Why are American's Shorter Than Europeans?

The New Yorker is running an interesting article that talks about the effect of affluence and health on human height. The article is found here.

This is an interesting topic. Basically there is a marked correlation with health and prosperity and average height in populations. While individual height is most effected by genetics, the average height of a population is a reliable indicator of how well the population is living.

This would lead you to think that the most prosperous country on earth (the United States) would have the greatest heights, right? Well actually it appears that the United States has remained stagnant over the last 100 years, while Europe and Japan have seen their average heights skyrocket. The average Dutch or Swede is now much taller than the average American.

The article argues for a number of reasons for this, but the main two seem to be access to prenatal and pediatric health care, and nutrition. The United States has a much larger level of poverty than Europe, while at the same time our poor often do not have access to quality health care. So the pervasive nature of poverty in the U.S. is keeping us all shorter than our more equitably prosperous neighbors in Europe.

Kind of an interesting article. I liked this quote as well:

“The best measure of a just society is whether you’d be willing to be thrown into it at random,”

Would you rather take this risk in Europe or the U.S? The height of our people is a seemingly ridiculous measure to worry about. But if it is an indication of far deeper problems, then we have to figure out how to resolve them. We have a long way to go.

Rice on the Stand - In Public - Under Oath!

This is of course the big news of the day. The 9/11 commission has created a firestorm for the Bush Administration, showcasing weaknesses, and hurting them politically. Richard Clarke's testimony was of course the most damning piece of evidence, as he claims that the Bush Administration relegated Al Qaida and the terrorist threat to second fiddle behind their obsession with Saddam.

Ever since Clarke's testimony, Rice has been hankering for an opportunity to set the record straight, however she wanted it under her own conditions. She wanted the testimony to be in private, and not under oath. She claimed precedent, and said that sitting National Security Chiefs didn't have to testify under oath.

Well this of course made it look like she had something to hide. The pressure got to her though, and now she and the Bush Administration have relented, and she will be testifying - In Public - Under Oath!! Whoohoo!

Not only that, but Bush and Cheney have also agreed to testify, in private, but before the full commission and not just a 2 member panel like they intially agreed. Obviously the media storm finally made them relent, and now hopefully we will get some answers. If what Clarke says is true, then they need to answer for their actions. They ignored their own experts, and instead heeded the advice of their political neo-con advisors. I am not saying they would have stopped 9/11, but we will never know if they might have been able to.

The heat is on!!

The White House is rapidly moving into panic mode over the 9/11 commission. After Clarke's damning testimony, they have worked themselves into a frenzy, attempting damage control .

While they have been working the media heavily, they have also been working the commission. Both Bush and Rice are making themselves more available to the commission now than they ever were before. Rice had earlier refused to appear before the commission either in public or under oath, on "advice from the white house lawyers". Her only meeting with them was short, in private and not under oath. Now she is seeking a second meeting with the commission, and she wants it with the same conditions, however she is unlikely to get them. Since she will be rebutting sworn testimony, it is likely she will only be allowed to come before the commission again if she is under oath. She is reluctant to do so.

Why is she so determined not to give testimony under oath? She says it is because it would weaken the President's ability to rely on counsel given by his advisers, if he knew they could be called upon to testify under oath in the future. This is BS, as should be immediately obvious. If we are expected to believe that the Bush Administration really thinks this way, then that means that Bush is only happy with his advisers if they will be allowed to lie about what they said to him in the future. They are actually saying that in order for counsel from advisers to be credible, then they need to be able to lie about the counsel they gave if they are ever called before a commission in the future! It is so ludicrous, that only the Bush Administration could have thought it up.

Bush also is now more willing to go before the commission. He has indicated that he would even be willing to give more than the 1 hour that he previously said he would give, and that hour was only after relenting from his previous position of not wanting to appear at all.

If Clarke has done nothing else, he has dragged these guys out of the wood work, and hopefully, we will now get Rice under oath, which will make it a lot easier to prosecute her later for covering up the truth.

