AARP's Tax Trap

Translation: AARP was hoping to use its candidate survey to nail down enough support to raise taxes on Social Security and to defeat private investment accounts if Mr. Bush pushes for reform again next year. But now that its scheme has been exposed and is hurting its Democratic pals in tight races, AARP leaders want to deny that this is what they meant. Let's hope Republicans remember this AARP double-dealing, which resembles what the lobby did in endorsing a drug plan for Medicare in 2003 only to call it inadequate now.

... But I ONLY joined for the free stuff!

Deaf School's Leader Ousted Amid Protests

I've been hearing and reading this story for weeks and I still don't know what the issue is. Like so much protest these days all you hear about is the immediate objective, and often, as in this case not even the whys and wherefores of it all. What exactly was wrong with this woman? One report said that it had to do with WHEN she learned sign language. That's IT? According to one of the stories here that's not it at all. So, what IS it?

Is this a failure of the MSM to get to the bottom of the story, or is there perhaps no bottom to it?

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is all drummed up by "professional" protesters who no doubt have made or are about to make a buck or two off this whole thing. this protest will launch a career or two, and it has nothing to do with who gets the job of president. Several years from now you will hear about some new head of the DNC or some such organization and they'll be saying that person got their start by organizing this protest.

You are witnessing a new job class finally surpass lawyers in caring more about winning than in the actual effects of the outcome.

Hurray for our side. Now what?

The Non-Contract With America

As a campaign strategy, this may well pay off. But if they do win, Democrats will have to fill their campaign vacuum with something, and the best clue to what that would be is what they've already proposed. We've taken some time to inspect these policy priorities and thought we'd share a few of the highlights, if that's the right word. (Warning: Keep sharp objects away from drug-company and Wal-Mart shareholders.)

A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data

Indeed, if all campaigns were doing it, the playing field might well be leveled.

Mr. Bowers said he did not believe the practice would actually deceive most Internet users.

But of course for the left, it's OK to try deception, while admitting that it might not work. Ever wonder why? Whether it is a stunt like this, or a misleading Oreo cookie analysis of the economy, or a parade of misleading victim testimonials on TV, the left will do anything to get their full power back.

Their goal: to trade the principles that made this country great for the principles that caused the Soviet Union to collapse. Oh, but to paraphrase John Kerry, they'll do it better than the Soviets.

Now when I confront a liberal with that comparison to the Soviets, there is always a denial that the goal is anything like Communism, or even Socialism. But what other label fits? "Progressivism" is meaningless, describing a state of perpetual change rather than an actual ideal state of being. Look at the specific goals:

To marginalize all religious practice and engender a total reliance on federal government solutions to every problem.

To bring down those filthy capitalists who run billion dollar companies (the rhetoric always leaves out what should be done about top sports and move stars and somehow you get the notion that its OK for them to make big bucks).

To take away almost any freedom of choice in personal matters (with the sole exception of course of those things that go on in the bedroom).

To install political correctness as the primary state sanctioned religion. This is thought control in as blatant a form as ever envisioned by George Orwell. they do it in their campaigning (as this stunt is a perfect example) and they'll carry the notion to its conclusion if empowered to do so. You can bet that the "Ministry of Education" will simply instruct Google and other such providers where certain search terms should take you. No need to "Google bomb".

The air-head actors of Hollywood threatened to leave the country when Bush got elected, but as far as I know none of them did. Of course they had plenty of places they could have moved that were closer to their ideal of an all-powerful central government, Canada simply being the closest, while the countries of Europe being more ideal. Why didn't any of them leave?

Where will you go when there is no freedom of thought (at least not that can be expressed openly) in America? Will there be pockets of such freedom in such places as Australia? Don't count on it.

Marx understood that for his theories to work, all avenues of escape must be cut off. World Communism wasn't just a nice goal, it was an absolute necessity for the system to succeed. There are those among us who have the same idea regarding our countries founding principles. They don't like states rights, which are all but gone thanks to judicial activism. States rights allow pockets of freedom to shine forth and attract those who love it. The existence of private (to their way of thinking) schools makes it impossible to make public education work, just as the existence of medical people who opt out of government subsidies make their ideal of health care impossible to achieve.

Where will you go after the revolution?

Not Facing Reality

In his interactions with both secularists and Christians after writing his first book, he notes "my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world … despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

"I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate."

and

The one group which speaks with moral clarity about the war in the Middle East is the religious right, Mr. Harris notes, while admitting he disagrees with that group over almost every other political issue.

"Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies," he concludes.

Prosperity Amid the Gloom

Nancy Pelosi vows that if Democrats capture Congress they will "jump-start our economy." A "jump-start " is administered to a stalled vehicle. But since the Bush tax cuts went into effect in 2003, the economy's growth rate (3.5 percent) has been better than the average for the 1980s (3.1) and 1990s (3.3). Today's unemployment rate (4.6 percent) is lower than the average for the 1990s (5.8) -- lower, in fact, than the average for the past 40 years (6.0). Some stall.

John Stossel: Health Insurance Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

Great, let's bankrupt America even faster! Medicare already has an unfunded liability of $32.1 trillion — that's how much more money the politicians have promised versus the amount the Treasury has to pay for it. The Medicare Trust Funds report says expenditures "are expected to increase & at a faster pace than either workers' earnings or the economy overall."

Can We Talk? Apparently Not

The real issue, however, is neither heterosexual or homosexual, and it extends even beyond the important question of the best interests of the child.

The larger question for American society is, as Joan Rivers has often said: "Can we talk?"

Political bigwigs in San Francisco say "No." They are demanding that Pete Wilson resign. In San Francisco, no one is supposed to criticize anything done by homosexuals.

Couldn't Resist

A Party Without Principles

"If Democrats cared about poor women and minorities, they would be clamoring to reform Social Security. But instead they get a childish gratification out of stamping their feet and refusing to discuss the subject. They can't muster the courage to block the suspension of habeas corpus. But when it comes to blocking entitlement reform, the Democrats ride out to battle."

Even lifelong liberals get it every now and then.

Funny thing, the article started with the phrase: "After years of single-party government, " and the first thing that popped into my mind was the period from 1952 to 2000. For most of that time the Repubs were a minority, at times very much so. They continued to work for their ideals and worked to block things they were against without simply rejecting anything that the Dems came up with. For the most part, the Republicans are STILL making concession after concession to the Democrats as if they (the Republicans) were still the minority.

And let's not forget the left still controls the media via which most of you are being brainwashed without even knowing it. The trick is not slanted coverage (although there is plenty of that too) but mostly a slant in picking what to cover. The news you never see is what the left is all about. Why else would they be so concerned about the occasional exception such as Fox News? For their slant to work, they need exclusivity. Not a foreign notion after all, as any Socialist will tell you, their system works best when the Capitalists have no place to escape to.

