“Move Toward a Nuclear Free World: Obama and Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama and Biden will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But they will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. They will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.”

These are ambitious and excellent goals.  Who knows what will happen, but doesn’t this sound like a better world?

RECOVERY.GOV.  Does Obama really mean to announce each dollar of the contracts that they issue during this plan?  If we go to this website, “every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars.”  Would this be an uprecedented level of disclosure in world history?  Has a King ever posted his treasury’s bank statement?

In the introduction to the address, it quoted:

“the plan will update our electric grid by laying more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines; weatherize 2.5 million homes; protect health insurance for more than 8 million Americans in danger of losing their coverage; secure 90 major ports; renovate 10,000 schools; and triple the number of science fellowships.”

For health care, he said: “To lower health care cost, cut medical errors, and improve care, we’ll computerize the nation’s health record in five years, saving billions of dollars in health care costs and countless lives. And we’ll protect health insurance for more than 8 million Americans who are in danger of losing their coverage during this economic downturn.”

Bravo and Bravo.  The question now is: how?  Here’s guessing there will be some kind of

To me, it sounds great.  And I look forward to reading more about it on Recovery.gov.

Report these returns and you'll get a lot of new investments

I’m certain humans have dealt with this exact problem before.  Something about eye patches and big floppy hats and “arrrgh!”  In those days, the general policy of world navys (navies?) was to hunt down all ships controlled by pirates, and sink them.  Could this idea work today?

There would be several main arguments against sinking:

1.  We won’t sink the cargo.  This could range from environmental reasons with oil tankers to civilian reasons like hostages.  In some cases, certain corporations will argue not to sink other valuable cargoes (gold, MRI machines, communications satellites).  These arguments will have to be listened to.

2.  Make love, not war.  Don’t shoot them, don’t shoot anyone.  Talk everything out.

3.  We don’t have the authority.  Um, did you think Obama was going to go on an embassy tour giving group hugs?  He knows he is the commander in chief of the most powerful economic and military nation in the world.  I’m pretty sure Somalia would be okay, especially if we asked in a really nice voice and already had all the Tomaharks armed and targeted from our warships in the harbor.  After what the mortage crisis has just put the world through, some foreigners would probably rather be invaded:  “At least we’d have great TV.”  Feel free to add comments for any other good jokes to make.

But making a general policy to sink all ships that had been captured by pirates would be a good idea.  We would make exceptions for oil tankers, lots of civilians, or particularly persuasive entities that could make it worth the U.N.’s while.  But for your run-of-the-mill trawlers or cargo ships that are captained by 10-15 pirates?

A couple torpedoes should do it.  We’ll have the prison ships ready to pick them out of the water and marines waiting on the beach to capture the swimmers.  Think they’ll be excited to be turned over to Somailia and take their chances in the Somali legal system?

This would be brutal, and gruesome, especially as the world sees the CNN shots of dead pirates.  But the world is plenty rich to cover any sunken non-essential vessels that get captured by pirates.  Economically, the shipping corporations would have to cover the increased cost by a combination of insurance premiums and armed mercenaries onboard.  But if followed, pirates would sure get the idea and I think this would mostly solve the growing problem.  Please comment and tell me why this is a stupid idea.

As of now, there are still hostages at the Taj hotel, which last we saw burning like a tinder box.  Now there are 100 dead.  What kind of intelligent species solves their problems like this?

Further research about Mumbai (which of course used to be Bombay):  It’s the financial capital of India with 13 million people.  It’s the largest port in India, handling half of the trade volume and corresponding import taxes.  It pays 40% of the nation’s income tax, with a population of 13 million in a sea of 800 million people.  Mumbai scientists built India’s atomic bomb. 

India is a much different nation than the U.S., and I’m sure Mumbai’s relationship with the rest of the country is far different as well.

Here’s some of my personal commentary about this event, as posted on New York Times:  At this early stage of this story it is crucial not to jump to conclusions.  But when we step back we see that this is a leftist group attacking India’s version of Wall Street, as Mumbai is the financial center and largest, richest port city, and in a very organized and dangerous way.  We may need to soon consider that international terrorists has moved its war towards the financial crisis of 2008 as a rallying cry.  This would be a replacement of earlier frustrations with American global military reach (eg. bases in Saudi Arabia).  In this scenario, I wonder if the next step could be America’s cultural influence: where are the symbolic centers of McDonald’s and WalMart?

In short, the rest of the movie is about McCain getting smeared by the stupid, obnoxious guy with more money, unbelievably calling voters and telling them that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child.  This against a guy with more character than any republican in decades, who served 5 years as POW and tried to serve his country as best he could when he got back.

Flash forward 8 years through the Bush fiasco and McCain is losing, mostly as a result of Bush.  Bush has so disgusted lots of reliably republican voters, that McCain is crushed in a landslide by a brilliant African-American, who inspires the nation to hope for something more than the incompetence of the man McCain seemed poised to defeat 8 years earlier.  A beautiful black family waves to adoring crowds of tens to hundreds of thousands.  If that isn’t Karma for the ultimate low for Republicans in racist, lying politics.  I guess “W” gets off into the sunset scot-free.

If one wanted to flash further forward than that, they could show a Reagan-like effect and decades of dominance by the Democratic party.  In particular, you have the entire generation of young professionals with a mob-like mentality to support Democrats.  Bush insulted both our education and our intelligence for eight years!  This one is going to be tough to recover from, for Republicans.