Bush Pushes Peace in Mid-East: Why it's a Good Thing

Over the last couple of days, we've been getting from many sources, such as the Los Angeles Times and others, that Bush is now ramping up a plan to push hard for a Middle-East Peace process. Of course this is a good thing, just for the simple reason that peace is always good (except for a government's defense budget).

But there is one particular reason why this talk of peace talks is good news for us, and the world. It means President Bush knows he's beat on Iraq. If you've been following the news from Washington over the last two weeks, you know that the Democrats and even the Republicans in Congress have had it with this war in Iraq, and smelling blood, they've poised themselves to go for the jugular. Time's up, and they want Bush's head over this thing before the President leaves office. And this new angle that the President is taking on a Mid-East peace process all of a sudden, will allow him to claim diplomatic victory and pull troops out of Iraq without looking like he's giving in to the demands of the Congress he disdains.

So here's how it will play out. Congress succeeds in building enough pressure to put the squeeze on the President, requiring him to give in to their demands to pull troops out on a time line. Bush knows he's a sitting duck and makes a move to begin diplomatically and cooperatively handing over military control to the Iraqis. There will be concessions made to the insurgents, but depending on how good the planners are at playing this, it will end with Bush claiming he ended the war in Iraq and accomplished whatever he wants to accomplish. We may even see a Berlin-esque wall through Baghdad. Who knows. But one thing is for certain, he will not admit defeat.

Make no mistake, however. This, in my opinion, seals the deal for a victory in the Presidential election for the democrats. There are still plenty of months left to change things, I suppose, but I think we better get used to the idea of having either a black president or a woman president. Neither one, of course, is a bad thing in and of itself. It is the individuals who will fill that role that scares me, regardless of ethnicity or gender.

Why Can't We Talk to North Korea?

That's a good question, and here's an article with a pretty good answer that makes sense (at least to me).

Excerpt:

"[F]or decades, North Korea has been trying to engage the United States in direct military dialogue aimed at winning one of its regime’s key policy goals: a permanent peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War....

...There was no immediate U.S. response to the North Korean proposal on Friday.

But Washington had previously rejected such a proposal, objecting any talks that would exclude its ally South Korea and China.

China fought on the North Korean side during the war, while the United States led U.N. forces on the South Korean side....

...U.S. and South Korean officials envisioned four-way peace talks involving all major participants of the Korean War: the United States, China and the two Koreas. But North Korea prefers direct talks with the United States in a ploy experts say is aimed at driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul."

Here is the story in its entirety, from The New York Times.

No Respect for the Jury Process in Nebraska

State law in Nebraska (and other states for that matter) allows judges to ban words which they think may influence the thinking of the jury, and ultimately their convictions. CNN reports that Judge Jeffre Cheuvront has done just that in a rape case that has already been tried once, where the jury was unable to reach a verdict. So on the second go-round, Cheuvront banned the use of the words "rape" and "victim."

We will not, however, be able to see how such a trial would play out just yet, due to the fact that Cheuvront has declared a mistrial before it had ever gotten started. His reasoning for the mistrial? Apparently the alleged victim, Ms. Tory Bowen, publicly petitioned the court via a website and encouraged supporters to gather outside the courthouse in protest of the word ban.

So they have quite the muddled mess on their hands out in Lincoln, Nebraska. The trial itself seems like a farce to me. Apparently Ms. Bowen got so drunk one night in 2004 that she could not fight off the advances of the accused, Mr. Pamir Safi, who admittedly had sexual relations with Ms. Bowen, under conditions that Mr. Safi claims was consensual.

At issue, first and foremost it would seem, is the very definition of "rape." Ms. Bowen claims she was raped because Mr. Safi, she says, knew she was too drunk to make any sort of consensual decision. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Safi acted dishonorably, but criminally? That, evidently, is the question. But before they even get into that question, there needs to be the freedom to discuss it. That freedom is precisely what Judge Cheuvront has taken away, as well as the right to protest peacefully for that right.

It is a jury's duty to hear testimony and decide for themselves if what they hear is true, and if it warrants a declaration of guilt for the accused. If a judge is permitted ban the use of words the witnesses can use, it seems to me that the judge is potentially obstructing true testimony. If it is the testimony of the accused that she was raped, then she ought to have the freedom to say just that. She should be granted the right to point to the accused in a court of law, before a jury of her peers, and state very clearly "That man raped me." It is then the jury's job to decide if she really was raped, based on the representation of the attorneys and the consideration of the evidence.

To deny the jury its right and duty to decide based on the actual testimonies is simply injustice, as well as disrespect for jury process and the individual jurors themselves.

The Big Dig: Digging into the Pockets of Bostonians

The Rueters article leads with the headline, U.S. looks for lessons in Boston's Big Dig. But the problem is, they may be learning the wrong lessons, in my opinion.

