Anyone catch “The Daily Show” Tuesday night?
Granted, Gen. Pervez Musharraf was there to hawk his book “In the Line of Fire,” but it was still remarkable. He was the first sitting president to appear on the show.
The Pakistani seemed relaxed — and frequently amused — as he sipped tea with Jon Stewart. Asked who would win if George Bush and Osama bin Laden both ran for election in Pakistan, Musharraf chuckled and replied, “Both would lose miserably.”
Posted by Dave Knadler
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32 Comments
What old Pervert, oops – I mean Pervez – failed to say, I’ll bet, is that he himself has never faced a general election in Pakistan.
“On January 1, 2004 Musharraf won a confidence vote in the Electoral College of Pakistan, consisting of both houses of Parliament and the four provincial assemblies which are dominated by the landed elite of the country, most of whom have been given governmental posts under Musharraf. Musharraf received 658 out of 1170 votes, a 56% majority, but many opposition and Islamic members of parliament walked out to protest the vote. As a result of this vote, according to Article 41(8) of the Constitution of Pakistan, Musharraf was “deemed to be elected” to the office of President. His term now extends to 2007.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pervez_Musharraf
There are some Bush-supporting people saying that Islam can support democracy. They give the examples of Turkey and Egypt. Except that Turkey was democratic under a secular non-Islamic construct. As Islam is reasserting itself there, a lot of “Western ideas” are going out the window. The Egyptian president jails his election opponents. Real democracy.
Islam is a religion of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were not noted for advancing democratic ideas. Can anyone say Islam is wrong? No, because critics, even in Western nations, who do, are assassinated. Like the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
Let them live their own lives, and stop trying to steal their oil. If they decide to modernize, fine. If not, that should not be America’s problem.
Let’s use our vast wealth of brilliant minds and abundant natural resources to distentangle ourselves and promote democracy, HERE. Like, do you really LIKE living under this “terrorism” FEAR? Having grandma treated like a potential terrorist at the airport? Having NSA monitor your telephone calls and emails? Having trade imbalances that start with foreign oil purchases–we can manufacture anything the Japanese and Chinese can, but we can’t make enough oil anymore to meet our domestic energy needs, so oil importation starts a chain of debt that makes it impossible to establish an international no-net-dollar-outflow trade balance.
Things like nuclear and wind-generation cost more than oil energy. Same for coal, although coal generates CO2 and climatic warming like oil. Where would the expenditures for these potential domestic energy forms’ generation go? Into the U.S. economy. Not overseas creating a trade deficit.
I basically agree, DrHrt.
But I have to quibble–if you factor in pollution costs, oil energy is likely far higher than wind.
You’re main point is valid though.
We can make gasoline from coal, and it’s cleaner than from oil. We have tremendous reserves of coal.
All we lack is the political will of the Worst. President. Ever.
Heartlander nails it.Congrats!
“Turkey was democratic under a secular non-Islamic construct”
Same is true with other religions – a theocracy is incompatable with democracy regardless of religion. So, a predominately Islamic country CAN be a democracy (note for example Lebanon and Palestine) but only if the government is secular.
Nuke and wind cost less than coal and oil when you fully factor in fuel costs.
All our brilliant minds are busy figuring out how to increase the bottom line or promote themselves. We can’t compete anymore as an industrialized nation because of 1) the cost of our workforce and 2) the corporate greed linked to profit margin. Why else would so many American businesses want to utilize foreign workforces?
The Hill newspaper has a GREAT cartoon today.
http://www.hillnews.com/
Pete, our workers don’t have to compete with Third World laborers. If we develop energy sufficiency, we can provide every consumer good people need. If we have a self-reliant domestic economy, we can do all right. A large problem–actually huge–is legacy costs here, i.e. older workers who get sick and their pension plans. We could have a different kind of manufacturing that enabled people to work healthfully, and into their late 60s and 70s. You really don’t have to have an economy in which people don’t want to go to work on Monday and want out as early as possible. It all depends upon how you envision and shape work. There are people today who are working in their 70s and even 80s, not because they have to, but because THEY ENJOY THEIR WORK. The trick is to make such enjoyment more widespread. For example, why should the average teacher want to retire by age 62? This means our schools are screwed up because they are based on a burn-out industrial paradigm. If you have the spirit to teach, and the system SUPPORTED your spirit, you’d WANT to keep teaching into your 70s or 80s. For example, I had two professors who were forced to become emeritus at age 67. Did they accept this? No, they went to other world-class universities that grabbed their talent. You can make work something you love, and if that happens YOU DON’T WANT TO RETIRE, and YOU DON’T HAVE TO.