THE ASSOCIATED (WITH TERRORISTS) PRESS

"Let me repeat that: An Associated (with terrorists) Press journalist gets caught with an alleged al Qaeda leader and tests positive for bomb-making materials. That. Is. News. How does a news organization explain away its decision to sit on it for five months? Like this: "The AP has worked quietly until now, believing that would be the best approach."

The best approach to journalism? No. The best approach to suppressing a damning connection to terrorists.

The mainstream media enjoys mocking bloggers as journalistic wannabes who don't do any "real" reporting and have no concern for the "public interest." But as in the case of the Reuters photo-faking debacle this summer, it is bloggers in their little home offices -- not the professionals on the ground thousands of miles away -- who smoked out a war story with profound national security implications."

Media Clowns

"One of the biggest media figures boycotting the Plame story has been MSNBC host Chris Matthews who has yet to mention the scandal at all since the Armitage report broke, a dramatic contrast to the 27 times he mentioned the "scandal" in the five months leading up to it."

Back in the USSR

And they say Bush has dictatorial aspirations!

Snow Should Grant Hothead Newsman's Wish

Newsman to Tony Snow: 'Don't Point Your Finger At Me!' said apparent member of the loopy left David Gregory, who doesn't like having his bias pointed out.

Why can't the MSM just fire these guys? With all the party-school fodder being turned out of journalism schools these days, replacements should be a dime a dozen. It would go gentle on that bottom line too. Is this the kind of publicity you need NBC?

I suggest for starters, Tony Snow honor his request and never point to him again. That should pretty much end his need to attend the White House press conferences in the first place. Leave the rest to NBC.

One more from the gang that can't shoot straight...

"Armitage's involvement in the matter does not fit neatly into the assertions of Bush administration critics that Plame's employment was disclosed as part of a White House conspiracy to besmirch Wilson by suggesting his Niger trip stemmed from nepotism at the CIA. Wilson and Plame have sued top administration officials, alleging that the leak was meant as retaliation."

Theya-culpa

Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe

Unless you count "green with envy" of George Bush.

"Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself."

WSJ.com - Socialism in Reverse

"This week Robert Poole and other scholars at the Reason Foundation released the 20th Anniversary Edition of their annual global privatization report. It chronicles this sweeping economic trend that began in Margaret Thatcher's England, spread to the U.S. under Ronald Reagan, then to China and the former communist nations of Eastern Europe. A 2005 World Bank report also finds that, from 1990-2003, governments around the globe have generated $410 billion in privatization proceeds."

Capitol Hill Blue - Screwing the pooch

"With the help of 'Bill' and some other volunteers who held the intervention Monday that helped me see the light we've gone back through the databases and removed quotes from unverified sources and eliminated stories that didn't fit the criteria I claimed to follow but did not.

The stories we have removed from the database include:

* Bush's erratic behavior worries White House aides (June 4, 2004)
* Bush's obscene tirades bother White House aides (Aug. 25, 2005)
* Dangers of a drunk Dubya (Sept. 22, 2005)
* Bush's Increasing Mental Lapses and Temper Tantrums Worry White House Aides (Nov. 2, 2005)
* White House keeps dossiers on more than 10,000 political enemies (Nov. 8, 2005)
* Bush on the Constitution: It's just a 'goddamned piece of paper' (Dec. 9, 2005)
* Secret Service agents say Cheney was drunk during shooting incident (Feb. 22, 2006)
* Bush just can't stop lying (March 22, 2006)
* The decider-in-chief: Drunk with power (July 22, 2006)


There will be others. It takes a long time to go through three different databases from the three different publishing systems we've used over the years to try and correct too many mistakes."

WSJ.com - Osama in Genevaland

"Mr. England's memo overturns a 2002 Justice Department memo that ruled explicitly that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, a policy change the White House confirmed late on Tuesday. For an Administration that has fought so hard, and in our view rightly, to protect its executive powers, this is being heralded as an embarrassing reversal. It also has the smell of a bureaucratic fiasco, since we can't recall another situation in which Presidential power was so freely handed away."

12 DOWN: TOP SECRET WAR PLANS, 36 ACROSS: TREASON

"What if, instead of passing information from the government's secret nuclear program at Los Alamos directly to Soviet agents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had printed those same secrets in a newsletter? Would they have skated away scot-free instead of being tried for espionage and sent to the death chamber?

Ezra Pound, Mildred Gillars ('Axis Sally') and Iva Toguri D'Aquino ('Tokyo Rose') were all charged with treason for radio broadcasts intended to demoralize the troops during World War II. Their broadcasts were sort of like Janeane Garofalo and Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio -- except Tokyo Rose was actually witty, and Axis Sally is said to have used a fact-checker."

Auditors: FEMA Paid $1 Billion In False Hurricane Claims

"Included in that is $10 million in housing assistance that went to 1,000 convicted criminals who already had housing -- in prison.

'FEMA's fraud detection and prevention controls were so weak or nonexistent that these fraudulent applications were never detected, let alone prevented,' said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

The hearings left some members of Congress exasperated because FEMA's top officials never showed up to answer questions. That left a 20-year civil service FEMA employee to field the brunt of representatives' wrath.

'Why weren't these steps taken?' one congressman asked.

'Sir, I think that's a very difficult question to ask a career person,' the FEMA employee answered."

The irony being that it is the career people, and not temporary appointees who should have the best handle on the workings of FEMA and every other Federal agency

Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe

"But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. 'These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios,' asserts Ball. 'Since modelers concede computer outputs are not 'predictions' but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts.'

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest."

What if it turns out that, as one study suggested, reduced amounts of soot and other light blocking pollutants has actually caused more heat generating light to hit the ground and is thus responsible for what we call "global warming"? Would Gore and his followers suggest then that we all go back to burning coal in our fireplaces rather than using natural gas or electric heat?

Like many politicians, he can only operate in an environment where there is a "boogyman" to be overcome. Let's turn our collective boogyman field glasses on the destructive power of simplistic Powerpoint presentations as a substitute for true substantive debate. The left made a surprisingly stupid mistake when they tried to make the Bush academic record a campaign issue, inviting comparisons with Gore's record. Gore was the type of guy you loved to have in your class to bring the curve down. View the movie as a comedy, if you must see it. We really are dealing with a conspiracy of dunces here. Real scientists hopefully won't be distracted from real work on the issues by all the needless media attention created by the Duncmaster General.

Hurricanes and Global Warming

"Now there’s a few modelers around who know something about storms, but they would like to have the possibility open that global warming will make for more and intense storms because there’s a lot of money to be made on this. You know, when governments step in and are saying this – particularly when the Clinton administration was in – and our Vice President Gore was involved with things there, they were pushing this a lot. You know, most of meteorological research is funded by the federal government. And boy, if you want to get federal funding, you better not come out and say human-induced global warming is a hoax because you stand the chance of not getting funded."

