And all this time I thought it'd be the B-52 that would be the weapon system to see active duty in its 100th year:

The U.S. Army was developing a new, semi-robotic, tracked howitzer, as part of the Future Combat Systems family of vehicles. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates killed FCS, in April. The howitzer — the so-called Non Line-of-Sight Cannon — was funded separately from FCS, so wasn’t subject to the FCS termination.
...
Anticipating NLOS-C’s death, the Senate just voted to spend an extra $60 million, to keep the Army’s existing, M-109A6 Paladin howitzers, in service until 2050. That’s nearly 100 years after the first M-109 entered U.S. service, and 70 years after the A6 version reached the field.

I just wish the Wikipedia article detailed why it's such a long-lived system.

Remember all the righteous indignation at the Bush administration "suppressing" various government reports that confirmed climate change? Yeah, about that:

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

See, I'm a cynical bastard and a card-carrying member of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I expect politicians and bureaucrats of either party to do absolutely anything to advance their agenda. That's why I'm never surprised by these things.

I am, however, endlessly surprised at how diligent and clever are the efforts of both the MSM and personal acquaintances to excuse the man behind the curtain, now that he's a Democrat.

Remember that chick who got all those stars by "teh horrible" tattoo artist? Yeah, the truth was about what you'd think. Leave it to the media to actually believe anything that comes out of a teenager's mouth.

After 74 years in production, Kodak has announced it's ceasing the production of Kodachrome film. We actually have a film-based SLR, one of the last "prosumer" models Nikon ever made. Olivia will likely take it to school one day as the ultimate example of "old tech."

Ron gets a no-prize that'll twirl impressively in its bell tower for bringing us two bits of evidence that the radical left, at least, is beginning to get worried that The Wrong People may end up getting credit for whatever good may come out of the Iranian, well, whatever it is going on there:

Proof... PROOF!!! that Israelis are attempting to destabilize the existing Iranian regime. And this is bad BEEECAUUSE???

A level-headed attempt to link Israel's fascist mistreatment of those peace-loving Palestinians who are peacefully protesting their peaceful desire to peacefully push all the Jews into the sea with Obama's non-handling of the situation in Iran. Money quote: "[A radical Israeli politician who I don't like]'s expressed eagerness to bomb the Aswan dam is at least the equivalent of Ahmadinejad’s reported desire to wipe Israel off the map. "

Ok, Sparky. Here's a ruler. This is something that will provide you with something called "perspective." Equating bombing a dam with nuking a country means you really, really need it.

Ok, pop quiz. What party is this guy talking about, and when did he write it:

During campaigns, they want our money, our support... but once they win, we're not needed. Even worse, they view us as a problem. Many of them forget that they have their tax-payer financed jobs and benefits because of the work so many of us did.

The honest answers are, "any active party", and "any time after 1787." I'm just about certain I can find comments like this any time in the modern era. It's likely the same sentiments will be found all the way back to the beginning, or shortly thereafter.

See, you guys just figured it was the Republicans who acted this way because, well, most of you wavered between "they're stupid" and "they're evil." Guess what, sparky? It's not Republicans, it's politicians, and it'll only get worse this time around because everyone seems to want so desperately to love this guy.

Original article is here.

Via Instapundit.

See, I'm never surprised by these things, since (contrary to popular perception) I think there's a certain type of person who's attracted to politics, who knows how the game's to be played, and party affiliation really only affects the color of the lapel pin. Therefore this doesn't surprise or bother me that much. The rest of you, quite obviously, will likely feel differently:

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Oh, don't worry, I'm sure you'll comfort yourself with some "but the Republicans are much worse!" pap. Don't forget to be smarmy when you mention it. I love it when you do that.

No, not you. The other one.

A Chinese sub recently collided with a US destroyer's towed sonar array. Those things are, as I understand it, highly classified. I'm not sure anyone knows what they really look like. This could've been a "love tap", or it could've gotten tangled up, or it could've been bashed around pretty good. Who knows?

... Mah Incentives:

Education really does pay.

An overwhelming number of schools participating in a controversial program that pays kids for good grades saw huge boosts -- up to nearly 40 percentage points higher -- in reading and math scores this year, a Post analysis found.

Since public education's true goal is indoctrinating the poor masses into the Church of Secular Humanism, the left is predictably moving the goal posts from "getting a good education" to "education should be valued for its own sake." If this shows even the slightest sign of catching on, expect identical MSM "in depth" stories about rampant cheating and kids spending their education cash on drugs. All, of course, based on the same NEA press releases using data from the same NEA-sponsored studies.

Bitter? Me?

And now, 10 cars that some journalist thinks last forever. The only real surprise was the lack of a Mercedes diesel, which are utterly legendary in their stolid virtues.

Hmm? Oh, you can make an Alfa go that far. Several have. You just need to fiddle with them more.

A lot more.

Rumor has it the Tata Nano may be heading to our shores. I'm not at all sure how. According to road tests I've read in the various popular magazines, the Nano has no modern safety features. No air bags, no side-impact bars, heck I'm not even sure if it has seat belts. See, in India, doors and a roof are considered big upgrades in safety already. Everything else is expensive gravy they don't need. As the US auto market experience in the mid 70s proves, it's hard to add these things to a vehicle not engineered for them. And those add-ons were relatively straightforward, things like battering-ram bumpers and big bars inside the doors.

Nowadays the safety features often involve things that go, "bang." Sometimes in your face, and are sophisticated enough not to kill you, your grandmother, or your toddler doing it. Can the engineers at Tata handle the challenge? Can they make money on the result? Who knows? There will always be a market for cheap cars, even in the US. The trick is making money off them.

While I agree the other side of this whole late-term abortion thing needs to be told, in my opinion I think the article's author does her own fair share of glossing in the other direction. Still, I will readily admit I had a very one-sided idea of what late term abortion really means in the US until I read this article.

Me? Well, all I can really say is abortion is legal in this country, and as such a person practicing it according to the proper guidelines is completely innocent of any wrongdoing. The perpetrator of the murder should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The rest is too complex for me to pass judgment. I only wish the criminal who decided to take the law into his own hands could've decided the same.

Via Violins and Starships.

Update: I guess I shouldn't be surprised the perpetrator isn't the brightest bulb in the bunch. That's another thing. If you're going to be an asshat and break the law because of your principles, suck it up and take the punishment like a man. One thing that annoys the s- out of me about protesters, be they right, left, violent, or peaceful, is how so many of them turn into whiny biatches the moment the cuffs go on. Hey, sparky, the whole point of being a martyr for the cause is dying at the end. At least Hajji has the decency to blow himself to bits.

Ron gets a no-prize that just looks suspicious for bringing us these 10 examples of news photographs that've been altered beyond all reason. What surprises me is how prominent the perpetrators are. I guess they're just more examples of people who are smart in one thing thinking they're smart in all things.

I'd always wondered just what Google Earth might be revealing about The Hermit Kingdom. Turns out, it's quite a lot:

A group of amateur spies has used Google Earth to provide a rare glimpse inside North Korea, one of the world's most secretive countries.
...
Among the most notable findings is the site of mass graves created in the 1990s following a famine that the UN estimates killed about 2 million people.
...
Also visible is the stark contrast between the living conditions of North Korea's elite and the general population.

~ Keep spending all our lives / Livin' in the worker's paradise... ~

Now that they're actually building the long-awaited Metro extension through Tyson's Corner, they're beginning to cut "black" wire. Definitely not the same sort of wire that makes the Milano's electrics go all wonky when it gets dirty.

The sad thing is, considering the level of debate amongst the "adults" of the internet lies somewhere between a screaming toddler and a poo-flinging chimp, this guide to "teaching children how to argue" should be required reading for, well, everyone. I know that's about as likely to happen as the MSM not asking, "what color?" every time the Obama administration yells "Sh*T!", but I can hope, can't I?

So, is the Obama administration deliberately targeting Chrysler dealerships who contributed to the GOP for closure, or is it just more paranoid ravings from the right? The Obama administration definitely has the arrogance, and the inexperience, to pull a stunt like this. After all, they doubtless have no expectation of being caught. Certainly the MSM will do nothing until the evidence is so colorful it starts to sell other people's newspapers.

I'm not sure it ever would occur to me that ebay was even in competition with sites like Facebook and MySpace. The former is for shopping, the latter for chatting. I troll ebay because I own an obscure pair of cars for which parts are difficult to find. Picking up weird stuff for fair prices was always what I thought ebay was for.

Policy wonks: the real solution to increasing and increasingly deadly mortar and rocket attacks is lasers. Which is all well and good, but nobody's managed to make an SSL that'll meet all the criteria for an effective defense. They're beavering away at it, so it may just be a matter of time.

The way most people get arrested is because of what they say to the cop. It gets interesting when a state law makes it permissible to say incriminating things to the cop, without getting in trouble. See, Ellen... all those times I've babbled at the TV about circumstantial evidence? I was right! The Mentalist, FTW!

While long on hyperbole and a bit short on actual facts, this account summarizing the theft of some of NASA's precious moon rocks is still worth a look. Considering how expensive NASA programs really are, I can't see how selling even previously contaminated rocks would make a difference. The feds took a dim view of someone using that excuse as a defense in fencing some stolen samples.

They're funny that way, eh?

One of the few people still relying on a full-body iron lung for breathing assistance has died. I remember when these things featured prominently in any number of TV shows or movies, mostly from the 60s. As noted in the article, nowadays it seems almost nobody uses them.

So, the next time someone from Japan gets in your face about how harmonious and safe their society is compared to ours, you'll now have something ask them about when they're finished. Yet more proof that our society has no monopoly on the dark side. We just talk about it where others can hear.

Mutual fund debt holders have torpedoed the Chrysler bailout plan. From various reports, it seems this was half expected, and there definitely seems to be a "Plan B" that will keep the main deal intact.

Just in time for GM's announcement of Pontiac's shuttering, Jalopnik has picked their ten greatest models from that marque. People familiar with automotive journalists probably won't be surprised to find a few models from other "ten worst" lists. Long term memory has never been much of a strong suite with journalists of any stripe.

Well, it's nice to know rice really doesn't hurt birds. I always thought that was a dumb one, but stopped noting it after it became obvious the various Bridezillas I had the temerity to contradict took it way too personally. If there's anything more dangerous than getting between a bride and her Perfect Wedding^tm, I'm not sure what it is.

Via Violins and Starships.

It would appear something's going to happen to Pontiac. It's not clear to me, from the article, if they're shuttering the brand outright, or if they're planning on spinning the division off. My brother always enjoyed the fact he had the last of the Firebirds in his '01. I'm not sure anyone expected it'd be one of the last Pontiacs.

Another day, another person without an axe to grind losing weight eating only McDonalds. Spurlock's film was a fine piece of entertainment, but a lousy documentary. Any viewer with even a lick of sense sees that in the first five minutes. Small wonder then that almost all MSM outlets portrayed Supersize Me as a serious, important commentary on our times.

Assuming the Fiat/Chrysler merger actually goes through, "what-goes-where" talks seem to be moving forward. More back-channel rumors indicate new big-3 assembly lines are extremely efficient, to minimize the impact of union-imposed restrictions. If Fiat can get the more onerous policies peeled away, it would seem to be possible to produce high-quality Italian cars here in North America in a perhaps surprisingly short amount of time.

I think it says a lot about, well, something, that a media publication thinks it can convey a meaningful portrait of an entire country through exactly eight pictures. Then again, the results are rather compelling.

Miguel P. gets a patrician no-prize for bringing us this perceptive look at what American government is, and is not. Yeah, it's a little long, but like most worthwhile lectures you really don't notice the time going by.

Even if the MSM continues to largely ignore the tea party movement, the radical left press sure isn't. Hey, you guys have Marxist wackos showing up to your rallies*, we have Fascist wackos showing up to ours. It's all good!

----
* Oh yes you do. Oh yes you do! Don't you make me get out the pictures of the hippies to prove it. You know what those look like...

Problem: Pirates are attacking our ships, but our liberal philosophy says we can't just shoot them outright.

Solution: Use expensive high tech!

Problem: Not so fast, moonbat-boy.

Pirates are plying their trade because, even with all the risks, it's cheaper and more profitable than any other trade to which a Somali can aspire. Only when the costs of being a pirate obviously exceed all other available options will attacks cease. Unfortunately when the risk of dying is already factored into a profession, its cost can only be raised by turning that risk into an actuality.

In other words, shoot the bastards. It's the only way to be sure.

Why don't we all just drive around with mattresses on the hood:

A Europe-wide collaboration led by Roger Hardy of the Cranfield Impact Centre at Cranfield University near Bedford in the UK has developed an experimental system for cars that aims to cut this death toll and reduce the severity of injuries. When the system detects that the car is about to hit a pedestrian, it automatically raises the rear of the bonnet (hood), releasing a giant airbag in front of the windscreen.

Legislation to protect pedestrians is already responsible for the "high forehead" look of new European cars... they have to meet a certain set of crush guidelines to ensure someone doesn't, well, get crushed. This'd make, what, eight or nine airbags in a well-equipped car? These are not cheap devices!

Fiat to UAW: DROP DEAD.

Well, ok, maybe not "drop dead", but definitely "stfd and stfu."

It should be kept in mind that it's not always bad when the US Government prints money. I'm especially glad this got addressed: If that new money is supposed to make the dollar worth less, then why is the rest of the world fleeing to the safety of the dollar, instead of fleeing away from what you say is the soon-to-be-worthless dollar?

It's a question that's been bugging me for some time.

Mark gets a mysterious no-prize for bringing us news that the on-again, off-again status of the Shroud of Turin is, well, on again. Scientists will likely not be given access to the shroud again until they come up with a non-destructive dating technique, so it'll be awhile before they can re-test. Not that it'll make much difference to the True Believers, on either side.

North Korea successfully attacked the Pacific Ocean with its latest rocket. Which was all well and good, except they were actually trying to loft a satellite. Boosters do a lot of things well. Bouncing isn't one of them.

Well, if this guy is right, the upcoming Fiat-Chrysler merger stands a very strong chance of working. Can a successful Italian company succeed where a successful German one failed? A lot will depend on both sides listening to each other about how strengths and weaknesses are perceived. This is reported to not have happened during the Daimler years. It'll be interesting to see if it does with Fiat.

If this list of "Top 5 Great Men who were Great Plagiarists" is to be believed, a few of our most cherished literary figures had some very sticky fingers. That said, this is a Cracked article, long on sophomoric mud-slinging and suspiciously short of citations. The case on MLK's Dream speech in particular strikes me a more of a reference than outright plagiarism.

And score one for me, who seems to know how to spell "plagiarism" without reference to spell check. Now if I could just consistently remember where I leave my keys in the morning...

Why stop at helping companies stay afloat? We obviously know better than they do what the consumer wants:

Obama has ordered GM and Chrysler to come up with a cost and product structure that focuses on making money on small, fuel-efficient cars, traditionally a losing proposition for U.S. automakers.

My advice: find the most powerful car that fits your needs and buy it now. The days of a 250 hp family sedan are over. Performance cars with 300+ hp are going to lead them into extinction. My prediction: when the economy recovers, say in 3-5 years, there will be an explosion in classic car values that'll make the runup in the mid-80s look like a wet bottle rocket.

Because, now that the government is deciding what is and is not a desirable car, the only place to turn for what you like will be the classic car market. Since there's no increasing supply there, prices must go up. They're available new or depreciating fast right now, but once people realize the best they're going to get from now on is a Smart, that'll change in a great big hurry. Buy low, because in five years you'll definitely be able to sell high.

Chrysler says it has reached an official deal with Fiat. The trick now is to make sure Chrysler keeps its doors open long enough for Fiat to route cars through it.

The latest iteration: Chrysler goes to GM, and GM gives Saab to Fiat as some sort of weird consolation prize. I'm not completely sure this'll work all that well either, since SAAB's lineup would seem to compete directly with Alfa's. Still, I've seen more news about Fiat coming back to the US in the past six weeks than I have in the past six years. Surely something will come of it.

Boy, am I glad Bush was the last president! Otherwise we'd have nobody to blame for these horrific budget deficits. Well, except for, you know...

So now it seems at least some women are coming forward saying they experienced orgasms during childbirth. Considering the human species has been reproducing the same way for the past 150,000 years or so, you'd think someone else would've noticed before now.

I quite distinctly remember reading news articles in the mid-90s about how crazy and unfair it was for southern states to "give away" money and rights trying to attract car companies to locate there. It was, after all, just corporate welfare, pure and simple. How dare they provide billions of dollars in tax incentives to companies making a profit!

Well, I don't expect anyone on the left side of the aisle to change their tune, but at least I'll have the ammunition to shoot down those ridiculous assertions.

The story makes me think about a related "how dare they!" scenario, legalized "riverboat" gambling. Mississippi "fell" to temptation, while Arkansas remained "pure." Ten years later the differences between the "is-this-1958-or-what?" poverty of the Arkansas side and the "was-anythiing-in-this-town-even-around-last-year?" growth on the Mississippi side was striking.

Funny that the left celebrates this as a "victory" of common sense over superstition, while excoriating what's effectively the same thing elsewhere as "corporate welfare." I wonder if they'd ever even acknowledge the distinction?

It would seem the messiah has fallen into the water. Finessing Congress is fundamental to the success of a presidency. Those who manage it are nearly always seen as successful, while those who don't, well, aren't.

I gotta say, this still looks a whole lot more like Carter 2.0 than it does Bill Strikes Back.

Personally, I think it would've been cooler for him to lose the other middle finger. Still, it does provide an excuse not to wear a certain sort of ring, eh?

Mexico appears to be poised to enter a trade war with the US. The cause? Democrats allowed a "pilot program" which enabled Mexican trucks to drive on US roads to lapse. The problem? This is an absolute darling issue with a very powerful core Democratic constituency (Teamsters), the pleasing of which runs right into our tough economic times. So, do you scoff at losing some or all of $151bn worth of trade, as well as the efficiencies of a free market, or do you engage in a bit of realpolitik and jettison a loyal cadre of voters?

Well, why not hold the funeral at your house? There are more, and more varied, traditions surrounding funerals than there are surrounding marriages, in both our families, so I don't know how well this'd play in our neck of the woods. Then again, considering how iconoclastic our own marriage was*, anything's possible.

-----
* An all-expenses package to Jamaica. Think elopement, with invitations.

Nothing like a set of century-old pictures to put it all in perspective, eh? Whenever I see collections like this, one of the more interesting things I think about is how every single person in these pictures, even (especially) the children are now long, long gone. Impermanence is the only permanent part of the human condition. We forget it far too often.

“I bet if the entire Obama Administration and Democratic Congressional Leadership were sentenced to hang on December 1, 2009, if the stock market were not above 9000 and unemployment were not below 7%, they would become raging tax-cutting pro-business libertarians overnight.”

Which is, of course, an interesting way of saying "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" and "do as I say, not as I do" at once.

Why worry about losing your wallet when something else that'll do the job can be implanted in your arm? I'm actually a bit surprised it's taken this long for someone to think it up.

Looks like Sunday will be the last day of business for Circuit City. I visited one a few weeks ago, and sadly found its selection rather similar to what it had been before they went bankrupt. What was there wasn't marked down to any remarkable extent. Yet another "I remember when..." I can tell Olivia about. If I remember.

Funny, I don't recall seeing this as a headline anywhere:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 20 percent since Inauguration Day, the fastest drop under a newly elected president in at least 90 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

"BUT! BUT! He's only been in office 2 months!" Well, yes, but wasn't this the president widely and loudly admired for his taut, disciplined, and organized transition team? You know, one which was, compared to the previous two administrations, what the Batmobile was to a pair of Chinese fire drills?

I mean, it's all well and good to engage in just a little more Bush hating; I'm sure at least one of you out there will do just that, but GW's train has definitely left the station and the heat from its engine can't last much longer.

But wait! There's more:

Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

Oh, that's right, I keep forgetting. Government is good. Economic justice is far more important than economic growth. If we engage in a dialog with the world we just won't need such an expensive defense budget. Our reliable allies will always be around to help! It's more important that gay people will be able to get married and abortion will never be threatened! People need clean air and renewable energy far more than they need jobs. It doesn't matter if you think so or not, they're the government and they know better than you, because they said so! Hey, that's what hope and change is all about!

Were all the lessons of 1977-1981 forgotten?

Heh...

Gotta love this quote: "I would have liked to have tried this experience on for size myself, but was told that only Mr Caballero is permitted to shoot prospective clients."

That's not "shoot" as in camera, but "shoot" as in gun. If it's good enough for the Messiah of the Democratic party, it's good enough for me!

So how well would your area fare if hajji managed to light a nuke off at a nearby landmark? Interestingly, both Ellen's and my workplace are just far enough away to be likely to survive everything hajji can carry in a backback. Friend Joshua's workplace, which is very close to the Air and Space museum, well, not so much.

The really big stuff would reach all the way out to the house, but I'd like to think something that big would be at least a little tough to sneak past customs.

What better way to start the day than playing with Armageddon?

Pat gets a tweedy no-prize for bringing us a rebuttal on a rebuttal to a climate change op-ed George Will published a few days ago. While wordy, I've always enjoyed this sort of slow-motion print flame war. Reminds me of my usenet days, stuck in treacle.

The Chrysler-Fiat deal continues to wobble its way forward, seemingly on press releases alone. The Italians are worried their tax dollars will somehow end up in Chrysler's accounts, while unions "concerned parties" are trying to torpedo the deal on this side of the Atlantic to keep American tax dollars ending up in Fiat's accounts.

To which I can only say, "where's my damned new Alfa at, anyway?"

Remember that "Darth Vader" ship that made the rounds on all those 90s tech shows? You want it?

Of course, the Navy is justifiably famous for placing unending rules and regulations about the "who, what, and how" of taking one of their now-obsolete babies. They also don't pay for anything. So I'm not expecting this one tied up to the dock of anyone I know, any time soon.

So how often should you change the oil in your car? This guy did some actual research and found that most Americans are probably doing it too often.

