From the floor of Congress, some sense

For those of you that have been too busy following the body count in Iraq, there was a small item of good news recently: the U.S. Senate managed to compromise and save the filibuster from destruction. Why the American public is overjoiced that the Senate just barely managed to keep from behaving like two five-year-olds squabbling over a favorite toy, is beyond me. You know those kids that grab onto each end of doll and play tug of war until the doll is torn in two? That almost was our Senate. Our politics is in a sad, sad state of partisanship.

I have a confession to make. It turns out that I was wrong, that left-wingers hadn't exactly been fair to Bush Jr., and had been sitting on his judges with the filibuster like school bullies. For judicial appointments (from the NY Times), 57% were confiirmed during the Clinton administration, 52% were confirmed during Bush's watch, and, to show how bad things have become, upwards of 70% for previous presidents. So, the compromise was exactly that--neither side is exactly happy, but the Democrats have promised to stop being filibuster-bullies and the Republicans have promised to not rip the filibuster-toy up and hurt our democratic institutions. I think, in another day and age, that 'bad compromise' (to paraphrase Bill Frist), might have been called...statesmanship.

I also have a story. I went and watched the Texas legislature, the House to be exact. I highly recommend that everyone do that one day. By good luck, I sat next to a lobbyist for a wind power company. All of those chattering Representatives and staff, the laptops, the cell phones, and the strange parliamentary lingo...it was a surprise. Every single vote but one was unaminous. The lobbyist said all the deals had been worked out already in committee. I was a little surprised, but then who really has a partisan position on expanding Dallas's utility oversight to include a nearby county, or on allowing electronic payment of certain taxes to the state? The lobbyist (in his nice suit with the telltale Blackberry and cellphone earplug) said, "Son, it's like a sausage. What goes in...well, it ain't exactly what comes out."

Then the entertainment happened, and I almost missed it. A Democratic congressman had had his favorite amendment dropped from the Senate version of a bill, and he had some words to say to a certain Democratic senator. I can't convey it like he did, not even close. But evidently people trolling for prostitutes in Houston had accidently hit kids on the way around the block to cruise by the hookers again. This congressman's had put in an amendment to be able to sieze the cars of individuals caught soliciting prostitutes where a car was involved, and the senator had cut it out for 'philosophical reasons.' "Well, the Congressman closed, "I invite the distinguished Senator, next time he's in Houston, to come down to our neighborhood and see if he can solve our problem with his 'philosophical reasons'."

After all the laughing and clapping died down, I was thinking, "Come on, buddy--A Texas senator on weekend furlough in Houston? You don't need to invite him. He'll already be in your neighborhood, trolling from his Caddie."

Ahh, politics. It's like Bridge for people in suits.

More, but Loooong

Well, I have been on this site more often but my posts have been long and political, I guess. Sorry, it's hard for me to write succinctly without practice or editing. There's a LOT going on in my life lately that I haven't posted on this site, like my job ending and an upcoming move to DC, the truly horrible car-crash which changed my life forever (which I won't say more about for legal and moral reasons), the recent death in my family, the cancers of my father and my aunt, how hard it is to leave your friends and family and home city for a new unknown, especially at a time like this....just too much. Too much to do anything but struggle with the abstract, too much to do anything but instruct the Web on the finer points of political matters I know too little about. All I can do is practice writing (and Lord knows I need it). Practice practice practice...and there find relief in the joy of learning a craft.

There are moments in life we never really leave behind us, moments we carry around like pictures in our mental wallets. I always thought all of my mental moments would be happy ones. I was very mistaken. The bright moments now shine against the dark ones like candles, but there are times when they all play again for me, the dark ones and the light ones, all at once. On days like that, days like today, life is a paradox of emotion--a joy that is too much a sadness to face with a full heart. I pull my heart in, I hide it away, and I call my girlfriend too much. But I get through, and I thank God that even on the darkest of days, the good memories never leave me be.

Chinese Checkmate

How do countries wage war in an age of nuclear weapons? The threat of mutually assured destruction prevents you from ever defeating your opponent militarily--if you destroy him, he destroys you. If you defeat him on the ocean or occupy his port cities, he launches and you both lose. The options for combat between nuclear-toting countries are few.

We have already started exploring alternative war options for nuclear rivals. The 20th century saw the proxy country war, the arms build-up, the client state, the propaganda war, state-sponsored proxy terrorism, and the cold war. Of all of these, the cold war was the most dangerous madness, one built from trying to weigh different levels of mutally assured destruction.

With the end of the Cold War, everyone expected the 21st century to hold different ways for nuclear powers to interact. What we have seen so far this century are old-fashioned methods of gaining power and influence without resorting to open war--the practices of nationalistic economics and strategic diplomacy. I would argue that China is trying to defeat the U.S. using both of these methods.

