October 19, 2009 archive

Oct 19 2009

Ike Skelton Pushes For More War in Afghanistan

Cross-posted at Dkos, MyDD, OpenLeft, and FDL.

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In today’s WaPo, Ike Skelton, Chair of the House Armed Forces Committee, teamed up with everyone’s favorite former Democrat, Joe Lieberman, on an op-ed for more war in Afghanistan called Don’t Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan.

The president was right to call the war in Afghanistan “a war of necessity.” Now it is time to treat it as such and commit the decisive force that will allow Gen. McChrystal to break the Taliban’s momentum as quickly as possible.

And

Here at home, we must stabilize public support by convincing an increasingly skeptical American people that the Afghan war is in fact winnable.

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It comes as no surprise that Ike and Joe are in favor of treating our Armed Forces to more $#!t sandwiches and crap burgers in Afghanistan.  Ike and Joe have been talking it up for quite a while.

Oct 19 2009

Overnight Caption Contest

Oct 19 2009

Pique the Geek 20091018. The Things that we Eat. Dried Foods

Preserving food by drying it is prehistoric.  Humans have dried food for millenia, and it works as well now as it did way back when.  In this sense, I am not talking about grains and seeds that naturally dry on the plant, with no interaction from humans, but rather foods that need a bit of help to dry without going bad.

Let us take, for example, apples.  Dried apples are wonderful, but leave that apple of the tree and it falls to the ground, and just rots.  Apples are too moist in their prime state to dry whole, especially if nature is all that is working for one.

Enter mankind to make a better process.  We have learnt to peel and slice the apples, and then put them into a place where the water is lost rather quickly, before bacteria and molds can grow.  Please read further.

Oct 19 2009

Considered Forthwith: House Foreign Affairs Committee

Welcome to the 24th installment of “Considered Forthwith.”

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies.

Reality got in the way the past two weeks, but I am finally back. This week, Considered Forthwith will examine the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. This committee has considerably less official authority than its Senate counterpart. Notably, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee has jurisdiction over treaties and appointments — including ambassadorships — as as required by the Constitution. I plan to examine that committee next week.

This week, however, I will be looking at the committee that dates back to the early days of the Revolution.

Oct 19 2009

Sunday Train: The Pay-To-Grow Financial Model for Regional HSR

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

also Agent Orange

Let construction or upgrade of a rail corridor be proposed, and almost immediately the cry goes up, “but we can’t afford it! It costs too much!”.

Confusing the response to this cry is that there are two quite different types of “cost too much” – real, and financial.

There first “cost of rail” question is the real cost question: what is the full economic benefit, including all material and energy impacts saved versus other alternative, versus the full economic cost.

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Note: The first kind of “cost versus benefit” question is the kind that Ed Gleaser fumbled so badly when he assumed Zero Population Growth in east Texas, no congestion today between Houston and Dallas on the intercity road network, either deliberately or through negligence bypassed important intercity transport demands along the route of his corridor, and presumed that the only available option was the most capital-intensive type of rail corridor, the all-new, all-grade separated, Express High Speed Rail corridor.

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The second “cost of rail” question is the financial cost – given the complex, sometimes ad hoc, and often inconsistent sets of rules we have established for allocating resources for both investment in transport infrastructure and paying for transport operations, how do we “pay for” construction or upgrade of those rail corridors that our best analysis of cost and benefit indicate are wise investments.

That second question is what I am looking at today.

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