From the Crawford Peace House:

"As August comes around the vision of Camp Casey August 2006 is in motion.   Last year Cindy's stand made history.   The miracle of the community that was formed toured the country, set up in Washington, DC, came back and happened again for Thanksgiving and Easter and on a smaller scale for New Years, Memorial Day and Father's Day. Blossoming Hope for change here in our country and around the World.   The War still continues and there is a need to formulate new contingencies for a more affective presence in Crawford.   We have announced Camp Casey starting August 16 through September 3.   At this time we will be at different location for Camp Casey. (Location to be announced.)"

I like this.   They're looking for a "more affective presence in Crawford."   The definition of "Affective" is "Influenced by or resulting from the emotions."   It does not mean the same thing as "effective" which means "Having an intended or expected effect."   So while the goodly folks at Crawford Peace House probably do mean to have an effective protest, they are going to settle for one influenced by emotion.   A Freudian slip?   I think not.

John Evander Couey, the man who admitted to raping, torturing and killing Jessica Lunsford in Florida, has won a legal fight connected to his trial.   His confession is inadmissible because he asked for but was denied access to an attorney.   The AP reports, however, that the discovery of her body, found kneeling and clutching a stuffed animal, hands tied with speaker wire and fingers poking through the garbage bags in which she was buried alive, can be used as evidence.   So maybe they'll convict the guy and maybe they won't.   If he is acquitted, all I want to know is where is he living.   Death sentence or not, this monster cannot be allowed to walk the streets ever again, legal fairness be damned.

Isn't there a general consensus that human burning of fossil fuels is causing the Earth to heat up to unprecedented levels?   Aren't most scientists in absolute agreement about the causes and effects of anthropogenic greenhouse warming?   Doesn't the media tell us that almost every reputable climatologist and scientist from every discipline is in total agreement on the subject?   Aren't there just a few holdouts who are not very important, probably politically motivated, maybe crackpots, owned by the fossil-fuel industry, and just not particularly bright, let alone authoritative, voices?   Al Gore's movie, after all, has received unanimous praise from the scientific community, hasn't it?   Not every scientist has been polled but the ones who were and have seen the film universally agreed to its scientific authenticity.   Isn't it just political hacks who are trying to keep this debate open?   What would Einstein have said about this?

Well, Einstein was unavailable for comment.   He left no names of people who could stand in his stead.   We'll never know what he thinks about this subject.   So what are we to do?   Well, we could consult with the men who have long been considered experts in atmospheric science.   We could consult with the fellows who we for decades on end consulted whenever there was a question regarding global weather patterns.   We could consult with those who have long been STARS in the relevant portion of the American scientific community.   But we don't.

If we consulted those individuals as often and with the same respect we have for decades and decades, the leading name would probably be Dr. William Gray, Colorado State University emeritus professor, who might have been the most frequently quoted scientist prior to the global warming non-debate.   But Gray is a skeptic.   His importance, at least in the eyes of the media who once quoted him at every turn, has waned.   He's now infrequently mentioned.   Gray says, "I could assemble fifty of my colleagues who are very skeptical about global warming.   The IPCC (UN group who started this mess) never talks to us, but I have a bit of an obligation, at my age.   I was trained to tell the truth.   There's a lot of hogwash in this.   If I don't speak up, I'm not doing my job."

Gray is getting on in years.   You might think of him as a tribal elder, a wiseman.   He's taught most of the important environmental scientists in this country.   They're his students.   He's the mighty professor.

Think back to your school days, be they in high school or college.   What do you call it when the entire class comes to one conclusion and then the professor corrects them?   What is the image conjured up by a tribe of people who all agree on one conclusion while their leader or wiseman tells them they're wrong?   Why do human beings need leaders, professors, and experts?   We need these people because, left to our own devices, we most often come to the wrong conclusion.   I can't say what Einstein would have said on global warming but the only surrogate he might have appointed that is available for debate says, "be skeptical, be very, very skeptical."

What was it we were afraid of in Iraq?   WMDs?   What are those again?   Was there some specific kind we were after and short of that, "President Bush lied?"   What would constitute WMDs of sufficient danger that going to war in Iraq would have been absolutely justified?   I'm really just curious what exactly would have made everything alright.   I just cannot seem to piece together a concept of the type of weapons which would have made the decision to invade Iraq and depose a homicidal despot bent on genocide from power the correct thing to do.

Saddam had previously made significant amounts of chemical and biological weapons.   He was hell bent on making a nuclear bomb in the same way the Iranians are today.   He hated Israel, if not with sufficient religious fervor to qualify him for the war against fundamentalist Islamic terror, then certainly with significant secular enthusiasm.   He was very much a sponsor of terrorism - he funded a multi-million dollar martyr pension plan for suicide bombers.   Those bombers were exclusively Palestinian bombers playing in the Israeli religious leagues - no American bombers had received pension payments to date.   No non-fundamentalist Muslim terrorists had qualified for the plan.

Saddam broke the peace accord we negotiated after we kicked his invading army out of a friendly country he invaded principally to strengthen his military, economic and political position in the Muslim world.   He saw himself as the uniter of that world who would become the great military empire builder of our time.   But we kicked his butt and made him agree to certain conditions and sanctions to keep his power.   He continually shot at our military aircraft enforcing that same peace accord.   He continually broke the agreement he made with the rest of the world to rid himself of certain kinds of weapons.   He clandestinely tried to negotiate an economic deal with a country whose only natural resource and exportable commodity is used to make nuclear bombs.

In order to avoid us invading his country and doing what we did, Saddam was supposed to have destroyed all the chemical weapons in his possession almost ten years prior to our invasion.   He was not only supposed to do that but also demonstrate to the entire world that he had accomplished the task.   He misdirected, obfuscated, and generally refused to cooperate with the peace agreement which kept him in power and off the gallows.

George Bush made some inflammatory comments in the run up to the war and liberals say he lied.   Liberals say there were no WMDs.   Well, that's actually a lie.   Liberals know there were and are WMDs.   They're just not the right kind.   They're too old.   They don't work.   They weren't usable.   They weren't what George Bush said they were.

So, please tell us, what kind of WMDs would qualify?   Would the 500 chemical munitions recently reported by the Pentagon qualify?   What about the other recently discovered weapons?   What about the munitions containing sarin nerve gas?

Is this a game?   Were we supposed to describe what constituted check-mate before the shootin' started?   Or is this the kind of game we played when we were children and the oldest, most worldly kid on the block kept changing the rules until he finally won the game and then everybody else went home angry?

Pamela Bondi (pictured) is a prosecutor in Hillsborough County, Florida and a guest on Scarborough Country on MSNBC as well as some Fox News shows.   After Hurricane Katrina, she adopted a dog which had belonged to Steven Couture and his family who lost just about everything in the storm.   Couture understood that the dog would be cared for until he got himself settled again which took quite a bit of time as you might understand.   Now he wants his dog back and Pamela Bondi is refusing.   She says, "I legally fostered and adopted a dying dog who had a serious medical condition that long predated the hurricane."   She claims she nursed the dog back to health.   I respectfully disagree with her claims.

