All the Smart Kids Vote

I said I was going to continue to post reasons to vote until election day and that includes the weekend. I'm not going to knock myself out with a real long post, but I'm putting aside my writer's sabbath nonetheless.

So, here's today's good reason to vote -- you're not stupid.

ABC News:

Early voting and absentee ballots are a hot topic this political season, but scientists say some folks are laying the groundwork for voting really early -- say from kindergarten.

"Little is known about the association between measured intelligence and how people participate in democratic processes," says a current Intelligence journal study led by Ian Deary of Scotland's University of Edinburgh, in a wee bit of an understatement. "There is debate about the importance of intelligence in relation to whether people vote in elections, and there is currently little information on how people with different levels of intelligence choose to vote in elections," according to the report.

So Deary and company took a look at a decades long study of 17,200 people born in 1970. According to the article, "The researchers check up on them every few years and included intelligence tests at age 5 and 10, as well as voting affiliation and occupation at age 34."





Turns out that those who are the smartest vote most often. The average IQ is 100 and, for every 15 points above the average, a person is 35% more likely to vote. "People who took part in a political meeting or rally in the last year, those who took part in a public demonstration, those who signed a petition, and those who were fairly or very interested in politics had higher mean intelligence test scores at age 10," the study found.

So voting doesn't actually make you smart, but it's what smart people do. Turns out that being politically active doesn't hurt any either. So who's the smarter voter, the leftie or the rightie?

"Childhood intelligence is associated with how and how much people engage in the democratic processes, and with support for political ideologies that are based on ecological sustainability and social liberalism," the study found. Let me translate that for McCain voters -- not you. All those smartypants kids grow up to be fancypants liberal elitists.

And does the fact that the study was based on UK politics, not American politics mean anything? Not really, say the authors. "Although these data apply to one country's political system, there are broad similarities in political parties across Western democracies, and so these data might have wider relevance beyond the UK." That means you, commie Obama backers. You're the brainiacs.

Now go out and prove it.

VOTE!

-Wisco

Deal or Steal?

I've already dealt with this briefly at my Griper News blog. I post a few of the screwy news stories I come across during the day as The Stuff I Didn't Get To or, more informally, "The Roundup." In this case, the story vindicated an earlier post I'd written titled War Could Cost Over $2 Trillion -- Wouldn't it Have Been Cheaper Just to Buy Iraq?

This isn't really a plug to go read stuff I've already written. It's a case of not hiding my light under a bushel. It turns out that, not only would it have been less expensive to just buy Iraq, but that Saddam was willing to sell it -- cheap. Extremly cheap.

I so called it.

Reuters:

Saddam Hussein was prepared to take $1 billion and go into exile before the Iraq war, according to a transcript of talks between U.S. President George W. Bush and an ally, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday.

During a meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on February 22, 2003, Bush told former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that Saddam could also be assassinated, according to the transcript published in El Pais in Spanish.

In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on the report.

Iraq has a land area of 168,754 sq. miles, making Saddam's offer roughly equal to $5, 917.15 per sq. mile for Iraq's oil rich land. Of course, as we all can surmise, Bush -- shrewd businessman that he is -- turned him down. It's this sort of decision making that bankrupted Arbusto Energy and led Bush to trade homerun machine Sammy Sosa to the White Sox.

In contrast, let's look at where we are now.

Associated Press:

President Bush and Congress are headed toward another showdown on war spending, this time sparring over nearly $190 billion the Pentagon says is needed to keep combat in Iraq afloat for another year.

[...]

If approved, Congress would have appropriated more than $760 billion for the two wars, having already approved of $450 billion for Iraq and $127 billion for Afghanistan.

Instead of buying off a dictator -- as he has with Pervez Musharraf and Muammar Qaddafi -- President Brilliant decided the best thing to do would be to invade. Like most of the decisions Bush has made thoughout his life, this proved to be a poor one. And an expensive one, in more ways than one.

Of course, we can always just borrow more money. That's been working out great. As Dick Cheney says, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." There's plenty of money to shovel down a hole in the desert. It's not like there hasn't been a return on the investment -- not for you, for Team Bush. Wartime presidents tend to be re-elected. Besides, if we'd just bought Iraq, flying onto the USS Abraham Lincoln in a jet, getting plenty of photos in a flight suit, and declaring "Mission accomplished" would've never happened. Bush's G.I. Joe moment was worth every penny -- to him, anyway.

In fact, Bush was so intent on getting his hero moment that nothing would keep him from war. According to El Pais, Bush was going to war with Iraq no matter what happened (translation by Watching America):

On the 16th of March 2003, even as Bush maintained his public demands for Saddam to 'disarm or it's war,' Bush, Blair and [then spanish President] Aznar decided to replace the U.N. Security Council and usurp its functions to declare war on their own accord.

