I absolutely struggle sometimes with the things that become “news” on this continent.

So, I’m hitting up MSNBC’s web site for a quick glance at the headlines earlier today and, lo and behold, there’s this doozy:

“Man jailed for sex with car-wash vacuum”

The economy is in the crapper, the US President is trying to turn America into Europe on his credit card, there are two wars being fought, and the EPA recently regulated that the air you exhale is a pollutant and this is the crap that makes the news?

Sad, really.

I read this interesting piece recently on a CIA sex scandal. The gist of it is, the CIA are a bunch of professional liars and, as the piece would try to imply, many are totally devoid of morals.

I say this is interesting because it would seem that over the last couple of years, the CIA has been getting a bad rap again for its processes and methods.

There is certainly a lot of press over the interrogation techniques the CIA employs. Much of the debate centres around using the Army Field Manual for the interrogation of prisoners by the CIA. Torture is wrong, it is argued, yet others argue that it is not a price too high to pay if it means no more 9/11′s.

That’s a tough issue.

But it further illustrates the problem. One of the criticisms over 9/11 was that the CIA had ceased being a boots on the ground organization and had become too reliant on electronic and signals intelligence. In other words, using satellites to watch and eavesdropping phone and internet communications of foreign baddies.

This approach maybe worked well against enemy states, which are vast, structured and, by-and-large, observable because they are known.

It doesn’t work against cells of highly motivated individuals running a guerilla campaign in parts of the world where technology doesn’t touch as much and, more importantly, you’re barely aware of their existence or intent.

So if there was public outcry that America should have known through its foreign intelligence gathering service about a 9/11 happening, and the response is to put more boots on the ground and do the ‘old-fashioned” spy stuff (infiltrating, gaining trust, using informants, physically observing, capturing and interrogating) it should come as no surprise that that business is very dirty and nasty.

Here then we come to the crux of the issue as summed up in this quote from A. John Radsan, a former CIA assistant general counsel:

“You want a culture that values innovation and creativity and doesn’t mind violating the laws of other countries, but at the same time, you want a culture of compliance and honesty,” Radsan said. “It is a built-in contradiction.”

What price are you willing to pay to protect yourself? Where do you draw the lines? Is it “okay” to kill ten people to save ten thousand? Ten to save a hundred? Ten of “theirs” to save ten of “ours”?

If firebombing Japan and killing hundreds of thousands of people is “acceptable” to preserve the lives of Allied soldiers, is torturing some really nasty bad guys for intelligence to save hundred or thousands of innocent lives just as “acceptable”?

Is part of that price a CIA that occasionally uses morally questionable but loyal people to perform occasionally morally questionable but potentially life saving actions?

It’s good to want to evolve from medieval tactics into resolving issues through discourse and dialogue. But if your enemy doesn’t partake in using reason, or can’t see your points through their own ignorance or pain (that they blame you for) how can you unilaterally declare we need to play fair now and expect the opposition to play fair as well.

That’s a reasonable expectation presented by reasonable people. But your enemy may not be reasonable.

How much are you willing to sacrifice for your reasonable and moral positions? Is it more important to set an example for a higher standard or potentially suffer losses to the people you’re supposed to protect by not providing all of the tools that could maximize protection? 

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t expect an organization like the CIA to maximize its effectiveness in a shadowy, unreasonable world by employing the rules of reason upon it. You have to pick, and accept the risks of either choice.

There may be more crooked agents using hookers to lure informants in foreign countries and those agents may end up doing nasty things as a bye-product of their environment and job (and, let’s not kid ourselves, maybe their innate nasty predisposition).

Alternatively, you can hope that by not doing nasty things to your enemy that you build goodwill and those enemies will eventually see that and want to engage in discourse instead of flying planes into tall buildings full of people. Or that satellites and signal intel can keep you safe.

It’s a tough call. But I don’t think you can have both. I don’t think you can have a kinder, gentler CIA that can maximize its effectiveness.

You have to choose the lesser of two evils. Which would you choose?

Very interesting article on NY Times the other day. Jurors are causing all manner of headaches by using their smartphones to “Tweet” about trials while in deliberation or to do some extra research by Googling aspects of the trial.

The problem, of course, is that jurors are only supposed to decide guilt or innocence based on the evidence as presented in the court. That’s why there are so many rules regarding what evidence can and cannot be used based on how it was obtained, etc. (As any regular watcher of Law and Order knows.)

This is another example of how technology is moving too fast for our legal system and governments to keep up. If it takes the average government, say, two years to see a problem, deliberate on some solutions and then draft the law (and this is likely a fast track timeline) how on earth can they keep up with things like FaceBook, Twitter, smartphones and other realtime communication apps and devices that are being developed at an amazing speed.

A curious conundrum to be sure.

