That's why major national powers have stockpiles in the thousands:  Some weapons, especially older ones, may not detonate or only detonate as a non-nuclear explosion.

The other consideration is versatility.  One commenter on DU said we could have something like 10 warheads to defend ourselves.  No, not realistically.  Weapon yields vary, depending on whether the weapon is a tactical nuke (intended for battlefield deployment) or a strategic nuke (intended to cause mass destruction and eliminate the enemy's ability and/or will to wage war).

Consider the following scenario:  A rogue state has placed short-range nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons aboard a ship.  When the ship approaches the coast of an American city, it intends to launch.  Intelligence learns of the plot right before the ship comes into weapons range.  A nuclear cruise missile could destroy the target with little or no warning, not giving the ship a chance to launch its payload while at the same time vaporizing that same payload.  A strategic weapon would gross overkill in such a situation, vaporizing not only the ship, but large quantities of seawater.  The radiation would also have a more profoundly damaging effect to the local ecosystem than a smaller tactical nuke.  Finally, strategic weapons are often carried by ICBMs or large bombers, increasing the time the rogue ship would have to launch its payload before destruction.

On the other hand, the same rogue state has built 10 strategic nukes to counter our 10 tactical.  During an exchange, their weapons level our cities, while ours level only a few blocks.

The threat of Mutually Assured Destruction kept the Cold War from boiling over. Both sides stood to lose too much in a conflict.  The guarantee of at best a Pyrrhic victory, at worst the extermination of the human race.  When dealing with emerging and aspiring nuclear powers today, however, MAD doesn't fit:  Religious fanatics are as a rule prepared to die for their beliefs, and when those beliefs include the destruction of Israel, the deaths of thousands if not millions of Americans, and the ultimate goal of a worldwide Islamic caliphate, the possession by those powers of nuclear weapons becomes a frightening prospect.

Mr. Obama has shown time and again he has little or no business acumen.  We first saw with the way his administration took over GM and sought to contradict free-market principles and tell people what kind of car they wanted to drive.  Now, we are seeing it with the way Obama tries to pursue a noble and honorable goal in the midst of dishonorable people.  In any negotiation, the goal is to get as much from your adversary as possible while giving up as little as possible.  What is Iran giving up?  What has North Korea given up?  We gave them light water reactors for a nuclear power program in exchange for them promising not to pursue nuclear weapons.  Instead, history will remember Madeline Albright as someone who foolishly followed in Neville Chamberlain's footsteps.  All indications are that, with regards to nations such as Iran, Obama is ready to follow Albright in the hollow pursuits of appeasement.

Finding out through Facebook...

My girlfriend's brother got engaged recently.  Not a big deal, people get engaged all the time.  People get married all the time.  But how often is the would-be groom's sister's boyfriend among the first to find out?  Through Facebook?

On one hand, it's not like I've just met my girlfriend's family.  My girlfriend's mother jokes about me being her favorite son-in-law, much to my girlfriend's chagrin.  But I would've figured my Facebook friend would've told his sister first before announcing it to his Facebook friends.

My Facebook friend, whom I'll call "Fernando" and thank him for the music (I'll admit, I'm a straight male who likes to listen to Abba, I counter it with Rob Zombie, so please don't question my manhood), has been married once before.  Like approximately 50% of the population, he decided he was married to a psychopath.  Like a smaller percentage of those 50%, he was correct in that assessment, as I'm inclined to agree that a woman who piles her ex-husband's clothes in the middle of the living room and sets fire to the pile may indeed have a couple of screws loose.  She subsequently had a child, and everyone on the Fernando's side of the family breathed a sigh of relief when the counting backwards yielded a larger amount of time since the divorce papers were finalized than since the little rug rat was conceived.

Now, it seems, Fernando has decided to marry his current domestic partner, a woman with a kid by another man.  Nothing wrong with that, I wish them all the happiness.  But I doubt happiness is a long-term reality for them.  Fernando sometimes has a short attention span.  I think he wants to experience the normalcy of family life while remaining a non-conformist.  I think once the charm has worn off on taking care of a miniature human being, Fernando's sister will find herself drawing up divorce papers again.

In the past, I've apologized to my girlfriend for being relatively boring, but I think she knows I"m not being sincere.

Hypermilers: Friends of Gaia, enemies of other motorists

So while sitting at a stoplight this evening, I observed a man sitting on his motorcycle turn the engine off. I recognized what he was doing, for I do it every time I wait for a train crossing, and last year, I tried it a couple of times waiting for stoplights myself:  He was hypermiling.  When I tried it in my old 15-year-old sport coupe, the results were not ideal:  I became the object of irritation to other motorists stuck behind me who ended up having to sit through another light while I furiously tried to get the engine on my car to start again!  A train crossing is one thing:  Usually you can see the end of the train.  If not, you can see the brake lights of the car at the front of the line as its driver sees the end of the train coming and restarts the engine.  You have time, you're not under pressure to get that bad boy to fire again.  Not so with a stoplight.  You might see the cross traffic light go yellow, but that's about it as far as warnings go.