A news article discussing the "adoption" of the dog says, "Malnourished, suffering infections, injuries and heartworms, the dog she named Noah needed a lot of medication and a lot of love.   At first, he cowered at loud sounds and thought he had to scavenge from the garbage can.   It took some time for him to wag his tail at people again.   But he's a happier dog now.   He has tasted Outback steak, made friends with Bondi's cats and was a hit on a visit to the courthouse where she works."

Well, let's begin to pick this apart.   "Malnourished, suffering from infections and injuries" is pretty consistent with what you'd expect from a dog which has survived a serious hurricane.   The heartworms are a little bit of a problem since you can protect a dog from them.   But I live in an area to which many pets from Katrina were shipped and almost every single dog from there has heartworms.   So, if we're going to claim pets for mistreatment because they have heartworms, we may have to take the dogs of every single resident of New Orleans.   And if that is the condition Bondi is claiming she nursed the dog back from, she's lying.   There is no cure for heartworms.   It is 100% fatal, 100% of the time.   It progresses at its own course but there is nothing you can do to cure it.

Next, since when do dogs eat cow, let alone aged, cooked, and seasoned cow, either in the wild or in captivity.   It is not a necessary or healthy part of a dog's diet.   Sure, people give their dogs cow meat but no vet is going to say, yes, by all means, cow is a healthy part of a dog's diet.   In other words, Bondi has admitted to mistreating the dog herself.   She fed him something which by no means belongs in a dog's diet.   It just ain't healthy.

Next, the people who owned the dog and cared for it for all these years have been found.   They want the dog back and are willing to repay any amount expended to care for it.   They love the dog.   They want it back.   Can't we at least show them that much compassion after all they've been through?

So, let's cut the crap, Pamcakes.   Give the dog back or people will come to your house and make your life a living hell.   What you are doing is the worst sort of human behavior.   We have to call you out on it.

If you'd like to give Omacakes a piece of your mind, I was able to find this e-mail address for her via the Florida Bar Association's web site:   bondi_p@sao13th.com   and her office phone number is listed as 813-274-1938.

Did you read the story about the Vancouver, Washington coffee shop which called the cops on a wireless service freeloader?   The man in question would park his car by the coffee shop and surf the web via the free wireless service the business offered its customers.   The man had the audacity to do this while never buying a cup of coffee priced at 20 times the cost of producing it.   A related case involved the prosecution of a guy who mooched off a residential wireless network set up by a homeowner.   If I'm not mistaken, that guy either had to pay a fine or even do some brief amount of jail time.   These cases baffle me.   Let me explain why I am confused and then you can leave comments explaining why I am wrong.

A theft is a theft is a theft.   If you take something which is not yours, you're stealing, aren't you?   Maybe and maybe not.   I believe an integral part of "stealing" involves depriving someone of something that is rightfully theirs and which they took reasonable steps to protect from disappearing.

If you store your money or other personal belongings in a box located on your front lawn, near the street, it is likely somebody is going to eventually come along and take whatever you keep there.   That would be a stupid thing for you to do but you are keeping your property in your possession (on your property) and you have a right to do that.   The other person, our thief, has no right to come onto your property and take what is rightfully yours.   Somebody will probably do this in our example, but that is undeniably theft.   It's your property and he has deprived you of it.

On the other hand, if you had a perpetual money making machine which spewed forth limitless amounts of cash 24 hours a day and left it on your front lawn, somebody came along at night and simply took a bunch of cash, that wouldn't really be depriving you of anything.   Assuming the machine continued to work while you slept, the cash which was spit out by the machine would normally just blow away similar to the air which exists above your lawn or the loose soil in your yard.   Somebody breathing the air above your property or scooping up the soil blown into the street wouldn't be depriving you of anything.   They wouldn't have a rightful claim to it but they aren't exactly stealing it either.

Also, you have some responsibility to at least minimally protect your property.   If you put a box of money in a public park with the words "this is Joe Smith's money box" on it and somebody picked it up, that's not really stealing.   You have no more rightful claim to that money than if you found a rock and put a twenty dollar bill under it expecting it to be there in five years.   You have to at least keep your money and property reasonably safe.   Somebody has deprived you of property which is rightfully yours but you didn't take reasonable steps to safeguard your property.   The other person merely found it knowing that it was somebody else's property.   They didn't steal it.

I once set up a wireless network for my broadband connection in my home.   The signal didn't travel very far, barely getting outside the house.   But I had a neighbor who thought he was clever.   He found our signal and used it instead of his dial-up connection.   I never minded him doing this since it didn't slow me down and if I wanted to, I could have prevented him from doing it.   he wasn't stealing from me.   he was probably stealing from the cable company in the sense that he was depriving them of the subscription money they should be earning on his use of their service.   But on the other hand, they allowed me to set up an unsecured wireless network which was open to all comers.   they could have limited my bandwidth to avoid theft of some of their pipe but then I would have dropped the service.   They know that some of their bandwidth is taken like this.   They don't like it but it is part of doing business.

So, here's what bugs me about the coffee shop calling the cops on the wireless moocher and the prosecution of a guy "stealing" wireless service from a homeowner.   It is relatively easy to secure a wireless network from at least 90% of potential stealers.   The homeowner could do it without any repercussions.   the business could do it by creating password protected access and giving the password to all customers who ask for it.   But even if they don't protect their wireless networks from moochers, what do these individuals and businesses lose when somebody "steals" their signal?   Nothing, that's what!

So somebody is getting something which doesn't belong to them because somebody else is failing to protect it because it isn't worth protecting.   They are not deprived of anything when the "thief" takes that which they don't value enough to protect.   So, how is this stealing?   if you are walking through the park dropping twenties every cuple of feet, I'm going to pick them up and put them in my pocket.   Please don't call the police and tell them I am robbing you blind.

Hey, no kidding, I don't watch "The View."   But let's quit kidding around about this.   Show creator Barbara Walters says, "It is becoming uncomfortable for us to pretend that everything is the same at this table.   Therefore, regrettably, Star will no longer be on this program."   Uncomfortable to pretend?   In exactly what circumstances is it difficult for Babs to pretend?   Her entire life is pretending.   She pretends that she is not an egomaniacal, completely self-absorbed bitch.   Does anyone else on the planet believe that?   Maybe.   But I know people who have worked closesly with this control freak who will completely meltdown if her makeup staff doesn't make her look pretty enough.   Barbara Walters pretty?   No, of course not.   But she thinks she is.   And if the high priced talent who doll her up every shoot don't accomplish the task to the degree she would like, she explodes and fires a bunch of them.   She is a total witch.   Let's stop pretending.

Release Murtha!   Republicans have him locked on and are ready to fire any and every time he opens his mouth.   They know Murtha is a verbal spastic who often sticks his foot in his mouth.   But this time they have misquoted him or, more precisely, have taken his comments out of context.   According to Murtha's press release, the unindicted Abscam co-conspirator did not actually say the US is the biggest danger to world peace.   Rather, he said polls show that "a greater percentage of people in 10 of 14 foreign countries consider the U.S. in Iraq a danger to world peace than consider Iran or North Korea a danger to world peace."   He also said he insists this administration react to those polls.

