Jones Beene wrote:
Sit back and shut-up, or change you tired old spiel - that is the
best thing you can do for us now, Neo-cons and assorted Rush-Bimbo-ites.
I assume this is addressed to William Kristol, who wrote today:
"Republicans need to find reasons to obstruct and delay Obama's agenda. . . .
Conservatives and Republicans will disapprove of this effort. They
will oppose it. Can they do so effectively?
Perhaps -- if they can find reasons to obstruct and delay. They
should do their best not to permit Obama to rush his agenda through
this year. They can't allow Obama to make of 2009 what Franklin
Roosevelt made of 1933 or Johnson of 1965. Slow down the policy
train. Insist on a real and lengthy debate. Conservatives can't win
politically right now. But they can raise doubts, they can point out
other issues that we can't ignore (especially in national security
and foreign policy), they can pick other fights -- and they can try
in any way possible to break Obama's momentum. Only if this happens
will conservatives be able to get a hearing for their (compelling, in
my view) arguments against big-government, liberal-nanny-state social
engineering -- and for their preferred alternatives. . . ."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/25/AR2009022501756.html
Rather blatant obstructionism. The "preferred alternative" in this
case appears to be tax cuts . . . and, uh, Mr. Kristol can't think of
anything else.
The battle lines are drawn! The first round was from Gov. Jindal who
said that spending $140 million on volcano monitoring is a waste of
money. That is like saying that hurricane monitoring in the Gulf of
Mexico is a waste of government money. I doubt the governor of
Louisiana believes that.
Volcanoes are common in Japan and they cause more damage than people
realize. Blockbuster-movie style disasters in which people are run
over by lava is extremely rare, but extensive low-level damage and
danger from things like volcanic ash and poisonous fumes is common,
and evacuations are expensive. Knowing when, where and how big the
eruption is likely to be saves far more than $140 million. In the US,
volcanic smoke disabled both engines in the jet and almost caused a
crash. More than 80 aircraft have been damaged by ash in recent
years, according to the USGS. This sort of thing can be avoided by
monitoring of the smoke cloud and weather conditions, if you know
what sort of ash you are dealing with, and you know a lot about volcanoes.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/tephra/ashandaircraft.php
(This photos and other information on this web page must have cost a
fortune to assemble! This is the kind of government waste Jindal
wants to eliminate.)
Incidentally, the hotel in which the ICCF-6 conference was held was
later destroyed by volcanic eruption. I read a surrealistic press
report filed from the hotel a few weeks before it was finally
abandoned, written by reporters who were camped out without water or
electricity. They were watching the nearby volcano and ignoring
meteorological agency warnings to evacuate. Kind of like reading a
press release from Pompeii. I do not think the building was
physically destroyed but it was rendered uninhabitable. That was
probably a relief to the people who built it, because it was a debt
sinkhole, allegedly with connections to Japanese gangsters.
Jindal's comments are an example of the lingering anti-technology,
anti-science attitude of the Bush administration and the Republican
Party. Unfortunately, there is a lot of this attitude in the rest of
society, among liberals and conservatives alike. It is one thing to
be wary of unanticipated problems from technology, or putting too
much power in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. It is quite
another to claim that spending $140 million to monitor volcanoes is a
waste of money!
- Jed
