It was not a bad state of the union address though pretty much devoid of surprises beyond the shot the President fired across Iran's bow.   Of course that was for our benefit not Iran's since the meaning will likely be lost in translation.

I think the President did take some shots against some of his critics whose comments haven't stood up in the public forum.   He explained the NSA eavesdropping program pretty well.   The NSA is not listening to phone calls of the President's potential political opponents the way many Democratic administrations have.   But did you see the puss on Hillary's face during that comment?   Wow for a woman who stood in the White House while her husband listened in on business calls in order to promote American business, she sure stood in judgment of a program intended to protect us.

The President talked a bit about energy policy.   I'm afraid, however, nothing much of use was said.   Ethanol is not the solution to the world's or the country's energy problems.   It is amazing to me that over the many years during which we realized that oil was a problem, nobody has come up with anything to even make a dent in the problem.   Neither Republicans nor Democrats have any new ideas on which direction to go.

The Social Security thing drew perhaps the most interesting reactions.   Something must be done whether it is the creation of a Republican or Democrat President or Congress.   Yet nobody seems prepared to champion a reasonable solution.   Democrats are beholden to AARP who is opposed to any change to the system.   But the system will go broke.   It is an unsustainable program.   It is easy for Dem.s to criticize budget deficits for this year but for some reason they seem totally unwilling to face up to the enormous deficits which will undoubtedly be ours if we don't fix the system and do so soon.

The rebuttal to the President's speech was really weak and labored.   A nobody was chosen to say nothing to an audience which had largely gone to bed.   Democrats tried to leverage Dr. King's wife and from there the rest of the presentation was verbal excrement.   We went to war in Iraq for a lie ...   Virginia does X ... There was nothing valid, nothing constructive, nothing useful in the Democrat response.   It was truly underwhelming.   Now there's a political party in some serious trouble.

The President's address get's a "B-" from me.   There's some useful stuff in it, the presentation wasn't too bad, but it really could have used some work.   The Democrat response gets a "D" since they did put something together which showed some work.   But it was uninspired and empty so consider the "D" a gift.   Better luck to both parties in the coming year.

I was looking up the time for the vote today in the Senate over Supreme Court nominee Alito when I happened upon this CBS report.   It says:

"With 57 senators already pledging to vote for Alito, his confirmation is assured."

"But it's shaping up as the most partisan victory for a high court nominee in modern history."

"Alito ... expected to lead the nine-member Supreme Court into a new conservative era following the retirement of O'Connor, the court's first female justice and a key moderate swing vote on issues like assisted suicide, campaign finance law, the death penalty, affirmative action and abortion ... Mr. Bush's decision to replace O'Connor with a former Reagan administration lawyer who worked to get the Supreme Court's landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade overturned."

"At most, six or seven Democrats will vote for Alito's confirmation, the lowest number of senators not in the president's party to support a Supreme Court nominee in modern history."

Each of these statements is facially correct.   Nothing apparently biased is contained in them.   But here's the rub.   There is nothing which could be voted upon today in the US Senate that would not be totally partisan.   If George Bush were to nominate "Lassie" for the dog hero hall of fame, Democrats might filibuster the nomination, and failing that, would vote something like 55-45.

And the juxtaposition of O'Connor's tendency to vote along liberal (no, not moderate) lines with Alito's record as an employee in a conservative administration is entirely unfair.   This battle is not about whether women should be permitted to vote or work or required to wear burkhas.   This is about hiring a qualified man to work with the nation's founding documents when adjudicating legal disputes.   The fact that he was a lawyer in a conservative administration and did things to please his bosses has no more bearing on his qualifications for this job than did Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's extensive work with the ACLU.

CBS is hardly the only news organization to slant this story in a particular direction.   Reuters just reported Alito was confirmed in a "near party-line vote."   The AP called the vote "one of the most partisan voites (sic) for a high court nominee in modern history."   Nowhere in news coverage was the fact that there was an attempted filibuster.   That vote took place immediately before the vote on the nomination.   The vote against a filibuster was 72-25 with 3 not voting.   The tally on Alito's vote itself saw 58 votes in favor and 42 opposed which significantly exceeds Justice Clarence Thomas' 52-48 confirmation.   I could tell you that only 4 Democrats crossed party lines to vote in favor of Alito the way the MSM is doing.   But I'm not a journalist and I'm allowed to be biased.   So I choose to tell you that only 42 Senators voted against Alito.   That number could have supported a filibuster but 17, almost half of those who voted against him did not have the courage of their apparent convictions - they voted against cloture.

Iran says the referral of the nuclear issue to the Security Council will effectively cut off diplomatic avenues.   I guess what they are telling the world is if you do this thing, you are hurting your chances for a peaceful solution.   But that's like the proverbial 90 pound weakling telling the heavyweight boxer that "now you have really made me angry."

Iran wants Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, Germany and the EU to know that now Iran is angry and will no longer engage in peaceful negotiations?   A country of less than 100 million people, without nuclear weapons, with an army which at best could only fight Iraq to a stalemate, with no real economy aside from the oil it exports, is trying to bully nations of 2 billion people, enough nuclear weapons to pound the country into something less than the moon 1,000 times over, with armies as large as the entire population of the country, which collectively produce most of the world's goods?

Iran thinks it has a wildcard with its supply of most of China's oil.   But that oil is only a couple percentage points of the total oil market throughout the world and if the west needs to buy China's cooperation by sharing the oil that is otherwise available, that's what they'll do.   So who exactly is hurt by Iran's cutting off of diplomatic avenues to resolve this issue?

There is only one way to interpret Iran's statements.   They do not believe the rest of the world has the will to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons.   That means they have not been negotiating in good faith.   They keep claiming that they have the right to develop nuclear power because they signed the non-proliferation treaty.   But that treaty requires countries with nuclear power to maintain complete transparency with respect to their power program.   Iran has not even come close to meeting that burden.   It is now time for the world to make an ultimatum to Iran but it must be one which will be followed through upon.   It is time for the world to determine just how much will it really has.

"With a chemical alarm, you're going to build one that is oversensitive because you would rather the alarm go off and give you a false alarm than to err on the other side."
      General Norman Schwarzkopf

My thinking in using this quote has less to do with the context in which it was spoken than with the extrapolation of its underlying philosophy.   Can we afford to use a less sensitive alarm for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons in the hands of those who might transfer such weapons to our sworn enemies?