The tone that the article sets looks to be drawing the conclusion that taking on the projects of burying congested and tangled highway systems, or stretches of roadways, is a good idea, but we just need to learn to do it better. Never mind the fact that 15 years and billions of dollars in tax-payer funds have been eaten up by the Big Dig, and we have a wrongful death suit filed due to a chunk of cement that dropped off the ceiling of the tunnel, crushing a car and the woman driving it. But at least we have parks. With trees. Trees are good.

But it looks like big spending is the name of the urban development game these days. Big projects are already being discussed for other big cities like Seattle, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. No surprise really, when we're talking about trimming 15 minutes off our busy schedules for the commute home. I mean, hey, maybe that 15 minutes is where we can finally squeeze in that family time that has been missing from our lives for the last several decades.

Think you Know About Scopes? Think Again!

In Liberty Papers No. 2 (also published at Strike-the-Root.com), I made mention of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, as an example of how government controlled education can go bad. Most people think they know about this trial, but what they really know is the media depiction of the trial, including the Hollywood version Inherit the Wind, which, as entertaining as it is, doesn't even come close to depicting what happened in Tennessee in 1925.

Rick Barry, writing for AiG, brings us up to speed on what we don't know about the Scopes Monkey Trial.

"How well do you know the facts about the 1925 Scopes trial, one of America’s most famous trials of the past century? Is your knowledge based mostly on the Hollywood depiction of the “monkey” trial, or is it based on the actual accounts as recorded in the transcripts and other historical accounts?"

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n3/monkeying-with-the-media

Let's stop letting the media make monkeys out of us, and get down to the real facts!

Take the Heat or Get out of the Kitchen?

"It would be a travesty for him to go off to prison. The president will take some heat for it. So what? He takes heat for everything."

That's what former Ambassador Richard Carlson says, according to BBC, about the possibility of a Presidential pardon for his friend Scooter Libby, who has now had his appeal for a delayed sentence shot down by a panel of three judges. The judgment on the appeal comes after the judges pronounced that there was not any "substantial question" raised by the appeal.

We should see shortly, whether or not President Bush decides to grant his loyal White House staffer the coveted pardon. And with conservatives largely in agreement for giving him that pardon, I'd put my money on Libby walking away from his ordeal a free man.

The man perjured himself under oath, and obstructed justice during the investigation and trial in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. The truth probably would have incriminated the White House in the incident, and the blame may have gone right to the top, or very close to it. But old Scooter is taking one for the team, and I'll be highly surprised if he ends up taking it too hard. If the pardon doesn't come, he'll be serving 30 months in the slammer, or some ritzy Club Fed mock-up of prison anyway.

Bradley Harowitz is a Dangerous Man

Irish writer Oscar Wilde once said, "All great ideas are dangerous." I don't know if he was right or not. As a lover of Liberty, I'm not inclined to come down on ideas at all, but there is one man and his ideas that I've recently read about that makes me a little edgy.

Bradley Harowitz is the head of technology development at YAHOO! and is responsible for building innovative search technologies. Sounds harmless enough, right? Sitting around coming up with ideas on how to access information quicker and better sounds like a great thing to spend money on. Just look at the interworld thingama-jiggy we have today. Without people like Harowitz, it wouldn't be possible.

What happens, though, when Bradley wants to bring his search engines to the real world? That's exactly what he's proposing here, in his BBC column today. Here's the example he gives:

"Imagine this scenario: I am in a supermarket and I pick up a can of tomatoes and I place it in the shopping trolley. Immediately my mobile phone flashes green to indicate to me that it is a good buy. I go down the aisle and choose a bottle of wine but this time my phone flashes red to suggest I reconsider.

This is only possible when we have a universal resolver for every entity in the world.

What do I mean by universal resolver?

On the internet we have something called DNS - the Domain Name System.

When I type in yahoo.com there's a service set up in multiple distributed servers around the world which helps "resolve" the mnemonic "yahoo.com" (easy to remember!) to a numerical IP address (hard to remember!) which machines can understand.

The service translates yahoo.com into a specific IP address so I don't get mistakenly sent to another website.

We do that very well for resolving domain names but we don't do it very well in the real world for resolving entities.

What do we mean by entity? Frankly almost anything qualifies: a person, a place or a thing, real world and digital objects, even concepts or ideas."

You think we have problems with Internet Stalking now? Just wait until we have Harowitz giving the world the ability to find anything, anywhere, anytime.

Admittedly, Harowitz points out that we already have this technology in place, with companies like Amazon tagging everything in their inventory with unique numbers. Books and CDs are one thing. But people?? Throw in the RFID tag scare and we've got a scenario that not even Equality 7-2521 could fathom. Ok, I'm beginning to hear echoes of my grandfather's voice... "The boy's got an overactive imagination!" Though I'm not sure if it's me he's referring to, or Bradley Harowitz.

Right to Privacy

And here we are again discussing the individual's right to privacy. How much privacy do we have a right to, and when? Complete privacy, if we wish, and all the time? That would be absurd I'm sure you'll agree. We certainly do not have the right to complete privacy when going out into public, say to the mall or to school or the workplace, meaning we cannot walk in anonymously, wearing a mask and expect to deal with people in a normal fashion. And so we arrive at degrees of privacy. At the store and so forth, we have a right to a certain amount of privacy. The people around us do not have the right to access my bank account information, for example. But they do have the right, I would think, to look face to face at the person that has entered their establishment.

