Housing Shortage in Georgia

When I built my new office behind my garage I wound up with some trees too close to the windows and had them cut down last week. This opened up my view of the backyard and I decided on Saturday to replace a bird house that had been up on a tree since we bought the house years ago. I got a nice $10 cedar bird house at WalMart and attached it to a tree about 10 yards from my closest window. A pair of little somethings adopted it within 1 hour. They have come back several times to check it out. I can only suppose there is a serious housing shortage to have it claimed that quickly. One of the pair has a fairly bright blue back. Gotta look up what they are since they will evidently be neighbors.

Minimum Wages

I read today that California is joining 11 other states and will no longer wait on the federal minimum wage to be raised. They want to raise it from $6.75 to $7.75 per hour. What they will learn is when the minimum wage law confronts the law of supply and demand, the latter wins every time. Lower paid workers will lose their jobs. The liberals who push for these increases are primarily screwing the portion of the population they profess to stand so staunchly in support of.......working poor and blacks. They will be the ones to lose. Blacks in this country have an especially poor concept of what constitutes enlightened self-interest, so many of them will be grateful to know that an employer must pay them $7.75/hour when it is that requirement which keeps them from being hired. There have been numerous studies of the effect of minimum wage increases on employment over the years and the evidence shows that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces the employment of young workers by 1-2%. If this holds in California, about 50,000 jobs will be lost. Swarzenegger vetoed a minimum wage bill similar to this one in 2004 saying "this is not the time to create barriers to economic recovery". Apparently now is the time to create those barriers because he has apparently given in to the demands of his democratic legislature.

William Buckley says we lost

During the Viet Nam war it is said that the military victory was declared a loss when Walter Cronkite said we had lost. I wonder now if the Iraq war will be a failure because William Buckley says it is. Here is an essay by one of my most respected intellectuals. A sample is given below.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.

Hippocratic Oath as applied in California

A brutal rapist and murderer escaped execution in California this week because two physicians said their involvement would be a violation of their principles.
“To participate in capital punishment, if you’re a physician, is a violation of the most fundamental ethical principles we hold.” What principles? The Hippocratic Oath says that doctors explicitly abjure “deleterious and mischievous” actions including giving “a woman a pessary to produce abortion.” The Geneva Conventions require doctors to “maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception.” Would that all California doctors held to these principles in all circumstances. Alas, in 2000 alone, 236,060 unborn Californians received fatal treatment from licensed physicians.

Good analysis from National Review

Kofi Annan has called for the closure of the terrorist-detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in response to a report by a group of U.N. “human-rights investigators.” The group, which answers to the U.N. Human Rights Commission — a body that includes such humanitarian luminaries as Sudan, Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe — proclaimed that prisoners at Guantanamo are being treated inhumanely and even tortured. After completing their thorough, dispassionate, truth-seeking investigation of American atrocities, the rapporteurs called for the responsible U.S. officials to be prosecuted “up to the highest level of military and political command.” Of course, none of the investigators felt the need actually to visit Guantanamo and observe the scene firsthand. They instead interviewed some former detainees (eyewitnesses!), along with detainees’ families and defense attorneys. Never mind that Qaeda training manuals instruct operatives to fabricate torture stories whenever they are captured. Never mind, either, that American officials deny the torture allegations. The Archimedean axiom of any good U.N. investigator is that anybody is more trustworthy than an American official. It’s a principle with which the U.N. indeed hopes to move the whole world.

Civil War Score Card

I just ran across a list of things to watch for as we go on alert for Iraq descending into a civil war. This is from a blog called PoliPundit.

The following list contains the main lead indicators a full scale civil War in Iraq is underway:

• The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance no longer seeks to form a unity government and marginalize the Shiite political blocks.
• Sunni political parties withdraw from the political process.
• Kurds make hard push for independence/full autonomy.
• Grand Ayatollah Sistani ceases calls for calm, no longer takes a lead role in brokering peace.
• Muqtada al-Sadr becomes a leading voice in Shiite politics.
• Major political figures - Shiite and Sunni - openly call for retaliation.
• The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party and Muslim Scholars Association openly call for the formation of Sunni militias.
• Interior Ministry ceases any investigations into torture and death squads, including the case against recently uncovered problems with the Highway Patrol. • Defense Minister Dulaimi (a Sunni) is asked to step down from his post.
• Iraqi Security Forces begins severing ties with the Coalition, including:

o Disembeddeding the Military Transition Teams.
o Requests U.S. forces to vacate Forward Operating Bases / Battle Positions in Western and Northern Iraq.
o Alienates Coalition at training academies.

• Iraqi Security Forces make no effort to quell violence or provide security in Sunni neighborhoods.
• Iraqi Security Forces actively participate in attacks on Sunnis, with the direction of senior leaders in the ministries of Defense or Interior.
• Shiite militias are fully mobilized, with the assistance of the government, and deployed to strike at Sunni targets. Or, the Shiite militias are fully incorporated into the Iraqi Security Forces without certification from Coalition trainers.
• Sunni military officers are dismissed en masse from the Iraqi Army.
• Kurdish officers and soldiers leave their posts and return to Kurdistan, and reform into Peshmerga units.
• Attacks against other religious shrines escalate, and none of the parties make any pretense about caring.
• Coalition military forces pull back from forward positions to main regional bases.

The ports kurfuffle

I must admit to not having a firm grasp on the pros and cons of the approval given by the Bush administration for a Dubai company to take over ownership of management of 6 of our ports on the East coast. My first impression is this could be another Harriet Meirs deal whereby Bush will tuck tail and pull back in the near future. One clue it is a bad deal is the news that Jimmy Carter is for it. I also have a hunch that if Bush should need to take on Iran, we will need friends in the Gulf region with air bases. I need to learn more. We need to do something to get Carter on the other side.

Lottery Foolishness

As I have mentioned before, when the national lotteries reach the 300 million mark or so, I buy a couple of tickets. That was the case this past weekend when it reached a record $365mm. Since Georgia does not have the PowerBall, you must go across the river and buy them in South Carolina. This undoubtedly increases the number of tickets sold over there since a lot of us from Georgia add to the activity. When you have a big prize like this, there are almost always long lines of people buying large numbers of tickets for several days. As I told my bride, if we wake up on Sunday morning and learn that the winning ticket was sold at the very filling station where we bought ours, the odds of us winning would still be prohibitive--tens and maybe hundreds of thousands to one. As they say, a tax on the stupid.

Celebrity News

I don't often wander off into the land of OZ inhabited by the loonies in Hollywood, but this is a holiday so let's see what is out there.

• Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong broke up I learn. What could have possibly lead to such a sad event? Well, according to a friend of Crow's, Armstrong is a Bush backer to the max. "Sheryl said Lance didn't just support Bush,-he'd go off and fight if the President asked him to". Looks like she will have to go to Hollywood to find someone to share her hatred for Bush. What are the chances?
• An Indian filmmaker by the name of Rajeevnath is looking to make a film on Mother Teresa. This will be his 11th commercial film, so I presume he has some movie credentials. Although there are several actresses willing to play the role, he is actively pursuing Paris Hilton for the role. Seems he is impressed by her refusal to pose nude for Playboy. I wonder if he has seen her most famous role which debuted on the internet?
• Gwyneth Paltrow, in a recent interview, say Brits are much more intelligent and civilized than Americans. That view is probably colored and slanted by her association with Keith Richards, Ozzy Osbourne and Boy George.
  

Now you can't say this isn't an eclectic blog. Maybe too much so.

Cowardly Lions?

Rationalizations notwithstanding, the refusal of the US media to show the images at the heart of one of the most urgent stories of the day is not about restraint and good taste. It's about fear. Editors and publishers are afraid the thugs will target them as they targeted Danny Pearl and Theo van Gogh; afraid the mob will firebomb their newsrooms as it has firebombed Danish embassies. ''We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," an imam in Gaza preaches. ''Whoever insults a prophet, kill him," reads the sign carried by a demonstrator in London. Those are not figures of speech but deadly threats, and American newspapers and networks are intimidated. ...

This analysis from Captain's Quarters is right on the mark. Read the whole thing here.

Here we go again

Palm Beach County, Fla., created the controversial ''butterfly ballot'' in the 2000 presidential election that reportedly confused more than a thousand Gore-Lieberman voters such that they wound up marking their ballots for a minor-party candidate.

In February 2006, local education officials told the Palm Beach Post that too many of the county's high school students apparently knew answers on the statewide comprehensive test but were incorrectly marking the answer sheets. The multiple choice questions require only one circle to be darkened on the sheet, but other questions require darkening digits of an actual numerical answer, apparently bewildering students into darkening too many or too few circles.