Not news, but news to me.

Impact of Inevitable Sanctions on Iran

According to the WSJ, maybe not so bad...

"For oil-importing countries, even though Iran exports roughly 2.7 million bbl/d in petroleum, a complete cutoff of these shipments could be offset in large measure by increased OPEC and non-OPEC output, greatly diminishing the dreaded prospect of $100-a-barrel oil. Saudi Arabia has the most untapped capacity, in the order of 1.3 million to 1.4 million bbl/d. Other OPEC members, according to the International Energy Agency, have spare capacity of 1.1 million bbl/d, not including Iraq's estimated 700,000 bbl/d. With a total of 2.4 million to 3.1 million bbl/d in idle capacity, OPEC alone could offset a loss of Iranian exports. Furthermore, global oil consumption is anticipated to grow in the range of 1.4 million to 1.6 million bbl/d this year, while new supply is expected to increase by 1.2 million to 1.3 million bbl/d. Much of the imbalance is expected to be covered by OPEC exports of LNG."

WSJ.com - A Beautiful Sunset

"Ronald Reagan used to quip that the closest thing to immortality in this life is a government program. We'd add one modern caveat, which is that under Beltway budget rules tax cuts automatically expire after five or 10 years, but spending programs and tax increases live forever.

The latter would change, however, if a group of House Republicans led by Texan Jeb Henserling and Mike Pence of Indiana succeed in pushing new rules to sunset out-of-date federal programs. Under their proposal that has been promised a vote this summer, Congress would have to reauthorize agency budgets every five years, or they would die. The legislation would also create a sunset commission to recommend program terminations, and Congress would vote up or down on the package. This procedure is modeled after the successful military base closing commissions."

Sounds like something worth writing your congress person (and everyone else you know) about, doesn't it?

Mr. Murtha's Rush to Judgment

"A year ago I was charged with two counts of premeditated murder and with other war crimes related to my service in Iraq. My wife and mother sat in a Camp Lejeune courtroom for five days while prosecutors painted me as a monster; then autopsy evidence blew their case out of the water, and the Marine Corps dropped all charges against me ['Marine Officer Cleared in Killing of Two Iraqis,' news story, May 27, 2005]."

Unstoppable Drones

Crazy talk? Maybe not.

Cops: Kennedy Was Under Influence - May 5, 2006

Or as one pundit put it: It's 3AM, do you know where your Kennedys are?

USNews.com: Despite a troubled history, police across the nation are keeping tabs on ordinary Americans

"The outfit stumbled in 2002, when two of its agents were assigned to follow around the county executive. Their job: to determine whether he was being tailed--not by al Qaeda but by a district attorney investigator looking into alleged misspending. A year later, one of its plainclothes agents was seen photographing a handful of vegan activists handing out antimeat leaflets in front of a HoneyBaked Ham store. Police arrested two of the vegans and demanded that they turn over notes, on which they'd written the license-plate number of an undercover car, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now suing the county. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial neatly summed up the incident: 'So now we know: Glazed hams are safe in DeKalb County.'"

VOTE.COM - ROUSING THE ISOLATION GENIE

"This withdrawal from globalism is a predictable consequence of the quagmire of Iraq. Bush has spent the constructive energies unleashed by Sept. 11 on his bid to make Iraq a stable democracy. Whether he has squandered our national vigor or simply invested it wisely will only become apparent in the next few years, but what is glaringly obvious is that our patience is over.

Republicans criticize Democrats for not proposing new solutions to the Iraq war, but the GOP misses the point that their opponents don’t have to do so. The wind of isolationism is at the Democrats’ back, propelling them onward to the likelihood of massive victories in 2006 and 2008."

“‘Just War Theory’ vs. American Self-Defense” by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein

The reason is that, despite their claims that they will do whatever is necessary to defend America, our leaders believe that it would be wrong—morally wrong—to do so. They believe this because they consistently accept a certain moral theory of war—one that has come to be universally taught in our universities and war colleges. This theory is accepted, at least implicitly, not only by intellectuals, but by our politicians, the leadership of our military, and the media. And while the American people are not explicitly familiar with this theory, they regard the precepts on which it is based and the policies to which it leads as morally uncontroversial. The theory is called Just War Theory. To understand today’s disastrous policies, and to reverse them, it is essential to understand what this theory holds.

Putting the cuckoo in our clocks�

"In other words, it isn't 1975 any more; we've made one or two technological advances since then; and did anybody stop to think that people might actually take advantage of the daylight by driving their gas-burning cars to more places? "

Director Rob Reiner resigns from Calif. commission

"Legislators from both political parties said Reiner, an outspoken Democrat, improperly spent $23 million of commission funds to highlight preschool when he was promoting a referendum for the June 2006 ballot that would guarantee preschool for 4-year-olds."

Meathead!

Man Overboard

"Mansfield writes that he wants to 'convince skeptical readers -- above all, educated women' -- that 'irrational manliness deserves to be endorsed by reason.' Sorry, professor: You lose. What this country could use is a little less manliness -- and a little more of what you would describe as womanly qualities: restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus, maybe even a touch of self-doubt."

Correction: You lost. And you will continue to make us laugh at your inability to recognize that fact. Better save all your propaganda/analysis for 2008. You're gonna need it.

The right to abandon your child�

"The feminists may well be stumped by this argument. After all, they've based their abortion advocacy as a matter of women's reproductive rights. Is it logical to claim women have reproductive rights that men lack? Yes, a woman has to carry an unplanned pregnancy for nine months and give birth. But Mr. Dubay, and many other men, are saddled with 18 years of child support. That's a pretty substantial inhibition of one's 'reproductive freedom.' "

Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship | The Brussels Journal

"No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage."

Funny. Tax referendums work that way too don't they? Congress votes over and over for new spending programs until they pass. then we spend the next 50 years debating how to pay for it.

At what point to ordinary citizens say "ENOUGH!"

We have to look to the former Soviet Union for examples. We're not quite there yet.

WCPE - Great Classical Music 24 Hours a Day

With local radio stations under largely deserved pressure to do something useful, an unfortunate outcome is that many marginal specialty stations are going under, or worse, changing format in the unlikely hope that having just one more top-40 broadcaster per square mile might make them slightly profitable again.

I can see myself soon totally weaned of the need for radio stations at all. Living now beyond the outskirts of much of anything the "scan" button on my radio has trouble finding a signal strong enough to stop at. Just the opposite of the problem I used to have where the stations were so close together it stopped at every single frequency (making it mostly indistinguishable from the up-down tuning buttons).

