Harriet Meirs

I have decided Miss Meirs should not be confirmed. Furthermore., I don't think she will be. A fairly good analysis of the reasons can be found here.

Pakistan Earthquake

Has anyone checked Osama's cave to be sure he is O.K.?

Bankrupcy

A large auto parts supplier declared bankrupcy today. Delphi is one of the nations's largest and joins a growing list of bankrupt companies. The reasons why so many companies are taking this route make a lot of sense. First, if they have labor contracts negotiated when times were better, they can restructure them on more favorable terms. They can restruct debt on better terms. They can downsize the existing work force. Finally, they can turn over their pension liabilities to the federal government and let you and me pay it. We won't completely replace the retired worker retirement income which was pledged in the working years, so the workers will have less and we will have less because there are so many companies realizing how easy this is that our federal obligation will go through the roof and the money has to come from somewhere.

George Will hits the nail

I have been somewhat ambivalent on the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in that there are reasons to be upset and other reasons to be semi-supportive. In the press conference yesterday, President Bush asked us to trust him since he had seen into her soul like he did with Putin and all that crap. I suspect he was wrong about Putin and this made me suspicious about his soul-peeking with Harriet. The conflict was broken for me today when I read that George Will made his usual cogent observation on the subject.

"Bush "forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution" by calling McCain-Feingold unconstitutional back in 2000, then signing it into law. "

Oklahoma coverup???

That guy who blew himself up outside the stadium at O.U. last weekend has raised suspicions about the report the guy was "ill". He evidently had a lot more explosives at his house than a mentally ill suicidal student would require. You can read about it here.

From Dad to the Nobel Prize

I learned today that two Australian scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery back in the 1980's that a bacterium by the name of Helicobacterium pylori was the cause of duodenal and gastric ulcers rather than stress and excessive gastric acidity as previously thought. I always enjoyed lecturing on that to medical students back then because it was controversial for some years. I was also always a bit struck by the irony that my own Dad died of complications from duodenal ulcer surgery complications in 1958 that could have been cured by a week's worth of antibiotics.
Timing is everything they say.

Bush's Supreme Court Pick

Harriet Miers seems to be a bigger hit with liberals everyone expected to oppose her than with the conservatives who are dissappointed with her. My own theory about such things is in these appointments and in elections we almost always get what we didn't think we would get. I could give a lot of examples going all the way back to LBJ who promised to get us out of Viet Nam. Bush has turned out to be more compassionate than conservative and it could be Roberts will be the disappointment and Meirs will be the next Scalia. In any event, it seems way too soon to get all excited. Eisenhower was surprised by Earl Warren, Bush the elder was surprised by Souter and thus it will always be, I suspect.

This is so good it makes me hurt!

This seems to be my day for media blogs. If so inclined, however, I suspect I could spend all my efforts in that direction. I am restrained by the fact that there are people out there like Mark Steyn who write so well it makes me hurt. Here is an example from today's article in the Chicago Sun Times.

Most of the media are still in Dan mode, sucking up their guts and congratulating themselves about what a swell job they did during Katrina. CNN producers were advising their guests to "be angry," and there was so much to get angry about, not least the fact that no matter how angry you got on air Anderson Cooper was always much better at it. And Mayor Nagin as well. To show he was angry, he said "frickin'" all the frickin' time so that by the end of a typical Nagin soundbite you felt as if you'd been gang-fricked. "That frickin' Superdome," he raged. "Five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

But nobody got killed by a hooligan in the Superdome. The problem wasn't rape and murder, but the rather more prosaic lack of bathroom facilities. As Ben Stein put it, it was the media that rioted. They grabbed every lurid rumor and took it for a wild joyride across prime time. There was a real story in there -- big hurricane, people dead -- but it wasn't enough, and certainly not for damaging President Bush.

Think about that: Hurricane week was in large part a week of drivel, mostly the bizarre fantasies of New Orleans' incompetent police chief but amplified hugely by a gullible media. Given everything we now know they got wrong in Louisiana, where they speak the language, how likely is it that the great blundering herd are getting it any more accurate in Iraq?

New York Times

I don't understand why I am still surprised by crap I read in the main stream media such as the NYT, but I was again this morning when I opened their web site. The first story dealt with the fact that prisoners serving life terms were dying in prison. Duh. The article itself gave an example of a cold-blooded killer who was still in prison despite having gotten a high school diploma while in prison. The article is here if you can read it without sobbing in sympathy for the poor mistreated inmates.

I thought Bush was responsible!

Increased output from the Sun might be to blame for 10 to 30 percent of global warming that has been measured in the past 20 years, according to a new report.

Increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases still play a role, the scientists say.

But climate models of global warming should be corrected to better account for changes in solar activity, according to Nicola Scafetta and Bruce West of Duke University.

The findings were published online this week by the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

My Candidate for Worst Idea Correctly Rejected

A senior U.S. official rejected calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet, reiterating U.S. intentions to keep its historical role as the medium's principal overseer.

"We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. "Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable."

Hurricane Summary

The following was published on Slate and pretty well sums up the way the events of Katrina were presented.

Liberal position: Racist neglect caused poor New Orleans residents to suffer from the unspeakable things that only a racist would assume actually happened!

Conservative position: A father-less under-culture caused poor New Orleans residents to do the unspeakable things the anti-Bush MSM falsely reported they did!

Entitlements

There is much talk in the blogosphere about budget cuts to offset what is projected to be breath-taking in expendatures for rebuilding the Gulf Coast. The only real place to do this is in entitlements.Of course, it won’t be easy. Ameri cans are too comfortable with their Social Security and Medicare benefits to let them be trimmed without a vicious fight. There is one entitlement, however, that Americans haven’t gotten their claws into because it’s not scheduled to start until Jan. 1: the Medicare prescription drug benefit. To offset the spending on Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction, the Republican Study Committee is proposing cuts that will save nearly $103 billion in 2006, $370 billion over five years and $950 billion over 10. Part of Operation Offset’s savings just happens to come from delaying by one year the start of the prescription drug benefit. Not a bad start. Here’s a great finish: Kill the program before it becomes entrenched and begins to metastasize. As Congress debated the prescription drug benefit for the elderly, the country was told it would cost $400 billion over 10 years. No way. Government programs always grow far beyond their forecast costs. Here are some examples:

• Consider Medicare. When it was launched in 1965, we were told it would cost $9 billion a year by 1990. Twenty-five years later, its cost was $67 billion. When a special hospital subsidy was added in 1987, Washington said it would cost $100 million in five years. Real cost: $11 billion.
  
• Then there was the 1988 projection that Medicare’s home-care program would cost $4 billion by 1993. Five years later, spending was in fact $10 billion.

So it will be with the Medicare prescription benefit. Sen. John McCain said it’s now projected to cost $730 billion over 10 years, a jump of nearly 83% before the first pill is popped. Even that figure’s a bit misleading, because it doesn’t include $134 billion that will be spent by the states, plus other Washington budget tricks. The real cost is going to be closer to $1.2 trillion.
Clearly, the drug benefit will be a budget buster. Surely the Bush administration understands that by enlarging the welfare state now, they'll bleed the public dry later. Tom Delay had to keep the vote open nearly all night to get the thing passed in the House. Killing it with a new Majority Leader should be easy. Hope someone has the courage to challenge the big-spending Bush and kill this baby in its crib.

FEMA

I guess a governmental agency has to have its rules. Afterall, Congress forces them to do certain things, but I read the other day that some firefighter/EMT volunteers from Indiana signed up to go to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast and FEMA first sent them to Atlanta for 8 hours of sensitivity and diversity training . Geez!

Texas Solution to Looting

American Society

Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently pointed out some statistics which tell a lot about the status of American society today. Here are some of his observations and statistics:

• The underclass has grown at the same time as crime has been decreasing for 13 years. Even though the crime rate has been dropping, the number of young men who commit crimes if given the opportunity has not dropped. We have just locked them up. When Reagan was first sworn into office 0.9% of the population was in prison. In 2003 it stood at 2.4%. This represents an actual prison population of 490,000 in Reagan's time and 2,086,000 in 1903.
  
