It's over!

Powerline says it:

...the Iraq war most likely will turn out to be a big victory for the U.S. and the Bush administration.

so it must be true. I've been thinking this way for quite a while now. So just what will the Dems use for an issue in 2006? Not to mention 2008? Hint: it ain't this:

"There is a hunger in America, a hunger for a sense of national community, a hunger for something big and important and inspirational that they all can be involved in," [Senator John] Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, told delegates at a weekend convention of Florida Democrats.

"Americans don't want to believe that they are out there on an island all alone," the former North Carolina senator said.

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean has commissioned confidential polling and analysis that suggest candidates in 2006 and 2008 should frame their policies — and attacks on Republicans — around the context of community.

It seems to be the emerging message from a party that has been bereft of one."

Yep. That's just what Americans want to hear. "You can be part of something bigger than yourself. You don't really count for anything by yourself, anyway, do you, punk?!! So join us or die." Real winner, that.

Can Dems somehow sneak around to the other side of the immigration issue? Donald Collins on VDARE thinks not:

But Dean then goes on to say

"’In 2006, it's going to be immigration; that's who he's (Bush) going to scapegoat next.’ He said Democrats must favor tougher enforcement of existing immigration laws and provide tighter border security, but said a balanced immigration policy would provide a way to give many of the 11 million illegal immigrants a path to legal status."

That’s ELEVEN MILLION MORE ILLEGAL ALIENS, Folks.

And that runs into the iron law of political life that has emerged recently: Howard Dean is ALWAYS WRONG!

Beyond Desperate
Dave Sheffield over at Redstate.org has this terribly amusing and comprehensive column about David Cameron and the state of the Conservative Party in Britain. Representative quotes:

"Mr Duncan-Smith, a nice man with the charisma of a stoat, was finally bushwhacked a few years later in a desperate attempt to elect someone combative enough to make election broadcasts that people would find traditionally offensive."

"The gist of this is, that no sooner would Major say anything than the Party at large would make him look an utter fool. They could have saved themselves the effort and bought him a mirror, which was all that was required. Thought to be the only person ever to run away from the circus to become a banker, Major was known to have failed an exam to become a bus conductor earlier in life."

"William Hague has returned from the desert to be Foreign Secretary. After Losing with a capital L in 2001, he has grown up and become an adult, acquiring the essential British skills of Not Taking Himself Seriously, and Appearing On Lightweight TV Shows."

If only US politics could be so colorfully described! You won't regret reading the whole thing.

Iraq and America

Wretchard on Belmont Club has a great post on the changing political and military perceptions in Iraq:

For America as a whole, one thing that no politician will dispute in 2008 is that aside from being a European and Pacific power -- which it has been since the end of the Second World War -- the US is now a part of the strategic landscape of the Middle East and Central Asia.

I believe there's something truly historic going on here, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago. So I boiled down my view to the simplest comment I could restrict myself to:

The US has been the dominant power in the Middle East since the Suez crisis of 1956-7. Until now, however, we have not acted dominant. The great danger is that we will walk away after Iraqi stabilization and allow chaos to well up again. Capitalism, democracy and secularism must have the opportunity to take root and flourish in Islamic lands. Otherwise we face more decades of intifada and international jihad.

I am optimistic that the influence of the US will eventually be seen as both benign and inevitable. And in the fullness of time the Arabs will come to the conclusion that their liberation was also inevitable and start to take credit and responsibility for it themselves. Then maybe we can start on Europe ...

Erudition
Oh, I won't say, "most erudite thread ever", but it's sure got some substance about the search for this quotation:

"The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and kill them. And the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!"

Jody gets it and appears to nail it down in a further comment:

First, that USC site I cited above for the hadith oddly returns an error (some database search error) when searching for "Jew and tree" or "Jew and rock". However, works fine for "Jew" (returns too many verses to work through) and correctly returns nothing if I search for "blah".

This may be nothing, but I find it odd...

Second, that hadith gets such wide play because a Palestinian iman recited it over the air.

Third, while you are correct in your reporting of the relative valuation of the hadiths and the Koran, for the particular hadith I quoted (Muslim) , wiki has the following to say "al-Bukhari and Muslim are usually considered the most reliable of these collections"

So this isn't some throw away line, it's actually a "reliable" part of Islam.

It's not exactly "instant expertise" but certainly gives an idea of how easily formerly recondite topics can be discussed substantively with all the amazing tools we now have at our disposal. You can tell some of the commenters are far more committed to religion than others. Yet the discussion doesn't degenerate into name-calling or the burning of heretics.