The American Red Cross did not violate the University of Vermont's non-discrimination policy by banning gays from donating blood.   That is the ruling of the University.   Undoubtedly this is not the last we'll ever hear about the Red Cross policy regarding gays.

I just don't understand the thinking behind the complaint.   Donating blood is all about the recipient.   It is not about the donor.   Gays are too self-absorbed if they think donating blood is a right or a privilege.   Oh, that's right.   Being self-absorbed is one of the stereotypes for gay men.

Is there anybody who is a bigger pretender than US second string Senator from New Jersey Bob Menendez?   He spoke today for the first time on the Senate floor and while he did not come off like as big a moron as Kennedy did, he did look like a deer lost in the headlights.   Menendez said, "homestate pride is not a sufficient reason for supporting a nominee, for a supreme court appointment is a lifetime appointment."   No kidding, Bobby.   Did you think that one up all by yourself?   Is there a little freudian content in that comment?   Your appointment is for far less than a lifetime.   Your tenure in the US Senate is likely to be rather short.

It is too bad Menendez's qualifications for being a US Senator are so far below Alito's qualifications for being a Supreme.   This was basically a midget voting against Shaq for NBA MVP.

If I were Bobby, I would want to get as much time before the cameras as possible so I could show my grandkids that I really was a Senator.   But having seen this pretender once, is there no way the Senate can make him sit in the corner and just take notes or something like that until his term expires?

Yep, I was right.   Democrats are down to just a few issues.   The war in Iraq seems more justified today than it did a week ago thanks to the information offered up by the former Iraq general and close advisor to Saddam himself.   Economic numbers are too positive to continue the claims that Americans are starving and out of work.   Sure you can bring up the income disparity thing but if I'm making $20,000 more each year than I was, I don't particularly care if somebody else is making $2 million more.   The eavesdropping thing ain't got legs.   Yada, yada, yada.   So what's left?   There's always racism but at a time when a black mayor came out and said New Orleans should be black, it is hard to criticize anyone for their racism if you don't start with that certain Democrat.   I suppose there's always the environment.   So Kennedy stands up in the Senate and claims Bush and Alito are responsible for childhood asthma.   He spoke of somebody becoming upset about a lake which has become polluted.   Who's zoomin who?   The air in this country has not been cleaner than it is today since sometime around the Civil War.   The nation's waterways are in far cleaner shape today than they were in the 1960s.   So, Democrats, what's left?   Not much.

The AP reports Tony Blair is alarmed about global warming.   Blair says, "the risks of climate change may well be greater than we thought" and "it is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases ... is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."

It's just Monday morning but already I have to wonder if this is going to be the week for unrestrained whackiness.   Alito will be approved for Supreme Court Justice and do so with a few votes from liberal Democrats!   One of Saddam's top aides is saying, "Sure we had WMD, what are you stupid.   We shipped them all to Syria in fifty something flights."   So I guess the "Bush lied" thing is being challenged pretty hard by real experts.   Cindy Sheehan is embracing the western hemisphere's most powerful COMMUNIST so I guess when all us stupid conservatives said her "peace inititive" is being backed by the COMMUNIST movement, we weren't just filled with hot air.   Iran finally realizes that the rest of the world is lining up against it.   Palestinian elections have laid bare for the world to see that there is very much a general islamic threat to the non-islamic remainder of the world.   It is difficult to argue that Palestine only seeks peace when the general populace elects a group absolutely committed to violence and genocide.   The truth is marching on.

So the only thing for liberals to do is take the tarp off the environmental thing.   The AP quite nicely pulls the curtain up and opens the first act with the comments of a friendly nation.   So, let's take a look at those comments.   "the risks of climate change MAY well be greater than we thought."   What did we previously think?   What would be greater?   And, what does "MAY be greater" mean?

The AP says "global warming is expected to raise ocean levels, intensify storms, spread disease to new areas and shift climate zones, possibly making farmlands drier and deserts wetter."   OK, that's what we thought.   I've heard all of these kicked around for almost ten years.   What's new?   What's "more than we thought?"

The AP notes that the "IPCC says temperatures rose by about 1 degree during the 20th century.   Computer modeling predicts increases of between 2.5 degrees and 10.4 degrees by the year 2100, depending on how much is dome (sic) to limit greenhouse gas emissions."   Well, nothing has been done to limit gases.   The signatories to Kyoto have a net increase in their emmissions so presumably the right number to look at is at least 10.4 degrees.   The one degree thing has been around a few years.   If we expect a 10.4 degree increase over 100 years, shouldn't we now be kicking around a different number for the current experienced increase?   Shouldn't it now be 1.5% or something like that?   You can do the math but Kyoto has been crawling up our butts since 1997 and the 1 degree thing was mentioned back then, so 8 years has gone by.   10.4 over 100 years should mean an average increase in global temp.s of about a tenth of a degree per year.   Even assuming a geometric rate of increase in temp.s, we should now be talking about an experienced 1.5 degree increase.   But we aren't.   Why not?

Blair also said "global warming is advancing at an unsustainable rate."   What is unsustainable about it?   I think he meant human beings cannot all be sustained if the global temperature rises as much as he predicts" but it is an interesting comment.   I would say that without a large additional body of peer-reviewed scientific studies, in other words a factual body of data, this global warming hysteria is not sustainable.

The headline reads "Hurricanes Shape New Natural Order" and the article says, "Last year's record hurricane season didn't just change life for humans.   It changed nature, too."   Scientists worry that "Nature might not be able to rebound so quickly" due to "the human factor."   One says "The problem is when we try to control nature, rather than letting her do what she does."   The Associated Press concludes, The seas are rising, the planet is getting hotter and commercial and residential development is snowballing.   Add those factors to a predicted increase in nasty hurricanes and what results is a recipe for potentially serious natural degradation, some say."

The last I checked hurricanes were a natural phenomenon over which human beings have absolutely no control and very little real understanding.   The last I checked human beings were animals, as much a part of nature as the earth, the seas, the skies.   Relative to their biomass, human beings change the landscape no more than ants or elephants.   Ants create huge colonies beneath the ground which alter everything from the way rainwater runs off to the types of plants which can survive in a particular place.   In fact, some ant colonies actually cultivate specific trees in whole forests.   They have been known to poison certain trees so their favorite kinds can thrive.   Elephants similarly alter the landscape by indiscriminately knocking down whole forests and wiping out whole species of trees they like to eat.   But we think of ants, elephants and all the rest of the flora and fauna to somehow be members of an exclusive club to which human beings are not permitted entry.   That club is called nature.

