"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
-Benjamin Franklin
"Doesn't this guy know how governments work?"
-Benjamin Franklin
"Doesn't this guy know how governments work?"
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Friends
The Therapy Sessions
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
It's time for a crackdown in Fallujah
Stop playing around with these guys. There have to be consequences for this: Four US contractors killed in Fallujah.
I suppose John Kerry will want to run away, or try to hand things off to the corrupt and thoroughly incompetent United Nations, just like Al Qaeda would want.
It is useful to remember Winston Churchill, speaking in 1934:
"Many people think that the best way to escape war is to dwell upon its horror. They flaunt the grisly photographs before their eyes. They fill their ears with tales of carnage. They dilate upon the ineptitude of generals and admirals."
But dictators always find a reason to make trouble, Churchill said:
"They will say: you are rich; we are poor. You seem well-fed; we are hungry. You have the past; let us have the future." And soon the day comes when they say: "You are weak; we are strong."
Like Churchill, we are at the beginning of a long and costly global war.
His war was against Hitler, and ours is against Arab tryanny.
Ours - which may soon involve nuclear weapons - is - in some ways - more frightening.
But it's also important to remember that we are winning:
Survey finds hope in occupied Iraq
An opinion poll suggests most Iraqis feel their lives have improved since the war in Iraq began about a year ago.
Steven Den Beste:
We have to respond, and we have to respond massively. But that response must be targeted only at those truly involved in this attack. Sunnis collectively must not feel themselves victimized by it. And that's why this is exactly the right response:U.S. troops on Thursday vowed to use overwhelming force to enter the volatile Iraqi town of Falluja and hunt down those who killed and mutilated four American contractors.
Marines took up positions on the outskirts of the restive town west of Baghdad where insurgents ambushed the contractors on Wednesday, but the U.S. army's deputy director of operations Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said they would return.
"Coalition forces will respond," Kimmitt told a news conference. "They are coming back and they are going to hunt down the people responsible for this bestial act.
"It will be at a time and a place of our choosing. It will be methodical, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming."
What is needed is a response which simultaneously punishes al Qaeda and reassures the Sunnis. But to do that, there has to be preparation. Our intelligence people now are busting their butts trying to learn everything they can about this attack and those responsible for it. Until they begin to make headway in that process, we must wait...
...And if we succeed (in democratizing Iraq), and if it actually does inspire liberalization elsewhere, it will be a catastrophe for the Islamists, and they know it. The insurgency in Iraq now is attempting to make that fail, by trying to prevent any reconciliation with the Sunnis.
I agree.
Another reason to like NCLB
There aren't many, but I like exposing people who don't really give a damn about education: Pa. won't release teacher test data:
The Pennsylvania Department of Education has refused a request by The Inquirer to reveal how many middle school teachers failed certification exams in each of the state's 501 school districts.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, seventh- and eighth-grade teachers must have certification in the subjects they teach by June 2006. Teachers who do not have the certification can obtain it by passing exams in those subjects.
Worst debacle since McGovern?
I'm not sure if Dale Franks is right, but I just like the way he puts things:
So I don't buy the argument that the coming election will be another nail-biter. I think, all other things being equal, Kerry is gonna get beaten like a red-headed step-child, and by October it'll be so obvious that the Democrats will start looking at how they can pull a Torricelli on this guy's campaign. I honestly think this is shaping up to be worse debacle than McGovern.
Oh, Richard Cohen....
The world is changing.
The herd of great beasts lumbers in search of water.
Once they were the giants of the land, feared by all. But now they are steadily being overtaken by quick thinking, warm-blooded, scurrying little creatures.
The herd is ignorant of its coming extinction, ignorant of everything except the importance of continuing its plodding journey to quench its thirst.
But a single paleo-liberal ignores the group, and turns his head to see the approaching meteor.
He isn't quite able to grasp what it all means:
Bit by bit, the UN is making itself look both silly and bigoted in the place that matters most to it - the U.S. The UN's persistently one-sided resolutions, its proclivity to blame Israel for everything and the Palestinians for nothing - not even for repeatedly rejecting every peace plan offered them - reduces it to irrelevance.
But this dinosaur still feels that US foreign policy should be subject to the UN's OK.
He just feels that way, he can't explain it.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Come on, William!
Despite numerous articles and copious amounts of information, William Raspberry still can't figure it out: I Still Don't Understand Why We're In Iraq
William, repeat slowly after me: we are trying to create the world's first Arab democracy. That's D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y. It is a very important form of government that will hopefully allow the Arab world to solve its own numerous problems and not just blame them on Jews and Americans.
Oh dear. I still don't think William understands.
I have no problem with somebody who thinks our adventure in Iraq will not work. They need to be heard.
I have a problem with somebody who refuses to understand why we are there and what we are trying to do. That much should be clear to anyone by now.Every American should know why we are there, and should hope that we succeed. If we fail, the results for us will be very bad, and for the Arab world they will be catastrophic.
William Raspberry will be on display at your local museum someday, and example of the exotic beasts that once roamed Washington in great herds, and are now (all too slowly) dying out: Clueless Paleoliberals.
Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and understand that men like this once swayed masses.
Today his simple brain can't wrap around a basic concept like the importance of liberty. He is lost in the past, muttering about Vietnam, busing and the evils of Nixon.
By the way, please don't feed the tard. He's on a special diet.
The advantage of ADHD
When I used to teach chemistry at Villanova, I was annoyed by a growing problem in universities today. I wrote a piece on it and published it in the college paper, and I got myself in a little hot water.
Here is the piece, and there are footnotes at the bottom:
On the first day of class, one of my students spoke with me privately. I must give him fifty percent longer than his competition on tests and quizzes, he told me. He has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I must keep this secret. If the other students find out, they are likely to feel cheated at the special advantage he gets.
They should.
Learning Disabilities (which increasingly include disorders as benign as “Test Taking Anxiety”) are becoming common at the college level: Currently, anywhere from three to five percent of students claim to have ADHD or a similar learning disability(1), and the number is growing (2).
These students are entitled to special privileges: extra time to take tests, free tutoring, private (sometimes unmonitored) testing environments, exemptions from standard disciplinary rules, personal note takers and, in some instances, laptop computers (3). Some psychiatrists even believe ADHD students should have special access to calculators and reference books on tests (4). All of these “accommodations” are given confidentially, and no mention of this advantage is made on their transcripts. When these “special” students take the SAT, MCAT, and LSAT (the medical and law school admissions tests), the tests are un-timed and can be taken privately (5).
It is a chilling thought: This college student, who today can’t take a timed test or gets nervous trying to think in a room with other students, could tomorrow be your child’s emergency room doctor.
I don’t deny that ADHD students are different. They are. And learning disabilities like dyslexia are very real. But despite all the opinions from the “experts,” I continue to be an ADHD agnostic.
Psychiatrists look down on people who, like me, suspect that most of these “learning disabilities” might – just possibly - be symptoms of undisciplined home environments. They know - they just know - that such thoughts are the prejudices of unwashed commoners, people unblessed with advanced degrees in psychiatry.
But even the psychiatrists have their doubts.
In 1998, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommended “a more consistent set of diagnostic procedures and practice guidelines (6),” and added that “further research is necessary to firmly establish ADHD as a brain disorder (7),” leaving open the possibility that ADHD might be an environmentally determined problem. The ADHD explosion is clearly a largely American phenomena (8), and its “sufferers” tend to be male, and richer and whiter than the general population (9).
But psychiatrists have been busy since then, and ADHD diagnoses have increased alarmingly (10).
Fearful of lawsuits from parents (11) who can’t understand the academic sluggishness of their undisciplined children, schools plunged in headfirst. Society’s bill for special education was $40 billion in 1995(12), much of that coming because of the new learning disability trend. To pay for these expensive, mandatory federal programs, districts turn to the only revenue source available: They raise school taxes (13).
The money is often wasted. As the NIH sadly concludes: there are “consistent findings that despite the improvement in core symptoms” due to Ritalin and expensive therapy, “there is little improvement in academic achievement or social skills” in children treated for ADHD (14).
A joint report from the Progressive Policy Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation laments that the education community now “attempts to serve an ever-growing population of youngsters with an ever-lengthening list of problems and difficulties, some of them ambiguous in origin, subjective in identification, and uncertain as to a solution…particularly in the LD (Learning Disability) area (15).”
These students are now filtering into our colleges, where they often receive the same unfair advantages they received in high school. Sadly, very few academics have been able to bring themselves to an amazingly simple conclusion about knowledge:
The ability to concentrate on a problem and solve it quickly is not an optional aspect of competence.
It is an integral part of competence.
But what happens next? Is there really any demand for workers who, because of their documented inability to concentrate will take, say, fifty percent longer to do the same job as their peers?
Of course there isn’t.
An employee who takes fifty percent longer to do a job is going to be fired, especially if he plans to bill his company for the extra time. These people will learn to work as fast and as well as their peers, some say. But if they can do this, it calls into question whether this disability was ever a disability at all.
I have a grimmer view about the future: I believe that when these “special” people are fired, they’ll sue, claiming discrimination. You can already hear the lawyers licking their lips.
We can only hope they lose: The productivity of our nation depends on it.
One of my students failed a test the other day. She has to study, I said. She told me confidentially that she think she has a problem concentrating on tests. She’s going to talk to some people about getting this documented. She wanted me to know.
Oh brother.
1. ADHD claims: NIH statement (point number 3) on ADHD, November 1998 available at this web address: ( http://consensus.nih.gov/cons/cons.htm ): search by date (This web address doesn’t work when I try to copy the link) November 1998 = ADHD report). This fact is in the intro (pg. 8 of 45).
2. ADHD growing: pg 46/371 (this is 371 pages long when opened as Adobe Acrobat file. This is page number of 28 of the report) (middle of page) in the report written by the Progressive Policy Institute/ Thomas Fordham Foundation. Available at this website: http://www.edexcellence.net/fordham/foreports.html
click “Rethinking Special Education for the Twenty First Century.)
also: Running on Ritalin by Laurence H. Diller, M.D; Bantam Books.1998 Pg. 2.
3.accommodations: pg. 48/371 (Page number 30 - bottom of page) PPI/Fordham report
4.. E. Hallowell and J. Ratey. Answers to Distraction. Pantheon Books, NY 1994 (see accompanying faxed sheet, pg.36 of this book)
5. SAT: 48/371 PPI (page #30 - bottom of page)
LSAT: http://www.lsat.org/LSAC.asp?url=lsac/accommodated-testing.asp
MCAT: http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/about/accommodations.htm
6. NIH (November 1998) report in Conclusions (pg. 3 of th report, pg. 7 of 45 on Adobe Acrobat) .
7. NIH (November 1998) report in “1. What Is the Scientific Evidence To Support ADHD as a Disorder?” (top of page 7) 10/45 on the Adobe Acrobat Reader
8. American: page 8 middle of the page (pg 11 of 45) NIH
9. Richer, whiter and wealthier: PPI/ Fordham 49/371 (page 31 top of page)
10. alarming increase: 46/371 PPI/Fordham (page 28 top to middle)
11. lawsuits: 51/371 (page 33) PPI/Fordham – top of page.
12. $40 billion 21/371 PPI/Fordham (page 2 top of page)
13. taxes 344/371 PPI/Fordham (top of page 336)
14. Not effective for ADHD Page 10 NIH)13/35 NIH
15. PPI quote 347/371 PPI/Fordham (pg. 339 middle)
Monday, March 29, 2004
Leave the dog out of it!
The Sun Newspaper Online
AN ARMY sniffer dog was the target of an ASSASSINATION bid by Iraqi guerillas because he found so many weapons.
What a good dog!
(Thanks to Rick)
I pledge allegiance...to the golden, crapping bird on high
A website grades the flags of various nations. Quite funny: Failing Grades
One that does poorly is Zimbabwe's, which features eye-jarring colors and a hawk sitting on a toilet:
I'm glad I don't have to pledge allegiance to that!
(Thanks to All Agitprop, All the Time)
Nine foot inflatable Satan terrorizes southern folk group!
It looked too fake to be real, but it's for sale on Amazon:Amazon.com: Music: Satan Is Real
You can listen to samples from the group (including the cover song) on that website. All of the poor fans of this group advise that you can't judge the album by its cover on this one.
But the cover is all I care about.
(Thanks to Die Puny Humans)
Blaming the victim
Hunger in the U.S.:
Households without money to buy enough food often have to rely on cheaper, high calorie foods to cope with limited money for food and stave off hunger. Families try to maximize caloric intake for each dollar spent, which can lead to over consumption of calories and a less healthful diet.
This is how liberals explain away one of the most stunning paradoxes in the US. The paradox, simply stated, is this:
If so many Americans suffer from "hunger," why is OBESITY the biggest health problem afflicting the poorest Americans?