And therein lies the problem. The internet has become more than a collection of information, or a giant digital reference section of the collected world's libraries. It has evolved into so much more. The world wide web is now an international community of people, sharing ideas, engaging in commerce, creating, destroying, building new cultures even. And in such a place, the question lies open still, how much privacy are you really entitled to, when dealing with other individuals in such a manner. Today when you access the internet, you can no longer say, "but I'm in the privacy of my own home. I should be given complete privacy if I desire."

This most certainly is not the case anymore. You have gone much outside your living room, outside your house, outside your country in many cases and are dealing with more human beings in the blink of an eye than our grandparents dealt with their entire lives.

It's a complex problem. How do we create the correct balance of privacy and disclosure? What IS the correct balance? And who should have a say in how much of my information is open to the world? I don't want to be tagged! Is anyone else feeling helpless at this point? And why is Morpheus ringing in my head??

"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Perhaps I'm being a bit melodramatic, but really... where does it end? What I don't want to happen is to have the next conversation about the internet go something like this,

"What is the internet? Control. The internet is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this." [holds up a Duracell battery]

Grand Political Theater

For the first time in a long time, Bush is saying something I agree with. He has criticized the Democrats in Congress for engaging in "Grand Political Theater," and for once he's right. Of course in this particular case, he was referring to the all the threats of a vote of no confidence in his Attorney General, Antonio Gonzales, and all the mess surrounding Gonzo's firings of numerous individuals in his Department of so-called Justice.

And now the investigation has widened to once again bring into play illegal domestic wire-tapping without warrants. For you folks that don't know exactly what that means, it means that President Bush's Administration thinks they have the right by law to wire-tap and listen into private telephone conversations of American citizens without any sort of warrant or recourse. In other words, according to Mr. Bush, you have no right to privacy. Period.

What's worse, the Department of Justice refuses to dole out justice at all, in this case. And so with the two issues of domestic wire-tapping combined with the mishandling of the DoJ firings, the Congress Democrats have lined up the firing squad against Gonzo.

Bush's defense for his appointed Attorney General? An accusation of "grand political theater." He couldn't be more correct when describing what's going on in Congress. The problem is Mr. Bush thinks the stage belongs only to the Democrats. He fails to realize or at least admit that the he himself is the one standing at the center of this three-ring circus.


Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, all three dancing to the tune that the Great Ringmaster plays. In the first ring, to the left, you have legislators spraying each other in the face with seltzer water like so many clowns, arguing about this and that, falling all over each other, complete with kicks to the seat of the pants. But when was the last time they actually accomplished anything worthwhile?

In the second ring, to the right, you have a combination high-wire act and trapeze artist, narrowly avoiding a great fall during a harrowing Senate Oversight hearing, but ultimately landing in the safety net of "I don't recall."

And at Center Ring, the Ringmaster himself presides over the big Elephant show with all the pomp and grandeur of a Barnum & Bailey Big Top. He smartly cracks his whip to the media with trite comments that put the audience at ease about the tent being on fire and burning down all around them. Who are the audience you ask? You have but to look around you. You will likely see your neighbors, your friends, your family, and perhaps you yourself sit on the edge of your seat, holding your breath, in awe of this spectacle. You nervously watch, with the occasional chuckle, knowing all the while that something is amiss, but the entertainment is just so enthralling. You can't look away.

And here we sit, glowing hot bits of the red, white, and blue Circus Tent floating away in a swirl around us. It burns our eyes, but we can't tear ourselves from the entertainment of this Three Ring Circus. Time passes, but there's always a new act just beginning in the next ring. Up next, in the center ring, the clowns from the Legislative Ring will battle it out to see who becomes the next Ringmaster.

As for me, I've lost my appetite for this show. I've sat by long enough, watching the delicate stitching of this old tent burn away. Somebody, please help me grab some water and lets try to slow down this inferno. Maybe one day, enough people will turn their back on this show to put this fire out.

Good News, Bad News

Well, the good news is, government programs are being cut. Programs that have no business soaking up tax payer money will be phased out over the course of the next few years and go the way of the dodo. This is certainly good news. Programs like the Federal Timber Safety Net program will be cut away like so many trees.

However, in typical Statist style, the programs will only be replaced by NEW programs, to meet the whims of the current administration. Like Momma, who the day after Christmas goes through the closet and throws out some of the old toys to make room for the new ones, President Bush is simply making room for his new toys. The spending budget for 2007 is an astronomical $2.77 trillion, with a "T." You can see what your tax money has bought and almost paid for here.

It Doesn't Take a Poll

Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Feel Bush Deliberately Misled Country on Iraq WMD

By E&P Staff

Published: February 03, 2006 1:40 PM ET

A new Gallup Poll, conducted in late January, reveals that just 39% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling Iraq, with 58% disapproving.