Kerry said it....."these guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen"

9/11 Testimony - "Your Government failed you"

Well it has been an interesting couple of days of testimony. Both Bush and Clinton administration officials defending their records, and both trying to shift the blame to the other side. The Clinton Administration representatives, lead by Albright, claiming that they were highly focused and did all they could, and the Bush Administration, lead by Rumsfeld and Powell, claiming that they were as well.

While the Republicans will disagree, the only semi independent testimony has been from Richard Clarke, who testified this afternoon. Clarke served under both Republican and Democratic presidents over 30 years. He is a registered Republican, and he voted Republican in 2000. He was also the only person who has given testimony so far that worked under both Administrations. He seems like he must be about as impartial an observer as you can get.

The Republicans are accusing him of working for Kerry, and only speaking out now because he wants to sway the election. He may indeed want Bush to be removed, but it is not because he is a partisan Democrat. He himself has said that he wants Bush removed, but not because of Kerry. He wants him removed because he believes that Bush is dangerous to the country, and that his war in Iraq has increased the terrorist threat.

Here are some quotes from his testimony today, reported in MSNBC here.

"The former counterterrorism chief in the Bush and Clinton White Houses apologized Wednesday to the families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying “your government failed you.” But he placed the bulk of the blame on President Bush, accusing his administration of not making terrorism “an urgent issue.” In contrast, the Clinton administration had “no higher priority. "

"Clarke testified that the Clinton and Bush administrations approached the terrorist threat in starkly different ways. “Although I continued to say it [terrorism] was an urgent problem, I don’t think it was ever treated that way” by the Bush administration before Sept. 11.

“I dealt directly with the national security advisers in the Clinton administration,” he said, while in the Bush administration, “I was told [that] would be best done with the deputy national security adviser. So I spent less time talking about the problems of terrorism with the national security adviser in this administration.”

“It was possible to make a very persuasive case that this was a major threat and this was an urgent problem,” Clarke said. But the Bush team “didn’t either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem.”

“I thought, if the administration doesn’t believe its national coordinator for counterterrorism when he says there’s an urgent problem and if it’s unprepared to act as though there’s an urgent problem, then probably I should get another job.”

This is truly damning testimony, and the Bush Administration realizes this, that is why they are in overdrive to defend against the charges. They dropped the ball. While they can claim that the CA approach was ineffective, at least it was the CA's focus. Under the BA, the focus became Iraq, and Al Qaida was basically demoted as an issue. When people like Clarke insisted that Al Qaida was a priority, the BA dismissed them, and assumed that they knew better.

Why did they do this? I believe it was 2 things. A pathological aversion to doing anything that might make them appear to be continuing Clinton Administration policies, and second, a pathological hatred of Saddam Hussein. This lead them away from Al Qaida, and instead moved the focus to Iraq.

What a shame. We will never know if they would have been able to stop 9/11 if the focus on Al Qaida had been continued after the CA left office. However I can say that the chance of us stopping it would have been better if the focus had continued.

Both Clinton and Bush Administrations could have done more

The preliminary findings of the commission investigating the actions of our government leading up to 9/11 have been released, and they are not surprising. MSNBC has an article here.

I expected there to be plenty of blame to go around, and for political expediency they were not going to only blame the Bush Administration. In hindsight, the Clinton Administration could have possibly done more, but hindsight is always 20/20. The reality is that they did a lot, and they were highly focused on getting Bin Laden and the threat he posed. He problem was that they tried to get him through diplomatic and criminal channels, instead of military ones. At least that is the conclusion of the panel.

The problem with this is that we are thinking with a post 9/11 mindset. It is very easy to think we should have invaded Afghanistan and killed Bin Laden, when we know that he would be responsible for such a heinous crime. However before 9/11, all we knew was that he was involved in terrorist plots against us. We did not have the right or the legal reasons to invade Afghanistan at that time. We were not living under the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes. Now the Republicans will tell you that maybe we should have been, but even Bush was not proclaiming his pre-emptive doctrine until after 9/11. That and the fact that the doctrine has pretty much been invalidated by the lack of WMD in Iraq, means that it is unreasonable to expect Clinton to have had the same policy during his Administration.