• Another manifestation of unsocialized young men, most of whom grew up without Fathers, is the proportion of males age 20-24 who choose not to work. In 1954 the figures stood at 9%. In 1999 it had risen to 30% and this doesn't include those which we have locked up in prison.
  
• What evidence is there that growing up without Fathers is related to the problem? In the early 1950's, illegitimacy (rate of births to single women) stood at 4%. In 1988 it reached 25%, in 2003 it was 35% and in 2003 the black illegitimacy rate stood at 68%.
  
• The saddest aspect of all this is the Democrats rediscovered the plight of this underclass following Katrina and blame it all on Bush and the Republicans , or at least Bush, rediscovered poverty and is now claiming that government can fix it. As if Lyndon Johnson didn't prove that the programs which politicians tout as cures are a mismatch for the problems.
  

Hard to argue with this

"In 2006, all Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for reelection. They ought to be turned out in droves. Their conduct for the past six years has betrayed every promise they ever made about smaller, less-intrusive government and fiscal responsibility. They passed tax cuts, which in the old days meant less revenue, thus less government. But then they have passed one pork-laden bill after another. They have created new entitlement programs, and they have spent the Treasury dry."
Read the whole thing here.

Hurricane Relief

For some years now, I have not trusted the Red Cross. Their performance with hurricane relief seems to vindicate this opinion. Most reports I read seem to support the conclusion that the Salvation Army is doing a much better job in getting relief to those who need it. I am sure it is a challenge to meet the needs of so many who have lost everything and want instant restoration of their lives, but the Red Cross has collected a billion dollars and hundreds of thousands of volunteers and still can't perform efficiently.
FEMA is apparently a fairly typical government operation. I know you can't believe what you read in the papers--especially an AP report--but evidently a FEMA relief station closed down yesterday because there were too many people there trying to get some help. And it was hot. So they recommended that people go home and call FEMA or get on the internet to register for help. Next they will tell people to call them on their satellite phones or text message with their Blackberries.

You gotta love the late Henny Youngman

Getting on a plane, I told the ticket lady, "Send one of my bags to New York, send one to Los Angeles, and send one to Miami." She said, "We can't do that!" I told her, "You did it last week!"

The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying "Mrs. Cohen, your check came back." Mrs. Cohen answered "So did my arthritis!"

The Doctor says "You'll live to be 60!" "I AM 60!" "See, what did I tell you?"

A doctor says to a man "You want to improve your love life? You need to get some exercise. Run ten miles a day." Two weeks later, the man called the doctor. The doctor says "How is your love life since you have been running?" "I don't know, I'm 140 miles away!"

"Doctor, I have a ringing in my ears." "Don't answer!"

Nurse: "Doctor, the man you just gave a clean bill of health to dropped dead right as he was leaving the office". Doctor: "Turn him around, make it look like he was walking in."

A bum asked me "Give me $10 till payday." I asked "When's payday?" He said "I don't know, you're the one who is working!"

A bum came up to me saying "I haven't eaten in two days!" I said, "You should force yourself!"

Another bum told me "I haven't tasted food all week." I told him "Don't worry, it still tastes the same!"

I played a great horse yesterday! It took seven horses to beat him.

She's been married so many times she has rice marks on her face.

She has a wash and wear bridal gown.

Those two are a fastidious couple. She's fast and he's hideous.

She's a big-hearted girl with hips to match.

This man used to go to school with his dog. Then they were separated. His dog graduated!

During the war an Italian girl saved my life. She hid me in her basement in Cleveland.

Why does the New Italian navy have glass bottom boats? To see the Old Italian Navy!

A woman was taking a shower. There is a knock on the door. "Who is it?" "Blind man!" The woman opens the door. "Where do you want these blinds, lady?"

A man is at the bar, drunk. I pick him up off the floor, and offer to take him home. On the way to my car, he falls down three times. When I get to his house, I help him out of the car, and on the way to the front door, he falls down four more times. I ring the bell, and say, "Here's your husband!" The man's wife says, "Where's his wheelchair?"

n high school football, the coach kept me on the bench all year. On the last game of the season, the crowd was yelling, "We want Youngman! We want Youngman!" The coach says, "Youngman - go see what they want!"

I wish my brother would learn a trade, so I would know what kind of work he's out of.

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

I asked my wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary?" She said, "Somewhere I have never been!" I told her, "How about the kitchen?"

My wife and I went back to the hotel where we spent our wedding night. Only this time, I stayed in the bathroom and cried.

Katrina's Research Effects

Since I used to be in the research business to some extent, I found it interesting to read how much the Katrina aftermath affected scientific research--especially biological research. For example, when the power went out in New Orleans and other places in the Gulf Coast, many research labs were fatally crippled. LSU reported that 8,000 research animals were lost due to the loss of temperature control and an inability to even feed them. Similar losses were experienced at Tulane and other research facilities. It will take years to rebuild these resources if it can be done at all.

Another research effort affected was clinical trials. In order to be valid, there must be a continuum of treatment of patients in various groups and this became impossible when the patients couldn't come for treatment visits. The National Cancer Institute alone had 318 trials involving over 7,000 patients registered which have been adversely affected, and in some cases compromised completely.

Finally, the most damaging blow may have been to cells and other biological samples which were being preserved in freezers throughout the area. Preservation of irreplaceable tissues, bacterial cell cultures, and other cells depends almost entirely on liquid nitrogen, which needs to be replenished frequently, or low temperature freezers which, of course, need electric power to function. When exposed to elevated temperatures, the cells die or in the case of serum or other types of research samples, are ruined.

Happy Arrest

Looks like an enjoyable arrest to me.

I am just shocked

Closely on the heels of two hurricanes we now have the slimy trial lawyers moving in. They want to rewrite insurance policies to make the companies which have sold policies with flood exclusions for decades now pay for this form of damage. A tort kingpin by the name of Dickie Scruggs whose own home in Mississippi was damaged now promises to sue for deceptive business practices. He is arguing that since the wind pushed the water during the hurricane the flooding was in fact wind damage.This should be a non-starter since the policies exclude rising water no matter what caused it.

It is important for the insurance companies to win this battle. The way insurance works is the companies assess risk and when an incident occurs, they use the money gathered from the many to pay damage to the few affected. With flood insurance, the only people who will buy the coverage are those who have a risk to flooding. If it is found that legally, the companies writing policies for those in flood zones must pay regardless of exclusions written in plain English, they will be faced with bankruptcy and if they survive, they will have to charge all of us for flood damage, even if we live on mountain tops in the desert. The risk has to be spread in order to be real insurance.
There is an alternative, however. Rational insurance companies could well choose to simply stop writing policies in states like Mississippi where contracts are not worth the paper they are written on.

Middle East Confusion

I admit I am not the first one to be confused by the actions of those in the middle of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but the Gaza situation is fully bazaar. The Israeli citizens have been removed from Gaza and Hamas celebrates their departure by exploding their own rockets killing large numbers of Palestinians. To save face Hamas blames Israel and begins shooting inaccurate rockets into Israel which hurt nobody. In response the Hamas leaders are being pounded with highly accurate missiles being fired in retaliation by the Israeli military. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has chosen to simply call for everyone to play nice rather than exert any form of control over Hamas and other militants. It is hard to see how this is going to end well for those left in Gaza. I have long thought that the only solution to the mess in the Middle East is a decisive military victory and I still feel that way. We may be getting closer to that day.

Quote of the day

In his comment on Hillary Clinton's decision to meet with the Sheehan woman, Mark Steyn says:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has yielded to "pressure" and agreed to meet with Mrs. Sheehan to "explain" her vote for the Iraq war. The dwindling stars of today's Democratic Party expend most of their energy jumping through the ever smaller hoops of an ever kookier fringe.