Now apparently hurricanes are not permitted in the club either because we have decided that human caused global warming makes them more severe.   Hurricanes aren't a natural phenomenon.   They are the result of human activity.   And what they do to the landscape is somehow, by extension, now a part of what human beings do to the landscape.

Nature is the victim in all this "unnatural" destruction of the natural world.   She is pretty resilient.   She has been bouncing back from horific blows for millenia.   But now it seems she may have met her match.   She'll try to clean up her destroyed house.   She'll try to put everything back into place.   But, just so you know, the evil forces are working hard to disrupt her.   She may not have the strength to make things whole again.

When did we get to the place where our thinking changed to this point?   How are we supposed to try to live in harmony with nature if we consider the human animal to somehow be separate and apart, perhaps above, nature.   We kid ourselves into believing that "native Americans" somehow lived in harmony with nature in an ideal way we could try to emulate but we are just too stupid to achieve.

Do we honestly think we have become so powerful that Mother Nature could not wipe us all out in a single blow?   If we think that, we're wrong.   Mother Nature is still strong enough to mold human civilization any old way she wants.   We can alter one or two hairs on her head but we will never be able to even make her blink.

The hurricanes did nothing to change nature.   Nature is not a static phenomenon.   What ever occurs by the hand of humans is nature.   Whatever occurs by the hand of hurricanes is nature.   A specific forest, species of plant or animal, or entire gulf is not nature but merely a dog in it.   if Mother Nature wants to change the contours of her garden or what grows in them, she will do so.   Our thinking about nature is silly folly which leads to poisoned reasoning.

"If you don't know your family's history, then you don't know anything.   You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree."
      Michael Crichton

Saturdays are supposed to be slow news days.   We're supposed to relax and "smell the roses" or spend time with our families.   But today, the news just will not cooperate.   There's too much going on.

I was able to hold my tongue about Palestinian unrest in the wake of the election of an overt national religion called terrorism.   I put on the backburner Nancy Pelosi's ridiculous stance on the NSA's surveillance program which she has known about for years.   But I'm just not able to sit still when Cindy Sheehan says she is contemplating challenging Feinstein for her seat in the Senate because Feinstein's "support" for the war in Iraq.

Does anyone suppose Cindy Sheehan will get more than 1,000 votes?   Can you picture "Senator Sheehan" engaging in meaningful debate with the other 99?

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

So what should Americans think of the elections in Israel.   After all, this was the result of democracy in action.   The mother of several suicide bombers won a seat in parliament.   Basically, the terrorists have won in pretty much of a landslide.   Basically Syria won.   Basically fundamentalist Islam won.

Some in the media say Hamas is not just a terrorist organization.   They build hospitals, hand out aid to the poor, etc.   They are also a political force.   The implication is that somehow Hamas is far more nuanced than we stupid Americans could ever imagine.   But we aren't so stupid.   We simply know what we have been told for several decades.   Hamas is the vehicle which sends teenagers into Israel with bombs strapped around their bodies in order to commit suicide while taking as many Israeli civilians, especially women and children, as they can with them.   This is the group which will never refer to their accomplishments as success until every Jew is dead and Arabs reclaim the land now occupied by Jews.   That is what we have been fed for most on the time since "Munich" was reality rather than a movie and even before that.

In recent years the media began to feed us information suggesting that perhaps the "plight of the 'Palestinian people'" was perhaps really to blame for all the strife in the Middle East.   Maybe they really were a people - not just Arabs.   Maybe Israel did occupy their land - never mind that Jews had been on the land for millennia, that when the state of Israel was formed the place was desert wasteland, and never mind that Jews had been the only successful rulers of peoples of all sorts of ethnicities and religious persuasions in this particular part of the world.   Maybe they just wanted their "homeland" back again.   Maybe they weren't really militant, it was just the most militant factions we saw on TV.   Maybe the Israelis were the bad guy in all this.

Of course this was all a lie which had overlaid the truth which is and continues to be the "Palestinian people" is a fabrication of Arabs who didn't want Jews back on the land they already had a superior right to.   Arafat freely admitted this but not when he spoke English.   But the media has come to support the notion of a "Palestinian people" who have been deprived their homeland.

Hamas is the militant group which wants nothing short of driving the Jews into the sea.   They consider Jews in a manner far inferior to anything the Germans ever did.   Hamas is the epicenter of international terrorism.   No amount of sugar coating will ever change that.   Now we know that, contrary to popular belief, the "Palestinian people" are not victims of anything.   They whole heartedly support international terrorism targeted at killing Jews and anyone who helps Jews.   It really is that simple.   Isn't it nice when whole populations are terrorists and the terrorists can no longer hide amidst a population of innocent civilians?

There is no question that without power an economy just cannot grow.   The Chinese know this all too well.   Their recent economic growth has made the rest of the world understand that cheap oil will just not be sufficient to accomplish the level of growth the world has been experiencing.   Even if enough oil could be found to satisfy the world's growing needs, chances are pretty good that environmentalists would take any and all measures imaginable to prevent drilling for the oil.   Witness the recent outcries against building a parking lot sized drilling facility in ANWAR's huge expanse of essentially wasteland.   The efforts to prevent drilling in the artic were just the most recent example of how we are imprisioned by special interest groups.   Another example is the effort to place large windmill farms in several areas.   Eventually a few windmill farms will crop up but even these won't make a dent in our power needs because some birds might be killed, because they don't look good from millionaire Congressmen's homes or for myriad other reasons all related to some special interest group.   Such is the state of nuclear power in the US as well.   Recent efforts to construct new nuclear power plants has run face first into a few well organized special interest groups who will do everything in their power to prevent ANY new plant from being built.   At some point we have to move past special interests and face up to the fact that we cannot just wait for someone to invent the perfect solution.

I told you recently about how I have made plans to leave the welfare state of New Jersey for another location.   One area we are examining is the Raleigh-Durham "Research Triangle" in North Carolina.   That area has an excellent school system, a wonderful standard of living, and it has not experienced the "housing bubble" many pundits claim will suddenly burst any day now.   If you've never been to the Triangle, you would be surprised to see just how great of a place it is to live.   Housing is not constructed there the way it is in New Jersey and much of the northeast or on the left coast.   Condominiums, townhouses, stand alone homes and even multi-million dollar homes are all constructed within single developments.   We were astonished to find a $2 million home on about an acre across the street from townhouses starting in the two hundreds.   And speaking of prices, there really is something for just about anyone looking to buy a new home.