Is it not enough that Democrats rule by the results of statistical polls?   Do we really have to consider the demands of an elected representative who formulates policy based upon polls taken in foreign countries?   Which is worse, an American who says our country is the biggest danger to world peace or a representative who takes his cues from foreign polls?

Algore's "An Inconvenient Truth" must now face the facts.   Not a lot of people are interested in it.   According to BoxOfficeMojo, the film has grossed $9,904,174 since its May 24 release.   That's $10 million in 34 days or about $400,000 per day.   That means no more than 50-100,000 people make the decision to trudge to the theatres and plunk down money to go see the thing.   Well, you might say, it isn't in broad circulation.   That's true but as it's circulation spreads, per theatre numbers are becoming abysmal.   The Post Chronicle reports the film's per theatre numbers are about one sixth to one seventh of their stellar Memorial Day start.   And that's during a period of poor weather across much of the country!

It was once thought that this film would provide a launching pad for Gore's political career but with around a million total viewers having viewed it in a country quickly approaching 300 million, those kinds of numbers just do not support any sort of political aspiration.   You couldn't win the California primary for dog catcher by getting a million people behind you.   Heck, you would think a presidential candidate would need a million hard-core supporters to even mount a decent campaign.   Gore's once ambitious expectations for this blockbuster have now cooled considerably.   The environment for global warming documentaries must be melting faster than the polar ice sheets.

The Surgeon General is on a mission to fight second hand smoke which he claims is guilty of causing a "wide range of health problems" including premature death and disease among adults and children, coronary heart disease and lung cancer, low birth weights and premature babies, sudden infant death syndrome, low respiration in children and middle-ear infections, breast cancer, brain tumors, childhood lymphoma and leukemia.   He suggests that any level of second hand smoke no matter how apparently insignificant can set into motion a chain of events which seriously impact one's health.   So, I have one question, why did those serious health effects not manifest themselves for the decades and decades during which every single blessed place permitted smoking?   For example, when I was a kid, almost 40 years ago, it was absolutely routine for people to smoke in movie theatres.   If you walked into any indoor area, the amount of second, third, fourth, and fifth hand smoke pervaded every single breath you took.   That was true at home, in school, any office building, restaurants, government buildings including courthouses, etc., etc.   Just about every person on Earth inhaled HUGE amounts of second hand smoke over the past seventy or so years.   And during that time, life expectancy has grown by amounts never anticipated by any scientist or medical professional.

Now this is what we've been saying.   You just cannot trust the mainstream media, and especially the Associated Press, to report accurately on anything.   They have an agenda, pure and simple.   While hordes of scientists from around the globe have scoffed and even laughed at Al Gore's global warming thriller, "An Inconvenient Truth," the AP comes out with a story entitled "Scientists OK Gore's movie for accuracy" in which they ask a boatload of 19 hand-picked scientists for their opinion.   The conclusion?   Unanimous agreement on one hundred percent accuracy.   This despite the unquestioned fact that Gore uses numerous discredited works in his presentation.   So the message the AP is sending is clear and unequivocal.   You cannot trust them to accurately report anything related to global warming.   The have an agenda.

Followup Posting:

Looks like the US Senate echoes my sentiment: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909

On Monday the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Rep. John Murtha's comments from a speech as declaring the US is the greatest threat to world peace.   The left side of the blogosphere has come to the aid of Murtha by questioning whether he made the specific comment or not.   Several lefty political sites have noted that the comments echoed around the media and blogosphere were never a direct quote but merely a summary of what the Sun-Sentinel reporter says Murtha said.   They wonder if Murtha isn't being "swiftboated," a reference to the Vietnam veterans who came out questioning John Kerry's military service record.   Is that a reasonable comparison?   Perhaps.

Let's start with the so called "Swiftees" who had the unmitigated gall to question John Kerry's patriotism in the middle of a political race.   It was Kerry who chose to enter the Democrat convention as if he were storming the shores in a thirty year old war in order to summon the patriotism of anyone stupid enough to buy into that sort of junk.   The left has made a never-ending attempt to draw comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam even though the two conflicts have very little in common.   Kerry's people took note of the increased feeling of patriotism Americans have felt since September 11 and tried to EXPLOIT that.   Kerry served, some would argue with distinction, so let's go ahead and make him out to be a bigger hawk on defense than Bush since that appears to be Bush's strongest attribute.

There was one problem with Kerry's Vietnam record and that was he cozied up to Jane Fonda after his service was up and became one of the lightning rods in protests which were NOT universally favored.   If anything from Vietnam remains today, it is the valley between those who felt it was an absolutely wrong war for at the wrong time for the wrong reasons and those who saw it as part of the effort to curb Communist aggression.   The historical context at least is clear.   Post World War II, the Communist system of government was in fact engaged in empire building and was a direct threat to American and other Democracy.   The US had no choice but to attempt to stop its spread at every turn.   Whatever mistakes were made in Vietnam, the reasons for going there in the first place were not wrong.   But Kerry made all sorts of vacuous statements in his critique of the US military effort in Vietnam and the overwhelming majority of veterans do not like the guy as a result.   It should have been expected that some would come out against him.   It should have been expected that somebody who knew Kerry in Vietnam would publicly speak out about his service and decorations.   Not even the most deserving hero has a pristine history.   Kerry's service record was inflated.   His deeds made into a mythology.   And all the swiftees did was expose that.

Now we have Murtha who has been reported as making certain un-American comments in a relatively small gathering of party faithful.   A reporter says he said these comments.   No she didn't quote him directly.   But Murtha's people have not denied the comments even given the chance to do so.   And nobody has delivered a recording of the meeting or a transcript.   Nobody is denying the comments were made by Murtha.   They are merely questioning whether he made them or not.   The opportunity for denial has been there for hours and hours yet not been taken advantage of.   Perhaps Murtha's people are waiting to see whether the public agrees with the supposed comments or not.   If a poll shows a majority of people think they are about right, expect Murtha to say, "Yes, I said them."   And if the polls show otherwise, we can expect a denial.   That is consistent with the liberal approach to everything these days.

So if one says Murtha is being "swiftboated," my question is do you mean he has become a political target of Republicans or do you mean people who actually witnessed something he did or said are criticizing him for it?   In either case the answer is yes.   You can't criticize the swiftees by implying that they were wrong.   You can't defend Murtha by saying he is being falsely accused without saying what it is he didn't say, what it is that is wrongly attributed to him.   And you can't wait for the polls this time.

In light of all the discussion on global warming, if human beings never existed on this planet, what would the temperature be today? Would it be cooler?

If the global warming community knows that our climate is getting too hot, then it stands to reason they'd know what the correct temperature should be.

Considering that temperatures are different all over the Earth, and that temperatures change through the seasons, you'd have to take recordings all over the Earth, throughout the year, and average them out.