Ben, certainly when you account for the effects of widespread environmental toxicity on healthcare costs and a degraded environment, oil and coal are extremely expensive. But the fossil-fuel producers haven’t had to pay for these costs. They profit for themselves, and humanity bears the costs.
Nuclear has hazards. But some smart physicists have pointed out that you can accelerate the decay of nuclear byproducts to non-radioactive elements using neutron bombardment to accelerate fission. Plus, we have this huge area in Nevada, Utah and Arizona that don’t pose an underground seepage risk into rivers, to bury radioactive waste, even if you don’t want to do fission acceleration for the time being. These are places where the ultimate groundwater-flow sink is in an ancient sea, now the desert, where nobody wants to live.
Thanks CapnAmerica for supporting me. Now if I can correct some of my errors, maybe even Apophis might say, “Heartlander makes some mistakes, but overall, he’s not doing too bad.” ;)
Accellerating the rate via bombardment is not feasible in my opinion. However there are other ways to deal with this including recycling as fuel. For disposal vitrify into an obsidian glass. We have geological experience with obsidian and it tends to be very resistent to leaching.
My nuclear scenario has zero ‘net new’ nuclear waste. I do that by using decommissioned warheads back-mixed with DU for fuel.
Ben, so bury it in glass. Put it in a place where the seepage, whatever level it is, goes nowhere that can harm many people. The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository would apparently leach potential waste into the Colorado River. Move it 150 miles north/northeast. I’ve been there. The water doesn’t go anywhere that could adversely affect people. Encase waste in glass, and small leaching amounts wouldn’t hurt anyone.
heartlander – I agree. We need to do both chemistry AND geology.
And lets do windpower. Large windmill farms that generate AC can power large grids. Individual windmills can generate DC that can power homes and farms, because you don’t need long-distance electricity transmission for self-electricity supply. Kansas has so much wind energy, it’s mind-boggling. And a tremendous opportunity to capture.
heartlander…………I DO happen to agree with you in this thread.
Why is it that the only Middle Eastern countries we’re allied with are totalitarian regimes that do not have the overwhelming support of their general populace? Is it any wonder why the United States is perceived as an imperial empire?
Bush is so Darth Vader by the way… Just dumber.
scratch the “imperial” just leave empire. Need coffee.
Yeah, that spreadin’ democracy thingy kine-uh backfired, huh?
Maybe we should let the indigenous populations around the world do the grass roots thing-a-ma-jiggy next time.
Apohis, there we go. Grounds for meeting of the minds. I’m a lifelong learner. I say things in order to hear other voices. I’m not looking for agreers. I am actually looking for disagreers to sharpen my mind, and make me THINK.
Take Milton Friedman. Arch-conservative economist. Where did he choose to live? Arch-liberal San Francisco. This always blows my mind. He could have stayed in comfortable conservative Chicago, but he looked for new horizons, including butting heads with people who were as smart as he was, but had completely different perspectives. He’s been in SF for more than 20 years. Hasn’t moved out. Because what invigorates him is debating top minds.
Agree again heartlander. Also generate H2 from electricity from wind in remote locations (and during low demand times). H2 then is a fuel.
Right now, I like the super EEstor capicitor better. Fuel cells have been around since the Mercury project, so are proven, but I want to see new chemistry blow people’s minds.
heartlander – good point. No reason they can’t charge up packs of them to ’smooth out’ peaks and valleys.
By the way – the movie “Who killed the electric car” screens tomorrow night at the Palace East.
Great comments on this topic.
The Bush administration would love for Perez to have free elections. Being that Perez is extremely unpopular conservatives would win Parliment by a landslide. That would put nukes in the hands of militant theocrats who’d love to bomb India as well as America. That would be a justification for invasion.
However, if Bush has his way and nukes Iran or else blows up their nuclear facilities that would spread radiation throughout the Middle East killing millions.
When millions die either way it’s a win-win from bloodthirty smirkboy.