More on the frenetic liberal media

The liberals who feed us their drivel from a lofty perch in the "main stream media" are about to lose it in the aftermath of Vice President Cheney's hunting accident. Obviously he was drunk or he would have called the Washington press corps before he even went over to see how badly his companion was wounded. Surely he was hiding something. As we wait for this to play itself out as did the other liberal hissy fits such as the stolen 2000 election, Enron, Halliburton, Abu Ghraib, torture at Guantanamo, Bush WMD lies, secret prison sites, Valerie Plame, Cindy Sheehan, Cheney's secret location, Hurricane Katrina, Jack Abramoff, illegal wire taps, etc., etc. we need to step back and ask how far all this hatred for Bush has gone. For example, the New York Times has a story advancing the possibility that if Mr. Whittington dies, Cheney could face a grand jury. I am not sure whether that is in fact the case since much of what they publish is not true, but I am almost sure those in charge of "news" and editorial content at this paper are not praying for his continued medical improvement and eventual recovery.

Follow-up on Katrina trailers

Now we are learning there is another reason the trailers are sitting in Arkansas rather than being moved somewhere so displaced hurricane victims have a place to live. Turns out the towns where the trailers are to be moved don't want them. They won't allow them to get occupancy certificates or some such. That makes one wonder why someone didn't consider that before the trailers were purchased. I bet if some of that multibillion dollar money Congress is sending to Louisianna and Mississippi had a clause to the effect the trailers had to be accommodated prior to getting the money, they would find a way to reconsider their objections to trailers.

Confession Time

Since I have been spending more time trading stocks lately, I have the TV on CNBC a lot. They have been going to curling at the Olympics after the market closes and I got to watching it the other day. Darn if I am not hooked now. Since I have never been around ice and snow much, I didn't even know what curling was before this week. Now I see it pretty much like chess on ice where you have to slide a 42 lb stone down the ice and try to get it in this circle with team mates sweeping the ice in front of the thing to slide right. The American women's team has these cute young things on the team and they seem to be holding their own. The men are about the same, I guess. Next thing you know, I may be watching pairs figure skating.

Hello!! Anyone home?

We've learned in recent days FEMA trailers remain on acres of ground in Arkansas instead of being used to house Katrina evacuees. Yesterday I heard one of the reasons. Many of the places where those trailers are needed are in floodplains. There is some sort of a federal regulation which says that you cannot put one of these FEMA trailers in a floodplain. This is your government we're talking about. Common sense and efficiency? Evidently not. The reality is that most of these trailers will never be used. Taxpayers were asked for $800 million to buy the trailers and then insisted on enforcing rules which prevent them from being used.

Makes sense to me

One of the things tracked by the Pew Research Center is happiness. Since the 1970s, the Pew pollsters have been asking Americans how happy they are and analyzing the results. Some 45% of all Republicans report being very happy, compared with just 30% of Democrats and 29% of independents. This finding has also been around a long time; Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey began taking its measurements in 1972.

The gap between Republicans and Democrats persists when factors like income and marital status (both powerful predictors of happiness) are accounted for.

Conservatives, likewise, are happier people than liberals, and churchgoers are happier than non-churchgoers.

The Cheny Affair

The self-important White House press corps is in full-throated outrage that they were not told about Cheney's hunting accident for some hours. Now the Democrats are joining in in an attempt to bring as much crap down on our Vice-President as they can. Most Americans do not feel it is any great crime to be involved in what was obviously an accidental shooting and they sure don't care if the press is ever informed about such matters. The esteem of this bunch is low and dropping. For the Democrats, however, they should avoid what could be a more serious shooting incident--i.e. one in which their collective foot is the victim. It would be easy for them to cause Cheney to decide to just resign and go back to Wyoming where fishing and hunting would be a welcome relief from all the Washington nonsense. Should this happen, the hapless Democrats would be faced with 3 years of a Vice-President (Condi Rice) who could well have presidential ambitions. They would be smart to let this drop.

The man is off his rocker

Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

Real or psychological ploy?

More and more we are reading articles like this.

If we are in fact getting ready to attack Iran, it is difficult to account for the origin of these stories. If we are not serious about such attacks, I think we should be. Let's get it on.

Happy Valentines Day

We all know the sellers of flowers, candy, and jewelry do well on Valentine's Day, but there is another industry that does really well also. Most of us would not think of it, but private detectives live for this time of the year. If someone has a lover on the side and must divide attention on this one day, it creates a definite opportunity for those who make a living catching cheaters. One private investigator who charges $95 an hour will handle about 20 suspected infidelity cases that day. One is a doctor whose wife aroused his suspicions when she told him she would be working late on Tuesday rather than her regular daytime shift. Another is an attorney who told his wife he couldn't have lunch with her on Valentine's Day because he would be in court. She knows he always gets a lunch break from court.
The detectives say trips scheduled over the day is commonly a clue that they follow and credit card receipts for restaurants and jewelry stores are their best evidence in these cases. One detective says he was hired by a man who was going to be out of town with his wife over Valentine's and wanted to spy on his mistress. She was taped buying two Valentine's cards, buying a dress using the client's credit card, and finally going to a hotel to meet another man.

Absurdity to a new level

Mark Steyn found a guy in Englan by the name of Sgt. Leslie Turner who sued Scotland Yard for racial discrimination and was awarded 30,000 pounds. Out of court. It seems he was a black officer guarding Camilla and he was the first such black to be so "honored." He claimed he was over-promoted because he was black and that put him beyond his abilities and made him unhappy and even miserable. His lawyer was able to sell this and he was compensated for this egregious promotion. There is nobody better in the sphere of commentators to sum up situations like this than Mark Steyn. Here is what he said on the subject:

With hindsight, it seems amazing that no such case has yet been brought in this great Republic, where affirmative action is so much more advanced. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow-PUSH could have a sister Rainbow-PULL organization: twice the shakedowns! One week you’re jumpin’ up and down outside Texaco or Wal-Mart shouting “No Justice, No Peace” because they’re not promoting enough blacks. Then, a month later, you’re back demanding they cease over-promoting blacks: “No Demotion, No Peace.” And the settlement wouldn’t be a footling thirty thousand quid, either.
So racial discrimination has now reached the blissful state of global warming: As the eco-crowd solemnly warn us, if it’s too hot, that’s a sign of global warming; if it’s too cold, that’s also a sign of global warming. If you’ve got too few blacks in senior management, you’re a racist; if you’ve got too many blacks in senior management, you’re also a racist.

Freedom of Speech

Journalists pride themselves on being the speaker of truth to the powerful. For generations now western journalists have been able to talk the talk without having to walk the walk. Now the power that they must confront is of a different sort and journalism is returning to its roots: speak the truth and risk your life.
The deep convictions of the major (read that liberal) newspapers seem to have suddenly undergone a change in the past week. Muslim extremists take to the streets threatening terrorist attacks, burning flags, and calling for the beheading of cartoonists, and press solidarity evaporates. Instead, the champions of free speech advise us: "Yes yes, free speech is all very well but you must of course practice it responsibly."! I wouldn't look for much bravery from the press in its support for free speech. The only time freedom of speech is relevant is when the speech is offensive to someone. Who needs freedom to speak on non-controversial topics?

Not sure what this means

The findings of Weight Watchers survey of 3,000 women revealed that girls lose an average of 8lb 5oz to impress a new man, but put on 11lb 3oz, as they spend few years into the relationship.

The survey also found that a woman's love life plays a significant role in how much she weighs.

"Our relationships have an enormous effect on our weight," The Sun quoted a Weight Watchers spokesman, as saying.

Almost two-thirds of wives said that their weight changes depending on how happy they are in their relationship, and and cited husbands as the biggest factor.

Before their wedding day, brides-to-be shed 9lb 2oz, but after having kids they put on 16lbs. They then lose the same amount in a mid-life makeover to rekindle their old romance.(ANI)

Do blacks know or want the facts?

Sen. Ted Kennedy drew roars of approval at Coretta's funeral when he invoked the 1960 phone call placed by his brother, then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, to Coretta King to pledge his help in freeing her husband from jail. Kennedy also mentioned the call placed by another brother, Robert F. Kennedy, JFK's campaign manager, to a local judge to inquire why Martin Luther King, Jr., could not post bond. King was freed the next morning, according to Kennedy

The sanctuary burst into applause when Sen. Kennedy said, "Robert called the judge!"