Porkbusters

There is a big movement in the blogosphere to generate political pressure on Congress and President Bush to help pay for hurricane damage by reducing the "set-asides" in the recently passed Highway bill or by some other measures such as delaying the Medicare drug bill which is a gigantic boondoggle. Much sound and fury is directed toward a return to fiscal sanity which Republicans used to rate highly on their agenda. The following quote by Jonah Goldberg sums up my feelings on the subject.

"Expecting Congress — of either party — to give back pork which has already been approved and passed into law is like expecting crack whores to give refunds days after services have been rendered."

This doesn't seem right to me

Women are increasingly seeking inappropriate IVF treatment because they do not have the time or inclination for a sex life and want to "diarise" their busy lives. Wealthy career women in their 30s and early 40s, some of whom have given up regular sex altogether, are turning to "medicalised conception" - despite being fertile and long before they have exhausted the possibility of a natural conception. Read it here.

Best Hiatus

We'll be off to Las Vegas for most of next week. Unless I win one of those casinos, I may not find anything of interest that is worthy of the BestView.

Scalia vs. Schumer; No contest

Speaking recently at Chapman University Law School in California, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said:

"Now the Senate is looking for moderate judges, mainstream judges. What in the world is a moderate interpretation of a constitutional text? Halfway between what it says and what we'd like it to say?"

Scalia was probably responding to a public release by Senator Schumer of a letter he wrote giving advise to President Bush on how to pick a judge.

"I start by encouraging you to use the same principles that guide me in evaluating judicial nominees. I consider three criteria: excellence, diversity and moderation."

Stupid Questions

As a former Professor, I really enjoyed an article I just read by Mike S. Adams, a professorial slave at UNC Wilmington, which challenges the old saying that there is no such thing as a stupid question. Here are some examples he has endured in his career and you can decide:

• Why do you consider homosexuality to be abnormal simply because most people don't do it?
• What makes you think that all illegal aliens have broken the law?
• Are you going to talk about anything important next class period?
• Nearly three years ago, a feminist student asked me why she should support the First Amendment rights of the religious right since those people prevented her mother and grandmother from exercising the right to choose an abortion. That was the kind of brilliant question that only an honor student could ask. Surely, she would be less resentful had her mother or grandmother decided to have an abortion.
• Why do you talk about us trans-sexuals as if we are somehow different from other people

Dr. Adams ends with this advice:

The next time you hear someone ask a stupid question just say "Man, that was a stupid question." Remind the person that the First Amendment gives him a right to show us he is stupid. But, also remind him that the Fifth Amendment can help him keep it a secret.

Global Warming and Hurricanes

The following is an exerpt from an interview with the man who has studied hurricanes for over 50 years. Read the whold thing here.

Glassman: And from a seasonal, monthly point of view, you had been predicting a growing number of hurricanes. Now, my question is in the wake of Katrina and some of the statements that we’ve heard immediately afterwards by advocates of the global warming theory – is global warming behind this increase in hurricanes?

Gray: I am very confident that it’s not. I mean we have had global warming. That’s not a question. The globe has warmed the last 30 years, and the last 10 years in particular. And we’ve had, at least the last 10 years, we’ve had a pick up in the Atlantic basin major storms. But in the earlier period, if we go back from 1970 through the middle ‘90s, that 25 year period – even though the globe was warming slightly, the number of major storms was down, quite a bit down.

Now, another feature of this is that the Atlantic operates differently. The other global storm basins, the Atlantic only has about 12 percent of the global storms. And in the other basins, the last 10 years – even though the Atlantic major storm activity has gone up greatly the last 10 years. In the other global basins, it’s slightly gone down. You know, both frequency and strength of storms have not changed in these other basins. If anything, they’ve slightly gone down. So if this was a global warming thing, you would think, “Well gee, all of the basins should be responding much the same.”

Stuff I ran across today

1. Others have not forgotten. It has now been 229 days since John Kerry promised to release his military records.

2. A few days ago I posted a link to a National Geographic article published last Fall which, writing in the past tense, described what then seemed to be a prescient chronicle of the events in New Orleans. Here is a sample: Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
Now it looks like it won't be that bad.

3. This look good? Unfortunately, this isn't on my diet anymore. Anything that starts with a pound of bacon is alright with me.

1 lb bacon
1 loaf bread
1(16-oz) ctn sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 lg tomato (take out seeds & juice)

Fry bacon until crisp. Cool and break into small pieces. Dice tomato.
Mix sour cream and mayonnaise.
Add tomato and bacon pieces.
Toast 1 loaf of bread and cut in triangles. Serve toast on side for dipping.

Liberal version of Bush Vacation

Katrina in Football Pads

Of all the consequences of Katrina, the one which is now being brought to the surface with the most heat is the way some of the most promising football players on the Gulf Coast have suddenly suited up and starred for teams hundreds of miles from their original schools. It has even been alleged that some coaches actually went to shelters and made it known they needed a running back or wide receiver or whatever. Opposing coaches and fans have charged that the housing and other accommodations for such players and families which accompanied matriculation in the new school may have even been of the quid pro quo ilk. To paraphrase the line from Casablanca, "I am just shocked."

MY FAMOUS LIST

Several years ago I kept a list of my colleagues whom I found especially irritating. Most were also shallow and phony. There were strict rules governing this list. It could only have 10 names on it. In order to add someone new, I had to remove someone. This often proved difficult, but it prevented me from what I feared could be unseemly excess.
I think this might be a good time to resurrect the list for this blog. Obviously, my colleagues and relatives would not be suitable for this blog, even though some could qualify, so I will start with well-known names which illustrate the principle. There are only 5 names at the present time and I can accept nominations as I consider additions to reach the maximum magic number. As you ponder the list, you must keep in mind that you won't make the list if you are just pitiful--like Michael Jackson or Mike Tyson. In addition, if you are just stupid--like Jessica Simpson--there is no way to justify the exclusion of others, like Paris Hilton who is similarily afflicted. So, she won't be on the list.

1. Dennis Rodman--his brain must rattle around in his skull like a BB in a boxcar. Wasted life.
   
2. Geraldo Rivera--what a phony. And slimy.
   
3. Jane Fonda--she makes the list in so many ways it is hard to know where to start
4. Tom DeLay--see comments below
   
5. Joe Biden--I have to be careful with politicians since I could easily fill up the entire list with just them. DeLay and Biden, however, are especially phony and in their own way equally vicious and thus despicable.

Hopefully this will give an idea about the list. You can't just be a hopeless liberal like Al Franken or a conservative bloviator like Rush Limbaugh. You can actually find humor in both of these guys. Hollywood is full of candidates and may be represented in the future. The problem is knowing where to start out there. It is sort of like the politician problem. I will keep working on it and consider suggestions of others.

Poor Judge Roberts

This is what happens to someone who has to spend hour after hour listening to Biden, Kennedy, Schumer, et al.

Gas and lettuce

My bride and I have chuckled over the years about the time when for some reason we can't remember that lettuce went from 59 cents per head to well over $1.50. We largely had to either not buy lettuce or pay what we considered exorbitant prices. After a period of some months, the crisis in lettuce abated and the price came down to around 99 cents. To us, that meant the veggie was a bargain and we again bought it with nary a thought.
We are seeing the same thing in gasoline today. After buying a few tanksful at $3.49 per gallon, we have forgotten how neat it was to pay under $2.00 per gallon and now think nothing of filling up at $2.60 per.

Predictable Senators

The Senate Judiciary Committee is stuffed with 18 of the most ideological clowns in that entire body. On the democrat's side, the liberals have had over a month to dig into Robert's background to uncover something which can be used to derail his nomination. They haven't found anything and can't even manufacture something. So they have one last chance to block Judge Roberts. They have to come up with questions in these hearings which trap him into saying something which they can use to parlay into a denial of confirmation. This would be difficult in the best of circumstances since he is smarter than any of them, but the way they procede when the camera is on is almost comical. Each Senator has 30 minutes. Instead of giving Roberts a lot of short questions to answer in the time allotted them, they can't resist long, rambling, self-congratulatory statements with numerous first person references which allows Roberts to just sit there listening to their drivel. You gotta love it.

