Comments on the news
The big blackout of 2003 is over and as usual the media is not reporting on the real story. The real story is what didn't happen, there was no looting, no mass starvation, no rioting anywhere. Our cities didn't descend into chaos and race war didn't break out even though the lights went out. Most people behaved in a normal, civil, and sensible manner. This more than anything else gives us hope for the future, if Americans can react so positively to this catastrophe we can survive and thrive in the trying years ahead.
So who is responsible for this catastrophe politcally?? Both right and left, the right for ignoring the nation's declining, infrastructure and offering senseless taxcuts to the public instead of spending the money to fix our problems. Worse for treating the free market as a magic wand and simply believing that deregulation and less government would solve all the problems. The left for refusing to engage in solutions it finds distasteful like nuclear power and in refusing to confront the problem. Do we have the political will to solve this problem I don't know. Politicians don't like dealing with infrastructure issues, it costs a lot of money, and requires tough decisions. Nobody wants to flood grandfather's farm or put a new power line, highway or rail line through their neighborhood. Yet, that's what we're going to have to do in the years ahead. Worse when infrastructure pays off the public doesn't see it. Politicians like crisises the public can see them solving now, not future problems being averted.
Now onto California, how will the recall mess affect the Democratic primary battles. Well it'll divert attention from, that's good and bad for the candidates. Bad because it means they'll lack name recongition and media attention. Good because there will fewer sound bites of politicians taking unpoplar left wing positions to get some votes from pressure group.
Then there's Iraq, the new terrorism there is frightening. The murder of innocent civilians simply to prove to people that the terrorists have the power to kill. That's disgusting. Even worse is the sabotage of the country's infrastructure. This points to sophisticated sabotage carried out by somebody with some real military training and weaponry. WHo is it? Normal terrorists don't like sabotage they like flashy bombs that attract the TV cameras and pile up the dead bodies.So who's doing it one disgusting possibility is Saudi Arabia and other oil rich gulf states. These countries want the price of oil to remain high so they can make more money from oil sales. Cheap Iraqi crude threatens that so they have an incentive to engage in such sabotage. It would be easy for them to slip a few bucks to IRaqi terrorists and hire a few mercenaries to slip across into IRaq and commit acts of sabotage so the Iraqi terrorists will claim responsibility. THe mess in Iraq and the blackout show us something else in our modern world. It's hard to wage all out war, only really rich nations like America can do that but it's cheap and easy to wreck havoc. Any idiot can plant a bomb at a power plant and shut down a city. What happens if some group or government decides to target our infrastructure and shut it down? What then. It's impossible to protect it all. We're going to have to deal with this possibility now.