Unlike my present town where a "starter" home stands around $450,000, it really is possible to have a decent home for $100 - 200,000.   To see what I mean, run a search on Realtor.com for "Apex" "NC" "100,000" to "200,000" and see what pops up.   If you live in one of the more expensive areas, you will be shocked by what is available.   And guess what?   Apex schools are excellent!   Not only that but you are just minutes away from a bustling quasi-metropolitan area which has most if not all the benefits of your overcrowded area.   The quality of life in this area for very reasonable prices has driven an incredibe building boom.   yet home prices have risen only about 5% per year for the past several years precisely because of the boom which has builders constructing new homes at a rapid pace.   But the Triangle needs power to continue to grow.   Nuclear is probably the best option.   But special interest groups are already at work trying to prevent any such thing.

It is too easy to stand back and criticize any and every solution to this nation's power needs.   A nuclear power plant built today bears little resemblance to one constructed back in the early 1970s.   Just think of the degree to which the computer of today resembles the computer of 1973.   I remember sitting at a "dumb terminal" typing basic language commands onto a mainframe which probably did not have nearly the computing power my little laptop does.   It's a new day thanks to the developments in information processing.   It's time we understood how much better technology is than it was over three decades ago.   It takes just a few hundred environmental volunteers to hold a nation of 300 million hostage.   At some point we simply must move beyond the special interest groups' emotional needs for a pristine environment which never existed in the first place.

Iran is moving away from the idea of having Russia do its uranium enrichment.   Reuters reports Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said the Russian plan to enrich uranium for Iran was not enough on its own to meet Tehran's energy needs.   This comes on the heals of US President Bush advocating the plan.   Iran says it wants to ultimately build 20 power plants.   But this is a plan for the next several decades and surely something can be worked out for the long range plans Iran says it has for power production.   What we are dealing with today is Iran's desire to enrich uranium without any level of transparency, without any supervision to determine that they are not building a nuclear weapon.   Iran wants to have everything on its own terms precisely because what it wants IS to build a nuclear weapon.   The rest of the world has said "uh-ah."   And now Iran is stalling.

I said last week that Iran claims for a "right" to use nuclear power are, on their face, correct.   But under established international treaties, a country only has the right to use nuclear technology if it is 100% transparent and submits to inspections and other supervision to ensure it is not developing weapons.   Given Iran's actions, therefore, it has absolutely no right to develop nuclear power.   It can achieve that right but it must achieve absolute transparency first.

This is all one big dance.   Most of the rest of the world is not interested in dancing.   The options now are for Iran to submit to the rest of the world or risk being pummeled into the ground.   Iran is gambling that the rest of the world does not have the will to stop it from developing a bomb.   Maybe they are right.   But there is no question that Israel, the US, and several other super powers do have such a will.   Iran is gambling at a stacked table.   They may win a hand or two but ultimately they will lose.   The only question is how much they are willing to lose.   Unfortunately what we have here is a child who has already gotten away with far too much bad behavior.   That sort of child often must be scolded far more harshly than a child who is ordinarily well behaved.

The New York Times cites a recent poll and concludes "public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved."   The Times also notes "responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded."   The Times' story can be read in full here.

The poll found that more than half of all Americans "supported eavesdropping without warrants" as a means of combating terrorism.   The poll also found overwhelming support for eavesdropping when that was conducted on people the government is suspicious of yet overwhelming opposition if the eavesdropping were against "ordinary Americans."   The Times called these findings "striking."   Well, no duh!   Is anyone in this country in favor of the federal government randomly listening in to their phone calls or e-mails for fun or to persecute people the administration doesn't like?   There should be no surprise in that.

But is anyone really against the administration listening in on a phone call placed by Osama bin Laden to anyone located in the United States?   I suspect some people are against that just as they are against detaining al Qaeda men in Cuba.   Many of those people work for the ACLU and a few don't.   It remains unclear whether those opposed to eavesdropping on calls to or from our sworn enemies abroad are against it for principled reasons or simply to be against their sworn political enemy, George Bush and his conservative buddies.   Because the very security of the nation is at stake, it seems as if the later reason clouds the opponents' judgment.   That's OK, it's a free country, after all.   But don't anybody be surprised when the American public votes against the forces who are accusing the Bush Administration of illegal wiretapping.   Don't anybody be surprised when candidates for Congress suffer crushing defeats because they worked to put a stop to the President using these means to protect us.

Go ahead Hillary, John Kerry, Harry Reid, etc.   Keep it up.   Keep telling the American people that listening in to phone calls from al Qaeda is against American civil liberties.   I said a long time ago this issue didn't have legs to stand on its own.   But you guys keep trying to ram an oversized rectangle into a pentagon-shaped hole.

"We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure.   But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not principles.   We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves.   We can resolve the clash of interests without conceding our ideals.   And even the necessity for the right kind of compromise does not eliminate the need for those idealists and reformers who keep our compromises moving ahead, who prevent all political situations from meeting the description supplied by Shaw: 'smirched with compromise, rotted with opportunism, mildewed by expedience, stretched out of shape with wirepulling and putrefied with permeation.'   Compromise need not mean cowardice."
      John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Oprah Winfrey has her previously favorite memoir author James Frey on the air at this moment.   To be quite blunt, Oprah is kicking his ass all over the set.   Hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned.   A woman scorned hath no wrath even comparable to Oprah when she feels betrayed!

In all fairness to Oprah, she acknowledged that she had been duped by Frey and the publishers and then she proceeded to basically prove Frey a complete liar.   Oprah has completely redeemed herself, at least in my book, which is not a memoir, and is not for sale, and which does contain some embellishments, and which nobody can read except for me.

"The Ten Commandments are a powerful statement of the covenant God made with his people."
      Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The New York Times today is carrying an editorial which concludes that Democratic Senators should fight Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.   But nobody is quite that stupid are they?   If Democrats united against Alito, they would lose 55-45, and Alito would be a justice.   if they filibustered, the gang of 14 would collapse and a vote on cloture in judicial nominations would undoubtedly ensue.   The result would be a loss of 55-45 and Alito's name would again be submitted, then confirmed, and Alito would be a justice.   In any imaginable scenario Alito would be a justice.   There is nothing to gain from this fight.   There are some things to lose.   Cloture could be defeated.   And many Democrat congressmen in conservative states would lose their seats sooner or later.   That would virtually cripple Democrats so the question is, what are they willing to spend in order to stand on principle?

