We were quick to call everyone who perished in the 9-11 attack "heroes."   They were and they deserved to be called such.   We were similarly pretty quick to hand over huge pots of cash to the families of victims of the attacks.   They probably deserved that as well.   But what about the people who willingly stayed at the WTC site for months digging through metal, concrete, human flesh, and God only knows what else, in order to clean up this site so we could move on?   They were truly the bravest among us.   They rushed to do respectful duty while many of us stayed inside with locked doors, watching TV news with tears running down our faces.   How much greater than the rest of us are those who stayed there digging through the rubble?   We need to treat these folks with the highest respect.   Those who died a few short years after the attacks because they inhaled dangerous substances ought to be given a place right next to the victims who died on the day of the attack.   Their lives were taken by the attacks as much as anyone else's was.   And if there are still debts unpaid, they are those debts of gratitude we all owe these bravest among us.   Some of those debts ought ot be paid in cash so these true heroes can afford their medical bills!

There was quite a scare today in Boston when numerous suspicious objects were found all around the city. &nbs-p; It turns out to have been a publicity stunt by Turner Broadcasting.   It cost the city of Boston millions in police work, lost commerce, and strees reducing vitamins.   I say make Turner Broadcasting pay for what they cost the people of Boston.   Then again, it would probably cost more than the company's bottom line but too bad.   Make'em pay for the trouble they caused.   the not so funny thing is the next attack very likely will be bombs in a bunch of ordinary objects purchased at Wal-Marts, Targets and Marshall's throughout the country.   These objects will be made into small bombs filled with shrapnel and placed in ordinary locations like shopping malls or large busy stores.   Nobody will think anything of them until they are set off by a digital phone.   And in the meantime, police will continue to investigate every odd object in the fear that it will contain a bomb.   By the liberals at Turner don't believe there is any risk that there will be another terrorist attack in this country.   They think we are all just over-reacting.   So they don't think it's a big deal when they do a publicity stunt like this in order to make money.   If they put us out a little, they're sorry.   They're sorry we are so nervous and ready to over-react at the drop of a hat.

Follow-up Posting:

Turner has said they were sorry.   They hope all is forgiven.   The official word was: "We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger"   That's like the little kid saying I'm sorry it made you mad when I burned the house down.   I'm not sorry I burned the house down.   I'm sorry that you got mad about it.

Turner isn't sorry that their idiot stunt caused major problems.   Like I said before, they're sorry we overeracted.   Let's make them sorry.

My state is contemplating a ban against metallic baseball and softball bats because a token number of kids are killed each year when struck by a ball in the chest.   It doesn't matter that wood bats kill more kids than metallic bats.   Logic tells you metallic bats must be a bad thing so let's get rid of them.   The science about trans-fats is not nearly as clear as some would have us believe.   Still, that didn't even enter the conversation when New York City banned them a few weeks ago.   We are all unwitting participants in a huge behavior modification experiment and we are not compensated for our participation.

I've watched the recent discussions concerning compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) with some consternation.   Caifornia is considering banning conventional lightbulbs in favor of CFLs.   There's lots of information claiming huge energy savings will result.   That's a line of crap.

Let me be clear that I have used these bulbs for years.   I'm not sure exactly why but I think it was their longevity.   I despise hunting for a lightbulb when one goes out.   CFLs do last longer though not nearly as long as the package claims.   And our energy bill did not go down appreciably, if it went down at all.   The light they put out kind of sucks unless you compare it to a 60 watt bulb.   Have you ever used 60 watt bulbs?   Why would you?   Why not just a bic lighter to see where you're going.   But the behavior mod police are going to make sure these bulbs become commonplace.   I guess they'll continue to tell us how much better they are for us.   Of course, they can't rely on the marketplace or average human intelligence to prove this.   They have to enact a law to force us to use them.   It's too bad all these token measures don't add up to a hill of beans.

If there is human caused global warming, these bulbs will not solve it.   Sure you can multiply the electricity savings by the hundred million households in America.   That seems like a lot in terms of raw numbers.   But truth be told, your lightbulbs do not use nearly as much electricity as your refrigerator or the air conditioning/circulation system of your home.   Your TVs and computers use far more than the bulbs.   Your washing machine and other appliances use far more.   The real truth is that if there is a human caused problem, the only way to solve it is to go to your fuse box and pop them all.   Turn off your electricity.   Now walk to the store and buy a bicycle.   You'll need it for your daily commute and all other transportation needs.

But that's not what global warming or trans-fats is about.   What these are, are pieces in the giant behavior modification experiment the lib.s have been working on us for years.   They believe people do better when they are faced with problems.   They believe we'll all be unhappy if life gets too good.

Please don't should on me.   If your life is so pristine, let's have a look at it.   Let's see everything including your cocaine abuse, your unprotected anal intercourse with multiple partners, and your other "minor sins" which you think are protected by the Bill of Rights while you go out and tell people they can't smoke in their own backyards, shouldn't be allotted any more than 1,000 square feet of living space for a family of four, need to drive a "hybrid" car, and lots of other things they do which just aren't healthy for them.

If you are sick and tired of the should people and their impact of every tiny aspect of your life, you really need to educate yourself on these people are.   They are majority liberal, majority Democrat, and majority elite, wealthy urban dwellers.   Being rich, educated, and sophisticated does not confer wisdom.   They are smart at writing stories, arguing points of law, investing funds, etc.   But that doesn't make them smart about life and it doesn't give them the right to tell you what to do.   String them up by the nads.   Vote them out of office before they determine that more than a half hour of TV per day is really, really bad for you.   Push them back to where they belong before they find something else they need to control for your own good.

Here's an article for your perusal: Sci-tech Today reports, "Ethanol ... helps cut carbon monoxide in winter but can raise smog levels in summer."   "Ethanol releases more nitrogen oxides, a key element of smog, and evaporates more easily than gasoline."

There are 223 million firearms in the US.   In the US, firearm ownership is restricted in several ways.   Suffice it to say it is far easier to purchase tobacco than it is is to purchase guns.   Yet almost half of all households report affirmatively to the question whether they have a firearm in the house or nearby.   There aren't nearly enough gun permits to cover a large percentage of all guns in the US.   I strongly suggest that we end the ridiculous gradual persecution of smokers so we can move on and harrass some other group of people who have been left alone while smokers are beat up.   Let's just apply the current gun laws to cigarettes and other tobacco products.   This way we can deprive the liberals of their absurd self-congratulatory moments as they walk away from publicly criticizing an aquaintance for smoking tobacco.   There is one problem with banning all tobacco, apparently usage will go up if we do that.

Hello, 911?   Yes, this is Bill Smith.   I'm calling from my car.   I'd like to report a man smoking tobacco in his backyard at 235 Elm Street.   Excuse me?   What I want you to do is your duty.   I'd like you to send an officer here to ticket the man.   Smoking is illegal, after all.   I'd just like you to enforce the law.   You're not going to send a patrol car?   Well, then, how about this.   I'll wait five minutes and if you don't send an officer, I'm going to shoot the man.   Have I been smoking what?   Why yes, I have been smoking crack but I don't see why that's any of your business.   No, my handgun is not registered.

When they start calling you names, you should know that you are striking a chord with them and they have no other weapon than to use the lowest available thing they can grasp at.   Sticks and stones will break my bones but names ...

John Kerry is out there throwing the "neocon" word around as a way of criticizing the American international frame of reference.   Kerry called the US an "international pariah" when he spoke, of course, outside the country recently.   Kerry is pissed because he finally realized his one shot at President is now history.   He's likely to become more embittered as he ages towards retirement.  

Hillary's using it too.   Her's is a more aggressive use but it is name calling nonetheless.   It seems to be making a more frequent showing in all the lefty media places.   Something must be bothering them.   They're picking up fewer stones and using name-calling instead.   That's weak!

NEOCON, NEOCON, NEOCON, NEOCON, NEOCON, NEOCON!