Second UN resolution or no, we were going in. Cooler heads couldn't be allowed to prevail. The US, UK, and Spain would later form the backbone of the "Coalition of the Willing." Bush wanted war so badly that the White House used 27 different excuses to invade prior to the war. When one reason was shot down, they'd cook up another. It seems that no effort was made to think up reasons not to invade. In the bad idea factory that is the Bush White House, critical thinking and considering both sides of an argument have no place. Bushies are (at least, in their own minds) flawless intellects and their first impulse is always correct. History disagrees.

In human -- as well as monetary -- costs, the occupation of Iraq has been damned expensive. At least 74,000 iraqis have died (although most observers put that number over a million), the US military has lost 3,800 people, we've spent going on $760 billion, and the US reputation in the world has taken a massive hit.

But we saved $5, 917.15 per sq. mile. Doesn't look like the best decision in retrospect, does it? Just another example of how crime doesn't pay.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; history; UK; Spain; Saddam Hussein offered to sell Iraq to us, but Bush decided to steal it

The UK Can be Glad Its Sailors Weren't Captured by the US

Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones puts the recent capture of british sailors by Iran into context -- as only a member of Python could.

The Guardian:

It is [...] unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.

And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantanamo Bay.

Compare how these the british detainees are treated with how the US has been treating detainees.

BBC:

[Abd al-Rahim] Nashiri's testimony was given at a military tribunal held at Guantanamo to determine his status as an "enemy combatant" on 14 March, AFP news agency reports.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," the transcript of his hearing read.

"It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way."

According to his testimony he eventually "confessed" to playing a key role in the bombing of the USS Cole.

"I just said those things to make the people happy," the transcript read.

"They were very happy when I told them those things."

Let me take a turn putting things in perspective -- when it comes to the treatment of foreign detainees, we suffer in comparison to freakin' Iran. What have we become?

For the sake of argument, let's say that Iran was waterboarding these people and drugging them and using other 'aggressive interrogation techniques.' What could we say with any moral authority? We can't argue that torture is wrong -- hell, the US argues that it isn't even illegal. By our own arguments, Iran would be well within their legal rights.

Could we argue that the sailors were taken illegally? That'd hand them a laugh. 25 CIA agents have been put on trial in Italy for kidnapping -- there goes that charge.

Look, if the argument that torture and kidnapping is deeply, deeply wrong isn't good enough, then here's the situation -- if we can do it to anyone, anyone can do it to us. And Iran could argue, as the US does, that things like waterboarding don't even constitute torture. They could quote the Justice Department's Bybee Memo back to us and inform us that torture 'must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.' I'm not sure how you're supposed to measure something as subjective as pain, but we've determined that waterboarding ain't it. Iran could have a waterboarding party and there wouldn't be a damned thing we could say against it. Not with any authority, anyway.

We're damned lucky that Iran isn't interested in making this kind of a point. Let's not fool ourselves, Iran's human rights record is awful. Let's just say that if any of those sailors are gay, it'd be a real good idea for them to keep that info to themselves.

Reports are that Britain is urging the US to butt out here. We can't help, because we've squandered any moral standing we once had. But that doesn't stop Bush from opening his mouth and screwing things up.

Globe and Mail:

"We are anxious that this matter be resolved as quickly as possible, and that it be resolved by diplomatic means, and we are bending every single effort to that. . . . We are in direct bilateral communication with the Iranians," British Defence Minister Des Browne told reporters yesterday.

But Britain's delicate diplomatic efforts were set back by U.S. President George W. Bush, who made a statement Saturday in which he characterized the imprisoned sailors as "hostages" -- a phrase that Britain has been carefully avoiding to prevent the crisis from becoming a broader political or military conflict.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Bush got a quick email from Blair after that, with the body consisting of 'STFU!' As it always does, Bush's impulse toward being a hard-assed tough guy serves him poorly and drives him to take the worst possible course. Which, in turn, serves everyone on down the line poorly.

In terms of diplomacy, the US has rendered itself useless under George W. Bush. We have no moral or legal authority in the world. We don't give a damn about law, we don't give a damn about justice, and we don't give a damn about human rights. All we care about is the US interest.

Unfortunately, Bush is such an idiot that his idea of what serves US interest actually harms it. We go marching off on a 'War on Terror' and terrorism increases 600% worldwide, for example. This is the last guy you want helping you out.

By practicing torture, our own people now have no defense against it. And we have no business rushing to the aid of people illegally detained. Bush has neutered us morally, legally, and ethically.

We now have no business lecturing other nations on law, justice, and human rights. The US has been an offender since 9/11.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; UK; diplomacy; terrorism; Bush can't lecture anyone -- including Iran -- on human rights, justice, law, or torture