Transposons

A female researcher by the name of Barbara McClintock discovered jumping genes in corn. She called these transposons and described them as genes which were able to move from place to place on the chromosome. Finally it was found that such genes were responsible for the different colors in corn. She got the Nobel Prize for this research in 1983 and since then her research has been expanded in remarkable ways. Now, for example, scientists have taken a gene from coral and inserted it into mice and made them glow red, or other colors. A scientist by the name of Tian Xu has recently taken this "trick" which has been done by numerous laboratories, and shown how such transposons, his is called PiggyBac and came from the cabbage looper moth, can be used in genetic modifications at cost of a mere $500. Heretofore, the cost has been $100,000 to create a modified mouse. Now drug companies, for example, can use genes which have been modified to jump will-nilly around cells as they watch to see which genes or combination of genes permit cancer to develop. Another benefit one can predict is gene therapy. Such things as muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, and cystic fibrosis are good candidates for targeting the gene defects which cause them. Until now, however, there has been no cost effective way to address the theoretical approach. A researcher by the name of Largaespada at the University of Minnesota has created a transposon called Sleeping Beauty. Like PiggyBac, his transposon which came from fish, and also works well in mammals. This is all pretty exciting to someone who once studied all of this as a possibility at some time in the distant future.

West Nile Fever

We should not let idiots like New York's Green Party, which is against killing of mosquitos because it "disrupts the food chain", dictate our reaction to health threats. I have already written about how banning of DDT in developing countries has allowed malaria cases to increase to the point where about 1 million people are killed each year by malaria.

Here is the current situation. We have the Gulf Coast with standing water and mosquitos breeding at abnormally high rates at a time when the mosquito-borne viral infection known as West Nile Fever is gaining in both incidence and severity. Last year there were 2,500 serious cases and 100 deaths from West Nile. The virus reservoir is animals--mostly birds-- and there is a time lag between animals becoming infected, mosquitos conveying the virus to humans and the incubation time until serious infection is recognized. The virus has been found in birds in 44 states and Louisiana is 4th in the number of human infections. Conditions in New Orleans can reasonably lead to an increase in cases despite a warning by the CDC to avoid mosquito bites by wearing clothes which cover the skin, using insect repellent and removing standing water. Good luck. The CDC doesn't challenge the politically charged suggestion that insecticides could be used.
In 1972, on the basis of data on toxicity to fish and migrating birds, the EPA banned almost all uses of DDT. It is ironic, of course, that the substance banned largely because of its toxicity to birds is now unavailable to kill mosquitos bearing a virus which is killing birds by the millions. We should declare an exception to the ban on the use of DDT in the New Orleans area for mosquito control. There are no good alternatives since DDT is long acting and could well spare a lot of people in the New Orleans area a life-threatening and preventable disease.

Whose side are they on???

The House yesterday passed a resolution commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It extended sympathy to the victims and survivors; honored the military, first responders, and others who helped; thanked foreign leaders for their support; declared that America is not waging war "on any people or any faith"; reaffirmed a commitment to the global war on terrorism; and vowed "never [to] forget the sacrifices made" on 9/11 or to "bow to terrorist demands."

No one could disagree with that, right? Not quite. The House vote for the resolution was 402-6; here are the six far-left Democrats who voted "no":

• John Conyers (Mich.)
• Barbara Lee (Calif.)
• Jim McDermott (Wash.)
• Cynthia McKinney (Ga.)
• Pete Stark (Calif.)
• Lynn Woolsey (Calif.)

Katrina Photos

This is an interesting picture on the Gulf Coast looking back from the beach inland. It is easy to see how far inland the water surge went. Above that, structures pretty much survived.

Good Recommendation

I just ran across the following written by a blogger whom I follow fairly often. He posts mostly on other things, but I intend to at least tape the program.

The story of Flight 93 is extraordinary. "The Flight That Fought Back" is an extraordinary documentary.

On September 11, at 9 PM (ET/PT), Discovery Channel will screen this documentary in the United States, with other countries to follow soon (please check you local TV guides for details). Thanks to the show's creators, I got a sneak preview and just finished watching it.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

You simply cannot miss it. I never type in capitals to make a point, but you can take it that I am now. Extensively researched and drawing on some previously unpublished information, "The Flight That Fought Back" provides the most complete and comprehensive recreation of events onboard Flight 93. It's a stunning, immensely moving production.

ESPN is an idiot

Unless you watch college football, this might not mean much to you, but ESPN has fired Trev Alberts and kept Lee Corso. In doing so, they have eliminated one of their few personalities that give an honest and intelligent opinion and retained the buffoonery we see and hear from Lee Corso on Gameday.

Corps of Engineers Projects in New Orleans

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing. Read the entire article here in the Washington Post.

I was mildly surprised to read in this paper that the stinginess of the Bush administration was not responsible for the breech of the levees.

Buddy Holly

Today is the anniversary of Buddy Holly's birth. What an unbelievable impact he achieved in a recording career that lasted less than two years. When he died at age 22 in the famous plane crash of February 1959 while on his way from Clear Lake, Iowa to a concert in Moorhead, Minnesota, he had established himself as a precocious musician of great gifts.

Writing and singing his own songs, fronting his own four-piece band, introducing the Fender Stratocaster as the supreme rock axe, Holly inspired a legion of followers. Foremost among the followers, of course, were the Beatles. They paid tribute to Holly in their name, a play off of Holly's Crickets, the group that had backed him on his first hits. But the Beatles were only the most prominent of an improbable crew of successors including Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Elvis Costello.

The song that put Holly on the charts was "That'll Be the Day," a takeoff on John Wayne's line in "The Searchers." The hits that followed were "Peggy Sue," "Oh, Boy!" "Maybe Baby," "Rave On," "Heartbeat," and "It Doesn't Matter Anymore." Among the nonhits are such knockouts as "Words of Love," "Well All Right," and "Not Fade Away."

Earl Pitts, American

Earl Pitts comes on my radio station every day at about 9:30 am and offers up some red-neck wisdom. Yesterday he made the observation that a naked woman could get a man to do whatever she wanted. Never had thought about it before, but I guess ol' Earl has that about right.

Rehnquist Humor

Rehnquist actually possessed a sense of humor. Not too many years ago, while addressing a ceremony at the University of Virginia Law School, he began his speech by noting that the audience was filled with lawyers and nonlawyers alike.

"In the past, when I've talked to audiences like this, I've often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who's been nasty, greedy and unethical. But I've stopped that practice," he said.

"I gradually realized that the lawyers in the audience didn't think the jokes were funny and the nonlawyers didn't know they were jokes."

Foreign Assistance

In an earlier blog I wondered how other nations would respond to our Gulf Coast hurricane and the resultant destruction. Well, the evidence is coming in and overall other countries are really stepping up to pledge assistance. For example, Bangladesh, one of the worlds poorest countries is sending $1 million and France is sending some cots.

National Geographic Article, October 2004

This article is not even a year old and it describes pretty well what we are now observing in New Orleans.

Funny if it weren't pathetic

EFFORTS by Hollywood actor Sean Penn to aid New Orleans victims stranded by Hurricane Katrina foundered badly overnight, when the boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.

Penn had planned to rescue children waylaid by Katrina's flood waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.

The actor, known for his political activism, was seen wearing what appeared to be a white flak jacket and frantically bailing water out of the sinking vessel with a red plastic cup.

When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down the flooded New Orleans street.

Nobody was rescued since his entourage filled the boat.

Bush's Elevation of John Roberts

When Sandra Day O'Connor retired, the liberals insisted Bush appoint a centrist to replace her and maintain the balance on the court. Now that Bush has named Roberts who clerked under Rehnquist ( whom they considered a right-wing, conservative, originalist) to replace Rehnquist as Chief Justice, I wonder if they will be happy?

Economic Ramifications of Katrina

1. National debt will go up and the movement toward lowering taxes will be confounded.
2. Unemployment will go up.
3. The Fed may stop raising interest rates. At least they should.
   