I think I've been tinkering with cars longer than this guy, otherwise he would've mentioned something most shade-tree wrenchers like me learned long ago... when factories first began touting longer oil change intervals, they also included a "heavy use" interval that really was only 3000 miles. A cursory reading of the owner's manual would reveal that, in order to qualify for the "normal use" category, a car essentially had to be driven warm all the time on highways at 50+ mph. Everything else was "heavy use."

Now, even the newest car we own today is nearly 10 years old, which (as I recall) was before all these new high-mileage oils started coming out. It may very well be one of the last vehicles to include this "heavy use" out. At any rate, we've run synthetic in everything except the Spider*. The Milano's on its very first oil change on our watch, but I'm pretty convinced of the new Mobil 1's protection and do not plan on changing it for at least 7500 miles. The Cruiser's always been treated as an "any time after 3000 miles" car, which usually translates to 5000-7500, and it's doing fine after 150k+ miles.

The point being? Well, as long as you let the car get fully warmed up on your regular drives, and are at least mindful of oil changes, nowadays you'll probably be fine. If you drive some goofy one-off Italian sports car that was never designed to last more than five years anyway, well, you're on your own!

----
* Whose engine is just about 40 years old. The oil leaked out like a mistreated opera star's mascara the one time I tried synthetic in it. Maybe after a rebuild...

Oh, goody:

Bloomberg is reporting that President Barack Obama's budget cuts rely heavily on reductions in military spending, and several other news organization said the same over the weekend.

Looks like it's time to order a few of these:

At least this one's clever: reactionary bourgeois tool of the capitalist system:

Well, the obvious point [of the Obama plan to prevent foreclosures] is that it represents a massive transfer to borrowers from lenders and the rest of us.

I'm rather fond of that slogan up there. I just might turn it into a T-shirt. Anyone else interested in one?

Ron gets a virtual no-prize for bringing us the latest news about the virtual dating scene. When Ellen and I met, the best you could do was text-based MUD wannabes. Now... I mean, geeze, what's next? Virtual rabbits boiling in virtual pots?

Lord, bless Wikipedia, without which I would not have known about a far more ancient holiday at this time of year:

The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci (or the flamen dialis) of two male goats and a dog. Next two young patrician Luperci were led to the altar, to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh.

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called Februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth. This tradition itself may survive (Christianised, and shifted to Spring) in certain ritual Easter Monday whippings.

On the one hand, it sorta makes putting Valentine's day cards into paper sacks look pretty tame. On the other, if given a choice between putting cards in sacks or being chased around the town square by bloodstained, half-naked lunatics flinging raw goatskin around... well, suddenly cards don't look so bad.

Ain't ancient history fun?

Actually, I doubt if seeing this budget graph will dent everyone's enthusiasm for Obama one little bit. Scary as it is, we're still close enough to the previous administration for them to take the blame.

From memory, it'll be about seven more months before I get to call fire and brimstone down on the current administration for the previous one's foibles. That's definitely what I remember happening, coming from people I actually know personally, with the last administration's first term.

It's left to the reader to remember which event marked the "in office, at fault" shift.

Those readers who've been to Amsterdam know all about it, but since I've never been this selection of red-light district photos was, well, I guess you'd say informative. The article is SFW, but the ads at the bottom of the page aren't.

Turns out that, when you consider the alternatives, working at Wal Mart really isn't as bad as you'd at first think. Readers on the far left of the peanut gallery (no, not you, the other one) may not like the conclusions the author reaches as to why Wal Mart has such a bad reputation.

It's been quite some time since I've read something this relevant, and good:

Two political figures dominated the final months of the 2008 presidential campaign. One was the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. The other had been unknown to all but 670,000 Americans only a few minutes before she was first introduced by the Republican nominee.
...
Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy the Left had ever held about the views of evangelical Christians and women who do not associate themselves with contemporary feminism, and all concern for clarity and truthfulness was left at the door.
...
Nonetheless, Palin was embraced practically without reservation in many conservative circles. The very heat of the Left’s campaign against her made her all the more a darling of the Right ... Palin instantly became an icon of the pro-life cause.
...
Palin’s cultural populism put her at odds with the foe that did her the most serious damage: the nation’s intellectual elite, whose initial suspicion of her deepened into outright loathing as the campaign progressed.
...
Applied to politics, the worldview of the intellectual elite begins from an unstated assumption that governing is fundamentally an exercise of the mind: an application of the proper mix of theory, expertise, and intellectual distance that calls for knowledge and verbal fluency more than for prudence born of life’s hard lessons.

Sarah Palin embodied a very different notion of politics, in which sound instincts and valuable life experiences are considered sources of knowledge at least the equal of book learning. She is the product of an America in which explicit displays of pride in intellect are considered unseemly, and where physical prowess and moral constancy are given a higher place than intellectual achievement. She was in the habit of stressing these faculties instead—a habit that struck many in Washington as brutishness.
...
McCain’s advisers were right about Palin: she was a mirror image of John McCain. She was not a visionary politician, or a programmatic politician, but an attitude politician with an appealing biography. In the end, she was no more able than McCain to offer a coherent rationale for his presidency.

I've never read quite such a succinct summary of what my lefty friends really do appear to believe. Great stuff! Go read!

Pat gets a no-prize with a big magnifying glass attached for bringing us the story of Dr. Aribert Heim, one of the last remaining uncapture Nazi war criminals. It would seem he passed away in 1992 after living a quiet life in Cairo. Died of rectal cancer, apparently. If he actually did what he's accused of doing, well, can't say I'm all that sympathetic.

Good:

Media reports suggest Senate Republicans have become a key focus of stimulus talks, an acknowledgement that they appear to hold the balance of power in that chamber despite having only 41 seats to the Democrats' 58.

That's the way it's supposed to work, folks. It's why I was able to sleep at night after "the rapture." 60 seats and the Democrats run the world. 59 (or, here, 58) and they have to co-operate.

He'll either learn to coddle, caress, and cajole congress, or he'll fail. Will he be Carter II, or Clinton II? We'll just have to see.

Even though it seems all I hear about regarding the most recent Israel v. Hamas conflict is civilian casualties, I'm actually rather impressed at how low they are. I've been following that region pretty closely for some time. Back in the late 90s and the early part of this decade, headlines would read "Israel fires rocket, kills 1 terrorist and 30 civilians." Today it seems I'm reading headlines like "Israel fires rocket, kills 13 terrorists and 3 civilians. Now it seems I've found the reason for the sudden increase in accuracy. Not exactly a super-weapon, but it definitely seems to be more effective than a Hellfire.

US Naval Institute: "The Iowa class battleship is NOT the greatest battleship in American naval history." The article gets really technical, so I'll just nod sagely and let others get in a fight over it. Oh, and that site allows comments, so don't go posting no six page refutation here. My eyes'll cross at that just as fast as they did to the original article.

So are increase CAFE standards good for the environment, or are they simply a really crappy sort of tax on driving? Regular readers shouldn't have to try very hard to guess where I stand on the issue.

I'm sure it's harder than it looks, but this video demonstration of gun disarmament techniques still seems instructive. I've known about these sorts moves for some times now, because of a martial arts demonstration at (of all things) a sci-fi con back in 1996. A very small Japanese man, who's day job was as a physicist and who's two night jobs were dojo and sci-fi author, demonstrated that all you really need to do is move quickly and roll away from the weapon. They were using a toy gun, so the "perp" could pull the trigger, and each time said perp was simply unable to fire the weapon before the "victim" was out of the line of fire.

In other words, as the video demonstrates, guns are meant for distance killing. Get too close and you give away the only real advantage you have.

Haha... I'm NOT in the upper right corner. Eat that you Darth Vader wannabees.

My Political Views
I am a center-left moderate social authoritarian
Left: 2.3, Authoritarian: 1.44

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 1.39

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Culture War Stance
Score: -1.7

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Political Views
I am a far-right social libertarian
Right: 8.09, Libertarian: 3.74

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 2.98

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Culture War Stance
Score: -0.89

Political Spectrum Quiz

I'm a little surprised that it didn't score me more libertarian. I'm a bit disappointed that the authors chose to break things down by foreign policy and social issues, but seemed to ignore economics. It seemed like about half the questions were economics-related.

Via Daffodil Lane, who's scores only surprised in that both are nearly as libertarian as I am, and that the chart was wide enough to keep Jamison from falling off the left side.

It'll be interesting to see if it's wide enough to keep Ellen from falling off the right side.

Well, why shouldn't there be Christian nymphos. Far as I can remember, the Bible is pretty much silent on what can and can't happen between two married, consenting adults. Of course, what I know about the Bible could probably fit in a thimble, so if anyone knows better fire away.

It would seem no matter how much preparation you do, the first day in the White House is always really hard. Note the meat of the article concerns how the press office is, or rather isn't, handling the press corps. "We don't care where your office is! Give us a press release! Now!!!" Charming.

Hey, at least the Bush people left with class. No missing "O" keys on the keyboard this time.

Seconded:

Is there anyone who still believes the Constitution was created to ensure each citizen liberty and the ability to pursue happiness rather than a guarantee of happiness — and a retirement fund, health care, a job, an education, a house ... ?

That was a great, big, hairy stumbling block I had with Obama's inauguration speech. It's also, when you get right down to it, why I have such a great, big, hairy problem with liberal and progressive (L&P) ideals. I believe very strongly in the former picture of the Constitution, L&P's quite strongly believe in the latter. Very few of them seem to be students of the 1960s and 1970s, or the 1930s, otherwise they'd know all of this was tried twice before and all this has failed twice before.

Because we all know the real reason these ideas don't work has nothing to do with them being, well, wrong, and is instead because Kulaks like me refuse to understand them and try to sabotage them at every opportunity. I'm not silly enough to believe the Democrats will try to muzzle my side with Stalinesque brutality; I've had a belly full of that sort of bloviating coming from the left for the past eight years. I'm simply disappointed we're going to go through yet another round of L&P experimentation just a generation after the last round failed.

For it is the doom of men, that they forget...

Fiat appears to be in serious talks with Chrysler for some sort of cross-production agreement. Fiat would get access to the US, and Chrysler would get access to a modern set of small and medium sized cars and the international markets in which Fiat is doing very well.

Alfa tried a vaguely similar deal with Chrysler back in the '80s, and it was a disaster. 2nd time's the charm? Who knows. At least with this deal they won't be selling cars through a competitor's dealer network (a-la BMW/Mini).

Who knew Diamond Crater had such a checkered history? What? You didn't know Arkansas had diamonds? Four years ago, neither did Ellen. When she found out while we were vacationing there, there was this whoosh of air around me and then the car horn was honking, suddenly loaded with wife, child, and the fifteen kilos of gear Olivia required back then. Ellen didn't find anything, but boy, was there a lot of mud!

Remember when, briefly last year, Volkswagen was the most valuable company on earth? It was on paper, at any rate. Now you can read how that happened. About ten years ago Porsche was in such financial straights the survival of the company was in serious question. They've come a long way since then.

Fun for the whole family: play "I might be a Jew" with people who care and aren't sure. This one's subversive enough it might even be fun for a few of my atheist friends, who (obviously) don't care much for religion but enjoy goofing on those who do.

When I see fake medical procedures portrayed in a fictional drama, I either ignore it or laugh at it. When the fakes are in a "hard news story" by "the most trusted name in news", I get more than a little annoyed:

The large man in the white coat was NOT performing CPR on that child. He was just sort of tapping on the child’s sternum a little bit with his fingers. You can’t make blood flow like that. Furthermore, there’s no point in doing chest compressions if you’re not also ventilating the patient somehow.

I also noticed how the camera seems to very carefully avoid showing the victim. The second video (as noted, at about 1:40) makes the "procedures" look even less convincing.

Now, tell me again, and slowly, because like I've said before I just must be too retarded to understand... why I'm supposed to prefer CNN over, say, Fox news?

Ares has a couple of highlights from Israel's current project in assisting Hajji hooking up with his 72 wyrgins. The first video takes quite awhile to develop, but the end is worth it.

I had a feeling it would only be a matter of time before NASA released a detailed report of what it must have been like inside Columbia during its final breakup. Yes, it was over quickly, but not so quickly people couldn't react. Space can be a dangerous, scary place.

Everyone's favorite loopy-lefty cartoonist seems to be calling for Obama's impeachment over "broken promises" made about the Iraq and Afghan wars. To be real honest, I only recall the loopy right calling for Bill's impeachment after, say, six months on the job. Mind you, back then I listened to Rush Limbaugh every day, so I was pretty cognizant of what the fringe was up to at that time. Calling for your own candidate's impeachment before he's even taken office? Must be some sort of record.

Told you ordering extra popcorn for the show was a good idea!

Via Instapundit.

Never a country to let a binge drinking idea go untried, Australian adult beverage companies are now selling toothpaste tubes full of vodka. Now that, friends, is a professional party country.

Stop the presses!!! The Pope thinks homosexuality is wrong! Is the church's attitude toward homosexuals backward and counter-productive? In my opinion, yes. Have they held the same attitude, consistently and without wavering, for the past 2000 years or so? Why... yes, yes they have. Personally I think they should concentrate more on helping the poor and using Jesuits as guided hajji-moves-to-Europe-hajji-converts-to-Christianity missiles. But anyone who is surprised or gets their panties in a wad over what the Pope thinks about gays needs to get out more.

So, what happens when a general news paper decides to take on the specialized and complex world of defense spending? About what you'd think:

Today, the NYT weighs in with its prescription for a 21st century defense budget, clearly written by someone with a hazy idea of the differences between various kinds of airplanes and ships. And like any prescription written by an unqualified person, it would make you ill.

Color me unsurprised.

But, like thousands of other credit card customers around the nation, he has been notified his rate is skyrocketing. "It almost borders on loan-sharking, from my perspective," he said. In the blogosphere, writers are livid at the instant rate hikes -- called "rate-jacking."

Citigroup seems to be the target of most bloggers' venom -- partly because Citigroup issues so many credit cards and partly because Citi began sending the notices at about the same time it was getting a $20 billion, taxpayer-financed government bailout.

No one at Citigroup would talk on camera to CNN about the matter. Instead, the company issued a written statement, which said: "To continue funding in this difficult credit and funding environment, Citi is repricing a group of customers."

Read full article here.

Cut them up while you can. Pay the minimum to more than the amount owed per month and start paying cash for everything.

Lesbian youth (in Canada, at any rate) are at much higher risk of teen pregnancy than the general population. I guess it proves liking your own team doesn't make you any smarter than anybody else.

Finally this family gets some peace.

Authorities announced that they've finally solved the 1981 killing of the boy whose father later gained fame as the host of "America's Most Wanted."

Wagner said Tuesday that after a fresh review, he is ending the abduction and murder case of Adam Walsh.

At an emotional press conference with Adam's parents Reve and John Walsh, Wagner said there is no new evidence in the case that began on July 27, 1981. Still, after what he called a meticulous review of the record and talks with the original investigators, he concluded that pedophile and convicted serial killer Ottis Toole abducted and killed the 6-year-old boy 27 years ago.

Read the entire article here.

I'm not sure just how seriously A Big, Dead Place should be taken, but if it's on the up-and-up it seems to be a candid look at what life's really like at the bottom of the world. Be sure to check out the "Ask an Antarctican" section. If it's for real, seems life is actually a little more boring than you'd think down there.

Ever wonder what it's really like for a reasonable citizen to gain and use a concealed carry permit? Wonder no more.

I'm actually surprised it's taken this long: an underwear company has created a line of "slimming" undershirts for men. Best bit:

At my first appointment, I bump into my friend Crystal. “Do I look different?” “You’re standing very erect,” she says, avoiding my panting chest, as Lisa, a fashion PR, joins us. I squirm as I tell them about the body-enhancing underwear I’m sporting, to which I quickly add, “purely for research purposes”.

Both pairs of female eyes drop to my groin. “Not down there!” I cry, cupping myself like a defender before a free kick. “You know, my body, does it look better in any way?”

Nice to see the "crotch-check" is a cross-Atlantic phenomenon. What, ladies, you don't think we notice when you do that?

Obama's NASA transition team has asked the agency to comment on the implications of canceling the Ares I launch vehicle. Executives at Alliant Techsystems (ATK), the Edina, Minn.-based prime contractor for the Ares 1 main stage, seem to be doing a ROTC traffic director "everything's fine!!!" sort of thing. Are they covering nervousness, or really do believe, once all the answers are in, Ares I really is the right answer? Only time will tell.

I thought I was the only one:

A wife’s sympathy for a partner with a cold lasts just five minutes, according to new research.

So, is the Navy's new latest-and-greatest actually stealthy, or have the dockyards and the service conspired to screw it all up? Again.

Being a pessimist, I don't think you'll like my speculation.

If we are in fact able to bring back the recently-sequenced woolly mammoth, and if we are in fact able to fully sequence the neandertal genome, should we take the next logical step, and just what would that imply?

Personally I think the two "ifs" are a lot bigger than the article's author seems to think. Still, it is an interesting ethical question. In my opinion, one of the many arguments against slavery is that it wastes the potential of someone who is in a very real sense no different than anyone else. Suddenly, at least on paper, we are rapidly acquiring the ability to create manifestly less capable beings, which are however still related to us.

To put it another way, we don't turn chimps into slaves because they're high strung, not that clever, and can bend cold steel with their bare hands. If we are able to create a much more capable, pliable, and less dangerous hominid, what would that imply about the morality of slavery?

To me, the answer is simple, but I've been called a moralist before.

Need a job? Move to the middle of nowhere. I'm not completely sure where a few of those cities are, but I do know Midland TX is deep in the heart of the Great Texas F-all. Of course, one statistic does not a desirable job make.

Nice to know Pointy Haired Bosses aren't confined to the US. Bonus: he's a she, and definitely not much of a boss.

I sometimes get a feeling, from my liberal friends, of genuine puzzlement about my political views. I'm clever enough to seem somewhat intelligent, I definitely have no love for the religious right, and yet I still insist on supporting Republicans. I've actually been asked, more than once, why?!?

This is why: (emphasis original)

[W]hile I find the anti-freedom strains of both parties equally dismaying, the Democrats are a lot better at implementing their big-government intrusions, and there's good reason to think that this will be the case even if the Republicans get full control of the government.

Since I'm probably a bit more socially conservative, I'll take it a bit further. I'm far less worried about the religious right making it harder for Stern to broadcast a homeless man sticking his toe in a woman's vagina, harder for some busybody to sue a local school over the pledge of allegiance, and harder for gay people to finance a divorce lawyer's third yacht than I am about the far left making it harder for people to find jobs, harder for our nation to defend itself, and harder for the country to grow and innovate as it always has.

Because, like Simberg, I've been watching this for a long time and while I know fringe Republicans would like all those socially conservative things to happen, I know they're about as likely to happen as me tagging a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover model. Also, like (well, something like) Simberg, I've read about what happens when Democrats get absolutely everything they ever wished for, and lived through the consequences of same*.

And now we're set to watch it happen all over again. Well, it took the debacle of Carter to bring Reagan to the fore. It'd be nice to think that '76-'80, the High School Musical Edition will bring someone of similar stature to the front rank again.

Via Instapundit.

----
* Which is why you should put your hand down and swallow that comment until you've actually read a book or two about LBJ, Vietnam, "Stagflation", and the school "reforms" of the late 60s and early 70s.

Well, one thing's for sure... putting yourself in ultimate peril can sometimes result in spectacular pictures. It's that whole "waking up dead" part that puts damper on the whole thing.

Lisa R. gets a no-prize with two very different sides for bringing us the "family friendly" sex shop. Me, I would've thought it'd be called "pre-family friendly", but whadda I know?

Nice to see the Democratic candidate isn't the only one with stories that tug the ol' heart strings:

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. "He's not going to wake up this time," McCain said.

Oh, and for the record, I've never once claimed McCain was a messiah. That's what your side does with your candidate. The sad thing is it's the one thing your side has never once denied.

Push play. It's not what you think it is.

Give it 62 seconds before you turn it off. It's a point I try to make all the time, but I either get interrupted or have had too much wine to say it that quickly.

The rest, well the rest is just as good, but I have a feeling many of you won't want to hear it.

AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?

If the latest rumors have any substance, the LA Times is sitting on a bombshell. Yeah, I agree, video of Obama actually saying, "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" and that there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis" might just be a wee bit controversial.

That the LA Times would sit on something that explosive until after the election is unconscionable but not surprising. I wonder if it's even legal?

Roger Kimball:

I’ve written about the “déjà-vu-all-over-again” phenomenon before in this space. Bill Ayers? Haven’t we done that? Jeremiah Wright? Haven’t we done that, too? Haven’t we tried Obama’s “soak the rich,” anti-business economic policies? Haven’t we tried his “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” foreign policy? Don’t we know that economics is about the creation rather than the redistribution of wealth, and that low taxes and strategies that encourage productivity and investment are best calculated to make the entire society, including the less fortunate, more prosperous? Don’t we know where appeasement and capitulation get us in foreign affairs? Don’t we remember Jimmy Carter? Haven’t we learned anything?

I rather strongly believe most of the people who are enthusiastic Obama supporters are too young to really, or even actually, remember the Carter administration. All the ones I've seen standing on street corners with signs certainly seem to come from the college student crowd. The dark side (the dem side?) is seductive, especially if one lacks first-hand memory of what it was really like the last time around.

Will the people who do remember, and take seriously, the malaise, depression, uncertainty, and humiliation of America between 1976 and 1980 turn out in greater numbers than those who don't, can't, or won't? Well, the old traditionally turn up at the polls in greater numbers than the young, so that's something. Will it be enough? I think it just might, certainly enough to give the MSM pause before they trumpet in their long-ago anointed savior.

Remember that whole, "95% of Americans will receive a tax cut" that isn't really a tax cut, but the government writing checks that may or may not have your name on them? Yeah, it's even worse than that. The Democrats, once again, are going to try complex legislation that inadvertently creates incentives for people NOT to work. Color me completely unsurprised.

See you next Tuesday!

It's going to be closer than you think. The only thing that keeps me up at night is if the Democrats gain a big majority in the Senate. The last time it all lined up for them was 1964.