As usual, the left has half of it right: the poor eat too much junk food. But poor people don't eat bad food because they are trying to "maximize caloric intake."
That's bullshit.
They do it because they don't understand basic home economics, the most important lesson of which is this: if you want to save money, DO THE WORK YOURSELF.
If you learn to cook, you can feed a family of four an astonishingly small amount of money.
I love to cook, and I bet I can feed four people for a week on less than $10/day.
Here's how I would do it:
My Grocery List (prices in suburban Philly, March 2004)
Potatoes (5 lb)......................................................$1.99
Celery (1 bunch)....................................................$1.39
Cabbage(1 head)..................................................$0.98
Onions (3 lb).........................................................$1.69
Vegetable oil(24 oz).............................................$1.19
Sugar (1 lb)...........................................................$0.43
Flour (5 lb)............................................................$1.92
Eggs (1 doz).........................................................$1.99
Rice (2 lb).............................................................$1.39
Spaghetti(2 lb).....................................................$1.75
Tomato sauce(28 oz)........................$0.79 X 2 = $1.58
Whole chickens (2-3 lbs)...... $3.00 X 3 (birds) = $9.00
Ground beef (2 lb)................................................$4.58
Milk (1 gallon, 1% milkfat)..................$2.44 X 2 =$4.88
Cheese (Monteray Jack, 10 oz)............................$3.50
White bread (1 loaf)............................................$1.99
Sliced ham (3/4 lb)..............................................$2.25
Hot Dogs (pkg of 8).............................................$1.29
Frozen vegetables (10 oz pkg).......$0.85 X 7 = $5.95
Lettuce (1 head ).................................................$0.69
Tomatoes (1 lb)...................................................$0.69
Butter (2 sticks)...................................................$2.19
Orange Juice, frozen conc. (can).......$1.38 X 2 = $2.76
Macaroni (16 oz, dry)...........................................$1.02
Kidney Beans (32 oz, dried).................................$1.43
Cereal (Puffed Rice, large box).............................$3.25
Oatmeal................................................................$1.36
______________________________________________
Total ..................................................................$63.13
Just the basics. No processed food.
That is an average of $9.01 a day to feed a family of four, less than it would cost to take for the whole family to eat dinner at McDonald's. Granted, nobody is going to get fat on the menu (and that is part of the point), but they aren't going to have "hunger" or malnutrition either.
Here is what I would do with this for a week:
Sunday
Breakfast: Cheese omelette, oatmeal and OJ
Lunch: Macaroni and Cheese
Dinner: Meatloaf (with tomato sauce glaze), mashed potatoes and peas (milk for the kids)
Monday
Breakfast: Cereal, oatmeal and OJ
Lunch: Chicken noodle soup, home-made bread
Dinner: Panfried breaded chicken breasts stuffed with cheese and spinach, served under tomato sauce and over rice (milk for the kids)
Tuesday
Breakfast: Pancakes, OJ
Lunch: Potato soup and biscuits
Dinner: Salisbury Steak, panfried potatoes, green beans
Wednesday:
Breakfast: French Toast, orange juice
Lunch: Ham sandwiches with lettuce and tomato, macaroni salad, leftover soup
Dinner: Hot Dogs, cooked cabbage on the side, salad
Thursday:
Breakfast: Biscuits, cereal and orange juice
Lunch: Chile con carne with cheese, over rice.
Dinner: Spaghetti with meatballs, green beans
Friday:
Breakfast: Cereal, OJ
Lunch: Cabbage rolls stuffed with rice and beef, in tomato sauce
Dinner: Fried Chicken (wings and drumsticks), beans and corn
Saturday:
Breakfast: Cereal, OJ
Lunch: Grilled cheese sandwiches, salads
Dinner: Chicken thighs in tomato sauce, over spaghetti, spinach
Yes, things are tight, and the meals won't be huge. But nobody's gonna be starving either.
And in reality, poor children qualify for the lunch and breakfast programs at their schools, so making the lunch and breakfast on workdays is probably unrealistic.
The kitchen, of course, should be stocked with extras like mayonaise, vinegar, ketchup, pepper, salt, jam, baking powder, yeast and syrup. But in a typical house, the usage of these things is unlikely to exceed a dollar or two a week.
The menu is lacking in fish, and perhaps I should have made tuna casserole using canned tuna.
If you are willing to cut out cheese, milk and meats, you can live a lot cheaper (with children, though, this would be unacceptable). If you are prepared to live on a real Third World diet (mostly cabbage, rice or potatoes) , you could do it for $20/week.This is how Chinese graduate students live on paltry stipends (about $10,000 a year) in the US and still send most of their money home to their families at the end of the month.
I believe that any person who wishes to apply for food stamps or any other government assistance program must first be required to take a basic home economics and a cooking course.
Our grandmothers - who knew this stuff instinctively - would be laughing at how spoiled and clueless we are.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Ant city
It's great fun to take out your frustrations, imagining that you are giant with a huge magnifying glass, training concentrated sunlight on the helpless people scurrying below: ANT CITY.
As a bonus, I took out a huge gas truck and destroyed the city!
(Thanks to A Bad State of Gruntledness)
Bush lied!
It is worth remembering what we DID find:
(U.S. weapons inspector David) Kay's list is chilling. It includes a secret network of labs and safe houses within the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi foreign intelligence service; bioorganisms kept in scientists' homes, including a vial of live botulinum toxin; and my favorite, 'new research on BW [biological weapons]-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin' -- all 'not declared to the U.N.'
I have been to medical school, and I have never heard of Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever. I don't know one doctor in 100 who has.
It is a rare disease, and you can be sure that Hussein was not seeking a cure.
Lincoln Illinois is going to need more hotel rooms!
If they build it, the Rogers family will be coming! And we won't be the only ones!
This is an artist's rendering of a proposed 305-foot monument of Abraham Lincoln to be built in Lincoln, Ill. Supporters such as Rev. S.M. Davis, a Lincoln pastor who first suggested the statue, say it would be visible for about 20 miles and have hopes it could become one of the biggest tourist attractions in America. (AP Photo/HO)
We won't be able to hold the kids back!
(What is on top of that barrel, by the way? A cut watermelon?)
Medical inflation
The exploding cost of (effectively) socialized medicine!
How can it be tamed?
Why has the cost of laser eye surgery fallen 22 percent in four years? For the same reason the cost of cosmetic surgery has been rising slower than the inflation rate. These elective procedures are generally paid for by individuals, from their own resources.
Individuals paying directly for procedures actually keep costs down?
Who knew?
When I got my laser surgery in 2000, it cost $4500.
Now, at the same facility with the same doctor, the procedure is around $3000.
It is medical disinflation in action!
Friday, March 26, 2004
The truth underneath the fury
Yep, that's about the size of it:
This is the real lesson emerging from the 9/11 Commission hearings if you listen above the partisan din. In their eagerness to insist that Mr. Bush should have acted more pre-emptively before 9/11, the critics are rebutting their own case against the President's aggressive antiterror policy ever since. The implication of their critique is that Mr. Bush didn't repudiate the failed strategy of the Clinton years fast enough.
We're all aggressive, unilateral warriors against terror now.
Bitch slapping to the oldies
Simmons Cited for Slapping Man at Airport
Getting bitch slapped by Richard Simmons doesn't look good for anyone's manhood credentials. It's kind of like having your ass kicked by a little girl.
People always said Richard Simmons seemed...well, a little gay.
Me? I never saw what they were talking about.
No longer Israel's problem
USS Clueless:
For the last 55 years, the Palestinians have had a problem. That problem is their refusal to accept the existence of Israel.
For the last 55 years the Palestinians have managed to make themselves into a problem for Israel. Sharon has now figured out a way to make it so that it will no longer be Israel's problem. With a pullout from Gaza, a completion of the wall around the West Bank and a pullout there, the Palestinians may well still have the will to target Israel but their means and their opportunity to do so will be drastically reduced.
Attacks on Israelis will continue, but the rate will be much lower than now, which is lower than it was a year ago. And there's good reason to believe that it will be reduced enough to bring about a crossover in Israel. It will no longer cripple Israel's economy or tie its politics into knots. That will be a major change.
The Palestinian strategy against Israel has always been the strategy that a small child uses against his parents when he throws a screaming tantrum in public. The child wants something and the parents refuse it, and the child has no direct ability to force his parents to change their minds. So the kid makes a scene and attracts attention, hoping the parents will yield in order to shut him up....
...All parents soon learn, if they didn't already know it, that giving in to a child's tantrum is a really good way to get a lot more of them. More to the point, doing anything which the kid interprets as being a reward for the tantrum, even if it was not intended to be, will get you more tantrums. It doesn't matter why the parents did what they did; what matters is whether the brat decides that tantrums are effective. By the same token, anything which seems to militants to be a positive result of their attacks will encourage more attacks.
Leave it to Den Beste to put the Palestinian problem in the context of Parenting 101.
The second phase
In city seen as Iraqi success, extremists rise
BASRA, Iraq - Given the choice, Rana al-Asadi wouldn't wear a head scarf. But a few weeks ago, the 22-year-old English major at Basra University decided she didn't have that choice anymore.
Menacing groups of men have been stopping cars at the university gates and haranguing women whose heads are uncovered, accusing them of violating Islamic law. Male students have accosted them as they walked to class. As Asadi spoke to a reporter in a courtyard, a scruffy-looking man handed out flyers that likened uncovered women to prostitutes and murderers.
"I fear them," she said simply.
The Inquirer is starting the next phase of anti-Iraq war campaign.
So far this is play-by-play since last year.
Early March, 2003: Iraq is going to a bloodbath, with hundreds of thousands dead civilians and possibly ten thousand dead Americans! The Iraqis will fight us tooth and nail!Saddam Hussein will attack Americans and his own people with his chemical weapons!
Late April, 2003: After a quick and relatively antiseptic war, the US will be unable to keep a lid on Iraqi chaos! Iraqis are gald to have Saddam, but they are eager to fight Americans!
Late Summer, 2003: Iraq looks more stable, but the US faces a long war of attrition that will eventually force it to admit it needs the UN to stablize things!
Early winter, 2003: It's another Vietnam! We are backing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi police who helping us stabilize things, but they are hated by their countrymen!
January, 2004: OK, the US is beating the insurgency and the Iraqi police are taking care of crime, but American dreams of democracy for Iraq will turn the situation into a civil war that the US cannot control! The Iraqi people may not want us to leave, but the insurgency will intimidate them into hating the US!
Current: OK, Iraq looks like its on the way to a stable, sovereign, democratic Iraqi government. It looks like the Iraqis think the war was worth it, and they want America to stay until a good government is in place. But these people will never have a real democracy! They are lost in the Middle Ages and they treat their women badly! (This from a country that, for the majority of its existence, didn't even give women the right to vote. Iraqi women will have that right, by the way).
As everyone knows, the editors of the Philadelphia Inquirer are brilliant.
And the Bush Administration is a bunch of fools who can't comprehend the complexities of international relations.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
A reason to be proud of the U.S.
I am happy to be the citizen of a country that stands up for the idea that a mass murderer of hundreds of Jews deserved to die:
U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Condemning Killing of Hamas Leader Yassin
Human rights abuse?
Barbarism:
Israel Defense Forces paratroopers caught a retarded Palestinian boy,aged 14, wearing an explosive belt at the Hawara roadblock, south of Nablus, in the West Bank on Wednesday afternoon.
"He told us he didn't want to die. He didn't want to blow up," the officer said...The soldiers then sent the robot to hand the scissors to the boy. He cut off part of the vest and struggled with the rest. "I don't how to get this off," Abdu called to the soldiers.
Where are all the condemnations from human rights organizations?
Oh, the Arabs did it.
Why did I even bother to ask?
(Thanks to Marc)
Spanish for kicking ass
This bullfighter is so busy kicking this bull's ass that he doesn't even notice that he lost his shoe!
Education equality?
Good old Jesse Jackson:
In the past five years Florida has delivered real school choice to more American schoolchildren than anywhere else in the country. Which is no doubt why Jesse Jackson was down in Tallahassee earlier this month calling Governor Jeb Bush's policies 'racist.' He and his allies understand all too well that when poor African-American and Latino children start getting the same shot at a decent education that the children of our politicians do, the bankrupt public education empire starts looking like the Berlin Wall.
Whatever!
Puny Americans! How you fear having your testicles crushed! Weaklings! Zhang Xiao Ju laughs at your fear!:
Former Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Culver City, kicks Zhang Xiao Ju between the legs during a demonstration performed by Buddhist monks at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif.
To hell with the Arabs, the Asians are tougher than we are.
Stupid French Arabs
French Group Suspends Train Bomb Threats
PARIS — A mysterious group that claimed to have planted bombs on the French railroad network announced Thursday it is suspending its terror threats while it improves its ability to carry them out.
