More on the Iraq front- it’s sure a good thing we went in there and liberated Iraq and made it safe for freedom. You know, like the freedom of a free press, where people can… what’s that?

18 months in prison for daring to criticize the leader of a political party?

My bad. I guess I shouldn’t believe all that “we freed Iraq” and “Mission Accomplished” stuff from the Bush Administration, eh?

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government.

Suuuuuuure it is. That damn Saddam- he’s been locked up for over a year now and he’s somehow still outsmarting us! It’s all Saddam’s fault!

What a pathetic attempt at misdirection. The gist of Bush’s speech was that since Saddam was so mean (he was and is) and so evil (he was and is) and bad (ditto), the violence in Iraq was all his fault.

Forgive me, but horseshit. When Saddam was in power, they didn’t HAVE this kind of violence. Was he an evil, mean, nasty dictator with a penchant for torture? Absolutely. You bet. But he was an evil, mean, nasty dictator… who ruled over a nation that wasn’t having a civil war!

I think Bush is just jealous that when Saddam was in charge, there weren’t hundreds of people being killed each week.

This actually points out something that we’ve seen before. When the tyrants are in charge, you can at least say one thing in their favor- they manage to keep the peace among some of these groups that are just dying to go slug it out with their mortal enemies. Once the tyrants (whether a system or an individual dictator) are removed, all those bottled-up tensions come boiling out.

The problem isn’t Saddam. The problem is that these people hate each other, based on ignorance and fear and uncertainty and generations of people growing up being told that the other guy is a worthless scumbag who wants to kill your parents, rape your sister and daughter, and take your stuff.

The problem is that we have not learned from history. History has shown us, time and again, that we need to be ready for it when a nation with sectarian or ethnic strife explodes after having the powerful dictatorship removed. And we weren’t ready.

Bush isn’t wholly responsible for the not-a-civil-war that’s going on in Iraq right now… but he’s partly responsible for it. He, and his cohorts in the Administration, should damn well have known that it was not only possible, but highly likely to happen- UNLESS we went in there with enough force and firepower and policing units to keep the nation under control.

The key is to do that long enough that people are able to live, side by side, and see that the other guy isn’t really all that bad after all- he’s just not someone who wants to do all that nasty stuff (rape, murder, take your stuff). Once you realize that the other guy might be a bit different- his hair or skin might be a shade darker or lighter, he might have funny customs compared to what you’re used to, he might worship a different god or believe that your religious tradition got things all wrong- but that difference isn’t all THAT great, and he just wants a better future for his family and his loved ones, and sometimes he can actually be a pretty good guy so let’s have a nice barbecue and shoot the shit about the local sports team…

Once you realize all that, you don’t want to blow him up.

Bush screwed the pooch on this one, and it’s a joke that he’s trying to blame the guy who’s in JAIL for the bombing going on outside that jail.

As an aviation professional, and as someone interested in airplanes for a long time, and as a Seattle guy, I have to say that I’m delighted with some of the latest news.

Basically, Boeing is thumping Airbus.

The commercial aviation market is very competitive. Billions of dollars are at risk when you’re talking about designing and building a new aircraft- not just for the company doing the designing, but also for the airlines and leasing companies that will buy the planes.

One of the classic gutsy moves in business history came back in the late 1960s, when Boeing decided to design and build the 747. It was gutsy because nobody had built an aircraft that big before; Boeing was basically betting that there would be enough demand (stemming from growth in passenger aviation) to make the plane pay off. They predicted they’d sell around 400 747s; they’re over 1,000 and still going.

At the time, had the 747 failed, Boeing would have failed as well. As it was, the company still almost went bankrupt. (Today, they’re so much more diversified that no single airplane development program can put them under.)

The big question in the past 5 to 10 years has been where the future money is in the airplane building business. Airbus has bet that it’s going to be in super-jumbos; they’ve designed their A380. Such an airplane is designed for lots of flights between “hubs” in the “hub and spoke” model of airline schedule design. Hub-and-spoke has some advantages, but there are great disadvantages for airlines as well. The biggest is that once the hub airport reaches capacity, any additional growth takes a big toll in efficiency.

Boeing, in opposition to Airbus, thinks that the money is going to be in more and more direct routings. For example, if you want to fly from Chicago to (say) Glasgow, Scotland, with the hub-and-spoke method you’re going to go from ORD (a hub) to Heathrow, Amsterdam, or Paris (hubs in Europe), and then on a smaller plane to Glasgow. If you’re starting from a non-hub in the USA, that adds yet another flight.

With the direct routing example, you just fly from Chicago to Glasgow.