But we also know that the Earth goes through warming and cooling trends in cycles ranging from hundreds to thousands of years. We also know that the Earth has experienced climactic changes that take place throughout millions of years.

Therein lies the problem.

Mankind hasn't recorded global temperatures on a consistent basis until the late 1800's (in the 1890's to be more precise). We just don't have enough empirical data to figure out what the Earth's temperature should be.

But, we do know that the Earth's temperature has risen. The Environmental Protection Agency says the Earth's temperature has increased an average of 1°F since the late 1890's.

Question

Is the Earth's current temperature exceeding its normal temperature, or is it returning to its normal temperature?

Answer

Consider that the last remnants of the Ice Age, the ice sheets in Canada, receded only 6,000 years ago (source USGS)...

Although the Great Ice Age began a million or more years ago, the last major ice sheet to spread across North Central United States reached its maximum extent about 20,000 years ago. Waning through a succession of retreats relatively minor advances, it lingered in Canada until about 6,000 years ago when it finally melted.

Since then, the Earth has been warming up. Is it still warming up from that period?

The USGS has some more interesting things to say about glacial retreat...

Prior to the 19th Century, observant Swiss peasants concluded that the glaciers in the Alps had formerly been much larger. They noted that the existing glaciers were slowly transporting and depositing down-valley and correctly inferred that the boulders strewn about their pastures had been transported and deposited in the same manner long ago.

In other words, glacial melting has been occuring as far back as the 1700s. The melting of glaciers is not something that happened only in the last few decades.

The problem is that we don't have daily and reliable temperature recordings going back far enough. Hence, we cannot make valid conclusions on what the Earth's temperature should be.

Moreover, if you were to live 100,000 years ago, and were able to record temperatures for 500 years (assuming you could live that long), the average temperature you'd calculate would be much different than in the present era. So, what was normal 100,000 years ago, is a lot different than what is normal today.

Global Warming

But what about the warming trend we're seeing today? Will Mankind suffer from it?

I'm not arguing that we're not headed for rising ocean levels and rising temperatures. Indeed, it looks like we are. My question is, is this something that Man is responsible for?

If you take a step back, and consider the history of the Earth, you'd realize that rising and falling ocean levels is something that has happened for millions of years. Perhaps billions of year.

If the Earth has experienced this cycle many times over, then why isn't this recent trend also part of a cycle?

What Do We Do About It?

If the recent warming trend is part of a natural earthly occurence, then what can we do about it? Nothing obviously. Instead, you prepare for it.

If you believe that Man is responsible for this recent warming trend, then again, there's nothing we can do about it. How do you change the livelihoods of billions of people? How do you get a free society like the United States, to stop its people and its businesses?

It's not unpatriotic.   It is TREASON!

The New York Times believes it has the right to disclose whatever leaked classified information it comes across.   They believe the founding fathers gave an unusual and poweful right of freedom of the press which permits them to do whatever the hell they please no matter how dangerous it might ultimately prove for the country and the citizens under whom the constitution is formed.   Those very words were written into the record today by Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times as he tried to defend against accusations that the Times committed treasonous acts when it published classified intelligence information.

Not to the Times, the constitution gave the right of freedom of expression not only to "the press" but to all Americans including the conservative bloggers you to whom you condescend in your letter.   All Americans have these rights.   There is no special right granted to the press.   And along with the rights come responsibilities as they always do.   There is no free lunch.   Actions have consequences.   And if an individual were to stand on the corner disclosing this very information, he would be tried for treason.   That's what should happen here.

Show us all your true colors, Mr. John Murtha.   They ain't as red, white and blue as you would like us to believe, are they?

Rep. John Murtha told 200 people in Miami that the US is the biggest threat to world peace.   Iran with its talk about blowing Israel off the map or intended development of nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community doesn't even hit the radar.   North Korea with its starvation of its own population in order to free resources to develop a missile which can launch its nuclear weapons to the continental US doesn't count.   China's unprecedented military buildup and tough talk against neighbors is just taking their rightful place as a world power.

Does this man Murtha speak for you?   he's your repreentative!

Want pressure?   Want to sweat?   OK, you've got it.   You're a major league baseball player.   You're hitting fourth.   It's the bottom of the ninth, last game of the season, bases are loaded, two outs, and your team is down by 2 runs.   If you get a hit, you're tied, a homerun and you win, you go to the playoffs, and everyone is happy ... temporarily.   Oh, the count is 0-2 and you're facing the toughest closer in the game.   Strike three.   Ball game over.   50,000 people you have never met are all booing in unison.   Your team is going home.   Now you have a sense of the type of pressure the typical CEO faces every waking moment of every blessed day.   But this is just a game.   Real life is far tougher.   Those 50,000 fans will forget this strike out.   When you're the CEO, your mistakes matter a whole lot more to a whole lot more folks.   Not much fun is it?

So what's up with the news headline, "CEOs earn 262 times pay of average worker?"   Would you do the job for 262 times your current pay?   Before you answer that, consider that you won't even get to know your kids.   When the "bat phone" rings, you've got to answer it.   Maybe it will be a friend telling you how your decision worked out just right or maybe it will be a call from an analyst you can't stand who wants to keep you on the phone for the next two hours answering his ridiculous questions.   I guess you can't read that Doctor Seuss story to your 6 year old after all.   Guess you can't watch TV with your wife who is contemplating divorcing you because you're "never there" for her and the kids.   You are going to that golf outing tomorrow.   That'll be fun, won't it.   Hopefully they won't pair you up with that other stupid analyst you can't stand like they've done for the last three years but then again, it is his company which sponsors this outing.

Life is so fun when you are the CEO, isn't it.   You're the boss.   You're in charge.   And when every decision you make results in the Board of Directors empaneling a special committee of expert consultants to criticize you, well that just goes with the territory.   Nobody cares that this is your third marriage.   Nobody cares that your 10 year old is in therapy because he has suicidal thoughts because dad's never around.   Nobody cares that your twelve year old is flunking math or science because you just don't have any time to help her with her homework.

Would you be a CEO for 262 times your current pay?   I wouldn't.   It's nice to fantasize about making large money but the job which goes with it is not something most of us could stand for more than a week.   It's always funny to hear the worker bees criticize the chief and shortly after that complain because the mid-level manager needs them to stay until 5:30 (instead of 5:00) to finish a project.   The CEO left at 5:00, didn't he?   Sure he did and at 5:15 he got a call demanding his attention until 11:00 pm.   Dinner was cold because his wife went to bed two hours ago knowing that he would be unavailable tonight.   He felt guilty but there really was nothing he could do.   He nodded off at 12 watching some cable news show but was startled awake at 12:15 with a dream about a ten year old committing suicide!   But, hey, life's tough.   Get on with it.

Where's the article exclaiming that movie stars make a million times what those paying to see their films make?   Where's the criticism of patent holders who make billions of times more than those who put their products together?   I suppose CEOs are just a for capitalism.   Attack the pay of CEOs just to show how capitalism is an evil system with an evil result.   But if you want to jump on the CEO's back, you've got to wait your turn.   Everybody else is engaged in picking on them.