Help Wanted: Shadowy terrorist organization seeks skilled bomb maker. Experience destroying civilian targets a plus. Applicant must be a self starter who shares our irrational hatred for infidels. Good salary, benefits. Seventy-two virgin retirement plan available. All explosives provided, but the directions are confusing.
UPDATE: AZF may be a small, incompetent terrorist group, but the French are eager to surrender anyway:
Over the past three months, a group called AZF - thought to consist of no more than two people - has threatened to detonate bombs under trains unless the French state pays a ransom, originally set at €5m (£3.3m).
The French government has communicated with the blackmailers by telephone, and through coded newspaper small ads. It has also made two unsuccessful attempts to pay the ransom.
Careful, before anyone thinks the French are wimping out, it may just be clever ruse by the greatest French policeman ever.
(Hat tip to Sean for the Independent article)
Headline policing
Kobe's Lawyers Want Sex in Trial
They do, do they?
Update: Almost as soon as I see it, Fox corrects it. Them editors is quick!
Ohh, they want sex details in the trial....
Not quite, Dick
Former Clinton Political Consultant Dick Morris thinks Bush is on his way to an election day blowout:
I have doubted the conventional wisdom that this election would be close. If Bush continues to stay on the offensive and Kerry's responses remain as inept as they've been, the Massachusetts Democrat will go downhill faster than he is now doing on his skiing vacation.
Bush's attacks have focused on the issues of terrorism and taxes. Kerry has not even answered the first charge and has given only a ritualistic denial of the second. Instead of answering Bush's charges in detail, he piously asks, in his ads, if the president has anything more to offer America than negative ads. But Americans don't see the Bush ads as below the belt, but as welcome information about a man they don't know who is running for president.
I'm not sure that I agree.
Like an economist trying to gauge the future performance of the economy, Morris can only say what will happen if events keep on going as they are.
And if things keep going the way they are, I agree with Morris: Kerry will be fatally wounded well before election day.
But events rarely stay the same, and events determine elections.
I think Bush's father lost to Clinton in 1992 because of a single jobs report. The unemployment rate was 7.9 percent (or something like that) and Clinton jumped all over it. As everyone knows, it is the president's economic policies - not the spending habits of 300 million people - that make the economy grow or contract.
It didn't matter that the numbers were eventually revised downward. The perception was out there: the country under Bush was horribly off course.
There are many factors that could change the course of the election. A terrorist attack would help Bush, but a sharp downturn in the value of American housing would help Kerry.
And with a weak dollar, the second is a real possibility.
A sharp stock market decline, a civil war in Iraq, a bad jobs report or any unexpectedly bad economic data could doom Bush.
But it would have to be something REALLY BAD to make America turn to a candidate as weak and unprincipled as Kerry.
But it puts Democrats in the awkward position of hoping for bad news. That usually looks bad.
I love to read political predictions. In my less disciplined moments, I even make them.
But I am well aware that predictions - even from the pros - are usually not worth the paper they are printed on.
The United Nations of Dictators
We went into Iraq for the wrong reasons! Democratization is good, but that's not why Bush said we were going in!
Not quite. Spreading democracy in the Arab world was always one of the reasons.
But it was a muted reason. I wonder why...
From QandO
The Administration... presented the 'democratization' argument. Not front and center, but I don't think I need to describe the difficulties of making that argument before the United Nations Security Council, do I? (hint: China, Syria, etc) Somehow, I don't think it would have been good policy to make the 'we need to start getting rid of dictators' argument in front of the United Nations of Dictators.
Exactly. If only liberals understood a little thing called strategy.
Just let this program die!
Subtract an ad? It doesn't add up:
Participation in the federal Food Stamp Program has dropped 30 percent in recent years, so the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to use the language of the marketing world, is trying to reposition the program.
The USDA is stressing that food stamps are an aid to proper nutrition. It also is trying to get more people - especially the working poor - to apply for this benefit.
"Aid to proper nutrition," my ass.
If you want food stamps to aid proper nutrition, you only let them apply to fruits and vegetables.
Not Chee-tos.
Why does the government do stuff like this? If people don't have enough initiative to go get food stamps, I guess they didn't need them that badly.
But like any federal Goldilocks program (so named becuase they never go away), it has taken on a life of its own.
It's not going to let itself get defunded because people don't need it anymore.
Hell, the government still has the mohair subsidy (which ABC's Sam Donaldson uses to rake in thousands of federal dollars) and the Helium Fund (setting aside a strategic Helium reserve to prevent Germany from filling its dirigibles in WWI).
Besides, in the bizarre logic of big government, dependency is good.
Who would doubt that?
If you want to save a quick $20-30 billion a year, gutting the Department of Agriculture would be a good start.
It should be inspecting food, and that's about it. No agricultural subsidies, no sweet deals with ADM, and - God help us - no food stamps.
(Hat tip to the wife....)
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Interesting...
One of the more interesting stories in the past few days has been the confused reaction in Hamas to the death of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Yassin. Initially, Hamas leadership was full of bluster and fury, promising to make Israel and America pay for his death in blood.
Hamas today hastily withdrew its threats against America:
Rantissi has vowed retaliation for the killing of Yassin, but he pulled back from threats to retaliate against the United States or U.S. interests overseas in retaliation for his predecessor's killing.
'We have an enemy,' Rantissi told ABCNEWS. 'This enemy is occupying our land. United States of America is supporting this enemy. But we said it clearly. We will not target any American targets and we will continue our resistance just inside our country Palestine.'
What happened to the days when EVERY fanatical Muslim group in the region was foaming at the mouth, shouting threats at the US? Back then, threatening the US had no consequences, and killing a few Americans was sometimes a good way to get them to listen to you. After years of tirades against the US, Islamic Jihad killed 244 marines in Beiruit in 1983, and America withdrew from Lebanon shortly afterward. Just like Islamic Jihad wanted.
To person on the left, Hamas's current confusion must surely be baffling.
But to a realist, Hamas - fanatical nutcases all of them - are just being rational.
Picking a fight with America was once easier. But something changed in the last few years (I wonder what it was?), and even the most hard-headed fanatics can sense it.
Hamas does not want to be in a war against America.
If Hamas killed Americans anywhere, Americans would be going THERE. Into Gaza and the West Bank.
And we would not stop at retailiation. Our price would be the eradication of their organization.
This is a good message for everyone to understand.
Sometimes, it pays to be a unilateral superpower with a grudge.
Kerry stumbles over the truth
Forget about flip-flopping: The thing that bothers me about Kerry is the way he is piously telling people things that HE KNOWS are wrong.
This is most egregious on trade. Kerry is not a dummy (or so we're told). He has watched Bush's (truly stupid) steel tariffs backfire, dragging an economy of 300 million in order to save the jobs of a few thousand steel workers. He is familiar with the (stoopid) Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, which Hoover used to turn a sharp economic downturn into The Great Depression.
Yet, Kerry continues to tell cheering unions that to "protect" American jobs, the US must "get tough on trade"- play hardball with our trading partners, revise trade treaties and "protect" US jobs.
He knows those things won't work, and if elected, he wouldn't do them.
They'd be disastrous, and he knows it.
This is, after all, is man who voted FOR all those trade treaties, because he is well aware that trade is good for the economy.
Kerry knows better.
And the pattern continues in Iraq.
Iraq is our most important foreign policy experiment since World War II. If it fails, the age of nuclear terrorism will not be far away. And that war is likely to be on our soil.
Kerry says he will enlist the help of our "allies" and the UN. On occasion, he describes the whole Iraq venture as a waste of resources.
He knows better. He know it's important (he voted for the war, after all).
He also knows that France, Germany and Russia have no intention helping us AT ALL in Iraq, and that the UN is in no position to help much either.
But he hopes to win the votes of the Deaniacs, so he tells them what they want to hear.
And of course there are the entitlements (with politicians of either party, they are always there).
Like any politician in Washington, he knows that the US government is spending its way into catastrophe.
Kerry knows that the numbers do not lie, but he insists that Social Security and Medicare must be kept in their current disastrous states.
He knows that reform will have to come. He knows that the only open question is who will determine the terms of that reform: our elected officials or our creditors.
In most cases, Kerry is just playing politics, trying to win over factory workers, the dumb left or senior citizens.
That is what newspapers call it anyway.
Sixty percent of Americans think Kerry just tells people what they want to hear.
Sweet talking Kerry could just be considered misinformed.
But when Kerry himself knows better (and has demostrated so in the past), this activity goes by another name.
It is called lying.
A very rude joke
A woman was shopping at her local supermarket where she selected:
a half-gallon of 2% milk,
a carton of eggs,
a quart of orange juice,
a head of romaine lettuce,
a 2 lb. can of coffee,
and a 1 lb. package of bacon.
As she was unloading her items on the conveyor belt to check out, a
drunk standing behind her watched as she placed the items in front of
the cashier.
While the cashier was ringing up her purchases, the drunk calmly stated,
"You must be single."
The woman was a bit startled by this proclamation, but she
was intrigued by the derelict's intuition, since she was indeed single.
She looked at her six items on the belt and saw nothing particularly unusual about her selections that could have tipped off the drunk to her marital status.
Curiosity getting the better of her, she said "Well, you
know what, you're absolutely correct. But how on earth did
you know that?"
The drunk replied, "Cause you're ugly."
(hat tip to the wife)
Philly teachers strike out
Please let this be wrong. Please:Teachers come up short in testing
In Philadelphia, students aren't the only ones struggling to pass tests.
Half of the district's middle school teachers who took tests to become certified as highly qualified under the federal No Child Left Behind law failed, district results show.
Math teachers did the worst: Nearly two out of every three failed that exam, while more than half flunked the science test, 43 percent the English exam, and 34 percent the social-studies test...
"There was stuff on there I've never seen," Haver (a math teacher) said, adding that some of her colleagues were equally perplexed. "When it was over, we just put our pencils down and looked at each other, like: 'What was that?' "
The Inquirer prints some "sample questions" from the test in question.
I pray to God that these reporters have taken only the easiest questions (perhaps just to make the teachers look dumb?):
Science
1. According to some scientists, the Earth’s average surface temperature is rising as a result of the greenhouse effect. An increase in the atmospheric concentration of which of the following gases is considered to be primarily responsible?a.Nitrogen
b.Oxygen
c.Sulfur Dioxide
d.Carbon Dioxide
2.Which of the following statements is true of hurricanes but not tornadoes?a. They form over water.
b. They have very high winds
c. They may cause great property damage
d. They may cause human fatalities
Math
1. The average number of passengers who use an airport each year is 350 thousand. A newspaper reported that the number in 350 million. The number reported in the newspaper is how many times the actual number?a. 10
b. 100
c. 1,000
d. 10,000
2. If there are exactly five times as many children as adults at a show, which of the following cannot be the number of people at the show?a. 102
b. 80
c. 36
d. 30
Please let there be some mistake here. Those must be the easiest questions. They must be the ones that everyone got right, on an otherwise hard test that half of Philly's teachers failed.
But this guy has his excuses down: It was the test's fault!
But Nick Perry, a science teacher at Conwell Middle School, said one test was not an accurate measure of a teacher.
"Content sometimes is really overrated. A teacher is like an artist, a coach. He has to be able to inspire children," said Perry, a seventh-grade science teacher, who has a master's degree in environmental science and the necessary certification.
Inspire them with what? The idea that any idiot can be a teacher?
I think I just became a believer in No Child Left Behind. If the new law does nothing else, testing like this will make it worth it.
UPDATE: Philly has decided that is now going to hire a test prep firm to help its teachers do better.
Well, that's nice.
But doesn't that constitute "teaching to the test?"
UPDATE II: Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/26/2004 | Tom Ferrick Jr. | Teacher test is fair; failure rate isn't:
That's nice, but we should wait until the check clears
MEMRI:
Qaddafi's son speaks up:
"The Libyan people is (sic) interested in progress, development, democracy, human rights, and freedoms, and all these constitute the agenda of our institutions which mirror the thoughts and aspirations of the [Libyan] society. Soon Libya will witness [development] that will be a precedent with regard to the Arab world, and it will be manifested by freedom of the press and freedom of printing...Libya must be a democratic and open country. If it isn't, it will become a reactionary, dictatorial, and fascist Arab country."
Pay-per-snafu
Show flips from triple threats to XXX
The Cosentino family gathered around the television for their favorite event of the year: WrestleMania XX, the Super Bowl of the wrestling world.
They broke out popcorn, chips and soda. Eight-year-old Nick wrapped his lucky beach towel with a portrait of The Rock around him and settled on the couch next to dad.
But an hour and a half into the pay-per-view wrestling extravaganza, the young fan witnessed a few moves he'd never seen before.
Triple threats? Triple X? What's the difference?
Thanks Trench!
Jackson's "Hot Rod"
Yikes!