He omitted the "Robert called J. Edgar!" part of the story.

More than a few observers of the politically charged, partisan funeral service noted that Kennedy failed to tell the whole story about the relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

It was the Kennedy brothers who authorized the wiretaps and surveillance of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time, according to historians, King was meeting with members of the American Communist Party, which greatly distressed the Kennedy brothers.

While the Democrat Party continues to claim it was the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who conducted the eavesdropping on Dr. King, Justice Department records released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Hoover was ordered by Robert Kennedy to conduct the surveillance operation.

The records indicate that Robert found wiretaps and electronic listen devices or "bugs" useful in Justice Department operations against the Teamsters Union, organized crime and suspected communists. Prior to assisting his brother, John, Robert worked as an aide to Senator Joe McCarthy during the notorious hunt for communists within the US Government. He was also a close associate of the demonized Roy Cohn.

According to conversations this writer has had with a top FBI agent from the Kennedy era, Robert Kennedy took an active role in covert operations which angered Hoover. The late Special Agent Bill Roemer told this writer of the times that agents listened to King's trysts in disgust, some of them even voicing objections to the intrusive "bugging" of King's hotel rooms.

The al Qaeda plans to attack L.A.

"Their plot was derailed in early 2002 when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. Subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target, and how al Qaeda hoped to execute it."

The quote above is from President Bush's speech yesterday to the National Guard where he revealed our success is stopping an attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles. My favorite part is the fact that we found out about the attack from "subsequent debriefings" of this operative. I reckon we just asked him and his lawyer to please tell us about any other planned attacks and he just spilled his guts. I am sure we did not engage in any more aggressive interrogation techniques which would upset the ACLU and our liberal politicians such as John McCain.

Jimmy Carter makes my list

As regular readers of this blog know, I keep a list of idiots and creeps who stand out as particularly perfect examples as such. I mentioned in a previous post that I try to keep it from being populated by politicians since it would be easy to crowd out such deserving listees as Mike Tyson, Barbra Streisand and others. But Jimmy Carter's tirade at the funeral of poor Mrs. King the other day earns him a place.

Carter tried to zing Bush for his terrorist surveillance program - by referencing the wiretapping of Martin Luther King that had been ordered by the Kennedy administration.

Of course, the bitter-sounding Georgian never acknowledged that it was Democrats who had violated the King family's constitutional rights. A jerk like this must be on the list.

They all look alike to liberals

NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams told The Hill that he wrote Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) letters of apology last week after he confused the two men at the State of the Union address.

During NBC's broadcast, Williams noticed Obama on the House floor and identified him to the viewing audience. Unfortunately, it was actually Ford.

Phony of the Year?

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton launched a charm offensive on Monday in a bid to counter charges from a top Republican that she sounds too angry to get elected president.

In a half hour news conference at a Head Start classroom in Manhattan, Mrs. Clinton took great pains to avoid sounding shrill as she urged the GOP to worry instead about "these devastating budget cuts [and] the confusion and bureaucratic nightmare in the prescription drug benefit."

The New York Times noted that Mrs. Clinton "spoke in even tones" to reporters and used "temperate phrases" as she "conveyed her displeasure at Mr. Bush's budget priorities."

The performance stood in marked contrast to attacks delivered by Hillary last week, where she accused the White House in harsh tones of deliberately delaying aid to Hurricane Katrina victims and charged that administration officials covered-up the health risks posed by contaminated air at Ground Zero in the days after the 9/11 attacks.

NSA Spying Controversy

If you have any doubt about the validity and necessity of President Bush's surveillance activities, this should put your mind at ease and reassure you he is doing the right thing:

Former President Jimmy Carter criticized the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program Monday and said he believes the president has broken the law.

"Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision — we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Carter told reporters. "And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act."

Will Gore blame Bush?

A Russian astronomer has predicted that Earth will experience a "mini Ice Age" in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomic Observatory in St. Petersburg said Monday that temperatures will begin falling six or seven years from now, when global warming caused by increased solar activity in the 20th century reaches its peak, RIA Novosti reported.

The coldest period will occur 15 to 20 years after a major solar output decline between 2035 and 2045, Abdusamatov said.

Dramatic changes in the earth's surface temperatures are an ordinary phenomenon, not an anomaly, he said, and result from variations in the sun's energy output and ultraviolet radiation.

The Northern Hemisphere's most recent cool-down period occurred between 1645 and 1705. The resulting period, known as the Little Ice Age, left canals in the Netherlands frozen solid and forced people in Greenland to abandon their houses to glaciers, the scientist said.

Cartoon Madness

The response to the Danish cartoon depicting Muhammed was probably encouraged by Iran we are now learning, but much of the main stream media and even our own State Department is trying not to take sides when it is clear to me that there is one correct side to take in this situation. CBS said it didn't want to show the cartoons since the situation was "sensitive". The following sums up the current world situation:

In a speech to the National Press Club last week, Secretary Rumsfeld said of Islamic terrorists, "they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs."

It's going to be a long war.

I can't wait to see this one.

Aker Yards, the Norwegian shipbuilder, has won a new cruise ship order worth about €900m ($1.1bn) from Royal Caribbean International. The vessel to be built is the most valuable ship ever ordered in the history of commercial shipbuilding, the company said.

The 220,000-gross-registered-ton new vessel will be 360 metres long and carry 5,400 passengers, making it more than 40 per cent bigger than the world's biggest cruise ship now under construction for Royal Caribbean by Aker Yards in Finland.

They did it again

Police fired in the air Monday to disperse stone-throwing protesters demonstrating over a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam, triggering a stampede in which a teenager was killed in northern Somalia. ...

This has to be some fatal genetic flaw flowing through the Muslim population.

Reckon they had any help?

A man convicted of masterminding the attack on the American destroyer Cole in 2000 escaped a Yemeni jail through a tunnel with 22 other prisoners, the international police organization, Interpol, said today.

The prisoner, Jamal Ahmed Badawi, was sentenced to death in 2004 by a court in Yemen for his role in the attack on the warship that killed 17 American sailors and provided an early glimpse of the workings of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda global terror network. The Interpol statement said that 12 of the prisoners who escaped through the tunnel with Mr. Badawi were convicted members of Al Qaeda.

Yemeni officials also confirmed to Interpol that a man responsible for the attack on the French tanker Limburg in 2002, Fawaz al-Rabeei, was among those who escaped.

Global Warming Review

If you find yourself hearing on the TV or reading in the papers that global warming is causing something or other, here are some things to think about.

• this is a big planet and there are lots of places to take its temperature and the instruments used must be compared with the instruments used a century ago if one is to conclude that there has in fact been a one degree temperature rise in that 100 years.
• if you conclude that scientists have indeed succeeded in accurately making that measurement, you must now decide whether that rise is the cause or whether or not the rise and fall of ice sheaths over the millenia might suggest that there are natural forces at work which do not have anything to do with human activity
• the hypothesis is that man's activity has produced CO2 which absorbs heat and thus if man has caused the problem, man should be able to reverse it by not allowing so much CO2 to be released into the atmosphere. This is offered widely by the press, various politicians, and scientists. As a layperson, who did not actually make the measurements, you must rely on the claim that CO2 has increased in the last 100 years from 0.028% to 0.036% .
  
• once you accept that claim you must face the numerous claims that global warming is responsible for such things as a recent claim that it is responsible for such things as frog deaths observed somewhere, hurricanes, too much snow, too little rain, etc., etc.

So, we have a model (increased CO2 makes the earth hotter) supported by dubious measurements being advanced to support the idea that governments should sacrifice economic growth to comply with hypothesized effects from this model. Lots of people accept that for the most part because they can't believe all those magazines, papers, politicians, and scientists would be concerned if there weren't something substantial behind the concern. I say poppycock (maybe even something stronger), but anyone is free to join those renowned scientists Al Gore and Bill Clinton who say global warming is the greatest threat to mankind.

I stole this, but it is pretty accurate.

During WWII, the Japanese were searching for a way to demoralize the American forces that they faced. The Japanese Psychological warfare experts came up with a message that they thought would work well. They gave the script to their famous broadcaster "Tokyo Rose" and everyday she would broadcast this same message packaged in various ways hoping to have an impact on American GI morale. What was the message? It had three main points:

1. Your President is lying to you.

2. This war is illegal.

3. You cannot win the war.

Sound familiar? Maybe it's because the US Main Stream Media and the Democrat Party has picked up the same message and is broadcasting it to our troops. The only difference is that they claim to support our troops before they demoralize them. Come to think of it, Tokyo Rose used to tell the troops she was on their side.

