The Definite Article

Rough day today - I'm flying to Southern California tomorrow at a wholly unreasonable hour. 730,000 acres on fire (according to CBS News) and I'm headed right for the middle of it. I came home to pack, eat dinner and watch some TV - but on the way to the Cavs game I got stuck on the Lou Dobbs show. Perhaps he just wasn't at his most polite.

I came in at the middle of the show, so I missed his performances before interviewing someone from the Haas School of Business (Laura d'Andrea Tyson, the Dean of the school, I think).

At any rate, the first words I hear him say are something like: "Many businesses are making the decision to move their labor to whatever country has the lowest cost of labor. That doesn't sound like a business decision worthy of a business degree to me. Does it to you?"

She spends a good three or four seconds just looking at him. I don't know what was going through her head, but I had two thoughts almost concurrently:

Immigration is too complex a subject to be summed up so cavalierly. Jobs moving overseas are symptoms of structural policy flaws in the country losing the jobs - relocating a plant isn't a decision made based solely on the fact that the wages nearby are lower.

Who is this guy to try and tell the Dean of the Haas Business School what is worthy of a business degree?

Well, he's Lou Dobbs, Executive VP at CNN and he's both rude and ignorant. Immigration is a far too complex topic to address with one liners and anecdotes with emotional appeal. The remainder of the segment was testimony from apologists for the American worker. I'd like to take a moment to remind people that the American worker is the same guy who is the American consumer. Meaning, if stuff is less expensive, then the American worker wins.

Later in the show, he gets Chuck Hegel to attack the Bush administration and tries to get a General to drop dimes and name names of who's responsible for housing reservists in barracks.

I turned off the television to return to you, feeling tired and dejected.

Posted by Nate at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Policymakers and pundits in the US are struggling to understand Iraq. So are those members of the common citizenry who follow the news reports. Theories abound, many of them ill-informed. Over the next several weeks, I will try my hand at illuminating two important issues: how and why we should engage Iraq.

The recent coordinated attacks in Baghdad - five yesterday - on US troops, the Rashid hotel, the Turkish embassy and the Red Cross limn the difficulties and challenges facing the region. There are now about 25 attacks a day in Iraq (source: The Economist) and as the number of attacks grows, so does the concern that whatever it is that America hoped to get out of Iraq just isn't worth it. Concurrent with this concern is the troubling lack of proactive steps to alleviate the difficulties.
The truth is that the United States engagement in Iraq is worth it. The reasons for this are multifold. In some cases, they also differ substantially from the public statements of casus belli put forward by the Bush and Blair administrations.
Furthermore, there are steps that can and should be taken by coalition forces to repair and rebuild the stability in Iraq. These steps sometimes deviate from the stated policy goals of the Bush and Blair administrations.
Over the next several weeks, I will make the case for engagement in Iraq as well as provide a course of action that will help to stabilize the region.
One final note: I opposed the United States going to war when and in the manner that it did, but do not oppose war on general principles, with Iraq or anyone else.

Posted by Nate at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

California turned out to be good for something besides electing Mr. Universe governor.

It also has given me oodles of free time - the only person I know around here is the lovely and talented LC. She's wonderful company. Unfortunately, I'm in San Jose, and she's in Redwood City.

So, between trips to the Apple store to check out iPods (not for me, naturally), I've been trying to get Movable Type working on dornbrook.com.

I finally succeeded, sort of.

Been ill for the last two days - perfect, get sick on the weekend.

Anyway, I've been chasing after my cousin (Rahmat) to get some sort of blogging site up and running, but he's a professional and he's been as busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, so I decided to try my hand.

God, I hope Erik doesn't look at the command logs for the ssh session from installing this.

Posted by Nate at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)