It's an odd idea for a movie, even for Michael Jackson (news). "Jersey Girl" director Kevin Smith (news) says he once got an offer to direct the pop singer in a movie about a man who turns into a car that gets ridden around by a boy.
Smith tells Playboy magazine that Jackson wanted to play the car/man role. The proposed title of the film, and Smith says this is no lie, was "Hot Rod."
Yeah, maybe it is a little odd.
Thanks to the Radical Cowboys.
Just give up now and avoid the violence!
ETA hoping for concessions from Socialists:
ETA is hoping to win concessions from the Spanish Socialists who take power next month.
The Basque separatist group ETA may call a unilateral cease-fire in its campaign of violence, a founder and other Basque sources said, in an effort to win political concessions from the newly elected Socialist government that will take power next month.
And if the Spanish don't give in immediately, a few good bombings will set them straight.
Medicare's about to get REALLY expensive
Medicare finances show steep decline:
Annual report turns grimmer, says program could run out of money in 2019.
WASHINGTON - Medicare, the federal health-insurance program for older Americans, will fall into deficit this year and exhaust its surplus funds by 2019, seven years earlier than expected, according to projections released yesterday.
I don't suppose it will do any good to get either Bush or Kerry to comment on this.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Incoming!
Den Beste:
(This), in fact, is exactly what a lot of Europeans think is needed: for America to capitulate.
It's the same old refrain, endlessly repeated. So they're pinning their hopes on a Kerry Presidency.
Which is a problem, for them. Kerry has emerged from the primary process saddled with political burdens which will cost him. With emergence of a clear winner in the contest for the Democratic nomination, Bush gave him a call and congratulated him, and let him know Bush was thinking about him.
Translation: 'INCOMING!'.
The Republicans have started campaigning against Kerry, and he's getting hurt.
A fair amount of that has been self-inflicted. He bragged about getting private endorsements from foreign leaders, got hammered, and then publicly picked up the endorsements of Malaysia's Mahathir and Spain's Zapatero, neither of which are particularly held in high regard in the US. Kerry's campaign then decided that foreign endorsements were not a good thing.
Yep, that's about the size of it.
Advanced case of nuance
I think it would take more than a few drinks for me to understand this level of nuance:
"For you see," John Kerry continued, “Again and again and again in the debate, it was made clear that the vote of the U.S. Senate and the House on the authorization of immediate use of force on Jan. 12 was not a vote as to whether or not force should be used."
My vision is blurry, but that quote is still not clear.
A fool's campaign
FBI Spied on Kerry in '70s, Report Says
Reports that the FBI monitored John Kerry's anti-war activities in the early 1970s highlight the need "to be vigilant about civil liberties," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said Monday.
In a radio interview Monday evening on WBZ-AM in Boston, Kerry said the reports are "such ancient history."
"It's just sort of in the past, but it underscores to everyone of us why we have to be vigilant about civil liberties, why we have to have an attorney general who respects the Constitution, and why our Bill of Rights is so important in the United States," said Kerry, who was on vacation in Sun Valley.
Kerry was smart to call this story "ancient history," but he lacks the discipline to leave it there.
He may wish he had.
The more the press snoops around this story, they closer they will come to this:
The Kerry campaign hopes this wipes out questions raised by the New York Sun's coverage of Kerry's attendance at a 1971 Vietnam Veterans Against the War meeting at which some activists had a conversation about possibly assassinating US Senators. That said, it doesn't account for the campaign's earlier insistence that Kerry was not present at that VVAW meeting when, in fact, he was.
That will not play well on TV, and it is the last thing Kerry wants to be discussing.
Just keep talking, John.
Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the FBI story link.
Dumb Irish
Oh my.
Left-wing politicians opposed to a planned visit by President Bush called Monday for his Secret Service agents to be disarmed while in Ireland.
Yes, we all know how careless those Secret Service agents can be with their guns...
Do these Irish clowns just do it for the press, or do they actually realize that this would make a bombing or shooting highly likely on Irish soil?
Oh yeah, these guys are good to have on our side (sort of).
Thanks Claudia.
That which fails to kill me doesn't last long
A great new saying, from Misty:
What doesn't kill me is dead when I'm through with it.
Classic. Thanks Norman.
Oh not again
My younger son Tim is sick again. He woke up this morning in a pile of shit and vomit.
Since my wife stayed home with him yesterday, it's my turn.
I used to like staying home.
Inky misses the point
Self defense is understandable, but peace won't come with the killing of any one terrorist leader.
The Inquirer seems to have mastered the art of nuance.
This much needs to be made clear: Just as the United States has a right to go after Osama bin Laden, Israel had a right to go after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
OK. got it.
As the founder and leader of Hamas, a group whose terrorists are responsible for hundreds of attacks, including suicide bombings, against Israeli Jews and Arabs, Israel had a right to go after Yassin as a threat to the state.
OK. Evil man. Got that too.
But that doesn't mean the killing was the best strategy
Hmmmm. Please explain.
It's hard to see how the killing will make Israelis safer or end the 3-year-old Palestinian uprising that has claimed hundreds of lives on both sides.
What were Israel's other options?
Ignore him? That has been a fatal strategy that Israel has followed for a decade.
Arrest him? And this would make Palestinians rational and ready to return to the bargaining table?
On the contrary, it would unleash the same terrorist forces that Israel faces today - except that they would have a demand after each attack: Israel must free Yassin!
Israel has acted wisely. Every leadership change in an autocratic organization like Hamas increases the possiblity of fragmentation.
I believe that the Palestinian Authority faces civil war. The Israeli wall and the targeted assassinations of people like Yassin make civil war more likely.
I hate war, but I can be quite Machiavellian: if you can get your enemies to fight amongst themselves, you make yourself safer.
This is Israel's long term strategy.
And does anyone think for a moment that catching or killing bin Laden or his lieutenant, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, will shatter al-Qaeda or stem Islamist extremists' attacks against the United States?
Does anyone seriously think it will HURT?
It is clear from this editorial that Inquirer's editorial staff is deeply divided. This editorial is the work of a committee, with little contributions from everyone.
There is nothing "clear" about it.
Some editors have no problem with the killing of Yassin. A few editors are under the mistaken impression that a peace process can forced on the region by the US. Some just want to blame Bush.
Israel is engaged against an enemy that demands its complete destruction. There is no negotiation with such a foe.
Some people at the Inquirer seem to believe that Arafat can be pressured into recognizing Israel's "right to exist."
But these cynical editors know the truth: Arafat already did so, as one of the conditions of Oslo in 1994.
Lot of good that worthless promise has been (Is the world still unaware of this man's complete contempt for the truth?).
Israel is - and let me make this clear (not Philadelphia Inquirer "clarity," but John Rogers' clarity) - AT WAR.
Israel has a right to exist because eight million, heavily-armed Jews are living there, and they are willing to fight to the death to maintain their state.
It doesn't matter what the US says. It doesn't matter what Arafat says, or the UN says. And it certainly doesn't matter what the impotent Europeans say.
This much needs to be crammed down Arab throats: Israel is here to stay. Get over it.
Maybe the fact that a bunch of Jews can make a working economy and a succesfull democracy in such an inhospitable land should tell you something about your own governments and economies.
For 50 years, Arabs have been killing Israelis for being successful where they themselves have failed.
It is time to tackle the root of Arab failure. And that is why we are in Iraq.
The Next Che
Just what we need: another Che Guevara. Good ole' Tim Blair:
Attention, Indymedia revolutionaries! You now have a new dead hero:
Iraqi leaders condemned the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, whom they hailed as a "Palestinian Che Guevara".
They're right; the resemblance is uncanny.
Yassin’s got all of Che’s qualities -- wild beard, fashionable headgear, no pulse -- plus additional groovy wheelchair charisma! No wonder artists adore him.
Poor Bill
Photo from Randal Robinson:
Quote from Iowahawk:
"Do you want to know why I am sympathetic to Bill?
This is Hillary Clinton's orgasm face."
Monday, March 22, 2004
African Americans vs. Europeans
In a recent blogging experience at Geoff Castle's blog, I made an offhand comment, repeating something that I had read many times before:
The income of average European is roughly the same as the average African American.
That is, most Europeans are no better off than American blacks, who liberals view as a "disadvantaged" group.
I was immediately called a liar, and asked to prove it.
I think I did:
Per Capita GDP's of several European countries:
France.....$26,000 (ppp adjusted dollars, 2002 data)
Germany....$26,200
Spain......$21,200
Sweden.....$26,000
Italy......$25,100
Britain....$25,500
We'll be nice and say the average European GDP is $25,500.
The average US per capita GDP is .....$36,300.
25,500/36,300 = 70 percent.
"Nationally, the average black household income in 2002 was about $29,000, compared with about $42,000 for all races, according a Census Bureau report."
29,000/42,000 = 69 percent.
Conclusion: the average European is about as well off as the average American black.
Liberals should be called upon to admit one of the following:
1) Europeans are much poorer than we thought
or
2) African-Americans have it much better than we thought.
Anything less is nuance.
The happiest day
Sheikh Yassin has said the happiest day of his life would be the day he died a shahib (a martyr).
He certainly had a smile on his face here (GRAPHIC IMAGE ALERT! I warned you!) (well at least on the half of his head that still has a face on it).
(hat tip to the Feces Flinging Monkey)
You may wonder how I can feel such joy over a man's violent death?
Only because I remember that the hatred that this man spewed was responsible for the murder of this little girl:
and dozens of others like her. People inspired by Yassin killed her - a five year old girl - just because she was born a Jew.
I have nightmares that I am Gal Eizenman's father. I can't imagine living a waking day with such misery.
Happy shahib, bastard.
A little more: From It Can't Rain All The Time:
And, of course, Hamas and the Palestinians have gone batshit —
The eyes of many burned with tears of rage as they chanted slogans like “death to Israel” and “death to America”, the BBC’s David Chazan reports.
Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember Palestinian marchers ever yelling much of anything else. Was there a report of Palestinian marchers yelling “Long live Israel, long live America!” and I missed it? I’m thinkin’ not.
All appeared united in mourning for the founder of Hamas, the group which has been one of Israel’s most intransigent enemies, adamantly rejecting any peace negotiations, our correspondent says.
Adamantly rejecting any peace negotiations? Oh my.
Oops. Sorry for removing your tyrant!
Iraq war wasn't justified, U.N. weapons experts say
Nobody is calling for us to reinstate Saddam. I guess it wasn't that much of a mistake.
Slimy Euros
Oh my:EU ministers issued a statement condemning what they called the assassination of Sheikh Yassin, saying it has inflamed the situation in the Middle East. The statement reflected the views just expressed by Mr. Straw, saying Israel is not entitled to carry out what the ministers described as extra-judicial killings.
Shame on these people.
Sheikh Yassin was committed to the murder of 9 million Jews and the destruction of their country. The man makes Yassir Arafat look good.
This man was no "partner for peace."
He is Israel's Osama, and I'm glad he's dead.
The Europeans applaud as Spain rounds up the men who killed hundreds of Spainards.
But when Israel gets a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Jews, it condemns the action.
And if Israel had merely arrested Yassin, they would have condemned that too.
If it makes the Palestinians upset, the Europeans get upset.
Some allies, huh?
What do you think, John Kerry? I can't wait to hear him get on both sides of this story.
Here comes the teacher shortage!
It is a problem that comes up every year: the Philadelphia region teacher shortage.
It is misnamed: the region cannot attract enough math and science teachers.
I wonder why....
hmmmmmm..(thinking)....(thinking).....(thinking)...Oh!
It might have something to do with the fact that people with math and science degrees have numerous options in the private sector.
People who majored in say ... fingerpainting .. consider teaching to be the ONLY option of getting gainful employment (and rightly so).
I've never read a story about the dearth of English or art teachers (although occasionally, there are shortages of Spanish teachers and school psychologists).
The logical response - therefore the response any business uses - would be to pay more to get the people that are most in demand.
A business would never pay an acutuary the same as an accountant. Both do work with numbers, but any business that tried to cut costs in that way would soon have no acutuaries.
But the NEA would never let such an idea go through. Why should a calculus teacher get more money than an English teacher? They both teach!
The real reason they oppose it, however, is that it would fragment their union. That would be bad for the NEA, but it would be very good for education.
Union-types never understand supply-and-demand issues.
People who work at McDonald's make minimum wage. This is not because McDonald's is a greedy expolitive corporation. McDonalds has to keep its costs as low as possible. Anybody can do a burger flipping job, and such workers are easily replaced.
Calculus teachers are hard to replace (hence the shortage of them). Higher pay will encourage some to stay, more to teach math, and more mathematicians to consider teaching as a profession.
Hence, it would solve the problem.
Thus, it is the last thing the NEA wants. The union doesn't want to solve the problem, because creating a "teacher shortage" is their whole strategy.
Only then can argue that all teachers need higher pay.