The Bush Administration, on the other hand, really dropped the ball. Where Clinton's were fully engaged on the issue, and doing all they could under the current environment, the BA failed to understand or even see the threat posed by Al Qaida. They were fully briefed, and the CA made every effort to ensure that they understood that Al Qaida needed to be a focus. The problem was that the BA didn't trust the CA, and so instead of continuing at pace, they decided to begin their own comprehensive study of the issue. This sounds great, but the problem was the study barely begun when 9/11 occurred. If they had trusted the CA, we might have had the focus where it needed to be.

No-one but Bin Laden and Al Qaida is responsible for 9/11. Hindsight is 20/20. Even greater focus from Bush might not have stopped the attacks. But now we will never truly know.

Bush's Former Terrorism Chief criticizes Bush

Richard Clarke, Bush's former anti terrorism chief has recently published a new book, called "Against All Enemies." I haven't read the book yet, but MSNBC has an examination of some of the claims contained in the book, their article is here.

Clarke makes some very interesting accusations. He claims that Bush has done a "terrible" job fighting terrorism, and that Bush was "obsessed with Iraq and Saddam," and that the focus was on them and not on Al Qaida.

Following 9/11, he says "The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now, he never said, ‘Make it up,’ but the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.”

His comments on Rice are even more damning:

"Clarke wrote that Rice appeared never to have heard of al-Qaida until she was warned early in 2001 about the terrorist organization and that she “looked skeptical” about his warnings."

Wolfowitz doesn't avoid accusations either:

"in April 2001, Clarke met with deputy secretaries. During that meeting, he wrote, the Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Clarke, “You give bin Laden too much credit.” He said Wolfowitz sought to steer the discussion to Iraq."

You can read the rest of the article at the link above.

The Administration has gone into overdrive to try and discredit Clarke, and that means they are worried. This once again paints them in a negative light, concentrating more on Iraq than Al Qaida, and dismissing warnings from their own Anti Terrorism Chief about the threat Al Qaida presented. Their whole re-election campaign rests on their response to the terrorist threat, since they have little else to run on, and they cannot afford to have their sole remaining platform for re-election destroyed.

As fellow blogger SnakeStu discusses today on his Blog , there was little logic in attacking Saddam when he had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. I am looking forward to reading this book, which gives an insider view into the decisions that were made, and explanations as to why they were made that way. Bush was determined to attack Iraq, and it appears this was a personal vendetta that needed to be avenged. Nothing was going to convince him that Iraq was innocent, and therefore he ignored the pleadings of his own experts, listening instead to the Neo-Cons.

We cannot let this guy stay any longer.

Bring Back the Draft?

There are currently 2 bills working their way through the House and Senate, that would re-institute the draft. Both are more stringent than the draft measures of the past, both allow less opportunities for deferment. This is a good thing.

The draft is one of those things that you instinctively hate. No-one wants to have to force people to go and fight for their country, maybe die for their country. The draft was hated in the 60's, and for good reason, since people lost their will to fight in Vietnam. One of the main objections to the draft though, was that too many of the wealthy or well connected were able to avoid the draft, whether they did it like Bill Clinton, or George Bush. Rush Limbaugh got out because he had a sore on his backside. Others for equally ridiculous reasons. The ones who ended up going were usually the poor and disconnected. (Obviously there are exceptions, Kerry, Gore and McCain are good examples).

So why do I think the draft would be good now? Because the current state of the military is causing too many problems. An all volunteer army sounds great, but the problem is that most of the people attracted to a career in the military come from poor disadvantaged backgrounds. Minorities and lower class individuals are disproportionately making up our armed forces.

The result of this is that when our leaders are making decisions about going to war, there is little personal impact. Those they will be putting in harms way are not usually members of their own family. They are not people who contribute to their campaigns. They are not people who are politically connected, or members of influential groups. They are a faceless mass of "disposable" poor people.

Now let me just say that I am not impugning the dignity or honor of the members of the military. They are fine men and women, and they do what they can, and do it well.

However when our leaders have no personal connections to people who could be put at risk, then it is much easier to order our forces to war. We are then more likely to start wars without thinking through the implications, or without weighing the costs and benefits effectively. A draft would partially solve that problem. If the draft is implemented with no or only limited deferment options, then it would be fair, across all racial and social lines. Every American would have an equal opportunity to be called up. Options for escaping would be limited. The result would be a military that more closely resembles America.