Here's a list of some global warming reading you may want to engage in:

1) "Confession of an Exx-Con" - a global warming skeptic answers some critics.

2) The AP reports on The National Academy of Sciences conclusions regarding global warming.

3) However, that was not the question asked by the House of Representatives.

4) Here's the NAS news release.   And here's the full NAS report - page down to read it for free online unless you want to pay 42 bucks and get your own copy.   But it is tough slogging through the online version.

It seems fairly clear with a casual review of this material that the National Academy of Sciences did not directly address the questions posed but that's to be expected.   What we do have is merely a recap of the information fueling the climate change / global warming alarmists.

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources.   No matter what anyone would like you to believe, resources for absolutely everything are not infinite.   The United States might be one of the overall wealthiest nations on the planet but we still have limitations on what we accomplish.   Disaster preparation is one of those things which requires a lot of very limited resources.   In the wake of Katrina, we are spending huge amounts of money to rebuild New Orleans and, especially, to reconstruct a levy system around a sinking, undersea island.   But what if the scientific projections about the San Andreas fault were to come to fruition?   What if the next great quake hits Southern California in the next ten to twenty years?   Will we look back and say we allocated far too many of our scarce resources to prepare for another tropical storm hit in New Orleans?

Heck, the world is almost constantly discussing the impact of global warming in the context of resource allocation as if the well is bottomless.   We don't really know if anything we are doing is causing global average temperatures to rise.   We know it could have a contributory effect, but we really have no idea if burning fossil fuels has made even the slightest contribution to the minimal temperature increase which has been observed to date.   And we're not all that sure what the effects of any global warming are likely to be - the models contrast.   Yet with our limited resources, we are talking about using large chunks to deal with an underanalyzed potentiality.   We know earthquakes are going to devastate SoCal.   We have no idea what global warming or another hurricane hit are going to do.

We, as a society, are always far to reactive to disasters.   We get hit by something and then start planning for the next time something similar occurs.   Then something else hits and we react to that kind of catastrophe.   There doesn't seem to be a way to know which sort of natural or other disaster will befall us next so maybe there's no way to really adequately plan.   But it is a certainty that one day in the not too distant future Southern California is going to get hit with a massive earthquake.   There are a ton of Americans living there.   We are reliant on economic activity conducted there.   And this may very well be the anvil which breaks the camel's back.   Maybe we ought to think about that a little more than global warming or rebuilding an island beneath the sea.

"San Francisco Offers Universal Health Insurance" or so blares the headline.   But that's not really what's going on here so take a closer look.   What's really at work is a way to pay for all the care poor folks get at hospital emergency rooms anyway and to shift some of those hospital visits to where they more properly belong like pesonal physicians.   And since the city needs to pay for all the care it hands out, this proposed legislation is very much a taxing scheme.   It is also a plan which won't work in a lot of places.

By any measure San Francisco is obviously one of the most upscale cities in the country.   It is not a place where there is a lot of cheap housing.   The city figures there are 82,000 uninsured residents who don't qualify for Medicaid out of about 750,000 residents.   A fair number of the high level jobs in technology and finance are held by out of city residents who commute in from the north and south.   These non-residents would not qualify for this health insurance but they would pay taxes which would help fund this plan.   And only healthcare received in San Francisco would qualify for the insurance coverage.

San Fran government estimates that the total cost for the plan would be around $200 million per year although that doesn't take into account the outrageous medical care inflation rate which far exceeds most other sectors.   So the costs should reach $300 million before long and $400 million not long after that.   It will be instructive to see where this plan is in ten years.

Small businesses will likely feel the pinch on this baby.   One who was interviewed by the AP says it will put her out of business.   She is a restaurant owner who already offers health insurance to anyone working 28 hours per week or more.   It remains to be seen if the added taxes will actually put end her business but she knows the numbers better than we do.   And I suppose it doesn't matter when you're implementing a liberal plan to help the needy.   It isn't as if San Francisco has all that big of a restaurant business anyway, is it?

More to the point of a plan like this, San Francisco with its upscale business environment might very well be able to afford such a luxury as universal health insurance.   There is a lot of money in this tourist destination and financial center city.   They'll be able to pay for this one way or the other.   They will most likely be able to keep their resident restaurant business and put the burden on the backs of the ferry commuters.   Other cities, like Oakland for example, can in no way afford to do anything even remotely similar.   But when you're talking about important parts of the liberal agenda, reason never prevails.

"One day, our grandchildren may ask us what we did when Islamic fascism threatened the free world.   Some of us will say we were preoccupied with fighting that threat wherever possible; others will be able to say they fought carbon dioxide emissions.   One of us will look bad."

Read More

Economists Jared Bernstein and Josh Bivens have studied Wal-Mart and determined the company could raise wages and benefits without raising prices, and still earn a healthy though smaller profit.   This study was not commissioned by Wal-Mart.   Mr.s Bernstein and Bivens thought it up themselves and did it.   I suppose they didn't have anything else to do like start and run a competitor or advise some company which pays better wages how to compete with Wal-Mart.   No, they're not entrepreneurs.   They're economists.

Mr.s Bernstein and Bivens concluded, "The more important question for the future isn't whether Wal-Mart is a force for good or evil in the American economy, but whether the economic benefits provided by Wal-Mart can be preserved even if their labor compensation is dramatically improved."   Since when do we even consider whether a business is a "force for good or evil?"   Are we now bringing black and white thinking into the nuanced liberal debate?   Does religion really have a place in business?   And whose question is it whether Wal-Mart can continue to provide significant economic benefits to its customers while dramatically raising wages above what it needs to pay a willing employee today?   It's not Wal-Mart's question.   They pay the prevailing retail wage like everybody else does.


Reuters notes that Mr.s Bernstein and Bivens compared Wal-Mart's profit margin to Costco Wholesale Corp. who posted a profit margin of about 2 percent in 2005.   You know Coitco, don't you?   Those are the humongous warehouses in which you elbow your way past throngs of people to see if they have your brand of shampoo this month or not and then buy a 15 gallon drum of it at absurdly low prices.   On the other hand, Mr.s Bernstein and Bivens did not compare Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart's biggest competitor in the same retail sector, Target Corp. whose profit margins are higher than Wal-Mart's.

Mind your own business Mr.s Bernstein and Bivens.   Oh, you don't have one.   That's right, you're economists.   I'm sorry, what is it you do again?

Here's another thought for you budding economists looking for something to fill your time.   Wal-mart employs about 1.2 million people.   The company has about 4 billion shares outstanding, 37% of which are owned by mutual funds.   That means about a billion and a half shares are held by a huge number of people in their retirement or college fund accounts.   How many people?   I don't know but reason dictates it is probably a far greater number than the number of employees.   So, if we rob Paul to pay Peter a better wage, what is the outcome?   People who saved their money for retirement would be hurt in order to give money to people saving for retirement.   Now that's capitalism in action!