Over half (53%) now say the administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," with 46% disagreeing. Gallup notes that this finding is "essentially reversed" from one year ago.

Further, some 51% say the U.S. "made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq." Yet, despite this, only 17% expect a significant reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq in the next year.

The partisan divide on all these questions is enormous, but with Independents now aligning much more with Democrats. For example, 84% of Republicans feel the president did not mislead the country on WMD, the exact percentage of Democrats who feel the opposite.

One interesting new question asked if respondents would feel the war in Iraq was a "success" if the new government there is composed "mainly of Muslim religious leaders." Almost half said that it could still be called a "success."

The latest poll was taken Jan. 20-22, based on interviews with 1,006 adults.

Quite a shift of opinion there. And yet the country continues to discuss things in terms of Republican versus Democrat. Common sense, it would seem, is not so common any longer. I would like to point out that Independents, contrary to this article, are not "aligning much more with Democrats." We are thinking for ourselves. Which is something that can rarely be said of either major political party.

BAG Day 2006

Just a reminder, before we all mentally spend our own money that the Federal and State Governments so graciously return to us.... BAG Day is quickly coming upon us! Tell us in the comments what you intend to purchase this year in honor of this sacred day.

And if you need an explanation of what BAG Day is, here's the explanation:
from last year .

In India, Engineering Success

Ok, so back to harping on the eduction system, if it can be called that.
This comes to us from the Washington Post via the Strike-the-Root site.

In India, Engineering Success

By Sebastian Mallaby

Monday, January 2, 2006; Page A13

The classroom of the future will feature electronic white boards. The teachers of the future will write equations on these boards with electronic pens. And the students of the future won't have to choose between concentrating on the teacher and scribbling the equations into notebooks. They will devote all their energy to listening, then download the equations straight into the laptops they've plugged into their desks.

Okay, that isn't quite right. The classroom I'm describing is not some figment of the future. It's the reality I visited a month ago at the Vellore Institute of Technology.

The what? Vellore is a small town in southern India, poor enough for some of its buildings to have thatched roofs rather than the rain-proof metal sort. Until a few years ago Vellore was notable only for its large Christian medical center, erected with the help of foreign money. But now it has sprouted this 9,000-student technical college, complete with a sports stadium, an incubator for start-up high-tech businesses and a bio-separation lab. Everywhere you look, fresh buildings are under construction: over here a new laboratory complex, over there a gleaming student hostel with its own swimming pool.

The college started out in 1984 with just 180 students, and its extraordinary growth is a symbol of the modern India as much as forts and palaces symbolize the India of old. Its success is part of the explosion of technical schools all across this country, which in turn is part of India's technology-fueled economic miracle. In 2005 India produced 200,000 engineering graduates, about three times as many as the United States and twice as many as all of Europe. But the really astonishing statistic is this: In 2005 India enrolled fully 450,000 students in four-year engineering courses, meaning that its output of engineers will more than double by 2009.

As striking as these numbers is the way India is getting there. What's made this engineering takeoff possible is not an increase in the supply of universities financed by taxpayers or foreign donors; it's an increase in demand for education from fee-paying students -- a demand to which entrepreneurs naturally respond. More than four out of five Indian engineering students attend private colleges, whose potential growth seems limitless. In 2003 the Vellore Institute of Technology received 7,000 applications. In 2005 it received 44,000.

Something similar is happening to the Indian school system, which has experienced a huge growth in private provision. Since the early 1990s the percentage of 6-to-14-year-olds attending private school has jumped from less than a tenth to roughly a quarter of the total in that cohort, according to India's National Council of Applied Economic Research. And this number may be on the low side. James Tooley of the University of Newcastle in Britain has found that in some Indian slums about two-thirds of the children attend private schools, many of which are not officially recognized and so may escape the attention of nationwide surveys.

The causes of this private-school explosion shed interesting light on debates about development, not just in India but throughout the poor world. The standard assumption among anti-poverty campaigners is that education leads to development; if you supply classrooms and teachers, progress will follow. Up to a point, India's success in brain-intensive industries such as software and pharmaceuticals lends substance to this theory: India's government has long invested in a few elite engineering schools, whose graduates are at the heart of the country's high-tech success. But it's also true that this elite pool of engineering excellence counted for little so long as statism stifled India's economy. It was only after market reform began in the 1990s that high-tech India took off.

Meanwhile, the recent private-education boom in India shows how causality can also flow the other way. Education may or may not spark development, depending on whether economic conditions favor it, but development certainly can spark an educational takeoff. Since India embraced the market in the early 1990s, parents have acquired a reason to invest in education; they have seen the salaries in the go-go private sector, and they want their children to have a shot at earning them. Private elementary schools improve kids' prospects because they teach in English, the passport to India's modern sector. Colleges such as the Vellore Institute of Technology promise the qualifications needed to work in the auto industry or in software. Once parents understand that education buys their kids into the new India, they demand it so avidly that public money for schoolrooms becomes almost superfluous.

