Month: February 2010

Lee Fucking Marvin

Lee Marvin: “What?”
Michelle Triola: “I said Jean Seberg has good insides,” Michelle said.
Lee Marvin: “Jesus Christ, I’m living with a dyke!” Marvin said. Whistle! Pop! “My ex-wife had something about Playboy when I read it”
Michelle Triola: “Playboy exploits women,” Michelle said. “Women’s liberation is against Playboy.”
Lee Marvin: “Against Playboy?” Marvin said. “Whyever more?”
Michelle Triola: “It exploits women,” Michelle said. “It presents women as sex objects.”
Lee Marvin: “Why not?” Marvin said. “Take a snatch away from a broad and what’s she got left?” Marvin spread his legs and breathed deeply.” Oh me oh my, why must I be a sex symbol? Why won’t they let me act?”

Are you an American who was earning less in 2007 than in 2000? The document has nothing to say to you.

  • Did you lose your home or job or savings in the crisis of 2008-2009? Blank to you.

  • Are you worried about the loss of your health insurance – or how you will pay for nursing care for your aged parents – or what 20% youth unemployment will mean for your newly graduated child’s life chances? Not our department.

  • Do you wonder whether we are winning or losing the war on terror? Do you want an explanation for why it took so long for a conservative administration to react to military disaster? No answers here.

  • Do you generally agree with conservatives – but wonder whether there is room in the conservative world for nonwhites, or the disabled, or the secular-minded, or the gay? The statement does not say “no,” but it does not say “yes” either.

  • What about the environment? Economic competition from China? The moral implications of the biotech revolution? Illegal immigration? Educational standards? Well – what about them?

The document answers one question and one question only. If you agree that Barack Obama is engaged in a deliberate and relentless attack on the American constitutional order, well be assured: the conservative establishment is on your side. But if you think those worries are a hysterical distraction from the country’s actual problems? To you, the conservative world says: go away. We have nothing to offer you.

David Frum, a Conservative I Can Believe In, discussing this
nonsensical Mt. Vernon Statement

[What often goes unmentioned is] the extent to which the deficit hysterics are also deficit peacocks. They’re full of bombast, and eager to shoot down anything that might reduce unemployment. But when it comes to serious proposals to bring the long-run fiscal outlook under control — which means, above all, doing something about health care costs — all we get is the sound of crickets chirping.

Paul Krugman

Stunning! Those that overwhelmingly oppose healthcare are also overwhelmingly unlikely to vote for a Democrat, any Democrat in the upcoming 2010 Congressional mid-terms. (PDF of polling data here)

Does that mean that the Democrat will now go ahead and push through health insurance reforms, secure in the idea that those opposed would never vote for them anyway, and those “unsure” are, at least, somewhat malleable and willing to be convinced on the matter? Of course they won’t. Are you fucking retarded?

Can’t be done

This quote is probably worth noting:

Japan Steel Works is spending 80 billion yen ($864 million) at its Muroran plant in the country’s northern island of Hokkaido by March 2012 to increase capacity to make parts for 12 nuclear reactors a year, compared with 5.5 units now, the president said.

The investment will increase annual sales from Japan Steel Works’ cast and forged steel for electric and nuclear power to 70 billion yen from the year starting April 2012, up from 45.5 billion yen expected for the current year, Sato said.

This is important, you see, because we can’t make this part in America. Despite all the hype recently given over to the idea that we’ll be steadily building new nuclear power plants (and wind turbines and solar cells and lots of other, non-carbon based energy production mechanisms) in this country as a partial offset to our ever greater carbon emissions, it’s completely clear that we can’t and won’t be building very many nuclear reactors, if any at all. Simply put, we cannot because we cannot. We cannot cast the key component here. Meaning in this country, which, as we are constantly reminded, is supposedly superior in all respects. But rather it’s over in Japan, where Japan Steel Works is currently the only place that can cast these large, integral, and functionally irreplaceable single pieces. And, oh by the way, China has an interest in cornering some or all of their current and theoretical output:

The country has 9,100 megawatts of nuclear capacity and has approved the construction of additional reactors able to generate 25,400 megawatts, Sun Qin, then-deputy head of the National Energy Administration, said last month. China will issue a plan by the end of the year to push development of clean energy sources such as nuclear, wind, solar and hydro power.