Boeing has therefore put more money into their two main new planes, the 787 and the 777. They carry fewer passengers than the massive A380, but they’re also coming to market quicker, cheaper, and can still haul a lot of people a long, long way.

Airbus is trying to strike back, particularly at the 787, with their proposed A350, but it’s still at least a couple of years behind the 787 and is based on some older technology. By the time it enters service, it’ll be even further behind. In the Seattle Times article linked to above (and again here), two of the most powerful airplanes buyers in the world basically told Airbus “the A350 sucks, redesign it or you won’t sell any”.

Ouch.

It’s good to see Boeing doing some things right. They’re not punting on the jumbo category, either; they’ve announced a redesigned version of the 747, but aren’t building a jumbo from scratch because it’ll cost too much money and they don’t think there’s going to be a market for it.

Seattle has a love/hate relationship with Boeing, mostly love. It’s nice, as a hometown booster, to see the company getting smart, listening to their customers (which is why they canned the proposed Sonic Cruiser airplane) and really projecting the trends in the aviation business.

Luis wrote a great post already about illegal immigration.

I had meant to write something that halfway praised King George- I know, shocking, but even a jackass like him can get things right once in a while. You know the saying… “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.” Well, maybe you don’t know the saying!

What I was going to praise Bush on was that he seems to be trying to moderate the tones of the debate a bit, which is a good thing. The nitwits who’re railing against these supposedly awful illegal immigrants entering our nation talk about these people as though they’re the worst scum of the earth, only coming across the border to either immediately go onto welfare and suck money from hard-working Americans, or steal our jobs, or both.

The fact of the matter is that the vast, vast majority of illegals are just looking for work; they’re willing to do crappy jobs that people here don’t seem to want to take; and they’re not out to sponge huge amounts of money from the social services network. In fact, there’s some evidence that illegal immigrants provide a net positive to our economy; they certainly help out the Social Security system, because SS taxes are withheld from their paychecks but as they’re not citizens, they’re not able to later collect from that system.

As Luis points out, the real emphasis needs to be on the employers, not the workers. You could start throwing all the illegals into a giant prison and they’d still be coming across the border, because they want the jobs, they want the money that those jobs pay.

I have a confession to make here, too- I’m guilty. I’ve hired guys that were almost certainly illegal.

When I moved from Uwajimaya Village Apartments to my new condo several months back, I went to the Home Depot on First Avenue and Lander Street. First thing in the morning. I’ve read that Home Depots have become the day labor meeting points all across the nation, which makes sense.

At the Seattle location, there’s usually at least 50 guys down there in the morning, hoping to pick up some work for the day. I saw three guys that looked reasonably fit, flagged them down, and had them come over and jump in my rig. Between my horrendous Spanish and their slightly-better English, I got across the notion that I was moving a lot of stuff and needed them to carry it for me, and I’d pay them $10/hour to do it.

This is roughly the going rate for that; I probably could have gotten guys to do it for less, but didn’t want to hassle with it and to me, it’s a fair wage for *any* worker, not just someone who’s illegal.

We went back and moved my stuff. They worked hard, carrying lots of boxes, furniture, you name it down a bunch of stairs, loading into the truck, and then when we got to the new place (all of 5 blocks away) back into my new pad. They were polite, didn’t give my girlfriend a hard time, and appeared to be willing to work straight through almost without a break, although we did break for lunch and bought lunch for them.

Does this make me a horrible person? No, of course not. There’s Americans who’re looking for and willing to do day labor as well, and some of them hang out at the Home Depot with the rest of the gang, but that’s not who I wound up hiring.

The point to be seen here is that I had zero fear doing this. I know perfectly well that no INS guys are going to be looking to bust me; the workers, on the other hand, often get ripped off by sleazey contractors who know that if they do so, the workers can’t complain or else they’re in the system and liable to get packed back off to Mexico or wherever else they might be from.

Without emphasis on the employers, you cannot even begin to slow the illegal immigration problems. Bush knows this, as do the Republican/business complex; so they don’t have any problem with a showy, get-tough-on-illegal type of program that makes it *look* as though we’re doing something about the issue.

As long as there’s a big market for jobs, though, people are going to come here. And overall, I’m a big fan of immigration; I think we need to keep it going. There’s probably a breaking point at which it becomes more of a drag overall on our economy, but as a general rule immigration is definitely good for America, both in the short term and the long term.

Once we quit thinking of these folks as heinous or criminal, and start seeing them as fellow humans who just want to try and make their lives better, we can have a civil debate. And for that, at least, Bush deserves a bit of praise; he’s trying to keep the discussion going with that in mind.