Some are not happy with the Democrats

If you think the crazies on the left have resigned themselves to Alito's confirmation, the following, which is just a sample on the liberal web sites, should disabuse you of that notion.

NOT A PENNY FOR THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, AND FURTHERMORE, I'LL NOT SACRIFICE ONE SECOND OF MY LIFE TO HELP THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY UNTIL THE TRAITORS ARE EXPELLED FROM OUR MIST.

Why? You ask.

Because they have committed an extremely egregious injury against this country's constitution and the people that it protects. I've lived my life under the belief that "An injury to one is an injury to all" When somebody harms my sisters and brothers, I take it VERY PERSONAL.

EXPEL THE TRAITORS FROM OUR PARTY, OR YOU GUYS ARE ON YOUR OWN!.

This sounds like a good idea

Two companies are going to explore the possibility of using high altitude balloons for cell phone connections instead of towers. These would be especially useful in areas which are not widely populated like the Dakotas. In theory a single balloon would take the place of hundreds of towers.

Latest Political Tactic may not catch on

I am almost sure this will not catch on with most of our politicians--especially those emulating Bill Clinton.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi has promised Italians he would lower taxes and raise pensions. His latest campaign pledge is rather personal: no sex until April 9 elections, an Italian newspaper reported Sunday.

Il Giornale, a conservative Milan daily owned by Paolo Berlusconi, the premier's brother, reported that the no-sex vow was made during a campaign rally in Cagliari, Sardinia, on Saturday with a popular TV preacher on the island and his followers.

We have been needing this

The following is from a blog published in Iraq that I read almost daily.

The Anbar tribes’ campaign to rid the province of Zarqawi’s terror organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq is in its 2nd day and so far, 270 Arab and foreign intruders have been arrested.
[…]
Usama Jad’aan, the leader of Karabila tribes in Qaim told al-Hayat that “the operation will continue to eliminate terror elements according to a quality plan” and added “270 Arab and foreign intruders have been arrested, in addition to some Iraqis who were providing them shelter”.

Sheikh Jad’aan added “the operation is conducted in coordination between the tribes and the minister of defense Sa’doun al-Dulaimi and since we arrested hundreds of terrorists, I don’t expect the operation to take a lot of time”.

This sounds promising

MSCRAMM^® is an acronym for Microbial Surface Components Recognizing Adhesive Matrix Molecules. These proteins are located on the surface of pathogenic organisms, such as bacteria and fungi, and play a prominent role in the process of infection. These proteins enable organisms to initiate and maintain an infection by adhering to specific sites on human tissue or implanted medical devices. Veronate is an antibody-based product designed to bind to specific MSCRAMM^® proteins, thereby preventing infections or reducing their severity.

First, by binding to the MSCRAMM^® proteins, these antibodies inhibit or block the invading organism from attaching to tissue or implanted or in-dwelling medical devices. Second, these antibodies coat the invading organism, identifying it for clearance by other cellular components of the immune system.

According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2001 there were approximately 43,000 VLBW infants weighing less than 1,250 grams at birth. These infants are particularly susceptible to hospital-associated infections. Various studies indicate that 30% to 50% of these VLBW infants will develop at least one hospital-associated infection during their stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The average length of stay in the NICU for these infants is approximately two months.

Not only do hospital-associated infections impact an infants health and development, but the cost to treat infections is significant. VLBW infants that develop a hospital-associated infection stay, on average, 20 additional days in the NICU when compared to those that do not acquire an infection. Also, recent studies suggest that infants who aquire such an infection may suffer long term neurological impairment

The Hamas Victory

The victory of Hamas in the Middle East region is evidently quite surprising. One thing it shows is that exit polls over there are not any better than they are over here. The other consequence of the election is the apprehension that this will inevitably lead to war between Israel and a group from Gaza and the West Bank which has vowed to destroy Israel. My own immediate thought was this was a hopeful sign for a meaningful move off ruts in the road. Some of this opinion was based on my tendency to think conventional wisdom on any subject is almost always wrong. The following response of Mark Steyn to a question about the probability of war confirms my thinking on the subject. The guy is a genius.

Well, I don't think it will...I don't actually think it will be a war. In a sense, I think in the immediate future, what it does is it gives Israel a greater leeway to secure itself with the wall. Nobody's going to argue when you're living next to Hamas that you don't have the right to build a wall. That argument, which the Europeans and other people have made, looks absolutely stupid now. But I think what it does tell you is that in the end, the Palestinians are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the Earth. Every city you go to...you go to New York, you go to London, you go to Paris, you meet talented, energetic Palestinian doctors and lawyers and accountants. All the talent got out of there in the late 1940's and early 50's. You imagine people, third, fourth generation, the people who stuck around because of this insane dream that they're going to get some olive grove of their great-grandfathers back one day, can you imagine what kind of idiot is going to stick around for sixty years for that? So it's the absolute worst of the Palestinian people who are in Gaza, and in the West Bank. And it's a terrible tragedy for them. But it is the fact that they've been wrecked by being essentially mollycoddled by the U.N. and world opinion for sixty years.

Trading Room

This blog was started to simply put up things that interested me at any point in time and has been something that I have enjoyed and since few ever read the thing there is no pressure to meet a deadline or even publish something if I was doing something else. One thing I haven't really blogged on was an interest in the stock market which started over 40 years ago. I have been trading stocks actively for some 15 years since the internet allowed online trading. I haven't included much in this blog about it since stock trading is too arcane for even the small number of folks who might wander onto this thing. What I do is mainly participate in a giant Ponzi Scheme where the earlier that you get invested and the more astute you are in getting out when the music stops and seats are still available, the more successful you will be. There are a lot of people out there who are better at the game than I am, but since I have managed to make money every year despite a number of years when I was not focused as much as I should have been, I conclude modestly that I am better than average at the activity.
Where this is leading is shown in the picture above. For several years, I was trading from our third bedroom on tables which were haphazardly arranged. We decided last September to add a room behind our garage which I could use as an office and the bedroom could once again be used to accommodate our kids, their kids, and guests. It is now completed and I am very pleased by the project. My bride has assisted mightily in providing esthetic touches and in the planning of it. I am now better situated to trade and I have been much more focused on it than in the past. One problem is it takes a lot of work and long hours to do what I do effectively, but I enjoy it and thankfully, I am in a position to quit when I am no longer having fun.

Senator Byrd

Even an octogenarian can get his mind focused by an election in a state that has voted twice for George Bush. Senator Byrd took to the Senate floor the other day to render his opinion of the Alito hearings. I doubt that Senator Kennedy was listening (or any other senators for that matter), but whoever wrote the following for the former Ku Klux Klanner did a good job. He has also announced he will vote for Justice Alito.

Many people and including foremost, as I say, the people of West Virginia in most uncertain terms, were, frankly, appalled by the Alito hearings. I don't want to say it but I must. They were appalled. In the reams of correspondence that I received during the Alito hearings, West Virginians — the people I represent — West Virginians who wrote to criticize the way in which the hearings were conducted used the same two words. People with no connection to one another, people of different faiths, different views, different opinions, independently and respectively used the same two words to describe the hearings. They called them an “outrage” and a “disgrace.” . . .

It is especially telling that many who objected to the way in which the Alito hearings were conducted do not support Judge Alito. In fact, it is sorely apparent that even many who oppose Judge Alito's nomination also oppose the seemingly made-for-TV antics that accompanied the hearings. . . .

And then there were the media and the media's contribution to the deterioration of this very important constitutional process. Mr. President, was it really necessary to subject Mrs. Alito to the harsh glare of the television klieg lights as she fled the hearing room in tears? Fighting to maintain her dignity in response to others, with precious little of their own?

FDA and drug labels

Drug labelling has long been a concern beyond the print being so small you can't read it. The FDA tried to clarify labelling problems to prevent lawsuit problems experienced by drug companies. For example, Vioxx is being sued 9,000 times for its troubles with the claim that they failed to warn of heart problems. One of the reasons for this is the FDA has required simpler labelling so only the most important information is put on labels. Then the state courts which entertain these lawsuits fail to acknowledge the federal requirement which prevents the company from listing all the possible side effects and even some which may be more than rare. Here is an example from real life. In Motus vs. Pfizer the wife of a suicide victim alleged that Pfizer had negligently failed to warn that the antidepressant might actually cause suicidal thoughts. The FDA had already considered requests to put this on the label and said no because it feared the risk of depressed patients skipping treatment with Zoloft to be greater than the known risk from the drugs themselves. When the FDA intervened to help Pfizer with what is called a "pre-emption" assertion, this infuriated some folks. Guess who? If you said the liberal democrats like Senator Kennedy who carries water for the trial lawyers you are right.

