They can't do the math in New York

“The difference between us and him is $200 million,” said Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, “$200 million over what will be a $135- or $136-billion budget, which I suggest to you is less than a tenth of 1 percent.”

And we tell sixth graders that if they don't learn how to calculate percentages, they end up homeless, derelict, unemployable, or speaker of the New York Assembly.

Slower Progress in Afghanistan. Really!

Leon Panetta seems to feel that things are going a bit slowly in Afghanistan. Slower than anyone expected.

Slower than expected by whom? I can identify quite a number of people, from the illustrious like William Pfaff down to obscure unknowns such as your present writer, who are not only not surprised that progress hasn't been greater, but would be surprised if there is in fact any underlying, sustainable progress whatsoever.

It reminds me of how Governor Kulongoski wants us to believe that the revenue shortfall in Oregon, identified in May, "couldn't have been predicted," although quite a number of people, again including this writer, predicted it twelve months earlier. People who make mistakes shouldn't assume that nobody else is able to see future trends any better than they can.

Another way of looking at the BP spill in the Gulf

What we keep hearing is how bad it's getting. It's not good, but let's consider this.

There are half a quintillion gallons of water in the Gulf, and every one is full of microbes. The water is warm, the sun is shining straight down on it, and while fish may not eat petroleum, microbes do, and things eat microbes that are eaten by things that are eaten by fish, oysters, and shrimp. People talk about this as an environmental disaster for the Gulf. I look at it as lunch.

Of course, in the short term, those higher up the chain such as fishermen and pelicans are going to be stressed, but I worry about real national catastrophes that we might do something about, like why our sixth graders can't multiply. In the mathematical sense.

Violence at G20

It is reported that Canada spent more than a billion dollars on security for the G20 conference in Toronto.

One has to ask: Haven't these people heard of teleconferencing?

A War Too Far

Remember "A Bridge Too Far," the movie about World War II? I think we may be seeing the equivalent now. With General Petraeus taking over in Afghanistan, expectations are starting to crop up based on his "success" with the surge in Iraq.

And that would be what, exactly? We've given them elections, but they don't result in a new government and whatever government they had probably couldn't deliver reliable electric power to their cities. They've stopped killing each other quite as freely, but by any standards other than Iraqi, the civil war goes on.

But however weak his legacy really was in Iraq, there was at least a pleasant illusion that he had succeeded. Now he has Afghanistan. Nobody, from Alexander the Great on, has marched into Afghanistan and later marched out, thinking back about what a splendid idea it was. Not the Macedonians, not the British, not the Russians, and now not us. There is no good outcome in the works. And it's Petraeus' baby now.

They say it's technically a demotion. Technically, politically, spiritually, ...

American Demagoguery at its Worst

H L Mencken said that America was ruled by the booboisie. It still is, a century later. Today there are two stories. Tony Hayward is catching hell for taking Father's Day off, and BP is making progress towards capping the spill.

First, why shouldn't he take Father's Day off? Would he be helpful, a Brit, working in the Louisiana bayous scooping up oil? Aren't there enough unemployed Louisianans looking for a paycheck to fill any vacancy?

And has he ever had anything to contribute personally to capping the well? This is the worst accident in oil drilling history, and the people who will solve it are petroleum engineers, working for industry not the government. I hope they succeed soon. I don't expect all the people who happily drive cars powered by the petroleum they find to express any gratitude.

There's a lot of talk about the possible impact of a hurricane. What will eventually solve the problem is the natural process of degradation, which takes place because petroleum is a natural, organic substance. It breaks down as a function of its surface area. The surface area of the petroleum that has spilled goes up as the spill is broken up. A hurricane will speed up the process.

There are a half a quintillion gallons of water in the Gulf of Mexico. That's a real number, not like a gazillion. A quintillion is a billion billion. In six months, you will have trouble finding a beach with a tar ball on it. In two years, you'll never know this happened unless you're a research scientist and know where to look.

None of this is to deny that Joe Barton is a bought and paid mouthpiece of the petroleum industry. That's a separate issue.

A silver lining for the BP spill

As anger in the U.S. increases over British Petroleum's having done exactly what the U.S. economy's unrestrained lust for oil required, so the British resentment begins to rise, a sort of political version of Newton's third law.

This could work out well. For instance, after a little more British bashing by Obama, the Brits might say, "You're right. We're at fault here. And it's going to cost us a ton of money. So why don't you take care of Afghanistan from now on?"

As the "allied" effort in Iraq dwindles to just the United States, so might the war in Afghanistan. Maybe we'd just bag it.

Not likely, but one can dream.