Of course, India's progress isn't simple. The best engineers get snapped up by industry, so it's hard to find decent teachers to staff Vellore and other engineering schools. As a result, many of the new colleges teach kids little of value, and some science graduates end up unemployed. But the story of Vellore points to an important lesson. Apparently unconnected development policies -- cuts in tariffs and oppressive business regulation, or projects to build roads and power grids -- can sometimes stimulate new educational enrollment at least as much as direct investments in colleges or schools.

Thoughts Unthunk, Mostly

This was too good not to syndicate.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/reed/reed8.html

An Essay on Rejuvenation
by Fred Reed

I am persuaded that the gravest catastrophes to afflict this misguided planet were the inventions of agriculture, clean water, and antibiotics. Without these pernicious conceptions our squalid race might consist of a few millions of savages picking bananas and slaughtering the occasional bison. I do not say this in criticism of savages. Theirs was a reasonable existence. I like bananas,
which contain potassium. Bison is succulent. A savage could sleep late.

We should have let well enough alone.

But no. We had to wage chemical war against the various races of bacteria, and boil them alive, and the result was Los Angeles. Three hours a day of commuting, eight more of unnatural staring at witless documents in which no one should have the slightest interest, and then several more of induced corpulence mediated by the lobotomy box. We have come down in the world. Bushmen may have poor table manners, but they don’t commute.

Savagery is unjustly contemned. It is true that savages plundered, tortured, and made war mindlessly and without cease in a state of profound mental benightedness. So do we. As I write, the American president bombs some country or other, it doesn’t matter which either to him or me. The Secretary of State, Kind Of Leezer Rice, runs about advocating torture. Her performance as First Iroquois puts the United States exactly on the moral level of any other Neanderthals. But then, that is the usual state of man.

The distinction is only that we butcher in volume, wholesale as it were. Ours is a brutishness made impersonal, stripped of the fun and human touch. Misbehavior that savages effortlessly wreaked with materials and implements ready to hand, we achieve with sprawling industries that make unnecessarily complicated means of destruction. Why an elaborate bomber? Why not an obsidian knife?

Don’t misunderstand me, lest I be thought unpatriotic or subject to a balmy idealism. I believe that people should kill each other, in the greatest numbers possible, with abundance and overflow. But I say this as a matter of principle. In practice, as amusement, a bow and arrow allows a more leisurely extinction and lets all participate. It is more democratic. Sometimes it is well to sacrifice efficiency to entertainment.

Further, savages did not build shopping malls. When a primitive came out of his yurt or hogan or beaver lodge, he found nature lying about him as insouciantly appealing as a floozy in her boudoir. He presumably liked such vistas as much as we do. He did not respond to his appreciation by building a subdivision to bury what he appreciated.

Perhaps we are out of touch. Hunter-gatherism constitutes a superior form of being. Indolence beats hell out of work. It is much more pleasant to loll around the tipi, enjoying the breeze soughing over the plains and telling off-color stories than to go to some air-conditioned dismalalium and rot for thirty years as a compelled cubicle wart in an office painted federal-wall green. To any sensible being, the very idea of work is repugnant. It wastes time better spent in lazing, swimming, or the company of girls. Work usually requires effort. Effort is not a good thing. It should be essayed only in times of desperation.

I believe that modernly it was the Protestants who came up with the curious notion of the redemptive value of work. Of course, in the higher social classes the enthusiasm was usually reserved for work done by others. Like self-flagellation, enthusiasm for labor results from a perverse in-turning of the religious impulse. It gave us such horrors as Puritanism, Massachusetts, and sweatshops full of children. I see little good about it.

But it was agriculture that doomed us. Before this irreparable mistake, the females of the species spent an hour or two a day picking things to eat from trees, or finding roots and berries. The men sallied forth from time to time and killed something—food, each other, or the neighbors. It was a relaxed approach to things, and left time for admiring sunsets and raiding other tribes for women. But then….ah, but then.

Then came farming. It required foresight, husbandry, and plowing. None of these had much to recommend it. The practitioner had to plan, to save seed corn, to remember things; here were the awful seeds of bureaucracy. Soon he was getting up at ungodly hours of the morning to dig holes and carry great lumpish things and remonstrate with mules. By contrast the savage, replete with bananas and bison, enjoyed a gentleman’s leisure.

The worst defect of agriculture was that it allowed the population to grow like over-sexed kudzu. A few people when spread over a large world are picturesque, or at least avoidable. When they can grow food, a profligate fecundity takes over and soon you have roads, malls, stoplights, and disordered people who want to ban drunk driving.

What good has come of it? Some might argue that the Cherokee in his natural habitat could not read and could not manage the rudiments of arithmetic. In this he closely resembled a high-school graduate. It is true that to some extent the gurgling adolescent of today can use a calculator. The Cherokee had nothing to calculate, a far better thing. Instead of spending twelve years unhappily learning nothing in a regimented ignorance factory, he learned nothing while running through the woods and climbing trees. The choice is, as we say, a no-brainer.