This is so great!

"To rein in wasteful spending, Dr. Coburn intends to offer an amendment on every pork project stuffed into appropriations bills this year. There were at least 13,998 earmarked projects contained in last year’s appropriations bills. By way of comparison, the Senate had only 366 roll call votes last year. Needless to say we are beefing up our appropriations staff for this challenge and we have requested that we be given at least 72 hours to review appropriations bills before they are considered. "
The above is an E-mail from Senator Coburn's office. What this means is if you want to stuff a special interest into the Appropriation Bill this year, you will cause the senate to have a roll call vote on it. Each roll call takes at least 30 minutes to conduct and you have to have time alloted to each side to discuss it before the vote. This will drive the big spenders crazy and Dr. Coburn doesn't give a royal rat's rear.

Gotta have sex to get the money

The University of Florida says that in order to get the full benefits under their health care plan, you and your other what-ever must be having sex. I am not making this up. Read about it here.

La Shawn on Abortion

"Black women are three times as likely to have abortions as their white counterparts. Blacks and Hispanics are about 25 percent of the population, yet they account for 57 percent of all abortions."

This is a sample from an article published this morning by La Shawn Barber, a black columnist, who has a very interesting essay which questions the support blacks give a Democratic Party which champions policies which are so detrimental to African Americans. I have always wondered that myself. Read the whole thing here.

Troop Levels

For years now I have read about how President Bush is screwing up mightily because he had too few troops in Iraq. Then we started reading that he has too many. There doesn't seem to be any particular political party clarity on this phenomenon. Politicians of both parties have opined on this subject with all certainity that they are right. Most of the discussion now is on whether or not we are reducing levels too fast or not fast enough. Sure some on the extremes of the Democratic left wing say we should just get out, but others, especially those in the press seem convinced that removing 20,000 would catastrophic and others say 30,000 would not be enough. Bush seems to be willing to let the Generals actually in Iraq make the determination and if he is really doing that, it seems to me we are going to be more correct than if some wind-bag politician or some columnist looking for a safe way to venture into an area where they have no expertise makes the decision.
I suspect that if Bush brought one of his critics from the political left into the White House, turned on the cameras and asked him or her to state right now what troop levels should be for the year ahead, they would wet their pants and turn hemming and hawwing into a comedy act.

More on Bush's Surveillance Authority

This is a pretty good summary of why the dems challenge of the Bush on surveillance is not only wrong, but politically a loser. Read it here.

Here's the key phrase in S.J. Res 23 authorizing the use of force:

Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States:

If the Constitution allows for the President to "take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States", then that ends all debate. Legislation can't take away the inherent powers that the Constitution grants the President as Commander-in-Chief. After all, the Fourth Amendment doesn't say the President needs a warrant for these wiretaps since this is defined as a reasonable search and seizure. The Fourth Amendment only requires a warrant for UNREASONABLE searches.

Why would they include that provision in the AUMF (Authorization to Use Military Force) if they didn't believe that the President had the inherent power to protect us through reasonable searches and seizures?

What makes Teddy's mindless diatribe that much more foolish is the consistency in the polling showing the American people think that the President is doing the right thing with these wiretaps AND they think that, if he doesn't have the authority, he should. Teddy's diatribe is the political equivalent of playing a game of chicken with a road grader. We know the outcome if it's allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion.

If this is where their political instincts are taking them, then it's a wonder they have any seats in Congress.

bin Ladin threatens

Much is the news now about OBL's threat to carry out to attack America is a big way. What is our response to be? Here is one which I endorse:


First the President of the United States should declare that any act of violence of the type that occurred on September 11, 2001 would send the signal for an all out attack against mecca and Medina with no holds barred and no quarter spared and any target of convenience thereafter. In other words any new attack on the United States will trigger the end of middle east civilization as it's presently known. We should not have to live under the threat of blackmail and terror from these people. Then all mosques should be placed under surveillance and all non-American Muslims required to leave the country. If we don't do this we'd better be prepared to pay a very very high price in human life and physical damage. We know it's coming to sit here and do nothing is insane! How many American lives does it take to force the government to act? Are we willing to pay the price?

Anna Nichole Smith

Have you ever wondered what there was about Anna's attempt to get hold of some of the money she earned by marrying an octogenarian when she was in her 20's that would get her in front of the Supreme Court? I wondered, but was not really curious enough to make an effort to see what the legal question was. Well, I happened onto a column in the Wall Street Journal which put it succinctly enough for me to read up on the subject. It seems like when the old guy died his will went to Probate in Texas where she was cut out since she wasn't in the will and all she had was a claim she had been told by him she was in for the loot. Ordinarily that would be the end of it, but she somehow went bankrupt and sued in California bankruptcy court where she won. When this was appealed it went to the infamous 9th Circuit since it was big enough to be a federal matter.This is where the Supreme Court got involved since probate matters are left to state courts and the 9th Circuit overturned the California judgement in Anna's favor. So, the question before the Supremes is this: Will they keep probate matters in state courts where it is nice and tidy or can creative lawyers shift the matter into federal courts? That is the extent of my knowledge. I don't even know what verdict old Anna is rooting for. In most cases, however, I root for Texas over california.

We don't need this.

Well, now I read the Chinese are expanding their broad inclination to flood the market with counterfeit goods such as CD's, compute programs, etc. They commonly take technology from others but now their pursuit of a dollar is putting all of us at increased risk to avian flu. Some large number of companies are trying to make bird flu vaccines to sell to farmers to protect their flocks. The problem is they don't know how to make vaccines so the farmers are paying a lot of money to inject the flock with stuff which has live virus or too little dead virus and the birds are either dying off despite vaccinations or even worse, developing a resistance to the virus which could render good vaccines worthless.

Bush broke the law

We have been hearing that a lot lately. When he authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on our calls and things. He broke the law. Some say he did,others say he didn't, and most of us not only don't care if he did, we would expect nothing less. How do we settle the question, though? Well, we have to go to court. That means someone has to sue and get a judge to take the case and decide it and then we would have some idea if he "broke the law" or not. That sounds pretty clear, but turns out it isn't. Who is going to sue and get the matter in the court? In order to bring a suit you have to have "standing" which means you must be able to show that you have been injured in some way. You can't just say you may have been injured, you need more than that to get a judge to hear a case involving presidential authority. As things stand now, nobody can get beyond the fact that we don't even have evidence that any specific person has been the target of "spying" and the only way to get that evidence is if the object of the suit agrees to provide the classified evidence to someone so they can sue. This leaves the liberal kooks in a bad way. So it has to go to a Republican Congressional Committee to make some sort of decision.

Al Gore goes on tilt

Al Gore chose MLK Day to make a foray into Bush bashing as did a number of liberals like Hillary. Most of the reaction from other bloggers, however, has been directed at the inventor of the internet. Gore made the charge that Bush had broken the law by listening in on Al-qaida conversations. Not only that, he said the "very nature of our government" was threatened and "the Constitution was in grave danger". Furthermore, Bush imprisoned citizens and and authorized kidnap and torture.
The reaction has been both funny (more than one blogger suggested that someone who didn't flunk out of law school should opine about what is legal), and frankly demogogic and pathetic. The fact is Gore did not voice any objection when the Clinton administration wiretapped Aldrich Ames without a warrant. Jamie Gorelick who worked in the Clinton Justice Department told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1994 "The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes". In addition, the Clinton administration used a surveillance operation called Echelon which targeted overseas e-mails and phone calls betweeen suspected terrorists and U.S. contacts. In order to do this, Echelon monitored virtually every electronic conversation around the world and in the U.S.
Gore and the other idiotic liberals should sit back and contemplate what it meant when Congress authorized Bush to use "all necessary" means to fight terrorism after 9/11.

George Foreman

You would not have ever predicted the success of this man when he first came on the boxing scene. I remember him as what I pretty much considered a thug in the mold of Mike Tyson who came after George. We know he became a minister when he left boxing and now is more widely known for his association with Salton, Inc. which makes the George Foreman grill which all of us own at least one of. What we all now realize is the man has become a decent human being with a sense of humor which I find engaging. What few of us realize, however, is the extent to which the man has become a financial tycoon.