But most teachers make enough money. With a bachelor's degree, a few fluffy teacher certification courses and three months vacation a year, a teacher shouldn't be living the high life. Especially not on the taxpayer's dime.
Philly isn't close to figuring this supply-and-demand issue out.
The problem in Philly's schools is more acute:city is not attracting or maintaining the best teachers.
But Philly thinks its only problem is monetary compensation. They think that if they can solve that, the problem is solved.
Wrong.
They're "thinking:" If we paid more, the best teachers would come to Philly, and our students would begin to excel. (Strange, but that is exactly what the teacher's union believes, too!).
Such logic works when you are talking about a nice place to live.
But Philly is a dying city, suffocating under oppressive taxes and a corrupt government.
I taught general chem at the college level for five years, and, for the most part, I enjoyed it. I am a young technical professional, but I would not mind teaching at the high school level for a few years, if for no other reason than to feel that I was helping things. Pay would not be huge concern if I felt I was doing good.
What holds me back from teaching in Philly?
Three things.
1. I'd have to move and become a resident of Philly. The hell with that.
2. I'd have to spend money and time getting certified (and I am allergic to bullshit classes). Fuck that.
3. I would be told how to do my job, and my job would be babysitting a bunch of undisciplined, little shits from broken homes. The idea that I would expect students to attend class and do homework would be challenged. I would be told to pass students who knew nothing, and not to rock the boat. No way.
Expecting kids to actually learn in such an environment is ridiculous.
No, Philly.
Your problem is more than your pay. Washington DC spends more money per student, and pays its teachers more; its schools are even worse.
The problem is that your schools are run by a bunch of bureaucrats who don't understand that the feeling of doing a job well is just as important as the monetary compensation (bureaucrats rarely feel that way).
A job in Philly's schools is akin to asking a skilled mason to build sandcastles. Each day he builds a masterpeice, but every night a high tide comes and washes it away. His bosses expect him to start from scratch each morning, happy to do it all again. And meanwhile, they invent rules forbidding him from using bricks or cement.
Teaching in Philly is an exercise in frustration.
$150,000 a year wouldn't get me to take a job like that.
Ask the Iman: how do I keep my wife in line?
hmmmm....
Muhammad Kamal Mustafa, the imam of the mosque of the city of Fuengirola, Costa del Sol, was sentenced by a Barcelona court to a 15 month suspended sentence and fined for publishing his book 'The Woman in Islam.' In this book, the Egyptian-born Sheikh Mustafa writes, among other things, on wife-beating in accordance with Shar'ia law.
On pages 86-87, Mustafa states: 'The [wife-]beating must never be in exaggerated, blind anger, in order to avoid serious harm [to the woman].' He adds, 'It is forbidden to beat her on the sensitive parts of her body, such as the face, breast, abdomen, and head. Instead, she should be beaten on the arms and legs,' using a 'rod that must not be stiff, but slim and lightweight so that no wounds, scars, or bruises are caused.' Similarly, '[the blows] must not be hard.'
Mustafa noted in his book that the aim of the beating was to cause the woman to feel some emotional pain, without humiliating her or harming her physically. According to him, wife-beating must be the last resort to which the husband turns in punishing his wife, and is, according to the Qur'an, Chapter 4, Verse 34, the husband's third step when the wife is rebellious: First, he must reprimand her, without anger. Next, he must distance her from the conjugal bed. Only if these two methods fail should the husband turn to beating.
America, ask yourself why they hate you.
Ummm....maybe because they are lost somewhere in the Dark Ages?
Sunday, March 21, 2004
A drinking game
I've been here before (and I bet I'm not the only one). I really like this game:J2O
I first saw it at Quotes, Thoughts and Other Ramblings.
I'm reading a lot of new stuff lately. It's kind of fun.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Great Stuff
From die puny humans:
The Canonical List of Weird Band Names: including but not limited to --
A Cat Born In An Oven Isn't a Cake
Accidental Goat Sodomy
Anal Beard Barbers
The Archbishop's Enema Fetish
The Ass Baboons of Venus
Beef Masters
Ben Wa and the Blue Balls
Bertha Does Moosejaw
Biff Hitler and the Violent Mood Swings
Bulimia Banquet
Cancer Bunny
Chewbacca Plaid Cock
Clive Pig and the Hopeful Chinamen
Cocknoose
Crappy the Clown and the Punch Drunk Monkies
March Reads
I have a list of blogs I travel to just to see what they are talking about. They are all on my blogroll on the right (under Interesting Reads), and I visit them frequently to see what's going on. They are all great blogs, but I want to discipline myself to reach out and read more of the stuff that is out there.
This month, I've picked several blogs that I will add to my frequent visit list. These sites looked interesting on the first visit, and I will checking back every day or so to see what they are talking about:
It Can't Rain All The Time...
c0llision.org
die puny humans
Quotes, Thoughts, and other Ramblings
A Man Needs A Fish Like A Woman Needs a Bicycle
Tonecluster
Everything I Know is Wrong
All Agitprop, all the time
I just need to broaden things out a little.
Friday, March 19, 2004
The smell of fatwas in France
French: World More Dangerous Place
My, such slimy hypocrisy and utter contempt for the obvious.
It could only be the French:
"We have to look reality in the face: we have entered into a more dangerous and unstable world, which requires the mobilization of the entire international community," (French Foreign Minister Dominique) de Villepin said.
More words from a professional talker. Nothing more.
What will France be mobilizing? Its diplomatic corps?
And than this:
"Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before," de Villepin said. "Today, it is one of the world's principal sources of world terrorism."
Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before, because Iraq was funding the terrorists attacking Israel.
For Europe, it is not terrorism when Israeli schoolchildren are blown up. It is glamorous resistance to vile Jews.
But when Europeans are being blown up, it's the American's fault for "destabilizing" things (as if this is bad in the world's most oppressed corner of the world).
Only a brute would think that the Madrid bombings were the fault of terrorists for actually killing people with bombs.
"Non, non. We must talk of root causes!"
But not if the "root cause" is oppression in Arab world.
Non, that's acceptable.
The root cause is that the US is allowing Israel to exist.
Superior diplomatic reasoning from a blow-dried effeminate Frenchman with a porn starlet's name.
Science and culture
I’m always amazed by the lack of depth in science education in American society.
I’m not worried that people don’t remember the anatomy of a paramecium or any other science trivia.
I’m referring to the discipline of scientific inquiry: the scientist’s habit of withholding judgment until all the facts are in, all the experiments complete.
As a former liberal, I noticed that many of my peers had a near pathological hatred for science and scientists. Some of this was just disgust with the way it was taught (“I hate memorization…”). Some of it was fear of the products of technology (“frankenfoods” and chemicals). And often there was a sense that scientists, who often tend to be white and male, are part of some oppressive conspiracy.
I never understood any of it.
In my experiences with scientists, I found them to be more human and less likely have personal hang-ups than most of the artsy types I knew. They were easy to talk to and work with, less likely to be offended by offhand comments, and more willing to cut loose and have a good time.
The scientific method is like a discipline, and people who refuse to think in a disciplined manner often find themselves enthralled by many specious theories and silly superstitions. These people tend to be quite common in the humanities, where specious theorizing often passes for deep thought.
For example, many of fellow English majors (yes, my wasted youth) proudly declared themselves communists. At the time, I let it go. But as I hear more from the Ivory Tower, I find it striking that many of these people are still there, and their beliefs are unchanged (after 1989, no less!). The communist parties continue to be a decisive influence in European politics. The large global “peace” protests (attempting to protect Saddam's right to kill his countrymen) of February 15th, 2003 were sponsored by International Answer, a communist front. And no one even blinked.
How can any rational person be a communist (or even a socialist)? Hundreds of attempts have been made to make communism work, and all have failed (most miserably). These experiments are useful in so much as they produce evidence: there is not one economic success, and there are hundreds of millions of failures buried in mass graves in every continent on the planet. Can anyone show me a single communist state that has managed to grow economically and while protecting human rights?
The lack of one would mean either that communist theory is ridiculous, or that it is to difficult to mold to human reality and thus impractical as a global goal.
Yet people believe, they really do!
Europe currently appears to have given in to its pacifist inclinations. Pacifism, like communism, can be shredded by the evidence. Would the world be better place had our ancestors used a non-violent approach against despots? Would the Constitution ever have been produced without blood? Would slavery have been eliminated without cannons?
Pacifists consider such questions to be rude, evidence of a brutish ignorance, and they evade the answers because they don’t like them: Pacifism is, after all, resignation to tyranny. But these ideas still appeal to the undisciplined thinker, most of whom consider themselves to be very well educated.
Marxism, in fact, is like a religion with its own ideas of salvation: everyone sharing, everyone living equally well in a fantasyland where all needs are met by the benevolent state. Its facts are more articles of faith than evidence. This explains something else: Communism’s discomfort with religion. Its so inflexibly athiestic that even weird movements, like China’s Falun Gong, aren’t tolerated. “You shall have no Gods before me” is also Marx’s first commandment.
Marxism and pacifism may be extreme examples, but the problem of unscientific thought extends further. Islamism – the idea that fundamental Islam is going to take over the world – is the fantasy that has most of the Arab world in thrall today. The facts don’t even come close to supporting it, but they have their own TV network to take care of that inconvenience.
Unscientific thought muddies our politics, too, trying to make political debate look like struggles between good and evil. One party wants to help everyone and the other party wants to help themselves.
We all know which is which.
One party wants to pay for everyone’s education and everyone’s drugs (they even want to remind you to take them everyday). They want to help you get a house, and give you one if you are poor enough. They make no distinctions about who ends up poor and who ends wealthy. They consider impolitic to discuss why some people consistently end up poor, but only because they are confident of the answers anyway (its obviously racism or the wake of capitalist greed). These benefits are expensive and the high taxes to pay for them are a bitter pill, but these wonderful people promise to take care of you.
Their motto appears to be: we care about your future as much as you do!
It sounds great. Great in the sense that the words to a rock song seem perfect until you see them written down.
It’s then that you realize that they don’t make any sense. Wait a second! Nobody cares about my future more than me! It makes sense that I be trusted on spending my money on ways to secure my future as I, not the benevolent government, see fit. That is what America is all about: trusting in the little guy take care of his own business!
In addition, the Democratic Party seems right now to be consumed by the politics of emotion. Where does John Kerry stand? It doesn't matter. Democrats just hate Bush, they seem to be saying (Geoff Castle is a prime example).
They complain about jobs (though the unemployment rate was higher throughout much of Clinton's presidency), but they have no plan (that they mention) to bring back all the "lost jobs." They want to protect American jobs from foreigners, but they are not protectionists (or so they say). Economic growth (4+%) has been stellar, but they gripe that it is meager. They complain about Iraq, but they are unclear what they would do differently (Kerry calls it a mess, but says we have to stay the course and get the UN (which already ran away once and has little desire to run things) in charge...huh?). The Democrats fall over themselves to say they will "preserve" Social Security and Medicare without reform, but both programs are wildly insolvent. Without reform they will collapse.
Don't be distracted by these things! Believe! Have faith! Vote for Kerry!
I can't stand such emotionalism.
I guess such sentiments put me in the sphere of the other party, the selfish party.
They have some strange beliefs, too. Large numbers of them have a real problem with the idea of a right to privacy (it may not be in Constitution, per se, but I believe it falls under “the pursuit of happiness”). Some of them want to indoctrinate my children with bizarre interpretations of religion, and many are very distrustful of anyone who doesn’t share the same ethnic background.
So that's me: a former Democrat and now a skeptical Republican. Where else can a fiscally conservative, socially moderate student of history fit in?
Thursday, March 18, 2004
What a bargain!
Pressure Building for Drug Importation
WASHINGTON — Importing drugs would save Americans 30 to 300 percent of the cost, but industry sources say that with this discount come fewer safety controls and a risk to the development of new life-saving medicines.
Now that's savings!
How exactly do you save 300%??!
Philly's mobs win again
Once again, the unions shoot Philly in the foot:
"We've decided not to shoot The Real World in Philadelphia. That's final. Our stuff is not in Philadelphia," said a spokeswoman for the television production company that had been setting up in Old City but left rather than deal with city construction unions.
"Really, we are very disappointed, but we've moved on," said Daniella Cracknell of Bunim/Murray Productions in Van Nuys, Calif.
Construction union officials said they had offered Bunim/Murray a deal to keep the production here, but whether any union offer would have saved the shoot remained questionable yesterday.
I hate The Real World. All I see is a group of self-centered, untalented American Idol wannabes annoying each other while trying to act cool.
But the point is clear: not even the glitz of TV can make Philly look like a hip place to be as long as the unions really call the shots in the city.
Good old Philly: you just won one for the fat union slobs everywhere who would rather extort than compete.
The drain of tech workers from the city will continue. Your tax base will shrink, and your problems will become more acute.
Is it any wonder when it costs 50% more to build a house in Philly than it does in the suburbs?