4. Online retail sites will be affected. People who once used the internet to shop and book travel will not have computers for some time. I read today that companies like Amazon have many orders ready to ship to the affected area and, of course, the addresses on the orders no longer exist. Credit card companies will have to unwind a lot of charges.
5. Companies like Home Depot will benefit. So will home builders and road builders and companies which sell heavy equipment, like Caterpillar, will do well.
6. Gulf shipping and much of the economic benefit will shift to the Florida panhandle (think Panama City) since it has the only other deep water port available. Wish I owned real estate around there.

Everyone is predicting widespread health problems could arise among those displaced and affected by the environmental exposure they endured. The nature and extent of that could well affect the drug companies, vaccine producers, hospitals, etc. Must keep an eye out for investment opportunities in that regard.

Random Thoughts

1. The situation in New Orleans that developed after the levee broke and those who tried to help were fired upon is the best argument for gun ownership I can think of. Liberals can stay with the flawed argument that lawlessness is best dealt with by police until pigs fly, but I want my own guns.
2. With a hurricane bearing down on the city of New Orleans one must ask whether it was George Bush's job to evacuate those who were at risk or did that job fall at the mayoral and/or governor level of responsibility? If Osama had blown a hole in one or more of those levees, would the response have been better? I think it would have been.
   
3. "This poor woman who's the governor of Louisiana, and floundering away on TV, she'd be out of her depth even if her city wasn't flooded. There's a level at which at some point, you have to talk about the political authority. When you send in an inadequate police force, to relieve a stadium, where people have gone to take refuge, and instead they're being raped in there, and you send 80 police officers, and the police officers are being beaten back by the rapists, that's a poor political decision." This observation by Mark Steyn pretty much sums up the quality of leadership at the state level.
   
4. They should capture the guys who were shooting at the children's hospital and other relief workers and lock them in the Superdome.
5. After looking at the football scores from yesterday, I imagine Oklahoma and Auburn learned the truth of the old Southern saying:"The sun don't shine on the same dog's ass every day".
   
6. It took a 100 years storm and a Supreme Court Chief Justice death to do it, but it looks like the cable networks will finally let poor Natalee Halloway rest in peace.
   

Katrina Charity

The following are good charities for helping Katrina victims I have discovered.

http://www.mercycorps.org/

http://www.samaritanspurse.com/

We are giving to both.

Gas Prices

Here in the South we have some panic attacks on the gas pumps since the word went out that there would be no or not enough gas soon. Everyone is faced with pump price shock here in the wake of Katrina. However, as you stand watching the total being summed up as you pump gas, keep the following in mind:

1. If ANWR drilling had been approved in 1995 when Clinton nixed it, we would be producing another million barrells of oil a day (5% of our total consumption) which would reduce gas prices, oil imports, and our susceptibility to things like Katrina.
2. Federal law prohibits energy exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Continental Shelf plus much of the Rocky Mountains and the waters off California. According to the latest studies by the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, this has increased the price of natural gas by 83% in the past 41 months and cost consumers more than $111 billion.
3. We haven't built a gasoline refinery since 1976 because of environmental regulations and on top of that Congress has mandated 13 special blends of gasoline which add 4 to 8 cents to a gallon of gas. This also makes it more difficult to refine, store, and distribute these regional blends. The latest is a requirement to double the amount of ethanol used in gas which will raise gas prices and do little to clean the air.
   

Another double standard

Back in 1997, George Stephanopoulos, fresh from his influential post in the Clinton White House, called for the assassination of Saddam Hussein in a Newsweek article subtly titled “Why We Should Kill Saddam.”
No self-righteous editorials condemning Stephanopoulos as a loose cannon. No endless talking-head discussions on how his words upset our diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. No reprimands on how a dictator was given proof that the U.S. was out to get him.
Instead, Stephanopoulos has been rewarded with media prominence and gets to expound his moderate views on ABC’s “This Week.”
Unlike private citizen Robertson, Stephanopoulos advanced his idea when he still had the ear of the U.S. president, after we had just fought a war with Iraq. “Assassination may be Clinton’s best option,” Stephanopoulos wrote. “If we can kill Saddam, we should.”
I suspect the media outrage over Robertson is really undisguised glee over the opportunity and ammunition he gave them to broadly paint the Christian right, a major part of the Bush base, as a bunch of loonies, as opposed to cooler heads like Howard Dean.

I love a good line and this one is very good.

Jonah Goldberg had this to say about a movie I never heard of:


"The Sum of All Fears," is the 2002 film that started Ben Affleck's career on a downward glide-path to the center square on "Hollywood Squares."

Dietary Salt

The federal government has decided to make all of us pay for a program to tell us salt is no good. Actually it's the science that's no good.

The federal anti-salt bureaucracy launched expensive public service announcements that warn Americans to cut back on salt. The ads intoned, ominously, "You eat more than 20 times the salt your body needs."

Eat "no more than 2,400 milligrams a day," said Dr. Jeffrey Cutler, the official behind the government's anti-salt campaign.

Cutler decided that Americans should eat less salt because high blood pressure can lead to heart disease and eating less salt can lower blood pressure. It's a plausible theory, but it doesn't prove that less salt leads to less heart disease. Too many other things may be going on.

Many experts on blood pressure told us there isn't enough scientific research to justify the government's anti-salt campaign, and there definitely isn't enough to justify Cutler's 2,400-milligram limit.

"I can't imagine how they came up with that number. I mean, there isn't a single bit of evidence that suggests 2,400 milligrams is better than 2,100 or 3,700," said Dr. Michael Alderman, who headed the American Society of Hypertension, America's biggest organization of specialists in high blood pressure. He says some people should cut back on salt, but for most people, it's pointless. Some studies have found that those who ate the least salt were four times more likely to have heart attacks.

The problem with all this is several fold, but the main one for me is I have to endure my 91 year old Mother chastizing me when I salt my food because she heard on Good Morning America that salt is going to kill you.

More from Mark Steyn

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

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

Why I love Mark Steyn

Jared Diamond currently has a bestselling book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. A timely subject, so I bought a copy. More fool me. It's all about Easter Island going belly up because they chopped down all their trees. That's why they're not a G8 member. Same with the Greenlanders and the Mayans and Diamond's other curious choices of "societies". Indeed, as the author sees it, pretty much every society collapses because it chops down its trees.

Poor old Diamond can't see the forest because of his obsession with the trees. Russia is collapsing and it's nothing to do with deforestation. Conversely, Diamond's book is a huge bestseller with those who see it as a warning on the perils of excessive consumerism - even though, in fact, America returns land to the wilderness every year, and my own town is far more forested than it was in either 1905 or 1805. Diamond's book couldn't be any loopier than if he'd argued that deforestation of Arabia was responsible for September 11.

Choices

It is hard for me to watch and read about the devestation in the Gulf Coast and New Orleans without reminding myself how much of life hinges on choices we make as we go through life. It starts early when we accept the concept of studying and preparing for later life or sliding by with the wrong group of "friends". Later we choose mates, careers, family size, savings plans and a large number of other options. All of these choices have consequences and it is impossible to make all of them perfectly, but those who usually make the best choices usually fare better in life.

Today I read an article about how the rich and the poor in the U.S. differ in spending money on electronics. The poorer people spend about the same amount for large screen color TVs, DVDs, and other entertainment items as the more affluent. According to the census, less than 20% of the poor own a PC, and just 15% have access to the Internet and its vast treasure of knowledge. In contrast, 83% of upper-income Americans own at least one PC, and 74% are online. The poor simply choose the wrong tools for success. They could easily buy a basic Dell with Internet access for what they shell out on two color TVs or just one big-screen TV. But many opt not to.
It is a matter of priorities.

So, as I watch the hapless victims in New Orleans and Biloxi and other places on the gulf coast, I also listen to survivors who relate how they made the decision in face of the warnings to "ride it out" in their homes or elsewhere instead of leaving as everyone implored. As the disaster story unfolds we will learn how many others made the same decision and are not now alive to tell about it. Others will be forced to finish out their lives knowing they elected to stay and their children are no longer alive. Choices.

