Either you get cheap goods at home, or death in another state. What do you choose? Governor Palin has asked the Governor of California to keep goods cheap for Alaskans while people (and animals) in California die. The LA Times explains:

“We are losing about 3,400 Californians each year because of pollution,” Lowenthal said. “No matter what Gov. Palin would like to see happen, the impact is killing Californians. I don’t think Gov. Palin truly understands the impacts going on here.”

John Casey, a spokesman for Lowenthal, added: “Maybe Sarah Palin doesn’t care about Californians.”

That is correct. Palin does not care about Californians. She does not care about the environment, about the budget, about health-care…all she cares about is making herself and her friends rich.

If she really opposes a tax, then she should ban pollution that causes severe financial strain due to health and environmental destruction. Just because she can not see it on a price tag does not mean there is not real and measured consequences, and just because it is not hurting her family directly does not mean that it is not a public concern.

Above all, the real question is why the Alaska Governor thinks she can tell the California Governor how to handle the health and welfare of people in his state.

A Reuters story on the happiness of tall people caught my attention:

Data from a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index study found taller people were more satisfied with their lives, more likely to report positive emotions like enjoyment and happiness, and less likely to report emotions like anger, sadness, and stress.

My first reaction was to consider all the tall people I have known and how they have had a very happy-go-lucky attitude. Sometimes they seem far happier than all those around them, kind of like a big dog can often be really aloof and content with life even while all the little dogs are running around yapping at each other.

Then I read about Gates’ presentation regarding his appointment of new Generals to lead the ongoing war in Iraq:

Injecting a bit of humor, Gates made note of what he called “one other historical achievement” for the new command team of Odierno and Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who replaced Odierno in February as the No. 2 commander and will remain until next spring.

“Between Gen. Odierno and Lt. Gen. Austin we just might have the tallest command in American military history — about 13 feet of general by my estimate,” Gates said. Each of the generals is nearly 6 feet 6 inches tall.

The aloofness has started already:

Odierno told the gathering that while much remains for the U.S. military to accomplish here, the Iraqis must take charge. “This struggle is theirs to win,” he said.

Our mission is accomplished, remember?

The same article has this note:

Petraeus said the insurgents and militia extremists who have created such chaos in Iraq over the past five years are now weakened but not yet fully defeated. He noted that before he took the assignment in February 2007 he had described the situation as “hard but not hopeless.”

He thanked his troops for having “turned ‘hard but not hopeless’ into still hard but hopeful.”

Despite the security gains, insurgents retain the ability to carry out devastating attacks. On Monday evening, a female suicide bomber blew herself up among a group of police officers northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 22 people. Hours earlier, car bombs in the capital killed 13 people.

Hopeful rather than not-hopeless?

Maybe if you are above 6′ tall this kind of language makes sense to you. To me it just seems like double-talk and vagueness, which is probably why Petraeus is getting a promotion while the straight-talking, honest and hard-working generals are being asked to step aside.

I am really getting sick of the crony system of Republicans that is based on hope.

Bremer was a documented liar and thief, but he always had hope. Do we really need more of these “hopeful” thinkers?

At the end of the Iraq war, vast sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared. Ed Harriman on the extraordinary scandal of Iraq’s missing billions

[…]

In the absence of any meaningful accountability, Iraqis have no way of knowing how much of the nation’s wealth is being used for reconstruction and how much is being handed out to ministers’ and civil servants’ friends and families or funnelled into secret overseas bank accounts. Given that many Ba’athists are now back in government, some of that money may even be financing the insurgents.

Both Saddam and the US profited handsomely during his reign. He controlled Iraq’s wealth while most of Iraq’s oil went to Californian refineries to provide cheap petrol for American voters. US corporations, like those who enjoyed Saddam’s favour, grew rich. Today, the system is much the same: the oil goes to California, and the new Iraqi government spends the national wealth with impunity.

With the corruption of the American Republican party today, I find it impossible to be hopeful.

The Los Angeles train accident is a horrible tragedy not only in terms of human suffering, but also in the context of security infrastructure. Consider the news now emerging:

Higgins said she believed the crash could have been prevented with technology that stops a train on the track when a signal is disobeyed. The technology was not in place where the collision occurred.

“I believe this technology could have prevented the accident. If he ran the signal the train would have been stopped. I’ve seen it tested. It makes a difference,” she said.

In addition, investigators are probing whether the conductor was texting on his cell phone, and while the engineer and conductor were not behaving as expected:

Higgins said audio recordings from the commuter train indicate a period of silence as it passed the last two signals before the fiery wreck, a time when the engineer and the conductor should have been performing verbal safety checks.

She cautioned, however, that the train may have entered a dead zone where the recording was interrupted.

Plenty of warning signals and plenty of time to react and avert disaster, yet 26 people are dead. The simplicity of the safety controls missing from this infrastructure should be an embarrassment to the US. Clearly rail transportation in America is being neglected in many areas of technology, not least of all in security.