Foley out!

Only those who have never had a Foley in can know the glory and wonder of having a Foley out. Sleep, beautiful sleep!

Mark Steyn is stealing my ideas again. I can't understand people who don't see the historic magic that Bush's policies are forging (can one "forge magic"?? Hmm.) in the Middle East. The implications and ramifications multiply amazingly. Not to mention we get a trained and hardened anti-insurgency force out of the deal. The next terrorist thinking of flying an airplane into an American building must ask himself, "OK, so what's going to happen as a result of this?" And if the answer is that hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened troops descend on any country you have connections with, it may not look like so much of a good idea.

Speaking of planes crashing into buildings, this incident raises my eyebrows. I guess we should be thankful they didn't try to blame fundamentalist Christian terrorists. No Gregorian chants or shouts of "Thank you, Jesus!!" before the impact. Or if there were they aren't telling.

Funniest.Thread.Ever.

From Protein Wisdom, Conundrum presents:The incoherent Democratic message. Now that's comedy for the third millennium.

-Pedestrian in a time of Hovercars

He's still an objectivist
Alan Greenspan made an interesting speech on Columbus Day(via Michael Barone's econoblog):

We weathered a decline on October 19, 1987, of a fifth of the market value of U.S. equities with little evidence of subsequent macroeconomic stress--an episode that hinted at a change in adjustment dynamics. The credit crunch of the early 1990s and the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000 were absorbed with the shallowest recessions in the post-World War II period. And the economic fallout from the tragic events of September 11, 2001, was moderated by market forces, with severe economic weakness evident for only a few weeks. Most recently, the flexibility of our market-driven economy has allowed us, thus far, to weather reasonably well the steep rise in spot and futures prices for oil and natural gas that we have experienced over the past two years. The consequence has been a far more stable economy.

Perhaps he's resigned to government intervention as a fact of life rather than a positive influence, but he's still got the old analysis going, with a nod to deregulation:

Starting in the 1970s, U.S. Presidents, supported by bipartisan majorities in the Congress, responded to the growing recognition of the distortions created by regulation, by deregulating large segments of the transportation, communications, energy, and financial services industries. The stated purpose of this deregulation was to enhance competition, which had come to be seen as a significant spur to productivity growth and elevated standards of living. Assisting in the dismantling of economic restraints was the persistent, albeit slow, lowering of barriers to cross-border trade and finance.

I wonder what Peikoff thought?

I don't seem to be able to get a comment to work on this post on Social Affairs Unit, but in response to this thought:

But the emotional climate that is happiness is not necessarily attractive. One reason for this is that happiness goes with a sense of completion; a sense of the end of struggle, of equilibrium, and the calm of a "happy ending". The Enlightenment was obviously drawn to calm and equilibrium, and it is not surprising that they made a cult of happiness. But the Romantic revolution had quite a different set of attractions. And we remain their heirs. Does everyone want a happy ending?

this is what I would say:

Perhaps happiness, undefined as it will probably ever remain, is not as important as the avoidance of unhappinesses - death, sickness, hunger, boredom, bad movies. Wealth allows one to avoid the most obvious and generally agreed-on unhappiness. Education, only possible through the possession of some wealth, allows one to avoid boredom and the feeling that other people know something you don't. For instance, I've always thought it must be intensely boring not to be able to read. But reading does not necessarily bring happiness. Stimulation, perhaps, but hardly cow-like contentment (Sorry, Elsie!) How pleasant the world seems when one is cut off from the daily deluge of small and large unhappinesses called the "news". But how colorless.

Ooh, car arson!

OK, Thanksgiving's over. Back to double-dipping comments and blogging. Eric Raymond, despite his oh-so-shameless self-promotion, had a good post on the car fires in France:

Yes, you read that correctly. 98 car-torchings a night is “normal” in the glorious Fifth Republic in 2005. Civil order in the banlieus has collapsed, but instead of addressing the breakdown the French response is to define it out of existence. (In other breaking news, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ol’ George Orwell is spinning in his grave.)