“When millions die either way it’s a win-win from bloodthirty smirkboy.”
Oops Brian, the good comments just ended. Doug is talkin stupid again. Unless he was just being stupid to illustrate a point. Doug?
I have read early reports that it may be possible to accelerate the decay of nuclear waste. Instead of taking 10,000+ years to become inactive it only takes ~1,000. Still a long time but much quicker. If I can remember where I found the article I’ll post a link.
There are numerous other ways to generate energy besides fossil fuels, fission, and the other methods mentioned here. There are tidal generators that generate electricity from ocean waves, they don’t generate a large amount of energy but it is ‘free’ and available as long as there are waves in the ocean. There is solar, both thermal and photovoltanic. There are great strides in both areas. Stirling Engine is a company in the southwest and they have plans to build a thermal solar generator in the California desert (I think) that when completed will be able to provide power for around 750K homes. It only generates power in the day (the down side) but that is when the demand is the greatest. Photovoltanic cells are getting more efficient, more durable, and cheaper to manufacture. The latest advances in this field include materials the liberate 2 electrons with one photon and there is reason to believe that the scientist will be able to increase this ratio. The bottom line is that in 10 or so years we may see PV cells with efficiencies in excess of 30% (very reasonable goal) and possibly as high as 50% (an optimistic goal).
These are just a few of the possibilities available and most certainly not a complete list. If Washington would just make a commitment to free the US of dependency on foreign oil and invest in the proven technologies as well as the up and comming techs, 10-15 years would be a very reasonable time frame for completely eliminating the reliance foreign oil.
Why would I want to read a book by this Pakistan guy? I don’t trust him not to turn on us and join up with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“Take Milton Friedman. Arch-conservative economist.”
Yes, take him, PLEASE!
He made his name arguing for”monetarist” economics, arguing that the supply of money creates inflation or deflation.
His views have been wholly and completely discredited.
Sucks to be him . . .
Bush and Musharraf.
Two unelected dictators.
No wonder they get along so well.
Elected leaders like Chirac and the PM of Germany, not so good.
Wrong capn – I think Musharif was ‘elected’
Ben, Bush was ‘elected’ too. Twice actually. It helped to have friends ‘massage’ the ‘vote counts’.
BTW, I see that there is a move to generate paper trails for electronic voting machines. Here is my two-cents proposal:
Each voting machine should have a microprocessor that generates a 12-digit pseudo-random number voter-identification number. The voter goes into the booth, hits a button and the number is generated. The voting-machine computer would eliminate all numbers that have been assigned, so that if the pseudo-random number generator popped out the same number later, it would be registered as already-used and the generator would put out a new number.
Then the voter makes selections, and when done, presses a “Review your votes” button and each choice made is HIGHLIGHTED in front of the voter’s eyes on the screeen (e.g. BOLD RED). If the voter wants to change a vote, he/she can hit a “CHANGE VOTE” button and revote by selecting appropriate boxes. Then he/she can do another review of his/her votes.
When satisfied, the voter presses a hard-copy printout button showing the unique voter number, and candidates/issues voted on for him or her to inspect. If the printout shows a discrepency, causing the voter to think, “Wait a minute, I thought I voted for Barnett, not Sibelius,” or vice versa the voter goes to the poll worker and says, “I don’t know what happened, but the machine didn’t register my votes as I wanted them.”
The voter submits his or her voter-number to the pollworker and his or her specified random number and votes get deleted as an error. The voter goes back to the booth, hits the number-generator and gets a new number and does it again. Voter gets a printout to peruse and take home.
Then, AFTER the counts are tallied and publicly reported, each randomized voter number and his/her candidate/issue votes are posted on the web by the county.
People can then compare their posted results to their own printouts at home, a neighbor’s home, a neighborhood home for vote inspections, or the library. Not all people can do this, but you can’t perpetrate fraud if a LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE can do this.
Then discrepancy-finders can report their findings to their parties and/or party-independent public-interest groups. If largescale discrepancies are found, elections can be negated through lawsuit claims and court findings of violations of citizens’ constitutional and statutory voting rights. The aggrieved produce their printouts as evidence. They testify under oath that the printouts represent their choices. The aggrieved can also sue errant voting machine manufactures into bankruptcy.
Wait… “both would lose miserably”?
Dude, where can I get me an electoral system like that?!?