Democrats were very upset about Bush's reference to the "Democrat majority" in the Senate during his "State of the Union" message.   Tony Snow informed everyone that Bush meant no insult but Democrats were insulted nonetheless.   Reuters notes that "Republicans for years have dropped the last two letters of the name as a slight to the party."   Yet if you visit the party's web site, you may notice that the domain name is "DEMOCRATS.org" not "democratic.org."   And party members are Democrats not Democratics.   We don't welcome the Democratic Senator from ..., we recognize Democrat Senator from ...   We don't come to listen to Hillary, Democratic candidate for President, we refer to "Democrat Hillary, candidate for President."

There is no slight intended in this post.   If you want me to call you by a different name, please change your name first.

Check this one out on YouTube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2rOjmDsPg_s

and compare it with Hillary's most recent comments which say Bush lied and used her vote, and others', for a pre-emptive war when that was not what she intended.   Check her recent words here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=h5LaiDfTQEk and move the thing forward to about 4 minutes to the point where she discusses her original vote.

She explains her vote as resulting from her own intelligence sources, being expressly for a pre-emptive attack, justified based on her own following of the facts for more than a decade, and presupposing the need for unilateral action.

It is kind of difficult to wiggle out of this one.   Hillary does not possess Bill's ability to obfuscate the obvious.

Don't get your back up.   The title to this piece doesn't indicate my beliefs.   I just wanted to stir you up a little.   I wanted to get you just a little mad before I send you over to the LA Times to read an op-ed entitled, "Was 9/11 really that bad? ... history says we're overreacting."

Now, this author, David A. Bell, makes some debating points when he points ou that what the Soviets suffered during World War II was far worse.   That's low hanging fruit.   he moves on to say "Even if one counts our dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as casualties of the war against terrorism, which brings us to about 6,500, we should remember that roughly the same number of Americans die every two months in automobile accidents."   Shouldn't that mean the Iraq war is pretty much insiginifant since its death toll has been spread out over more than 3 years?   Um no, that's not what he is saying.   Bell complains that too many of us, "particularly on the right," have overreacted because Islamic fundamentalists do not have the capacity to inflict real damage on our society.   This is where the author loses the overall debate despite points earned early on.

The problem is we cannot look at threats via the prism of perceptions about potential.   That is precisely how Hitler was able to get into the position to inflict the significant pain upon the Soviets Bell refers to, not to mention the Jews, slavs, other Europeans, etc.   Had we analyzed Germany's potential in 1935, before things got heated, we would have seen a society with serious weaknesses including lack of resources.   We would have argued that this was a war-worn-out country with no significant military apparatus.   We would certainly not have feared them.   That is exactly where we see Islamic fundamentalists today.   But it isn't the way it would have played out had we left Afghanistan alone.

I am pretty sure that despite the media's admonitions about how patient bin Laden and his followers are, history will show that his fatal mistake was a lack of patience.   Had he left the US alone, he would most likely have been able to thrive within Afghanistan and eventually exported his ideology to Pakistan where so many adore him.   With a little luck and persistence, he might then have had two countries supporting his world view, one of them possessing nuclear weaponry.   Also, he might have aided the Chechens and ultimately defeated the Russians there, spreading to yet another country.   He could have worked towards conquering Africa slowly, one country at a time and then when he achieved a critical mass, he could have gone after the Arab states where Whahabism is already fairly rampant.   He would have had nuclear technology, several countries, significant oil resources, etc.   And from there, the sky would be the limit and his ultimate goals might then be realized.

But bin Laden didn't act in a patient manner.   Instead he decided he needed to act rather than build potential first.   because he chose the wrong enemy to attack first, his vision will fail.   Hitler, at least, understood resource strategy far better than the tall Saudi does.   But our reaction to 9-11 was not in any way an overreaction.   It was a reaction whose time had come and thank goodness it was early enough to prevent the spread of yet another mad ideology.

If we wait until an enemy possesses the potential to destroy our society to act, it will already be too late.

According to Wikipedia, "Poverty is a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life."   That's a fairly absolute concept.   Yet the online encyclopedia also claims it has something to do with "the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society."   And it may be defined in "relative terms" as when "income disparities or wealth disparities are seen as an indicator of poverty and the condition of poverty is linked to questions of scarcity and distribution of resources and power."   These non-absolute definitions of poverty are a liberal corruption of the term and render it meaningless.

Poverty is generally considered to be an indication of not having the bare necessities of life.   Most dictionaries recognize the word's roots as related to the terms pauper and poor.   None refer to anything along the lines of possessing less than some other person or persons.   It is understood as a condition of unacceptably less than that required for a reasonable life without regard to any external indicia.   It is not a concept measured against the possessions or opportunities of others.   It it were a relative and broad term, those of us shoveling snow this morning on the east coast of the US might be called impoverished as compared to those enjoying a bright, sunny, warm day in Los Angeles.   If it were, nobody would engage in an effort to "stamp out poverty" unless they intended to implement Communism.   If it were, Americans might, in majority be considered impoverished, especially if they didn't possess large-screen (50 inches +) HD television sets.   If it were, Americans could not be expected to donate funds for the purpose of stamping out poverty since they, themselves, would be impoverished.

Rather we understand poverty in terms of hunger, shelter, and a reasonable level of education - exclusively as it relates to providing oneself with food and shelter.   When one hears of an effort to address the problem of poverty, one understands it as an effort to feed, clothe, shelter someone who currently cannot do it themself, and to provide them with the ability to take care of these necessities for themselves in the future.   Those donating to anti-poverty charities do not contemplate how much the richest versus the poorest possess in an impoverished village, country or area.   We want to give so the babies won't starve.   We want to asure adequate clean drinking water.   We want everyone to live with at least a minimum level of human dignity - one in which the next meal is not the only concern.

My Sunday newspaper lamented what it termed "the widening gap between the rich and the poor" in my state.   The paper pointed out "over the past three decades, income inequality - the income difference between the low- and high-income residents (of the state) - has grown" here and in the country as a whole.   But this news piece was exclusively concerned with poverty and its eradication.

I suggest to you that with this liberal corruption of the term, there is no way to eradicate poverty without making 100% sure that each of us possesses not only precisely the same property, but also all other aspects of life.   if your water is not quite as tasty as mine, you are impoverished.   If my TV is better than yours, likewise.   If the weather where I live is routinely better than yours, or vice versa, one of us is impoverished.   If your job is easier, even slightly easier, than mine, or more rewarding, or in a nicer office, or involves a half second quicker commute, I am impoverished and you had better make amends.

The reality is poverty is an absolute term.   And to the extent that it is absolute and relates to a minimum standard of living, its eradication is a worthy goal.   To the extent we view poverty as a relative term, it is a notion which is ideologically linked and should be viewed as such.

Last week I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about the American military casualty rate in Iraq.   He asked his viewers to answer a question in order to gauge the degree to which each was subject to MSM manipulation.   The question was how many US soldiers died last year.   I guessed around 800.   The answer is, according to a web site called iCasulaties, 821.   Limbaugh suggested that if you guessed something like 1,000 or less, you aren't as subject to media manipulation as those who may have guessed 1,000 or more, 2,000 or more, etc.   Yet I wondered if that is precisely true or not.   Am I subject to media manipulation?

I guessed approximately the correct number but that was just a guess.   And the guess was a "raw number" guess.   How relevant is it that I happened to guess right?   What other impressions do I have which might demonstrate my susceptibility to manipulation?

