Levee Breaks in Portage, WI

A levee failed in Portage, Wisconsin today, causing the evacuation of a neighborhood. About 60 homes were destroyed, with potential to ruin about 100 total. 20 businesses were destroyed. Many roads are currently flooded and rendered useless, and many more will be with the continued flooding.

This is terrible for the people of Portage. The levee was pretty old, and the 11 inches of rain they got pushed it over the edge. I'm glad we don't have floods like this in California.

Republicans' "Pledge to America" Doesn't Even Look Good On Paper

Yesterday, the GOP released their video designed to get them votes in the upcoming election:

source: youtube.com

Setting aside the fact that this is probably the dullest video ever made, there are several points that discredit the GOP in this video. One in particular is when they are bashing the country's current leadership:

An arrogant and out-of-touch ruling class of a few makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many.
Rising joblessness, crushing debt, and a polarizing political environment are fraying the bonds among our people and blurring our sense of national purpose.

 The video seems to forget that our massive debt was incurred during the Bush administration, and it will take more than a couple years to clean up the mess.
Another flaw in their video is that they want to cut taxes and shrink regulation. But isn't that mostly what got us into all this debt? The war in Iraq is the second war (first in 1840 against Mexico) when taxes were decreased. The problem is that wars cost a ton of money, and when we cut taxes, the government didn't have that money, so they borrowed it, hence our debt. Also, lack of regulation is pretty much how the banks failed. People were tricked into impossible mortgages, and the banks couldn't back them up when things got bad. Bankers got money every time they gave a loan, so they didn't care if the person could pay it or not. If we had less regulation, think of the consequences.

Drug Cartels Govern Mexico

Source: nytimes.com

In Mexico, drug cartels have long held more power than the authorities, and recently a photographer for a Mexican newspaper was shot and killed, presumably for a story he was writing that somehow offended one of the gangs.

“We want you to explain to us what you want from us,” the front-page editorial in El Diario in Ciudad Juárez asked the leaders of organized crime. “What are we supposed to publish or not publish, so we know what to abide by. You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city because the legal authorities have not been able to stop our colleagues from falling.” -New York Times

Ciudad Juárez is one of Mexico's most dangerous cities, with thousands of homicides each year. In Mexico, police get more money from bribes than they would get from the government for doing their job right. This leads to Mexican police being lenient with gang members. Obviously they don't allow the gangs to murder innocent people, but when the drug cartels have more money and power than the police force, the strong arm turns limp.

This is important to the United States because if Mexico cleans up their government, reforms their social policies, and gets rid of the gangs once and for all, the country would be much safer, and would be one less reason for Mexicans to illegally immigrate to the US. I believe immigration is a great thing, but only when done legally. Now Mexico just needs some money. Too bad we don't have any to help them out.

Quran Burning Is "Suspended," Not Cancelled

Pastor Terry Jones apparently made a deal with imam Muhammed Musri of Florida. Jones said the deal was that he would not burn the Qurans on the condition that the imam moved the location of the mosque being built 2 blocks away from the World Trade Center memorial. But there's a disagreement on how the deal went: imam Musri says that was never the deal.

But later on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Musri said that Jones was wrong about what he had said about the mosque. He said what he offered was a meeting among Jones, the New York imam and himself to talk about moving the mosque if Jones agreed to cancel the Quran burning.

MSNBC has the full interview of both Jones and Musri here.
Personally I believe a lot more in Musri's story. He seems a lot more studious and educated, as Jones' intelligence can be defined by his moustache. His defense is always something like "no it's not," and he barely uses any logical reasoning when making an argument. Any religious leader with any compassion and understanding would recognize the burning of someone else's sacred book as a horrible act of hate and a disgusting exhibition of values that could be misinterpreted as America's own. Jones doesn't seem to understand that not all Muslims are terrorists. In my honest opinion, I wish someone would put him out of his misery.

Easing Depletion

In "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" by Thomas L. Friedman, he says that global warming is a man-made mistake, caused by "our vastly increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, as well as from deforestation, large-scale cattle-grazing, agriculture, and industrialization."
As kind of a reflex I read through these topics a second time and tried to think of ways to solve them, but I got hung up. We can make power with a combination of solar cells, wind power, wave power, nuclear power, and more, instead of burning coal and oil. Within a few years we'll have compressed-air-powered cars and electric cars, so we'll use a lot less oil, as long as people are motivated to make the switch. For deforestation, we can't really solve that. I don't see the world using less wood any time soon. All we can really do is plant more trees, which we really should do. Large-scale cattle-grazing was the most puzzling one to me. The gases emitted are mainly methane and carbon dioxide from their digestive systems. Methane in the atmosphere traps heat 21 times more efficiently than CO2 traps heat. I had an idea that if a lot of cows were in a warehouse, their gas would float to the ceiling, and there could be chimney-type openings in the ceiling with torches that would burn the methane. This may sound far-fetched to you. But methane, when combusted, turns into CO2 and H2O (CH4 + O2 --> H2O + CO2), or carbon dioxide and water vapor. The drawback to putting a bunch of cows in a warehouse is that it would most likely be inhumane, and it's not worth abusing animals to break down methane, so I couldn't solve this one. As far as agriculture, we need it to live. All we can do there is streamline our current processes, if possible. For industrialization, all we can do is make more efficient machines powered on more efficient energy.

We Owe Them One

In the book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" by Thomas L. Friedman, he makes an interesting point about military nurses in Iraq:

I walked away shaking my head, thinking: "What have we done to deserve such good people?" I don't know the answer, but I do know this: They deserve a government with a national agenda equal to their dedication and idealism. If this many Americans were ready to enlist for nation-building in Iraq, imagine how many would enlist in nation-building at home-- in the chance to revive and reinvigorate America so that it realizes its full potential?

This grabbed my interest because it made me realize that while here at home, we have incompetent politicians bickering over minute issues and battling against the opposite party for only the sake of battling the other party, whereas overseas in Iraq, we have dedicated people with a love for our country getting things done. This is especially contrasted when you take into account that this war is not of any particular importance to the U.S. (This is not just my personal opinion-- in a CBS news poll from August 20-24, 2010 of 1,082 adults nationwide, the question was "Do you think the result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American lives and other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?" and 20% voted "Worth it", 72% voted "Not worth it", and the remainder were unsure. These data disregard the political party of the people.) With the way our government is (not) operating, I could never have the motivation that these people have to work in Iraq-- but I'm proud that someone does. I think that anyone fighting for our country deserves a country worth fighting for. We should probably think about rebuilding our nation so that it's one to be proud of.