Just wondering

If this hurricane and its resultant damage to property and human lives had occurred anywhere else on earth, the U.S. would already have assistance on the way to help. Let's see who offers to help the victims on our Gulf Coast.

This sounds like the new, improved Vitamin E

I ran across an article on curcumin which is an active ingredient in tumeric. It is being studied as a treatment for a variety of diseases and a preventative for others. The studies are based on a reduced incidence of several diseases observed in India. Curcumin (present in curry) is cheap, widely available and has no known toxicities. It has been shown in preliminary studies to lower cholesterol, is an anti-inflammatory, and has Cox-2 inhibition properties like Vioxx and even some anti-cancer properties. Women in India cover themselves with tumeric to prevent wrinkles and mix it with milk to ease an upset stomach. The research currently being done is wide-spread and limited in that the doseage needed is not known. So before you run to the store to buy some, keep in mind that the amounts being used in an Alzheimer's study at UCLA is 4 grams per day. That is a bunch (something like 120 curry dinners per day). It seems to be an impressive antioxidant, however, and I will look into it further and will probably put what I find on this blog site.

Mark Steyn's Constitutional Analysis

The Shia get an acknowledgment that Islam is "the official religion of the state," just as the Church of England is the official church of that state -- though, unlike the Anglican bishops, Iraq's imams won't get permanent seats in the national legislature.

The Kurds get a loose federal structure in which just about everything except national defense and foreign policy is reserved to regions and provinces. I said in the week after Baghdad fell that the Kurds would settle for being Quebec to Iraq's Canada, and so they have.

The Sunnis, who ran Iraq from their days as Britain's colonial managing class right up to the toppling of Saddam, don't like the federal structure, not least because it's the Kurds and Shia who have the bulk of the oil. So they've been wooed with an arrangement whereby the country's oil revenue will be divided at a national level on a per-capita basis.

If you'd been asked in 2003 to devise an ideal constitution for Iraq's very non-ideal circumstances, it would look something like this: a highly decentralized federation that accepts the reality that Iraq is a Muslim nation but reserves political power for elected legislators -- and divides the oil revenue fairly.

And if it doesn't work? Well, that's what the Sunnis are twitchy about. If Baathist dead-enders and imported Islamonuts from Saudi and Syria want to make Iraq ungovernable, the country will dissolve into a democratic Kurdistan, a democratic Shiastan, and a moribund Sunni squat in the middle. And, in the grander scheme of things, that wouldn't be so terrible either.

To be sure, we shouldda done this, and we shouldda done that. Yet nonetheless Iraq advances day by day. The real quagmire is at home, where the kinkily gleeful relish of defeatism manifested by Cindy Sheehan, Joan Baez, Ted Kennedy et al. bears less and less relationship to anything happening over there. Iraq's future is a matter for the Iraqis now -- which, given the U.S. media, Democrat blowhards like Joe Biden and Republican squishes like Chuck Hagel, is just as well.

Relationships in the market place

The previous post and others about the crazy way people are financing housing has consequences for other things we may not realize immediately. For example, the machinists are striking Northwest Airlines because the company has asked them to take a wage and benefit cut so the company can continue to fly. The union called a strike without consulting members and now there is some discord in the ranks. The following shows why some union members are taking actions which continue to weaken the union movement.

Sue Dorr, who has spent eight years as an airplane cleaner in Detroit, said she began looking for work a month ago, anticipating that the union would go on strike. But, Ms. Dorr said, "I'm going to have to take two jobs just to keep my house."

Sue may not be successful in keeping her house and the union may not be able to convince its members that a strike which may lead to not only a job loss but a loss of your home is worth it.

This is pretty scary

New products give homeowners increasing leeway as to how much equity they can tap and how fast they can tap it. Credit cards that allow consumers to draw on their home equity loans are one such device.

CMG Financial Services, a mortgage company in San Ramon, Calif., introduced another tool this summer: a combination checking account and mortgage.

It works like this: Your paycheck is deposited into your account and immediately applied to your mortgage principal. Over the course of the month, as you spend money on food, gas and other necessities, the principal creeps back up. But the result is that your mortgage debt gets paid off more quickly.

That's the theory, at least. Of course, if you're indulgent, you can pay much less of your mortgage — like none. Any shortfall is added on to the principal.

Iraq Sunnis

Sunni Arabs are getting fed up with the terrorism, and lack of order in Sunni Arab areas. The contrast between the poverty stricken Sunni Arab areas, and the peaceful, and increasingly prosperous Kurdish and Shia Arab zones, is growing. Sunni Arab tribes are taking sides, and going to war with each other over this issue. That’s part of the problem with the deadlock over the new constitution. The other problem is that many Sunni Arabs really believe that they represent the majority of the population. Even those Sunni Arabs who know better, believe that the Sunni Arabs deserve more power, and oil income, than their 20 percent of the population justifies. The fact that Sunni Arabs have called the shots for centuries is something the Sunni Arabs just cannot give up, or at least not give up easily. At the same time, Sunni Arabs appear to be clueless when it comes to confronting their blood soaked past, and the fact that they grabbed most of the oil money for the past half century. Too many Sunni Arabs believe that reality does not apply to them.

Read the whole thing here.

This should be fun.

Men are more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, making them better suited for tasks of high complexity, according to the authors of a paper due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped explain why many more men than women won Nobel Prizes or became chess grandmasters, the study by Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn concludes.

They showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rose. There were twice as many with IQ scores of 125, typical for people with first-class degrees.

When scores rose to 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

Tularemia Outbreak

An outbreak of rabbit fever, or tularemia, a rare dangerous disease, registered recently in the Volga provinces of Central Russia, could have been caused by a leak from biological warfare facilities present in the area, a U.S. Website surmised Thursday.

Earlier this week, Russian news agencies reported on dozens of cases of tularemia registered in Russia since early August. From Aug. 4 as many as 96 people including 15 children sought medical assistance at hospitals in Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan.

Mike Yon reports from Iraq

Everyone should read this report of action in Mosul. Absolutely amazing.

Swedes are really strange

The Malmo, Sweden library lets you borrow people to talk to for 45 minutes in an effort to overcome prejudice and discrimination. So, if you are sitting in a bar you can call up and ask for the library to send over a veiled Muslim woman, a gay, a gypsy, a hard-drug user, or whatever. The theory is by asking questions and carrying on a conversation for a while you will won't think negatively about such people in the future. If this catches on in other parts of Europe, some of us may have to go over there and let them talk to us to overcome anti-Americanism.

Mil;itary Enlistments

First time military enlistments are running a bit behind, another product of a burgeoning economy, but re-enlistments, even from soldiers in combat zones, are running ahead of expectations.

What does it mean when the guys in the thick of it, closest to the action, at risk, on the ground and looking at things with their own eyes, decide to stay for another hitch?

They must believe in what they're doing.

From IBD

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court this summer gave New London, Conn., the green light to seize private homes in the city’s Fort Trumbull area and sell them to a private developer. The developer plans to build houses, stores and offices where the homes now stand. The city claims the development qualifies as “public use” because it’ll generate more in local taxes than the homeowners will pay.
This alone is an outrage clearly inconsistent with our constitutional rights and liberties. But the barons of New London aren’t through.
Drunk with the power imbibed from the Kelo v. New London decision, they’re trying to collect back rent from the seven homeowners who fought the seizure, arguing they’ve lived on city property since 2000, the year the homes were condemned.
The New London Development Corp., front group for the city’s shakedown, is also offering buyouts based on the market rate in 2000 instead of present-day value. Given the real estate boom, the difference is significant.
Some say New London’s decrees add insult to injury. Others call them childish vindictiveness. Either way, they’re unconscionably abusive and decidedly totalitarian.
According to the Fairfield County Weekly, some homeowners in this working-class (but unblighted) neighborhood will owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in back rent. Matt Dery has been assessed more than $300,000. Susette Kelo, owner of the little pink house above, says her rent will be a more modest $57,000. But she’d still have to “leave here broke,” she told the newspaper.
The city also wants any money the homeowners made from tenants who rented their properties. In some cases, the rents are the homeowners’ lone source of income.
We have to keep reminding ourselves this is Connecticut, U.S.A., not Zimbabwe, Africa, where thug-in-chief Robert Mugabe has seized virtually every white-owned farm and pushed the country near starvation.