The vices of the savage were precisely those of today. His virtue was that he could apply them only locally and spottily. Because he had no refrigeration, he saw no profit in killing more bison than he could immediately eat. Because he did not practice agriculture, he could not reproduce excessively, and so there were always enough bison. Incapacity has always been more a check on mankind than judgment.

The only hope may be avian influenza if the virus would only abandon its shiftless ways and mutate, although an asteroid strike would serve if I knew how to foment one. Perhaps the Black Death might return. I do not put much faith in radiation poisoning. It has not been adequately proven, though it might serve as a backup.

Those few of us remaining could live torpidly on Pacific Islands, eating mangos and crabs and only occasionally dismembering each other, intimately and with machetes. We have lost the sense of community. Bladed weapons would restore it. Between hecatombs they might lounge on white beaches and watch gorgeous red sunsets over a dark and threatening ocean. We are here for but a short time anyway. Better that we eat coconuts and rut than unduly document things.

Surviving New Orleans

It's been a while since I've posted anything new, but this had to be shared with as many people as possible. Right now, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there are people holed up in an office building, surviving in New Orleans. Those people have a connection with the rest of the world right here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/.

Cops are looting and things are chaos. It's a warzone. At least these people know better than to depend on anybody but themselves. Our prayers go out to those few people in Outpost Crystal. Godspeed, and stay safe.

Governments turn to Organized Crime for Revenue

Strike The Root presented an interesting article today, about a town in Colorado that doesn't take too kindly to competition on their turf. The Mob apparently has a new look. This one includes a shiny badge. Somebody forgot to pay their protection money.

The raid was a major sting operation, and officials spent a month in preparation for it after finding out about the game. Never mind Andy Griffith walking into the restaurant and having a talk with the owner: "You know, Jeff, what you're doing isn't legal, and you're going to have to shut it down." "Oh, thanks Andy, I'm sorry, I wouldn't have held the poker game and risked felony arrest as well as loss of my liquor license if I thought I was doing anything wrong. As far as we knew, we were doing everything by the book." (That last line is an actual quote from a waiter at the restaurant.) Instead, the smart-ass, arrogant police chief Dale Smith says, "Normally, we don’t give warnings for felonies." Looks like Barney Fife has gotten a promotion.

The Des Moines SS

Thanks to Gunner over at No Quarters for the story on this. If this is an indication of what this country is quickly coming to, there's more to worry about than I thought. The Police in Des Moines apparently do not think very highly of "due process" anymore. Here is the story of a young man who just had his property seized for no apparent reason.

Des Moines police on March 28 confiscated a legally purchased AK-47 assault rifle from the home of Patrick Younk, 18. Police began investigating Younk after they received a complaint about threats made against Roosevelt High School students.

Sgt. Todd Dykstra said Younk did not take the weapon to school or threaten anyone. The gun was shown to Younk's friends at a tennis court in the 4600 block of Observatory Road on March 5. Younk was not arrested or charged with a crime, police said.

Dykstra said police confiscated the gun because "we just didn't want to take any chances."

Dykstra said the case had been turned over to the Polk County attorney's office for review because the gun was transported in Younk's car.

Sgt. Todd Dykstra should be fined, if not fired, for this breach of protocol and violation of the rights of an American Citizen. I think maybe he needs to have his drivers license revoked, and his car seized, because we just don't want to take the chance of him mowing down pedestrians.

"In the Year of Our ... well... nevermind"

Thanks to Ravenwood for the heads-up on this. Here is yet another reason why public education is a crock and needs to be tossed out the proverbial window.

Thanks to the Washington Times this week, we have one more journalist to make fun of. It seems Michael Gormley is convinced that we lost 33 years of history somewhere along the road.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- In certain precincts of a world encouraged to embrace differences, Christ is out. The terms "B.C." and "A.D." increasingly are shunned by certain scholars.

Educators and historians say schools from North America to Australia have been changing the terms "Before Christ," or B.C., to "Before Common Era," or B.C.E., and "anno Domini" (Latin for "in the year of the Lord") to "Common Era." In short, they're referred to as B.C.E. and C.E.

The life of Christ still divides the epochs, but the change has stoked the ire of Christians and religious leaders who see it as an attack on a social and political order that has been in place for centuries.

For more than a century, Hebrew lessons have used B.C.E. and C.E., with C.E. sometimes referring to Christian Era.

Although most calendars are based on an epoch or person, B.C. and A.D. have always presented a particular problem for historians: There is no year zero; there's a 33-year gap, reflecting the life of Christ, dividing the epochs. Critics say that's additional reason to replace the Christian-based terms.

Just so we are all on the same page here, there is no 33 year gap. The A.D. does not stand for "after death." The year 1 A.D. was the first year after the birth of Christ. The year 1 B.C. was the year directly before 1 A.D. I wonder how many editors this piece of fine journalism passed by.

"When Jews or Muslims have to put Christ in the middle of our calendar ... that's difficult for us," said Steven M. Brown, dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.