Ah Christ. If any of you really understood what 1964 meant...

Don't ask me... ask the 58,0000.

Oh. Wait...

I've always known that when a media outlet runs a story about how Americans are just one card swipe away from debtor's prison it's more about how slow the news is that day than it is about any real debt danger. Now I have proof. Disappearing frogs have been a harbinger of imminent environmental collapse since at least 1981 (when I first remember reading about it), and the growth of consumer debt in the US has been the final signal of economic end times since at least 1985. Like most apocalypses, history's stubborn refusal to end as scheduled simply causes our prophets to move the goal posts and start ringing their bells again.

It has, I suppose, always been thus.

After researching previously sealed reports and reams of old records, scientists have determined the bombing of Dresden did not in fact result in the deaths of half a million people. Instead, it was "only" about 18-20,000.

So Obama says he's cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. Presumably being one of those 95%, I suddenly find myself feeling "not so fresh" in my support of McCain. Then I find out what the Democrats call a tax cut is not at all what the rest of us think is a tax cut. Jerry Pournell put it much more succinctly:

Obama's "Tax cut" will actually be a payment to a rather large number of "taxpayers". That is, anyone who sends in an income tax form is considered a taxpayer; but about 40% of those pay nothing. Some number of that 40% actually receive a "refund" although they didn't actually have taxes withheld; it's called "earned income credit" although how that income was "earned" is not clear to me.

Tell me Obama's cutting my taxes and hey, I'm all for it. Tell me he's going to take more of my money but give more of it back later and while it sounds icky, yeah, I guess I'm still with him. It's only when I realize what he's really going to do is take more of my money and give it to other people, people who won't be paying any taxes at all anyway and that's when I start having a big, fat, hairy problem with his idea. That's when it starts sounding a lot less like government being nice to me and a lot more like government knows best for me. That's when it starts to sound a whole heaping bunch like he's taking my money away and using it to provide even more benefits for people who won't stop having babies and who won't get a job.

In other words, it makes him sound a whole lot less like a reasonable, charismatic moderate and a whole lot more like the old fashioned big-city political boss people who've been paying attention have been calling him all along. In other words, a Democrat.

See? Feeling fresh and clean now, eh?

Like Joe the Plumber, ACORN, and Ayers, this one seems to be sticking. Will it be enough? It just... just... might.

Via, in various ways, Instapundit.

Mr. Chavez's appointment with a public square* gets closer as the price of oil gets lower. Maybe instead he actually will end up sipping drinks on the Riviera. All I can hope is it happens sooner rather than later, because the damage caused by "real, practicing socialism" gets harder to fix the longer it's in place.

----
* Think this.

So, is ACORN a nefarious left-wing organization which systematically committed voter fraud, or is it a an innocent community organization getting smeared by The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy^tm?

I'm not all that sure the Republicans are going to get much traction on this one. After all, the left has been crowing for nearly a decade now about how various Republican electioneering efforts "stole" the past two elections.

The trick, I suppose, is just how much evidence there is, and whether there are actual laws being broken. Unlike activists on the other side, I know both parties do absolutely everything in their power, legally or otherwise, to ensure a win for their side. It just seems that the Republicans are better at keeping just barely in-bounds. Will the Democrats prove as adept? Hard to say. If history is any guide the Republicans seem to get busted long after the score, while Democrats seem to cough the ball up long before they're anywhere near the goal line.

Ron asks, and we provide:

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Ayers and Obama worked for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. "CAC translated Mr. Ayers' radicalism into practice," notes the Journal. "It required schools to affiliate with 'external partners' " for their funding.

"Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers," such as ACORN.

I mean, didn't we all learn long ago that things like math and science take care of themselves when one's children have the proper ideology and politics? I mean, it's worked so well in the past, why not try it again?

Via Instapundit (who finally seems to have seen the traction on this, even if he doesn't give proper credit!)

A Turkish creationist is offering [pinky to mouth] 7.5 trillion dollars[/ptm] to anyone who can produce an actual transitional fossil. Of course, it's "transitional" by their definition, not anyone else's. Heck, I'd offer that much money in a contest I got to judge. He's probably as likely to actually have said cash as I am.

The Obama-Ayers connection doesn't seem to be going away:

Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.

...

Obama and Ayers are neighbors and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.

...

One friend of Obama and Ayers is former '60s radical Marilyn Katz, now an Obama fundraiser, strategist and public relations maven. She's often a go-to quote for reporters to knock down the Ayers-Obama story.

...

Clearly, if she wasn't a good soldier for [Mayor Daley] her list of clients would be quite small. Katz is often aggravating, but she's also funny and smart, so I called her to submit my theory: That by buying off the political left—through PR contracts to Katz, through his own support for Ayers—Daley maintains control over message and symbolism.

"I don't see it that way," said Katz. "As kids, our issues were schools, the environment, housing—and these things are the same things that the mayor cares about. So we have this in common. The agendas that drove us pulled us together. It's about respect for each other's point of view, not what we did when we were 19."

So lemme get this straight here. Ayers doesn't count because Obama was just a kid when Ayers was running around blowing stuff up. We know this is true because one of Ayers's associates, who is a "go-to" person for a quote and helps run the Obama campaign tells us so. They just all have the same views on a range of issues like public education, that's why they've crossed paths recently. This is completely not a story, because we all know radical progressive experiments in education have turned out so well in the past.

Definitely not a story here. Not at all. Because, after all, the Obama campaign people tell us it is not.

Via Instapundit, who frequently mentions Ayers' terrorist credentials while too infrequently mentioning the destructive, recent, and (IMO) far more relevant connections with school policies.

I know he reads his trackbacks, hopefully he'll check out where the real traction is in this story. It ain't terror, it's schools.

Yeah, ok, I get it. Lots of people were radical in the 60s. A few of them even blew up the occasional mail box. You may have known some of either type. But when's the last time you talked to any of them:

"He [Obama] said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005" (New York Times, 10/3)

Why in the world was Barack Obama still communicating on the phone or via email with Bill Ayers up until 2005 — when in 2001 Ayers gave widely publicized interviews claiming he had no regrets about the bombing, indeed regretted that he had not done enough, and did not necessarily have any remorse either about his Weathermen career?

I take this all so seriously not because Ayers was a bomb-throwing nutjob in the 60s, but because to this day he supports radical progressive experimentation in public schools. The only place progressives really got to implement their agendas in the '60s and '70s was in the public schools systems. The results were disastrous, igniting riots and consigning who knows how many children to unemployability all in the name of their intellectually pure agendas. The echoes of that failure ring across school systems to this day.

Progressives had their shot and it failed. Now they've picked a candidate who pals around with one of the remaining relics who refuses to admit that anything ever went wrong. It is my opinion Obama is vulnerable here because of the education angle, not because of the terrorist angle. I can only hope the McCain camp starts running with this ball, because we're already past the two minute warning and we only have one more time-out left.

Via Instapundit

As expected, as soon as one candidate shows signs of pulling ahead, and only when one candidate shows signs of pulling ahead, the MSM stampedes in the opposite direction:

I'm becoming increasingly convinced they're treating this as I would a football game played by teams I don't care about... they just want it to be close, and (in their case) they root for whoever is playing defense on that particular play. Ball changes hands, they change sides. Except, of course, when I do that it doesn't actually influence the outcome of the game.

Via Instapundit.

The latest news on Alfa Romeo's return to the US, well, isn't. Other than calling the 2010 deadline "firm", the rest is old news, and not particularly heartening. Putting your vehicles in the dealerships owned by a close rival and then using excess capacity in Detroit to produce them sounds like a perfect storm of "fail" to me.

I guess I'll have to amend my saying to, "most people turn to a life of crime because they're too stupid to do anything else":

Monroe police are searching for a man who robbed an armored-car guard Tuesday morning then fled with the money — down a nearby creek on an inner tube.

Police say the robber also may have recruited a host of unwitting decoys through a Craigslist ad.

As with most genuinely smart crooks, this guy hasn't been caught yet. I still think it's only a matter of time. Sending out lots of e-mail messages to decoys and having an accomplice or two most likely will leave enough of a trail to follow. It's also my understanding that a high percentage of these sorts of robberies are inside jobs, so it wouldn't surprise me if this one is too. I wouldn't want to be employed with that particular armored car company this morning, that's for sure.

The Skeptical Optimist: it's not funded by the taxpayers. This one includes nice, simple pictures for those of us who's financial knowledge is roughly at the "you have more paste to eat than I do" level.

And then he followed it up with something even Dora could understand

Fark (of all places) linked up the best explanation of the sub-prime meltdown I've found so far. Don't worry, this one's nice and neutral and doesn't mention the Clinton administration even once.

Ironically, it seems very close to this much earlier, and more colorful, explanation.

I'm not at all surprised that the NRA is going after Obama. I am surprised that the Obama campaign seems to be returning the favor. You can take the man out of the Chicago political machine, but...

At least one pundit thinks the administration's recovery plan could end up making lots of money for the government. Before the rhetoric really started heating up, I definitely read more than one economist making "buying low selling high GOOD!" comments. Still, this whole thing is so complicated I'm not sure who to believe. And Lord help us, we've got nothing but Congress to be our guide. Jesus wept.

What he said:

But we're in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the "Diversity Recession" (if this doesn't work, make that the Diversity Depression).
...
Therefore, I propose any bailout bill start with these words: "It is the sense of Congress that credit is not a civil right."

Somehow I don't think it'll work out that way.

While this article is so far the most comprehensible account of what's going on in the financial markets right now that I've found, I still couldn't get my head completely around it. Which, I suppose, is why I don't work in the banking sector, eh?

Just about everyone knows who Andre the Giant was. I'm not sure how many know just how big he could be. I don't know how many of the stories of Andre's legendary capacity for alcohol consumption and mischief are, but they were entertaining to read. It's good to know that in the short time he had he lived his life to its fullest.

It would seem it's actually government policy, not "market failure", which is the root cause of the current financial chaos. Color me completely unsurprised. Just about every large-scale "social engineering" attempt by Democrats starts out well-meaning, and usually works for a brief time. Unfortunately, and inevitably, the wheels fall off in spectacular fashion when all the other incentives their policies create come home to roost. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single instance where this didn't happen, all the way back to the New Deal. Those who can are welcome to comment.

"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. "
-- Milton Friedman

Everyone sees these things happen, yet most of you still persist in believing, "if only we could create the right program, and actually allow it to be fully funded by taxing all those billionaires and corporations out there a little more, by golly we'd get our government to do something right for a change."

I'd like to think it's not possible to hold a belief founded on so many false assumptions at once.

I would, of course, be wrong.

It's official, the Post ran an over-the-top attack on the Republican ticket every single day this week. I wonder just how long they'll keep it up?

Nevermind, I know. November 4, right?

Is it just me, or are the right's hysterical reactions to criticism of Palin starting to sound a lot like the left's hysterical reactions to criticism of Obama? Is this some sort of bizarre tit-for-tat "you started it!" sort of thing, or is it that everyone on the fringes is just plain nuts no matter which direction you look?

Another year, another big-money bribery scandal involving third-world leaders. Unfortunately, other countries (*cough* France *cough*) consider themselves much more "enlightened" when it comes to dealing under the table to get what they want, so this may just end up helping them instead of stopping corruption entirely.

The Post's attempts to smear Sarah Palin are getting a little more desperate:

... what the story ultimately reveals is that Palin (a) billed the state for most expenses allowed by law, including per diem when she stayed in her own home ...; (b) didn't bill the state for other expenses, when she could have done so lawfully, such as per diems for her children; and (c) spent a lot less money on expenses than did her predecessor, especially on travel and by ridding herself of the state's personal chef.

The story's headline? "Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home"

And that, dear friends, is just about the clearest case of MSM bias I've seen in this campaign season to-date. Unfortunately it's just about a certainty it won't be the last.

Via Instapundit.

While the MSM has fallen back to the more standard "let's cast the Republicans as religous nut-jobs" strategy, enough people are still trying to attack Sarah Palin in whatever way they can this article separating fact from fiction was still quite useful to me. The fact that many commentators still bring up her disabled child as some sort of impediment to her ability to perform the job of Vice President is to me the epitome of unacknowledged sexism. Any time I hear it, I say the same thing, "what, suddenly she doesn't have a husband?"

I guess stay-at-home dads are only relevant when you're trying to pry more tax dollars out of the system, not when, you know, they empower women or something.

Via Instapundit.

It looks like official France is finally admitting French is no longer the, well, lingua franca of the developed world. Only took them, what, a few hundred years to get around to it?

Ever wonder what a town hit by a tornado looks like on Google maps? Wonder no more. On a lark I decided to look up my old home town of Dumas AR to see if Google had updated their picture cache of it with hi-res photos. They did, and (judging by what's there) they did it because of that tornado a few years ago.

At least, I hope they've actually cleaned the place up since then. With SE Arkansas, you just never know for sure.

The Skeptical Optimist recently posted this review of the "super-important" movie, I.O.U.S.A.. Definitely not for the "debt = deficit" crowd, but everyone else may want to check it out. In a nutshell: it's economic growth that's important!

Another Olympics, another article about how they're boinking each other stupid in the Olympic Village. I first heard about this in college from a guy who actually attended the 1984 Olympics. He only stopped bragging after we threatened to toss him out a window.

It seems the Olympic medals of disgraced athletes have a pretty interesting story to tell. Who knew?

I've seen various refutations of the sensational "corporations pay no taxes" study that came out recently, but so far this one is the best. FTW:

The politics behind the GAO report are transparent—to undermine the momentum that’s building to cut corporate tax rates. As I wrote several weeks ago (“In the U.S., Selectively Applied Capitalism,” July 28), the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate among 30 countries in the Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development. That matters because, as economists for the OECD recently concluded, the corporate tax is the most harmful to economic growth of all the levies most commonly used by member nations. That’s why GOP presidential nominee John McCain favors lowering it, but so does the powerful Democratic Chairmen of the House Ways & Means Committee, Charlie Rangel. The Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, has also said in newspaper interviews that he would consider cutting the corporate tax, but he hasn’t made that an official part of his platform.

Now, however, labor-friendly legislators egged on by union leaders are trying to derail calls for a corporate tax cut by manufacturing outrage against U.S. businesses. That’s not hard to do when you have so many journalists reporting and commenting on these issues who can’t get behind headlines that are spoon fed to them, like the editorial writer at Newsday who found the GAO report “jaw dropping.”

I wonder how long it'll take them to declare that anyone who doesn't work for a union is rich and gets taxed much more because of it? Yeah, I don't think it'll happen either, but I bet they'd sure like to try.

Kathleen M. gets a no-prize that must be rocked to sleep carefully for bringing us a different look at infant mortality rates and what they really mean about the quality of health care. Hint: people who tout them as a boost to socialized medicine "managed health care" are selling something.

One of the most common convictions of social right-wingers is that relaxing the divorce laws in the 60s and 70s in the US lead to higher divorce rates and a very long list of social ills. Like most common convictions, it would appear this doesn't stand up to close examination:

The first surprise is that looser divorce laws have actually had little effect on the number of marriages that fall apart. Economist Justin Wolfers of Stanford University, in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), found that when California passed a no-fault divorce law in 1970, the divorce rate jumped, then fell back to its old level—and then fell some more.
...
In short, nothing bad happened. But in another NBER paper, Wolfers and fellow economist Betsey Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania report that in states that relaxed their divorce laws, some very good things happened: Fewer women committed suicide, and fewer were murdered by husbands or other "intimate" partners. In addition, both men and women suffered less domestic violence, compared to states that didn't change their laws.

The only thing I find surprising is it took this long for someone to run the numbers. Once you think about it, it all really does make sense.

When human idealism runs up against human nature, the results can sometimes be a really great deal on eBay. Homeless people trashing public facilities created for them. Nope, I didn't see that coming at all. Ha!

I'm sure lots of other people knew about it, but I definitely didn't understand the ANWR region was about as big as South Carolina. I did, however, know most of it was a barren wasteland frozen solid in the winter and covered in literal fog banks of mosquitoes in the summer. A place only a watermelon could love.

It's something I've thought a few times myself: if it's just about impossible to police athletic doping, why bother? There would absolutely have to be some changes in policy regarding age of participation. We don't want 14 year olds messing with this stuff, after all.

The best counter argument I saw over at Slashdot was "well, if we make it legal, they'll dope themselves to within six inches of death because they have to." While valid, I did think of a counter. Many auto racing rules* are meant to address exactly this sort of thing: if they didn't exist, teams would run patently unsafe vehicles simply because they had to in order to win. By making your rules pro-safety instead of anti-something (speed or dope), the incentives get turned around and, at least in auto racing, the rules work.

Would it work in people like it does in machines? I dunno, but it might be worth examining.

----
* Oh stop groaning! You knew I was going to say it! Sit down and listen.

Same song, different singer: politician confesses to just what he's been caught at, then gets busted again. The Post featured nothing about the Edwards scandal until the Kurtz article a few days ago. I'd make a comment about how they sang from the tops of their towers over a suspicion that McCain had an affair, but it's already been said much better in different places.

Well, except for the MSM, that is.

I love this....*sigh*

I'm voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending my money than I would.

I'm voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

I'm voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe the people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday CAN tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

I'm voting Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves and their families. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the GOVERNMENT sees fit.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe five elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would NEVER get their agendas past the voters.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe that when the terrorists don't have to hide from us over there, when they come over here.

I don't want to have any guns in the house to fight them off with because someone, who had an unhappy childhood, may get hurt.

I'm voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my horse.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 7% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 18% isn't.

Makes ya wonder why anyone would EVER vote Republican, now doesn't it?

Suck it Obama! I hope you only have 19 year old tree huggers voting for you. I'm sure the housing foreclosures will only grow since they have no idea what owning a house is like... or rather RESPONSIBILITY!

I'm JUST SAYIN'! Utter bullshit. Let's see how the boomers feel.

Making the rounds: It's easy to have amazing fireworks displays if you let the CGI guys take a crack at them:

London's Telegraph newspaper reports that some of the fireworks which appeared over Beijing during the television broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. But -- hold on -- it's not necessarily as bad as you think.

NBC gets caught doing crap like this what, every three or four years or so? You'd think by now they'd know better. This being the M-est of the MSM, you'd of course be wrong.

Update: Looks like NBC didn't have a choice. My apologies.

The revelation that certain kinds of high-security locks can be picked with plastic cut into a key pattern is, on the face of it, pretty embarrassing. However, on further reading it would seem to require an extensive knowledge of how the locks themselves are engineered before this sort of thing can even be contemplated. This is not the sort of thing a thief would really concern themselves about, since an eight pound sledge will do the deed much more efficiently.

... it's not painted red:

The Italian Navy has finalized a contract with Fincantieri, worth about EUR915 million, for two more Todaro-class submarines.
...
Currently, Todaro is in the US, taking part in a six-month Atlantic training mission. After having called at Mayport and Norfolk, it is due to go to Groton and will conclude its US cruise in October by joining Columbus Day celebrations in New York.

Fun!

Two words: inflatable church. What will those spunky Italians think of next?

This time, I found our previous reference. Lordy, this place has been around awhile.

It would seem that, once again, the McCain camp has gotten its house in order and seems to be on the road back. He, like the rest of us, will have to be forgiven for not understanding the MSM properly elected Obama about a month ago, with the upcoming election merely a formality. I'm heartened by the success record of the other four or five candidates they "elected" during the run up to and running of the primaries. One can only hope it marks a real trend.

Via Instapundit

The guy who brought the suit that ended the last DC ban is bringing another to stop the new one. The "emergency law" the DC city council rushed through is rightly seen as "banning by other means," and it's such a heavy-handed attempt only the nincompoops on that council would think it had any chance of working. Instead, it will embroil the city in another presumably very expensive and drawn-out series of lawsuits they cannot hope to win.

The 2nd amendment's language may make its intent seem ambiguous, but a perusal of the founding fathers' other writings (especially Jefferson's) clear this ambiguity like blowing fog off a mirror. Like it or not, individual gun ownership is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Seems like Russia is getting ambitious about its blue-water navy. Wanting six new carriers is, of course, not the same thing as actually getting them. However, after years of delay it does seem that the Great Bear is getting new weapon systems into production, so who knows?

Ares: "Austria has cleared the last of 50 buried 105-mm. tank turrets, installed in 1983 as an anti-invasion line of defense in one of its eastern provinces." With pictures!

Sit inside a little metal box with a big gun strapped on, while the hordes of the Red Army pass through. Yeah, Fritz, you have fun with that!

It seems "white flight" is no more. The article contains the standard leftist hand-wringing over the wrong sort of change, as well as a bit of statistical misinterpretation for spice. Personally, I wonder if it's not a sign that we really are, very gradually, learning to live together? That self-appointed "representatives of the black community" would bemoan this is disappointing, but not particularly surprising.

Fresh from the "making sh*t up to keep the press release interesting" department comes the prediction that the computer mouse will go "extinct" in five years. Gartner has been saying goofy things about the IT industry for as long as I can remember, and this is no exception. My prediction? The mouse isn't going anywhere, but alternative input devices will most likely prevent it making inroads into any other computer-like system.

Welcome to America, home of the 300 lb. "poor person." Now that, friends, is an inconvenient truth.

Via Instapundit.

Michael Totten recently filed this detailed report on conditions in that other war-torn chunk of the world, the former Yugoslav territories. It seems that, like most places when people are allowed to do so, they're moving on. It is, however, nice to see a pro American part of Europe. Muslim too, no less.

Suddenly the decision not to import the "Mini-killer" MiTo makes a lot more sense:

German carmaker BMW AG (BMW.XE) said Tuesday it has signed an agreement with Fiat SpA (F.MI) regarding possible cooperation for their Mini and Alfa Romeo brands aimed at reducing costs.

Leave it to Italians to design a car specifically meant to go head-to-head with a company they just signed a co-operation agreement with.

