The Unstable Kernel v. 1.0

2004-01-06T11:24:00.000-06:00

Front Runner's Strategies Add Boost From Bradley

From the Arizona Republic

I particularly like the following quote:

"The Bradley message could be, like, (Dean) knew where he stood on the war, is still a Democrat, takes . . . positions, blah, blah, blah," the staffer said.

The next day, the speaker said, "surrogates" for Dean, both local and national, could "then hit Clark on the flip side of the argument: that he's indecisive, didn't know what party he's with, doesn't know his position on the war," she said.

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Dean and his campaign of web-enabled hipsters and their Pampered Chef-meets-Amway organizing combined with a Lennon-esque adoration for their candidate have done a tremendous amount to be congratulated for and to be respected for in terms of grassroots mobilization and the mobilization of first-time voters.

If this kind of thinking is the best that the Dean strategists can come up with to hit at Wes Clark, then they not only will lose the nomination that they now hold in their manicured fingers but they will lose it in spectacular fashion. It's one thing to criticize Clark for his comments on the war if you're Joe Lieberman who supported it all along. It's quite another thing to criticize Clark for his comments on the war if you're Howard Dean, the man who has made it hip to be ambiguous about everything except how angry you are at George W. Bush. Dean's own record of comments about the war and the occupation of Iraq qualify as vague with an underlying current of the byzantine, revealing a candidate who doesn't know a whole lot about foreign policy and frankly stays as far away from it as his speaking engagements and debate opponents allow.

If I could bend the ear of Joe Trippi and his staff on this issue, I would warn them off this approach. Yes, they have one heck of a lead in New Hampshire and are battling it out either in first or in the top three in nearly every other early primary state. Yes, they have garnered two important endorsements from Al Gore and Bill Bradley. It's also noteworthy that both of these gentlemen lost, by fair means and foul, in 2000. I find it very odd that the Dean campaign is so eager to embrace Gore, the Washington insider who is only now an outsider because of the 2000 election, and who sits center stage in the play that created much of the outrage and anger that has fueled the Dean campaign to date.

They should stick with this approach. Continuing to appeal to Democratic outrage and general alienation is a win-win for Dean. Trying to come into the middle (though his record is repleat with centrist policies, his campaign's current incarnation is slightly outside the moderate fold of the Democratic Party) this soon in the election cycle on an issue where he is woefully outclassed by both Clark and Kerry might be just the blunder that the pack nipping at Dean's heels needs to make up some ground on the frontrunner.

2004-01-06T09:51:00.000-06:00

Howdy Fellow Taxpayers...Time To Pucker Up For Halliburton!

U.S. Army clears Halliburton of overbilling-WSJ

Tuesday January 6, 1:07 AM EST

NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Halliburton Co. (HAL) has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a Kuwait fuel-delivery contract that Pentagon auditors alleged overcharged the U.S. government by more than $100 million, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday.

The head of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers, said Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root unit will not need to provide "any cost and pricing data" relating to a contract to deliver millions of gallons of gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq, the paper said, citing a previously undisclosed Dec. 19 ruling.

The paper said Flower's ruling came after lower-level Army Corps officials concluded that KBR had provided enough information to show it had bought the fuel and its delivery to Iraq at a "fair and reasonable price."

In December, the Pentagon said a draft audit found evidence KBR may have overcharged U.S. taxpayers $61 million to supply fuel to Iraq from Kuwait. Halliburton strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Halliburton and Army Corps of Engineers representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

©2003 Reuters Limited.

I'm willing to be objective about Halliburton's enormous windfall from their no-bid contracts received as part of the war against Saddam Hussein and the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Note to neoconservatives and blighted Republican supporters here: Are you tired of hearing liberals and others in America (i.e. real conservatives, libertarians, all those not dead from the neck up and apathetic from the neck down) complain about the Bush Corporate Giveaway and how Vice President Cheney is the Evil Puppetmaster? THEN DON'T LIE DOWN FOR CRAP LIKE THIS!

If you do continue to lie down for nonsensical, criminal chicanery like this from your Supreme Court-appointed President and his administration, then to paraphrase Laura Ingraham, "Shut Up and Listen!"

2003-12-23T18:37:00.000-06:00

It's All Done...Until Next Week?

Deadline Passes, Rodriguez Still A Ranger

Well, another week passes, another deadline passes. Alex Rodriguez is still a Texas Ranger...thank God!

I know A-Rod has to be tired of playing his tail off every game and still finishing dead last in the AL West by now, but as a Rangers fan I am very happy this evening to see A-Rod's name still on the Rangers' roster instead of Manny Ramirez.