By some miracle though, I have a fast Internet connection, and various means of listening to "Internet Streaming Radio" (I'm not sure if there is an official term for this, so I made that up). I can listen directly, using one of several computers, but after I got used to this notion I wanted that music piped out of my moderately fancy stereo system as well, so I got an Apple Airtunes gadget and have been using it for coming up on two years I think. More recently I caught These Things on sale for $99 (well more, if you wanted the nicer display) and decided to try one (and then another). Being able to tune into an Internet radio station without the need to be sitting at a computer (as was the case with Airtunes) or even have a computer turned on, is really liberating. Having two going at once in different rooms is also nice, even if the sounds are a bit out of sync. More expensive devices can cure this problem too, but this one is good enough for my needs, namely being able to go from the living room to bedroom without losing continuity.

Now if I want to listen to my own music collection rather than someone else's, this devices connects (in a more user friendly way than Apple hardware) directly to my iTunes setup, and it will also connect to several other music server programs (including one that runs on Linux, a big bonus for me), but I haven't yet gotten over the convenience of having such a large selection of music (and with database search capability rather than that mere up-down tuning mode of an actual radio) so other than to prove it works, my local music collection is sitting idle for the time being.

Finally though, this is about revenge. Revenge for one thing against all those top-40 stations which seem to be coming and going monthly around here so that you can no longer keep the presets on your radio programmed properly for any length of time. Do you hear me top forties?! I'M NOT LISTENING! But this is also revenge against some of those marginal stations, that, rather than do more to leverage whatever specialty market they are in, and rather than do the graceful thing of just going out of business, instead embarrass themselves and their listeners by making sweeping death spiral changes to their programming switching from classical to religious, from religious to country, from country to talk, from talk to top-40 and then finally closing their doors after wearing out whatever audience they had.

Locally, here in the middle of nowhere, there was only one station that played classical music, a college station, and they did a fairly good job of it too, using two different frequencies, one of which I could receive in my concrete silo, the other I could only receive in the car. For some reason they decided that the farmers in this area do not include enough old-time Communist sympathizers, so they have switched one of the two stations to 24-hours of NPR programming. Guess which one? So at home, there is now no reception of classical music, and on the station that such reception used to exist there is a constant demand that I send them money. They are barking up the wrong tree. I spent my donation money on a new Internet radio and now I'll be listening to this:

theclassicalstation.org

among others. Maybe the connected world only needs a few of these, and I'll be sending them a check to let them know I appreciate their efforts. In the mean time, I wish the local stations were more imaginative. But they aren't. So there.

Sen. Clinton Says Rove Obesses About Her

"'He spends more time thinking about my political future than I do,' Clinton said, noting that Rove and other White House aides have met regularly with her possible opponents in November's 2006 Senate race."

No es possible.

WSJ.com - Daughter of Islam

"After 9/11, many Americans assume that the radical Islamic agenda is to destroy the U.S. The reality is that attacks on Western targets are designed to function as brutal propaganda coups that will attract recruits to the cause of violent revolution. The main goal of ideologues like Osama bin Laden is to topple the governments of Muslim countries, including, most famously, the Wahabi royal regime of Saudi Arabia. But the real strategic plum, Ms. Wahid says, would be her native Indonesia and its 220 million citizens -- with the largest Muslim population on earth."

Andrew C. McCarthy on Port Security on National Review Online

"You may recall, however, that, upon election, President Clinton proceeded to get tough with Beijing for, oh, about ten minutes. After that, there was no transfer of precious technology and no national security secret that couldn’t be had for the right price. Oh, and guess who now controls several port operations on the West Coast? And has for years? Well, whaddya know? It’s China.

Indeed, Chinese infiltration of U.S. ports would have been even more pervasive if Senator Clinton’s husband had had his way. In 1998, the Republican Congress (led by Senator James Inhofe (OK) and Congressman Duncan Hunter (CA)) had to stop him from turning over management of a 144-acre terminal at the former U.S. Naval Station in Long Beach to the Chinese Ocean Shipping Company — a subsidiary of the People’s Liberation Army linked to arms trading to Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan, Cuba, and even the street gangs of Los Angeles."

A Failure of the Press - By William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz

"We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities."

2006 Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda

"This 2006 Congressional Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda lays out what the Democrat Party promises to do if they are given majorities in Congress this fall:"

In government we trust

"Hillsdale College Economics Professor Robert Murphy cites some of FEMA's stupid responses to Hurricane Katrina, which include 'delaying firefighters two days in Atlanta hotels to receive sexual-harassment training and watch videos on the history of FEMA while people were dying in New Orleans.'
By contrast, private firms like Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and Home Depot had trucks on the road right after the hurricane. "

Alec Baldwin Blasts 'Chicken-Bleep' Dems

"Hollywood Democrat Alec Baldwin is blasting his party's Senators for failing to block Samuel Alito confirmation to the Supreme Court, saying he's appalled that Sen. Ted Kennedy and other liberals could muster only 25 of the 41 votes needed mount a successful filibuster."

Funny, I thought he had left the country. Whatever could be holding him back?

BREITBART.COM - La. Turned Down Feds' Help, Documents Show

"Two days before the Aug. 29 storm, HHS was told by the state's health emergency preparedness director that the help was not needed, according to an e-mail released Monday by a Senate panel investigating the government's response to Katrina.

The state official, identified in the Aug. 27 e-mail as Dr. Roseanne Pratts, 'responded no, that they do not require anything at this time and they would be in touch if and when they needed assistance,' wrote HHS senior policy analyst Erin Fowler."

Flourishes and flubs - R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. on "Alioto" Hearings

"I cannot rid from my mind the name Alioto, Judge Samuel Alioto. That is the name of Judge Samuel Alito as pronounced by the delightful Sen. Edward Kennedy, or is it Eduardo Kennedino?

No, it is simply Teddy, and he is as entertaining as any U.S. senator since the days of the soused Southerners, who would tipple their way through the dreamy days on Capitol Hill, rousing themselves for histrionic oratory in the midafternoon and then slumping back into their seats, awaiting the late afternoon hour when they would all gather in one or another's chambers for a 'restorative' -- then on to dinner. "

WSJ.com - The Wages of Leaks

'I believe, I accept, your explanation that you didn't want to hurt the United States, that you are a loyal American,' Judge Ellis said in sentencing Mr. Franklin. But 'it doesn't matter that you think you were really helping,' the judge said. 'That arrogates to yourself the decision whether to adhere to a statute passed by Congress, and we can't have that in this country.'

Triumph of the Redistributionist Left | csmonitor.com

"Republicans' capture of both Congress and the White House was, understandably, a demoralizing blow to the left. But the latter can take solace that 'Republican' is no longer synonymous with spending restraint, free markets, and other ideals of the political right."

Amen

The Barrett report by Robert Novak

"The long-awaited final report by Independent Counsel David Barrett, to be released today [Thursday], was severely censored by court order but not enough to sufficiently obscure its importance. As long forecast, it alleges serious corruption in the Clinton administration's Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The question is what was contained in 120 pages removed by the judges."