Our newest grandchild

Jackson Alexander Finley at 120 minutes

This should work

BANGKOK (Reuters) - With Asian tourists still shunning its southern beaches, Thailand is calling in a revered Chinese sea goddess to ward off the restive spirits of the thousands who died in last December's tsunami.

A statue of Godmother Ruby, known as Mazu in Chinese, will be brought to the Thai island of Phuket from the Chinese coastal province of Fujian next month for ghost-clearing rites, said Suwalai Pinpradab of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

"After the tsunami, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Chinese and other East Asians dare not come because they don't want to visit places where mass deaths took place," Suwalai told Reuters on Friday. "It is inauspicious."

Mazu, a Taoist goddess of the sea, has a huge following among fishermen and shipworkers in coastal provinces of southern China and Taiwan.

Thailand's official death toll from the December 26 disaster stands at 5,395, of which 2,436 are believed to be foreigners. Of these, fewer than 50 were East Asians.

Bathing suit in Saudia Arabia

This is from an ad selling bathing suits to Saudi women. My wife and dermatologist would love them.

Smog in California

Standing around chewing the cud, cows don't look especially threatening. But dairy herds in California are the latest livestock to be branded an environmental health risk on account of their flatulent behavior.

This month government regulators issued a report identifying dairy cows as the main source of smog-forming pollutants in the San Joaquin Valley, California.

The announcement highlights growing concern over the global impact of greenhouse gases produced by cattle and other livestock.

A dairy cow annually emits almost 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of smog-forming gases known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—more than a car or light truck, according to the San Joaquin Valley United Air Pollution Control District.

Read all about this nonsense here.

China Gas Lines

The picture I put up yesterday showing gasoline lines in China got me to wondering what the problem was and it turns out the problem is fairly simple. China went the Jimmy Carter route. In the 70's Carter put on price controls in an effort to fight inflation. Not only that, he also added a "windfall profits tax" on oil and gas producers. China is doing the same. O.K. now here is the question. If the price of a barrel of oil in China is held $10 below the actual world price, where will the Chinese oil firms sell their oil? Bingo!!!

When Reagan became President the first thing he did was immediately repeal all Carter-era oil and gas controls and the excess profits tax. Oil prices went to their natural market value and through the magic of market forces, production rose, consumption fell and prices began to decline.

Gas lines in China-August 18,2005

I am not sure how much it costs when these drivers get to buy gas, but I am glad to be paying $2.50 per gallon in comparison.

Who would have thought?

Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation's leading college admissions tests.
Read the whole story here

Cleaning up the mess

I should have known better than to call RU-486 a morning-after pill since it is actually a true abortiofacient drug which terminates confirmed pregnancies rather than block implantation of newly fertilized eggs. My main point remains intact, however.

Why I own stock in Syneron

Syneron makes a product called VelaSmooth. It sells for $65,000 and physicians, primarily gynecologists, buy it. They use it on women at a cost of $150 per visit and most women need 16 treatment sessions and then maintenance treatments every 3 to 4 months. Most doctors can generate $22,000 to $25,000 per MONTH with VelaSmooth so it gets paid for in 3 months and then the rest is gravy. Furthermore, the treatments are not reliant on insurance company payments. The women pay after each visit. Why do they do this? VelaSmooth combines radio and laser to reduce the appearance of cellulite. The symbol of this company is ELOS.

Something to keep in mind

During World War II the Japanese military sent 4,000 young, inexperienced pilots up in obsolete aircraft with a 250 pound bomb to perform as martyrs and, similar to today's terrorists, give themselves up for the "cause". By war's end, the U.S. had credited Kamikaze pilots with sinking 34 Navy ships and damaging 368 others. Some 4,900 sailors were killed and about the same number were wounded. The present war started with the greatest Kamikaze attack of all time on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which killed almost 3,000 people. Now we must see if our nation can perserveer as we did in the previous war.

Law suits and adverse drug outcomes

Here is something to watch for in coming weeks. What happens when a drug, approved by the FDA, suddenly has some unexpected deaths associated with its use? Think of Vioxx. This is an antiinflammatory drug taken by persons with painful arthritis and in a few cases patients had heart attacks and died. What happened next is being acted out in a court room where Merck is being sued by trial lawyers for humongous damages on behalf of "victims" and others who took the drug but did not die and are also going to be included in law suits to come.
Now we have a situation where 4 women who took RU-486 out of 400,000 who have taken the drug since 2000 have died of infections which are very closely attributable to having taken the drug. RU-486 has a controversial history since it is well-known as the "morning-after" pill which blocks pregnancy if taken soon after intercourse. The anti-abortion position was that the drug would be misused and was dangerous to women who took it. In fairness, however, they also opposed it on moral grounds as being an abortion pill. Since this was the anti-abortion position, the liberals defended it and got it approved by the FDA. The pro-abortion crowd is now fighting to get it approved as an over the counter drug.
Here is what we need to watch for. Will the trial lawyers yield to their liberal instincts and leave the drug alone or will they yield to their greedy instincts and sue to have the drug be withdrawn and the manufacturer pay through the news?

Report from Iraq

It's been nearly a year since a gang has been able to attack and capture a police station. The cops know how to call in reinforcements, including American ground troops and air support. In response, the gangs increasingly turn to murdering and kidnapping individual police. But this sometimes backfires when the cops go after relatives of the criminals. This is an old Middle Eastern practice. Kill a cop, and the police will lock up your mother until you turn yourself in. The outlaws are at a big disadvantage once the police come to town, build police stations that cannot be captured, and establish the capability to arrest people. Law and order changes the way the war is being fought. The gangsters are increasingly making desperate and spectacular attacks with bombs and ambushes, failing to shake the cops, and then fleeing to the shrinking number of towns without police stations. The Iraqi police are taking more casualties than the Americans, but the cops are winning the war, one neighborhood at a time.
Read the whole thing here.

Mortgage Problems Ahead??

I knew that many folks were taking out adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) which will result in higher monthly payments if interest rates go up--which they are doing at the lower end and long rates should follow. That would scare me, but I recently read of a home mortgage product called an option ARM that would terrify me. With an option ARM, the borrower has the option to make minimal monthly payments which are below what interest only loans would be. This means that the balance of what is owed keeps going up even if rates stay the same. This is called negative amortization. It also means that if interest rates go up beyond what is manageable for the borrower and there is a coincident decrease in home values (don't believe it can't happen), the so-called owner will be forced to sell at a loss or simply walk away and let the lender have the house. If this happens on a large scale, the victims will not only be the borrowers and the lending institutions, but all of us will suffer since Congress will step in and bail everyone out with our money.

Sylvester Graham

This week's U.S. News and World Report has an interesting series of stories about food in the U.S. It makes the point that Americans are fascinated by food and I am a good example of that, I guess. One of the stories described the contribution of Sylvester Graham who invented the Graham cracker. He was a food fanatic of his day and believed that if we ate what Adam and Eve ate, we would be in physiological balance as nature intended. This ruled out meat, shellfish, salt, spices, sugar, coffee, tea, and alcohol. He was especially keen on controlling sexual urges through diet---especially masturbation. He felt that you need to avoid foods that stay in the body for a long time since they become fermented, turned to alcohol and this leads to nervous irritability and eroticism. This lead him to develop his own high fiber wheat flour from which he made his famous Graham cracker and, of course, we have now adopted his belief in high fiber diets even though I doubt many of us are selecting foods to suppress urges.

Australian in Al Qaeda

There was a documentary released last week by the terrorists with links to or in Al Qaeda which differed from others in that at least one segment was in English by a person with an Australian accent. It has now been established that his name is Mathew Stewart and this is his background:

Private Mathew Stewart was patrolling the streets of Dili, East Timor, in 2002 when he was confronted with the full horror of live combat.

