Remember Those Old Political Cartoons from History Class?

What sort of political cartoons will be in our children's children's history books?

Notice the torn constitution and burning book entitled "Rule of Law."

Movie Review of "W."

Welcome to this the 165th post of The Way by WiredForStereo.

My wife is out of town so I went to see W. (it's pronounced dubya) this evening. I'll tell you now that this isn't a comedy unless you are a Left Wingnut, (I mean like the kind you only see on YouTube) and you'd be surprised how even handed it can be at times.

The main thrust of the story is the runup to the Iraq invasion, and that story is interspersed with scenes stretching all the way back to W's days in Yale. It casts Colin Powell in a good light, even before he came out in support of Obama. There have been some criticisms of the relationship shown in the Bush family, but those aren't the parts I'm interested in anyway.

The parts I am interested in are the parts depicting the Iraq stuff and W's relationship with God. I am a Jesus Freak, and as such I cannot judge whether or not God really called W. to be president as he says He did. I can at certain points doubt whether we worship the same God or not by what that deity tells us.

It's my conclusion that Dubya isn't a bad guy, as many of us now see him. He's just one of those people you know who doesn't belong in the job they have. In his case, his job is so involved that he needs all these advisors and because he really doesn't know what he's doing, his advisors run amuck. He's a smart guy, person to person say, but not like running a country. He'd probably be a great Xerox copier salesman. Some of you know what I'm talking about.

I don't think that history will look favorably on W. The stuff many were excited about him doing and being didn't turn out to be the things we were excited about. His faith based initiatives were a fantastic idea, but he's not done much with them. Hopefully Barry can follow through on his plans for them. And the war as everyone now knows was waged under false pretenses. There were no WMD's, and no Al-Qaeda, but there sure are now.

Good movie if you are interested in such things, I give it a 7/10. Hopefully it comes out on DVD before W. is president no more.

WiredForStereo

Review of the book "OVERTHROW, America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

The question is, how much democracy can you afford?

We seem to think democracies are the best form of government, but they have a very critical flaw as is shown in Kinzer's book. That is gullibility. My bet is that if Americans (me included) knew about all these US Sponsored regime changes in the past and how they failed, how we have never had a successful regime change, I think we'd resolve to stop doing it. But as Kinzer showed, all it takes is a simple little lie (they are godless savages, cannot govern themselves, etc.) to whip well meaning people into a frenzy of wanting to "help" when really, very few of those countries needed our "help." The help they (and all other third world countries) need is education.

Not related to the book, I have this opinion: We need do drop millions of tons of food, not bombs, books, not ideologies, and especially not politicians. America could be the wellspring of life, technology, and education for the rest of the world, but instead, most of us only care about money.

But seriously though, I'd suggest you read this book. It's a little left of center maybe, but that's ok, because it is moderate, and as I believe everything in moderation. The book starts out with the detailed story of how Hawaii lost its peaceful monarchy to money hungry banana barons. The book then continues on to recount in great detail the stories of nearly every overthrow in America's history. The list is quite staggering. Here are some of the countries where the United States has staged coups and regime changes: Hawaii, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Afghanistan, Cuba, Chile, Vietnam again, Panama, Granada (a success by the way, though still crooked,) and finally, a little country who generally liked America, and still caved under pressure, but got invaded anyway, Iraq.

I was against invasion of Iraq from the beginning. I was also against Saddam Hussein for all the murders he caused, but I just don't think it's the Christian way to go invading other countries. Christians were never meant to be conquerors, or even kings. Christianity thrives in the most oppressive of countries, and always will. The fact remains that Iraq was a secular state. Not fundamentalist. Saddam had spent years getting rid of fundamentalists. But our president had it in his mind to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and the evidence followed the conclusions, not the other way around as is should be, and now lots of people are dead and the whole thing is a mess. Just like every other regime change.

The reason why I have focused on Iraq so much when the book only focuses one section on it is this: I am young, it's almost the only one I was an adult for. And I want to make it clear that I did not vote for Bush, I voted for not Kerry. That guy was a loop. He decided it for me when in the same sentence he affirmed his Catholic faith, he stated that he was pro fetal homicide. Now that's hypocracy.

Back to the book. It's a good book written by a guy who knows what he's talking about. I was floored, angered, saddened, and outraged by this book and I hope it brings out some of the same reactions in you.

WiredForStereo

New Coal and Natural Gas Power Plants in Arkansas and the South.

I was out to visit a new natural gas power plant in Tontitown Arkansas yesterday. Looked up some info, you can find articles here and here. The first deals with the Tontitown plant and the second deals with the larger SWEPCO network over Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

I got to see some of the plans, and you can see the substation that has already been built next to it on Google Earth here. The plant will appear in that (now enlarged) dirt area to the left of the substation. The article states that there will be two gas turbines and one combined cycle steam turbine, but on the plan, I saw a fourth unit of the same size. I believe the turbines will be GE 7FA units but I could be wrong. I am definitely sure of the 7 though. Notice the Tyson chicken farm right next to the plant.

Now I am definitely more ok with the natural gas peaking plants than I am with the coal mainline plants because of reasons listed before. And, I am much happier about a natural gas plant being a few tens of miles from my home rather than a coal one. But, that ignores the availability of wind power close enough to here to be useful. Any US wind resources map you look at will show you class 3 wind resources in two separate areas, on both sides of the River Valley. And I know there are not alot of people that live on those areas because they are mountainous (for Arkansas that is.) Additionally, there is a huge portion of Texas that contains class 3 and 4 wind, not to mention Oklahoma.

It is refreshing however to hear of more wind turbines going up in Oklahoma and Texas though. And I'll tell ya, it was very enlightening to find out how much more efficient George W. Bush's house is than Al Gore's.

WiredForStereo