Rangers' management should be tarred and feathered for even considering the idea of taking on another slightly younger, slightly more healthy Juan Gonzalez to lumber around in the outfield shuffling after grounders that get past him and hacking away at everything within two feet of the strike zone. Just say no to overpriced veteran hitters, guys!

Now on to my next mission: Just say no to Brett Tomko! Look, it even rhymes! How can you think about PAYING MONEY for a guy who posted a 5.08 ERA and gave up 35 homers last year...when he wasn't calling the Ballpark home! My statistical software breaks when I try to project what his numbers would look like factoring in the Ballpark Inflation Index into the forecasting model. Can we say "Chan Ho Park-esque?" What insanity is this?!?!?

There have got to be guys available on the waiver wire right now who you could pay a whole lot less for comparable production.

This gets at the very reason I have so little sympathy for the Rangers organization when they bellyache about having to drop salaries and not being able to sign the players they need. I understand A-Rod's contract is a financial albatross, but when you can't even get the details right (i.e. overpaying for mediocrity with Tomko), what confidence should I or any other Rangers fan have the front office will do any better once they have more money to go out and spend?

2003-12-22T15:47:00.000-06:00

***NEWSFLASH: A-Rod Still A Ranger***

From the "Hurry Up and Wait" Department: Alex Rodriguez is still a Texas Ranger. In one of the most confounding and seemingly never-ending trade sagas in recent baseball memory, the on-again, off-again, ok-on-again, well-off-again, wait...one-final-chance-again trade of Alex Rodriguez just keeps on going, and going, and going...the December Engergizer.

It says a lot for all of us suffering Rangers fans out here that this story is the biggest thing to talk about regarding the Rangers over the last three seasons. Hell, it's the biggest thing to talk about since the Rangers signed A-Rod in the first place! It's not often that an organization gets the opportunity to bring the best player in baseball on board, finishes last in each season he's here without doing anything remotely substantive to address their fundamental problem, and then trades him away for an older, less-mobile, defensively-challenged power-hacking outfielder...oh yeah, who also has an attitude and is expensive!

"What?!?" You say? "Why's he talking about Juan Gonzalez?"

Yep. No doubt. As if the Rangers didn't learn from the last moping, shuffling, aging primadonna with the stiffest back in baseball, now they seem destined to take on another one, albeit with a back in better medical condition.

Please, Mr. Hicks and Mr. Hart, don't saddle the Rangers with Manny Ramirez! For the love of God spare us from Igor Jr.!

Instead, ring out a dismal 2003 for the Texas Rangers and bring in a wonderful 2004 with the following deal:

Rangers send SS Alex Rodriguez to Boston

Boston sends 3B Kevin Youkilis, SP Derek Lowe, and SP Philip Dumatrait to Texas.

"Who, who and who?" you might ask...Youkilis gets on base like a madman, Lowe is a great sinkerball pitcher in a park where a great sinkerball pitcher is more valuable than a great fastball pitcher, , and Dumatrait is a very nice-looking pitching prospect from the Sox minor league system.

Forget Manny Ramirez. We've already been down that road with Prince Juan and we've seen where it leads.

This trade is all about trading Alex Rodriguez's salary. That's the only reason you try to move the best all-round player in baseball. As long as you are dumping salary, go ahead and get some value in return for it. Manny Ramirez is not value...Manny Ramirez is another Juan Gonzalez-in-training.

2003-12-01T03:12:00.000-06:00

President to Drop Tariffs on Steel

There ought to be a sub-heading to this that reads:

"Until Rust Belt States Become Vital 2004 Political Battlegrounds."

2003-11-29T23:19:00.000-06:00

Hop on the Bus? It's Not That Easy

NY Times Political Points, Nov. 30, 2003

ONE of Howard Dean's favorite stump-speech lines is a promise to give President Bush ``a one-way bus ticket back to Crawford, Tex.''

The trouble is, there is no bus to Crawford, where Mr. Bush has a ranch and would presumably retreat after his stint in the White House. Greyhound's closest station is in Waco, 18 miles away, and Waco's local bus service, known as the Hop, stops at the city limits.

There are three options if Dr. Dean gets his wish and sends the president ridin' the dog to Waco. Mr. Bush could leave at 1:50 a.m. and arrive the next afternoon at 2:50, making 29 stops but only one transfer. Or take the 9:30 a.m. bus, cutting the trip by three hours and 45 minutes but requiring three transfers - which would complicate work for his Secret Service busmates. Or leave at 11 p.m. on the shortest route, although it includes two overnights, landing in Waco - remember, he still needs a ride to the ranch - at 7:30 a.m., two days after leaving Washington.