The quiet soldier and keen surfer from Queensland's Sunshine Coast stumbled upon the almost unrecognisable body of a Dutch journalist killed by militia.

Financial Times reporter Sander Thoenes, 30, had been shot in the chest and badly beaten. According to his comrades, Stewart was deeply traumatised by the discovery, his first encounter with death on the front line.

He was discharged from the army's 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment for psychological reasons a short time later, sending him into a spiral of depression and self-doubt.

While other East Timor veterans looked for a change of lifestyle back home, Stewart began fixing his sights on the war unravelling in Afghanistan in the wake of the attacks on New York the previous year.

Furious at his perceived mistreatment in the Australian army, Stewart began making plans to fight for the other side.

This makes one wonder about the intelligence communities claim that it would have been impossible to infiltrate Al Qaeda. If an Australian soldier can walk in and join, surely we could find someone to get in there. Or maybe we have.

What happens when you elect a German Pope

WWF International Issues Climate Conclusions

European Union to set tougher targets for emissions of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide.
…
...13 of the 16 cities surveyed were at least one degree Celsius higher than during the first five years of the 1970s, the environmental organisation said.
…
There is a trend of increasing summer temperatures and that is due to global warming.

Certainly urban areas are experiencing climate change. But it’s a micro-climate change due to a well documented phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect.

Air in urban areas is often 6-8 degrees hotter than in surrounding rural areas. The abundance of dark surfaces in urban areas absorb heat and the minimal vegetation limits the shade required to mitigate such effects. The urban heat island effect is blamed for increased energy use, and therefore, increased emissions.

The answer is not to tighten emissions standards and control “global warming,” but to apply common sense urban design. Urban development should utilize to the greatest extent feasible heat reflective materials on surfaces and roofs. The EPA recommends the use of building materials that turn traditional heat absorbing surfaces “cool” or “green.” Not only would urban areas be cooler, but they would be improved aesthetically.

Unions vs. Wal-Mart

Teachers union members are trying to persuade consumers to boycott Wal-Mart. The campaign claims Wal-Mart pays low wages, fails to provide affordable health care, discriminates against women, violates child labor laws and shifts "more than $2.5 billion a year in health care and welfare costs for its underpaid and underinsured workers to U.S. taxpayers," reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Retail employees don't make much money, but presumably they prefer a low-wage job to the alternative. Most Wal-Mart employees work full-time and average $9.68 an hour, the company says. Health benefits start at $35 a month. Wal-Mart gave $45 million last year to teachers and students, in addition to selling low-cost school supplies.

So why is Wal-Mart any worse than any other retailer? Don Dawson, a math teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, said the Walton Family Foundation -- run by the heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart -- has spent about $250 million in the past six years promoting the school-voucher movement and lobbying for tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools.

I guess that explains it.

Britain getting smart according to Michael Barone

British opinion since the July 7 bombings will have noticed that "multiculturalism" is under sharp attack. Tony Blair has spoken favorably about multiculturalism. But on July 7, he struck a different note. "It is important, however, that the terrorists realize our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause the death and destruction of innocent people and impose their extremism on the world."
Writers in other tolerant countries have been noticing the blowback from multiculturalism. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter wrote that as traditional Calvinist discipline frayed and Muslim immigrants rejected Dutch tolerance, "the delicate mechanism of Holland's traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance."

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures, but in certain specific times and places -- mostly in Britain and America, but also in various parts of Europe.

In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swathes of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America, though it has existed in every society and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians.

Random Thoughts

My bride and I were in St. Maartens last year and we heard that the airport was on the coast and landings brought the planes in right over the beach. Here is confirmation of that.

1. I am not sure what the mission is for our shuttle program on paper, but it seems like the primary objective now seems to be a launch followed by a long repair process with the hope that the crew can get back alive.
2. I read a good description of the current real estate market in some areas--especially the one I have been playing with the last few months. It is like a flock of chickens. If you put out a pan of big food scraps, the chickens come running and the first ones pick up a big piece and depart quickly...the others see the pieces in the beak, and instead of realizing there's plenty more in the pan, they chase the hens who got the first pieces. That is the resale psychology.
   
3. The female teacher in New York who is accused of raping her male students will be prosecuted in the same way as a male teacher would be who raped female students....according to the D.A. Nonsense. In the first place none of the so-called victims in this case filed charges and I doubt any of them would call the experience "victimization".
   
4. My understanding is we need to watch to see if Iraq comes up with a constitution which gives the 3 sectarian sections of the country strong powers with a weak central government or if the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia sections are weak relative to the central government. I am not sure they will be able to avoid a civil war in any event.
5. I admit I am no Brad Pitt, but I am not sure I would give up Jennifer Anniston for one of Billy Bob Thornton's rejects.

Americans With Disabilities

I have always had problems with the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is not a very popular position, but I guess I am enough Libertarian to believe that the market would have done the same thing if left alone. Merchants would have provided access to their stores and parking places without the government getting involved and as a result concocting all kinds of ridiculous rules to hamper small businesses in particular. Well, now we are getting ready to have some new laws as a result of a review of existing practices by the Department of Justice. There is a guy named Banerjee who is a paraplegic due to an automobile accident and he is now asking that ALL public golf courses be required to provide special golf carts with swing-out seats which would allow him to swing at a ball while seated. Obviously, this will impose a hugh financial burden to many courses and guess who will be required to pay for the carts which will be seldom if ever used?
There are other changes being contemplated. The blind are asking for ATM machines which have audio capabilities so they can operate them independently. With such a machine a user plugs headphones into a jack and a computerized voice guides the customer through the transaction by pointing out where the buttons are.
Finally, the National Association of Manufacturers is concerned about proposals which would require wheelchair accessible routes even in areas where the public is not permitted--such as the plants work floor.
All this is fairly typical of government gone wild, I think.

Show Us the Scientific Data

The Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is Joe Barton of Texas. He recently requested that three noted climate scientists provide data related to their claim that climate changes and global warming require tens of billions of new taxpayer money. This research, by the way was heavily funded by federal taxes and by other sources which could have had a political stake in the outcome of the researchers claims....namely the U.N. and the Pew Center on Climate Change.
Barton asked Universtiy of Virginia's Michael Mann to share the data and the methodologies they used to come to the conclusion that the 20th Century was the warmest of the past two millenniums and also the source o the funding of their research. This has been called a witch hunt despite the fact that the issue of whether human carbon dioxide emissions cause any significant amount of greenhouse gasses is still the object of intense debate among scientists. Mann's research popularized his theory that shows nearly 1000 years of relatively stable temperatures followed by an abrupt upturn in temperatures in the latter part of the 20th century. This is the well-known "hockey stick" graph. Six teams of scientists published critiques of this work and showed that Mann omitted key data and misinterpreted other data. Mann's team later issued a partial "correction" conceding it had underestimated temperature variations by more than 33% since 1400, but stated the major error did not affect his conclusions. At the same time, Mann's team adamantly refused other, more skeptical scientists the right to review the raw data or the methods they used to arrive at their conclusions. Without that information, it is impossible to determine if Mann's research is valid and Congressman Barton is doing exactly what he should to insist on full disclosure before spending more of our money on such a boondoggle.

Leno on O.J.

In Florida, a judge has found O.J. Simpson guilty of stealing satellite TV and ordered him to pay DirecTV $25,000 in back charges. We are finally getting tough on celebrities in this country.

Were you shocked? I knew he was a murderer, I didn’t know he was a thief. I was stunned.

I just hope this one incident doesn’t ruin O.J.’s reputation.

Howard Dean

This man is really an idiot. Most recently he loudly blamed the widely unpopular Kelo decision which allowed the taking of property by some town in Conneticutt for private developers on Bush. He said it was "Bush's right wing Supreme Court". Not only has Bush not named any of the current court, but the only dissention to the decision were by Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor. You won't read about this in any of the MSM, by the way.