Tossaud's in Germany is putting a wax model of Hitler up. They're portraying him in his last days, and have the statue under heavy security to prevent vandalism. When I visited the New York version of the museum, I thought it was most interesting when they had them standing up, so I could see how tall (or short) they were. Sitting down, and behind rope no less, would seem to me a bit of a letdown.

Now, I know this will shock... shock you: in order to get a really fizzing-good documentary, a production team played fast-and-loose with the facts. The horror!

To me, the controversy regarding the Gospel of Judas and National Geographic's handling of it sounds a lot like sour grapes from a group of academics quite patently not familiar or happy with the huggle-buggle dashing around of all these flamboyant commoners! Working for money, no less! The rest is the standard slow-motion slugfest common to just about any collection of academic journals when something really new shows up.

Which does absolutely nothing to dim the astonishing discovery of an entire ancient book previously known only from a single throw-away sentence written by a disapproving bishop nearly two thousand years ago. Amazing!

While not the original, Larry Harmon, the man who was responsible for the popularizing of Bozo the Clown, has died at the age of 83. We had a Little-Rock based Bozo while I was growing up. It never occurred to me there could be more than one until WGN brought in an alternative. That Bozo mug of mine might still be out there somewhere.

Annie gets a modest and well-made no-prize for bringing us news of how the FLDS ladies are making ends meet. Have sewing machine, will travel!

Personally, I've always thought it was quite possible for women to rape men. Hasn't happened to me (sound of wood knocking), but just on principles I could picture it happening even before I read this article.

The fact that more than one member of the peanut gallery has scoffed at the mere mention of the subject is why I'm linking it here. Since self-correction is something most gallery members think only happens to me, I'm not counting on much. But I can hope!

Via Instapundit.

And yeah, Jason, you're pretty much going to hell. On the bright side, we have jackets!

While I'm nowhere near as optimistic as this guy, I do think it's time to break down and admit we may have started to (finally) make solid progress on the war on terror. He definitely makes some good points, in my opinion.

Via Instapundit.

They subtitle says it all: Can emergence break the spell of reductionism and put spirituality back into nature? I've thought for quite some time that there are some awfully peculiar coincidences in physics and nature which could not be explained by science. It's nice to see someone much smarter than I am apparently has done a much better job of explaining them, and what just might be "behind the curtain."

Globalization worked because transportation was so cheap it allowed businesses to leverage foreign labor for domestic goods. Now that transportation ain't cheap, globalization is slowly reversing. It's happening slowly and without as much dislocation as, say, protectionist policies advocated by labor unions and various watermelon environmental groups.

It would seem the on again, off again attempts by the Army to replace its main carbine is on again. Advocates of the 7.62 round shouldn't get their hopes up... the Army long ago decided the 5.56 is the way to go, and no amount of shouting has made them budge even the slightest in, what, fifty years?

Interest on the national debt: there's a lot more to it than you'd think:

Next time someone is wondering what we bought for the interest [on the national debt], I wish they'd also wonder what we bought with the principal that interest is supporting. Although it's impossible to pinpoint, I bet we have a Nimitz carrier, a few intelligence assets, several thousand more college-educated GIs, and a few more Head Start activities in the works because of the principal we were able to borrow -- all because we have been steady and reliable in paying interest on our debt.

To paraphrase a favorite song of mine, debt isn't always evil, and it is not always wrong.

I'm not quite old enough to remember it, but I've read enough different histories of the times to agree with this without question:

I can remember how opponents of the Vietnam War simply tuned out news of American success when at Richard Nixon's orders Gen. Creighton Abrams pursued a new strategy. Opponents of the Iraq war, including Obama, seem to have been doing the same.

Sounds a lot, a lot like the conversations I've had with certain members of the peanut gallery. Even ones who agree that Abrams got the short end of the stick.

Historical perspective is, after all, something that happens to other people when The Gallery is proven wrong.

Leave it to California to take a small mess, grow it into a medium mess, and then make it a big one. I'm ambivalent about gay marriage, but I am certain on one thing: this is a matter for legislative, not judicial, action. Put it another way: it's not like you need to give the lunatics on my fringe another set of targets to bomb, eh?

whats on the other end of a 900 number.

The Skeptical Optimist:

Why aren't we hearing more from the candidates about how their proposed policies would help to grow the economy, and therefore the average worker's take-home pay -- as well as the government's tax receipts? Why doesn't Obama take the muzzle off Austin Goolsby? Why doesn't McCain fire the Concord Coalition from his team, and get them out of Jack Kemp's way?

Bonus: a brain teaser that even the luddites on the left side of the peanut gallery may finally get. Then again, I won't hold my breath waiting on them.

So just what would happen if each side of Congress had it all its own way trying to lower the cost of oil? About what you'd expect. Of course, Republicans would figure out how to piss away our money in a different way. If it weren't the world's largest demonstration of a Chinese fire drill, it wouldn't be Congress!

Mark gets a no-prize which he'd do just as well tossing for bringing us this article on seven things most people think are recyclable, but really aren't. Ellen is absolutely obsessive about putting just about everything in the recycle bin. Now, maybe not so much.

Self-professed atheist Terry Pratchett seems to have walked right out the other side and found something there. We all come to faith in our own way and our own time. While not as spectacular as meeting the savior on an old country road, finding it while walking down the stairs will definitely do.

India has premiered what it bills as the cheapest car in the world. No, it'll never play well in Peoria, but it should do the trick in the choked streets of Bombay. And get a load of the build quality when they show the inside door handle. Gaps are not your friend!

Seconded:

The core belief of Masonomists is in spontaneous order. We embrace change that emerges from an evolutionary, trial-and-error process. We trust the process of entrepreneurial creative destruction, market solutions to market failure, and technological progress. What we distrust is central planning by experts. And I am sure that Pete Boettke would want to remind me of our intellectual debts to Austrian economists.

If this seemingly even-handed look at the Bakken oil formation in Montana is on the right track, it would seem we're a few generations of drilling technology away from a very significant oil deposit right in our own back yard. Of course, there will be a ton of "ifs" involved, not the least of which is an environmental movement which will vehemently appose any attempt to expand supply. Will the state of Montana use it's famous "going-to-do-it-my-way-f-you-very-much" attitude to stymie the watermelons' ongoing efforts to strangle the kulaks? We'll see.

Via Instapundit.

After years of big subsidies, India is being forced to raise fuel prices. This is one of the 800 pound gorillas which is actually causing the spectacular and sustained rise in gas prices. The other is China. Both heavily subsidize fuel prices, helping their countries sustain spectacular growth rates, but at the same time insulating their populations from supply signals prices provide. They do not conserve, they do not become more efficient, because they have no incentive to do so. And, as long as their respective governments continue to insulate them, they never will.

The story was, of course, buried deep inside the Post. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it wasn't reported at all in other places. It doesn't fit with the "it's the Evil Oil Companies / Vast Right Wing Conspiracy / Wasteful Lazy SUV-driving Americans that cause our suffering!!!" theme. It's not us, it's them, and until economic pressures squeeze their government subsidies on fuel out, things won't change.

Of course, Indian people aren't really that much different than American people or European people or any other people, so instead of bucking up, tightening their belts, and using less fuel, they're raising hell, blocking traffic, and jangling the cage of every politician and reporter they can get their hands on. It'll be even worse in China, because that nation does not have the mechanisms in place for peaceful regime change or even (relatively) non-destructive civil disobedience.

In other words, it's not over yet.

The Navy has finally admitted its role in the discovery of HMS Titanic in 1985. It seems Ballard's original mission was to make detailed surveys of the lost submarines Thresher and Scorpion. Ballard finished ahead of time, and, since Titanic was thought to be between the two wrecks, he sort of took the long way home.

I'm not completely sure this is all of "the rest of the story," as I recall reading vague references to Ballard's mission being used to "send a message" to the Soviets about certain capabilities the Navy had developed. Nobody that I know of has been specific as to what these were.

Another "Western Union by Other Means" test that I've heard of is STS-2, space shuttle Columbia's second flight. According to things I've read, the widely-publicized radar test which revealed the presence of ancient riverbeds crisscrossing the Sahara was actually meant to demonstrate the US's ability to image hidden Soviet bunkers and missile silos. At least, that's what I've heard at any rate. YMMV!

If The Washington Post is running unabashedly positive reports on Iraq, something good must be going on over there, eh? Lately I've noted a certain amount of bitter admiration of the Bush administration from several of his other implacable critics. However, the left side of our own peanut gallery continues to collectively roll its eyes and froth on cue whenever our not-quite-departed president is mentioned, so at least something is still right in this world.

Were it otherwise I'd start rushing outside to see if angels were arching across the sky.

Via Instapundit.

A recent effort to clean up a northern California canyon overlook site has resulted in the recovery of more than 50 vehicles. Some were simply rolled down embankments, others were quite obviously launched at high speed by drivers looking for a shortcut to the start of the reincarnation line.

This sort of thing would seem to be rather common. I remember reading years ago about a murder investigation involving the search for a woman thought to have been murdered, whose body was stuffed into the trunk of a car which was then rolled off an embankment into a nearby river. A search of the area didn't find that vehicle, but it did find some dozen or more others which had been... disposed of... for many other reasons.

People will just toss any damned thing in a river, it would seem.

Annie gets a no-prize that'll shriek at her in drag for bringing us news of a sales increase in everyone's favorite "pork product", spam. I used to eat that stuff a lot when I was a little kid, and then (for reasons I can't remember) just sorta stopped. Olivia's pretty passionate about bologna, something tells me she'd probably like spam too.

I've railed against the various Democrat-sponsored (or left-wing endorsed) health care ideas many times on this site. It would appear that, finally, people have found a state-run alternative that works:

Americans have grown used to buying every kind of product from overseas. So why not “buy” foreign ideas or social institutions? Why, for instance, hasn’t the United States adopted the same healthcare system as Europe, Canada, and nearly all the rest of the developed world?

While the United States is portrayed as the outlier, the truth is that another developed nation has eschewed the European government-payer model—with a great deal of success. That nation is Singapore, a city-state with a population of just 4.6 million but a lot to teach America.

Can we create something like this? Well, in a sense I think we already have, albeit in a limited fashion, with "thrift savings" medical accounts (at least that's what I think they're called, at my workplace anyway). Not being Singaporeans, we most likely can't duplicate it, but at least it provides a template to start with that doesn't have a reputation for making its victims beneficiaries wait six months for an important operation. Stick that in your "why can't we have a system like Canada's or Britain's" pipe and smoke it!

Via Econlog.

Another day, another lunatic preacher learning that it's just not a good idea to take on TV professionals on their home turf. The twist: this time it's a Saudi woman reading a "learned doctor" the riot act.

Everyone knows "unconventional" warfare doesn't get a whole lot of cash from the federal government. Well, until you realize "not a whole lot" needs to be put in perspective. $23 billion dollars may not seem like a lot stacked up against, say, the F-22 program, but something tells me it'll buy a whole bunch of nifty widgets for secret battles.

Michael Yon: "Pornography and propaganda are closely related, as they are both cynical attempts at manipulation, rooted in a lack of respect for humanity."

Even though that's not what his article is about, to me it represents a pretty accurate and concise definition of what separates erotica from pornography. Well, it does in my opinion at any rate. Deciding what represents "respect for humanity," and when that line is crossed, is unfortunately rather open to interpretation. Were it otherwise, I think the whole adult industry would most likely have a much easier time doing business.

Alternate title: Paging Elliot Ness, white courtesy phone please. Of course, since Elliot almost certainly didn't speak Japanese, he'd probably be just as interested in finding out what being a beat reporter following the seamy underbelly of Japanese society is like as I was.

Horror film fans may be happy to find out a new, and perhaps the only, biography of Nosferatu star Max Schreck is now available. It would seem that, like many early film stars, there's not a lot to tell at first. However, it definitely seems to lay to rest the old "he was really a vampire" legend.

It would seem all those "myths" about eagles taking children just got moved from "busted" to "plausible."

Warning: The video is definitely a "nature, red in tooth and claw" sort of documentary. If you're upset by that sort of thing, the very least you should do is turn down the sound. The narration isn't in English, so you won't miss anything.

Via Ares.

Remember that little boy a few weeks back who raised a ruckus because his parents claimed he was trans gendered? NPR has th edetails. For me, the money quote is: "Suppose you were a clinician and a 4-year-old black kid came into your office and said he wanted to be white. Would you go with that? ... I don't think we would..."

Problem: A new study provides evidence that people who identify themselves as conservative are in general happier than those who identify themselves as liberal.

Solution: Spin, damn you, and faster!!!

That one is twirling so fast I'm surprised it's not smoking.

It would seem Hillary has finally found an economist to support her gas tax cut. I agree I don't think Hillary's campaign staff will be calling Brian any time soon.

Public relations agency: 1, News reporters: 0. For any other race driver, even Danica Patrick, an F-1 test ride is roughly equivalent to getting a ride on a Blue Angel F-18 or Thunderbird F-16. Except you're solo, and get to twiddle the controls. In other words, it's nice, it's fun, it obviously generates good publicity, and that's about it.

I'm only now getting back into Indycar now that they've merged with CART, but the few road races I've seen with oval-trained IRL drivers in the majority are... amusing. And not in a good way (well, maybe a little). The skill set required to be fast on a speedway will help a little on a road course, but not much. It's possible she'll be quick, just like it's possible for me to jump into an F-22 and fly a successful combat mission. Both have the same likelihood.

Still, it is quite a bit of fun to watch a driver used to actual race cars try to wrestle one of these starfighters around a track. The look on the crew cheif's face when they pitch a multi-million dollar example into the weeds is worth the price of admission alone.

But it's not something to bet half of a race team's season on. Even if you are as slow as Honda.

Via Instapundit.

Remember that cargo ship with all the Mazdas? Turns out it's more challenging to get rid of 5000 cars than one would at first think. I completely understand the company's motivation. It's a shame human nature prevents these things from being recycled as complete cars, instead of shiny metal bits.

Citizens of Israel, like those in the US, seems to be more than a little neurotic about their success. So much so that sometimes it's good to get a reminder of just how good things really are. I used to do this a lot with some (not all) folks I know, but got tired of being sneered at because of my politics. Meh. F- 'em if they can't take a joke, eh?

Via Yourish.

Remember that prediction I made that fuel might one day be brewed instead of refined? It's much closer to reality than even I thought.

Making the rounds: P.E.T.A. has announced $1 million prize for the first company to create "in vitro" meat. According to the article, this was a hard-fought idea within the organization itself. Considering the loopy politics too often associated with PETA, I'm not surprised.

Something tells me there's a man with a pitch fork and a tail wearing a parka and an extremely annoyed expression knocking on the office door of PETA headquarters.

While perhaps cerebral, this defense of gun ownership was nevertheless one I'd not heard before.

Liz recently featured graphic evidence for why vaccinations are a must-have for children. I didn't have the courage to actually watch the video, but if the text description is even close, I can only say that if my kid started to make noises like that there'd be one of those Road Runner-like flaming trails from my driveway to the emergency room.

Ours got her shots on schedule, BTW.

The movie Expelled is looking more and more like a Michael Moore film every day. I generally respect and agree with Stein when he's talking about things like liberty and economics, but his rants for intelligent design and against Darwinian evolution leave me cold. Yet another example of "smart in one thing != smart in all things", I guess.

Like I needed reasons to vote for the guy:

The big policy-wonk news was that [McCain] called for some new initiatives, including doubling the personal exemption for dependents from $3,500 to $7,000, an alternative and supposedly simpler two-rate tax code, a one-year spending freeze for all government programs other than defense and entitlements, some sort of wage insurance for displaced workers, a summer suspension of the 18.4-cent gas tax, and making wealthier seniors pay more for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D. He also reiterated the need to do away with the alternative minimum tax, cut corporate taxes, and allow immediate expensing of business purchases.

To repeat: any president who promises to cut taxes and shoot terrorists will always have my vote. I'm simple, sue me.

Mike P. gets a no-prize that will squirm impressively when the data go wrong for bringing us yet another watermelon proclamation about global climate change:

China has already overtaken the US as the world's "biggest polluter", a report to be published next month says.
...
"Our figures for emissions growth are truly shocking," [Dr Max Auffhammer, the lead researcher] said.

"But there is no sense pointing a finger at the Chinese. They are trying to pull people out of poverty and they clearly need help.

"The only solution is for a massive transfer of technology and wealth from the West."

Absolutely! No problem! Let me go get my checkbook, just let me know who to write it out to.

Just because you're smart about one thing does not make you smart about everything, eh?

Problem: You've been outmaneuvered by the administration and forced to debate a bill all your powerful friends don't like.

Solution: change the rules.

Clinton was justly famous for corralling a Republican-controlled Congress into endorsing legislation they didn't like, especially in his last years in office. I can't recall them ever pulling a stunt quite like this. Then again, since my own opinion of Congress would need to look up to see the proverbial snake's belly, I wouldn't be surprised if Republican congresses did actually try this and I just don't remember.

Ain't government grand?

It would seem speculation that Vista may end up "the next Millennium edition" may be true. Then again, considering how long it takes MS to come out with any new version of their main operating system, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the new version.

Mark gets a no-prize that'll convince him to crack open an innocent battery for no reason for bringing us the urban legend of the 6 volt battery. Just missed April Fool's day, too!

While suspiciously rah-rah in tone, this look at Switzerland seems to prove at least some parts of Europe work quite well indeed. Like a watch, if you will.

Pope John Paul II is widely credited with having made a substantial contribution to the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union. Will Benedict XVI contribute as much to the fall of radical Islam?

One does not fight a religion with guns (at least not only with guns) but with love, although sometimes it is sadly necessary to love one's enemies only after they are dead. The Church has lacked both the will to evangelize Muslims as well as the missionaries to undertake the task. Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, has thought about the conversion of the Muslims for years, as I reported just before his election in 2005 (The crescent and the conclave, Asia Times Online, April 19, 2005). Where will the Pope find the sandals on the ground in this new religious war? From the ranks of the Muslims themselves, evidently. Magdi Allam is just one convert, but he has a big voice. If the Church fights for the safety of converts, they will emerge from the nooks and crannies of Muslim communities in Europe.

The papacy has an uneven record risking its collective neck defending faith against modern opponents. That said, it's sometimes worth remembering just how risky John Paul's stance against communism really was in the mid-70s. Will Benedict risk a car bomb in St. Peter's during Easter to take on the West's most dangerous existing threat? I can only hope he's up to the task.

In my own opinion, the world could do a lot worse than adopting a religion that learned how to cope with the modern world long ago.

Via Instapundit.

Mark gets a very earnest no-prize for bringing us this essay on what the author considers the fundamental differences between Catholics and Protestants. It unintentionally provides a graphic demonstration that Christianity's monomaniacal focus on doctrine is alive and well. All other religions believe it's important for the poor to be fed. Only Christians are concerned that it be done for the right reasons.

No, really, it's a porn school:

Sometime this weekend, at some sexy, unknown location in Tampa Bay, a woman named Courtney Cummz will show two-dozen prospective adult filmmakers how to make a porno.

The film shoot is part of "Porn Camp," a weekend-long, $4,000-a-head seminar that'll cover everything from porn-star pay scales to set design to proper Web site design.

Considering that I've been told* the vast majority of sites are poorly designed sticky-traps that barely render at all, just about anything that improves the situation should be good.

----
* Mah story, sticking to it. U go wai.

According to this Instapundit roundup, it would seem the media are suddenly discovering that basic economics still applies to the housing market. We've got some friends who quite recently reaped the rewards of their house purchase timing, so this tracks well in our own experience.

Idle more than 10 seconds? Turn the motor off, save tons of gas money. According to the article, modern fuel injection stops the big start loss associated with carburetors. Discuss, please. :)

Pat gets a no-prize that'll worry her to death trying to get that last dime for bringing us this story detailing the return of haggling to even big-box retailers. I'm usually too much of a sap to actually try to bargain, but maybe if I come armed with info I won't feel too gobsmacked to try.

Annie gets a sad but important no-prize for bringing us a tragic tale of disease and death that's triggered a huge controversy in France. I'm quite deeply conflicted about things like assisted suicide, to the point I can only really say I'm very glad I'm not the one having to make such a decision.

I was wondering how long it would take Drew Carey to wander across a libertarian issue that'd send the left howling to the bell towers. I'm not wondering any more.

Legalizing the sale of organs is one of those issues that makes complete sense on paper but runs the creep meter right up to the peg. In my own opinion, I think it would almost certainly end the shortage of many organs available for transplant. With a judicious bit of oversight, I think it could work, even well.

But I do understand why people would be apposed to it. So, for now at least, let's at least start a discussion. If the country decides it's a good idea, we'll get legislation moved through. Ain't democracy grand?

While this diagram of .net classes confuses me more than it illuminates me, the trolls in the comments are an absolute scream. Anyone who thinks software engineers are mature and sophisticated need only peruse them to understand you can easily take the nerd out of high school, but you can't easily take high school out of the nerd.

As with most big media panic stories, a little historical perspective on the current value of the dollar is quite illuminating. Since Chicken Little never was much for history books, I'm not surprised we hear nothing like this.

A Christian who doesn't "believe the Establishment or Free Exercise Clauses created any such doctrine called separation of church and state,” seems to have had an epiphany:

If a Muslim teacher visited your kid’s classroom every week to give a Koran lesson, what would you do? I wouldn’t like it. I’d probably file suit.

Which is more or less what everyone I've ever known who argues for an explicit separation of church and state arising from the First Amendment has been trying to get across for years. The sign of a good design is its adaptability to tasks for which it was not originally intended. I think the usefulness of the First Amendment quite handily demonstrates its good design.

But that's just me.

And let's hear it for someone I respect, but at the same time think can be a bit reactionary, for coming to the logical conclusion!

Now we have video of the robotic gas station. Only in Europe (and perhaps New Jersey) would something like this be competitive with self-pumped gas.

Pat gets a no-prize nobody really wants for bringing us this summary of Microsoft's latest woes with Vista. It looks very much like the marketroids got just enough decision making power to comprehensively wreck expectations about the product. In other words, business as usual.