And this is likely only the tip of the iceberg…

I was disturbed by a headline on MSNBC.com earlier today. The headline read: “S. Africa gangs using rape to ‘cure’ lesbians“.

How can it be that we live in a world where not only is this type of thing happening, but people actually believe a theory like this? It is mystifying to me.

And it all comes back to a topic that has been increasingly on my mind lately: education. I’m worried bymany things I see and read that we’re losing our ability to learn and reason as a society. I increasingly see the inability to rationalize and examine two sides of an issue, for example. Instead people just shout at each other like apes.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many, many issues in which I have chosen a “side” and defend it vigorously, or attempt to discredit the other point of view just as vigorously. But I almost always take the time to critically examine both sides of an issue by trying to apply logic and reason.

I like to credit this to the education I received. One that included teachers that allowed and encouraged debate of different views. Teachers that were also passionate about their subjects, and that passion showed through. I can recall math, physics, english and history teachers that were very passionate about what they taught.

I consider those four courses to be the essential basis of education. Everything else, with the possible exception of chemistry, is a nice to have. But I firmly believe that math and physics provide a template for rationed thinking and history and english provide a mechanism to examine context and convey thinking.

So when I read about gangs raping women to “cure” them of their lesbianism, I wonder what kind of education these folks got. Not much of one. And it leads me back, time and time again, to a core belief I hold that if you could provide a solid education to most of the world’s population, almost all the other problems would start to go away. And that makes me fearful of what we’re doing to our own education system.

I’m no educator. So I’m probably just talking out of my ass, but I’m watching my first child enter the educational system and I wonder if it’s going to serve him as well as it served me.

I have been developing a fear these last few years that our local educational philosophy is deeply flawed. That becoming a professional teacher has become more about the mechanics of teaching than possessing a deep understanding and passion of the subject they teach. Learning needs to be about inspiration as much as mechanics, and my gut tells me that the inspiration isn’t happening as much.

We look at education as a service that is provided by the government like healthcare and paved roads. But what we fail to realize is education is the core foundation of every other thing we want to do in society. Education, above all else, should never be cut. It’s an investment in the future.

Likewise, we’ve created unions and bureaucracies to execute our education. Unions that want to protect all teachers, regardless of their performance, and treat them the same. We’ve seen what unions do to industry (hello, Detroit). And as government continues to expand, the more people you put a room to solve a problem, the more politics starts to play.

We need to stop creating mechanics and start creating teachers again. We need to invest in our school curriculum and make education inspirational. We need to get our kids excited about math, physics, english and history. We need to add creativity into the system. More artistic classes should exist. We need to flush all the bureaucrats out of the system. The delivery of P-12 should be privatized and schools can compete based on their ability to offer the best foundation, much as the voucher system in the US works.

University should be free on a merit system for those that can qualify academically from high school. If you get A’s and B’s, your course is free. If you get C’s, you pay half the cost. If you flunk, you pay the whole shot. Attending a community college and trade schools should be mandatory or heavily encouraged through a tax break if you choose not to go to university. There should be no one unable to gain skills that can positively add to our economy.

I could go on. But at the end of the day, if more people were properly educated and capable of dissecting arguments and having rational discourse on topics, we’d all be better off. As a society, we’re getting smarter, but I fear we’re becoming less intelligent.

How long will it be before we descend to where roving gangs are trying to “cure” things here out of their ignorance?

Well, this little article was pretty interesting. From, admittedly, a right-leaning blog, the basic premise is that Bush II had higher approval numbers at this stage of his presidency versus Obama now, at the same stage. Here’s the quote:

Barack Obama’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll today is 61 percent, with 28 percent disapproving (the Real Clear Politics aggregate of polls has his overall job approval rating at 59.8 percent). A March 5-7, 2001 Gallup poll found President Bush’s job approval at 63 percent as well, with only 22 percent disapproving. So George W. Bush, at a comparable time in his presidency, was in marginally better shape than Barack Obama is right now, at least based on the Gallup Poll survey.

So, recap:

• Approval: Bush 63, Obama 61
• Disapproving: Bush 22, Obama 28

So there’s plenty of time for the Obama administration, with it’s big government, big spending, big socialism, big taxing administration to exceed Bush’s all-time low numbers as well (assuming he even makes it to a second term, which I’m very skeptical of).

The article also points out that Bush had just come through the divisive 2000 “stolen” election while Obama had just coasted to his media-induced coronation.

The glow will be wearing off soon. As people open their 401(k) statements and see what Obama’s radicalism has done to their savings, with no sign of Wall Street gaining any confidence (the opposite is occurring, in fact).

Americans like celebrities, but they don’t like radical leftist socialism. The “liberal media” can only protect him for so long. (You don’t here them talking about this story, do you?) Soon, Americans will realize that their celebrity president is only a few steps ahead of being a marxist.

Then things will get interesting…