The US House of Representatives approved a resolution which praises U.S. troops, calls the Iraq war part of the war on terrorism and says an "arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of troops is not in the national interest.   The vote was 256-153.   It was not the culmination of a "fiercely partisan debate" as the AP says it was.   More than 20% of Democrats voted in favor of the resolution.   A number of Republicans voted against it or refused to cast a vote.

Let's call a spade a spade.   This was an easily won bipartisan vote (63% to 37%).   The vast majority of the public feels similarly.   The vociferous minority is in favor of the United States cutting and running immediately if not sooner.   No matter how you slant your polls, any thinking person realizes that we cannot simply remove our troops today and be better off for it.   Lots of people will disagree with Bush or Rummy's prosecution of the war.   But only a small minority of citizens of this country believe we should establish a timetable or bring the boys (and girls) home now.

So, can we move past this is and pledge our undying support for the brave men and women who voluntarily stand in harm's way in order to get this job done?   Can we drop the double speak of "we support the soldiers but are against the war" and move on to unequivocal support of our armed forces?

It is high time we dropped the public partisanship with respect to our military efforts.   It is high time we kept any sort of disagreement with respect to our people behind closed doors.   Family squabbles are nobody's business but the family's.   Public grandstanding on Iraq and the war on terror must cease.   It is unpatriotic to make our soldiers' difficult jobs even more difficult.   You cannot support our boys and girls while publicly criticizing the war itself.   The two acts are mutually exclusive.

I try to dismiss certain news items as beyond the merely ridiculous.   But sometimes I just cannot.   I can't keep my mouth shut when I witness complete and utter human stupidity.   At these times I simply must spout off.   You have my sincerest apologies for the comments I am about to make.   I realize subjecting you to this is inhumane.

Whole Foods Market Inc. has announced it will no longer sell live lobsters or crabs because their treatment, movement to market, and cooking alive in boiling water by consumers is inhumane.   The market noted that these critters are not treated with respect and compassion.   They did not say the respect and compassion they deserve.   That's because lobsters and crabs don't deserve respect and compassion.   Even PETA morons recognize that truth at its core.

I can understand that the plight of some animals with at least a tiny piece of intelligence can seem cruel to almost anyone.   Cows, chickens, pigs, etc. all have some semblence of intelligence.   It is easy to see them as having "feelings" roughly akin to those of human beings even if they do not.   They have faces with eyes, noses, mouths, and those faces do look enough like human beings that we imagine they even have expressions.   Because we have wonderful imaginations, we often confuse the "facial expressions" of animals as indicative of emotions.   If they have emotions, they must have feelings as we know them.   Take enough imaginative human beings, expose them to enough "facial expressions" of animals, don't give them much of anything else meaningful to do, and there's gonna be a problem when those animals with "facial expressions" (therefore, feelings) are butchered and delivered to the dinner table.

But there is a duality in this when we don't draw the line someplace.   We would not be able to breath if we worried about the plight of poor harmless bacteria floating in the air.   We kill hundreds, perhaps thousands with each breath.   We wouldn't be able to sit on grass, swat a fly, or walk around if we pondered how many insects we kill each day.   Even building a shelter to protect us from the elements causes the denial of survival or even direct death to thousands of creatures including ants, bees, bunnies, and mice.   We can't breath, walk or create shelter without a holocaust.

A soybean has but one purpose in life and that is to find a home in the soil, grow into adulthood and produce more soybeans.   Yet we prevent the self-actualization of the soybeans we rip from their parent plant, grind into powder and boil into an edible thing.   Is this not cruel by its very nature?

We rip carrots from their homes, stack them into over crowded-piles stick them in boxes and load them into trucks, trains, and planes to ship them to marklet where people essentially throw them alive into boiling water to make stew.   How could anything be quite as harsh as that?

Beans live a relatively carefree life of leaching off their parents until they achieve a point in their lives when they can go out and start their own bean families.   We wait and watch for that moment right before puberty and then pluck them from their intended destination and shove them alive into our mouths crunching down hard and swallowing them into the cauldron of our digestive juices.   Should we not feel compassion for the plight of the common bean?

The animal nuts (no offense to nuts) mostly focus on protecting animals with faces.   But a lobster or crab only really has a face if you study it for hours on end.   And they don't ever exhibit anything which really appears to be emotion or feeling.   Hence the word "crab" which we use to describe a person in a bad mood.   A crab always looks crabby.   Crab never smile.   Crabs never sing.   They don't laugh.   Maybe that's because they live at the bottom of salt water bodies in the muck and mud and eat mostly crap left over when another creature dies.   Maybe that's because they don't have any emotions or feelings.

If we're gonna draw the line on which creature deserves respect and compassion, where exactly should it be drawn?   I'd like some Vegans or PETA members to answer that question for the rest of us.   Do we arbitrarily draw the line at the vegetable / animal mark?   On what fundamental principle to we delineate vegetables as unfeeling?   Have we really listened to carrots or beans as we kill them so we are positive they don't scream?

Are some animals / insects "fair game."   If so, which ones and why?   Before another animal nut attempts to put the kibosh on another human food, they should be forced to lay out the logic for the rest of us in unemotional terms so we can know what we are allowed to do without offending them.   Until such time, I strongly suggest you BOYCOTT WHOLE FOOD MARKETS, INC.

It's really nice to see all the good intelligence information which was found in the process of setting up the meeting between al-Zarqawi and Allah.   They paint a different picture of the "insurgency" than our media does.   It's probably too early to know exactly what is in all the document s discovered but there is one undeniable conclusion one must reach with the little brips and drabs which have made their way into the eye of the public and that is Murtha was and is WRONG about just about everything!

On Monday a Washington Post columnist attacked Tom DeLay for his goodbye speach to Congress.   The basis of the attack was DeLay's criticism of "bipartisanship."   The concept promoted by liberals is conservatives don't negotiate, they take no prisoners.   The back side of the concept goes something like liberals always negotiate, they always work together with the other side of the aisle.   What complete and utter folly.

Teachers' unions are often highly critical about the "No Child Left Behind" laws.   Those laws are clearly the work of liberals, Ted "the head" Kennedy for one, empowered by a conservative president.   The 9-11 Commission was called for by liberals and filled with moderates and liberals.   Their study and recommendations were given huge weight by a conservative president and congress.   We still have ridiculous discredited wealth redistribution policies in this country thanks to liberals.   We still have ridiculous business regulation thanks to liberals.   We can't even fire a teacher for sexually abusing students in this country.   We can't build a nuclear power plant or drill for oil in a barren wasteland because of liberal environmental policy.   We cannot ratify the fact that marriage has for thousands of years been exclusively the domain of heterosexual partners thanks to liberals.   There's nothing bipartisan about most of this country's policies.   They are undeniably liberal.

The key question is what constitutes "bipartisanship" to a liberal.   The answer is whenever they are getting their way, that's bipartisanship.   And whenever they are not, conservative partisanship is to blame.   Conservatives apparently need to be reminded of that fact over and over again.   If you really need to question whether this country is bipartisan whenever liberals are in power, you need only look at the things this country has done over the past 100 years which are counterproductive and ask yourself why we do such stupid things.   The answer is liberals engage in outright partisanship whenever they are in power and act as sticks in the mud whenever they are not.