I freely admit that I thought going to war was a worthwhile endeavor for our military.   Saddam was a loose canon.   Sure the US might have supported him at one time but only as a counterweight to a dangerous theocracy which threatened to turn the entire Middle East into a unified Islamic fundamentalist, fascist whole.   If the FBI can cozy up to Sammy the Bull in order to bring down John Gotti, we can use a repressive dictator to further our national interest.   That's practical reality.   But, just as Sammy the Bull, eventually was arrested for subsequent crimes, we didn't get married to Saddam and his regime of thugs.   We used him when he was useful.   There's no shame in that.   And when his actions began to exceed a certain level, long after his usefulness to us had expired, when he invaded a neighbor friendly to us, we had to go toe to toe with him.   Maybe we could have finished the job then or maybe we should have thrown the full weight of our capability behind the burgeoning insurgency which rose against him after Kuwait.   But we didn't and you can't go back and have a do-over.   The question was what would we do going forward.

Any questions about whether Saddam was a madman were answered for me by the show which replays every now and again on National Geographic Channel called "Inside Saddam's Reign of Terror."   if you haven't seen this program, you should.   It does a great job of providing pretty much the full history of the Saddam regime.   It shows why Iraq didn't really have a WMD program per se, at least not a serious one.   Maybe the US should have known or reasoned to some of the information like how poor the regime had become and how their debt load was so great that they couldn't afford to really develop nuclear weapons after the Israeli bombing of their $3 billion nuclear plant, the 8 year Iran war, and the destruction of most of their military hardware in Desert Storm.

I'm going to far afield here but I did want to at least discuss the backdrop for my opinions about Iraq so I could understand better the ways in which I have been manipulated by the media with respect to this war.   Over the past year or so, I came to the realization that Republicans would lose this past election.   I tried to convince myself that this wouldn't happen, that the American people weren't quite as weak as they seemed to be.   But when I heard my own relatives say things like, "I don't like what the Democrats are saying but we just have to get out of this war," I knew it was pretty much over.   The sense was things are bad in Iraq and they are getting worse every day.   I agreed with that.   I couldn't refute it.   I knew in my heart that the situation was, every day more and more US soldiers were making the supreme sacrifice.   I didn't know there was any place around where I could look at casualty rates.   I didn't need to look at that.   I knew the rate of casualties was steadily climbing.   I figured the rate of killing would continue to accelerate until the situation became untenable.   This one is over, I thought.

When Rush Limbaugh put forth his challenge, his media manipulation quiz, I was driving in my car and decided that I would check out this iCasulaties site to take a closer look at the raw data.   I'm pretty good at analyzing trends in numbers because in my prior life I was an accountant - that's part of our training.   We conduct "analytics" to try to find theft an error.   I resolved to go through the numbers in detail and form some trend analysis so I could understand exactly what these numbers should be telling me.   What I found was a striking contrast to what I expected.

First off, the only real trend in the data concerns the actual fixed piece war.   That period, as presented on the site, shows our rate of military deaths was very low by any standard of evaluating a war between hundreds of thousands of military personnel.   From March 20 to May 1, 2003, we lost 140 service people.   I'll call that a 42 day period including both of the end points.   The average rate of death during the battle was three and a third persons per day.   That's incredible until you consider the manner in which the US conducts wars.   Our weapons systems are unparalleled.   We have a single non-nuclear missile which can wipe out a huge number of armored vehicles in a single shot.   The weapon was deployed in a battle in which our Marines faced an entire tank formation.   It was deployed and wiped out one third of the vehicles in a single blast.   The rest of the formation immediately surrendered without a single shot being fired by our Marines.   Aside from that incident, they are many others in which we didn't deploy such weapons yet achieved almost the same results.   The American military is an incredibly effective machine, the most efficient fighting force the world has ever seen by a large margin.

Secondly, after the fixed battles were over, there was a lull in deaths as the populace embraced the death of the truly wicked witch, Saddam.   That lasted for a few months, a little less than a year.   This brings us to early 2004 at which point deaths rose somewhat.   In February we lost 20, in March 52, in April 135, and by November the number of casualties per month reached its apex at 137, the highest number of monthly deaths according to my manipulations of iCasualties' data.   April, 2004 seems to be when the insurgency got going.

Thirdly, the number of deaths per year has remained fairly steady.   In 2004, we lost 848 people, in 2005 the number was 846, and in 2006 with the conflict "escalating" we lost 821.   That isn't much of a trend.

In order to try to make better sense of these numbers, I ran them using a trailing one year average monthly rate.   That means I took the previous 12 month total and divided it by 12.   Using that methodology, I determined that the peak of the insurgency to date was in February, 2005 at which point the trailing monthly average was almost 80 deaths.   Moving forwards from that point, I found the trailing monthly average dropped steadily until August, 2006 when it was 63.   Then it moved up slightly but never has approached the rate of February, 2005.   That's about the point in time when I, before analyzing the numbers, came to the realization that the situation in Iraq was worsening quickly and likely to bring down Republicans!

Let me rehash the results of my analysis to try to understand what the actual casualty situation is in Iraq.   There is no year to year trend.   The death rate remains flat with just a small downturn in 2006.   On a moving average basis, the death rate dropped steadily through the 2006 election cycle and has inched up since.

Yet one is left with the feeling that the situation on the ground has been steadily worsening.   Where does that feeling come from?   It isn't fact based.   I have no source of information regarding Iraq other than the news.   I can't afford to take a trip there, let alone several to gauge whether we are making progress or not, the way Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, and others can.   Other than that I have my primary sources of news and information, the daily paper, the nightly news, news-related broadcasts, and whatever comes across the radio at the top of each hour.   And I am convinced that the situation is worsening.   I have been manipulated by the media into believing that this insurgency is progressing exactly like the one in Vietnam did.   The numbers, however, don't lie.   There is no escalation in American deaths.   There definitely was not one leading up to the 2006 election.   There was a clear downward trend in deaths from February, 2005 (two years ago) through November, 2006, when we voted out Republicans due to their inept handling of the war.

So what is the cause of this manipulation into a completely false impression?   I can't put my finger on it.   The best I can do is formulate possible hypotheses.   I don't have access to the resources in order to test the hypotheses but I'll share them with you to see what you think.

The first thought I have is I pay more attention to political news during election cycles.   It is entirely possible that, because I do, I heard candidates claiming that the situation on the ground was worsening.   Those sorts of claims were common during this most recent campaign.

Another theory I have is the news media is interested in seeing Democrats win and Republicans lose.   I can look to anecdotal evidence concerning other elections to support this claim.   It has become pretty clear to me over the past several decades that the news media is liberal-biased.   Heck I used to enjoy "60 Minutes" attacks on corporate America and conservative politicians.   But I grew tired of it when I realized that the reality couldn't be that slanted.   And over several election cycles, I found it difficult to believe that the newsies just happened to always support the Democrat because he was a better candidate.   That works for a while but after a couple of elections, it is fairly clear they are supporting a party and an ideology more than a single candidate.

How can a guy like Reagan who turned a stagflation economy into a booming one be called a dope while a guy like inept Jimmy Carter be considered "brilliant?"   How can the man who headed the CIA be referred to as sort of weak on international affairs while the governor of Arkansas (Arkansas) be considered to have refreshing viewpoints on the international arena?   How can the captain of a national championship football team be referred to as uncoordinated?   How can a 40-something year old man who plays sex games with a teenage intern not be crucified during a period when sexual harassment claims are skyrocketing and filling the news broadcasts and movie theatres?

I could go on for hours with specific examples about particular candidates but my point is, after watching news of politics for decades, I find it more than a little curious that the Democrat is always preferable to the Republican unless there is bias on the part of the media.   And the way the news media tries to protect its reputation for independence goes a little too far.   David Gregory is fair and balanced!   Chris Matthews, who has worked for four Democrats, including a stint as speechwriter for Carter and a six year period as aide to Speaker of the House, O'Neill, is actually a closet conservative!   He always supports the better man regardless of ideology!   By the way, just to prove it, Matthews a Democrat for his entire adult life, claimed he voted for Bush over Gore in 2000!   How can you refute that!   Was Gore too liberal for him?   Right!   The guy who worked decades for extremely liberal Democrats finds Gore unappealing!   How stupid are we or how stupid do they think we are?