The cost is not, as Dr. Dean might seem to suggest, getting two million people to donate $100 each to his campaign, but just $145 ($79 with seven-day advance).

Mr. Bush can take solace in the tradition that departing presidents get a final ride home on the presidential airplane. But there appears to be no specific constitutional impediment to alternative transportation on Greyhound One.

2003-11-29T22:56:00.000-06:00

Note to Longhorns: Don't Get Comfortable

Another Thanksgiving, another Longhorn defeat of the Aggies. Only this time there was something to look forward to if you are an A&M fan.

"What is that?" you might ask, and with good reason: This is a season that many in College Station and those of us who used to be in College Station would like to forget as quick as possible. But there is light at the end of the long R.C. Slocum tunnel, and that light has two names.

Dennis Franchione and Reggie McNeal.

Franchione is the kind of coach guys like McNeal want to play for. Franchione is the kind of coach who lands the stud QBs, WRs, linemen, and receiving TEs that make a Division I-A college football team nationally viable. Under R.C. Slocum the only top-flight recruits that wanted to come to A&M were defensive players and running backs. No top QB or WR in his right mind wanted to get near College Station because it was as sure as a sticky day of 100 degrees in August that as a QB your main job would be to hand off to a stud RB and as a WR your main job would be to block for that RB. Neither of those job desciptions gets you anything but a bench slot on an AFL team or, if you are a genuine Aggie hero, a roster spot on a defunct NFL team.

Granted, there are occasional players from R.C. Slocum's tenure who have gone on to have great or promising NFL careers on the offensive side of the ball (see Dante Hall and Bethel Johnson for two current examples), but the pickings are thin. Why? Because R.C. never could recruit an Applewhite, a Roy Williams, or a Vince Young until Reggie McNeal dropped into his lap courtesy of Mac Brown's inability to pick the best quarterback on his roster (a mistake he looks ready to repeat next season or in a bowl game this season with Vince Young instead of Chance Mock).

Dennis Franchione runs the kind of offense that won't be dependent on the incompetence of the football coach in Austin to land recruits. The offense and the coach will net bigger and better offensive players. My guesstimation is that after two years' worth of recruiting guys for his system versus having to play his system with R.C. Slocum's guys, Coach Fran and the Aggies will be back on the national stage and will break the cycle of being the second-most likely source of indigestion on the day after Thanksgiving.

2003-11-20T18:44:00.000-06:00

Don't Hate da Playa, Hate da Game!

Much has been made on the pages of Salon, the National Review, and the New Republic regarding Bush hate. Why is it, puzzled conservatives ask, that liberals hate our President with such a passion? What has he done to deserve such scorn and venom?

It's actually quite easy to explain from a moderate viewpoint.

Think of how conservatives felt about President Clinton. Now imagine that those conservatives are now liberals and President Clinton has been replaced by President Bush. There you have it.

My take on this topic is that if conservatives want to know why liberals hate Bush, they should recall why the hated Clinton; likewise, if liberals wondered why conservatives hated Clinton so much (and still do to this day), they now have a parallel in Bush hating.

Both Presidents were moderately successful with their policy agendas, having much of their flagship legislation shot down by Congressional opposition, but not before it polarized the left and right sides of the American political spectrum. Both Presidents ran as something other than how they governed; Clinton ran as a liberal and governed as more of a centrist; Bush ran as a centrist and has governed more as a conservative.

Perhaps the most hate-inspiring factor of both Presidents for their loyal dislikers is that despite many foul-ups that their opponents feel should have seen them plummet from their popular heights, neither flirted with real public dislike until Clinton's impeachment hearings. Even in the darkest days of the Clinton administration around half of the country approved of him. Even in the darkest days of the Bush administration, around half the country approves of him.

It is this failure to see and to be swept up in the glaring faults that the true believers in the opposition see that is the seed to the crop of hatred against both Presidents.

2003-11-18T02:04:00.000-06:00

Bush Pulls Out of Speech to Parliament

I would like to know exactly why it is that the U.S. government, at a time when they could go a long way to restoring some semblance of domestic credibility, has mobilized a small army of security and staffers for President Bush's visit to London and he's backing out of something as major as addressing Parliament at the last minute? Is this going to turn an extremely expensive (to the taxpayer, not the President) shopping safari to Harrod's?