You have undoubtedly heard of the Philly Cheesesteak place with the sign stating that in order to order, you must "SPEAK ENGLISH."   I doubt anybody is surprised that the lib.s are coming at the poor entrepreneur with all guns blazing.   Now city government is taking the man to court to get the signed removed.   They claim he is in violation of two city ordinances, "denying service to someone because of his or her national origin, and having printed material making certain groups of people feel their patronage is unwelcome."   Horse hockey!

How does language necessarily equate to "national origin?"   Many non-Americans speak English.   A huge number of Americans whose national origins are non-English speaking countries also speak English.   This business isn't discriminating against those people based on their national origins.   The only people being "discriminated" against are those who don't bother to learn the language spoken by the private business establishment's personnel.   The same can be said of any business owned and operated in areas of Pennsylvania or Philadelphia where English isn't spoken.   I'm not all that familiar with Philly but I do know that in many localities throughout this country, for example so called "China Towns" in NYC and San Francisco, a non-English speaking patron will find nobody to converse with in many business places.   Are those establishments violating the law similarly?   Do we not have an Equal Protection" issue here?

Also, does "having printed material making certain groups of people feel their patronage is unwelcome" apply to businesses which post only Chinese or Russian signs?   What about French or Italian restaurants whose menu is exclusively in non-English words?   Can we require them to use English and Spanish.   And what's magical about written words?   What about when we enter a taxi and the driver doesn't speak English, Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese or even Russian, but injstead is conversant only in some Arabic or Indian dialect?   Does that not make "certain groups of people feel their patronage is unwelcome?"

This is so much ado about nothing, it is beyond reason that the city even tried to address it.   If you make this man take down the sign, you simply must make every business establishment post all signage in every language on the face of the Earth.   The fact that this business is being rather blunt in no way colors the issue.   The city of Philadelphia is applying its laws unevenly, in a persecutorial manner, and that is a far bigger affront to the public than this business establishment's actions.

Hillary Clinton, one of the bigger hawks on the left side of the equation is taking heat from John Kerry, of all people, and jeers from the base.   But is it fair?   Definitely not.   Hillary voted for the Iraq war and has stuck to her guns (pardon the pun) while Kerry continues to waffle his way back into the next presidential race.

You'll remember Kerry as the guy who exclaimed, "I voted for it before I voted against it."   Doesn't much matter what the context is.   John Kerry always votes both sides of any issue.

You'll also remember Kerry as the guy who voted to put troops in the way of bullets and then refused to give them any bullets of their own.   Nothing could be more morally repugnant than a sleazy politician who votes to put people in harms way and then refuses to allow them to protect themselves.   But this is hardly the first time Kerry has voted for some fundamental policy and then stood in the way of implementation.   It is reprehensible to watch his double speak in action and to see all the damage his participation in this nation's government causes.

Kerry has made a career out of "having it both ways."   The man has a solid history of being blown by the wind from moment to moment.   He not only checks the polls, but also alters his voice to fit the whims indicated by them.   He is no leader.   He is purely a follower.   You may not be in love with the notion of President Hillary but you've got to admit that, given just two choices for the job, you'd much rather have that than "President Mr. John Kerry."   President Kerry ... the phrase sends shivers down my spine and causes me to wretch uncontrollably.   And that's my thought for the day!

Militant vegans hold sway over your diet?   Yes, my dear, they do.   Read this piece about "Big Tofu"

The enviro-headline of the moment seems to be Polar bears may be turning to cannibalism because global warming has cut down their ability to earn a living.   This is said as if polar bears' habits have been studied for a long time and this is something entirely new.   But we haven't been able to study polar bears as extensively as other animals on the planet because they eat us.   There's nothing new or unusual for a polar bear to stalk, hunt, and eat a human being.   When they look at us, they see Burger King.   And since polar bears don't fret quite as much about trans-fatty acids or other dietary concerns, they don't hesitate to kill us while they are making a meal.   Because they're so big and strong, we really do not have much by way of protection from them so we do not study them quite as closely as some would have you believe.   They are the Great White Sharks of the land but we do not have cages with which to protect ourselves from sleeping with the fishes (salmon).

Basically, polar bears are not very cooperative with humans.   This brings me to my next point.   You may have missed this next story which caught my attention because it has no environmental connections.   It turns out that polar bears are capable of other bad behavior.   Their misdeeds are not limited to occassional cannibalism.   It turns out juvenile polar bears do not get much in the way of moral instruction from their parents.   ecoEnquirer reports a number of acts of delinquency have been traced to polar bears, particularly adolescents, with too much time on their hands.   It kind of makes a myth out of the notion that bears don't have enough to eat.   If life is that hard for the bears, how do they have time to goof off and creat havoc?!   Answer that one all you loony-tunes enviro-babble nuts!!!

After I see a truly stirring movie, my interest in the subject matter is piqued. I think I spent two years reading about sharks after I saw "Jaws."   That helped fill the time I no longer spent in the Ocean bodysurfing the waves.   If you've seen Al Gore's thriller "An Inconvenient Truth," and you're looking for something to do with your time rather than sit and look at the flames in your fireplace or take a drive in the country, might I suggest you do a little research on the scientific research regarding global warming causality?   I wish Al Gore had done more research before came off half cocked but what's done is done.   Today I hope Al will find time to delve a little further into the subject than he has to date.

Here's an easy reading news article to start your reading, Al:

"Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe"

Some of the more salient points of the discussion are:

"Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic."

"Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, 'There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame.   In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.' Patterson asked the committee, 'On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?'"

"Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea.   'The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier,' says Winterhalter.   'In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades.   If the water is deep enough icebergs will form.'"

"Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time.   The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

But Karlen clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off.   As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans.   When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karlen concludes."

These are kind of inconvenient opinions, don't you think?

The MSM frequently calls the group of interested individuals who publish their own opinions about things including politics "stupid."   They note that the blogosphere is a bad place from which to get your information if you want to hear the truth.   During the past couple of elections, Democrats have also uttered this mantra.   Those stupid bloggers!

But when it comes down to really taking a look at the world as it has been over the past several centuries, bloggers have a whole lot more in common with the free press first established in the British North American colonies.   Back in those days, the technological development was the printing press.   Today it is the internet and blogging software which makes anyone, no matter how technically savy or not, able to publish their views.   Similarly, the printing press allowed individuals to get the word out on their ideas about freedom.   The early free press resembled not even a little bit the mainstream media of today.

Still you have to wonder about some of the blogosphere.   Some of their ideas are way out there.   And Democrats like John Kerry are well advised to avoid them since they offer up such weird ideas about things.   For example, take the Hollywood Liberal.   Their nuanced thinking includes stories about how George Bush is actually gay or bisexual - having an affair with Secretary Rice, or that George Bush and Bill Kristol have a secret plot to make Bush grand leader, dictator, of the US.   Anybody who gets their information from HL, needs to consider serious psychological counselling.   And any political leader who would sit down with these idiot bloggers ought to have their head examined.   I guess that's why John Kerry consented to giving them an interview in which he claimed everything George Bush does is done in order to "loot the country."