That way when these leaders are making decisions about war, their wealthy contributors, their connected influencers, their own peers could have family members effected. This increases the chances that our leaders will make a much more informed decision when they do go to war. They will be much more likely to only take that drastic step when it truly is the only option, when we have exhausted all others. A man who decides to send the nation to war, even when his own son or daughter could be effected and involved, makes a much graver, and a much better decision.

Hell, personally I would go a step further. I would require every member of Congress and every member of the Presidential Administration to have a member of their family active in the military. That way they would really be careful about going to war. This will never happen of course :) but a draft will at least get us closer to that idea.

I am not saying war is bad. It is often a necessary evil. However it is not something to be undertaken lightly. Every decision to go to war should be made as if I am deciding whether it is worth my own son or daughter's death. If it still is worth that cost, then it is worth fighting.

DVD Night

My wife and I got together with friends over the weekend. We have a regularly scheduled "DVD Night" where we get together and watch a movie. Sometimes we never get that far, and we just sit and talk.

The reason I am bringing it up here, is that it is refreshing to be able to talk politics with a group of knowledgeable people. They have a lot of insight, and a lot of good ideas, and a lot of disgust with Bush (which is nice also).

Just wanted to say hi to any of them who are reading!

Bush Administration miscalculated costs of Iraqi War

MSNBC is reposting a piece of analysis by Dana Milbank and Robin Wright of the Washington Post. Here is a link to the article.

This opinion piece examines the miscalculations of the Bush Administration as to the costs of the war, as well as the reaction we would receive. While this may be news to some, there were many, myself included, that were frustrated with the overly rosy projections given by the Administration before the war. They were obviously out of touch with reality, and many tried to call them on it. However they persisted in saying that it would cost little and that the Iraqi people would greet us with flowers, and that it would be the beginning of a flowering of Democracy in the Middle East.

However overly optimistic projections which turn out to be wrong are par for the course with this Administration. Whether it is the cost of tax cuts, the future state of the economy, the job gains we are supposed to have, the amount of WMD in Iraq, or the cost of the medicare prescription drug plan, the Administration consistently over promises, and under delivers. They seem determined to only ever use the best case scenario in their projections, and the American people are starting to realize this. While this can be effective if used rarely, but when the Administration uses overly optimistic numbers every projection it makes, it ends up destroying their credibility.

Anyway, it is an interesting article and worth a read.

No more Memory Hole!

Here is an incredible link:

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/

This site is part of the House Committee for Government Reform's web site. It is a comprehensive database of the distortions by the Bush Administration regarding the war in Iraq. It is fully searchable by date, topic and speaker, and it is an excellent resource! Kind of fun to browse too!

Rummsfeld Caught Lying on Tape

He put his foot in his mouth there!:

Click here for the link

An Interesting Idea?

MSNBC is reporting that Senator Joseph Biden is calling for a Kerry/McCain ticket.

Well now wouldn't that be interesting.!

I actually like the idea. I have often said that if there is one Republican I would even come close to consider voting for, it would be McCain. I do not agree with many of his policies, however I respect the man and believe he is a man of his word. He has principles, and he sticks by them.

Just think of the power this ticket would have. I think it would be hugely popular with independents, and possibly even disaffected Republicans.

bring it on!!

Bush Administration and the energy industry - Again!!!

The Seattle Times has an article that reveals once again the seedy underworld of Bush Administration policy development. Apparently last year when the Environmental Protection Agency was developing Mercury Emission rules for industry, the political appointees in the EPA did a run around the career staffers, even skipping the normal testing and study procedures that always preceed this kind of change. They also used Industry Lobbyists text directly in the new rules.

The industry and the BA have said that the new rules would reduce emissions. Many opponents of the new rules insist that it will instead increase them. Who is right? Well unfortunately because the studies were cancelled by the political appointees we can't know! Read the full article for more info.

What does Al Qaida want?

The Spanish election is obviously story number one right now, and many pundits and media types are declaring that the Spanish election results were a victory for Al Qaida. They are assuming of course that Al Qaida's objective with the bombing was to scare the Spanish into withdrawing from the war on terror. However I am not so sure that this was their objective.