In the suburbs, the taxes are lower, the schools are better, the neighborhoods are safer, union rules are lax and business thrives.
The quality of life - for everyone - is better as a result.
Only an ideology-blinded Democrat could fail to make the connection.
Hey, here's one:
The loss of a visit from the popular Real World television show might not seem like a big deal to Mayor Street and some labor leaders in this city. The mayor suggests the city is just fine without MTV's gift of positive, internationally distributed exposure.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Passion of the idiot
Yes, even in suicide, proper planning matters:Man treated after attempting to nail himself to cross
HARTLAND — A Hartland man was treated at a Pittsfield hospital after he nailed himself to a cross. The 23-year-old man apparently was trying to commit suicide Thursday evening in his living room, the Bangor Daily News reported...
Lt. Pierre Boucher said the man took two pieces of wood, nailed them together in the form of a cross and placed them on the floor. He attached a suicide sign to the wood and then proceeded to nail one of his hands to the makeshift cross using a 14-penny nail and a hammer.
"When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911," Boucher said.
It was unclear whether the man was seeking assistance for his injury or help in nailing down his other hand.
(From Best Of The Web)
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Europe is Al Qaeda's bitch now
Hey Akbar, it worked with Spain.
Now let's see if we can get France to get rid of that headscarf ban.
It's a quagmire!
Yet another poll of the Iraqi people.
And this one is from that bastion of neoconservative thought, the BBC:
About 6,000 interviews were carried out in total, half in Autumn last year and half this Spring, in a project run by Oxford Research International (ORI).
Seventy percent of people said that things were going well or quite well in their lives, while only 29% felt things were bad.
And 56% said that things were better now than they were before the war.
Best buddies
Oh boy:
BEIJING (Reuters) - China and France will hold rare joint naval exercises off the mainland's eastern coast on Tuesday, just four days before Beijing's rival, Taiwan, holds presidential elections.
France joins forces with dictators to intimidate democracy.
But it's not all bad news for Taiwan:
"Through this joint exercise, we hope to learn the French navy's combat training experience and combat thought," Ju was quoted as saying.
French combat thought? There is only one French combat thought: "Run away!"
The inequality mirage
Even now and then, the Economist says something so elegantly, so succinctly, that no further comment is needed:Poverty and inequality
HUNDREDS of millions of people in the world are forced to endure lives of abject poverty—poverty so acute that those fortunate enough to live in the United States, or Europe or the rich industrialised parts of Asia can scarcely comprehend its meaning. Surely there is no more commanding moral imperative for people in the West than to urge each other, and their governments, to bring relief to the world's poorest. And what a tragedy it is, therefore, that many of the kind souls who respond most eagerly to this imperative bring to the issue an analytical mindset that is almost wholly counterproductive. They are quite right, these champions of the world's poor, that poverty in an age of plenty is shameful and disgusting. But they are quite wrong to suppose, as so many of them do, that the rich enjoy their privileges at the expense of the poor—that poverty, in other words, is inseparable from a system, capitalism, that thrives on injustice. This way of thinking is not just false. It entrenches the very problem it purports to address.
Power and weakness
The psychology of weakness is easy enough to understand. A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, inasmuch as the alternative - hunting the bear armed only with a knife - is actually riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will likely make a different calculation of what constitutes a tolerable risk. Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn't need to?
The quote above explains the difference in foreign policy approaches between Europe and the US (link obtained from USS Clueless).
When faced with the catastrophe of Madrid - Spain's 9/11 - the Europeans are buckling under and calling in squads of diplomats to talk it out. Among other things, they will attempt to show how different they are than the Americans in combatting terrorism. More flexible. Less good vs. evil. More gray areas - recognizing the Palestinian bombers as resistance fighters, for example.
They hope this will make the Muslim nutballs think less of them, and pass over the continent when fighting Americans.
It won't work.
The terrorists aren't interested in negotiations, particularly not with impotent European diplomats. For them, there is no middle ground between friend or foe in this war. They will demand more the Europeans, until the Europeans can give in no longer.
The Spanish - by giving in to the terrorists this time - may have bought themselves a temporary respite from attacks.
But the terrorists will return and their future demands will be a lot more unacceptable.
European reliance on diplomacy is futile because European diplomacy doesn't work. European diplomats have no "option B," no military power to enforce anything that they manage to get down on paper.
And the terrorists are larval dictators, with even less guilt about breaking promises than Hitler had.
Didn't these people learn anything from Neville Chamberlain?
Monday, March 15, 2004
Philly Education Follies
One of the most depressing things about living near Philly is watching know-nothing liberalism kill reforms that the region needs to pull it out of its tailspin.
When the city was forced (by the state) to hand over control of its most atrocious schools to the privately-run Edison Schools, the Democratic machine, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, went loony with paranoia.
The Philadelphia Inquirer featured apocalyptic warning stories about Edison's carnage in a run down suburb. The story ran on its front page: Edison schools' scores drop in Chester Upland.
Average scores on the latest Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests declined in all nine Chester Upland schools run by Edison Schools, a district report released yesterday shows.
That is, Edison got one year and they failed. End of story.
A year later, the Inquirer buried (on page six, deep in the story) some interesting good news about Edison in the same schools:
(The test) gains were especially noteworthy in the Chester Upland School District, where the for-profit Edison School Inc. took control of nine of the district's 13 schools two years ago. Four elementary schools there made double-digit percentage gains in reading proficiency, and all four district middle schools increased math and reading proficiency levels.
Three of the elementary schools are run by Edison; the district retains control of the Toby Farms Elementary School.
The Edison-run Showalter Junior Academy, serving sixth through eighth grades, improved its proficiency numbers by about 60 percentage points in math and about 26 points in reading. About 71 percent of the school's eighth graders tested proficient in math, up from 11 percent in 2002. In reading, about 82 tested proficient, up from 57 percent.
Showalter eighth graders even outperformed their counterparts in the respected Haverford School District, whose middle-schoolers posted about 76 percent proficiency in reading and about 66 percent in math. The state average for eighth grade was 63.4 percent in reading and 51.3 percent in math.
"I wasn't surprised [Showalter] did well. I was surprised at how well they did," said Juan R. Baughn, vice president of operations for Edison schools in Chester. He attributed the school's breakout results to the hard work of principal Jayne Gibbs and the school's early embrace of the Edison model.
So far Philly is following the same pattern seen in Chester-Upland. Edison's across the board successes so far have been marginal, but they have been successes.
The city had looked away while these schools failed for decades.
No one has bothered to state the obvious: expecting high success rates in such risky endeavors is too much to ask.
Even a 10% improvement in the dismal test scores of the Philly schools would be miraculous. After all, the state gave Edsion only the worst schools - the schools everyone had given up on.
How many problem schools has the government revitalized? Can anyone even quantify such an insignificant number?
There have been other upsides to an Edison takeover: It has been enlightening watching the private firm clear the bird nests and bat guano from corrupt administrations so larded with inefficiency that $7000 per student was too little to buy books.
If the Edison people had merely painted the rooms and replaced the plumbing, it would have been an improvement.
But let’s not kid ourselves: if the goal is creating young scholars, Edison (or anything else) will fail.
It, after all, is only a bandage. Major surgery is needed.
We have known this truth all along: In 1966, a government education study made officials so uncomfortable that many wanted it kept secret.
It concluded:
Socioeconomic background, not school spending or philosophy, is the greatest predictor of academic achievement.
Communities packed with single mothers, welfare and crime are toxic to schools. It matters little whether students are black or white. They are not going to be good students, except in the most extreme cases.
Someday, perhaps we’ll rescue ambitious - but disadvantaged - students with vouchers targeted at the city’s poorest, releasing children from the atrocious schools they are forced to attend now.
Currently, such a program is too much to ask of Philly’s stagnant education community.
And local Republican politicians, fumbling an issue of such clear moral power, prefer to see it as a way to placate rich suburban voters.
The status quo will continue: the most ambitious of the poor will barely be literate enough to work in corporate cafeterias.
How meritocratic is that?
Keep fretting about teacher salaries, class size and management, Philly.
More bandages.
There are some tasks that are beyond government.
Replacing fathers in Philadelphia is one of them.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Stupid people, cont'd
I find this woman charming for her utter stupidity:
COVINGTON, Georgia (AP) -- A Georgia woman who tried to use a fake $1 million bill to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at Wal-Mart was arrested, and police later found two more of the bills in her purse.
Chirpy Sales Clerk: "Hello, welcome to Wal-Mart!"
Dummy: "Good Morning. I'll be buying this stereo equipment and - oh darn, I brought the million dollar bill today. Drat! I do hope you can break it. You do have $998,300 in your register, don't you? Please don't trouble the manager."
(The light above register three begins to flash. "Manager to register three!"
Light above Dummy's head remains dim...)
It's all in the eyes?
I'm not very good at this test, so I guess it's a good thing I'm not a detective: Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?
Hit back at PETA
I support this totally:
Hitting PETA where it hurts: International Eat an Animal for PETA Day
If you haven't heard by now, PETA has started yet another offensive ad campaign. This one really reaches bottom—they are using Holocaust terminology, quotes, and pictures to liken the "slaughter" of animals to the slaughter of the Jews by the Nazis.
I've already received a letter from a child of Holocaust survivors who is, of course, extraordinarily offended. But here's the thing: PETA is known for this kind of outrageous publicity stunt—and that's what it is, an outrageous publicity stunt—and while I am also offended and outraged, there is absolutely nothing we can do that will make PETA change their ad campaign. I'm sure they knew exactly what they were doing, have a plan in mind, and, if they withdraw the campaign, will do it according to their deadlines and their decisions.
So let's make up our own outrageous publicity stunt. Let's designate Saturday, March 15th, as International Eat an Animal for PETA Day. Everybody set the date on your calendar, and either go out and enjoy a great steak, or cook one at home. Or cook up some chicken or fish or anything else that PETA wouldn't want you to eat. And let's let PETA know how their ad campaign has affected us.
Send a letter to PETA something on the order of this one: (You can cut and paste, but you can also write your own.)
Dear PETA,
I found your new ad campaign, "The Holocaust on your plate," offensive and outrageous. But I don't expect your organization to suddenly develop any sense of tact or human decency, so I thought I'd tell you what your campaign has wrought:
March 15th has been designated "International Eat An Animal For PETA" day. On that day, I'll be chowing down on a juicy steak, or chicken, or perhaps I'll have lobster—fresh, of course, chosen from the tank specifically for me. Maybe I'll have a plate of ribs at my local barbecue restaurant. Then there's that great seafood restaurant with the poached salmon and the delicious crabcakes. I could take my family there.
America's a free country, and you have the right to say what you want, no matter how offensive I think it is. But as a result of your insensitivity to those millions of people who died in the real Holocaust, and to the survivors and their descendants, I and my family will show PETA the same kind of insensitivity.
And have a great, meat-filled dinner, while we're at it.
Chew on that.
Fellow webloggers: Please feel free to join in and put up your own letter for your readers to grab. Here are the contact addresses. Obviously, the above letter needs to be changed for the international crowd. There are more country contacts on the page.
PETA
501 Front St.
Norfolk, VA 23510
Tel.: 757-622-PETA (7382)
Fax: 757-622-0457
E-Mail PETA
United Kingdom:
PETA Europe Ltd.
PO Box 36668
London
SE1 1WA
England
Tel: 020 7357 9229
Fax: 020 7357 0901
E-Mail PETA UK
PETA Europe Web Site: www.PETAUK.org
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Kerry vs. Bush
I don’t do predictions very well.
I remember watching Dukakis after the Democratic convention is 1988. He had just made a dramatic speech, and he led the senior Bush by 17 points in the opinion polls.
I remember thinking that the man was going to be our next president.
When I went back to college (where I saw very little TV), the winds in the country had changed dramatically. I never knew what happened to Dukakis, but I – being a young liberal – was convinced it was all some dirty trick played on the country by the Republicans.
(Now the idea of Dukakis having been president in 1990 scares the crap out of me: we would be staring down a nuclear armed Saddam Hussein, sitting on top of most of the world’s oil, and the Soviet Union might still be around (I think that with a weaker American president, the Soviets might have cracked down more tightly on the first voices of democratic dissent)).
Kerry or Bush ?
Gee, I don’t know. But I do think that Kerry’s contradictory positions are going to be a real problem for him.
Bush’s strategy is going to be simple:
1. Attack Kerry as being inconsistent (going on now through late spring).
2. Attack Kerry as being liberal (around the time of the convention).
His defense against the first charge has to be nuance: there is other way he can explain all those votes.
The second charge is more fatal: Kerry needs to move toward the center to attract swing voters.
And when does, the public’s perception of his inconsistency (the first charge) will be confirmed.
Kerry's strategy seems to be tell people that the attacks are coming so that he can portray Bush as being a big meany.