FORK REPLACES DONKEY AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY SYMBOL

"Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party, may have had some unpalatable goals, but at least they were big ideas. Wipe out the Indians, kill off the national bank and institute a spoils system. Love him or hate him, he never said, 'I'll be announcing my platform sometime early next year.' The Whigs were formed in opposition to everything Jackson stood for.

The Republican Party emerged from the Whigs when the Whigs waffled on slavery. (They were 'pro-choice' on slavery.) The Republican Party was founded expressly as the anti-slavery party, which to a great extent remains their position today."

CNN banned from Iran for nuclear translation gaffe

"He said a restoration of CNN's right to work in Iran would depend on an assessment of the broadcaster's future coverage of the Islamic state."

If only we could do the same thing here!

OPENING ARGUMENT: The Case of Alito v. O'Connor (01/09/2006)

Brilliant!

Media Report Miracle Mine Rescue -- Then Carry the Tragic Truth

"The Washington Post story by Ann Scott Tyson, which appeared on the front page, opened: 'A dozen miners trapped 12,000 feet into a mountainside since early Monday were found alive Tuesday night just hours after rescuers found the body of a 13th man, who had died in an explosion in an adjacent coal mine that was sealed off in early December.'"

Wind Farmer's Almanac

"Kennedy elaborates on this - he goes on to describe Nantucket Sound as 'among the most densely traveled boating corridors in the Atlantic.' As such, Cape Wind's turbines would come 'perilously close to the main navigation channels for cargo ships, ferries and fishing boats.'

The project would also come 'perilously close' to the Kennedy compound, although no mention of this is made in the column. "

The Road to Hell...

Someone on Slashdot claimed that the Democrats were the more financially responsible party. After I cleaned the coffee off my screen I had to set them straight.

(1) I don't consider just raising taxes to cover every spending spree you go on to be "financial responsibility". Republicans regularly vote for smaller spending increases than Dems. And I can't think of the last time a departments budget was actually cut. ("cut" means CUT, not just reduce the increase).

(2) The reduction in the size of government that Clinton likes to take credit for consists almost entirely of military base closings that were voted into place during the previous Bush administration. How about we do the same thing for domestic departments that have long since outlived their function? I don't hear any of these responsible Democrats calling for such things. If they did, I'd vote for them.

(3) Most Republican voters as well as Democrats are "good" people. What confuses you is that you have been told that all Republicans are evil when in reality most Republicans have a distrust, that is well founded in history of governments that get too big and try to live people's lives for them. There is no instance of government "giving" money to individuals that does not come with strings attached. As "kind hearted" as many of those programs sound, they will, and have largely already, produce a population unable to think for themselves and such a society cannot sustain itself. Never has, never will.

If there were a "Leave Me the Hell Alone" party that had electable candidates I would vote for them. Until then, I will continue to vote for the party that comes closest to that philosophy, even if there is only a hairs breadth of difference between the two existing parties.

Here is a quote from Jimmy Carter's new book "Our Endangered Values":

"Soon after arriving in Washington, I was surprised and disappointed when no Democratic member of Congress would sponsor my first series of legislative proposals -- to reorganize parts of the federal bureaucracy -- and I had to get Republicans to take the initiative. Thereafter, my shifting coalitions of support comprised the available members of both parties who agreed with me on specific issues, with my most intense and mounting opposition coming from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. (One reason for this was the ambition of Senator Ted Kennedy to replace me as president.)"

(NPR Link)

When Carter took office, even though I hadn't voted for him, I thought he was a nice guy, and his statements on reforming government gave me hope that he would do the right thing. His presidency was one disaster after another, some probably beyond his control (the gas crisis), but his own party sabotaging him is not a reason for me to consider voting for another Democrat until the Democrat party does more to distance itself from people who for all practical purposes are extreme socialists. Again, the problem with the socialist philosophy isn't that the intentions are bad, it is that the system does not work.

As they say, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Maybe that should be the motto for the Democrat party.

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation: Honor the Victims of Communism and Those Who Love Liberty

"'The fall of the Communist empire,' said Czech President Vaclav Havel, 'was an event on the same scale of importance as the fall of the Roman Empire.'

And yet in Washington, D.C.--the city of memorials--there has been no monument marking this epic event or memorial to the many millions who died under communist tyranny. Until now."

Europe must face ugly truths of communist past

"What is needed to accomplish this is a Europe-wide Truth and Reconciliation Commission, composed of scholars and elder statesmen of undoubted democratic loyalty, who would hold hearings and report not just on the crimes of communism — remember, they included mass murder and widespread torture — in eastern and central Europe but also on those in the Soviet Union itself and even on the culpable failures of Western statesmen to halt or restrain those committing them."

BREITBART.COM - Hecklers Cause Coulter to Cut UConn Speech

"During the question-and-answer session, someone asked Coulter if she really was against a woman's right to vote.

'Not having women vote is a joke,' she said, reversing comments she has previously made.

Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major at UConn, didn't attend the speech.

'We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech,' said Knudsen, head of Students Against Hate."

Clueless in Connecticut.

It’s anybody’s guess | The Register

"However, unlike with my train journey, it is very unusual for software developers to be asked to estimate from a position of certainty. To gain a competitive advantage, organisations need to be delivering new and, hopefully, unique functionality. 'New and unique' is, by definition, something we have not done before and have no experience of. It is, therefore, unknown."

Good coverage of why things go wrong, but there is more.

Of course it doesn't cover government contracting. There are additional factors here. For example, your government "management" was supposed to tell you to start working on a new feature in January, but they either forgot, or failed to attend the internal meeting where this information was passed down. So, when you actually begin work on the "planning" phase of the project in July, you post date all the items on your project plan to make it look like you actually started work in January. While you're still trying to figure your ass from a hole in the ground the schedule says you are midway into the coding phase. You still have to go to status meetings with your government "manager's" peers and engage in fantasy-land talk so as not to embarrass the bozo/bimbo, and it is you, not the bozo/bimbo who must take that lashes for things being "not quite finished yet". Of course, reporting the facts of the matter is out of the question, as your "manager" and the people you would report him/her to are all in this lifetime employment scam together and are probably at least as incompetent as yours is.

Every now and then the cumulative disparity between your fantasy-land project and reality actually has an impact on something that the public might become aware of. But the good news, is that by then, there is so much blame to go around that it is indistinguishable from nobody being to blame. Steady as she goes, slower, slower slower: The game goes on.

New Scientist Breaking News - Liars’ brains make fibbing come naturally

Clinton(s) Explained: “Some people have an edge up on others in their ability to tell lies,” says Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “They are better wired for the complex computations involved in sophisticated lies.”