So that's why I suspect the news media may be behind creating the image of an escalating insurgency - an escalating insurgency which is not happening.   How they accomplish the swindle, I suspect, is very subtle.   They gradually increase the coverage of casualties to create the image of an ever-increasing rate.   Likely this would have begun around the middle of 2005 right as the actual death rate was inconveniently dropping.   Each day Murtha or Cindy Sheehan get a little more coverage.   Eash day the facts, when they don't point in the desired direction are covered less and less.   Anybody who wants to test this theory of mine should try comparing the actual trailing monthly average with the number of reports of Iraq deaths.   If I'm right, the trend should be very clear.

Personally, I don't need to test my hypothesis.   All I have to do is pose one question.   That is, name me one major newscaster, who doesn't work for Fox News, who has ever stated that the casualty rate in Iraq is falling or has remained flat.   Go ahead and name one for me so you can try to change my mind.   Here's another question for you to answer to change my mind about media bias.   name a single newsy, again not employed by Fox, who has been in favor fo this war since after the first phase was over.   OK, you can't name an answer for either question.   That's because there weren't any.

I have one final theory on why my impression is the war is worsening which doesn't have to do with media bias per se.   That is due to the gradual rising overall numbers.   It was easy to make comments when the number reached 2,000 that Iraq wasn't in any way comparable to past conflicts like Vietnam or Korea since tens of thousands perished in those wars.   Yet I hesitated to do so because I feared the passage of time would make me eat those words.   And I don't have a good sense of time, especially where months and years are concerned.   I don't know if that's the result of age or something else but I lose track of years.   So when the number approached and passed 3,000, I felt that the rate was accelerating.

In any event, I now know that I have been or have allowed myself to be manipulated in some manner.   My impressions of Iraq are becoming worse each day.   I feel as if the death rate is escalating.   Maybe you do too.   But the fact is the rate is at worst holding steady and in some ways improving.   And while a comparison to Vietnam or Korea is still not appropriate, it seems likely that it never will be unless the insurgents step upo attacks dramatically or we stay in-country for another 40 years.

There are other more accurate comparisons to make.   Our military's death rate was worse in Somalia than it is in Iraq.   That was due to inadequate resources being there.   But that was a UN peace-keeping mission in which the idea was to distribute supplies to the people.   We weren't engaged in pitched battles or rebuilding a country.   We were protecting supplies.   Still the death rate per deployed force and time spent there was higher than it was in Iraq.

Our death rate was actually far worse in Reagan's Grenada "pre-dawn vertical insertion" than it is in Iraq.   We were there from the end of October to the middle of December, 1983.   That's a month and a half.   Our total forces were 7,000 personnel.   We suffered 19 fatalities.   If Iraq went like Grenada, we would be losing 270 per month and would have lost almost 13,000 by now.

The situation in Iraq is not growing more grave very day.   It's fairlt stagnant - too stagnant.   We aren't exactly getting the job done but this feeling of panic is purely emotional - not based on the facts.   If you disagree with me, that's fine.   But this discussion is just about the casulaty rate.   If you disagree, point to something about that not to the old argument that "Bush lied, people died."   And don't refute me by claiming I have excluded the Iraqi victims of the insurgency.   We can have another discussion if you like about the death rate of Iraqis under Saddam and you won't win that argument either.

Well, we told you this peace rally was going to take place in Washington on the 27th.   It has happened and the AP reports it was a spirited rally under a sunny sky, seeing opportunity to press their cause in a country that has turned against the war.   But here's the problem.   This group has had more than a month to put this thing together.   It should have been perhaps hundreds of thousands in a country of 400 million.   But, as the AP reports, it was a mere "tens of thousands."   I'll wait until we get some reports disputing that it was "tens" of thousands and not more like 10,000.

And the AP goes on to report they interviewed some in the crowd including an intelligence specialist at Fort Meade, MD who, according to AP said "she joined the Air Force because of patriotism, travel and money for college."   Well, I can understand the patriotism, but "travel and money for college" are a bit silly.   Members of our military do not have the right to complain about a war because they joined for money to go to college.   They do receive these sorts of benefits, if you will, but they have a duty to go wherever their commander in chief sends them and do the duties their superior officers order them to accomplish.   They do not have the freedom to pick and choose which orders they will and will not follow.

The Clinton's are at it again!   They blame "an obvious right-wing hit job" on the "rumors" which surfaced recently concerning whether Obama is a secret radical Muslim or not.   And CNN claimed victory for "debunking" Insight Magazine and Fox News' report on the subject.   But before this chapter is forgotten too soon, what really happened?

First off, Insight Magazine published a report alleging that the Clinton team is investigating Obama's possible Muslim links as part of a campaign strategy.   The magazine further alleges that its undisclosed sources in the Clinton campaign believe they have found a smoking gun - that Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim state with over 200 million Muslims (88% of population).   Also, supposedly the Clinton operatives have discovered that the school Obama attended for four years was a Madrassa, or Muslim seminary.   Insight called Mr. Obama's press secretary before the story was published in an attempt to independently verify the information provided by Clinton insiders.   He "said he would consult with 'his boss' and call back but Insight claims he never did.   Fox News carried reports which mentioned the Insight story.   But neither Fox nor Insight ever claimed that Obama was either raised a Muslim or attended a Madrassa.   They simply reported that Clinton people investigated the man (standard operating procedure these days) and believe they found some issues.

Next up, CNN began its "debunking mission" to disprove what it wrongly believed were Insight's and Fox's assertions.   CNN reported that its own reporters went to the school and found it was a normal, non-religiously affiliated, public school where there were "boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes."   The reporter said the school is "nothing like" "those madrassas in Pakistan" which fuel anti-US, anti-Israel hatred while promoting Wahhabism, the religion of Osama bin Laden.   The reporter also said "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."   So the conclusion is Obama attended a "multi cultural public school" where even Buddhists and Confucian followers feel warm and fuzzy.

CNN and other MSM outlets are pointing to this story as proving that Fox News, Insight Magazine, etc. are biased and reported false information in order to slow the Obama-mania train.   They want us to believe these "right-wing nut jobs" only brought up the Clinton's to push blame from themselves.   But that ignores the story and the facts.   These "right-wing nut jobs" didn't investigate the story about a possible Muslim upbringing or attendance at a Madrassa because that wasn't the report they made.   The report really had to do with how far Ms. Clinton's team was willing to go to wipe out her only current credible threat, Obama.   Fox and Insight know Obama has no shot at becoming the Democrat candidate for President, and if he actually passes that test, is probably the easiest candidate the republicans could face.   They and "right wing nut jobs" like me have no reason to work against Obama.   We'd rather be up against him than Hillary.

The Clinton's have yet again blamed this esoteric "right wing conspiracy" for their shame.   But what CNN and the liberal media is doing here has nothing to do with trying to punch out Fox, Insight or any other conservative group.   What they are interested in achieving is a deflection, a misdirection.   Someone in their liberal family has done something which will likely not sit well with the American people.   So, in order to make that disappear into the wind, they have changed the subject of the conversation.   The story is about Clinton investigators digging extremely deeply, perhaps excessively so, into Obama's potential weaknesses.   But somehow the MSM has reported it as an example of inaccurate reporting or of further wonders of Obama - his wonderful multi-cultural upbringing in an overwhelmingly Muslim society.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama

Australia and scientists throughout the world are very concerned about the condition of the Great Barrier Reef.   There have been all sorts of reports about the bleeching of the coral which are the foundation of ther reef.   Most of these reports blame global warming and then go on to say global warming is due to human activities.   Many want government action to save the reef.   And it looks like Australia is ready to do something.   After Bush's State of the Union speech the other night, Senator Barnaby Joyce says Australia should follow the United States in setting mandatory targets for ethanol use in petrol.   There is one potential infirmity to this solution, however.   It has been long understood that a more immediate threat to the coral is the species known as crown-of-thorns starfish which preys on coral.   It turns out there is quite an epidemic of the crown-of-thorns which many are blaming on agricultural runoff.   Fertilizers wash into the sea providing food for algae, algae in turn provide food for the crown-of-thorns and many more juveniles survive.   Then the crown-of-thorns eats the coral.   The main Australian source for ethanol is sugar cane - the agricultural product which causes the massive runoff blamed for the crown-of-thorns!