The year is 2011.   The Gorelick report has just been issued detailing the methods used by al Qaeda-linked terrorists who were able to blow up 25 rented vans in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.   Each van contained nerve gas cylinders which then sprayed out their deadly payload, killing 5,000 and sickening another 30,000.   Gorelick was enlisted to review the intelligence breakdowns which allowed this to happen only ten months into Hillary Clinton's first term as POTUS.

Far-fetched?   Perhaps and perhaps not.

Gorelick finds that the Clinton Administration missed critical information about the master plan developed by some previously unknown al Qaeda mastermind located somewhere in the netherlands of Pakistan where government forces have absolutely no influence because the local fundamentalist Muslim militias control.   Apparently the whole thing was organized via a network of Verizon digital phones, e-mails, web sites and message boards.

al Qaeda has taken credit for the attack which it says has been in the works since 2000.   It promises more attacks, but on a "far greater scale," are in the works.   Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and others danced in the streets in large numbers after the attacks.   The American economy has been dealt a serious blow as all commercial transport has come to almost a complete standstill.   Unemployment stands at 15%.   Lines at food banks are growing on a daily basis, riots are a frequent occurrence at some.   The country teeters near chaos.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, Israel is experiencing serious political turmoil as suicide bombings, sponsored by Syria and Iran have increased dramatically.   Iraq is governed by a theocracy because the US pulled its troops out in January 2007 which did not give the country time to establish a working democracy which could defend itself.   Iran claimed it had six functional atomic weapons in 2008.   Intelligence reports indicate the country may have as many as three times that many weapons and its regime has increasingly hinted that it may sell a few to terrorist organizations.

The Gorelick Commission found that homeland security did everything in its power to protect the country but it lacked critical information.   Had digital phones been tapped and web sites been scrutinized the plot would easily have been unearthed.   But many of these sites were situated within the US and most of the phone calls originated or ended within the country.   There is a call for unilateral attacks against Pakistan, Syria and Iran but President Clinton has continually pushed these aside claiming it is extremely important for Americans to stay the course and trust in the United Nations.   She dismissed much of what Gorelick found saying she is sworn to uphold the Constitution regardless of external threats.   The critical information the commission discussed could only have come from "illegal" wiretaps.   The Clinton administration had sought FISA approval of a number of taps but most of the communications traffic occurred within a week of the actual attacks.   Some taps were approved, others were not, but even the approved taps turned up nothing since those phones went silent within days.

Hillary is running for re-election on a platform of protecting Constitutional rights ahead of security.   Mrs. Clinton continues to misquote Benjamin Franklin by saying, "those who give up liberty for security, deserve neither."   Her opponent has derided this comment and stated it correctly as, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" saying we are giving up non-essential liberties for permanent security.   The opponent is campaigning on a promise to tap every phone suspected of being used by terrorists, invading Iran with Israel's and Britain's help even though we do not have definitive proof they have the bomb, forcing Pakistan to send their military to police the netherlands and capture the terrorist masterminds, and tightening homeland security while offering significant tax cuts to spur the economy.

For whom will you vote?

Hillary Clinton wants to prove herself a better liar than husband Slick Willy.   She is currently criticizing the Bush Administration's eavesdropping program - the one started under Willy.   Hillary said, "Their argument that it's rooted in the authority to go after al-Qaida is far-fetched."   So Hillary, I guess it's OK to listen in if business is involved but not OK when American citizens' security is involved?   Hillary also said, "Their argument that it's rooted in the Constitution inherently is kind of strange because we have FISA and FISA operated very effectively and it wasn't that hard to get their permission."   Then why did Willy go around FISA so often?   Where, Hillary, did you earn your bona fides on Constitutional law?   And how would you know how easy it is to go to the court if you were never actually a part of the Clinton administration?   You were the first lady, for God's sake.   That hardly qualifies you as expert on the court set up to handle items too sensitive for other courts.   Did you know things that went before the court?   You shouldn't have!   We were not at war during your husband's reign.   We did not have the Soviet Union to deal with either.   The only other acknowledged threat to national security which would warrant such espionage was the Chinese and they had your husband in their back pocket.   So, what the hell are you talking about?

Million little fabrications author James Frey is set to appear yet again on Oprah tomorrow.   I'm sure the show will get great ratings but I'm not sure what Oprah is trying to accomplish with this.   Basically Frey wrote his book, tried to sell it as fiction, ultimately sold it as a memoir, and got more free advertising than anyone deserves when Oprah chose it.   Now the book has largely been discredited.   Frey appeared on Larry King and Oprah even called in to say she stood behind her favorable treatment of the author and his work.   Bloggers and others went wild criticizing Winfrey for the idiocy.   But now she is having Frey on her show.   As far as I can see, only two things can come of this.   Either Oprah will hammer away at Frey's fictitious story (unlikely) or she will continue to support him and receive even more disdain from the press.   It seems to be a war of wills she is pursuing.   She cannot win this war.   Give it up Oprah.   If you are trying to sell s#!t, we're not buying.

According to Georges Sada, one of Saddam Hussein's most trusted military advisors has a book out called "Saddam's Secrets" in which he describes a number of things of great interest to the American people.   I just saw him interviewed on Fox's Hannity and Colmes and what he had to say about WMD is rather interesting.   Sada says Iraq shipped their chemical weapons to Syria and that they are still stored there.   I think it is time the USA put a little pressure on Syria to answer these charges.   Maybe we can finally get to the bottom of this so we can move past it.

Boys are not failing our schools.   Our schools are failing boys.   Such is the message contained in the January 30th issue of Newsweek magazine.   If you have children, be they boy or girl, or if you are otherwise in anyway interested in the education of children in these United States, this issue of the periodical is a must buy and read.

I don't have a subscription for Newsweek but I happened to catch an interview with one of the authors for the magazine's cover story, "The Boy Crisis."   What I heard told me I had to run out and buy the issue to read it.   Fortunately, for you, you can read it online for free here.   I'm out the $3.95 I paid for the magazine.