The History Lesson of Joseph Ellis

"But by the time you read this it may even be official that Ellis' career as a writer and professor is over. After all, his classwork is part of his scholarship, and thus his scholarship — the basis of both his teaching and writing — will now forever be doubted. How can you trust a historian who makes up history?"

But today CBS gave him air. Surely they weren't running short of Bush bashers?

Social Security Online - The Technocrats

"The Technocrats believed that the solution to all problems of economic security were the same, the rigorous application of engineering principles in a system freed from the Price System. They conceived of retirement as being made possible at age 45 for everyone due to the vast prosperity the new age of Technocracy would usher in. Rejecting all forms of traditional political science, the Technocrats refused to even use standard geographical maps because their boundaries were political, so they would refer to states only by their geographical coordinates. Names, too, were suspect for some reason so members of the movement in California were designated only by numbers. A speaker at one California rally was introduced only as 1x1809x56!"

Sweetness & Light: Tim Russert, Democrat Shill

"In fact in his original answer Powell insisted the administration honestly believed the information the CIA had made available to them and had acted in good faith. But Russert edited Powell’s response to make it sound exactly the opposite.

Doing so, Tim Russert has once again exposed himself to the world as the Democrat hack that he is. Of course this is not news to anyone who has ever watched him."

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Only U.N. Official Fired in Oil-for-Food Scandal Cleared, Reinstated

"The decision was made Monday and Joseph Stephanides, fired May 31, received the letter Tuesday maintaining that he violated staff rules by showing preference to one bidder for an Oil-for-Food contract but essentially acknowledging the punishment was too harsh.

Stephanides, a 60-year-old Cypriot national, had been scheduled to retire in September and the move gives him his pay up to that point. Deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe confirmed that Stephanides' firing had been overturned and said Undersecretary-General for Management Christopher Burnham signed the letter on behalf of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is at a conference in Tunisia.

The letter, dated Monday, said 'the sanction that was imposed on you has been reconsidered in light of all the circumstances in the case and the principle of proportionality.'"

mediabistro/FishBowlDC: A Leaky Post Newsroom

How fun to watch the media talk about themselves "off the record".

"Not discussed directly in this forum, but effectively used by others to bludgeon us this morning, was the question of a reporter "exempting" himself from the Plame story and then appearing on TV as a pundit -- and washington post representative -- trashing the fitzgerald probe as much ado about gossip."

They should all be forced to watch (until it sunk in) the "Yes Minister" episode on anonymous leaks to the press.

They start with the premise that there are situations where relying on anonymous sources is the right thing to do, and then argue with each other 'till the cows come home about exactly what those circumstances are.

I have a suggestion to them: Just don't do it!

For journalists willing to do the work there are plenty of sensational stories with sources in the public domain (although hidden by more red tape than the average individual can wade through).

Take a look at the Wall Street Journal's legal efforts to get the facts on this case made public for a good example of the right way to go about this.

A press that engages in rumor mongering makes itself as much a tool for tyranny as against it.

More Evidence in Favor of Term Limits

Plame's husband wants Post to probe Woodward

"Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press have asked Judge Reggie Walton to deny Fitzgerald's blanket protective order, which would bar public access to grand jury transcripts, witness statements and a wide range of other evidence in the case. Any leaks could result in civil and criminal fines, the order warns."

Wilson continue to prove that he can't keep his own mouth shut.

Believe It or Not - Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC? By Christopher Hitchens

"Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don't be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the 'shocked, shocked' faction, we already know who you are."

Brown's Alito letter lifted from blogger

"Brown's letter merely changed the last clause so the sentence read, 'What is striking about Alito is that he is so hostile even to the basic rights of workers to have a day in court, not to mention interpreting the law against them.'"

Joe Biden, where are you?

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Paris Burning: How Empires End by Patrick J. Buchanan

"This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires.

At this writing, the riots are entering their 12th night and have spread to Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Cannes, Nice. Thousands of cars and buses have been torched and several nursery schools fire-bombed. One fleeing and terrified woman was doused with gasoline and set ablaze. "

GAO confirms some e-voting problems

"Although the issues are not universal, GAO found that some e-voting systems do not encrypt ballots cast or audit logs, and either one could be altered without detection. In addition, some machines are insecure enough that someone could alter a ballot's appearance so that votes cast for one candidate would be recorded for an opponent."

Democrats defeat election-law aid for bloggers | CNET News.com

"Democrats on Wednesday managed to defeat a bill aimed at amending U.S. election laws to immunize bloggers from hundreds of pages of federal regulations."

Nice going, commies!

Just The News

"Cooper, 38, has been gathering momentum all year that peaked with his on-the-scene coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Klein said.

'He's got a refreshing way of being the anti-anchor,' he said. 'He's not quote-unquote reporting at you. He's just being himself. He's asking the questions you would like answered. He's getting involved the way you might. You feel that he's a regular person that you can trust talking to you. He brings such a passion to the storytelling that's infectious.'"

What total idiots. But then, I haven't watched network TV for a long time. I'd probably have trouble going back to it. Die mainstream media, die!

WARD OF THE COURT - Democrats-Temper Tantrums or Honesty - By Steven Ward

"So to claim that Tenet and other CIA officials would have lied to Jay Rockefeller and others in private closed door meetings to help the neocons make the case for war defies credulity. Yet, that is what the room temperature IQ crowd of Cindy Sheehan and others want us to believe. "

*Chuckle*

Watered Down Volker Report Finally Sputters Forth

Even so, the "sensitive" types at the UN are shocked...

"The 19-month investigation has caused havoc at the United Nations, whose officials say the world body was unequipped to handle a program of that size."

But from here:

http://www.un.org/geninfo/ir/ch6/ch6_txt.htm...

Who works at the United Nations and what do they do there?
Economists, translators, statisticians, secretaries, TV producers, computer experts, physicians, carpenters – these are just a few of the wide variety of people with many skills and backgrounds who work as UN staff members.

The UN Secretariat employs some 7,500 staff members under the regular budget and a nearly equal number under special funding. Coming from some 170 countries, they administer the UN's policies and programmes in New York and at duty stations around the world. The UN system as a whole – the UN and its related programmes and specialized agencies, including the World Bank and the IMF – employs some 61,000 people worldwide.

Funny, thts more people than Microsoft has:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39233636,00.htm

NEWSMEAT - Hall of Fame - Political Donations of the Rich, Famous, & Powerful

Now I know who to boycott (most of 'em).

'Bill and Me'�

Mr. Freeh also heaps scorn on Mr. Clinton for his 177 last-minute pardons and commutations without consulting either the FBI or the Justice Department, contrary to established procedures. One beneficiary, Marc Rich, fled to Switzerland to avoid 50-plus indictments for fraud. Why drop the charges? Mr. Rich's socialite wife, Denise, donated more than $1 million to Democrats during the Clinton-Gore years. As Mr. Freeh writes, "the stench... should have been enough to dissuade the president. It didn't, of course. That was Bill Clinton."

