The Present, Considering the Past

THOUGHT #1: So, you know how the Bush administration is determined to keep the Iranians from getting nuclear weapons and even nuclear technology? You know how they think that's possible?

Well, here's a thought: any Sony PS3 is way more powerful than the computer that NASA used to put people on the moon. And that NASA computer radically outclassed the computer that the Manhattan Project used to build the first A-bomb. (That one ran on paper punch cards.)

So the Bushies are pretty sure that they're so smart and/or that the Iranians are so dumb that the Iranians could never duplicate a 70-year-old technology. Neither strikes me as especially likely.


THOUGHT #2: American car manufacturers are bitching about how impossible it would be to raise fleetwide fuel efficiency to 35 mpg in the next few years as a new bill under consideration in Congress would require. Current fleet-wide mpg for most American cars is around 25.

I guess our car makers are right. The 1914 Ford Model T, which had a hand throttle and only two forward gears, averaged 20-25 mpg, making for an increase of 2.5 mpg in 94 years. Since there's no way that the lack of increase has anything to do with American car manufacturers never having given a damn about fuel economy, the only conclusion is that God has ordained that mpg increase by less than .03 mpg per year. More proof that the Democratic Congress is godless.

The Japanese, the Europeans, and even the Chinese, of course, are using black magic to keep their domestic fuel economies above 35 mpg.

Oh, Sweet Moronic Jebus

At a South Carolina town hall meeting, a superlatively Fox-informed gentleman asked John McCain when America was going to send "an airmail message to Tehran" (because remember, it's not tactics, intel, troop strength, materiel, and domestic support that win wars, it's the manliness of your message). In reply, McCain sang "Bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann."



It was meant as a joke. And, along with the (rhetorical) dancing McCain did afterward, it did save him from having to answer directly whether he would lead us into another war even though the ones we're in already have stretched the military as far as it will go. Still. It's mighty creepy and somehow a little sad.

Just Because You're Paranoid...

So most of the reason that Iran's president (and the clerics who actually run the country) are so insistent on defying the world and developing nukes is that they're paranoid and smugly convinced of their own righteousness. They tend to talk about America as the imperialist Great Satan for the same reason.

Even so, I can still sort of understand their concern. The Pres. & VP still intermittently saber-rattle about Iran, which can't help, but the current physical, military realities can't have escaped the Iranian leadership's attention. Specifically, the two countries that share Iran's most important borders--Iraq and Afghanistan--are under US-led occupation. Nearby Saudi Arabia is home to US military bases, and bordering Pakistan gets a lot of military support from the US. We have them surrounded.

Under those circumstances, I'd be pretty skeptical of America's intentions also. But then I know that we're not a bunch of gun-happy idiots bent on a disastrous occupation of a nation WAY BETTER equipped to fight our army and then, even if it were to lose, positioned to conduct a generations-long insurgency.

We're not, right?