Neverland Ranch: a sad, abandoned husk of its former self. Spending yourself bankrupt will do that to a person, donchaknow?

Students of Vietnam-era history may be happy to learn the gung-ho attitude of combat helicopter units seems not to have changed all that much:

The pilots were about a half mile away from their parking spaces when the Predator relayed coordinates and the laser code to pilot CW3 Tom Boise ... and the left-seater was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Carlos Lopez ... [Earlier] Lopez introduced himself to me as an Iraqi interpreter. First I thought, “Why does a Kiowa unit need an interpreter?” And then, “This guy doesn’t look like any Iraqi I have seen.” Lopez must have seen the strange look on my face because he cracked up laughing. The pilots, when they aren’t killing terrorists, apparently are great practical jokers. Captain Brad Warr, an excellent medical officer I got to know in 2005, told me how the pilots stole the adult-tricycle he rides around base. What Brad failed to explain was how he had first stolen the pilots’ van, and then painted it pink and put hearts all over it. They might not seem like killers. .

Via Instapundit.

There are secrets, and then there are secrets:

She then hit me with a confession that would both thrill and confuse me. She explained that in the months that I had been away in Iraq her role within the AUC had changed; she had joined the urban militia and become an assassin. Her job was now to eliminate informers and traitors.

Many times over the years I've read in articles and been told by acquaintances in a position to know that Columbia is a uniquely violent, chaotic place. All I can say is it definitely won't be on my list of places to visit any time soon.

Meryl quite rightly points out the glaring double standard regarding reporting of the most recent events around Gaza. Every time I read about how awfully the Palestinians are being treated, how terrible the injustice and violence, I can't help but think to myself, "well, if they'd just stop shooting glorified bombed-up bottle rockets at Israel they might actually get some peace." And it's not just the media, there are some people I know personally to whom I'd say the same damned thing.

It doesn't matter the Palestinian rockets hardly hit anyone and the Israeli bombs always do. Were I to trade places with an Israeli, it'd be just my luck to pull the short straw and walk underneath the thousandth one that actually managed to hit something. I can't imagine waking up every day for weeks at a stretch worrying about it. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'd actually be damned pleased my boys shoot straight, and horrified only that these Palestinian kids don't seem to understand being next to someone poking a tiger in the ass is a Bad Idea. Where the f--- are their parents?!?

The problem is I already know the answer, and so do the Israelis. I can only hope they finally manage to field one of the tactical laser ABM systems they've been working on, and soon. I have a feeling it'll take making the wall around Gaza infinitely high before the rockets will finally stop.

Only the music industry would be shocked to discover that when value is added to a product, people are willing to pay (and pay more) for it. I've long thought the reason why music is so readily pirated is because it's too damned expensive for what it provides. I think it'll probably take several big names to be successful in this route, and at least one unknown becoming a big name in the same way, before the paradigm will finally shift.

Those who think artists will be too greedy or beholden to record companies to make the attempt obviously haven't known very many musicians personally. You will never find a more contrary, risk-taking, just plain weird bunch.

"Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber."

One of the most bedrock common-sense axioms is that mothers protect their children. Everything goes pear-shaped when this fails.

It's when I read things like this, and only when I read things like this, that I think the sentiment in the title may be the only real solution. Which pisses me off more than you might think.

Via Instapundit.

After a period of relative quiet, it would appear combat submarines are seeing a surge of interest. Includes the new (to me) term "air-independent propulsion," which turns out to be more an improvement to diesel electric than it is a replacement for nuclear.

CBS gets itself into another political reporting scandal:

The chairman of the Alabama Republican Party sent a letter to "60 Minutes" producers asking for a retraction unless they could provide evidence backing up a segment on former Gov. Don Siegelman's prosecution- Birmingham News.
...
"Our staff has done an exhaustive search of Alabama Republican Party records going back several years, and we can find not one instance of Dana Jill Simpson volunteering or working on behalf of the Alabama Republican Party – as stated by 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley."

It's like they've got the gun superglued to their foot, and just can't stop pulling the trigger.

Via Instapundit.

At first I thought Obama might be a Democrat I could at least trust not to run the economy into a wall. Now I'm not so sure:

There are two general themes to his message that he has begun, to be fair, to articulate in more detailed fashion. At home, there will be an increase in taxes—income, estate, payroll—to fund more government health care, education, and general entitlement programs. The old Reaganesque notion that government subsidies can make one more dependent, angrier, and envious is forgotten, along with the notion that lower taxes stimulate economic growth and encourage risk-taking, innovation, and independence. I worry especially about the lifting of income caps (how far?) on social security taxes inasmuch as they were part of the original covenant justifying the caps on benefits paid out.

Distortion, you say? Prove it.

Steve Warshak, owner of the company which makes a number of herbal enhancement drugs such as Enzite, has been found guilty of mail fraud. They got his mom, too. Both are looking at some serious time in federal prison, as well as losing all the money they made bilking gullible men out of millions of dollars.

It deserves saying again: If you could get bigger boobs from pills, every woman's bra selection would start with C. So would about a quarter of the men.

If you could get a bigger wang from pills, most men would have to coil it to fit it in their pants. The rest wouldn't be able to leave the house.

Fling a rocket, bag a satellite, and suddenly every foil-hatter in the world comes twirling out of their tower to yammer at any newsie close by. We've had anti-sat capabilities for twenty years, people. Just because one system gets retired and you don't hear about a replacement, is not the same thing as there being no replacement around.

I love the sound of cages rattling in the morning. Smells like... victory...

It appears Toshiba, one of the last HD-DVD holdouts, is throwing in the towel. I'm still not going to pull that particular trigger, mostly because the players are still pricey and, except for the PS-3, don't even support the latest Blu-Ray standard. It is nice to know things seem to finally be sorted out.

And it's not really bad news for HD-DVD owners. Prices for existing titles should drop nicely, and it may be quite some time before studios stop releasing things in that format. By which time Blu-Ray may be down in price and ready to become your next upgrade!

Computer scientists have created a program that is apparently quite good at predicting terrorist targets in Iraq. On reading, the software sounds rather similar to what the New York City police department used in its successful fight against crime in the 1990s.

Hey, anything that puts Hajji in closer contact with his 72 wirgins is all right by me!

My own suspicions about what causes long term poverty just got a boost:

Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor's degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charles­ton, S.C.
...
During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

A few on the left side of the peanut gallery may sneer about sex and skin color, which to me is a demonstration of just how fast goalposts can be moved when a score would threaten to upset someone's most deeply held misconceptions.

Via Instapundit.

It would appear the Air Force is mulling over a shoot-down of the failed spy satellite that's been in the news lately. If it keeps the thing from falling on someone, I'm all for it. But it will definitely be interesting to see just what, exactly, is used to do the deed.

Bitchy employers:

Mike Bunner calls it a ''cowboy mentality,'' the attitude he sees in so many people who come seeking jobs from him.
...
''They don't want to follow rules, and in a workplace there are certain rules,'' Bunner said. ''It's almost like it's a cultural thing.''

A culture where labor is subject to market forces just as any other commodity, and in which Mr. Bunner's area appears to have switched from a buyer's to a seller's. Which reminds me of a connection you get to make when your head is stuffed full of useless history...

What struck me was how much this whining sounded like the whining of Abbots and Lords about what happened after the Black Death. Then, a terrible disease tightened the labor market by at least 33% (perhaps 50%). Since, unlike the Ottomans or Chinese, Europe was unable to simply bludgeon its peasantry into working without wages, European employers had to pay a premium for good workers or settle for less. Since a medieval boss was not much different from a modern one, the chronicles of the day are filled to bursting with complaints about how it was impossible to fill jobs and the workers you could get were awful and how the king or the Pope aught to do something about it. The fact they couldn't is one of the fundamental forces which created our modern world, and why it started in Europe instead of anywhere else.

Fortunately today it's economic growth rather than the scythe of disease tightening up the labor market. However, as long as that market is allowed to function, no matter how bitchy employers get or how arrogant employees become, not only will the economy continue to function it will grow faster and more efficiently than any government program ever could.

Which is not to say people will like it.

Pat gets a no-prize that just won't go away for bringing us news of just how difficult it is to delete one's Facebook account. To me, this indicates more of a design problem than anything else. Their system's back-end is most likely cobbled together from a lot of disparate applications, and nobody's had time to write the requisite scripts needed to get rid of it all, all at once.

An interesting question: If as many factors are figured in as possible, which impacts the environment more, a dog or an SUV?

It's not as simple a question as you'd at first think.

Hugo Chavez's "socialist paradise" continues down its depressingly predictable path to destruction:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in an effort to deal with food shortages nationwide, threatened today to expropriate farms and raised the price rice producers are permitted to charge.

Old-guard Bolsheviks like Lenin or Stalin would've responded by stealing confiscating all food resources in the offending regions and letting the farmers and their families starve. Millions would end up dying in what was, to fans of Communism, a justified pogrom against traitors to the state. Fortunately, Chavez is no Stalin. At least, not yet.

Watch carefully. This is where radical socialism always leads.

Via Instapundit.

While the Republicans, by design, now have a single candidate and nearly a whole damned year to campaign against the Democrats, it's becoming increasingly clear the Democrats will be campaigning against each other until at least August. That's right folks! While the Republicans will be spending their time telling everyone about their platform, and how awful the Democrats are, the Democrats will be... explaining to everyone how awful the Democrats are. This too, is apparently by design.

Sorta says it all, eh?

A formal report has been released after a state investigation of the fatal explosion at Scaled Composites last year. Unfortunately, the investigators seem to have shrugged at what might have caused the disaster at the company known for its innovative SpaceShipOne and Two vehicles. The evidence has now been turned over to the district attorney to see if anyone may be liable for the deaths.

The thing that makes a good sulk so enjoyable is you get to ignore everything that contradicts it. Like, you know, this:

American "decline" is the foreign-policy equivalent of homelessness: The media only take note of it when a Republican is in the White House.

...

Now take military expenditures. Yesterday, the administration released its budget proposal for 2009, which includes $515.4 billion for the regular defense budget. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this would be the largest defense appropriation since World War II. Yet it amounts to about 4% of GDP, as compared to 14% during the Korean War, 9.5% during the Vietnam War and 6% in the Reagan administration. Throw in the Iraq and Afghanistan supplementals, and total projected defense spending is still only 4.5% of GDP -- an easily afforded sum...

(Emphasis added)

The key to real prosperity for everyone is economic growth. Whichever party most consistently supports policies which enable growth will always have my vote. Any party that chooses to emphasize an agenda that impedes growth (pushing agendas like "fairness" or "living wages" or "progressivism") won't.

Which should make my party choice, well, rather obvious.

Via Instapundit.

Seconded:

Much is said about principles, and since I am not able elect anyone BY MYSELF I have entered into this pact with the group of people who I feel most comfortable with in terms of values. If they, as a body, choose a candidate who is not my first, second, third or fourth choice, then I can look to the Democrats. There I find views so antithetical to everything I believe that I realize there is indeed something to this idea of party loyalty.

I have misgivings about McCain, but only because other people who I respect have misgivings about him. When it comes down to it, I have had misgivings about all the Republican candidates. But they're nothing compared to the flat-out fears I have about what would happen if the last bulwark preventing the Democratic congress from running amok were removed.

So I will quite confidently cast my Republican vote this November, because even though whoever is running won't completely represent my values, and even though that party sometimes says or does things I disagree with, it agrees with and does things I do value and agree with far more often than the other side ever will. You can, most of you do, disagree with me. That's fine. That's what elections are for.

See you at the polls!

F- the current candidate roster. I want the team who's producing this stuff:

But hey, we all know how accurate and well-meaning our MSM is. Why listen to anyone else?

Via Instapundit.

Michael Totten: "I met a young Marine named Austin — he did not give me his last name and he wasn't wearing his rank – who grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. “I'm from a really bad area,” he said. “I didn't even go outside when I was a kid. Fallujah is a lot better.”

Via Instapundit.

Now that the media has bequeathed the Republican nomination to McCain, it's time for the loonies to lock on to their new target. At least if, and until, McCain loses said nomination. One need only ask previously "anointed" candidate Clinton on the accuracy of media bequests.

I wonder how the card-carrying Bush Derangement Syndrome Club members in the peanut gallery, who are generally McCain fans, will react when a picture of their "good" leader is being carried on a sign with a toothbrush mustache penciled in?

Via Instapundit.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who notices how ridiculous MSM's coverage of the economy is.

What I remember most was, during the Reagan administration, at the ripe age of 13, how the media kept harping on how awful the economy was two years into Reagan's "revolution." The stock market had tumbled, interest rates were truly astronomical, and it seemed everyone was either in an unemployment or gasoline line. And then suddenly, say, around 1983, almost overnight the reports stopped being about how bad it was and started crowing when "the recovery would end." Addled as I was with teenage hormones, I quite distinctly remember shouting at the TV, "end?!? When did you sonsofbitches ever admit it'd started?!?"

I'm pretty sure my yellow-dog mom tossed a shoe at me. She still does.

After all, being right (in more ways than one), doesn't mean you get to swear.

All those "work from home, earn $$$" signs you see around the neighborhood? Yeah, they're scams. Look, people, if someone asks you to set up a chain in which money gets deposited in one place, is moved around one or more times, and then is withdrawn from a different place, they're trying to use you to launder money. No matter how legitimate they may seem, this multi-step process is always the sign of something fishy going on. These are not nice people, so don't think about doing something clever like accepting the money and then just disappearing. You may end up disappearing more than you wanted!

If this test is to be believed, "my" candidates for the upcoming presidential election are McCain, Giuliani, and (gulp!) Huckabee. The other Republicans are pretty close too. In other words, no surprises!

Via Daffodil, who likewise received no surprises, albeit from the opposite side of the aisle.

It's 1940 all over again:

The democratic Republic of China, commonly called Taiwan ... frequently irritates Chinese leaders with calls for greater independence from the mainland. But while the American military mulls its options, Chinese missiles hit runways, fuel lines, barracks and supply depots at U.S. Air Force bases in Japan and South Korea. Long-range warheads destroy American satellites, crippling Air Force surveillance and communication networks. A nuclear fireball erupts high above the Pacific Ocean, ionizing the atmosphere and scrambling radars and radio feeds.

This is China’s anti-U.S. sucker punch strategy.

It’s designed to strike America’s military suddenly, stunning and stalling the Air Force more than any other service. In a script written by Chinese military officers and defense analysts, a bruised U.S. military, beholden to a sheepish American public, puts up a small fight before slinking off to avoid full-on war.
...
Because the American public is “abnormally sensitive” about military casualties, according to an article in China’s Liberation Army Daily, killing U.S. airmen or other personnel would spark a “domestic anti-war cry” on the home front and possibly force early withdrawal of U.S. forces.

No, dumbass, launching a comprehensive pre-emptive strike on US interests which decimated our Pacific defenses with large military casualties would precipitate WWIII. Ask Japan what happens when you surprise the US and roll them up all the way to the California coast. Hint: it's not pretty, and it's not fun.

Reading past the blunderbuss opening and the confident "plan survives contact with enemy" naivete, the article appears to be based on a press release intended to rattle the Air Force's cage enough to get them to beef up base protection. Which I guess would be all well and good, if they had any money to pay for it.

Look, we plan on taking them down just as often as they plan taking us down. It's how the game is played, and China more than anything else wants to be a Player. However, unlike the USSR, and 1930s Japanese before them, China's prosperity is deeply rooted in the world economy, and they are extremely aware of it. Kicking the biggest member of that economy in the nuts over an island off the coast does not a prosperous country make, donchaknow?

But I gotta tell ya, this would make for a cracking good military thriller. Get Tom Clancy on the phone!

I'm sure someone in the peanut gallery's heard of the battle of Khalkhin Gol, but I sure hadn't. I'm not sure we'll ever know exactly how decisive this battle was to the course of the war, but considering how many times outcomes hinged on slim margins, I would think it would be significant.

In my own opinion, one of the biggest blind spots in both Ellen's and my own basic education was in the handling of money. While we make our own way reasonably well, neither of us are extremely rational about it (I try to reflexively save every dime; Ellen panics whenever she deals with money.)

I think a lot about how to teach Olivia spending, saving, and investing in a more rational way, but don't know exactly where to start. I'm thinking this book might be of assistance. It's certainly interesting enough to go on my wishlist, so I won't forget about it. She's already quite capable of making deals*, so it'll most likely not be very long before she's able to grasp the rest of it.

Via Instapundit.

* Actual conversation at a recent visit to a train museum:

Me: "Let me see your new bandanna, Olivia, I'll show you how to make a mas--"

Olivia: "NO! DADDY NO! BWAAHHH!!!!" Much wailing & crying ensues.

Three minutes later, Olivia: "Daddy, let me through, I want to see that train!"

Me, in a gentle voice: "Let me see your bandanna."

Olivia, in cheerful voice: "Ok!"

Personally, I think Glenn got it wrong. It should've been...

They told me when George W. got elected, government would take over our lives. And they were right!

Via, appropriately enough, the puppy blender.

It would appear a photographic archive of ancient manuscripts, long thought destroyed, may represent the next "fatwa" target for guardians of the "religion of peace". Barring a few famous but extremely small fragments, the oldest well-dated Christian manuscripts only go back to the 3rd century. Discovering a cache of manuscripts made only sixty years after Jesus's ministry would be a remarkable find indeed.

However, as noted in the article, Islam is tied much more closely to its foundational document than is Christianity on its Testament. Christianity's foundation in mysticism, its legendary flexibility, and its ease of adaptation (to the point of bloody schism), have allowed it to withstand scholarly critique of its foundational documents.

Not so Islam, whose structure was quite obviously informed by the blood-drenched religious chaos of seventh century Constantinople. Having read it myself, I can say many parts to me definitely seem to have been composed by someone who knew both Christian and Judaic traditions, albeit second-hand and garbled. It would be ironic indeed if, by so very carefully engineering itself against the weaknesses evident in the Christianity of its time, radical Islam left itself open to its eventual undoing in the face of modern inquiry.

However, I feel quite realistic in not expecting a "Mohamed Seminar" similar to its Christian counterpart to appear because of all this. After all, if one claims not all of Paul's letters were in fact written by Paul, and provides convincing evidence to prove it, one does not need to worry about the embrace of lunatics wearing complicated vests.

I only hope the relevant German authorities quickly take steps to secure (or at least create many copies of) the archive. While I doubt I'll see it in my time, Islam won't always be this loopy, and it would be a tragedy to lose such an important collection of ancient documents due to carelessness or sabotage.

Update: More info, from a more innocent time, is here. It would appear the manuscripts are from perhaps the first few decades of Islam's history, making them even more important and remarkable. It would at first seem outrageous such a find would be barely known, and (as far as I know) never published. An intact, original gospel or an original Pauline letter collection would rightly cause a sensation in the West. Then I remember who we're really talking about, and it's not so outrageous after all.

So you tell me, did we fake that whole "When Mooji Boats Attack" incident or not? I didn't doubt for a second everyone's favorite Persian Pranksters were spoiling for a fight. Now I know they also have no trouble lying about it.

Then again, considering how schizophrenic Iran's government is, I wouldn't put it past them to have the mullahs pull something like this without telling anyone else. Personally, I don't care. A few rounds from the ol' M2 should stop hajji in his tracks next time around.

I guess I'm just a little strange (shocking, I know), because I think this photo exhibit would probably be quite interesting:

Why are the Japanese couples in Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photographs having sex outdoors? Was 1970s Tokyo so crowded, its apartments so small, that they were forced to seek privacy in public parks at night? And what about those peeping toms? Are the couples as oblivious as they seem to the gawkers trespassing on their nocturnal intimacy?

...

The series, titled “The Park,” is on view at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea, the first time the photographs have been exhibited since 1979, when they were introduced at Komai Gallery in Tokyo. For that show the pictures were blown up to life size, the gallery lights were turned off, and each visitor was given a flashlight. Mr. Yoshiyuki wanted to reconstruct the darkness of the park. “I wanted people to look at the bodies an inch at a time,” he has said.

I don't think I'd much appreciate the whole "sneaking through the gallery with a flashlight" bit though. A guy's gotta have standards, eh?

(All pictures in the article are SFW.)

It would appear Dragon Skin armor isn't all it's cracked up to be. As it were. I've seen this stuff demonstrated a few times in various "Futureweapons"-like shows, and it was consistently portrayed as The Next Big Thing. Then again, pretty much everything those shows demonstrate is. I'd always suspected such programming was little more than a video press release with commercials thrown in. Now, it seems to me anyway, I have proof.

While this description of DNA as a sort of organic software is inevitably geeky in places, it does provide a certain amount of insight into just what makes biology tick. Well, insights for a sysadmin or developer at any rate. Those who aren't may not get as much out of it, but hey, it's my blog, I'll link what I want :).

It would appear there is at least one place quite a bit more dangerous than Iraq. Not much of a distinction, but I suppose you have to take what you can get.

Via Instapundit, who's point about Mr. Chavez's fans is well taken.

While this mash-up of a speech from Naomi Klien and clips from various Milton Friedman appearances can only barely be called a debate (and dude... volume matching!), it still provides a nice side-by-side comparison of what Friedman has actually said versus what leading lights on the left claim he said. Straw men don't exist just for Dorothy, don't ya know?

Go watch the whole thing (it's really only a few minutes long). It should definitely provide fuel for thought, if not fire.

TSO: "Think the interest on the debt is a problem? Well, in the mid-1990s, it took around 15% of federal tax receipts to pay the net interest on the debt; but now, it only takes 9%."

But well all know the real problem is... umm... well?

Wanting to put his money (as it were) where his mouth was, a seemingly self-confessed conservative decided to find out just how bad waterboarding really was. The verdict: it's pretty damned awful. The author seems to consider it inhumanly so.

Being a student of European history makes gaining knowledge on the myriad and manifold techniques of man's inhumanity to man essentially inevitable. Knowing these things (albeit in the third-person context), I have to say waterboarding really doesn't sound that bad. Since all serious forms of torture will eventually result in capitulation, a method which acts quickly and causes no permanent physical injury would seem ideal for everyone involved.