The new terms were introduced by academics in the 1990s in public elementary and high school classrooms.

In New York, the terms are entering public classrooms through textbooks and worksheets, but B.C.E. and C.E. are not part of the state's official curriculum, and there is no plan to debate the issue, said state Education Department spokesman Jonathan Burman.

"The standard textbooks primarily used in New York use the terms A.D. and B.C.," Mr. Burman said. Schools, however, may choose to use the new terms, although B.C. and A.D. will continue to be used in the state Regents exams, many of which are required for high school graduation.

Candace de Russy, a national writer on education and Catholic issues and a trustee for the State University of New York, doesn't accept the notion of fence-straddling.

"The use of B.C.E. and C.E. is not mere verbal tweaking; rather it is integral to the leftist language police -- a concerted attack on the religious foundation of our social and political order," she said.

For centuries, B.C. and A.D. were used in public schools and universities, and in historical and most theological research. Some historians and college instructors started using the new forms as a less Christ-centric alternative.

"I think it's pretty common now," said Gary B. Nash, director of the National Center for History in the Schools. "Once you take a global approach, it makes sense not to make a dating system applicable only to a relative few."

But not everyone takes that pluralistic view.

"I find it distressing; I don't like it," said Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, which finds politics intruding on instruction. He said changing terms accepted for centuries because of a current social movement could threaten other long-held principles.

Mr. Nash said most major textbook companies have adopted the new terms, which are part of the national world history standards. But even those standards have been called into question. In a 2000 national resolution, the Southern Baptist Convention condemned the new terms as "the result of the secularization, anti-supernaturalism, religious pluralism, and political correctness pervasive in our society."

"Is that some sort of the political correctness?" said Tim Callahan, of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, an independent group with 60,000 educator members. "It sounds pretty silly to me."

Talk about an understatement.

New Element Discovered

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER NEW ELEMENT - GOVERNMENTIUM

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element has been name "Governmentium." Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These 311 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert.

However, it can be detected, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over 4 days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in co ncentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass."

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.

The Team Europe Cheerleader

Yesterday Jeff Feffer decided it was somebody else's turn to drive the bus. It's amazing how delusional people can get when they forget that we had two World Wars the last time Europe decided to drive. Here are some of the jucier bits of lunacy for you....

What "job" was she talking about? We most definitely were not getting the job done in Iraq, I pointed out. In recent years, it's Europe not the United States that's been on the right side of the major foreign policy issues of our time, be it Europe's objections to the Iraq War or its diplomatic approach toward resolving the conflicts with Iran and North Korea -- an approach that is far more likely to succeed than American military oomph.

Do people actually believe this over there? You think diplomacy with someone who kills millions of his own people is suddenly going to roll over and stop his aggression just because other nations ask him too? That's amazing. Especially taking into consideration the progress the UN made during the 11 years after the Persian Gulf war. Brilliant work there on the part of diplomacy.

"As for taking care of their own people, the social system in Europe -- the kind that ensured the job security, high-quality education, crime-free streets, and comparative lack of poverty that friend so clearly admired in Switzerland -- was clearly superior to anything the average American could hope for."

Thought I'd take the opportunity here, to point out that Switzerland's government is more pro-gun than even the U.S. And from what I understand they are even less socialist in ideals than we are. They require every household to have a well-maintained machine gun over there.

"While the resentment of U.S. power and domination was the same as ever, according to Gordon, the students were no longer willing to give the United States its usual pass for its excesses. What's more, they were only too happy to contemplate the alternatives that Gordon offered. "And they would say, yeah, we'd take China. Germany? Yeah, Germany is fine. France? Yeah, that would be good," he said. "They were looking at me like, well, of course, we'd rather have those countries more powerful than the United States."

I laughed at this. We'll start with France. When was the last time France ever successfully defended herself, let alone actually did anything abroad worth mentioning--unless they were tagging along on one of our expeditions. Fact of the matter is, France has no muscle to flex, and like it or not, you have to be able to back up what you say with force when needed.

Germany is the only one out of the three mentioned that actually has any potential to be a global source of rational leadership. We've all seen what can happen when Germany focuses it's resources toward a war machine too. Their mechanical capabilities are one of best in the world. But as of late, they seem to have little ambition toward anything outside the EU. There's something to be said for that as well, don't get me wrong.

China. China is the "sleeping dragon." Anyone in the U.S. who actually knows anything about what's really going on, fears China more than any other nation in the world. They have the resources, the technology, the manpower, and the capital to rival the U.S. militarily, if they chose to. And that's a scary proposition, considering the differences in ideologies that exist between the two countries. If China ever decides to stir from its slumber (some say it's a "when" not an "if") we're all in trouble. And if you think it's a bad idea to have America's ideals of democracy behind the wheel of the bus, you'll be wishing you never had such thoughts if China is driving.

"The most astonishing fact revealed by the new poll is that 34 percent of Americans agree that Europe should be running the show. Let me repeat this: one-third of Americans want Brussels, not Washington, to be calling the shots on the global arena."

and then....