What I would like to know is what RUBE on the President's staff was STUPID enough to place him before Parliament? Or better yet, which member(s) of his staff were INCOMPETENT enough not to understand what they were doing? Doesn't anyone at the White House or anyone within shouting distance of the President ever watch Prime Minister's Questions rebroadcast each week Parliament is in session on Sunday night C-SPAN?

They would absolutely eat Bush alive. He couldn't take it. No way, no how. Seeing as how the Secret Service and his political advisers use the transparently-bullshit excuse of "security" to cordon off in some remote area any protesters here in the States, he probably hasn't seen a protester since that slip-up in Cleveland earlier this year. If Prime Minister's Questions are a rule of thumb to go by as far as viciousness and rhetorical composition, I'm afraid our President just couldn't hack it in front of Parliament.

2003-11-16T01:13:00.000-06:00

Revisiting the Idea of Iraqization as Vietnamization

In my post on Friday I complained about the ease at which certain opponents of our Iraqi quagmire are dropping the term "Vietnamization" in an attempt to link our failure in Iraq to our failure in Vietnam. While I think we need more discussion of what's happening in Iraq, both the good and the bad, the factual differences between our sudden urge to "Iraqi-ize" this conflict and our turning over the Vietnam conflict to the incompetent South Vietnamese government are two completely different birds.

To elaborate a little further, simply because we are looking squarely at failure in Iraq does not mean our reasons for failure will be the same as they were in Vietnam. Though the ends are most likely going to be the same (in broad terms of failure), the means are quite different.

Vietnam was a strategic domino in a complicated series of dominos tipping over one after another as communism jumped from state to state. Iraq is not a domino, though the Bush administration and their cynical heads-in-the-clouds policy makers believe it can be the first democratic domino. Vietnam had lots of rubber, rice, and labor. Iraq has lots of oil. Oil is going to trump rubber, rice, and labor any old day.

The role that Iraq's strategic reserves play in Iraqization cannot be ignored. We had several tens of thousands of reasons to leave Vietnam, casualties that could not be counterbalanced by Cold War rhetoric, rubber, or the breathtaking beauty of Nha Trang. We have around 9,000 reasons to leave Iraq, but we're not going to go home. Why? Iraq's oil is simply too important to just up-and-leave. This may be one point that the Bush administration will not admit to publically but that they are cynically correct on. Having scuppered the evil that we knew, we are faced with the uncertainty of the evil we do not know. And those millions of barrels of reasons to remain are unfortunately going to trump a whole lot more dead and wounded American soldiers in the Bush administration's calculus.

Eventually Iraq's oil resources could be the key to igniting a renaissance for the country. There are several very tedious, long-term, unglamorous steps that must be taken first, however, and our current administration doesn't seem to be able to overcome their own groundless schizophrenia long enough to find a solution that works and stick with it.

2003-11-15T23:40:00.000-06:00

Democratic Senator Under Fire for "Lynching" Comment

Well, Zell seems to be in a headlong rush to suck up to George W. Bush and the southern wing of the Republican Party these days...so of course it's no surprise that he trotted out a good old fashioned racial comment.

Thankfully soon-to-be-ex-Senator Miller, extending his role as a latter day Democratic Judas, laid into his former party during the judicial filibuster charade conducted this past week by spoiled Senate Republicans who were angry that their four most nauseatingly biased nominees for the Federal bench were not rubber stamped by unpatriotic Democrats. Senator Miller said "The Democrats in this chamber refuse to stand and let her do it. They're standing in the doorway, and they've got a sign: Conservative African-American women need not apply. And if you have the temerity to do so your reputation will be shattered and your dignity will be shredded. Gal, you will be lynched..."

Wow. I think our old buddy Benedict Miller must be taking some PR cues from his new best friends in the White House, the Eagle Forum, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute. The only things that are shattering California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown's reputation and shredding her dignity are her regressive judicial views manifested in her decisions.

The irony heaped upon us by the conservative spinsanity just keeps getting thicker and thicker. It's defending American values to dredge up personal information on former President Bill Clinton and to expose and examine his every personal flaw, yet when the same treatment is applied to George W. Bush, it's somehow become "dirty politics" and "the politics of character assasination." Taking lengthly amounts of time to let Clinton Federal bench nominees rot while expressing concern over their liberal judicial decisions was good stewardship of the judiciary. Once 2001 rolls around, however, conservatives from the Senate floor to the Federalist Society to the Eagle Forum suddenly discovered the catchy rhetoric of "a judicial crisis" when a Republican President, George W. Bush, was making the appointments instead of a Democrat. Now, blocking nominees that are so blatantly conservative in their outlook that Antonin Scalia would blush over them is suddenly "obstructionist politics."