In other words, waterboarding would seem to have it all over being pulled on the rack. But I've always had problems with moral relativism. Like you didn't know that.

US economy: 1, Anti-globalization doom-and-gloom luddites: 0. Money quote:

"For a long time people thought of globalization only as the loss of jobs," said Elliott Howard, who fills and labels the brown bottles of chemicals distilled in Tedia's eight large stainless-steel stills. "Now, I think of it as expanding the company."

Diversity, growth, and trade are what keeps the nation strong and going. The trick is to make sure the Democrats aren't able to take it all apart as a sop to their Big Labor backers.

Having just spent an extra two hours on the Jersey Turnpike for no discernible reason, I find this explanation of just why mysterious traffic jams happen rather timely.

Yes, I am being held prisoner in a Chinese laundry a Yankee paradise Indian country the inlaws for a holiday visit. Why do you ask?

It would seem that, under the pressures of combat, the underpinnings that made the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy seem logical are slowly being dissolved. I've always been ambiguous about the whole thing, seeing as how I'd never end up "live fire testing" any of it. But if it really is the case that combat units are comfortable and effective with openly gay members in their ranks, it would seem to me time to re-evaluate the policy. We need all the talent we can get, and if GI Joe/Jane's preference for a bed partner isn't affecting their own or their unit's capabilities, why should we care?

Graphs are nearly always interesting, especially when the trends are breaking your way. Iraq's still got a long way to go, but people who think they've made no progress whatever are selling something.

The Skeptical Optimist reminds us not all debt is bad debt. One of the things I've found quite difficult in my own politics is coming to terms with the fact that not all government initiative is bad*. Likewise, Steve makes some excellent points to the effect that not all government debt is bad. Personally, I think projects which enable people to spend government funds for their own benefit (c.f. G.I. Bill, The) are best, but that's not always an easy thing to engineer, or get people to agree with.

----
* Ah geeze. Someone go pick Joshua up off the floor. Wave some vodka under his nose or something.

A German company is making a pitch to create parachute-powered freighters. I seem to recall this idea as being bounced around for years, and still with no working prototypes. Vaporware? Vaporship? You be the judge.

Glenn Reynolds: ...it's important to understand that to the Framers the "militia" wasn't some specialist unit of government employees, but a group consisting of the armed populace; one that, though in some ways organized by the government, was also in some ways set against the government, as a check.

The pro-control argument that the 2nd Amendment is too vague or would never have been put in place if modern weapons were available only seem valid when considered just in light of the text of the amendment itself. When one reads the supporting documents from the people who framed the Constitution, it's quite easy to see they did in fact mean the populace should be able to arm itself without interference from the government. While there were no machine guns back then, large caliber weaponry was still quite common, and yet there is no, "except for big shotguns and cannon" in the amendment. In fact, from what I've read, the framers of the Constitution most likely would've explicitly included our right to own Howitzers and .50 caliber machine guns, if they'd known such things could exist and that the citizens of their country would be able to buy them one day.

Looks like the deficit most likely won't balance out in time for the elections. Then again, since it's only 1.4% of the GDP, why worry?

Democratic process: 1, trying to do an end-run around it: 0

The Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples who marry in Massachusetts, the only state that allows same-sex marriage, may not divorce in Rhode Island.

In a 3-to-2 decision, the court ruled that it was up to the legislature, not the court, to determine whether same-sex marriages and divorces would be recognized in Rhode Island.

The narrow margin is disheartening, but we've all gotten so used to the courts making policy instead of adjudicating law I guess it's a victory nonetheless. For the Constitution, at any rate. Members of the peanut gallery who think it's OK for unelected retired lawyers to rule us all will, I imagine, not even completely understand what I'm talking about.

Definitely reads like something Ellen would do:

Charlie is a wild-born coyote who was unexpectedly delivered to my doorstep this past April after both his parents were shot for killing sheep. Whatever reservations I had about raising a wild animal simply didn't matter - couldn't matter - when I realized his survival, at least in the short term, depended on me.

Then again, vets know most of all that coyotes and cats don't usually mix, so I'm not sure what Ellen would do.

Oh who am I kidding. We got so many different kinds of animals around here nowadays I'm not even sure I'd notice.

DARPA is looking to field some networks as "firing ranges" with which to test their electronic widgets. I suppose most large software development offices have (or have access to) things like this, and if they're sitting around doing nothing most of the time, why not?

The Skeptical Optimist has a neat post that shows no matter which way you slice it, the US Government's debt just doesn't matter. That is, as long as we keep pursuing pro-growth policies. I've long known that even though the public debt is a really astounding amount, it's size is dwarfed by the GDP of the country. You can have the biggest truck in the world, but if you park it in the VAB it's still going to look small.

We've been mulling over whether or not to see The Golden Compass for about as long as it's been advertised. Now I find out that, in the opinion of at least one person, at root it's all about an attack on Christianity. Catholic Christianity, to be precise.

I'm never particularly good at seeing subtexts, and I imagine, had I not known beforehand, this particular set would've gone right over my head. I still think the deciding factors for us will be a) does it suck? and b) is it scary? The former will prevent us from seeing it, the latter will prevent us from taking Olivia. The option c) it portrays Catholics as jackbooted thugs I guess I'll have to reserve for after I see it, if I see it.

*Shrug*

Via Instapundit.

Casualty numbers in Iraq continue to fall. Keep in mind the numbers come from a well-known anti-war organization. When the absolute worst source shows real improvement, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny, eh?

Almost a third of the questioners [at the recent Republican candidate debate] seem to have some ties to Democratic causes or candidates. It's almost as if they don't want a Republican to win this time around.

Hey, at least with Fox News they're not trying to hide it or anything.

Military history buffs in the peanut gallery (you know who you are) should find this photo essay on constructing a "Dark Ages" short sword worth a look. When it starts out a bunch of metal strips and ends up something you can wave at Grendel, well folks, I call that built from scratch for sure.

Another economist is sounding warning calls about the Euro. One problem with predicting a chess-like series of moves toward disaster is that global economics is not a two-dimensional game played on a board. It's fantastically complex, interrelated, and plays out in four dimensions. Disaster could happen, but it can also be averted.

I've been following predictions of the Euro's collapse since before its adoption. I can say they do seem to be getting more frequent, and rather more specific. Will it run into a wall? I can only hope not. Such a crisis in the heart of the developed world will have repercussions for everyone, and nobody can predict exactly what they will be.

Well, other than no good at all, I'm afraid.

Via Instapundit.

Instapundit linked up this middle-length piece detailing the "turning" of a Baghdad neighborhood from an Al Qaida stronghold to an island of relative calm. The warning that we may be setting up private armies loyal to men instead of country is well made. Then again, just like in the US, not liking the government is not the same thing as not liking the country. The Iraqi commander's comment that the biggest remaining enemy is Iran also tracks well with several different sources I've read who either are Iraqi or have spent a very long time there. Maybe now that the situation in-country seems to be stabilizing rapidly, they can begin to concentrate on their border to the west.

And I think it's very important to keep in mind the current Iraqi government is not the country. If this bunch can't get things done, eventually (and perhaps soon) they'll vote themselves in a new bunch who might.

It's also important to understand even with the very best of outcomes, the Iraqi government will never be as decisive as our own. A parliamentary system, with proportional winners, usually spends a lot of time grinding against itself with occasional (but comparatively frequent) turnovers of power. Think Israel, not the UK or Canada.

However, in the long term such democracies have proven far more resistant to takeover and dismantling than have those with organized, and separate, executive branches. I've heard it said the worst gift the US has given to the democratic world is the concept of the presidency, and from my readings that's not too far wrong.

In my own opinion, the only really dangerous government is an efficient, effective one. The best judgment of a particular democracy is how well it keeps the busybodies occupied while the rest of us get on with running things. Oh, the press and the chattering classes will definitely wail and moan at how little is being done by the government. This is, after all, another aspect of keeping the troublemakers busy. However, as long as the economy grows, and the rule of law is enforced, it will all work out in the end.

“It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”

I've always thought the whole, "American worker's wages have gone nowhere this decade" argument completely wrong, but I didn't have the numbers in a convenient place to prove it. now I do. Put that in your, "my kids will never be as well off as I am" pipe and smoke it.

Robert R. gets a no-prize he can jingle for spare change as people walk by for bringing us this rather sardonic look at the regional airline business.

The criticism may be a bit overblown, but it does at least track somewhat with other things I've read over the years. A career as a commercial pilot is supposed to have quite a bit of reward potential, but from the pilot's side almost all regional carriers supported by the majors (which is to say, almost all) are, like their parent companies, very poorly run. Powerful unions, as they are wont to do, have imposed byzantine and parochial advancement and pay rules, providing powerful disincentives to hard work. Take the two together and you end up with something that looks a lot like what the video is railing against.

The unfortunate thing is that as long as the majors are propped up and regularly bailed out by the government, the situation is unlikely to change any time soon. But it's not all bad. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many people applying for the job. Still, it's definitely not the glamorous profession portrayed in the movies. It hasn't been for quite some time.

After 125 years, Thomas Edison's final DC power link will be cut in New York City. Sorta puts my pride at retiring a 10 year old Windows NT server in perspective, eh?

Micheal Yon is reporting on "the best day I have had in Iraq:"

Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John’s. Muslims who want their Christian friends and neighbors to come home. The Christians who might see these photos likely will recognize their friends here. The Muslims in this neighborhood worry that other people will take the homes of their Christian neighbors, and that the Christians will never come back. And so they came to St John’s today in force, and they showed their faces, and they said, “Come back to Iraq. Come home.”

Others report on how much has changed.

Coupled with the near silence in MSM outlets like the Post, it would seem we're all actually starting to pull this off.

CNN taking a celebrity's quotes out of context? The horror!!!

I respect the hell out of pro wrestlers. Sure, it's about as spontaneous as kabuki theater, but there's some mighty skills involved in getting a 250 lb man to jump 9 feet to the ground onto another 250 lb man without everyone ending up in the hospital.

You go tell them it all sounds a little gay. I'm hiding behind my keyboard where it's safe!

Looks like China's getting pretty good at playing with their submarines:

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

While high on sensationalism and low on detail, the article does seem to represent a kind of watershed in military relations between our two countries. There's most likely going to be one helluva lot of CYA shuffling amongst the sub hunters of that fleet, as this is the sort of thing which can end careers.

Still, "sailed within viable range" is a funny sort of phrase. Something tells me that, when and if the details of this incident come out, it'll turn out that the sub was just barely within the very outside of its weapons envelope. If that is the case, while the chances of a successful weapon launch were good, the chances of a successful hit were most likely very bad.

Also interesting was the sensational "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik" quote from an unnamed NATO official. Notwithstanding the poor understanding of US history it represents, why NATO and not the Navy? Just who's leaking what, and for which purposes? Are we pissing off the French again or something?

Finally, and strangest of all, is why they even bothered to reveal themselves in the first place. If you want to send a message, use Western Union. Needlessly revealing your enhanced capabilities just alerts the other guy he has a problem. Our Navy is quite well known for some truly spectacular cock-ups, but they are also equally well known for never screwing up the same way twice. I can just about promise no Chinese submarine will ever get this close again.

Update:

Always read the comments, where I found this (on Slashdot):

... Interestingly, the Wikipedia page notes that this incident occured in October 2006 "in the ocean between southern Japan and Taiwan", at a range of 5 nautical miles (less than half the distance to the horizon) off Okinawa. One wonders if the Kittyhawk was conducting flight ops (the tone of the article would seem to indicate no).

If you've been on one of her escorts and had to be plane guard for an aircraft carrier, you know her for a fickle wench out chasing a breeze. If the submarine commander wasn't really comfortable with his knowledge of the sea bottom, that surfacing could have had everything to do with fearing for his life. Trading paint with 84,000 tons of US diplomacy underway going full-tilt-boogy is not going to be a career enhancer. Not that this wipes the egg off the face of whoever was in charge of the escort screen, if the Chinese presence was indeed the surprise that the article touts it as.

Which nicely explains why they popped up. An accidental reveal of capability is much different than a purposeful one, exactly opposite of what the article tried to pass it off as.

The templates for chimp and human social behavior are very similar in a central feature, that of territorial defense and the willingness to solve the problem of a hostile neighboring society by seeking its extermination.
-- Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, Recovering the Lost History of our Ancestors. Penguin Books, 2006

Put that in your "the reason Western civilizations are so superior is because they're so savage" pipe and smoke it, you turban-wearing hippie.

So, does Da Vinci's The Last Supper really have a hidden message? Go judge for yourself. To me, it sounds (as it were) like someone who's connected random dots into an order of their own choosing, but what do I know?

"If things continue to go well, this photo should win a Pulitzer."

Concur.

Mike J. gets a no-prize he'll be proud of whilst being burnt at the stake for bringing us yet another evidence-based look at global warming. I haven't had time to watch all four segments, but the conclusions of the first one are quite, well, interesting. But you better damned well watch and listen first, before coming back here and telling me my monster carbon footprint will be the ruin of us all.

One of the things that worries me quite deeply, especially considering the opposition's promises, is the positive steps we take to combat this "problem" will be what tips us over into something far, far worse. And in our lifetime, no less. Hint: it'll make the economic recession we'll put up with if they get their way look like a goddamned cakewalk.

'Scuse me while I go light up a few charcoal grills in my front yard.

Arnold Kling's latest discussion of the economics of health care:

... The demagogues say that we can continue to insulate people from costs using employer-provided health insurance and Medicare, plus insulate more people through "universal coverage," and afford it all.

You remind the demagogues that Medicare and employer-provided health insurance are both unraveling on the financial end. They say, "Oh, right. We have to cut costs."

But cutting costs means changing health care as we know it, in order to reduce the extravagant use of medical procedures with high costs and low benefits.
...
What the demagogues won't tell you is that they are forcing us down the path of government rationing, when some of us might not like that so much.

You say America's health care system isn't as good as it can be, and I'll agree to that. It's only when you say we should model our health care system after nation X's that I start shaking my head. As far as I'm concerned, nobody has come up with a sustainable health care strategy just yet.

Jason is rightly proud of calling the play years before it made its way out onto the field.

And I do love the way the MSM spins: (emphasis added)

The explosion Monday killed at least 28 policemen and wounded 17 policemen and three Iraqi civilians, according to the U.S. military, making it the deadliest insurgent attack in Iraq in more than a month. The last mass-casualty attack struck Baqubah in late September, targeting a reconciliation meeting and killing at least 25 people.
...
Meanwhile, a spokesman for tribal leaders in Diyala province said all but one of 11 sheiks kidnapped in eastern Baghdad on Sunday had been freed.

It goes without saying these mentions were buried so deep I had to read the article twice to find them. They're really going to have to try a lot harder. Otherwise, people may think we're turning Iraq around.

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

~St. Francis of Asissi

The greatest story never told, indeed:

The results of the surge, or "the escalation" as Harry Reid derisively called it, have been obvious in the Icasualties.org numbers. Before the surge, a bad month would claim the lives of roughly 3,000 Iraqi civilians and security force members. In February '07, the exact number was 3,014 Iraqi casualties. In March, the figure was 2,977. As the surge began to have its effects, that number dropped to 1674 in August. In September, with the surge taking full effect, the numbers showed a profound change--the Iraqi death toll plunged to 848.

Happily, September's figures don't appear to be an aberration. October has seen 502 Iraqi casualties so far. If the trend continues though the end of October, the final number should be around 650 for the entire month. That represents better than an 80 percent improvement from the war's nadir.

YOU'D THINK THIS would be a big story. After all, the mainstream media makes such a show of "supporting the troops" at every turn, you'd think it would rush to report the amazing story of our soldiers accomplishing what many observers declared "impossible" and "unwinnable" not so long ago.

It hasn't worked out that way...

Crow all you want about my propaganda and cherry-picking, but go take a look at that graph on the second page of the article and then tell me something good isn't going on.

And then there's this:

There will not be a sectarian ""civil war" in Iraq, perhaps best evidenced by the fact that the media—excuse me, actual reporters in Iraq, not plaintive Times editorialists—have quietly let the claim die. Just as quietly, they have stopped wondering if Iraqi security forces will be able to hold together, and instead focus on corruption in the higher ranks.

At the present rate, the only way the media could shift goalposts faster is if the crane moving the goalposts was attached to Jeff Gordon's stock car.

I noticed The Washington Post started moving the goalposts at about the time Yon started to report positive things. Nice to know, in a "but-not-really" sort of way, that I'm not the only one who saw it.

Another big diamond has been found at Murfreesborogh, AR. I somehow managed to avoid going to that steaming mud hole last time we visited. Something tells me the next time around I may not be so lucky.

Hard decisions deserve hard questions, climate change most of all. For me, this was the best question:

5. Just how rich are those future generations likely to be? If you expect economic growth to continue at the average annual rate of 2.3 percent, to which we've grown accustomed, then in 400 years, the average American will have an income of more than $1 million per day—and that's in the equivalent of today's dollars (i.e., after correcting for inflation). Does it really make sense for you and me to sacrifice for the benefit of those future gazillionaires?

Which is why I'm pro-growth first of all. Compound interest is your friend!

Fark linked up an in-depth examination of yet another D.B. Cooper candidate. As with most magazine-length articles, it's heavy on frou-frou and light on actual evidence, so I'm not convinced. However, a purser working for the airline from which the airplane was hijacked, who was once a paratrooper and who had a house near where the guy jumped seems like someone worth looking into, if you ask me. But what do I know?

Looks like, as suspected, the infamous robotic gun attack was a mechanical failure. Never ascribe to malice...

... deficits:

Thanks to George Bush's amazing deficit reduction plan, the budget deficit is now only 1.2% of GDP. If this trend continues, by the time George Bush leaves office, the budget will be within a hair's breath of being balanced. I can only hope that Democrats don't squander this precious legacy of fiscal responsibility.

Unfortunately it would appear the budget won't balance in time for the election. I have a feeling it will always be thus; like the carrot mounted on the end of a pole strapped to its head, the critter (be it elephant or donkey) will always be close but not quite close enough. As long as the pole stays short, that's fine with me.

Funny. I can't seem to recall a single mention of this sort of thing in the Post lately. Imagine that!

I'd been chalking up the whole "genocide resolution" dust-up to politics-as-usual causes that always bubble up whenever a majority of our 435 instant foreign policy experts get a bug up their butt. But I couldn't understand why it was going on for so long, until I read this:

If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq war?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the latest in a series of Congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct of that war.
...
Japan has yet to acknowledge its atrocities from the Second World War. Yet the Congress of the United States does not try to make worldwide pariahs of today's Japanese, most of whom were not even born when those atrocities occurred.

Believe what you want to. This particular essay has moved the whole can of worms from the "safe to ignore" box to the "call your congressman" box. Time to get the phone.

... the easier it is to stop up the drain:

It is dismaying that after decades of experience with manned space stations, Russian space engineers still couldn't keep unwanted condensation at bay. But what's worse is that they designed circuitry that would allow one spot of corrosion to fell a supposedly triply redundant control computer complex. Another cause for dismay is that when trouble did develop, the Russians' first instinct was to blame their American partners. Such deficiencies need to be worked out in the years ahead, on the space station, before both the technology and the diplomacy can be thought reliable enough for far-ranging missions that replacement shipments wouldn't be able to reach.

Good design is never easy. At least with my systems, if something blows up nobody dies. Not that you could tell by the way they scream about it...

Michael Yon has a new update. This time, it's a "warts-and-all" message from a LTC operating in Baghdad. Positive news seems to be breaking out all over the place. But you already knew that, right?

Looks like there's a press release war heating up over internet gambling:

A Brussels think-tank has accused the US government of reneging on commitments made to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over internet gaming.

Panellists at a trade forum levelled harsh criticism at the US, focusing on a burgeoning trade clash between the US and Europe over internet gaming.

The forum believes that the US could be liable for up to US$100 billion in trade concessions to European industries after placing illegal discriminatory trade restrictions on European gaming operators.

Seeking is one thing. Getting it is another altogether. Considering the Bush administration won't be in office about 14 months from now, I'm not expecting much will happen on this any time soon.

So what would happen if you were to try to follow the bible literally in your day-to-day life here in this modern world? One guy tried it just to see. From the interview, it looks like it wasn't nearly as bad as we'd imagine. Definitely a book I'll look for next time I visit the store.

Stern played Ann Coulter's latest demonstration of foot-in-mouth disease yesterday, expressing nearly the same righteous indignation as did the show's host, Donny Deutch. The thing was, as I listened, I both knew Coulter was right in what she was saying (as far as it went) and that everyone else was wrong to be offended, at least in thinking her remarks were antisemitic. Hell I'm not even a Christian and I knew they were wrong. Jason does a nice job of explaining exactly why.

Was she crass and insensitive? Well, yes. That phrase is, after all, a synonym for Ann Coulter. But she wasn't antisemitic, at least in what I consider the common definition of the term. Some others may answer it's not really possible for a fundamentalist Christian to be anything but antisemitic, to which I can only say, "lighten the hell up, willya?"

The Coors and Miller brewing companies have announced their intention to merge. Even though it's not cool to say so, I actually do like some of their higher-end products. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as a bad free beer, so I end up drinking even the "base" models on occasion. It's not that even those are bad, it's just there's more out there that's better. In my opinion, of course.

It would seem that at least one British newspaper is starting to consistently report progress on the war in Iraq. As a card-carrying member of the Vast Right Wing/Neocon Conspiracy I'm completely unreliable when it comes to linking news. But really, how many will it take before you begin to admit we might be making progress?

Just, you know, wondering out loud, sort of thing.

I agree completely, we have to rediscover the middle ground: (emphasis added)

It's wrong to deny the obvious: The Earth is warming, and we're causing it. But that's not the whole story, and predictions of impending disaster just don't stack up.
...
As sea levels rise, so will temperatures. It seems logical to expect more heat waves and therefore more deaths. But though this fact gets much less billing, rising temperatures will also reduce the number of cold spells. This is important because research shows that the cold is a much bigger killer than the heat. According to the first complete peer-reviewed survey of climate change's health effects, global warming will actually save lives. It's estimated that by 2050, global warming will cause almost 400,000 more heat-related deaths each year. But at the same time, 1.8 million fewer people will die from cold.