The man was very intelligent about money from the start. He took his early boxing purses and put them into a trust which was for his old age. When he retired the first time that money was there for later, but he wanted to raise some money to finance a return to boxing. By this time he was well beyond the age where boxers have success. He tried to find 10 people to invest $50,000 each or 5 guys with $100,000 each with the agreement that they would get 40% of his earnings in return. Nobody would take the chance so he took some of the money he had saved up for his several kids and financed it himself. According to the interview I read this morning in the Wall Street Journal, they missed out on $40 million which he had to keep all for himself.

Thoughts on living

1. If you are not happy with your mattress or if it is about time for a new one, you should seriously consider its replacement with one of the new "memory foam" brands. They are pricey, but should last longer than others and they are definitely worth the extra money if you like a good night's sleep.

2. If you haven't looked at or thought about your home owners insurance in a while, you should at least inquire about the level of coverage you have vis-a-vis your house's current market value. We just did that and found we were considerably under-insured even though our policy had some sort of automatic increase built in.

3. The day is coming, and it may already be here for some of us, where paying for a land-line telephone service is a waste of money. If you have a cell phone, that may be all you need. Companies such as Vonage offer internet calling plans which can save you as much as 50% on your phone expenses. Another alternative is internet calling. A leading provider of this service is Skype which lets you call free to others who use it. It also has a service which lets you place calls to others who do not have the service for a fee of about two cents per minute. The latest version can be used with a cordless phone so you don't have to sit at the computer to make your call. If you want to investigate various phone services and compare costs for your particular circumstances, you can go to http://www.ABTolls.com . The Skype-type phone service will be become much more widely used in the near future, I understand.

4. If you are not an old geezer like me, you should be carefully consider putting as much of your retirement savings into a Roth 401(K) account as you can. The difference is traditional 401 (k) contributions come before and Roth contributions come after taxation. The withdrawals, however, from a Roth at retirement are not taxed. I predict that this will be a significant factor when the government tries to fund the $45 trillion structural deficit in Medicare and Medicaid. They will want to tax the bejeezus out of what they will consider unearned money which has accumulated in retirement accounts.

I like this idea

Project Prevention is a California based organization which has decided it would prevent many tragic pregnancies if drug-addicted individuals could be prevented from reproducing. They want to do this by giving them cash to become sterilized. Read the whole article here. The following is a sample.

Project Prevention’s sterilization crusade stopped in Pasadena Friday to offer more cash to drug-addicted men and women who agree to become sterilized or use long-term birth control.

Barbara Harris founded Project Prevention in 1997 after adopting four of eight babies born to a Los Angeles woman addicted to drugs.

The group offered $500 to each of the first 100 women who agree to use birth control methods like inter-uterine devices or tubal ligations. In the past, the group offered $300 and men are also eligible if they agree to a vasectomy.

The increased cash incentives are part of a national grassroots campaign to raise the total number of clients served by the organization to 2,006 by the end of 2006.

Mark Steyn analyzes the Alito hearings

This is precious. Here is a sample.

Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.): "I find it, uh, troubling, uh, that as a, uh, grown man you were a, uh, member, uh, of an, uh, organization, uh, with, uh, a, uh, very troubling, uh, track record on, uh, the treatment of, uh, women."

Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.): "Yes, it's, uh, true I was a member of the, uh, Kennedy family."

Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.): "Please don't interrupt. And it's, uh, true, is it not, that you've, uh, made, uh, jokes that could be regarded as, uh, inappropriate and offensive to, uh, women, uh, you've, uh uh, known?"

Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.): "Well, uh, I named my dog Splash, but, uh, other than, uh, that, uh uh..."

Medicare Follow-up

My bride of some 44 years (this week) read my blog (see below) and looked at her Medicare Summary Notice to see how her flu vaccine was handled. She went in to get her vaccination on October 31, about 3 days before I did. We went to the same Family Medicine Clinic. Again, they charged her $20 to administer the injection. The actual vaccine, however, was $32 rather than the $22 I was charged. The only difference I could notice was her vaccine had no preservative. Why, I don't know. So her vaccination was $52 and Medicare was not so frugal with her. They agreed to pay $48.84. I got a 24% reduction and she only got a 6% decrease. Makes no sense to me.

Between the two of us, the government spent $80.38 to protect us against influenza. This gives me an idea. What if all of us old folks went down to the local drug store and gave them $20 each for our shots. Many people do this anyway. Just send us a check for $25 and save the rest.

A Medicare Story

I got something called a Medicare Summary Notice in the mail yesterday. Usually I don't pay much attention to stuff like this, but I opened it and glanced at the bottom line which said I didn't owe anything, which is usually all I care about. For some reason, though, I looked at the numbers since the only thing involved was my flu shot which I got last November. Back then I went to my Family Medicine Clinic which is nice and handy and for some reason after I got my shot and went to the cashing out window, they did not have the fact that I was a Medicare patient on the record. So, I was told I owed $20 and I just paid them, got a receipt and walked out without another thought. Later in the week, I was called by someone at the clinic and told to stop by to get my $20 back since I would get my flu shot courtesy of Medicare. The one who must be obeyed who is also the one I sleep with was only too happy to get our $20 back. Now I get a Summary Notice from the Medicare folks. As I look at the numbers, here is what I see. The clinic charged Medicare $22 for the actual vaccine and $20 to inject it. Total charged was therefore $42.00. No wonder they wanted to give me back my $20. Reading further, I see that because our government is so frugal they only paid the clinic $31.54 and told the clinic to take it or leave it. The clinic took it.
Here is what I see in summary. The patient thinks he is getting something for nothing, the clinic is getting an increase of over 50% from the government for a service which almost assuredly cost them less than the $20 they inadvertantly charged me. Then the governmental agency sends me a summary which makes it look like they are being judicious when they reduced the amount charged from $42 to $31.54. When you stop and think about this nonsense being magnified many times over in millions of us oldtimers you can't help feeling this will eventually bankrupt us.

Good news from Iraq

The following is part of a popular blog written by a guy in Iraq which is entitled Iraq the Model. I read it regularly and he seems to be pretty down the middle in telling it like it is. Read it all here.

Meanwhile, there are some good news coming from Anbar.
Al-Qaeda is apparently being chased down and confronted by Iraqis in Anbar and Samarra according to a report from al-Sabah.
Mohammed al-Ubaidi is a citizen of Anbar who took part in a battle against al-Qaeda fighters said that people were enraged by the attacks that kill civilians in Anbar and other provinces and therefore have decided to form squads from the residents to rid Anbar from the foreign terrorists.
The reports mentions that several tribes’ sheikhs had a meeting in the home of a sheikh of the Dulaim tribe where they pledged to fight al-Qaeda and throw them out of the province. There are also news that some 120 al-Qaeda members have already fled outside Iraq after a series of battles between their cells and the residents of Ramadi and other towns and suburbs of Anbar.
According to the same report, similar measures are being taken by the residents in Samarra and have succeeded in forcing foreign terrorists out of their city.

Where are you Hillary???

This is an interesting blog from Michelle Malkin.

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton appeared on Good Morning America to lambaste the Bush admininstration for not caring about troops who need more body armor. She demanded an investigation.

On Wednesday, Senate Armed Service Committee chairman John Warner did exactly that.

But Hillary didn't bother to show up. Via the Washington Times:

"Senator Clinton had a long planned day of events with her constituents in New York and wasn't able to attend the short-notice briefing attended by the chairman and two members of the minority," Hillary spokesman Philippe Reines told the Washington Times.

Among the items on Hillary's schedule this week that took precedence over staying in Washington: a Children's Defense Fund lunch also attended by Hugo Chavez pal and Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferer Harry Belafonte.

Priorities, priorities.

This is instructive, I think

If you don't read the blog known as DailyKos, you are missing some of the political opinions from the liberal perspective as they bill themselves. This is a very widely read blog and I don't usually find much there of interest, but today, I did. As has been widely reported in the media, Mrs. Alito left the hearings of her husband yesterday in tears which have been widely attributed to the many hours of attacks by Senators such as Kennedy, Durbin, Schumer and the chief bloviator, Biden. Most of us, regardless of our view of Alito feel it is unfortunate for the spouse to be present at such a hearing. This is the view of one of the readers of the DailyKos.

What, is this junior high school?

"Lindsey Graham Made Mrs. Alito Cry"
Sounds like a note someone passed me in algebra.

Why are people allowing themselves to get drawn into this episode?

-You made her cry, bully!
-I didn't make her cry, HE did!
-Well, she's crying now and everyone thinks YOU did it!