So, while perhaps anthropogenic greenhouse warming may be harming the coral reefs, the proposed solution will definitely finish the job.

As if California's energy problems were not enough, the state is set to make things even more difficult on itself.   State regulators yesterday approved rules which ban power companies from buying electricity from high-polluting sources, including out-of-state coal-burning plants.   According to AP, about 20 percent of California's energu currently comes from coal plants in other states.   Also according to AP, "The new standard is aimed at encouraging investment in cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar, while discouraging the use of coal and other high-polluting fuels."   I hope this green feeling will comfort you Californians when the heat rises in July and you're sitting in the dark without AC grumbling to yourself about your inept political leaders.

Senator Barack Obama says "it's wrong that 46 million in this country are uninsured."   He is right on that one.   There are nowhere near as many as 46 million uninsured people in this country.   This number is kicked around by the media as if it is documented but actually only represents one extrapolation of an improperly taken poll.   A more accurate number is probably half that.

He also says, "Americans pay $15 billion in taxes to help care for the uninsured."   That is also about right.   Another way of putting it would be those who do not have privately obtained insurance are covered by the taxpayers.   Or, the taxpayers provide insurance for the uninsured.

Where Obama and several other candidates for President are quite wrong is where they think the way to change the current situation is via a government run health insurance program which is mandatory for all of us.   That would end up costing the taxpayers far more than $15 billion and would result in value judgments regarding your and my healthcare made by bureaucrats against whom none of us would have any recourse.

Today if an insurer denies you treatment or coverage for treatment, you can take them to court or before state regulated boards to argue against their judgment.   If this private system were replaced with a socialistic one, you can bet any decision would be final before you had a chance to even gasp.   There would be no opportunity to argue that the vast majority of physicians believe the treatment is right or justified.   Instead some ex-nurse would look at your vital statistics and decide whether you got treatment or not.   Maybe that day she just broke up with her boyfriend or maybe she despises someone with your same name or maybe she thinks you deserve to die for one reason or another.   There'd be no opportunity to even question her judgment.   And if you needed something like brain surgery, you better hope the line for it is short.   You better hope there are no "unofficial" policies against that kind of surgery for smokers, high BMIs, or people your age and older.   If you don't believe any of this is possible, you had better do your homework.   All these things happen frequently under the socialized medicine programs of the countries after which we will model ours.   You kid yourself if you don't believe me and your dishonesty may one day cost you your life.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama

Iran is acting suspiciously by reportedly acquiring North Korean assistance with its "civilian nuclear program" and in preparation for its first underground nuclear test, and by acquiring "advanced defensive missiles" from Russia with which to protect its nuclear facilities against attack.

Note to Iran: those missiles will not protect your facilities from our offensive missiles!   Even if they did, 29 of them functioning perfectly will not protect your facilities from thousands of ours!   That's about how many we can muster on short notice say within a week.   Just try conducting an underground military nuclear test and see what happens.   Thanks for letting us know which facilities to attack via your deployment of these systems.

Democrats have a strategy for the war in Iraq and it's not just "cut and run" like those awful conservatives say it is.   It's called "phased redeployment."   Hillary has often spoken of it though never explained what the term means.   Some Democrats have said "phased redeployment" means moving troops out of Iraq and "over the horizon" just in case they need to be "redeployed" again.   "Phased Redeployment" is just too difficult of a term for my puny brain.   Someone please explain what this means!   Any takers?   No, nobody brave enough to attack that one.   I guess we're all left to our own to define it so I'll try.

Phased is pretty easy to understand.   It means literally "in phases."   That's like a progression.   if you need to move 100,000 people from one place to another, maybe you start by moving 10,000 in the first phase, then another 10,000 in the next.   Eventually you move all 100,000 in phases or steps.   That's easy.   It is orderly, the opposite of anarchic.   I suppose any kind of anarchy is to be avoided in military situations since it leads to death.   The military is rather disciplined.   Everything they do is phased, involves a progression, is disciplined.   Otherwise I suppose they wouldn't be very "military-like!"

"Redeployment" is a little more complex.   I need to do a little research and see if I can make sense of it.

My dictionary, Webster's New World Collegiate, defines "redeploy" as "to move (troops, etc.) from one front or area to another."   I'm not sure about this use of "area."   This definition causes me to be confused since under it, the movement of any troops anywhere would constitute a "redeployment."   That would render the term meaningless especially in the context of a strategy for war.   There's no movement of troops which wouldn't be a deployment or redeployment.

According to Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, "redeployment" means "the transfer of forces and materiel to support another joint force commander's operational requirements, or to return personnel, equipment, and materiel to the home and / or demobilization stations for reintegration and / or out-processing.   See also deployment."   Deployment is defined by the publication as meaning "1. In naval usage, the change from a cruising approach or contact disposition to a disposition for battle.   2. The movement of forces within operational areas.   3. The positioning of forces into a formation for battle.   4. The relocation of forces and materiel to desired operational areas.   Deployment encompasses all activities from origin or home station through destination, specifically including intra-continental United States, intertheater, and intratheater movement legs, staging, and holding areas.

I guess Webster's pretty much got it right.   Redeployment is just military vernacular for movement of troops regardless of where they are moving from or to.   As I understand things, then, the democrat strategy is to move troops in an orderly fashion.   They don't want the troops moved in a disorganized fashion.   They want them moved deliberately and with regard to a plan for such movement.   But that doesn't seem like an actual strategy since our troops have always moved in an organized fashion.

So I guess my next way of understanding the Democrat strategy for Iraq is to look further.   the only other piece of information I have at my disposal is they want the phased redeployment to be to a point "over the horizon."   Unfortunately "horizon" is a relative term and depends upon one's viewpoint.   horizon is in the eyes of the beholder.   The lower you are to the ground, the closer the horizon appears.   This is said to be true whether you are on a "flat Earth" or the actual round one.   Regardless, however, of whether this idea was developed by a congressperson sitting in a chair at sea level or one flying aboard a plane, it can't be more than a few hundred miles away.   What isn't clear is whether the congresspeople meant the horizon with respect to Washington or say Baghdad.   There's no place within a few hundred miles of Baghdad where we can safely place more than 100,000 troops on anything other than a temporary basis.   Washington might work as the point from which the horizon is determined though we probably would have to reopen bases which were already closed in order to accommodate that many troops.

But this analysis is giving me a headache.   I just have so much difficulty deciphering "phased redeployment to just over the horizon" that I can't make any real sense of it.   To me, it must mean an orderly retreat.   So let's call Democrat military strategy what it must be, retreat.   That's different than "cut and run" because there should be no running involved.   It's properly called cut and walk, though walk quickly so you don't get shot.

A study over a 20 year period of polar bear births has raised a red flag for global warming alarmists.   Scientists say the bears are increasingly giving birth on land and "global warming is probably to blame." (emphasis added)   The study covered the habits of a sample of 89 bears who were tracked via satellite.   These bears made dens (gave birth) 124 times.   From 1985 - 1994, 62% made dens on sea ice while 38% did so on land.   From 1998 to 2004, 37% percent made dens on sea ice while 63% went onto land to give birth.   Scientists conclude this bodes very poorly for the bears since it may indicate, "at some point they might have to cross vast stretches of open water to reach habitat on shore suitable for building dens in which to give birth," if the climate continues to grow warmer.   I question this study and believe the actual numbers should be discussed rather than the percentages since such small numbers are involved.   As it is, I have to work backwards to get to the raw numbers but that exercise is worthwhile since they tell a slightly different story.