Before I tell you what I think is happening, let me be clear--I respect the people of China, their culture and history, and their hopes. I hope that China's economic growth will keep lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, and I would love to one day see a democratic China take her rightful place among the powers of the world. I believe in letting the people of China decide when they are ready for democracy, and I do not believe war is the answer to the problem I am about to present.

China is growing rapidly though growth-friendly economic policies, injections of incredible amounts of government money, and by artificial devaluation of their currency. By keeping their currency (and therefore goods) cheap through government monetary controls, China is underselling the world and stockpiling assets. Rather than sitting on a pile of cash, their government is investing a good portion of that money into the richest country in the world, the U.S.A., to the tune of $300,000,000 in American government debt. The Chinese are financing the American government's ballooning federal deficit and allowing us to keep interest rates artificially low. Low interest rates, in turn, are allowing the American economy to ignore our deficit problem. If the Chinese ever stop loaning us money, interest rates will rise and our economic bubble will burst.

So what happens if the U.S. and China ever have a major row, maybe over Taiwan? Rather than face a dangerous conventional war (our nukes maybe outnumber China's by a 100:1) and economic collapse if they lose the war, China would just do the easy thing: threaten to deep-six the U.S. economy through their investments. If given a way to save face, the U.S. would probably back down and let China have its way. Victory, through nationalistic economics, and no war.

In this fantasy confrontation, the U.S. still holds the high-card: our huge nuclear arsenal. China, to neutralize our advantage there, needs to find a way to increase its nuclear stockpile to a respectable level without drawing massive international sanctions and opprobrium. I suspect they've found it: strategic diplomacy with North Korea.

China has long had North Korea by the short and curlies--they supply their food. North Korea is therefore acquiring a nuclear arsenal and long-range missiles with China's tacit approval. At first, I asked myself, why would China do this? Why be so reckless as to allow your client state to become a nuclear blackmailer in direct conflict with Japan and the West? Even pet dogs can turn and bite.

It is entirely possible that China's inaction on North Korea is the result of a carefully calculated game of strategic diplomacy: nuclear dominoes. Or, as I think it, Chinese checkmate. Just like there are six countries in talks with North Korea, there are six players in Chinese checkers, and only one wins.

When one country in a region gets the Bomb, their neighbors suddenly want to have the bomb. Look at the U.S., the Soviet Union and China, or at Israel, Iraq, and Iran, or at India and Pakistan. Fear drives a crash of nuclear dominoes as one nation after another goes nuclear to deter the threat from their powerful neighbors.

The big winner in a nuclear dominoes scenario involving North Korea (Russia, South Korea, possibly even Japan) would be China. It would now have a perfectly acceptable reason to increase its nuclear arsenal dramatically: the threat from its 'now-rogue' former client state. This larger arsenal, along with the direct threat of economic collapse, would allow China to stand up to the United States in the 21st century as it becomes a superpower. Victory, through strategic diplomacy.

We will see in the coming years whether China is indeed playing this game. I will predict that after North Korea develops very long range missiles, China and North Korea have a public 'break-up' (but China still feeds North Korea, decrying it as blackmail). This will lead to China increasing its nuclear stockpile. Then if China annexes Taiwan in a peace deal at first objected to then grudgingly accepted by the U.S., then I think the game of Chinese checkmate is over.

I hope to goodness that I wrong, and hope even more that the U.S. takes rapid steps to cut the federal deficit and enter one-on-one talks with North Korea aimed at de-arming it and returning it to IAEA supervision. Even in the absence of a Chinese plan to take advantage of the U.S., deficits and rogue nuclear states are bad enough.

As they say, weeds in the garden mean only one thing: neglect. I hope our president eventually sees clear to tend gardens somewhere other than Crawford, Texas.

Going Nuclear--For the Greens?

In a recent article in the New York Times, "Old Foes Soften to New Reactors," several leading environmentalists are quoted as being newly interested in supporting nuclear power. They are interested, they say, because nuclear is a proven energy technology that does not emit greenhouse gases. Those of you that remember the nuclear power marches of the 1970's and 80's (the protests that helped to give birth to the environmental movement) may be a little surprised at this news. Shocked, surprised, appalled...whatever you want to call it. But you should have seen it coming.

Environmentalists and conservationists have had many successes both in the U.S. and abroad over the last 30 years. It is a growing movement with growing power, but our environmental problems are growing faster as our population continues to increase. Faced with huge challenges, conservationists are getting brutally pragmatic. They want to solve global problems, and that means they have to play, and win, in the dirty world of economic dealing and compromises.