To anyone out there reading this, all I have to say about this whole sorry state of affairs is this: Republicans and conservatives, it takes one to know one.

Zell, old buddy, old pal, you've arrived! You're now officially a Republican. Somewhere, Senator Trent Lott is waiting to shake your hand.

A fitting memorial to Zell Miller should be his being stricken from the historical records of the Democratic Party and for an organization like MoveOn.org to nominate one Democratic traitor each year for the "Senator Judas Miller Prize."

2003-11-14T23:10:00.000-06:00

Two Quotes of the Day

While I agree with the comments of Senators Biden and McCain regarding what looks to be a poorly-conceived election year ploy to bring back the troops to look good for the voting public regardless of the consequences for a still unstable Iraq, the growing number of references made comparing the our latest policy in Iraq to the policy of Vietnamization do disturb me.

First, it is inaccurate comments like this that make it so easy for conservative pundits to simply discredit liberal politicians and pundits and move on down the road without thinking of the substantive issues behind the criticism. While on a broad level we can "Vietnamize" this conflict by turning over responsibility for and ownership of the political, economic, and security environments to the Iraqi government (what little of it there is) and the Iraqi people, with the probable similar outcome that we experienced in Vietnam, to simply say that this is the 21st century's first Vietnamization and then letting the implications hang thickly in the air without qualifying the differences in the situation is simply too inviting of a target for the mendacious pundits of the right.

We will not be automatically revisiting Vietnamization lock, stock and barrel for three main reasons: First, the three main flavors of Iraqi resistance to continued U.S. ground forces in Iraq (Sadaam loyalists, foreign jihadis, and local patriotic resistance) do not enjoy the immense overt support of a neighboring state as the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army units operating in Southern Vietnam enjoyed with North Vietnam; second, there is a governmental void in Iraq whereas South Vietnam's government was far more a part of the problem in Vietnam than they ever were a part of the solution; third, Vietnam did not possess the one strategic resource that makes Iraq so economically and politically special: Oil.

Arguments can be made on both the pro and con sides of this discussion. Certainly it appears that the differences in both points one and two should work out in favor of our present situation in Iraq in considering the outcome of Iraqization. A subtle but extraordinarily important difference in point one is perhaps the most salient one of the three: In Vietnam we faced an opponent with a singular goal, a singular ideology, and a singular plan. In Iraq, to the best of our knowledge, we face three distinct opponents with three mostly independent ideologies and three mostly distinct plans. That there is some cooperation between them is a probable fact. That each classification of resistance group has their distinct reasons for fighting U.S. and international forces in Iraq is also a probable fact.

In short, I do not think that simply equating our latest policy with Iraq with Vietnamization is effective rhetoric. It is too easy to shoot holes in, regardless of the fact that the holes do not address any of the substantive issues behind the comparison. There is sufficient cause for concern that this policy is not a wise decision, or more correctly that it is the latest in a series of unwise decisions without dredging up the inaccurate ghosts of past foreign policy failure.

2003-11-13T18:07:00.000-06:00

Alabama Chief Justice Removed From Office

Is this really what all of us, Christians and Muslims, Jews and Gentiles, Buddhists and Hindus, have to look forward to from the often-argued, rarely-supported "New Great Awakening" in the U.S.A.? If former Chief Justice Roy Moore and his theocratic re-reading of our nation's consitution are it, then folks, we and our civil rights and civil liberties are in profound trouble.

Unlike the first Great Awakening, this new Great Awakening (something of which I am still not convinced is happening) is taking place at a time where science and faith are positioned to clash in direct conflict. During the last Great Awakening faith only dealt with the rudiments of industrial society, things that were thought to pose threats to God-fearing people but really did not. Now, however, some of faith's traditional territory is being scouted out by the frontiers of science: Nanotechnology, the Human Genome Project, cloning, genetically modified plants and foodstuffs, space exploration.

Unfortunately for those of us who do not agree with the former Chief Justice, somewhere along the way his flavor of Christianity lost or dropped the concept of tolerance.

2003-11-13T17:22:00.000-06:00

Howdy folks! My name is Patrick. I'm a graduate student and full-time research consultant at a public university in the wonderful Lone Star State. My major professor and my parents have always told me that I'm interested in too many things for my own good, so in order to add to my list of things demanding my time, a blog seems like the natural thing to do!

I'm a political scientist by training, a research consultant by vocation, and a political beast, gardener, writer, skydiver, and lover of fiction by inclination. I hope that the Unstable Kernel will grow to reflect some or all of these passions, professional and otherwise.