Let's assume the births occurred evenly over the 20 year period.   That means there were (124 births divided by 20 years) 6.2 births per year.   The ten year period from 1985 - 1994 would yield 62 births.   If 62% of these were at sea, that means about 38 were at sea while 24 were on land.   Then the period of seven years 1998 - 2004 would yield about 43 births.   37% at sea yields 16 with the remaining 27 on land.

My first concern is why the entire period is not explained.   There's something suspicious about that.   What happened from 1995 - 1997?   Let's even up the period and predict what you would expect if they were both the same duration.

If the periods studied were both ten years (62 births), you would expect the following:

First period (62% sea) 38 at sea, 24 on land
Second period (37% sea) 23 at sea, 39 on land
That's a difference of 15 "events," if you will

If the periods studied were both seven years (43 births), the results should be:

First period (62% sea) 27 at sea, 16 on land
Second period (37% sea) 16 at sea, 27 on land
That's a difference of just 11 "events"

It is probably more appropriate to draw a comparison between the events over seven years since that's the anomalous one - the period of reduced incidence of denning at sea.   Over comparable 7 year periods, we have 11 events outside the expected norm.   We are basing a conclusion of dire consequences caused by global warming on a study which noted less than two "abnormal" behaviors per year!   This is not science.   This is voodoo mathematics.

The only way a study such as this could possibly have any validity is if the sample size were increased, the period studied were extended to develop a baseline, and more sophisticated statistical analysis were applied.   Percentages have a funny way of yielding odd results as population size tested dwindles.   My ten year old ran a test the other day of flipping a coin to record the incidence of heads and tails.   Her first ten tosses resulted in 8 heads and 2 tails.   Now that's anomalous!   By the time she reached 100 tosses, the results were 65 heads and 35 tails.   That's still unusual but moving in the expected direction from the first ten.   Had she tossed the coin 1,000 or more times, one would expect her results to come closer and closer to the expected 50/50 split.   She most likely wouldn't ever get to precisely 50/50 but as sample size increased, probability demands that she would approach it.

Secondly, without any sort of baseline with which to compare the study periods, there is no way to draw conclusions.   The first period - the one with the higher incidence of births at sea - could be anomalous in and of itself.   The period of 100 years prior to this period might have yielded results more like the later period.   It may be easy to say the study is invalid due to this weakness but we don't have a time machine to go back and reperform the study.   However, the point is 20 years and 124 tested events is just not long enough.

More to the point, in order to statistically judge whether a behavior is within "normal" patterns, you need more sophisticated analysis than percentages of each kind of event.   In order to formulate a proper study, those compiling data would have to calculate modal behaviors and standard deviations.   Then each year could be examined to determine if the incidents fell within an expected normal distribution.   Absent that sort of analysis, the study's findings are irrelevant.   And even if they go back and do this, it wouldn't matter since the sample size would again be too small to perform regression analysis.   In short, this work might be convenient for journalists and easy for their brains to comprehend but it is not statistically significant or scientifically relevant.

A bigger concern for me as a budding naturalist is the general low birth rate of the population studied.   If 89 bears over their entire sexual maturity (generally around 20 years) only gave birth 124 times (polar bears typically birth 1 or 3 cubs, 3 far less frequently according to some studies) and, given the harsh realities of polar existence, many do not survive, that means the total population will shrink, all other things being equal.   1.39 births per female, with an expected infant mortality of probably half that, means the population will halve or worse each generation.   No species can be expected to survive more than a couple generations given this kind of trend.

If the sky were blue, the bright sunshine heating the temperature to a nice 75, and the ground swept by a dry, wispy breeze, the newsies would warn us of the impending danger of drought.   Such is the case today with the US economy.

MSNBC's headline taken from the Financial Times glares "US productivity growth lowest for a decade."   The story continues that a study to be released today by the Conference Board warns "growth in output per hour worked falling behind the EU and Japan."   But this is all to be expected as unemployment is quickly disappearing.   Whenever a modern economy reaches into the last 4% of its labor pool, productivity drops.   The fact that there is any productivity growth at all is startling, amazing, insane.   How this can be lost by anyone in financial analysis is beyond me.   It's as fundamental as the cause of inflation - too much money chasing too few goods.

Economics 101 tells us the law of diminishing marginal returns means as we add more and more inputs to an efficient machine, output will exceed input by a less and less.   At some point a machine achieves a point of equilibrium where it is functioning at peak efficiency.   This is why, for example, an automobile achieves maximum fuel efficiency somewhere around 50-55 mph.   Run it at 10 mph or 100 and you won't see anywhere near peak fuel efficiency.   The engine is built that way.   Even organisms have points of diminishing marginal returns.   Make a human being restrict their caloric intake to say 500 calories per day and you'll get little work, eventually the human will die.   Similarly, feed someone 5,000 calories per day and eventually the human "machine" will break down.   Find the point of diminishing marginal returns and you will get maximum productivity.

Another way to grasp this law is to consider a task which requires 40 hours of peak performance.   If your peak performance occurs over 5 hours each day and you approach the task by working 1 hour's worth each day, you will get almost nothing done for a very long time.   Eventually you will probably complete the task but the total elapsed time will be more like 100 hours.   If you decide to tackle the thing head-on and not stop until it is completed, it will take you longer than 40 hours because at some point you will become so inefficient that you won't be able to accomplish much.   It may take you less than 100 hours but it will take you significantly more than 40.   if instead you operate during only your peak performing hours, you'll most likely finish in the prescribed 40 hours.

That's the way machine's work.   That's the way human's work.   That's the way economies work.   If you want to cut down the total hours to perform a particular task, you simply add more productive capacity but this too has its limits.   If in our example above, the task were to be taking one pile of dirt and shoveling it into another location, if you added more humans to the workforce, you would get the task done more quickly.   If it were synergistic to add more humans, the total hours worked might decrease as well.   But if say you decided that since 2 is better than 1, 100 must be better than 2, the result might be that the task gets done more quickly but the total input hours would increase dramatically because you exceeded the point of diminishing marginal returns - there would be too many chefs in the kitchen.

So, let's go back to the US economy and bring this to a conclusion.   This news article says America's rate of increased productivity has dropped below that of the EU and Japan.   Well, no kidding!   Japan's economy has been in the dregs for far too long.   It's about time they picked things up.   Their unemployment rate is around where ours is thanks to the near socialistic policies with respect to firing of employees, but still things have been fairly dismal economically for decades.   Since the 1990s, Japan has had very low growth and as the government tried to deal with a speculative real estate market which had priced living quarters to unachievable levels, the economy tanked.   Only recently have they had any growth at all.   Also, Japan - the media's darling for so long with respect to savings rates - has perhaps the world's most extreme government debt - almost double national annual productivity.   On top of that, the country is aging significantly and its population is falling on top of the other structural problems.   It is inconceivable that at some point the deflation laden economy would not see some sort of huge uptick in productivity - it couldn't get any worse than it was.

And the EU is an interesting partner for comparison of productivity gains considering that it is comprised of countries just now shaking off the shackles of Communism and those firmly entrenched in Socialism.   Their economies have been worse than Japan's.   if they didn't wring out some productivity gains, they'd be in deep doo doo and so would their systems of government.

Claiming that US productivity gains have fallen below those of these other countries is beyond ridiculous.   It is akin to checking the speed of two marathon runners, one after the finish line and the other at the 13 mile point.   I don't know, Marv, Bert is running much more quickly than Mukumba.   Yes, Al, I see that but Mukumba has finished the race in first place and is walking it off.   Bert is only at the halfway mark and I'm not sure he's going to finish at all.

The glass is half full.

The New York Times made news with the story entitled "51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse".   That's right, they manufactured the news.   They fabricated it.   They made it up.