What is Al Qaida's goal, what is it they want? The major consensus is that they want the U.S. and western powers out of the middle east. They want to free the middle east from the yoke of the infidels. Now this may be the case, however there are other theories as to what they want that should be considered as well.

One theory that circulated soon after the 9/11 attacks was that Al Qaida wanted to forment a holy war. They wanted to infuriate the U.S., so that the U.S. would overextend its hand, and retailiate in a way that would infuriate the arab street. This would hopefully (in their minds) lead more to their cause, and start a holy war with the west. This holy war would be the final war, the one that would destroy the infidel, and bring about the final result of the world under Islam.

If provoking a holy war between the west and Islam is their goal (a holy war they believe they would win with Allah's help), then the bombings in Spain need to be looked at in a different light. The goal of the bombings was not to scare Spain away, but was instead to infuriate the Spanish and Europeans, so they would increase their participation in the holy war. If that was truly the case, then Al Qaida may have failed, if Spain becomes more isolated and pacifist than it was before. One thing to remember, the bombings came exactly 2 years and 6 months since the 9/11 attacks. While the election probably played into the plans, I think that the symbolism of the date was just as important. So maybe effecting the election was not the main goal.

One thing we have to remember, is that Al Qaida hates the leaders of most of the countries in the middle east. They have tried to kill Musharef in Pakistan, they are on record as hating the Saudi leaders, they hated Saddam as a secular anti radical Islamist. Al Qaida doesn't care if we invade every one of these countries, in fact they would probably prefer it. That way they can finally (in their minds) get the people of Islam to fight for their Islamic faith, and have the holy war they desire.

It is still early of course, but Spain and Europe may still play into their plans. Europe appears that it may become more engaged with the war on terror (outside the occupation in Iraq) rather than less engaged. If that happens, then Al Qaida will have the result they hoped for.

I may very well be wrong, and it may be that Al Qaida is deluded enough to think that the attacks will cause the West to fully withdraw from the middle east, and that is their goal. But I am not convinced that is the case.

Spanish Socialist Victory

Well the victory for the socialists in Spain is causing the Bush Administration a little consternation. The Conservative leader, Jose Maria Aznar, was a staunch Bush ally, a frequent guest on the "ranch" and one of the few world leaders strongly behind Bush's Iraq adventure. He had been expected to lose some ground but still hold onto power in the election yesterday, but the bombings last week changed that.

The socialist leader, Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has been critical of the conservatives support for Bush. Their criticism has basically been that Spain should not have been involved in a war that was not sanctioned by the United Nations, and a war that was doing nothing to stop terrorism. He was also critical of the fact that no WMD had been found, and that the conservatives main rationale for war was therefor based on a lie.

With the bombings last week, the country obviously agreed with him. In exit polls, the obvious result was that people felt that the support of the Bush Administration had lead to Spain being labelled a target by Al Qaida, and they felt that the reasons behind that support were not good ones. Therefore the support of the conservative Government disappeared almost overnight, and the Socialists managed to gain power.

The big news in this for the U.S. is two fold. The first is that Zapatero has already announced that he will be withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq by July, if the U.N. is not put in control of the forces there. This is of course embarressing for the U.S. Administration, since the Spanish contingent is an important one when they are trying to sell the occupation as international. The second reason this is big news is that Spain will now be an opponent to American plans rather than a supporter. This is more in line with the will of the Spanish people, and will be a big blow to the Bush Administration.

The Administration has of course struck back. Powell and others are already on record stating that they think that Spain has learned the wrong lesson from the bombings, and that Spain is simply cowering before the terrorists. However Zapatero has made clear that this is not the reason for the change. Zapatero has emphasized that Spain will be responding to the attacks by becoming more involved in the war on terror, not less involved. The difference of course is that Spain now considers the war in Iraq as unimportant in the war on terror.

Of course the new Spanish position is correct. The war in Iraq was a sideline, a diversion, not really part of the war on terror. If we had spent all the money, manpower and resources attacking Al Qaida instead of Iraq, maybe the Spanish bombings wouldn't have occured, because they were not undertaken by Iraqi's, they were undertaken by Al Qaida. The focus of our efforts should have been shutting down Al Qaida, not worrying about Iraq.