"While the current American leadership certainly has a martial disposition, it seems that virtually everyone else -- the majority of Americans included -- is weary of Washington playing globo-cop..."

At this point, I'm fairly sure this guy is on crack. When did 34% become a majority?
And just to counter that point anyway, I'd be willing to bet that most of that 34% couldn't tell you the difference between socialism and capitalism, and quite possibly couldn't tell you what country Brussels is in.

"It is conceivable that, in another four years, Hillary Clinton or some other vaguely palatable Democrat will paint the White House blue and put the French back into French fries. But it will take a long time to undo the damage the neo-cons have done to the United States' standing in the world -- and the damage America has done to the world. By all means hang in there for Hillary. As for me, I'm with the 34 percent of Americans rooting for Team Europe. "

*shiver* That just gives me the willies. Anyway, let's all take a minute to remember what got us into this predicament to begin with. The Persian Gulf War ended in the early 90's and the U.N. started in with their mandates and weapons inspectors in Iraq. We decided then that we could get by alright with trying to keep Saddam Hussein on a leash. During the 11 years after the end of the Gulf War, Hussein showed a blatant disregard of the U.N. and their meaningless mandates. I say meaningless because after seeing mandate after mandate after mandate being tossed aside, the U.N. continually wanted more and more talking, and absolutely no consequences for Iraq. All the while Hussein continued the mass-murder of people groups who were at odds with his Baath Party. We appealed to the U.N. time and again to actually DO something instead of huddle together and talk about more talking. Time and again that request was denied. We here in the United States generally hold to the principle that if you want something done, do it yourself.

And that's exactly what we did. Like it or not, you Europeans were given the chance to help out and take a turn at the driver's seat. You chose to fall asleep at the wheel. We in turn, simply decided to take another bus.

I make no mention here of any supposed connection to Al-Queda or the existence or non-existence of WMDs. The facts are so muddled now with those angles that I will not even venture to decipher what's fact from fiction anymore. The simple facts are, the United Nations did nothing to enforce the resolutions they imposed in the first place on Iraq.

Were there other reasons that played into this mess for going to war? You bet. But the enforcement of the resolutions should have been enough, let alone the genocide that was happening on a daily basis there.

And if you want to talk about trying to be in the driver's seat, why don't we ask France, Germany and Russia the REAL reason they wanted to keep Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq in power. They just might reveal themselves to be a bit more capitalistic than they claim to be.

History of the Income Tax

[Excerpt from Neal Boortz's soon-to-be-released book "The FairTax Saying Goodbye to the IRS and the Federal Income Tax", soon to be published by Regan Books.]


"Now here's where things get really depressing. After the idea of an income tax was declared to be unconstitutional the politicians in Washington chose sides and drew their battle lines. On the one side we had Democrats who were eager to spend the money that would come from an income tax. The Democrats included a platform calling for such a constitutional amendment permitting the income tax in both their 1896 and 1908 platforms. Republicans were opposed.
Those who favored the income tax scheme met with considerable success in capturing public sentiment with promises that the tax would "soak the rich" and would leave the vast majority of Americans alone. Wealth envy was every bit as alive and well in the early 1900s as it is in the early 2000s.

The history timeline now brings us to Texas Senator Joseph Bailey, a conservative Democrat, who cooked up a scheme to humiliate congressional Republicans. Bailey introduced a bill calling for an income tax. Even though Bailey himself was opposed to an income tax, he thought that the Republicans would rush in to kill this legislation. This would further the image that Democrats were trying to cultivate of Republicans as hostile to the poor and concerned only about protecting the wealthy. Wouldn't you know it; things didn't turn out as Bailey had planned. Liberal Republicans, backed by Teddy Roosevelt, came out in support of the bill. Passage seemed all but certain.

Conservative Republicans needed a way to derail the Bailey Bill and the growing threat of an income tax. In one of the worst examples of legislative play-calling in the history of our Republic, Republicans came up with the brilliant idea of announcing that they would support the idea of an income tax, but only if that income tax came about as the result of an amendment to our constitution. This group of conservative Republicans felt that while there might be some chance the proposed amendment would actually make it through the House and the Senate, there was just no way in the world that the legislatures of three-fourths of the states would vote for ratification and make it a part of our Constitution.

Oops.

Sail through the House and the Senate the amendment did. The vote in the Senate was 77-0 and the House approved it by 318-14. It was off to the states for ratification. Conservative Republicans were certain that the effort was doomed. They were wrong.

Democrats launched a massive effort to convince the people that any income tax would only be directed at the wealthy, and that ordinary Americans would be left unscathed. Conservative legislatures in the West and the South convinced their constituents that the adoption of the income tax would have little effect on them, since incomes high enough to be taxed were rare in these areas. The people, thus anesthetized, raised little objection and the 16th Amendment was ratified on February 12, 1913 . This date should be added to December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 as dates in American history that shall forever live in infamy."

The FairTax (c) 2005 John Linder & Neal Boortz