I suppose if all you can do is get money from the lunatic fringe, you have to cater to them.   And if you have to speak to them, you better make all sorts of conspiracy claims.   On the other hand, maybe Kerry believes all this crap he is spewing.   I don't know.   But when Kerry started off his interview by saying everything is "off the record," you have to figure he is at least smart enough to know his words are ridiculous yet not smart enough to realize these guys don't keep their promises.

An interesting dichotomy of the liberal mindset, one which gets little play, is the utter disregard for top down management.   Liberals distrust authority.   They hate the police.   They prefer parliamentary governmental systems to having one with a co-equal executive branch headed by a single person.   They create business organizations which are flat rather than pyramid shaped.   They prefer socialism to representative democracy because representative democracy establishes a leader.   Yet liberalism prefers to adhere to the ideas of a single man, Marx; points to examples of governments run by dictators like Stalin; and even their business organizations are typically headed by one visionary like Steve Jobs of Apple, Ted Turner of Turner Broadcasting, and too many other examples to name.   Liberals champion egalitarianism so long as it is inspired by a visionary.   They see events like the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as not all that important since the "insurgency will outlive" him.

The Japanese have a phrase which sums up the importance of leadership which goes, "a fish rots from the head down."   This means basically that the leader is the key element to any organization.   We see this many times over in history where organizations rise to power on the strength of a single leader or taking out such a leader is the short way to defeating an opponent.   Nazi Germany could never have outlived Hitler for very long.   The United States could not have been created were it not for a select few leaders who taught the public their vision of what could be.   Without George Washington we could never have hoped to defeat the British.

Today we comtemplate the death of al-Zarqawi and the liberal media pours water and fertilizer on the notion that the Iraq insurgency will of course not be even slightly diminished by his death.   That just cannot be.   It just is not possible to take out a leader and have the same organism proceed as if nothing has changed.   Of course somthing has changed.   The guy who inspired so much death and misery is no longer on the planet.   he's engaged with however many virgins or white doves his religious book promised him.   The organism of al Qaeda in Iraq is without a leader today.   A new head may grow in his place but that head will either be a perfuntory follower of what the grand leader previously established or he will change the direction of the insurgency.   There is no historical example in which a leader was removed and the organization continued precisely as before.   There is reason to celebrate.   The head has truly been cut off.

The AP says today, "The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that many Americans perceive the alleged atrocities against Iraqi civilians by U.S. forces as isolated incidents while saying the U.S.-led invasion was a mistake, an unusual disconnect that sets this conflict apart from Vietnam." [emphasis my own]

Since when did anything about Iraq even remotely resemble anything about Vietnam?   I realize Cindy Sheehan and others who are opposed not just to this war but to any war want everyone to think this is another Vietnam because we did not accomplish our objectives there.   Yet there is so little similarity between the two conflicts it is beyond any reasonable logic to make the comparison.

In Vietnam, there were two essentially established governments fighting each other, one in the north and another in the south.   In Vietnam, we chose to fight on the side of democracy against the communists because we felt they were funded by our enemies, China and the Soviet Union.   We feared the forceful spread of communism, a reasonable fear when you consider the way this system spread after World War II.   But, as it turned out, the "democracy" was not really a democracy and the side we were on did not necessarily have the support of the people.   We made plenty of mistakes in Vietnam and a infinitesimal minority of our soldiers may have committed some heinous acts.   But life is kind of like that, you make mistakes and a minority of people do incredibly stupid things.   We cut and ran from Vietnam before achieving real military victory because the voice of the people forced the politicians' hand.

In Iraq we fought against and defeated a brutal dictatorship which brooked no opposition.   There was not any sort of organized side to whom we came to aid.   We fought and quickly defeated militarily the established dictatorship.   Now we are engaged in fighting an insurgency made up of: 1) former members of the brutally repressive regime, 2) members of an ethnic and religious minority who for decades repressed the ethnic and religious majority, and 3) al Qaeda.   In Vietnam, the insurgency was a decades-long-established group of freedom fighters who had engaged successive colonial powers.   In Iraq, it is mostly the losing military side which is fighting us in a subversive manner.   There's no comparison in terms of factual circumstances.

There are really only two valid comparisons between the wars.   In both cases, Americans did the lion's share of heavy lifting.   In both wars we had good intentions and failed to see the situation for what it was.   In Vietnam we were on the right fundamental side of things.   If you doubt that even for a moment, just look over at the two Koreas.   One is democratic and the other communist.   The people on the communist side spend their lives in meaningless drudgery to support an extremely large military establishment, not even getting enough food to eat.   On the democrat side you have an extremely well established and successful society.   We left Vietnam and it fell to the communists.   Even today, Vietnam more closely resembles impoverished North Korea than it does wealthy South Korea.   North Korea has been dominated by a megalomaniacal dictator who claims he sinks a hole in one on every golf shot he ever tries.   South Korea has been dominated by a political process involving a huge number of its well educated middle class.   The scoreboard is clear.   Whatever you want to say about Vietnam, you cannot say we were absolutely, totally wrong in what we wanted to accomplish.   The same is true in Iraq.

And let's not forget that we have been in a virtual state of war with Iraq since they chose to invade their tiny neighbor, Kuwait.   That was a war of coming to aid of a tiny friend who did not have the wherewithal to defend itself.   Saddam never lived up to the peace treaty, just as Adolph Hitler defied a peace treaty.   You may not agree with the decision to invade Iraq but you cannot claim our intentions were bad or this is somehow an illegal war.

The AP may really think the American people's view of this conflict is an unusual disconnect.   They aren't particularly bright when it comes to analyzing the world.   They should perhaps stick to reporting facts.   Apparently the American people do well enough analyzing them.

I heard a couple of conservative commentators complain that Ann Coulter's "controversial comments were like pouring gasoline onto the fires of partisanship.   I disagree.   Partisanship achieved critical mass in 2000 over the Bush-Gore thing.   It is currently a self-sustaining nuclear reaction as powerful as the sun's.   Pouring gasoline onto the sun would have zero effect.   And this particular brand of partisanship is good for the country.   That's what energizes people to come out and actually vote.   When people come out en masse and vote, we get to know the real feelings of the country.   Anything which accomplishes that has to be a good thing.

According to Junk Science, Greenpeace issued a statement against nuclear power recently which went something like:

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet, decrying the "threat" posed by the reactors Bush visited in Limerick.   But after that assertion, the Greenpeace authors were apparently stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor. "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Seems the green guys forgot to insert an "ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID" to sufficiently terrorize the public before issuing the release.

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!

Congratulations to the US Military for arranging the meeting between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his maker.   Now, if we can only do the same favor for bin Laden!   This news ought to make at least some people happy but it won't cause the media to give up the anti-war rhetoric just yet.   They're quick to point out insurgency will outlive al-Zarqawi.   They truly hope it will.   Otherwise what is th