With all due respect, F*CK Mrs. Alito! We are dealing with a decision that will affect millions of people over generations! I don't give a good godd*mn about Mrs. Alito. Frankly, I'd be much happier seeing MISTER Alito crying due to a withering grilling by the Dems. But the only folks crying over the Democratic senator's questioning are other Dems (including me).

Abramoff's list of donations

I just went over the long list of politicians to whom Jack Abramoff gave donations and my brother-in-law was not listed. He needs to get out more. He must not be even trying. There are sure a lot of Democrats on there. Wonder if that will keep them from making this a Republican scandal?

Scary??

I can't help but wonder just how scary it is for Iran to ponder the possibility that their behavior is likely to lead them to be brought to the U.N.? They should be more worried about Netanyahu.

These are strange people

Thousands of Muslim pilgrims rushing to complete a symbolic stoning ritual during the hajj tripped over luggage Thursday, causing a crush in which at least 345 people were killed, the Interior Ministry said.

The stampede occurred as tens of thousands of pilgrims headed toward al-Jamarat, a series of three pillars representing the devil that the faithful pelt with stones to purge themselves of sin.

I am rooting against the realtors

According to this article there is an invigorated campaign against the National Association of Realtors who have been gouging all of us for decades. Any previous attempt to lessen the costs associated with buying and selling houses has been thwarted by the lobbyists, but things may be changing. I hope so.

My hormones made me do it.

The study in the Journal of Hormones and Behavior examined 38 coeds from one large, unidentified U.S. university.

"We found that women were most attracted to men other than their primary partner when they were in the high fertility phase of the menstrual cycle," said Dr. Martie Haselton, a UCLA researcher. "That's the day of ovulation and several days beforehand."

A related study, which will be published in Evolution and Human Behavior, finds that women are more likely to fantasize about men other than their mates, but only when they don't consider their mates to be particularly sexy. That UCLA study examined 43 normally ovulating women.

"We're claiming the desire to cheat is what evolved in women, that they may notice they have these desires at a certain point in their cycle," said Elizabeth Pillsworth, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of communication and psychology at UCLA. "Whether they translate into unfaithful behaviors is a matter of their own choosing. Cheating is a choice."

Nomination for biggest phony in Washington, D.C.

The conservative alumni group Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) has been the subject of criticism in recent weeks, but yesterday the University itself also came under scrutiny.

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who grilled Samuel Alito '72 about his CAP membership, also said that he "wasn't a big Princeton fan."

"I didn't even like Princeton," he said, to laughter from the gallery. "I mean, I really didn't like Princeton. I was an Irish Catholic kid who thought it had not changed like you concluded it had," referring to Alito's earlier statement that Princeton had changed its traditional ways before he enrolled.

But Biden had nothing but praise for the University in a 2004 speech at the Wilson School.

"It's an honor to be here," he told the audience. "It would have been an even greater honor to have come here."

Biden also said yesterday: "One of my real dilemmas is I have two kids who went to Ivy League schools. I'm not sure my Grandfather Finnegan will ever forgive me for allowing that to happen."

But in his speech at Princeton, he said, "I have three children who have mercifully all finally completed undergraduate and graduate school. And I tried to get all three of them to apply here."

He went on to recall how he tried to convince them to attend Princeton, but because they didn't, he's "counting on his grandchildren."

Thoughts

I have been really busy trading stocks the last few days, but some of the Alito hearings were on in the background. I can't help wonder if the Democrats are as moronic as I think they are. It occurs to me that they must know they are going to lose and Alito will be confirmed. If so, could it be that Alito may just be human enough to remember when a case comes up where he has the chance to stick it to Kennedy, Schumer, etc in an instance where he may not have in the absence of such hostility. Just wondering.

This could be handy in Iraq

A new handheld radar scope from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) can provide troops with an ability that was formerly the province of science fictional superheroes alone—the ability to sense through up to 12 inches of concrete whether someone is in the next room.

The Radar Scope is expected to be in use in Iraq by spring of this year, according to DARPA's Edward Baranoski. Weighing just 1.5 pounds, the device is about the size of a telephone handset and will cost about $1,000. Waterproof and rugged, it runs on AA batteries. Held up to a wall, users will be able to sense movements as small as breathing up to fifty feet into the next room.

"It may not change how four-man stacks go into a room (during clearing operations)," Baranoski said. "But as they go into a building, it can help them prioritize what rooms they go into. It will give them an extra degree of knowledge so they know if someone is inside."

Osama gone?

The following was in an article recently published by Michael Ledeen. It is interesting how little attention it has generated because the guy is fairly well connected to sources in Iran. Maybe we have finally decided it really makes little difference. Read the whole article.

And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Iranians who reported this note that this year's message in conjunction with the Muslim Haj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time.

Here comes John McCain

The lonely mission of Senator Coburn of Oklahoma to cut the money handed out by Congress in the form of "set-sides" (remember the bridge to no-where) has now been joined by a very formidable ally. John McCain never misses a chance to grandstand and he is good at it because the networks love to have him on grandstanding. The Republicans might be well advised to join in the fight against these pernicious spending vehicles since they will now be impossible to defend. I will relish the spectacle.

It's all b.s. Congresswoman

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, engaged in a small but cheesy bit of deception last week. She released a letter, which quickly found its way to the front page of the New York Times, that she had written on Oct. 11, 2001, to then National Security Agency director General Michael V. Hayden. In it she expressed concern that Hayden, who had briefed the House Intelligence Committee about the steps he was taking to track down al-Qaeda terrorists after the 9/11 attacks, was not acting with "specific presidential authorization." Hayden wrote her back that he was acting under the powers granted to his agency in a 1981 Executive Order. . . .

The release of Pelosi's letter last week and the subsequent Times story ("Agency First Acted on Its Own to Broaden Spying, Files Show") left the misleading impression that a) Hayden had launched the controversial data-mining operation on his own, and b) Pelosi had protested it. But clearly the program didn't exist when Pelosi wrote the letter. When I asked the Congresswoman about this, she said, "Some in the government have accused me of confusing apples and oranges. My response is, it's all fruit."

This is not good news

Yesterday six more children who have tested positive for avian flu remained in a critical condition in the Turkish city of Van, near Dogubayazit. Another 24 suspected cases are being treated in a special ward in the university hospital.

A further 18 patients with symptoms of the disease, most of them children, are being treated in hospitals in the eastern cities of Yozgat, Erzurum and Diyarbakir. Other cases are being investigated.

I have wondered about this too.

George Will poses a question I have wondered about for some time, but he does the posing in a most Georgewillian way. The guy has a way with words.

It is mysterious why states or localities that want casinos operating nearby -- and providing jobs and tax revenue -- also want them afloat, a few feet from a riverbank or ocean shore. (Mississippi has just decided to let them come ashore.) Does the narrow band of water provide a prophylactic against sin? The communities already have weighed the sin against the jobs and revenue and found the sin congenial.

Global Warming and Greenhouse gases

Not so global global warming. Interestingly, the Northern Polar Region appears to have a rising trend from 1992. The Southern Polar region, however, demonstrates no clear trend, having cooled slightly. Contrary to hysterical claims this is pretty much the coup de grâce for the catastrophic anthropogenic greenhouse warming hypothesis. 'How so?' I hear people puzzling - it's actually pretty simple, let's walk through it:

• the misnamed 'greenhouse effect' can be experimentally demonstrated in the lab;
• logically, some warming (or not cooling) must have occurred with rising greenhouse gases;
• whether this effect is sufficiently large in the real world to even be detected is moot;
• anthropogenic greenhouse gases are well mixed in the atmosphere;
• due to topography and population, the greatest concentration of cooling particulates is located in the Northern Hemisphere;
• the cold, dry polar atmosphere has the greatest greenhouse warming potential;
• the coldest, driest atmosphere is located over Antarctica;
• air samples taken at the South Pole show anthropogenic greenhouse gases present at levels within a couple of parts per million of those taken elsewhere on the globe;
• despite its lack of cooling particulates, the Southern Polar region shows no detectable temperature response (dose-response?) to rising anthropogenic greenhouse gases;
• there is no postulated mechanism by which anthropogenic gases could cause warming in the Northern Polar region but not in the Southern Polar region;
• this tells us that warming observed in the Northern Polar region is driven by something other than anthropogenic greenhouse;
• since something other than anthropogenic greenhouse is driving all the observable (measurable) temperature change then we can be confident that tweaking anthropogenic emissions will have no measurable effect.

See? It needn't cost trillions of dollars to solve the greenhouse emission 'problem' after all. Thanks to this site.dedicated to Junk Science.