Just for fun today

The Bush/Cheney website has some interesting things on it, but one application is a lot of fun. It allows you to create official campaign signs and posters, using an easy to use tool on their site. What is fun about it is that it then allows you to add your own caption to the poster.

You need to make sure to not put anything in any of the fields except for the custom text line. Then hit creat my poster. As long as you haven't used any overly obvious negative words (swear words, obvious derogatory comments) it will take what you have written and give you a great new poster!

Here is the link:

http://www.georgewbush.com/btl/CustomPoster.aspx?type=color

Here are some custom comments I was able to add to the poster:

We're DoublePlusGood! Big Brother in '04
Help! Cheney has my testes in a vice grip!
Return of the Crusades!
Deception is Divine
Empire or Bust
Punish your kids, leave them with economic ruin!
We like Gays, we just don't want to marry them
We're Mentally Challenged!
Nepotism for Dummies!


Have fun!

Forbes misses the point on the No Child Left Behind Act

Forbes magazine has an interesting article on the flaws in the no Child Left Behind Act. Forbes is basically saying that the act is destined to fail, and explains the reason's why it believes this is so. Here is the article.

It was pretty interesting, although a couple of assumptions the article makes really gall me. The main one is represented by this quote:

"The problem is that some students are not smart enough to do well on tests. This might be considered too obvious to mention but for some astounding details about No Child. For openers, it proposes to eliminate--not reduce, eliminate--the "achievement gap" between prosperous and impoverished students. The gap is tremendous and in large measure reflects socioeconomic IQ differences."

This is making the assumption that children in lower socioeconomic groups are less intelligent than those at higher levels. I am not saying that this is not often the case, however the gap is not just because poor kids are dumb. There is a certain amount of validity to this, less intelligent people are more likely to have less intelligent children, and less intelligent people are also more likely to make less money.

However, there is another HUGE factor involved, and that is that less wealthy children have far less opportunities to excel, and far less resources to help them. When you are living in a slum with little to eat, and with a single mother forced to work while leaving the child in extremely poor daycare, of course that child is not going to do as well in school.

Forbes seems to be saying that the problem with Bush's plan is that it expects these poor kids to meet proficiencies, however Forbes is basically saying that it is unrealistic because these kids are unintelligent. To a small extent they are on the right track, it is impossible to reach 100% efficiency. However what they need to realize is that they are alluding to the true flaw of the program, without actually recognizing it. That is that the No Child left Behind act demands high achievement and accountability from schools, without giving the schools and our children the necessary resources to achieve that. They don't fund the schools, and they don't reduce the problems that are faced by low income kids.

If the NCLA was coupled with increases in head start, poverty reduction programs, mentor programs, counseling, tutoring, an increase in child care subsidies, housing assistance etc, then it might have a better chance to succeed. By only expecting results, and not doing anything to resolve any of the core problems hindering results, the act is destined to fail. Forbes is on the right track, they just let their prejudices get in the way.

Martha Stewart Guilty on all counts!

I am so glad to hear this announcement. I honestly had very little confidence in her actually being convicted. She will of course appeal, and she will of course be put up in a cushy white collar prison, but at least she will pay.

Why am I so vindictive? Well she is a symptom of a larger problem. There is a group of people in this country who seem to assume that the law doesn't apply to them. These wealthy individuals get away with destroying other people's financial lives every day, and they rarely pay for it. If I hold up someone at knifepoint, and take $500 from them, I can go away for years. However if I defraud thousands of shareholders, I generally get away with it. The recent spate of high profile CEO indictments has been a promising sign, but so few of those caught up in the scandals of a few years ago have actually been held accountable.

Even when they are actually charged, it is still very unlikely that they serve any time. They generally can afford the best legal representation available, and usually receive lenient sentences even if they are convicted.

We have a dual layer legal system in the U.S., where the wealthy get the best possible reprisentation and leniency, while the rest make do with poor representation and a lack of options. This is a serious problem, and must be resolved if we are truly to have a fully equal society.