Agency Probes Possible Terror Threat Leak - Yahoo! News

"'It's ironic that on the one hand the department is saying this is not a credible threat and then, if these e-mails are true, people within the department with access to classified information felt it was worth contacting their own families,' said Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The e-mails began circulating Oct. 3 — three days before Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced they were putting thousands of extra police officers on patrol in the subways in response to the possible plot to bomb the subway using briefcases or baby strollers packed with explosives.

The Daily News quoted one e-mail — purportedly penned by the unnamed son of a high-ranking Homeland Security official — in which he warns recipients: 'The only information I can pass on to you is that everyone should at all costs not ride the subway for the next two weeks in major areas of NYC.'"

Nothing like this to restore my faith, along with the founding fathers that government should only be trusted as far as you can throw it. That mistrust, not shared by nearly enough US citizens these days, is exactly what made our country great. Keep disappointing us Big Government. We need the reminders.

Miers is the wrong pick - George Will

"The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers' confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination."

E.U. Opens Historic Talks On Membership for Turkey

"PARIS, Oct. 4 -- The European Union formally opened membership talks with Turkey early Tuesday morning, but only after bitter opposition by Austria had exposed deep apprehensions about the future of the 25-country group and the prospects of admitting a large, poor, Muslim country to its ranks."

I wonder what their problem is? In another 25 years or so all of Europe will be a large poor Muslim country. Turkey will fit right in.

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy - Los Angeles Times

"Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong."

If Ex-WMAL Host Is Sorry, It's Not For Bashing Islam

"Graham hopes to have the last laugh. ABC is seeking bids for its radio stations, including WMAL, and the overwhelming response Graham has had from other radio companies makes him optimistic that a new owner might put him back on the air here."

WMAL, another train-wreck (err, make that ship-wreck in keeping with the post below) about to happen has in recent memory been a conservative talk show station, although I've continued to think it has been such only reluctantly. WMAL's local talk has been all over the map with an emphasis on early morning wake-up humor and traffic reports. I always got them confused with WTOP and WRC, one a news-only station and the other the original home of Larry Kings radio program before he hit the jackpot of... whatever you call what he does now.

With few exceptions, media companies have two separate agendas, one, "The Agenda" whatever that happens to be, and two, the bottom line. In the past they have been able to keep these two things blissfully unaware of one another. Is the New York Times the powerhouse it is because it is a liberal paper in a liberal city? Probably not. After all, the Wall Street Journal comes out of New York too, and there are lots of more liberal papers in New York.

WMAL's success has been well correlated though with the fact that they were the primary carrier of Rush Limbaugh for as long as I can remember, and they gradually added more conservative talk, as well as shifted their own local talk to a conservative slant, presumably to keep people from tuning away as soon as Limbaugh's 12-3 slot ended.

Thinking that the ABC-Disney combine was more centrally located on the political spectrum than the others I once signed up for a slew of "services" from the company (that my spam filters are still trying to cope with) and among other things checked in at a forum where you could leave comments about their on-air activities.

That is, in fact, what I did: leave a comment about the newly restructured program "This Week" which David Brinkly had turned over to Sam Donaldson and Cokey Roberts (with short appearances each week by token conservative Pulitzer Prize winner George Will). My comment was on the sudden departure of Donalson/Roberts and their replacement with the quite liberal commentator George Stephanopolis, who's main claim to fame was a kiss-and-tell book written after he left the Clinton administration. Nothing has changed my opinion that this fellow has no particular business (i.e. credentials) to host such a national show. And nothing has changed the opinion of ABC News, who promptly deleted my comment. Fair and open, as long as you say nice things about us I suppose.

Well, nothing pleases me more than to see these outfits have trouble. Their reign as arbiters of what we all are supposed to be thinking is long overdue for an end. If WMAL goes under, or gets sold and changes to an all Hari-Crishna format, or whatever, someone else will no doubt pick up the popular programs, even if, in the shuffle, a few good things are lost. In the long run, and in the big picture, the fat-cats of the fourth estate deserve to be taken down a peg, or several. All in all, a good start.

NY Times cuts 500 jobs; Philly papers cut 100 - Boston.com

"NEW YORK --The New York Times Co. and two Philadelphia newspapers announced major job cuts Tuesday as the industry grapples with severe financial problems including weak advertising and circulation declines. The Times said it would cut about 500 jobs, while the Philadelphia papers will eliminate a total of 100 jobs."

Reminding me of my favorite lawyer joke, the punchline of which is: "A good start."

More:

Mercury News plans to shrink newsroom by 52 jobs
"16% reduction ends week of newspaper industry buyouts and layoffs;
Cuts are 'painful,' says editor, but the paper will survive"

The Conservative Brotherhood

" The Conservative Brotherhood is a group of African American writers whose politics are on the right hand side of the political spectrum. Expanding the dialog beyond traditional boundaries, they seek to contribute to a greater understanding of African Americans and America itself through advocacy and commentary."

German Debate Results

In reporting about debate results for the top job in Germany it would seem that the German and international press are as confused as is the US press over who wins our debates:

"BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder beat his conservative rival Angela Merkel in a feisty U.S.-style TV debate on Sunday but may not have delivered the knock-out blow needed to catch her in the polls, surveys showed."

While other reporting claimed that she was a clear winner. Only the polls will tell.

Martin Sheen, Sharpton Visit Anti-War Camp - Yahoo! News

I'm always confused when "bereaved" people wear such big smiles.

Internal CIA report faults ex director, others for pre 9/11 faults

Yahoo! News: "Tenet, who resigned in July 2004 after seven years at the top, was censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on Al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks, two people familiar with the report told The New York Times."

Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

The Ergosphere:

"Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

All the attention in the nation appears to be on hydrogen as the ideal medium for energy in a renewable economy. It has a lot going for it, in particular the fact that it can be produced from nothing more than water and energy. But this comes at a high (and hidden) price, especially for production from renewable energy; it is far from obvious that the use of hydrogen is worth the additional costs. The consequence is that we should downgrade hydrogen research, and cease deployment efforts immediately.

Hydrogen is certainly a wonderful molecule. It's the lightest element and has a very high energy/mass ratio. It's also the foundation of many chemical synthesis processes, both artificial and natural; when plants make sugar, they begin by splitting a water molecule to make hydrogen. There are even some ways to persuade plants to yield hydrogen directly. And when hydrogen is required, nothing else will do. You need hydrogen to make ammonia (for nitrogen fertilizer) or synthesize hydrocarbons.