Senator Kennedy get it right!!

"What the American people have seen is this incredible disparity in which those people who had cars and money got out and those people who were impoverished died."

-- Ted Kennedy on Hurricane Katrina

"Ditto"

-- Mary Jo Kopechne

Thanks to my friend Dave Scott for this. Precious.

Bush's meeting with has beens

I was evidently wrong about the subject of Bush's meeting with the former Secretaries of Defense and State. Iran was not discussed, it seems. Too bad.

Liberal "Logic"

As I now understand it, liberals such as Senator Finegold think that President Bush exceeded his constitutional authority when he intercepted (I think wire tap is the wrong word here) messages sent by or to individuals with suspected ties to terrorism because he did not establish beforehand some reasonable assurance that they were in fact terrorists. Setting aside the complete lack of understanding of the powers the Constitution gives our Chief Executive, I wonder if Sen. Finegold thinks I should be X-rayed, screened, wanded and otherwise scrutinized before getting on a plane. Surely all of us in that long line at the airport have not been clearly established as terrorists to some reasonable degree of assurance. If you don't think that is a good example, go to Washington and try to get into the good senator's office without scrutiny. The guy is a partisan idiot.

Neal Boortz's Analysis of the Mine Disaster

There was one absolute certainty yesterday as the tragic story of the West Virginia mine disaster unfolded. By the end of the day the disaster was going to be blamed on either (a) global warming or (b) George Bush.

Well, it didn't take long. Yesterday somebody named Jack Spadaro, who is the former head of something called the National Mine Safety and Health Academy, went on Hannity and Colmes. The topic was the mining disaster in West Virginia that claimed the lives of 12 miners and left one in critical condition. He was asked what he made of the safety at the mine.His response: "This mine should have been closed." Fair comment.

Asked why, he said "There were too many serious violations and the record is very clear." At this point, that's obvious. So far, so good. Just another run-of-mill interview with a mining expert...the kind of thing we've heard over and over the past couple days. Then he took that extra step...the one we were all waiting for.

Asked to elaborate on why he thought the mine stayed open despite the violations, Mr. Spadaro actually said this: "I think it's because of the current Bush administration's policies toward mine operators and their reluctance to take the strong enforcement action that's sometimes necessary." That's right....those miners died because of, you guessed it, Bush's lack of enforcement of mining regulations. The president killed the miners!

To the left, everything is George W. Bush's fault. It doesn't matter what wrong is committed anywhere in the world...there is nothing the president isn't responsible for. We'll hear more about this...and by the time it's all said and done, liberals will be accusing Bush of purposely blowing the mine shaft to take the news coverage off the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Apparently the explosion originated in a sealed mine shaft. Obviously the result of an administration plot. Where's Louis Farrakhan on this?

Oh ... before we leave this. How in the world could this be blamed on global warming? Well, let me help out the environmental moonbats on this one. There are reports of a serious thunderstorm at the time of the mine explosion. Some people are actually wondering if that lightning on the surface might have had anything to do with the explosion a few miles down. Well, if you can make that connection, then you can say that the thunderstorm was unusual this time of the year in the mountains of West Virginia, and that global warming gets the credit.

Bush reaching out?

Bush has invited a bunch of former Secretaries of State and Defense from both parties to the White House for a briefing on Iraq. Many are making the point that Bush is finally reaching out to others--even as the Iraq military activity seems to be winding down and our involvement decreasing. My suspicion is Bush doesn't care what Madelyn Albright and Colin Powell think of his Iraq policy. I think they will be talking about Iran and potential action against their nuclear activity.

Ralph Nader better avoid this guy

A guy by the name of Patrick reports the following:

Cylert (generic name “pemoline”) has been the most effective treatment for Teresa’s narcolepsy in 24 years since she was first diagnosed. She’s been taking it for most of that time. Now it’s gone.

We discovered this when we tried to refill her standard prescription, just before Christmas, and the pharmacy didn’t have any—and, after some confusion, reported back that the wholesaler didn’t have any either, because (surprise!) it’s no longer being made.

Cylert has been implicated in some people’s liver problems. Teresa is regularly tested and her liver is fine. Evidently Abbott, makers of brand-name Cylert, discontinued it in March—but Sandoz intended to keep making the generic version, until the FDA, pressured by Nader’s group, weighed in to discontinue it entirely—despite a last-minute appeal from the Narcolepsy Network. Thank you, Public Citizen, for completely shafting my wife.

The demographic problem

Most of us haven't yet begun to think about the consequences of low birth rates and the future of Western Civilization. I hadn't. An essay I read this morning changed all that. Read it here. It is brilliant, but scary. Basically it presents our most important problem in a way which is impossible to disagree with.

Here is a sample which should intice you to read it all.

".... if we are at war—and half the American people and significantly higher percentages in Britain, Canada, and Europe don’t accept that proposition—than what exactly is the war about?

We know it’s not really a “war on terror.” Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even “radical Islam.” The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it’s easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in “Palestine,” Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally."

Cream of the black crop

Firebrand Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has been named "Person of the Year for 2005" in an online poll by the Black Entertainment Television network, beating out Oprah Winfrey, Sen. Barack Obama and BET founder Robert L. Johnson.

The BET.com VP credited Farrakhan's Millions More March last October with mobilizing "hundreds of thousands of blacks around the issues of atonement and empowerment, and to convince the masses of our people that we must be the primary catalysts and engines for positive change in our communities."

During his Millions More March address, Farrakhan urged African-Americans to bring a class action suit for "criminal neglect" against the U.S. on behalf of Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans and demanded that America "acknowledge her wickedness to the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere."

For weeks before the march, the controversial minister touted a theory that the Bush administration had blown up the levees in New Orleans. Farrakhan said he came to that conclusion after a private meeting with Mayor Ray Nagin, who told him there was a 25-foot crater beneath the levees.

Boondoggle Update

The most serious disagreement I have had with my brother-in-law since he went into Congress was on the issue of the latest Medicare prescription benefit program which he voted for and then tried to defend. If you don't remember, the House had to hold the vote open for 3 hours past the usual 15 minutes in order to bribe and pressure enough votes to pass it. Now we see seniors trying to understand the thing as it will go into effect this year. My objection that a federal program which paid for my prescription drugs when I could well afford them would eventually break the bank. Evidence that I am right is now being brought to light as the estimates for the cost of the thing keeps going up. Neal Boortz's opinion is given below.

George Bush's massive new entitlement program, the Medicare prescription benefit will prove itself to be a bottomless pit where taxpayers money is squandered on prescription drugs for members of the Gimme Generation who, for the most part, could damn well afford to buy them on their own. When this monstrosity was passed the average senior citizen in this country was spending about $600 a year on their prescription drugs. That's less than they were paying for their cell phone bills. Now with this quasi-welfare program the drug companies will step up their advertising and the wizened citizens will be demanding this, that and the other thing. The original cost estimate was $300 billion over ten years. By the end of 2006 that estimate will be at one TRILLION dollars.

This man is too intelligent to ignore

Thomas Sowell starts the new year with an essay I fear is too likely to be prophetic. Read it all.

When you are boating on the Niagara River, there are signs marking the point at which you must go ashore or else you will be sucked over the falls. With Iran moving toward the development of nuclear weapons, we are getting dangerously close to that fatal point of no return on the world stage.

Yet there are few signs of alarm in our public discourse, whether among politicians, the media, or the intelligentsia. There is much more discussion of whether government anti-terrorism agents should be able to look at the records of books borrowed from public libraries.

Affirmative Action

I just ran across this interesting essay on affirmative action. A snippet is given below, but the whole thing is worth reading here.
Dear Owen:

Thank you for writing to express your views on affirmative action. Although the article to which you responded is one I wrote nearly three years ago, your argument is timeless. You are black. I am white. Therefore, I “owe it to you” to support race-based affirmative action.

I want to thank you for saving me from being the token affirmative action opponent in the “forums” my university occasionally holds on the subject. Recently, I was asked to join one such “forum” to discuss the subject with five affirmative action supporters. A “forum” with five supporters and one opponent was my university’s first attempt at viewpoint diversity in nearly a decade. That was because a student organized the event. If the administration organized the event, I would have received no such invitation.

But I declined the invitation for the same reason I once declined a philosophy professor’s kind invitation to share my opposition to affirmative action with his class. The reason is that I simply don’t have enough material to “support” my position. I’m just opposed to racial discrimination. I cannot muster more than that one sentence. I’m just opposed to racial discrimination.