Mean and tested vs. inconsistent and liberal?
If I had to bet, I'd bet the South, most of the West, and the Midwest will vote Republican.
Game, set and match for Bush.
I could be wrong, though (it’s been known to happen - ask my wife).
But I do believe that Kerry election would be a tragedy for nation that is – as much as we wish to forget it - truly at war.
Steven Den Beste likens quitting the war now to be very similar to a tuberculosis patient quitting his drugs before the disease has been eradicated from his body.
The enemy will bide its time, learn from its mistakes and come back better and wiser than before.
This is no time to change course in the war. We are winning, but we haven't won.
We have to see it through.
Monday, March 08, 2004
Globalization creates jobs. Duh.
Thomas Friedman:
I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue.
Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues — like outsourcing of jobs to India — without any reference to reality. Unfortunately, in this life, I'm stuck in the body of a reporter/columnist. So when I came to the 24/7 Customer call center in Bangalore to observe hundreds of Indian young people doing service jobs via long distance — answering the phones for U.S. firms, providing technical support for U.S. computer giants or selling credit cards for global banks — I was prepared to denounce the whole thing. "How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.
Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.
The great German Bunny shortage
This isn't getting much press. Someone or something is killing the bunnies of Germany:Nationwide Bunny Count
Let's learn something from the French
In the late 1990’s, the French had one of their periodic bouts of xenophobic paranoia about foreign influence in their culture.
For decades, the French government had been subsidizing its film industry. Their hope was that French film would become the envy of the world – a showcase of artistic excellence and a display of French cultural superiority.
It didn’t work out that way.
French filmmakers, released from their obligation to turn a profit, turned their talents to producing whimsy. Critics, a group that included money-losing theatre owners, described French films as diffuse, unappealing and unprofitable.
By the late 1990’s, the situation had gotten so bad that 75% of the screens were showing imported films, which actually brought in crowds. The French government – in its loveable way - attempted to force theater owners to devote 50% of their screens to French films.
Presumably, their next great plan was to purchase the bankrupted theaters.
This anecdote, I think, illustrates everything that is wrong with government involvement in the arts (and a good part of what is wrong with France).
Its lesson is that government should have nothing to do with the funding of art, for the precisely the same reason that government should not buy sports stadiums for sports teams, or protect failing industries in the hope that they will grow more competitive.
But art is a particularly easy call, because after years of smashing rules and breaking conventions, artists now find their cultural landscape strewn with nothing but debris.
Modern artists get no respect? Look no further than modern art. It is often the colorful chicken scratches of third grade talent, a ridiculous mingling of obscure images and radical, wacky philosophies. And no display of modern art is complete without venomous attacks on business people, politicians, scientists and religion.
This wasteland has been evolving for quite some time. Brancusi – now regarded as one of the great sculptors by art critics – once had difficulty getting his art through American customs. His art - a sculpted lump of pig iron that looked remarkably like an unsculpted lump of pig iron - was confiscated by custom officials who thought that he was smuggling in raw steel without paying the required import duties. Modern art groupies laugh when they tell this story, sniffing that customs officials aren’t qualified to be art critics.
What better evidence is needed of the detachment of modern art from modern society? Is this art or fashion?
I think government funding is toxic to artists, mainly because it allows them to avoid the painful growth required to attract an audience.
Mozart’s service to a succession of masters is legendary; indeed, the inner conflict between what he wanted to play and what his bosses wanted to hear is the key to understanding his depression late in his life. Yet he produced quality music. Someone of his prodigious talent would do well in any generation, under any circumstance.
I can’t see Mozart, upon learning that he’d been denied government funding, deciding to go into, say, accounting, because the world is populated by Phillistines. But had he received a handsome paycheck for his early work, it is quite possible that a contented Mozart might not have made the art that the conflicted one did.
I don’t favor giving money to the talented guy who plays pipe organs, the mediocre man who does street mime, the incredibly-talented nutcase who sculpts excellently using chewing gum, Pennywise the clown and his amazing balloon animals, the symphony that wants a new concert hall, the African bolo dancer, the guy who welds sheet metal together to look like birds or the break dancer.
Each one will get the same answer from me when they come to me with their hands out: go away.
America is far from artless. It has burgeoning literature, excellent independent filmmakers, and countless painters and sculptors.
I personally want to see art that represents a high degree of technical mastery. I went to a dozens of concerts (all with no government funding, naturally) before I had kids. If I went to a concert and saw that the performer was playing guitar only slightly better than I play guitar then that’s the end of concert for me!
Others might appreciate different aspects of the un-talented guitarist. Perhaps his lyrics sound like poetry, for example.
Trying to codify that into law, and interpreting fairly for the thousands of different types of people who make up any modern society, is impossible. You can’t, and nobody can, and I’d hate to see what a hash government would make of it.
Hey, they’d probably just do what they do now– give money to their elite friends at the symphonies and art galleries (while impoverished hip hop musicians have to go tour to survive).
It is impossible to define art at something above the personal level. Some people may feel a blood covered Star of David or a decapitated businessman are works of art. Fine. I call them political expressions. Let them pay for them.
The art world is torn by competing answers to a timeless question: what is art?
Government involvement is not going to help answer that question.
We can at least learn that much from the French.
Silly Chavez, invasions are for axis members
Chavez Warns U.S. Against Invading
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday vowed to freeze oil exports to the United States and wage a "100-year war" if Washington ever tried to invade Venezuela
This is probably just for local consumption, but if this jack-off thinks the US has even contemplated invading his country, he demonstrates that he is unfit for leadership right there.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Stewart is going to jail because she is human
I'm not sure how to feel about this:Martha Stewart found guilty on all counts
I hate Martha Stewart as much as the next guy. But I think the laws that govern information and stock sales are irrational.
The best reason to buy or sell a stock is because you think you have information that others don't have. You may be one of the first to buy a new product, you may be a scientist who understands the implications of new technology, or you may have received a tip from an enthusiastic employee of a hot company.
Any one of these people has information that others don't have.
But information is "special" if someone tells you a company's stock is about to plunge. You can't act on that.
Come again?
I know that Stewart was convicted on "obstruction of justice." But the law is unclear, and it always will be: it is (yet another) case of the government attempting to regulate information.
Companies are paranoid about this right now. I work in the pharmaceutical industry. If I somehow got wind that a clinical trial was going poorly and dumped my stock, I could be convicted of insider trading (or so they say: we were forced to sign onto company policies in this regard, but I'm not a big fish. If I were to ignore the company policies, I doubt anyone would bother with me).
Yes, I realize that connections shouldn't allow connected people to benefit grossly out of proportion to everyone else (are you listening Hillary Clinton?), but the whole point of markets is the aggregation of information.
And some of this best information comes from on high: Indeed, the knowledge that high-level executives are dumping their own company stock is very important information to everyone else. Information about such trading is available to everyone (especially on the internet).
Now, these fearful executives will hold, even when extremely bad news is imminent.
How does this help the little guy?
The law seems have the noble intention of putting the humblest person on the same plane as Warren Buffet when he buys and sells stock.
But is that realistic? Granted, it is well-intentioned, but if it can't be implemented fairly, is it noble?
I agree that Samuel Waksal deserved to go to jail. He had inside information (though lots of others had this information too), and he acted on it (and I'm sure many others did too).
But the government actually expects any person to look on placidly when they know that they will lose tens of thousands of dollars tomorrow?
Some people are always going to have better information than others: that is why we have markets.
How does law regulate the flow of this information? Anyway that it does so will be flawed.
I believe that the greatest dispute of the 20th century was between societies that attempt to control information (totalitarians) and societies that freely allow its distribution.
The lesson was that information is not something that a government can control.
This has implications for all manners of government policy: from trade, to science, to campaign finances to insider trading.
One of the difficulties of laws in these areas is that it is damn near impossible to know when one is in violation of the law.
Law should not be like that: the difference between right and wrong should not be so nuanced that rules have to be interpreted by full time lawyers. That doesn't benefit anyone.
Law should be as clear as black and white, and one should have no illusions of innocence when one is committing a felony.
Who benefits from the fact that that our tax laws are such a hodge podge collection of incentives and deductions meant to favor certain groups of people? The little guy doing his taxes with a calculator, or the rich guy who pays full time accountants?
As I said before: I hate Martha as much as anyone, but I don't think she belongs in jail for acting rationally.
Kim Jong Il's candidate
This is interesting:
In the past few weeks, speeches by the Massachusetts senator have been broadcast on Radio Pyongyang and reported in glowing terms by the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), the official mouthpiece of Mr Kim's communist regime.
How banal, ridiculously boring, and noncommital do your speeches have to be to get them read on North Korean radio?
Kerry couldn't have mentioned anything about freedom, American values, or the importance of standing up to aggression. He couldn't have talked about his (questionable) pride in being an American, the unique role of the US in the world, or the benefits it bestows on its citzenry.
In short, all he could have been doing was criticizing Bush without providing any clear alternatives. That is the only way his musings could play on North Korean radio.
The apparent enthusiasm for Mr Kerry may reflect little more than a "better the devil you don't know" mentality among the North Korean apparatchiks. Rather than dealing with President George W. Bush and hawkish officials in his administration, Pyongyang seems to hope victory for the Democratic candidate on November 2 would lead to a softening in US policy towards the country's nuclear weapons programme.
Message to Democrats: even the government of North Korea (now undisputed as the worst government on Earth) considers you to be a bunch of pushovers.
The Democrats are so dense that they will consider an endorsement from the world's worst dictator to mean that they are more reasonable than the Republicans. And another learning opportunity will be lost on them.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Naomi Wolf's dark secret
I was shocked (shocked!) when Naomi Wolf bravely came forward and confessed that a professor had come on to her at a party 30 years ago. The fact that he put his hand on her thigh (!) must have a heavy burden all these years.
It appears that Naomi Wolf is not the only telling secrets. It appears Ms. Wolf has something to hide as well.
Iowahawk has the scoop:
Hungry Like Naomi Wolf
He was the naive on-call plumber. She was the superstar feminist clothing theorist he hoped to impress—until she hungrily ogled his butt cleavage. Two years later, he’s speaking out. But the Matriarchy still isn’t listening. A turgid story of sex, secrets, and soccer mom denial.
by Paulie Intaglio
G&G Plumbing Specialists
Long Island City, Queens
For All Your Kitchen & Bathroom Plumbing Needs
Call 800-55-LEAKS
Twenty months on, I am handing over a secret to its rightful owner. I can’t bear to carry it around anymore.
In the early summer of 2002, feminist Naomi Wolf did something banal, human, and destructive: she put her unwanted gaze on the unprotected asscrack of a unsuspecting plumber —a plumber who was tasked with replacing the In-Sink-Erator model 17 3/4 HP batch feed disposal in her well appointed Manhattan kitchen.
The plumber was me, a 34-year-old journeyman with G&G Plumbing Specialist in Long Island City, Queens. Here is why I am telling this story now: I began, nearly a year ago, to try—privately—to start a conversation with my union, that would reassure me that steps had been taken to ensure that another union brother would not fall victim to this repulsive woman's unwanted ocular sexual advances. I expected her apartment Co-op board to be responsive. After nine months and many calls and e-mails, I was shocked to conclude that the atmosphere of feminist collusion that had helped to keep me quiet two years ago was still intact—and as quiet as a Crane Cranada Silent Flush commode.
Friday, March 05, 2004
Welfare state funnies
Need another reason to oppose a big government welfare state?
I have one: You have to listen to people like this:
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court rejected a legal bid on Friday by an unemployed man who wanted the state to provide him with free pornography and trips to brothels because his wife is in Thailand.
Any word on how his wife feels about this?
The court in the southern town of Ansbach ruled that social services did not extend to satisfying the 43-year-old's sexual needs after he attempted to sue his local welfare office because it had refused to finance his appetite for prostitutes and porn.
"He wanted them to pay for four trips to the brothel a month, eight porn films a month, plus condoms," said court spokesman Peter Burgdorf. "He also wanted some sort of appliance for self-gratification to use when watching porn."
Unbelievable.
"The state owes me a living. And a house, three meals a day, a TV (with cable, of course) and, of course, brothel trips, condoms, porn films and blow up dolls...and you know, I could use some booze too."
Call Aristide's bluff
So Aristide claims that he was kidnapped by US marines.
I agree with many voices I've heard recently in the blogosphere: let's call his bluff.
President Bush should announce that a plane is on its way to the Central Africa Republic to pick up Aristide. From there, he will get a direct flight back to Port au Prince, courtesy of his marine "kidnappers."
My hunch is that Aristide will decline. In Haiti, he will be torn to shreds, and he knows it.
It is one of the odd things about African politics: Africans (and Haiti is really a West African country) turn on their leaders when they are no longer in power.