The bottom line here is, decades ago, there were a lot of misconceptions engendered by the women's rights movement.   One of these went something like boys and girls are basically the same and the way we raise them creates their gender identities.   Boys are rough because we encourage them to be rough.   Girls are "in touch with their emotions" because we teach them to be this way.   That misconception has been entirely debunked by science.   Science tells us that from "sometime in the first trimester, a boy fetus begins producing male hormones that bathe his brain in testosterone for the rest of his gestation" and "that exposure wires the male brain differently."   Sometimes girls' brains get bathed in testosterone and sometimes boys' brains don't.   When this happens, you get girls whose brains are more like boys or girls whose brains are more like boys.   This has nothing to do with socialization.   These are real, biological differences which have a major impact on behavior.

Long ago this country's educational system (or systems) began changing in order to create greater opportunities for girls.   As the father of two girls and no boys, I applaud those efforts for the opportunity they have afforded my daughters.   But this also began a chain of events which have essentially taken opportunities away from boys.   Unfortunately, what was good for the goose was not particularly good for the gander.   We made gradual changes to the classroom which rewarded girls for being girls and punished boys for being boys.

Today boys are expected to sit still in school just like the good little girls which form the "gold standard" of behavior.   But boys don't learn very well in the environment we created to help girls.   We have become the ADHD nation because our system and conventional wisdom told us classic boy behavior was wrong.   We "classified" boy behavior and boys, and placed many in "special education" which is a euphemism for go sit in the corner with a dunce hat.   In our kinder, gentler way, we "mainstreamed" boys who were calmed by drugs.   Parents actually became grateful when their sons were classified, prescribed drugs to tone down their boy behavior, and permitted back into the normal classroom.   But an underlying problem with American education today is it stresses conformity at almost any cost.   Conformity at all costs stifles creativity.   And creativity is the engine which makes American society go.

If you take a look around you at the myriad technological devices we all benefit from, these were not merely the inventions of a class of scientists who sat calmly while teachers lectured.   Many of this world's greatest technologically advances were the product of non-conformists, school dropouts or other misfits.   Today, it is necessary for any budding creator to meet a minimum standard of scientific knowledge.   Our system of conformity at all costs, pushes the budding experimenters of tomorrow into circumstances in which they'll be lucky to achieve subsistence by taking a job at the local carwash.   We simply have to do better.

And by no means are our educational system's failures only going to manifest themselves in science and technology arenas.   Business has a place for conformists, it's called a clerical position.   Successful businesses are led by people who "think outside the box."   What this cliche means is it is insufficient to follow established rules in order to succeed.   successful business leaders must take long established systems and re-engineer them to achieve greater efficiencies.   They must not become preoccupied with what is.   They have to see what will be and establish the systems which will take them there.   This is not the place for good little kids who do everything they are told.   This is the place for people who say, "no, that way is stupid, let's try this."

Our future lies in the hands of children.   It is up to us to educate these children, to raise them like precious orchids, to teach them knowledge while not breaking their spirits.   Long ago, we embraced radical ideas which are today the norm despite the fact that they have been discredited.   The time to re-engineer our educational systems is today before it is too late.   We must think "outside the box."   Conformity is for automatons.   Boys will never be girls.

FYI, while I'm out house shopping in a conservative state, my partner on this blog is stuck in the hospital in Palm Springs after wiping out on his motorcycle.   He probably broke his wrist and bruised his kidney.   His wife, Lisa, is unable to visit him in the hospital because she is undergoing a radiation treatment and is under quarantine as a result.

So, if you're gonna pray for anyone extra tonight, put in a good word with the Lord about my buddy, Steve Johnson.   He could use a little help for a short while.

I'll try to post some stuff here while I'm on the road but I won't make any promises.

There must be a bidding free for all going on.   The Associated Press reports the price for oil jumped to almost $70 last week on fears regarding Iran.   The AP says, "Prices could soar past $100 a barrel, experts say, if the U.N. Security Council authorizes trade sanctions against the Middle Eastern nation, which the West accuses of trying to make nuclear bombs, and Iran curbs oil exports in retaliation."   Well, besides the fact that there are currently only two options, sanctions and removal from the global map, what are we supposed to do?   Are we to be held captive to Iran's oil exports?   Should we?

According to the CIA fact book on the country, Iran exports about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day.   The estimates of world oil usage I have seen say the world uses something like 80 million barrels of oil each day.   So Iran provies a little more than 3% of the rest of the world's oil usage.   Why would a reduced supply of 3% lead to a doubling of the price of any commodity?

"When we lose, I can't sleep at night.   When we win, I can't sleep at night.   But, when you win, you wake up feeling better."
      Joe Torre

I just stumbled over this story.   Apparently Jesse Jackson was sued by a conservative black minister who claims Jackson and his son assaulted him.   What strikes me in this is not so much the story but the fact that I haven't heard it anywhere before today, the first day of testimony.   I suggest to you that if any conservative was alleged to have assaulted Jackson, it would have been in the news from the day of the incident, through filing of suit, and through the actual case.   Why is this just being covered now?   Could it be that this is embarrassing to liberals?   Could it be this scenario just doesn't fit into the media's notion of what really happens in the universe?

The story itself notes that the accuser is "a frequent guest on conservative talk shows."   Oh, really!   Funny but I have never heard the Reverund Jackson EVER referred to as a guy who is a frequent guest on liberal talk shows.   I wonder why that is?   Maybe it's because media types don't think there really is anything we can refer to as a "liberal talk show."   All those news analysis shows like Chris Mathews are totally objective, right?   It is only shows like "Rush Limbaugh," "O'Reilly" or "Hannity" which qualify for a left or right moniker.   Mathews is perfectly objective, isn't he?   My God, the media is a strange group of people who live their entire lives without mirrors.   Heck, they don't even glance at their shadows.

50 Cent is being sued for copyright infringement by 2 Live Crew for stealing their poetry.   Apparently 50 Cent stole a line which I think went, "Go Go Go Go (etc.) Sheila, it's your birthday" by using a line that went, I think, "Go Go Go Go (etc.) Shorty, it's your birthday."

Says the representative from 2 Live Crew, "It's the melody, it's the pace, the style? everything about that one line is the same.   We're entitled to a portion of the profits."   Ahhhhh!   That is what Rap is all about, isn't it? the profits from selling defecation.

Oh the tintinnabulation that so musically wells ....

I'm no copyright expert but here's my "2 cents worth" (copyright, January 20, 2006 by me): These guys ain't got a prayer of defending a single copyright of this s#!t!