It's easy to dismiss Lomborg as a bomb-throwing sellout to whichever industrial cabal you happen to think exists when you don't read what he says. When you do, and realize just how much of his work is based on a level-headed look at the science, not so much.

Something tells me the ferocity of reaction to his work is in inverse proportion to the amount of it someone's actually read. In other words, read the whole article, buy both books, and read. Then you can come back and tell me, in detail, just how wrong he is. Trust me, I won't be holding my breath.

Via Siflay.

While this essay may seem at first a bit "rah-rah" in spin*, the author does, in my opinion anyway, make some very valid points. Read the whole thing before you dismiss it as the ravings of a Fox News pundit gone AWOL.

---
* Especially to those who think the mainstream media have been far too charitable lately**.

** Sarcasm, like satire, is so often lost on those it targets.

MOSCOW - A small Russian city just got a really big addition: a 17-pound, 1 ounce baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children.

With picture goodness!

While I'm still a little fuzzy on the actual specifics of this explanation of just what, exactly, the fed's been doing to avert various monetary crises, the conclusion seems to me sound enough. Those who get their economics reports from CNN or other TV news outlets may disagree. Because we all know what experts they are, eh?

Via TSO.

Amazingly enough, it appears even when you get hit by an RPG, you can still survive. And by hit I mean, "flight path intersects with soldier's body."

As long as it doesn't go off, at any rate. I'm not sure if the story represents luck, or skill. Most likely great big cups full of both.

So, after all the sturm and drang about the "Jena 6," I eagerly read through the Post's sum-up, trying to figure out exactly WTF it was all about. You see, I'm no cable news junkie. I don't have time to watch six hours of CNN to try to piece together what's going on.

After skimming I don't know how many column-inches, I still wasn't clear just what, exactly, happened. As usual, this meant what really happened didn't fit the story of what the media thought should've happened.

I grew up in a small southern town, with a concomitant rabid sports circus such places seem to grow like noxious mushrooms under a rotted tree. The athletes (freaking teenagers!) in general were utterly untouchable. The black athletes were untouchable and extremely scary-dangerous. Mysterious, unexplained black eyes and broken bones were the expected, even logical result of anyone who called any of them what they were: brutal sub-humans who's only real talent was tearing up your stuff and beating you to within an inch of your life.

Worse still were the adults, parents and "alumni," who allowed it, no... encouraged it, all to happen. College kept them busy enough and far away enough the rest of us were generally left alone. Well, as long as we weren't female, or a cop. I sometimes wonder if today I stay away from playing in team sports because of the brutal, "if we can't beat them we'll beat you" athletic culture I was steeped in as a child.

Sad to say it would seem some twenty years after I graduated high school, absolutely nothing has changed.

Via Instapundit.

Michael Totten: "Bumps in the road are now officially seen as more hazardous than insurgents and terrorists in Ramadi." It's beginning to seem to me now that what we'll be looking at for at least 18 months is a stable Iraqi Kurdistan, a stabilizing Arab Central Iraq, and a chaotic, Iranian-driven sectarian conflict in the Shi'ite south. Progress, of a sort, and definitely worth pursuing.

If you'd told me two years ago it'd be the Arab section that precipitated out of chaos first I would never have believed it. Now that it has (or at least seems to have) happened, well hell, I guess anything's possible.

Go for the pictures of the kids we're helping to save. Stay for the article.

Via Instapundit.

The author of The Skeptical Environmentalist has finally released a follow-up:

Mr. Lomborg starts by doing what he does best: presenting a calm analysis of what today's best science tells us about global warming and its risks. Relying primarily on official statistics, he ticks through the many supposed calamities that will result from a hotter planet--extreme hurricanes, flooding rivers, malaria, heat deaths, starvation, water shortages. It turns out that, when these problems are looked at from all sides and stripped of the spin, they aren't as worrisome as global-warming alarmists would suggest. In some cases, they even have an upside.

I found his first book actually a bit dry, but it still represented the most thorough and even-handed look at what environmentalist's priorities are compared to what they probably should be I'd ever read. The fact that it sent the enviro-establishment, and more than one personal acquaintance, into positively apoplectic fits of disdain and derision only strengthened my view that Mr. Lomberg was on to something. His current book seems to be more of the same, which means it'll most likely be on my list of "to-do" books very soon.

Oh, and before you go raising your nose to sniff down at me again, go read the damned book first. At least then I'll be able to take you a little bit seriously.

No, not you, the other one.

Via Siflay.

On Sep. 11, 2001, as I watched and smelled the smoke rising from the Pentagon, I knew we'd won anyway when, just three hours later, I pulled money out of the ATM and bought McDonald's for lunch not ten miles away. They did a horrible thing, but from the perspective of the entire country it didn't matter. But I never thought it wouldn't matter on a scale like this:

Overall, the American economy is, adjusting for inflation, $1.65 trillion bigger than it was six years ago. To put that gigantic number in some perspective, the U.S. economy has added the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias, eight Irans, 13 Pakistans, or 15 Egypts, depending on your preference. And while 9/11 did cause the stock market to plunge, the Dow is 37 percent higher than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, creating trillions of dollars of new wealth for Americans. What's more, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent today vs. 5.7 percent back then. Not bad at all.

Personally, I blame the Bush administration. But you already knew that.

Mike J. gets a no-prize that clucks ominously from the rafters for bringing us news of more cracks forming in Hugo Chavez's "Gansta Socialist Paradise":

The bolivar has tumbled 30 percent this year to 4,850 per dollar on the black market, the only place it trades freely because of government controls on foreign exchange. That compares with the official rate of 2,150 per dollar set in 2005. Chávez may have to devalue the bolivar to reduce the gap and increase oil proceeds, which make up half the government's revenue.

I thought it would take a real drop in the price of oil to hurry Mr. Chavez along to his meeting in the local public square. I didn't get that, if allowed to meddle with a country's economy long enough, progressives would torpedo themselves in spite of the windfalls they were reaping from oil. Silly me. I'd forgotten such is always the result when markets are twisted and trammeled in the name of "equality."

I can only hope, for Venezuela's sake, it happens sooner rather than later.

While I'm not completely sure when it was written, this essay on just how different Arabs, and specifically Saudis, are is still quite interesting. While I think he may be overgeneralizing at least a little bit, this does track well with what other sources (even Arab sources) I've read say. Certainly an American who's actually lived in Saudi Arabia for a full year will have a different perspective than, say, a New York Times editor in Manhattan.

Time and again we're told, "the US has only one fifth of the world's population, yet consumes nearly a quarter of its resources." There then follows a right good scolding about how we should cripple our economy to conform to someone else's self-righteous plan to put us greedy Americans in our place. Hardly anyone ever mentions there's another side to the story:

The United States makes more manufactured goods today than at any time in history, as measured by the dollar value of production adjusted for inflation -- three times as much as in the mid-1950s, the supposed heyday of American industry. Between 1977 and 2005, the value of American manufacturing swelled from $1.3 trillion to an all-time record $4.5 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States is responsible for almost one-fourth of global manufacturing, a share that has changed little in decades. The United States is the largest manufacturing economy by far. Japan, the only serious rival for that title, has been losing ground. China has been growing but represents only about one-tenth of world manufacturing.

The country is not worse off than it was eight years ago. Far from it. And as long as we keep promoting pro-growth policies, it will always get better. Put that in your, "greedy corporations and the Bush administration have trashed the country" pipe and smoke it.

The Small Wars Journal is carrying this in-depth piece analyzing the why's and wherefore's of the ongoing tribal revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq. The overall tone, as with seemingly everything coming out of Iraq nowadays, is cautiously optimistic, and makes some very valid points about why conventional benchmark reports like this one aren't as upbeat as reports from people on the ground are.

When I say, "climate change probably isn't the big damned hairy deal everyone makes it out to be," people often dismiss me as a crackpot. Which I suppose is fine, because I am*. But when Freeman Dyson does it, well, obviously they call him a crackpot too, but he's a crackpot who understands all the math that shores up the climate models everyone's so up in arms about. In other words, cracked pots can hold water too if the crack is nowhere important. I'm damned certain his cracks are nowhere near as important as, well, his water, as it were**.

At any rate, read the whole thing, it's an intriguing counterpoint from someone who knows his stuff and doesn't care what anyone else thinks.

Via Econlog.

---
* Well, actually I prefer the term, "bomb thrower," but crackpot'll do in a pinch.

** And I'm definitely not above a pee pun when the mood strikes.

Many of you probably think all my sources only wax eloquent about progress in Iraq. Not so, not so. We can't be everywhere at once, but if progress continues in other areas, it's only a matter of time before we've been everywhere at least once.

Via Instapundit.

Those in the peanut gallery prone to imitating Chicken Little any time someone says "China" and "debt" in the same sentence (you know who you are) would do well to read and ruminate over this Skeptical Optimist essay. I came up with a very similar line of reasoning over dinner last week, but didn't write about it because we all know it's the continuing resolutions that are killing the budget. Right?

In the "holy crap I sure didn't expect that" category, we have wild west festivals in France. Then again, why not?

Via ¡No Pasarán!

Instapundit linked up this interview with Lt. Col. William F. Mullen, who commands the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment (currently at Forward Operating Base Reaper on the South side of Fallujah). It provides a concise update of the goings-on in what was once considered the absolute worst place to be in Iraq. It appears that positive progress reported previously is still continuing, perhaps even accelerating.

DDT's reputation seems to now be officially rehabilitated. My generation was the one that grew up with school books praising the environmental movement's success at banning the substance. It's been quite informative to watch that achievement's perception transform from a species-saving event to something that has directly contributed to the deaths of more children than all the environmental catastrophes in modern history combined.

And Glenn can be funny! Whodathunkit?

If a well-known German media opponent of the Iraq war is reporting cautious optimisim, well, it better be time to start taking all these positive reports more seriously. I was so damned surprised I read the whole article. It most definitely is not a "rah-rah" report from someone co-opted by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Instead, it's a very even-handed "warts-and-all" report that still manages to be quite plainly hopeful.

The contrast with how the media's reporting in Vietnam changed as that war progressed is quite instructive. Little surprise then that nobody seems to have drawn the comparison explicitly.

Via Instapundit.

Those of you who think the national debt is a real and present danger to the country should find this very reassuring:

... The debt clock is now ticking backwards.

As a portion of GDP, total debt is 64.6% and dropping; publicly held debt (the more important statistic) is 36.2% and dropping. This blog is one of the few places on the web, if not the only one, where that good news is prominently displayed. Everyone else is just giving you a partial score; try googling "debt clock" and see what I mean.

Now, there was a whole bunch of people out there who gave the Clinton administration all sorts of kudos for balancing the budget and paying off the debt. With the budget on track to balance itself late next year, and the debt already being payed down, shouldn't we expect the same for the current administration? You know, the one that managed it without the largest tax increase in US history?

Dammit. I hate when heads explode in the left side of the peanut gallery. It makes such a mess.

What I find most heartbreaking is when the only thing that's moving is the casualty counter, for weeks at a time.

Via Siflay

Ron gets a filthy no-prize for bringing us this quick review of the unforeseen difficulties involved in hosting a first-world event in a third-world country.

Optimizing an economy for maximum growth requires minimal regulation, especially of the environment. Eventually, as average per-capita income rises to a certain point*, people will start demanding a cleaner environment, and pollution controls can (well, should) be gradually introduced. Unfortunately, while China is rapidly getting a first-world economy, it's definitely not there yet. Equally unfortunate, the requirements of effete first-world left wingers run right up against this reality, and so China has a potentially intractable problem on its hands.

This is most likely worrying China's leadership far more than you'd think. China as a country is almost psychotically obsessed with getting this chance to prove they've "made it" right. They take it extremely seriously, and should it fail I'm not quite sure what would happen. It's probably not too far fetched to picture riots and revolutions. Certainly that's what the leadership must fear.

The ironic thing is the air pollution in Beijing is almost certainly no worse (probably better) than that experienced by the athletes of the first few Olympiads. One need only read about conditions in turn of the last century London to understand this.

----
* As I recall, $8000 per year in 2000 dollars.

It's official, the New York Times is positive about the war. Cautious and with reservations, but undeniably optimistic. Meanwhile, the Post has been reduced to making vague implications of delusion, with a weird tendency to keep saying "hedgehog."

I will admit it's rather fun. "Hedgehog! Hedgehog hedgehog hedgehog hedgehoghedgehoghedgehoghedgehoghedgehog!"

Why yes, I think I would rather like a bit of a lie down, thanks for offering! It'll help me pass the time while I wait for my pizzas to start arriving.

Via Instapundit.

Weer In Ur Stores, Buyin' all ur warez:

The US economy grew last quarter at the fastest pace in more than a year as rising exports helped offset a slowdown in consumer spending.

Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.4 per cent in the second quarter, well above the anaemic growth of 0.6 per cent in the first quarter, according to the Commerce Department.

The surprisingly strong economic rebound showed business activity took over from household spending as the driver of growth in the period. Factories increased output to meet demand from Europe and Asia for US imports.

The primary advantage of a diverse and growing economy is that when one sector falters, there are several others which can suddenly take its place. Remember all those guys who predicted doom at the fall of the US dollar? Yeah, not so much now, eh?

While trolling around in Fark's comments, I found this rare TV interview with Kevin Clash, the man behind the gargantuan red fuzzy success story that is Elmo. Olivia seems to have outgrown the giggly monster around age 3, but she definitely still knows who he is. At the moment, Dora and Diego are much bigger hits.

Michael Totten's latest report from Baghdad is definitely worth a read:

Everyone was friendly. No one shot at us or even looked at us funny. Infrastructure problems, not security, were the biggest concerns at the moment. I felt like I was in Iraqi Kurdistan – where the war is already over – not in Baghdad.

He was quite blunt about reporting how bad things were in 2005, so I take his positive reports quite seriously. We may actually pull this off.

Ward Churchill, the guy who compared 9/11 victims to Adolf Eichman, just got fired. Can't say I'm displeased.

So, is the nation's obsession with the JFK assassination really caused by liberalism's inability to come to terms with the ideology of the assassin? It's definitely a plausible, and as far as I know new, way to look at the problem. However, to me the author (of the article, if not the book) provincialises the cultural upheaval of the 60s, seeming to me to make it out to be a singularly American event. On the contrary, the whole world experienced cultural upheaval of various sorts as the cadre born just after WWII came of age.

Still, the position that Oswald's undeniably pure communist belief represented a challenge to 60s liberals that they simply could not overcome is damned intriguing. I guess I'll have to buy the book and see if he really does pull off this historical 180 degree turn.

Via Instapundit.

Fark (of all places) linked up this economics 101 lesson in why oil prices are high (hint: it's an op-ed from the Ayn Rand institute). The comments on the article provide an abject lesson in the economic illiteracy of the Western world's 21-45 year demographic.

The second is about an unintended consequence of the current state of civil union laws. I definitely agree that a man who's wife now has a legally recognized domestic partner (male or female) should be off the hook for alimony. However, I do not think that it automatically follows that the only solution is legalizing gay marriage. It simply means the laws need further adjustment and re-writing to accommodate the change in circumstance.

My feelings on the legality of gay marriage are too ambiguous to have a firm stand (I'm mildly against it, but am still open to debate). However, I very strongly feel this is a matter for the states to resolve via legislative and most definitely not judicial means. Those who feel differently should more closely review the social and legal costs of our most famous policy-via-judicial-fiat decision, Roe v. Wade.

It would seem recent immigrants are actually ten times less likely to commit a crime than the native-born. This is so counter-intuitive I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around it. However, Bryan is an economics professor. If the authors of the paper were twiddling with the numbers for effect, I would think he'd spot it right away.

From now on, I'm not so impressed at an escape artist "mysteriously" getting free of handcuffs. As noted in one of the comments, this is not how to escape from police custody, but rather how an escape artist would pull the trick off. It never occurred to me that where and how the hands were placed in restraints is important in escaping from them. Now I know.

Those of you who strongly think our current tax structure unfairly favors the rich may wish to peruse this fact-based op-ed:

The C.B.O.’s most recent calculations of federal tax rates show a highly progressive system. (The numbers are based on 2004 data, but the tax code has not changed much since then.) The poorest fifth of the population, with average annual income of $15,400, pays only 4.5 percent of its income in federal taxes. The middle fifth, with income of $56,200, pays 13.9 percent. And the top fifth, with income of $207,200, pays 25.1 percent.

At the very top of the income distribution, the C.B.O. reports even higher tax rates. The richest 1 percent has average income of $1,259,700 and forks over 31.1 percent of its income to the federal government.

This is not the first article I've seen debunking the idea that the rich somehow get a free ride. That many people continue to hold this view speaks more about their own intransigent beliefs than any series of facts they may find.

Via Instapundit.

It's getting to the point you can actually graph progress in Iraq. If the MSM doesn't get on the stick with some relentlessly negative reports, people might start getting the wrong idea about what's going on out there. We all might end up thinking we've started to win?

And that, as every person in the MSM knows, Will Not Do. Why, it could lead to dancing!

Via Instapundit.

At least one person is claiming everyone's favorite Lizard King didn't die in a bathtub. Not much corroborating evidence, but certainly dropping dead of a heroin overdose in a nightclub bathroom is certainly possible.

Those of you who made such a big goddamned deal about the deficit in '03 are pleased to be sitting down and shutting up now. See-no, hear-no reactionary comment in 3... 2... 1...

Reports of strong, positive progress in Iraq are beginning to pop up all over the place, even where you'd least expect them. Coupled with a bit of historical perspective, why, it's enough to make a body downright hopeful.

Something tells me there's a chance, perhaps even a good one, all that pizza will come my way again.

The Skeptical Optimist has the answer. Hint: Folks on the left side of the peanut gallery and Jeff rabid Bush haters ... ahem... pessimists probably won't much like what he finds, even though more rational people will. I especially enjoyed his five year "perception summary," which tracks extremely well with conversations I've had with various people around various dinner tables:

• 2001-2: The economy isn't growing.
• 2003-4: ...okay, it's growing, but it's a jobless recovery.
• 2005-6: ...okay, it's growing and creating jobs, but only the rich are benefiting.
• 2006-7: ...okay, it's growing, creating jobs, and wage growth is beating inflation, but we're still beleaguered by the dreaded deficit.
• 2007: ...okay, it's growing, creating jobs, creating higher wages, and the deficit is disappearing, but, uh, we still need to raise taxes because, uh, let's see... yeah, that's right: because there are still too many rich, and because the oil companies are making too much profit.  Yeah, that's the ticket.   

Indeed.

Well, if everyone were jumping off a cliff would you go do it too:

Professor Scott Armstrong is at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr Kesten Green is with the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit at Monash University. They're experts in forecasting techniques. (Many people are unaware that forecasting is a subject with many academic experts and a body of research going back to the 1930s. The website forecastingprinciples.com attracts more than 200,000 visitors a year.) Their paper is Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts. It was written for the 27th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting.
...
Armstrong and Green rated the methodology used by [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Working Group 1] against 89 principles of good forecasting derived from years of research. They found that the panel report breached 72 of those principles. They concluded that the forecasts the weather was likely to change in many negative ways were worthless.
...
Armstrong and Green note: "To our knowledge, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that presenting opinions in mathematical terms rather than in words will contribute to forecast accuracy."

I've actually found it quite remarkable how many prominent news outlets (the Economist quickly comes to mind) not only seem to accept the precepts of the green crowd, but seem to be evangelizing them. Green truly does seem to be the new yellow.

It may surprise some, but we've actually done quite a few things the greener side of the peanut gallery would approve of. We use CF lights extensively, a computerized thermostat that shuts the A/C and/or heat off when we're not home, and while our PT Cruiser is by no means the most efficient car in the world it's a whole lot better than most, and we carpool besides.

But we do these things because they benefit us economically, not because "we should." Were the greens more interested in improving people's lives than they were in pushing their watermelon agendas, I imagine their successes would come at a walk.

Pity...

Via Instapundit.

When Republicans are in power, they backslide on social issues. When it's the Democrat's turn, they start backsliding on the economy. Unfortunately the media are both more forgiving of the Dems and less able to understand the importance of economics, and so we never hear about these things until stuff starts to break. Worse still, when someone screws with my access to porn it means I have to take a cold shower. When someone screws with the economy, we're all doused with a bucket of cold water.

Which is the main, prime, horizon to zenith reason why I never plan on voting Democrat, ever, and constantly wonder why anyone else would want to do so. I knew they'd start pulling stunts like this as soon as nobody was looking. The only things that keep me from panicking outright is their razor thin majorities and a president from the right party who has no need to pay attention to polls anymore. But dear Lord that '08 election just keeps getting more and more important.

But the rest of you freaks, the ones who wanted and voted for a split government? Hope you're happy now.

Via Instapundit.

While environmentalists worry, decrepit warships continue to rot. Personally I think they aught to give tours of the place by boat and raise money that way. Big old ships are interesting!

Is it a Celtic bowl, the Holy Grail, or some wacky thing Himmler cooked up in his spare time? The world may never know.

The Skeptical Optimist has an insightful criticism of the failure of the recently deceased immigration bill. Has this base-driven defeat turned the GOP into a permanent minority party? If the American Democrats and British Labor parties represent anything, it's the ability to gain power in spite of your supporters. I think it's quite likely the GOP will (eventually) rally as well.

Looks like "Iwo Jima" will soon be no more. No, they're not nuking the island or anything like that, just changing the name. Sort of, since according to the article "Iwo To" means the same thing as "Iwo Jima."

So which side of the rope do you intend to pull on? Oh, don't bother. If you're not already on my side I'll just toss the other end to the left and be done with it.

For those on the left side of the peanut gallery and that guy in the corner with the "too loopy to talk to" dunce hat on (you know who you are) we have mo' bettah proof that a) taxes are still every bit as progressive as they've ever been and b) the tax cuts were distributed evenly. The article also includes nifty charts that undercut just about every economic position various friends and family have tried to bludgeon me with over the occasional dinner. And that's before I even got to the main article!