I heard about this one on Rush Limbaugh today and thought I'd share it with you.   It involves an analysis performed by Michael Medved who disproves the accuracy of the Times' story.   The Times says it consulted the US Census but in order to achieve the over 50% mark of "women living without a spouse," Medved shows, they needed to massage the data - deep tissue massage.   They included over 10 million "women" aged 15 - 19, 97% of whom have not yet tried marriage (thank goodness!); 2.4 million women for whom "single living conditions" are temporary because husbands are working out of town, in the military, or institutionalized; and 9 million elderly widows (42% of women over 65 are widowed).   If they had fallen short, I wonder if they would have included anyone who has begun menstruating and declared the results for "women of sexual maturity."

If that isn't ridiculous enough for you, consider that this story occurs when, factually speaking, three quarters of all women over the age of 30 are either currently married or widowed.   That includes currently divorced or separated women, nuns, lesbians, doctoral candidates, and any other women who have a reason to forestall marriage until after 30.   Marriage is still very much alive in the US.

The Times ought to be ashamed of this NEWS Story which made headlines nationally in every sort of media outlet.   But they aren't ashamed.   They stand behind their story.

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a bona fide letter from a marine stationed in Iraq to a child who wrote to him.   I received it through a network of people who know the boy.   Here I offer it for your consideration:

Young man, it was a pleasure receiving a letter from you.   Thank you for thinking of us in Iraq and taking the time to write.

Happy New Year to you from Ramadi, the capital city of Al Anbar Province.   It's the largest province in Iraq.   You may have heard of Al Anbar.   It's mostly desert except along the Euphrates River where people grow many crops as they have for thousands of years.   This ancient land is the home of Babylon and Baghdad.   Alexander the Great marched through on his way to India.   You mentioned that you like comic books.   Comic books are fun, but you sound like an intelligent young man.   It will soon be time for you to start reading history and other books that will expand your horizons and thinking.

Life here is pretty decent, all things considered.   We sleep in beds not tents and eat decent food in the chow hall instead of combat rations.   Our camp is NW of Ramadi and it only takes a few minutes to drive into the city.   The city has serious problems, but most of these were caused by Saddam.   He ruled the country for many years, but he spent the money that belonged to all the people of Iraq on wasteful things like palaces for himself and weapons he used to attack his neighbors.   The electrical and water systems frequently break down as they were poorly maintained and the equipment is old.   That makes life more difficult for the people who cannot use their appliances like fans in the summer and lights at night as they would like to.

It's not as bad in Iraq as the news might lead you to believe.   It's complicated here.   The people of Iraq are nearly all Muslims, but not all are Arab.   The Arabs presently are having the most problems.   This is because the majority of the Arabs are Shia Muslims.   The rest are Sunni Muslims.   It's something like being Catholic and Protestant.   Unfortunately, a small percentage think it's a good idea to shoot at the other side.   You can imagine how much of a problem that would be back in America where you are.   We hope to assist the good people here in building a decent army and police force so they can govern themselves.   However, good government doesn't just happen.   People have to work hard and make sure it happens.

The picture I've sent to you is of one Soldier and some marines visiting with a retired Marine named Oliver North.   He is now a correspondent for Fox News.   As you can see, it's not too cold here in the winter time.   We will not be shoverling any snow.

I'm here from NH, so I am rooting for the Patriots like you.   We will see the Super Bowl when you do, but we are in a different time zone.   The game will come on the TV for us about 0300 in the morning.   I may be too tired to stay up to watch it.

XXXXX, your parents expect you to grow up and become a credit to your family and country.   This will require you to apply yourself at school and work.   You can do all this if you try.

Semper Fidelis   (The motto of the Marines which means "Always Faithful".)
  Master Gunnery Sergeant .....

So, when will we get to the bottom of the meaning of "Barack Hussein Obama?"   I imagine we will continue to hear more and more about his background.   For example, "Barack" is Swahili for "One who is blessed by God.   Obama's father was Muslim, originally from Kenya which is majority Christian with just 10% practicing Islam.   But he left Kenya to further his agnostic leanings.   Similarly, Hussein has interesting roots.   It is undeniably arabic and means "good, small, handsome one."   It seems unlikely that Barack was deliberately named for any religious or specifically ethnic purposes.   He was just named for his father.   Obama's mother is a white American and described by him as "a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism."   So why would she endorse any sort of religious name?   She wouldn't.   Obama's father left when he was very young and the mother remarried to another with Muslim background, this time from Indonesia.   The family lived in Jakarta where according to a friend, he attended a fundamentalist Muslim school after which he went to Catholic school.

Named as a Muslim, educated by religious schools from various religions, lived all over the world, rising political star, etc., etc.   At this point, I'm wondering if the family ever hired a nanny with a bad mole who invited mean looking dogs into the home.   I also wonder if the father did any bible reading or looking for birth marks before he decided to leave.   Barack must be made to show us that he has no "6-6-6" anywhere on his body.   Hillary should take a page out of Rick Lazio's book and challenge him to do this if they ever debate publicly.

There's something wrong here.   Something very, very wrong.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama

Guess who is missing Kyoto targets?   Why Kyoto, of course!

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Congrats to Newsbusters for pointing out the obvious, Hillary Clinton's video announcement to run for President seems to have been shot quite some time ago.   As Newsbusters points out, presumably this was shot in Washington or New York.   Regardless, those are tulips in the yard, out the window in the background so even if Clinton's people come back and claim it was recently shot in California or some place warm, that's a lie.   Ss far as I know, tulips are not in bloom anywhere on the planet right now.   It looks like she knew she would run for President even before the NY Senate election took place!   Surprise!   Surprise!

Hillary Clinton is "in."   She's announced her run for Democrat candidate for President.   In her announcement, she said, "Only a new president can renew the promise of America - the idea that if you work hard you can count on the health care, education, and retirement security that you need to raise your family.   These are the basic values of America that are under attack from this administration every day."   Bush has been attacking hard working people's access to health care, education, and retirement?   What exactly are we talking about here?

First off, you don't need me to tell you about Hillarycare - nationalized healthcare, shall we say socialized medicine, as promoted by Hillary during her husband's first term.   America just doesn't want that no matter how you spin it.   My biggest concern regarding Hillary's healthcare plans is why so many large health insurance companies donate to her campaigns!

Do we need to rehash Clinton's stands on education?   OK, here are a couple of quotes from Hillary on the subject with our theoretical questions of a hypothetical interview:

Q: Mrs. Clinton, are you for or against merit pay for teachers?

A1: "I believe that we ought to have pay for performance where we evaluate teachers.   I think we ought to streamline the due process standards so that teachers that don't measure up would no longer be in the classroom."

A2: "Merit pay to individual teachers would discourage teachers from helping troubled students and would create a distorted competition among teachers.   I don't think that’s a very good way to inspire teachers.   We want our best teachers to work with the kids who are the hardest to teach."

Q: So you're against testing?

A1: "The work that was done in Arkansas received numerous awards and praise, because we really started something that I'm very proud of.   And test scores went up in third grade and sixth grade."

A2: "If teachers are going to be told that the people who look better on a test are the ones who are going to get them rewarded in salary or compensation, why would anyone take on the kids who are harder to teach?"

A3: [In 1983, while chairing a committee to improve last place in the nation Arkansas' education system, then ranked ], Hillary said, "Why don’t we have a test for teachers and fire the ones that fail?"

As far as an objective analysis of Mrs. Clinton's experience and success with education goes, it is a fact that Mrs. Clinton was very much involved in education during her husband's long stint as governor.   It is also a fact that Arkansas's public education system was last in this country during that period.   It has been several decades since Hillary was involved in the Arkansas public school system.   The state is moving steadily towards the middle of the pack.   The "2005-2006 Smartest State Award" shows Arkansas as ranked reasonably at # 37.   This shows it is possible to turn things around but it does not reflect well on Hill.