So what happened this evening was predictable:  The green left-turn light illuminated for its brief performance, and the hypermiler in front of me is trying to kick-start his chopper.  Thanks to the delay, I barely made it into the intersection with a yellow left arrow.  I'm pretty sure the guy two cars behind me ran a red light.  As for the lover of Gaia?  Well, he celebrated his conscientiousness by kicking in the burn and putting at least a quarter-mile of distance between us.  Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

It got me to thinking, which is probably why the government has got me on a watch list:  How many gallons of fuel are being wasted by motorists stuck waiting for another light because they were stuck behind the hypermilers' whose engine may not start on the first try?

Passing the buck...

So I saw a former subordinate of mine today.  He's looking for a reference, as well as a recommendation.

Now he asked my former boss' boss, and he asked my former boss.  Now he's asking me.  My predecessors passed the buck on this guy because of less-than-stellar job performance.  Now I'm faced with a decision:  Agree to be a reference and paint a glowing portrait of the guy, or agree to be a reference and be tough on him.  I would hate to burn a potential networking contact for the future, but I feel it would be irresponsible of me to simply pass a problem off to another employer.  Were it not for the layoff, he'd have been reassigned or let go.

So I think I'll do the only thing I can do:  Give an honest assessment of my former subordinate's skills and abilities.  I won't trash him, but I can't sing his praises either.

I only hope my own references are as fair to me.

In one motion.

"Insert and remove your card in one motion."

You ever notice that instruction on gas pumps, the automated Post Office machine, and similar credit/debit card readers? How the hell does one accomplish this feat? You slide it into the reader, and then you slide it out. That's two motions-- Two very good motions, she'll tell you if you know what you're doing. But I digress.

It's like the asinine question everyone gets asked at the airport: "Has anyone put anything into your bags without your knowledge?" If they did without my knowledge, THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ASKING ME? I WOULDN'T KNOW! All that needs to change with that standard question is to replace "Has" with "Could". I'm pretty sure the screener is trying to ascertain if you've been keeping an eye on your bag, but instead it sounds like an on-the-spot litmus test of latent psychic abilities. I've always wanted to point out the insanity of the question, but it would be just my luck if I caught someone in law enforcement without a sense of humor and having a bad day.

I'm sure everybody has noticed the Braille dots on the drive-up ATMs. Just for amusement, I might go to the bank's drive-up ATM when it's busy, wear dark sunglasses, lean well out of the car, pretend to read the dots while everyone else in line looks on in mortal terror, get my cash, and then maybe turn to the car behind me and shout: "Is anybody in front of me?"

Isn't it possible to just disagree?

Apparently not. If you're a conservative who has the temerity to reject the socialism that our president seems to be embracing, the root of your policy disagreements must be because you have a personal problem with the man sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.

Oops, I used the S-word. We've been told that the S-Word is the new N-word.

"The N-word"? Are you kidding me? What are we, in third grade? Is someone going to spank us if we use it? How come blacks can refer to each other as "nigger", but the word is completely off-limits to any other races? I agree with blacks, it is an offensive word, best left to the days of slavery and the Jim Crow South. So they need to stop using it as well. As Chris Rock pointed out in one of his stand-up routines, whites do not go around calling each other "cracker" or "honky."

And what happened to "black" being used to describe someone whose roots trace back to Africa? "African-American" seems silly when used on people whom have been living in the U.S. for generations. I can see a Nigerian friend of mine using it to describe himself: He was born in NJ and grew up in Nigeria. He'd probably just call himself Nigerian-American, though, if he bothered to hyphenate at all. More likely, he would say he's an American. Because being American means you or your ancestors came from somewhere else. Much evidence exists to support that even the American Indians traversed a land bridge from Asia to North America some 12,000 years ago. The bridge is gone, having been replaced with the Bering Strait. Is "Native American" an accurate description? Am I not native to this country? I was born here, too, as was my father, his father, and so on, going back about 12 or 13 generations. At what point do I become "native"?

The point of this tirade is to point out the fallacy in assigning these asinine labels. That's a contributing factor to racism-- the labeling of differences. For this reason, I reject the concept of diversity. Celebrating the differences between people requires drawing attention to those differences. I'll take color-blind equality over diversity any day.

The ascribing of racism to Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) is a desperate attempt by the left. You know they've exhausted their slate of arguments when that's the best they can come up with.

Competition is the new buzzword

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard liberal politicians trying to appeal to our inner capitalists by claiming the public option will "provide competition" in the health care industry. Really? There's something like 1300 private insurers spread across the country. If every state had laws forbidding an out-of-state insurer from selling insurance in-state, that still is an average of 26 insurance providers per state. That's a pretty competitive environment.

But wait a minute.

Seriously, wait a minute, I'll be right back.

Intermission.

OK, I'm back, I needed a refill. Now here's the problem with the notion of the public option competing with private insurers: Nobody said the competition would be fair. Since our federal government wants to roll this plan out to us, how does that mesh with state laws governing insurers having to operate within a state in order to sell insurance? You don't suppose the federal government would have an unfair advantage? I mean, another unfair advantage. Consider:

• The federal government does not have to make a profit.
• The federal government can operate at a loss.
• The federal government does not have to pay corporate business taxes.
• The federal government has no incentive to do more with less.
• The federal government is not subject to state laws by virtue of federal mandate.

Over time, that public option will become the only option, since Uncle Sam always wins when he doesn't play under the same restrictions.