Global warming is a juggernaut on the horizon. At stake is no less an issue than the shape of our coastlines, the survival of island nations, the location and acreage of deserts and farmland, and the destruction of thousands upon thousands of rare species. The poles are melting, and the sea is starting to rise--who knows where it will stop in the coming centuries?

This huge problem has been produced by a MASSIVE consumption of fossil fuels. and the MASSIVE release of CO2 into the atmosphere by deforestation. We are way in the warming hole already, and soon our CO2 will be in the Jurassic range (read: globally tropical). Global temperature over the past hundred million years ALWAYS follows the atmospheric CO2 level. Just give it a century or three, a geologic eyeblink, and North America will be a different place.

So what can we do? We need, as a global society, to stop burning fossil fuels before we run out, and to combat deforestation. Oil will be needed for plastic long after we stop using it for energy. And as the user of 25% of the world's energy, America, for the sake of global warming and for our own national security, needs to stop using so much fossil fuel.

To stop using fossil fuel without cutting our standard of living is going to be ENORMOUSLY difficult. We have to find a way to supply 80% of our energy needs without using oil, natural gas, or coal. Almost all electricity, and all of our car 'gasoline.' And let's remember folks, 'gasoline' has to be either mined (fossil fuels) or produced (biofuels, hydrogen). A hydrogen economy would just shift the energy problem to producing more electricty to make hydrogen--it would not generate more energy to satisfy our needs.

To answer this huge challenge, we are going to need to employ every trick, every technology, in the playbook. And yes, some environmentalists see it clearly--even nuclear power.

What of conservation, you ask? It could account for a quarter reduction, no more--and it might help to keep our energy use from increasing any more. Carbon recapture technologies? If employed on a global, high-density scale with a good bit of the world GDP, it could account for a fraction. Will that happen? Unlikely. Reforestation? It's complicated to fix, but is worth trying and could contribute to reducing another chunk of our CO2 emissions.

So maybe we are down to accounting for 50-60% of our energy demand. Remember, we are already getting 40 miles to the gallon and buying fancy AC units to keep the bills down. We need to generate a LOT of energy some alternate way. Our options: Fusion? It's still a few decades away. Hydrogen? In a couple decades it will power our cars, but remember it will just pass the buck for our energy needs. Solar, geothermal, wave action? All still too experimental in the short-term to rely upon.

So let's face it, folks. We need to solve our short-term energy thirst with the tools we have at hand. That means clean coal, nuclear power, biofuels, wind energy, and hydro. Cars will just have to get high miles per gallon on fossils and biofuels till hydrogen comes online. But here's the thing wise environmentalists see: no useful tool should be cast aside. Even nuclear.

France has generated 60% of its energy in a very safe manner for the last 40 years--using plutonium breeder reactors. We could take a page from them, and use new, safer technologies to build a new generation of terrorist- and meltdown-proof nuclear power plants. If we supply 40% of our energy from nuclear by 2050, the other 30-40% we need could be supplied by clean coal, wind energy, and biofuels. This would be a stop-gap measure, to be cast aside once solar and fusion come into their own in the 22nd century. I would bet hydrogen will be in wide use by mid-century.

If we allow industry to come up with the best solution by placing gradually increasing taxes on fossil fuels, they may go nuclear, they may go biofuels, they may go a whole new direction. But in short order, by mid-century I bet, the great engine of economics will have resolved the problem it created.

What a dream! The threat of massive global warming stopped in less than 45 years, reduced to a temporary warming trend in the early part of this millenium. It's time we stopped playing around and set to make this dream a reality. If we do not, we will wake up one day to a very hot nightmare. So nuclear energy--unless you have a better idea?

Nuclear=Destruction. No reconstruction possible.

So my blogs have been really long and infrquent. That's not really fair to my faithful audience of three, so I figure I will change that. My 'fed-up-with-American-Politics' factor is reaching critical.

There's so much bullshit floating in the air in Washington lately, they are going to shut the place down to let it settle. So much for bullshit, let's start with facts: Republican senators blocked as many Democratic judges during the Clinton administration as Democratic senators have proposed blocking during our current Bush administration. Turn-about is fair play, right?

Hell no. Instead, Republicans-in-Power are going for the nuclear option, the destruction of the filibuster as a 140-year old institution. What you are witnessing is a naked and short-sighted power-grab by religious conservatives in the U.S. Senate. Claiming credit for delivering the fall elections to the Republicans, this faction of the Republican party wants payback. They don't care if they have to destroy democratic institutions to get their results.

You know, this stinks so much that I am ashamed to even be a conservative Democrat. And what's the worst part about all of this? The destruction of the filibuster is going to come back to haunt the Republicans when they are a minority party a few inevitable elections from now. They will have shot their feet completely off in an unbridled majority power grab, and screwed American democracy up for the people. How do you like those apples?