And I agree with him... if the budget's gonna balance itself in 18 months, why not make the tax cuts permanent?

I'm not quite sure what to make of these graphs charting American vs. terrorist casualties in Iraq, but they do seem to pose problems for the people reading from the "it's a disaster, always has been always will be" script. Not that problems have ever stopped them before.

Well, except from thinking, that is.

Water buffalo: 1, Lions: 0. I've heard it said more than once that the domestication of cattle was probably one of the greatest achievements in ancient agriculture. You see, wild sheep and goats simply run away when confronted by a human. Wild cattle try to kill people. They're justly famous for being quite good at it.

Mark gets a no-prize he can fling high into the air for bringing us this graphic representation of why wild carnivores are successful only about 30% of the time.

Mark gets a damned dangerous no-prize for bringing us this look at the "largest illegal arms market in the world." If you want it, it would appear you can get it there, cheap.

Looks like someone else is going to take a run at the NFL. Their plan is to run their first season in 2008. At first I thought, "ah geeze, not another one," but after RTFA, the guy does seem to have at least some business sense. Certainly with so many untapped large media markets, there would seem to be an opportunity here.

It's not about knowing the answer, it's about knowing the question. I've had a bunch of people on the left side of the peanut gallery challenge me to give them the facts behind my support of various policies. You know who you are. Do you... dare?!?

Unsurprisingly, it seems the whole "disappearing bee" thing is mostly media hype. In a lot of ways this reminds me of the "crashing amphibian population" hysteria the media trots out when nothing else is happening in the world that day. I first read, and at the time deeply worried, about that in, oh, probably 1981. Twenty-six years later, the frogs are still jumpin'.

And the bees will, I'm sure, continue to buzz.

The "Anbar story" seems to be spreading down the Euphrates. The last time cautiously optimistic reports started leaking out more disasters were reported to drown them out. Yet there does seem to be progress.

Those of you wondering just why the Pentagon is shaped like, well, a pentagon, need wonder no more. In a nutshell: they needed a huge building, which for political-aesthetic reasons couldn't be tall. The Northern Virginia lot chosen was roughly pentagon-shaped, so that defined the building. A different non-pentagonal site was then chosen, but since everyone was in such a goddamned hurry, the shape was never changed. Bureaucratic Murphy's Law-ism at it's best!

Business as usual: 1, Left-wing loons: 0. The moderates I know who consistently voted democrat claimed to do so because they liked a split government. I guess they're getting what they wished for. The ones who were naive enough to think this would change anything, not so much.

Those of you who pinned your balanced budget hopes on the Democrats are pleased to be sitting down and shutting up now. Of course, Democrats are supposed to be the tax-and-spend party, so this isn't much of a surprise. All that bleating about balancing budgets confused me for awhile, I guess.

Hey, at least their ethics package is moving along smartly. Oh... wait...

I mean, changing ethics rules and overhauling budget priorities was part of their mandate, right?

Via Instapundit.

The Godfather: An economic treatise and libertarian showpiece. I suppose.

Via Econlog.

The gyrations mainstream media reporters have to go through to not report on the economic success story that is the Bush administration tax cuts are getting harder and harder to hide. And I most definitely agree with the comment that the economic turnaround will be front-page news should Hillary Clinton be sworn into office. Republicans overseeing an economic recovery are, after all, just so much "dog bites man" news.

Unfortunately for Ms. Clinton, if elected getting credit for the previous administration's recovery will be a double-edged sword. If the inevitable business cycles cause a contraction during her hypothetical tenure I do not think the media will give her a pass. A Clinton administration failing to bring prosperity would after all most definitely be "man bites dog" news.

Via Instapundit.

We're gradually turning ourself into a nation of burger-flippers, allowing greedy corporations to outsource all the really good jobs to places like India or Mexico. So goes the progressive party line. But is that really what's happening? It would seem the truth is far more nuanced, and optimistic, than the doom-sayers would have you believe.

Yes, another Skeptical Optimist link. Whaddaya want? The guy's interesting! S'our blog, we'll link what we want! So there!

Fred Thompson:

From the enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1791 until the 20th century, no one seriously argued that the Second Amendment dealt with anything but an individual right — along with all other nine original amendments. [Civil-rights attorney and gun-law expert Don] Kates writes that not one court or commentator denied it was a right of individual gun owners until the last century. Judges and commentators in the 18th and 19th century routinely described the Second Amendment as a right of individuals. And they expressly compared it to the other rights such as speech, religion, and jury trial.

All in all, a nice follow-up to the Penn and Teller show we linked up early this week. Except, you know, without pink pistols and a giant ugly guy with glasses, sort of thing.

Via Instapundit.

... same as the old boss:

For now, it appears that the problem is less with Pelosi’s [conflict of interest] disclosure on this particular earmark and more with the state of earmark reform in general. The Democrats swept into power making a lot of noise about cleaning up the “culture of corruption” in Washington. Earmark reform was a big part of their stated agenda. First, they put a “moratorium on earmarks” until new rules governing them could be put into place. Then the House passed new earmark-disclosure requirements

...

But that’s where Democrats left it. The House rules apply only to the House. The Senate lumped earmark reform into its ethics and lobbying bill, which is now languishing in conference and has yet to take effect. Nevertheless, the Democrats must think these half-measures constitute thorough earmark reform, because the moratorium is long gone. The Water Resources Development Bill contains, along with Pelosi’s earmark, more than 800 others. Perhaps the most egregious is a provision to add sand to a California beach famous for its annual sandcastle competition.

Last year, everyone was talking about how it took Democrats some forty years of legislative control before they were so rotten Terminex men had become a real threat, while it took the Republicans a little more than a decade to do the same. It seems the Democrats are now returning the favor, abandoning their "changed, and better" principals orders of magnitude faster than their elephantine predecessors.

The silence coming from the left side of the peanut gallery is quite deafening.

Via (and title shamelessly stolen from) Instapundit.

I'd long ago thought it had been conclusively proven Iran was providing significant supplies to back the insurgency in Iraq. However, it seems a lot of people out there still don't believe it. Well, don't listen to me, listen to him.

One of the more basic rules of warfare is, "when things are going badly, don't open another front to fix them."* Therefore it seems to me unwise to start bombing the crap out of Iran, no matter how richly they deserve it. However, if this doesn't constitute a clarion call for increased sanctions by the international community, I'm not sure what else would. With the change in administration in France, perhaps the time is right for another Security Council push?

----
* It's just possible the administration didn't violate this by opening a front in Iraq with an unsettled Afghanistan. At the time, as I recall, the major portion of that conflict had ended. At any rate, the insurgency there has never seemed to be as violent and energetic as that in Iraq.

But it's only just possible. Others, I'm sure, will vociferously disagree.

It took me my entire lunch break to watch it, but Penn and Teller's take on gun control was worth it. Considering the mighty efforts gun control enthusiasts expend trying to restrict this defining part of the American experience, I'm quite glad the founding fathers made it second in importance only to the freedom of speech and religion. It most likely would've been lost completely by now had they not enshrined it so.

Inconvenient truths, indeed:

[I]magine two lines on a piece of graph paper. The first rises to a crest, then slopes sharply down, levels off and rises slowly once more. The other has no undulations. It rises in a smooth, slow arc. The first, wavy line is the worldwide CO2 tonnage produced by humans burning coal, oil and natural gas. It starts in 1928, at 1.1 gigatons (i.e., 1.1 billion metric tons), and peaks in 1929 at 1.17 gigatons. The world, led by its mightiest power, plummets into the Great Depression and by 1932 human CO2 production has fallen to 0.88 gigatons a year, a 30 percent drop. Then, in 1933, the line climbs slowly again, up to 0.9 gigatons.

And the other line, the one ascending so evenly? That's the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, parts per million (ppm) by volume, moving in 1928 from just under 306, hitting 306 in 1929, 307 in 1932 and on up. Boom and bust, the line heads up steadily. These days it's at 380. The two lines on that graph proclaim that a whopping 30 percent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didn't even cause a 1 ppm drop in the atmosphere's CO2. It is thus impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from people burning fossil fuels.

Read the whole thing, then come back and accuse me of being a neocon shill for big oil. It warms my heart so, when you do that.

Via Siflay.

Looks like some of Everest's most macabre landmarks are going to finally be covered up. Every documentary about an ascent of Everest I've ever seen always includes comments about the corpses littering the various base camps and trails that lead to the summit. You'd think a "sporting activity" which includes such stark reminders of the price of failure would gradually lose its popularity. Since it's people we're talking about here, you'd of course be wrong.

Making the rounds: The New York Times is actually reporting on positive progress on the war in Iraq. I've read things like this for perhaps a week or so on various in-country blogs, so to me it's not a huge surprise. To the MSM? Ah, well, better late than never I suppose.

If I'm looking at this one right (no promises there), it provides further proof to bolster the argument that well-compensated CEOs generally repay that compensation with increased earnings and growth. I'm not surprised that there a few (but only a few) "upper-left" types... as Jason (from whom I found the graphic) notes, some of the industries are cyclical, so it may just be a snapshot issue. Like him, I think the real warning would be if a CEO got in the upper-left and stayed there. That you can create a graph that actually shows these things is pretty neat. That Luddites like previously mentioned Mr. Brush ignore such information is not surprising at all.

Ron gets a puritanical no-prize for bringing us a typical rant against the "outrageousness" of CEO compensation in the corporate world today. While warning shareholders that the boss may be playing fast and loose with one's money is in general a good thing, further reading of Mr. Brush's other articles indicates to me his motives come more from envy than anything else.

The bottom line is, if the CEO is steering the ship well, with profits rising and costs declining, why not give him or her nice things? The costs of what a bad, albeit cheaper, CEO would do to a large company's bottom line will most certainly exceed the costs of keeping a good one.

Fussing about a $6,000 wine allowance is a good idea when a company, no matter what its size, is struggling. Doing so when that company just increased profits by 30% and raked in billions of dollars in profits for its shareholders, well, that's just clucking to me.

Film critic Roger Ebert doesn't care what anyone thinks he looks like after a recent operation to stop his cancer from spreading. Might not be able to talk, but he most definitely can still write, much to the chagrin of film executives all over the world.

Bryan Caplan: "Yes, separating newspapers saves paper. But it costs time. Why don't we recycle in our house? Because our time is worth more than a pile of newspaper." I resist most recycling efforts for the same reason. However, economic truth has no affect on wifely disapproval, so things end up in the recycle bin anyway. You see, there are costs, and then there are costs.

"Could it be that we have won the war but are too dense to realize it?" It would be nice to think that was at least possible.

Via Instapundit.

Mike J. gets a no-prize that throws rocks at hippies for bringing us George Will's incisive counter to the current global warming fad. Readers of The Skeptical Environmentalist (and if you're not one, you should be) will not find much new here, but that's not surprising. Like Vegas magicians, global warming enthusiasts have done little more than re-tread tricks discovered (and, for the most part, debunked) years ago.

Instapundit had an interesting paper to note that's quite relevant to today's tragic shootings at V. Tech. For those unfamiliar with the layout of the state, VT is well south of us, so no worries there. However, VT banners, stickers, and flags must be the most common college logo I see in the area, so this will most likely be hitting many longer-term locals much closer to home.

Frakken maniacs...

Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team.

Reading the above in detail sure makes me look at this article in a different light. I recall reading The Post's initial article on the breaking "scandal," and I remember it being every bit the snickering hatchet job The Wall Street Journal op-ed is criticizing.

Via Instapundit

Considering how relentlessly negative the Post's coverage of the war has been lately, I was quite surprised to find them running an op-ed that actually talks about real, positive progress in that conflict. Probably Krauthammer's syndication deal means they have to run what he writes no matter what he writes?

Via Instapundit.

I agree with Jane: the real question about CEO pay is... so what? Those of you who regularly talk about "corporate evil" should read this one, and very slowly. Then come back and tell me how government is the "solution."

Via Instapundit.

So you're gonna pony up for the latest 1080p television technology. Will you see a difference? Maybe, maybe not. If the article is to be believed, 1080p (and the high-def formats that can reach that resolution) substantially increases the size of a TV you can have in a given space, instead of improving the perceived image you get from a set of a fixed size. In layman's terms (if I'm reading it right) the great advantage to 1080p is that TVs can be much bigger, or can be placed in a room much smaller, without showing a jagged or blurred image from a given viewing distance.

This actually tracks well with what I've seen in electronics stores. The blu-ray demonstrations are damned impressive, but only because I'm standing right next to the screen. Step a dozen feet away or more, and the effect is much less noticeable. Considering the modest size of our living room, and the fact that we often have people scattered about the room quite close to the screen, it looks like another plus to our planned Christmas upgrade to new display technologies for the home theater rig.

Hey man, nobody's perfect:

What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.

Ron gets a no-prize that'll throw rocks at hippies for bringing us this all-too-often ignored counterpoint to the Al Gorians of the world.

The more time that children spent in child care, the more likely their sixth-grade teachers were to report problem behavior.

Also, children who got good quality child care before entering kindergarten had better vocabulary scores in the fifth grade than did youngsters who received lower quality care.

And this is news?

One outlet reports cautious optimism on the troop surge in Iraq. The next day, another reports deepening pessimism.

Were I paranoid, I'd speculate that MSM heavyweights were trying to do their Democratic buds a favor by spinning the war in a slightly positive way to show what a great thing it was to have "rational" people in charge. Now that it is becoming clear that a) this also helps the president and b) the Dems are going to spend most of their time in pointless pissing contests instead of trying to get things done, the standard negativity is returning to the forefront.

But, knowing only to well the truth in the axiom, "never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence," I'm more inclined to think Iraq is still a bubbling gumbo of conflict so complex nobody on the street can claim to have a handle on the whole thing. Which, of course, doesn't prevent the media from trying.

First link via Instapundit.

The Chicago Cubs are now officially for sale. Will this lead them to greatness, or more Wrigley-esq mediocrity? Only time will tell!

Also (eventually) from Instapundit, this first-hand account of what it's like to have one's house searched by US troops. The catch this time? The subjects were none other than Omar and Mohammed, of Iraq Now.

I hear it all the time, "if you're such a big damned supporter of the war, why don't you send (yourself | your children | your next-of-kin)? Eh? Hypocrite!"

I just found a nice counterpoint:

But you can't [claim to stand for freedom and human rights and then attack everything America has done and tried to do in Iraq over the last four years]. Indeed, by declaring the whole thing illegitimate, all you're doing is siding with the Islamophobes of the world who claim the Muslims and the Arabs are far too savage, backward, and primitive to respect things like democracy and human rights. Indeed, you're implicitly siding the the Jihadwatch crowd.

It's high time someone told you people this, whether you're Muslims or not.

The sad thing is I've had private conversations during which people actually do admit to believing such things about Arabs. Racism isn't just about hating blacks, you know.

Via Instapundit.

Just don't call them weapons of mass destruction. Because, you know, it's only a chemical weapon when it's loaded in the barrel of a gun, yes? Via Instapundit.

Fark linked up this interesting look at the peculiar Amish practice of "Rumspringa," the custom of letting young Amish adults do whatever they want in the modern world without fear of shunning until they formally join the Amish church. As usual, the real thing is more sophisticated than it's portrayed on TV.

While the answer to the question, "how historically accurate is the movie 300?" is rather predictable, the author still provides a good look at what Sparta was really like during classical times. Expecting a film based on a comic book graphic novel to even vaguely represent an historical event is rather like expecting Ann Coulter and John Edwards to elope to the Bahamas, but if it gets people interested in the classics and finding out what really happened, I call that a Good Thing.

I'm not particularly surprised scientists who doubt that global warming is caused by human activity are being threatened. They are, after all, going after one of the most sacred of leftist cows. What is interesting is how widely these sorts of things are being reported. Could it be that, after Al Gore's triumph, the media have decided in their famously contrary way to foment a backlash? Could it simply be that those of us who have our doubts are now officially sick and tired of it, and are not taking it anymore? Are the cow-eyed idealistic college students who drove most of this finally becoming grizzled, disappointed cynics like the rest of us?

All the world wonders...

We LOVE Vegas! We went to Vegas ONCE! ONCE I say! It was a nightmare to get there, but we had a great time!

I have decided I want to move to the desert. Nice and sunny all the time. Humming birds... tacky city... yadda yadda yadda...

Then I came across this this.

An interesting day to day blog. Informative on what being a cocktail waitress is really like. TIP THOSE GALS DAMMIT!

Ok, and she has an adorable baby to boot!

Take a read. It's quite fun!

While it hasn't come up recently in any of my own arguments, the whole "why don't we have privately funded defenses?" question seems to be ably put down here. So all of you who were sharpening that particular argumentative knife are pleased to be putting it back now.

James Randi: "Without good folks like you to stand up against this humbuggery, we’d have no soldiers out there to offer a defense of reason." Since John Edward's Sci-Fi show seems long gone, I thought he'd also faded into oblivion. I suppose when you have extremely rich and powerful people like Oprah Winfrey believing you, oblivion is just a temporary thing.

Yet more signs the latest Baghdad crackdown is working, this time from someone who actually calls a relative who lives there.

Via Instapundit.

It’s very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bollocks.

For me, if the effects of global warming will take a hundred years or more to manifest, the world will quite easily adjust (as long as market forces are allowed to work). If the effects will manifest in just a few years, there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it, and trying will just cost us the money we'll need to fix things when the disaster hits.

Look, people, when you pin these scientists down they all admit their models don't work. Their models don't work! And you're asking me to allow the government to spend millions of tax dollars trying to make it work? Having the government sacrifice poverty-curing growth trying to make it work? When we know already it doesn't work?

Welcome to 1917 redux. Please pick up your red flags by the door. I'll be standing against the wall with the rest of the Kulaks. Take your time. Your aim will be better then.

It looks like the push for Baghdad security might actually be working. A tipping point perhaps? One can only hope.

Via Instapundit.

Makin' our own rulz.

Yes, it's amusing how quickly Bush got the "co-operate with the congress" religion when his party lost the majority. I'd counter, however, that's it's much less amusing to see how quickly the Democrats seem to have traded their lofty ideals for business-as-usual politics. My God man, he had $90k in his refrigerator!

More detail is now available on the Dumas tornado. Looks like it first hit about a hundred yards away from my old grade school (and right next to old Highway 65 and the rail road tracks) and then moved across new residential developments until it crossed the current Highway 65 and creamed what used to be the Wal-Mart. There was a mysterious abandoned hotel we used to regularly scare ourselves driving past in the area, I imagine it's finally been blown away by this thing.

It's nice to hear major businesses are making a commitment to rebuild. Getting declared a major disaster area will do that for you, I suppose. This article also includes the first quote from a name I actually remember, Dwight Hill (a family friend who once lived near us).

Finally, A Minnesota (of all places) news team has more video. Looks like the McD's I worked at in my college years was 'asploded and the Pizza Hut I worked at in High School was knocked around a bit. Bad luck to hire me, I suppose!

Every time I think the Dems have wised up and actually started thinking about new things, they go and prove me wrong again. I'm reasonably impressed with how Pelosi et. al. have managed to leash their baying loons so far. Then again, it took about two years for my side to lose control of ours, so the clock is definitely ticking on this one. Of course, two years puts us on the other side of an election.

Which means, if things stay the course, America has a good chance of one side in charge of one part of the government, with the other side holding the other part. The names'll change, but the song will stay the same. Hell, there's a decent chance it'll all get swapped around with a Clinton in office again. Lordy, lordy.

Via Econlog.

In case any of you still don't know who Milton Friedman was and what he stood for, this Reason article does a very nice job of summarizing it. I watched a recent TV biography on him, which covered the incident of some wack Trostkyite disrupting his Nobel prize ceremony. I get insecure when people tell me I dress funny (which is to say, often), I can't imagine the strength of belief it must've took to keep plugging away under such extreme pressure to conform.

Being right helped a lot, of course.

Via Instapundit.

Oh, and as for all that "troops = mercenaries" crap being bandied about by the loony lefties:

One of [fellow economist and draft opponent William H.] Meckling's favorite stories, which his widow, Becky, recalled in a recent interview, was of an exchange between Mr. Friedman and General William Westmoreland, then commander of all U.S. troops in Vietnam. In his testimony before the commission, Mr. Westmoreland said he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. Mr. Friedman interrupted, "General, would you rather command an army of slaves?" Mr. Westmoreland replied, "I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves." Mr. Friedman then retorted, "I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher."

Those of you who claim I never, ever admit the other side has anything worthwhile to say should absolutely not read this paper. No way. Don't want to destroy illusions, you know.

While I'm by nature suspicious of progressive ideas (especially when they make this much sense), it is nice to see someone out there is coming up with different ideas for how government should work. I'm not saying I agree with them, but they do represent a good starting place.

Via Econlog.

Too cute~!

Are they sure it's not their teeth?"

EXACTLY like the 1920's swimwear!

While, in my own opinion, asking is environmentalism a new religion is sort of like asking if the Pope is Polish German, it's always nice to see a new take on the stance. This time, the article profiles the author of a book which takes on climate modelers, who's models disagree so frequently and wildly that when they do actually agree, "it says more about the self-regulating group psychology of the modelling community than it does about global warming and the economy."

Via Siflay.

Don't praise your kids for being smart, praise them for working hard. It apparently works amazingly well. A very interesting article to me, because this:

... For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.

... describes my experience in school to a "T." I eventually "got over it," but I wonder how much more quickly I would've overcome my difficulties if I'd learned early on that it was the work I put in that made the difference, not any so-called "natural ability."

I don't begrudge my parents for their actions... even the author admits it's quite hard to re-work praise habits. It also didn't help that I grew up in the heart of the "feel good" praise-driven radical school revolution. I can remember quite clearly my parent's relief when we moved from the "success-based" report cards of my early grade levels to ones that actually assigned a letter. In middle school my classmates and I were all quite stunned to learn it was imposs