In moments of despair, confusion or even lack of clarity in global political issues, I find more and more frequently I must turn my attention to Jon Stewart and Comedy Central's The Daily Show.   Yesterday I was convinced that bin Laden's statement meant al Qaeda was in trouble.   Then I considered some things and changed my conclusion to believing another attack on our soil is imminent.   Stewart put things back into perspective for me this morning when I watched last night's show via TiVo.

Stewart quoted bin Laden as saying American polls tell us clearly that a majority of citizens are opposed to US military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Stewart said something along the lines of well maybe Americans are not generally in favor of the thing in Iraq but we are pretty much unanimous in our desire to bomb the s#!t out of you.

Why that makes me feel better, I don't know.   But if you haven't watched The Daily Show, check it out and see if it doesn't do the same for you.

Iran now has an ally in it's efforts to gain nuclear technology.   Syria is backing the regimie's efforts.   The President of Syria says:

""We support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear technology.   It is the right every state to own nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.   Countries that object to that have not provided a convincing or logical reason."

I'm afraid that statement is completely lacking in any sort of factual support in light of the actions of Iran.

Both Syria and Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.   That treaty acknowledges every country's right to use nuclear power.   That implies uranium enrichment.   But all such countries have the duty and obligation of being completely transparent with respect to their nuclear power programs.   Iran has taken specific actions to hide their research and all other activities with respect to enriching uranium.   That's precisely why we have the problem we have today.   For that reason, they have placed themselves in a position where they no longer have the right to enrich uranium.

Besides, Syria is backing Iran?   Whooo!   We're quaking in our boots.

The Bush administration has agreed to allow Cuba to participate in the World Baseball Classic.   The first consideration of Cuba was turned down but Cuba reapplied and was permitted today partly because they have agreed to donate any profits from the event to victims of Katrina.

I'm not quite sure why they were turned down to begin with but it never made sense to me.   How are we ever going to prove to the Cuban people that our system is better if we can't even have a simple baseball game and bash their brains in?

Also, did nobody in the Bush administration realize that if Cuba does well, they'll probably end up playing someplace in the US - the finals are in San Diego.   This will provide ample opportunity for great Cuban players to defect and enrich our Major League teams.   It would be possitively stupid for our government to do anything to prevent this team from competing.

If you want to know what the liberals are thinking these days, look no further than New Jersey.   Former outrageously liberal Senator (still outrageously liberal) Jon Corzine has taken over the wheel and he is a man with plans.   New Jersey, despite years of a tremendously good economy, is in fiscal crisis.   State government is running a huge deficit.   Residents pay the highest property taxes in the country to support schools which, while good when compared to most other states, do not begin to measure up to schools in other developed countries and do not reflect the huge amount of money which is poured into them.   Heavily traveled roads in this, the most densely populated state in the union are beginning to deteriorate.   Businesses are starting to move out due to high levels of taxation and the crumbling infrastructure.   The inner cities are rat holes of crime, drug abuse, etc.

Jon Corzine is ready to make his first moves.   According to his pick to head the Department of Human Services, his first efforts will be to "ensure health insurance to as many uninsured children as possible until we get to universal coverage."   This is job one for the Corzine administration because 12 percent of children in the state are without insurance.   Where the money to accomplish this while also balancing the state's books will come from is anyone's guess.   Actually it is anyone with a decent job's guess.   Anyone with a decent job will be paying more in taxes in order to ensure that every kid has insurance while also firming up the budget.

Does it stop there?   Probably not!   Corzine's people also noted that numbers of those in poverty and "working poor" in the state are growing.   They want to address that problem too.   Let me translate that for you.   The poorest people will not be footing the bill for balancing the budget, insuring all children, and raising everyone out of poverty.   So maybe the "richest" people in the state will take care of this?   Not bloody likely.

There are wealthy people in the state of New Jersey to be sure but collectively they don't have enough wealth, let alone income flow, to pay taxes sufficient to raise everyone up to the liberal standard of living.   And if anyone tries to substantially tax the rich, they'll move out of state to New York, Connecticut, etc.   Most of the money will be taken from the hides of middle class people - people who are educated by some of the best institutions in this country because their parents bit the bullet or because they piled on debt; people who work 60 hours a week excluding their 1 - 2 hour commutes each way; people who have things and live pretty well because they sacrificed.   And their earnings will flow to people who "chose" to forego college or even high school because they wanted to have unprotected sex a few years earlier than everyone else, because they wanted to be their own person and not suffer under the oppression of corporations, or because they just couldn't be bothered with working after 5:00, on Saturdays, or more than 35 hours each week.

The people who "choose" to work any job they can get to pay their college tuition, "choose" to endure an hours train ride for the privilege of pushing their way through other throngs of people to get on a crowded subway in Manhattan so they can work 60 hours a week and maybe take a weekend part-time job at local businesses during the holidays to buy their children Christmas presents or put them through supplemental education programs, will, as they usually do, foot the bill for liberal good intentions.

I'm sorry if I am venting too much but I took the six year plan for college just so I could work a 60 hour a week job to actually pay the freakin tuition bill.   I lived in a crappy apartment in the ghetto - $500 bucks a month including utilities split between three dudes, filled my lousy broken down car up with $5 of gas at a time, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pasta with frozen broccoli and margarine, and occasionally, maybe once a month, bought a pizza and a twelve pack of crappy beer, studied my butt off and then worked 100 hours a week for the first couple of years after which I cut down to seventy or eighty, in order to live the way I wanted to.   My efforts have provided a decent home for my family but we're certainly not rich.   Our income pays the mortgage, buys food and a little - not enough - is left over to put away for the kid's college or for our retirement.   But we don't take vacations or buy expensive cars or have a lot of other "luxuries."   We pay our own health insurance - a little less than 10% of our monthly earnings.   I've had enough.   So I'm movin' out.

I'm movin' to a place where the identical house costs less than half, where the taxes are less than one fifth, where the schools and the quality of life are better, where there is a conservative (yes Republican but not just Republican) government which actually holds down costs.   I'm movin' to a place where the recent rise in property taxes due to incredible growth raised a huge uproar even though that rise is less than what I have faced year in and year out, every year I have lived here.   I'll tell you more about it on another day.   I have to go house hunting now.

Google refused to hand over information subpoenaed by the federal government in its efforts to combat child porn on the web.   The government had requested one full week of search requests entered into Google.   The Bush administration says the information is vital to its effort to restore online child protection laws.   But I think they have gone too far this time.