So, now let's move on to retirement.   A year ago, the New York Post's Peter Schweizer pointed out that Bill Clinton was an adviser to Yucaipa Corporate Initiatives Fund and the Yucaipa American Fund both of which get their funds from CALPERS and the New York State Common Retirement Fund.   These funds serve the retirement security teachers and public employees in CA and NY.   Clinton pledged his involvement in the funds would serve "socially responsible investing" such as investments in "urban-based minority or female-owned businesses."   Yet Clinton channeled millions into "Current Television," Al Gore's rich-white-suburbanite-owned-and-managed cable television channel.   There are other instances of Democrat party cronyism in Clinton's otherwise "progressive" investment strategy documented by Schweizer so take a read but the point we want to make here is the downtrodden California and New York teachers have not been well-served by these funds whose returns have been abysmal.   If all these folks' retirement money were under Bioll Clinton's direction, they'd have to rely on social security to but their cat food.   No wonder these people want a lockbox on social security.   They trust nobody - they assume everyone acts as they do.

But that's Bill and friends.   Hillary is much more responsble than that isn't she?

In 1999, Mrs. Clinton speaking with regard to the nation's Socail Security system:

"Like many Americans, I got my Social Security card when I was a teenager and applied for my first job.   Then, of course, I didn’t understand that my wallet-sized card represented a commitment that every American could grow old with dignity.   I also didn't understand that Social Security is not just for the elderly-and not just for retirement.   Nearly 1/3 of its beneficiaries are either disabled, widows, widowers or surviving dependents.   Social Security is a family protection system."

and:

"It’s in all our interests to preserve and strengthen Social Security into the next century.   And if we don't want to burden our children and grandchildren-if we want to make sure Social Security remains solvent well into the 21st century-we must make bold decisions now."

One of the reasons Hillary gave for opposing Bush's partial privatization plan was "Women especially would be disadvantaged by a privatized system because they would have lower annual account deposits and would likely lose the advantage of spousal benefits."   But that's not true since a "privatized" social security benefit would be owned.   A spouse's account would, of course, be inherited by a wife if a husband died.

Aside from her opposition to Bush's privatization, Clinton has not put forth any "bold decisions" about how to keep the system solvent.   Obviously investments like her husband has made on behalf of public employees won't help the calculus.   It remains unclear what Mrs. Clinton has to offer other than rhetoric.   The easiest way to increase solvency would be to increase the tax base.   Is that what you were hoping for?

I cannot find instances in which the Bush administration has attacked the nation's basic values concerning health care, education, and retirement security but I'm sure they must be out there someplace.   Even assuming Bush is opposed to these things, I'm not sure Hillary has anything alternative to offer.   I think she is a better candidate than is Edwards or Obama.   Given the choice of these three, I think I would support her.   But if you support Hillary, the time is now to get her to offer up firm plans on what matters so we can judge for ourselves whether they will take the country in the right direction.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama

By all acounts (at least those of liberal MSM bigshots), Anderson Cooper is a star!   Larry King says of Cooper, "He has a bright future.   I hope they don’t lose him."   The executive producer of 60 Minutes said, "It's hard to explain why Anderson's so big.   A big part of it is because he's very talented."   His bank account shows it too!!   He just re-signed with CNN in a long-term deal for $4 million a year.   The cable news network boasted his ratings were up 24% in the fourth quarter.   But, up from what?   If a quarterback wins one game in a season and two the next, does team ownership brag about the 100% increase?   No, they don't.

According to Media Bistro, Cooper's ratings were quite similar to our hypothetical two-win-quarterback.   Yet he's paid like a superbowl champion.

Here are some ratings comparisons for your review:

In the 10 pm slot, Cooper pulls about 200 - 250,000 viewers in the key demo while Greta Van Susteren gets almost 500,000.   Greta?   Give me a break!   Have you ever watched that show?   It's miserable.   I can't bare it.   There's almost nothing on at that hour but still, I can't force myself to watch Greta.   Still, if I were abdocted by aliens and forced to watch one show or the other, I wouldn't hesitate to choose Greta over Cooper.

From 11 to 12 midnight, Cooper's audience sometimes bumps up a bit and sometimes shrinks.   But it doesn't come close to the "O'Reilly Factor" which often doubles Cooper's ratings.   And that's a re-run of the show which aired just a couple hours beforehand!!!   If I were abducted by those same aliens and forced to watch O'Reilly, I'd survive but if I were forced to choose between Cooper and an "O'Reilly Factor" I'd already seen, I'd tell those aliens to perform bizarre medical experiments on me instead.

It's no skin off my back that CNN is willing to pay Cooper that kind of money for virtually no audience.   I just don't get it.   Can we stop complaining about the going rate for pitchers and quarterbacks now?

AP takes note of the, how shall we say this, low levels of participation in anti-war protests.   A rally in Boston - sparsely populated Boston - not a big college town Boston - decidedly conservative and Republican Boston - drew a "couple hundred people."   A really big rally in San Francisco drew a thousand hippies.   A couple weekends ago I drove through an "anti-war rally" at the gates of a military installation.   I was driving and got stuck at a traffic light in front of the fort when I looked to my right and saw about a dozen people holding signs saying "honk if you support our troops" or some such and, wondering why they were there, I looked across the street to see about the same number of people carrying anti-war signs.   It was pathetic on both ends.   But the AP's attempt to paint the anti-war "movement" as significant is even more pathetic.

The AP story explains the low levels of anti-war participation by noting: "There were four times as many troops involved and 10 times as many American casualties over a comparable period in Vietnam."   People don't feel connected to the war because we aren't suffering the same sort of deprivations we did during WWI and WWII, Korea and Vietnam.   There isn't a draft.   The economy is thriving.   There's no stagflation.   And there aren't any pitched battles in which the US suffers hundreds or thousands of casualties.

That's approximately accurate.   The US had some 600,000 troops - probably more - including support personnel in-country in Vietnam.   More military support personnel were located offshore at sea and in nearby countries.   And we experienced about 60,000 combat deaths.   But there are more differences between Vietnam and Iraq.   The Vietnam war involved more "conventional battles" in which thousands of the enemy fought from fixed positions against thousands of our troops.   Also, we were there in significant numbers for more than a decade.   The Vietnamese were supported by two large, powerful, militarily advanced countries.   The Vietnamese felt they were fighting the same battle against colonial powers, be they European or Asian, that they had been fighting for centuries.   Vietnam was surrounded by countries engaged in the same fight they were conducting.   The US was worn out from decades of fighting the same battle - from 1945 forwards there was virtually constant war between Communist governments and Democracies in various forms.   The US conducted largescale air operations including massive carpet bombing campaigns against the north.   The North Vietnamese held hundred of prisoners of war and paraded them before the media.   The differences go on and on.

There are some similarities between the anti-war protests in the sixties and those today.   The same people are doing the protesting.   Their numbers are diminished, however, at least partly because some have died and others have other things to do.   But what hasn't happened is a full-scale joining in by the nation's college and high school students.   And the music sucks.   And there are no drugs.   And nobody seems to be looking for an excuse to drop out and do nothing - they're all too busy trying to finish school and get jobs.

At this point it doesn't seem likely the anti-war protests will ever grow into anything close to what they were in the 60s and 70s but the media would like to change that if they can.   The prrof is in the pudding.   Despite efforts to garner support, the movement seems to be losing people more than gaining them.   But there is one more chance to make a showing.   That will be in Washington when the Cindy Sheehan crowd stages what they call a "massive rally" on January 27.   They've had months of planning for this.   Their grassroots movement is well funded and they've gotten plenty of media coverage.   This is their big chance.   But if they fail to gather at least 100,000 people, this thing will never grow to Vietnam War proportions.   50,000 people will be a decent showing.   10,000 will be an abject failure.   Less than that will be laughable.

The gauntlet has been laid down.   The anti-war movement's survival is hanging in the balance.   Gather 100,000 or fade into oblivion!

"If" is the middle word of the English language.   If the US is spewing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, what are its causes and how do we solve this "crisis?"

First off, it is difficult to locate the source of information for the claim that the US causes 25% of the world's CO2 emissions but let's say oil consumption is a reasonable proxy.   According to the