We can learn a lot from plants (biomimicry has yielded a lot of good concepts), but there are limits to how far this can go and still be useful. It's one thing to borrow inventions and techniques from nature when they are well-suited to the task at hand, and quite another thing to cut the engineering problem to fit the Procrustean bed of a biological prototype. I intend to show that the 'hydrogen economy', and particularly the hydrogen fuel-cell car, is a poor way to accomplish this."...

Follow link for analysis.

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn: "Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing."

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Pathetic.

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996 - New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam 'well beyond the Middle East,' but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show."

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001)

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001): "Iraqi Spies Reportedly Arrested in Germany
16 March 2001

Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.

The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies."

Interesting, no?

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters: "'New England Republicans are different than most. They are more reasonable and thoughtful,' Dean said. 'You don't get as many right-wing wackos.'"

But of course, you do get quite a few left-wing wackos. Some of which go right to the head of the class.

NARAL Loses Nerve

My Way News: "After protests by conservatives, NARAL Pro-Choice America said Thursday night it would pull the ad that began running this week.

'We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record,' NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.

'Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,' she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who earlier in the day had urged the group to withdraw the ad."

I call BS.

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud: "What is clear is that the Secretary General intends to spin the Volcker report not as an indictment of his tenure in office, but -- and this is amazing -- as another reason to endorse his reform agenda and, therefore, his continuance in office. 'As part of its investigation of Mr. Yakovlev,' a U.N. press release states, the U.N. 'will separately make recommendations for further reforms, particularly regarding strengthened supervision and controls over individual procurement officers.' "

Oil-for-food probe expected to accuse UN director

In a story pretty much fully explored by the Wall Street Journal back in the run-up to the latest Presidential election...Wired News, via Reuters reports: "An investigation into the oil-for-food program will accuse for the first time on Monday the director of the defunct $67 billion U.N. operation of getting cash from oil deals."

LA Times Overly Concerned

The (over)exercise of power: "Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? I don't mean the fact that Bush would vet his selection for the highest court in the land in part on something utterly trivial. That's expected. What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy."

Well, no you are probably not the ONLY one, but more people find it disturbing that the money losing LA press doesn't have better things to be disturbed about. Were you disturbed by all those jogging pictures during the Clinton years? Were you curious that after all that supposed excercise he got fatter and fatter. Were you disturbed by the comparisons between Kerry falling off his 10-speed on a Washington street and Bush falling off a mountain bike riding up a hill composed of soft sand?

I'd be checking into the reasons behind all of your concern. We don't buy it any more.

independentsources.com also thinks it odd that Bush is critisized for something worthy of praise.

I guess I'm not the only one who is disturbed at their being disturbed. Do we have the makings of a Monty Python sketch here?

Last Farmland in DC Sold

Article here, thanks to Technocrat.com

Why do people move to big cities? Jobs.

What happens when a medium sized city gets to be a megalopolis? Ordinary people can no longer afford to live in the center. Roads in the center can't cope with individual travelers and mass transit copes poorly, forcing middle class people to move to the edge and commute AROUND, which is what the beltway was originally intended for (the overcrowded core of DC has long since passed beyond the beltway though).

If you change jobs a lot you are better off renting. If you insist on owning a home you had better get a real estate license on the side (at which point you realize you can probably make more money selling real estate than whatever else you were doing). That describes DC, LA, NYC and a number of other "hubs" right now.

All of this was pretty much inevitable for the non-farm worker in the past. But today we have no excuse for continuing this endless cycle other than "well, thats the way we've always done things".

Why do millions of stock brokers, computer programmers, customer support specialists, lawyers, sales reps, and a host of other white collar workers have to leave their home at all and clog up one means of transport or another with their sweaty bodies for 3 and 4 hours a day? And for most of these people, what do they do at work? Sit in front of a computer display and talk on the telephone. I'll skip the argument about whether 80 percent of the government workers need to be employed at all, but from my observation of them (over the course of 15 years or so, since computer networks became commonplace) there is almost nothing they need to be physically present to accomplish.

Only recently in the DC area did I work with sales reps who no longer had a permanent office. Not surprisingly it was mostly from foreign based companies that didn't see ownership of a building in the US with a logo on its side as an asset. These sales reps of course did pay me frequent visits, another waste. They could have e-mailed me the powerpoint presentation from Idaho or anywhere else and it would have been just as useful as a personal visit. "Ahhh" some will say, "that personal touch makes the sale!". But I don't think there is a lot of evidence to support that.

Hopefully in another generation or so we will finally be weaned off of notions that a TV ad reaches "millions" while an Internet ad only reach those who "click-through". My mailbox is full every day with print media desperate to count me as an eyeball to their advertisers when in fact I almost never open their publications.

In a civilization that takes the power of the Internet seriously I think big cities are going to die one last (and hopefully slow, painless) death. A well known tech pundit recently asked if Silicon Valley would ever make a full recovery from the dot-com crash. The answer is NO, and why should we want it to? That USED to be productive farmland and there is no reason it can't revive that tradition (at least it isn't QUITE as paved over as New York yet). It could be a nice place for a lot of technologists to live, but there is no need or advantage for ALL of them being there. Many of them would be surprised how many places between the east and west coasts are not only pleasant places to live, but still affordable. And just maybe having some of our technology brain power in less expensive parts of the country is a better alternative to using the brain power in other parts of the world.

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times: "'We went on a borrowing, spending and taxing spree, and that nearly drove us under,' said Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney. 'It was because we nearly went under that we got the courage to change.'"

Maybe we here in the US need to start electing Democrats again so we can nearly go under and get the courage to change.
Except I thought we tried that already. Apparently Democrats have forgotten. Or they just like being in power.

Is it Over Rover?

Is it Over Rover?
2004-04-06

Rover Daily
Update Spirit Sol 91: "Spirit woke up on sol 91, which ended at 6:38
p.m. PDT on April 5, 2004, as if it were any other martian day, but this
one was special. Finishing 90 sols of surface operations since landing
day marked completion of the last of the official success criteria for
Spirit's prime mission. The rover team at JPL had checked off the
next-to-last box for mission success two days earlier, when a drive of
50.2 meters (165 feet) took Spirit's total travel distance over the
600-meter (1,969 feet) mark."

This might hint at further cutbacks in rover coverage. From the once
daily hour long press conference to "daily" 2 minute mission controller
updates, which now seem to get regularly skipped, we are down to the
still daily written summary:

Rover Daily
Updates

I wonder how long those will last now. NASA people seem to be in a big hurry to declare the mission over so they can go home. Unfortunate really, since
in the beginning when the press was anxious to cover more territory they
were told that there was no hurry. The 90 day number was just the
MINIMUM life expectancy of the hardware. Now they are changing their
tune. The hardware is fine. Seems it is the personnel that is worn
out. Or maybe it has just exceeded the American publics attention span.
Ever shorter.

But no worry, USG will be happy to spend millions more to launch follow-on
rovers to cover the ground that these could have, but didn't.