Google notes "that many people probably contact Google more often than they do their own mother."   I don't think this is an apt analogy.   I don't know about you but I don't call my mother every 45 minutes or so during my waking hours!

This is roughly akin to the federal government holding up all mail sent for one week and reading everything contained in it to unearth crimes committed via the mail.   To be clear, the government is not seeking to go through these records to develop criminal prosecutions or identify people looking up pictures of nude children.   They are conducting simple research.   But time and again we have seen evidence that no government can be trusted with such information.   They use it in unintended ways.   They leak it.   They don't use it just for the stated reason.   We cannot trust them with it.

It is easy to say this is just like state governments obtaining information from private companies about customers who made online purchases of cigarettes to escape taxation.   Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't.   Much of the information states obtained about tobacco purchases was given up by companies who were strong-armed.   The states ensnared these companies and then said "we'll cut you a significant break if you just give us this information."   Then the state revenue authorities shared the information among themselves and mailed out large invoices requesting taxes.   It was a morally repugnant act but there isn't much you can do to stop a company from giving up information about its customers when the government has them trapped between a rock and a bankruptcy place.   But even there, the government was investigating crimes they knew to be committed by persons in a specific place and time.   This is different because the government is not investigating specific crimes.   They are using miles of drift nets to catch one or several man-eating Great Whites.

Let me be clear that I am totally against the exploitation of children.   I think those who are convicted of committing acts of assault or exploitation of children for sex should receive a minimum ten years in jail for a first offense and life without parole for a second.   But there are all sorts of heinous crimes committed every day around the globe.   We don't search everyone in an entire state - even if we could - when someone is the victim of a knife attack.   If we allow the government to engage in drift net fishing in order to stamp out all crime, our liberties are doomed.   We might just as well embrace totalitarianism to make the trains run on time.

Journalists continue to hammer away at President George Bush's idiotic linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda.   The media continues to want to know why this man is so stupid that he thinks he can hide the fact that Iraq had no WMD - the stated reason for sending our boys there - by continuing the lie that Saddam was somehow responsible for 9-11 when we know that isn't true.   Why does he wage war for bad reasons and continue to claim noble ones?

Well hold on thar varmint.   It seems as if Iraq was quite active in sponsoring international terrorism.   The Weekly Standard reports confirmed evidence that Iraqi elite military men trained thousands of al Qaeda:

"The secret training took place primarily at three camps -- in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak -- and was directed by elite Iraqi military units.   Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence.   Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army.   Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis."

At this stage of the game, many Americans, who draw their "knowledge" from the same MSM who refuses to acknowledge the actual findings in Iraq, are upset about our motivations for going to war.   You can impeach the stated reasons - which were largely political statements meant to convince the public - but you can't impeach the results.   The Bush administration should start feeding the American public some of the actual stuff found in Iraq.   We knew Saddam gave pensions to the family of suicide bombers but I don't think the coverage of actual terrorist training camps or actual weapons caches found has been nearly extensive enough.   And if the MSM won't cover this, it is time for Bush and his cohorts to start telling us about the realities of Iraq before we went in there.

"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can"
      Samuel Adams

Are you looking for office space near Fort Worth, Texas?   This space is currently occupied but I can't imagine it will be for much longer.   The current occupant is Radio Shack Corporation.   They aren't long for this world.   The stock price was recently at about 22 bucks vs. 68 bucks in mid December 1999.   That's a nearly 70% loss if you held the stock for that period.   But that's only part of the story.

If you happened to purchase anything at Radio Shack this past holiday season, you probably had a similar experience as I did.   I went in there specifically to buy something they had advertised - a satellite radio with a kit for both the car and the home.   They had the radio and told me the home kit would be in within a week.   They took my information and told me they would call me as soon as they got it in - one week from that day.   Three weeks later, not having heard anything from them, I called to find out when the goods I had already paid for would be in.   I was told to call on Thursday which is when they get shipments of these item in.   When I called on Thursday they laughed and said, I should call back after 1:00 since they never get deliveries before then.   I called at 1:30 and they again laughed at my folly - who told you to call then, that's ridiculous.   I then called again a few days later whereupon I was told to call on Thursday afternoon!

My next call was to corporate headquarters.   They told me the particular sales associate is responsible for calling customers so it was none of their concern.   I suggested that a corporate entity is given existence not only by the operation of law but via the actions of its duly appointed agents including sales associates.   I suggested that the "person" with whom I dealt, the corporation, truly did have an obligation to give me what I had already paid them for.   A few days later corporate called me and told me the store I was dealing with would be getting a shipment in about 6 weeks.   They said I should call the store and then I would have to compete for the few units they would be allotted.

And liberals say Wal-Mart is bad for America.

I doubt I'll ever see this item from Radio Shack.   I imagine I'll buy this from someplace else like Wal-Mart if they carry the item.   I will never set foot inside Radio Shlock again.   They are a piece of detritus on the raging seas of modern commerce.

Whoops, I almost forgot my favorite birthday.   Today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe.   When I remember these things, I like to publish the wise sayings of my favorite people on their birthdays, so here goes:

"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."
      Edgar Allan Poe

President Jacques Chirac said today that France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state that carried out a terrorist attack or used weapons of mass destruction against it.   Them's fightin' words.   Apparently the country is growing worried about the possibility of a serious attack on its soil despite the lack of meaningful participation in the US-led war on terror.

I think it is time all people of the world gained an understanding of just how weak and feeble the west really is.   Europe and the United States are democracies which routinely squabble internally about this or that course of action.   To outsiders like the Muslim fascists, it must seem as if we are unable to make decisions and follow through with action.   Any review of history shows that assumption to be false.

Europe and the US have in recent decades backed away from practicing the sort of colonial domination they used to address the rest of the world until a few years after the Vietnam war.   But we are no less warlike when it comes to defending ourselves.   Even a noted liberal like Chirac would bite back and bite back hard if bitten.   Nothing changes a person's point of view faster than being mugged.

So, what if, what if the terrorists made a really spectacular attack.   How would the west react?   And how, for example, would the west react if terrorists obtained a nuclear device from say Iran or North Korea and set it off in Paris?   You have to believe Chirac would not hesitate for even a moment to return the favor to such a country even before the intelligence was completely vetted.   If Iran were the culprit, France would level the place.   And the US would enthusiastically participate because despite our differences, France is an important friend.   If North Korea were to blame, China would have great difficulty defending its friendly neighbor from full invasion by western powers.   And that would most certainly happen very quickly.

What if it was a