The average time it took to build China’s first 10 nuclear reactors was 6.3 years, according to a report commissioned by the German environment ministry.

Gross domestic product in China expanded 7.9 percent in the second quarter as the economy rebounded from the weakest growth in almost a decade, boosted by stimulus spending.

“Similar to road and railway construction, nuclear energy is also part of China’s plans for a recovery after the economy slowed,” Sato said.

In fact, the entire future run of this component for five to ten years (or more) is already spoken for. Recovery X all over again. We need a new economy. We need to make things, preferably things that are in demand. You want a real National Security issue of the Call to Greatness kind? This is it.

A real country with functional leadership (and, uh, leaders) would be talking about this right now. Acting, right now. It will take decades to do even begin to do anything about it. Instead, we’ll spend those decades not doing anything while China (and the rest of the world) acts. As it stands right now, China looks to have the money, the power (both political and but more importantly: electrical) to be unassailably in ascendancy over the next 50 years. The US: not so much. We’ll be lucky to still be a reasonable tourist destination come 2050.

You might just take a look at what quantity of excess electrical power-generation the United States had on hand in 1940. What are a few of the more important war and/or peace projects that we carried off with that seemingly excess power capacity? Compare that situation with today’s. Then look at China. Who is better prepared for the future? To grow and locate a new market in an X-shaped recovery, in which the “old” jobs and the “old” economy simply never return? Just saying.
Then pause to consider this: which country is currently leading the world in wind turbine production? In solar cell production? GeoThermal? Hydroelectric? I’ll give you a hint: the United States isn’t even reliably in the Top 5 of those categories. Even from a purely capitalistic position: which countries are then better positioned to profit on the grand conspiracy that is climate change and carbon emissions reduction? Is it to be thought of as an a priori harmful concept to generate power from sources other than fossil fuels? Or to make and sell equipment to others who may wish to do likewise? Judging from our national posture, one could only assume it must be.

The Chinese and others have chosen their priorities and are working towards them. We have an inwardly focused, rotting core of a political system that is doing less than nothing about even setting national priorities, much less acting on them. Wonder who’s going to come out on top in that equation? Sure as hell won’t be America, home of Free Enterprise, with special emphasis on would, as in “theoretically could”:

Czech forges have said that they would be able to retool to build large reactor vessels within about two years.

This economy can’t get back on track because the track we were on for years – featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere – simply cannot be sustained.

The X marks a brand new track – a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can’t “recover” because it can’t go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin.

Robert Reich. X is the new L. This elusive new economy is precisely why we should be investing, and heavily, in infrastructure and overall technological development. Nothing else matters. At all.

Just about everyone

America: satisfied to be number two. Or ten; or even just outside the top-25 somewheres, but who can keep count?

While China (and others) use the current downturn to invest heavily in their infrastructure, we in the United States use it to line up for group photos and pat ourselves on the back for the political savvy it took to stop any kind of productive jobs bill from getting through and but still allowing some “jobs” bill to get through such that we don’t look like obstructionist asshats (it’s our “play of the week”, Bill!). Oh, wait, did I say “we”? I meant the GOP.

Anywho, worth repeating:

a Chinese official [reportedly told] him “over the past decade you’ve spent $1 trillion on Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve spent $1 trillion building the future of China”

You’d think a politician somewhere would grab this concept that seemingly combines 52 different concerns into a simple, understandable concept that can be stated in one sentence, and then use that sentence to craft a new politics of American progress, building infrastructure and other actually useful projects that both provide jobs today and also create the greased skids of tomorrow’s economic growth. But, no. Can’t do that here. Just like most other things China is, you know, actually doing.

It’s going to be a long, slow slog back up. America:Britain::1900:2015. Welcome to functional irrelevancy.