When the man is wearing the presidential sash, he is looked on with adoration and awe. It is an almost spiritual kind of reverence, compelling people to gladly stand for hours in sweltering heat listening to the most mundane presidential speech.
But once the sash is removed from his shoulder, everyone spits the ex-president's name hatefully and would kill him like a dog if given the chance.
This is one of the reasons why so few African leaders actually step aside.
It seems strange to Americans: we let our ex-presidents - no matter how reviled they are - live out comfortable retirements playing golf and giving softball interviews to Parade magazine.
In African nations, leaders know that once they no longer control the assemblies, courts and police, those forces will be turned against them.
The lucky ones are tried for all their corruption (which is always present: it is necessary to pay bribes to underlings to maintain loyalty);
The unlucky ex-leaders are just killed.
And the fact that African leaders won't step aside makes that next hallmark of African governance only a matter of course: the military coup.
When I was in Sierra Leone, military coups were referred to as "African elections."
Sierra Leone has had three or four coups (I lost count) since I was last there, and none of the new leaders was worth a damn.
Fashion Crimes
Man Charged After Defecating in Diaper
PEQUANNOCK, N.J. -- A Paterson man faces child endangerment charges after allegedly showing up at a Roman Catholic school clad in a diaper and pink stretch pants.
William Rhode III, 53, was wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs when he appeared Tuesday in Superior Court in Morristown. Judge Salem Vincent Ahto wanted to make sure Rhode understood the charge lodged against him.
Rhode nodded his head when the judge asked if he understood the charge. Ahto then ordered him returned to Morris County jail in lieu of $75,000 bail.
Rhode is scheduled to undergo a psychiatric evaluation on March 12.
I'll say.
No really, it was stuff like this that forced me to move out of Jersey.
Take back America?
Tim Blair takes on Margo Kingston, but the best part is one of the comments:
Blair's post:
DEAN SUPPOOORTER IDENTIFIED
Margooo Kingstooon writes:I followed the Democratic primary in the US on the web, and was very disappointed when Howard Dean bowed out. His 'Take back America' campaign hit the spot with me, and at least his outspokenness on the Iraq war and the takeover of the US government by crony capitalism energised liberal voters and caught on with the other candidates. He's now planning a transformation of his huge internet support base into a grassrooots activist movement.
She only followed a single primary? Which one?
Posted by Tim Blair at March 5, 2004 12:35 AM
From the comments:
This line got me:"His 'Take back America' campaign hit the spot with me"
Why the hell would an Aussie be interested in a "Take Back America" message? What's the deal? Did the British put you guys up to this? Well, here's a message for you to take back to your paymasters: Forget it! We took it from you fair and square, and you can't have it back! Nyaahh!!
Posted by: TomK at March 5, 2004 at 05:34 AM
Classic.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Why I spank my son
"Today one finds no support for spanking in the scientific literature. This opinion, shared by mental health and child development experts, and other professionals in related fields, has been evolving for many decades and its beginnings can be found centuries ago."
- Jordan Riak
Some parents may never need to spank their children, but I do not count myself among them (though I wish I could). There are times when a child's obedience can't be iffy idea, particularly when the child's safety is at sake. When I tell my son to get out of the road, I need to know that he is not going to argue. I may see a car coming.
That is why I first spanked Sean. Spanking is not appropriate for all parents, but it has worked for me.
The latest "advice" on spanking is exactly the kind of pseudo-science currently debasing the mental health and child development community: Self-inflated "experts" think parental spanking is abusive. They taint studies with their bias, but an uncritical media trumpets their findings anyway. They acknowledge that spanking does result in "quick compliance with parental demands," but they refer to this as a "short term" benefit that is outweighed by the psychological damage inflicted on the child.
These "scientists" think all children are bratty and inattentive. It's the nature of children, they say. They point to their own as examples, and far too often these children are labeled with fictional attention disorders and drugged into compliance with Ritalin.
My wife and I have been spanking Sean since he was old enough to understand its meaning. We do it only infrequently now, because it is hardly needed. Sean understands a tone in our voice that means we are not kidding. We love him more than we love life itself, but we realize that it is important that he follow the rules of our house. The rules are simple rules for his own safety: he is not allowed to play in the kitchen or in the basement by himself, he must hold our hands when crossing the street or in crowds, and he must never hurt his little brother.
My sons, victims of abuse (Timothy even looks like he knows what tortures await him):
My son is not bratty or inattentive (though like any child, he has his moments). He goes bed when he is supposed to, he stops running when told and he does not talk back to people in authority. He loves to go for walks in the fields with Dad, and make color pictures with Mom. His curiosity knows no boundaries, and by all accounts, he is a happy, well-adjusted boy. I believe his ever-present smile comes from his sense of security, the knowledge that his parents are in control and will keep his home safe and stable.
Loving parents rarely need spank frequently. The mere threat of spanking can work wonders, stopping a child in his tracks.
Try that with a "time out."
Any young child is calculating enough to understand that a twenty-minute "time out" is a small price for the thrill of punching his little sister in the stomach. If the threat of spanking keeps a child from playing with matches or touching a hot stove, so be it.
Betsy and I use "time outs" too, though we prefer not to call them that. The term reeks of psychiatry. We just tell Sean to go to his room.
The most primal parental responsibility is to protect children from their own curiosity. If a child is running toward a dangerous street, "quick compliance with parental demands" is not merely a "short term benefit."
It is a matter of life and death.
"Child development professionals" are so busy thinking for parents that they have forgotten how to think like parents.
Dennis, it's time to light the rockets
Alright, I am beginning to lose hope that Dennis Kucinich is going to pull one out of the hat here.
Come on Dennis, it's time to say something provocative and get noticed!
I've supported Dennis Kucinich from the beginning, if for no other reason than it would be fun watching Democrat who is wrong on everything try to get elected.
Social Security? He wants to EXPAND it.
Iraq? He believes that the UN wants to come in and take over.
Health Care? The money saved in Iraq will more than pay for his universal health care plan, or so he says...(would you trust the guy with a calculator after he bankrupted Cleveland?).
And he wants the right to a job and the right to housing to be included in the Bill of Rights. (Hey, why not throw in the right to three square meals a day while we're at it? It could be just like prison!)
And it would all be paid for by a tax hike on the rich and a 50% cut in the defense budget. Yippee!
In short, Kucinich is saying the things that many Democrats would love to say, but they can't stand the thought of being laughed at.
Yes, it would be fun having a Democrat who is wrong on EVERYTHING:
("Hey Dennis, what color is the sky?"
"Azure."
"Wrong! It's blue!")
Dennis has it all. Not just the politics, but the look too: Popeye's Olive Oyl with a strained, constipated expression and Moe haircut. The ill-fitting suits. The squeaky voice. And he has a history too: two failed marriages and a history of fiscal mismanagement in his personal and public life.
His campaign actually trumpeted an endorsement from a children's fairytale character. But he was the fairytale candidate for people who can't stand Democrats.
But alas, Dennis. The score is about a million to zero, and it is late in the fourth quarter.
But Dennis does have an ace up his sleeve, one thing that could turn the tables on old John Kerry:
At least Dennis Kucinich is authentic.
Nobel foolishness
The idea of fighting so that you can live in peace baffles liberals, who consider it to be the ultimate oxymoronic statement.
But it is really no different than saying that you work so that you can enjoy leisure.
The war to transform the Middle East might just make the world a much safer place. I believe it is the best chance we have. Our actions in Iraq might save millions of Americans (and hundreds of millions of Arabs) from nuclear holocaust.
We may never know the answer. I hope it is always to be one of those unanswerables, like the conjecture about what would have happened if Hitler had gotten the bomb first.
At least somebody agrees with me:Bush, Pope are among nominees for peace prize
President Bush, Pope John Paul II, and the two U.N. officials at the heart of the effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are among the nominees for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Hey, why not?
The Nobel Peace Prize has been an nominate-a-fool award for years.
At least Bush can make the case that if he hadn't acted, there would be 50,000 more dead Iraqis today.
What similar case can the Pope make? Or Chirac? Or Blix?
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Cool new (non-lethal) weapons
Iraq Troops Get High-Tech Sonic Weapon
U.S. soldiers in Iraq (search) have new gear for dispersing hostile crowds and warding off potential enemy combatants. It blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam...
..Dubbed "The Sound of Force Protection" in a company brochure, the devices can broadcast sound files containing warning messages. Or they can be used with electronic translating devices for what amounts to "narrowcasting."
If crowds or potential foes don't respond to the verbal messages, the sonic weapon, which measures 33 inches in diameter, can direct a high-pitched, piercing tone with a tight beam. Neither the LRAD's operators or others in the immediate area are affected.
Just what I need...
High-purity heroin marketed for U.S., report says
Drug traffickers are targeting middle-class Americans with high-purity heroin that users can smoke rather than inject, a U.N. drug agency warns in a report being released today.
The Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board - an independent U.N. body that monitors the global drug situation - says producers are tailoring new drug products to meet the sensitivities of Americans who find injecting drugs repulsive.
You've got to hand these drug lords: they know their customers!
That's me: Middle class with a family-oriented, suburban lifestyle.
I have always considered the thought of destroying my life through heroin addiction to be an enticing propostion, but I've hestitated because the idea of needling myself was just...well...icky.
Smokeable heroin? Yeah, that's for me.
Kerry: foreign policy half wit or lying opportunist?
Kerry challenges Bush's policy
LOS ANGELES - Sen. John Kerry, giving a wide-ranging critique of the Bush administration's national security policies, accused the President yesterday of leaving Iraq in "disarray" and said U.S. troops there had "no exit in sight."
Kerry challenged what he said was Bush's policy of going it alone in trying to introduce democracy to Iraq, an approach that has suffered repeated setbacks as one group of Iraqis after another has rejected the U.S. vision of how to proceed. The Democratic presidential front-runner endorsed reliance upon the United Nations instead.
"We must offer the U.N. the lead role in assisting Iraq with the development of new political institutions," Kerry said. "And we must stay in Iraq until the job is finished."
While it is reassuring when Kerry says we should not quit Iraq "until the job is finished," I wonder if the man reads the papers.
The UN had a more substantial capacity in Iraq once, but they were chased out by a suicide bombing in August. They have a desire to participate, but they have neither the capacity nor the will to play a "lead role" in the reconstruction of Iraq.
And any person who has picked up a paper in the last nine months knows that there are several countries in the UN who would love to sabotage Iraq, if for no other reason than they once told the US not to invade (France, Germany and Russia). These countries, it is now known, were once getting huge amounts of cash from Saddam.
Several countires that might step forward with substantial help (i.e. Turkey, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia), view a stable, democratic Iraq as the worst possible outcome.
Changing course now means abandoning a course that is getting results. Every despotic government in the region is threatened, and Al Qaeda has cast its lot firmly with the forces of tyranny.
Iraq is now the most America friendly government in a very bad neighborhood. Where else in the region could Americans run the country, hire hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers to work alongside us and still have overwhelming popular support from the locals for staying until the job is done?
Bad governments in Syria, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia now fear their own people more than they hate us.
That is progress.
Iraq's path - though muddled and dangerous -is moving in the right direction:
What's more, that consensus (on the interim constitution) is a remarkably liberal one. We've heard a lot of nonsense over the past two years that Muslims aren't ready for self-government, and that the Bush Administration was imperial in trying to "impose" it. But Iraqis of all stripes didn't need a lot of prodding to draft what is far and away the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, including what a senior coalition official calls "an extraordinary bill of rights."
Those include the rights to free speech and assembly, the free exercise of religion, habeas corpus and a fair and open trial. There will be gender equality and civilian control of the military. The interim government to be elected by next January will be parliamentary in nature, with a weak executive composed of a president and two deputies.
Kerry is going to face some very tough foreign policy questions on the campaign trail. He will need to answer them with something more than "bring it on."
His answers will reveal how stupid (and gullible) he thinks Americans can be.
And they will tell Americans how friendly he thinks our dangerous world is.
FDR's 401k plans
FDR comes out in favor of privatizing Social Security.
In 1935.
Even he saw he a demographic nightmare coming, and he envisioned his program giving way to a government sponsored 401k plan:
"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
- Franklin Roosevelt
MESSAGE TO CONGRESS ON SOCIAL SECURITY- January 17,1935
I had been curious about the above quote. Jon Henke found it.
It is entirely possible that this election will turn on Social Security. John Kerry might just manage to scare enough old people into voting for him.
Certainly, they are entitled to the money that all these young whippersnappers are earning. All Kerry has to do is lie and tell them there's nothing wrong with the program.
He'll say, in effect: Don't worry, geezers, you'll be dead and I'll retired from politics when the bills come due!
He is capable of doing that. That alone could win him Florida and Arizona (two states where retirees are potent voting blocs).
After all, didn't these old people vote themselves a comfortable, government-financed retirement, back before these upstarts were even born? How dare anyone think of taking it away!
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