. Some of the other commenters were saying that a lot of these cars might be people having their cars burned for insurance reimbursements, which I believe is the favorite - perhaps the only - pastime of those who live in Lawrence, Massachusetts. This theory didn't seem to hold water for yours truly:

The phrase “98 cars torched” would seem to exclude the idea that owners were purposely burning cars for insurance purposes. So apples and oranges. Is it simplistic to assume that the previous totals of cars burned during the riots, by masked rioters, in defiance of the police, for rage-related purposes, excluded those burned by or on the orders of their owners for insurance reimbursements? Unless some sharp entrepreneurial arsonist had the happy thought, “Hey, I don’t have to take on the risk of burning these cars on my “to-do list” myself. I’ll just park them in front of Stalinist-looking apartment blocks and wait for darkness and riotousness!” ‘Tis an ill wind…

Hey, I might actually have home internet service today, dialup only. And I got the phone line without giving out my D/L number or SS #(I never did like the Stutz Staffeln, anyway). Thank you JJ Luna!

Darn islands again

A while ago I did this weekly search around the world by Google to find odd little islands. So I had to notice this. Somehow it popped up in my search for the real Yola in Nigeria. Google Earth keeps taking me to one Yola when I know the one where my sister lives is across the country from there. But these little sub-Antarctic islands don't have one thing Nigeria has:

Heard Island - 80% ice-covered, bleak and mountainous, dominated by a large massif (Big Ben) and an active volcano (Mawson Peak); McDonald Islands - small and rocky

Heat.

I noticed one thing: 0% arable land. Now if only global warming were true, that might change. The place might become a desirable vacation spot, with bathing beauties.

P.S. What does one make of this statement:

Legal system:

the laws of Australia, where applicable, apply

??

The thread kept a rollin' all night long

I've posted a 2nd comment to this post from yesterday:

Excellent thread, except for the Cheney Derangement Syndrome rant. As to IQ, it might be interesting to see what the facts are about immigration worldwide. It may be that most countries allow immigration of higher-IQ individuals and bar those with a lower average IQ than that of their own citizens. Charles Murray and Steve Sailer would doubtless have some ideas on this.

Again, I don't know how much good it does to toss in a comment 63 thoughts downstream, but at least it keeps me thinking. Now there's a project, for after my divorce is final and I get a business running = do a worldwide immigration analysis.

Full of galloping
Fighting corruption in Nigeria must always have seemed like trying to sweep back the tides with a toothbrush. But this article at least gives one hope:

But moments after judgment, Balogun, in an emotion-laden voice said: “I will serve the jail term. I will serve it. But all I know is that the permanent feature of life is that it is full of galloping. It is full of ups and downs, downs and ups. At a time, I was up the ladder. Now, it is the reverse. But I will bounce back. Hun..hun.. I say I will definitely bounce back.”

How many French former Inspectors-General of Police have ever been investigated, much less jailed, for corruption? And there's Vladimir Putin the head of Russia. Didn't he at one time have something to do with The Committee for State Security (KGB to some of us)? I guess he just bounced back.

Maybe it's silly to put a comment in a thread with hundreds of comments. Who's going to care? I've noticed that the longer threads get the less relevant to the original post the comments become, because commenters start addressing each others' arguments and forget what the heck the original post was about anyway. And heaven forbid anyone should actually read the article that the post linked to. But this thread (which I found via Gene Expression) appears to be an exception. Everyone's staying pretty much on topic, which was:

Are you OK with the fact that the U.S.'s population is growing much, much faster than it would without illegal immigration? Are you cool with the fact that the country's ethnic makeup is undergoing a drastic re-ordering? I'd be a much happier man than I am if I heard these questions being argued about openly. Hence my determination to continue raising these topics despite the risk of appearing to be a monomaniac. Let it never be said that it's possible to visit 2Blowhards without encountering the topic of migrations and immigration!

So I inserted my anecdotal two cents' worth:

If "open borders" and massive uncontrolled alien flows are good ideas, why doesn't Mexico have such a policy? Do they let any Guatemalan come in who wants to? I don't think so. Or any other country? If even illegal immigrants really contribute, many countries should not just be welcoming them but seeking them out. That doesn't happen. I was in Cairo in 2000 and remember my sister remarking on how many poor Ethiopians were trying to immigrate to Egypt. The Egyptian police would conduct massive sweeps late at night for illegals and deport them all immediately. Once again, the US is the sucker.

I really should look up all the immigration laws of the world that are available on the Net and find out if I'm right about all this. And I am aware that Australia periodically launches campaigns to get skilled workers and high producers to come to Oz. But that's not really relevant to the kind of illegal immigration and the sins of omission with regard to dealing with it that the US is experiencing today.

Ooh, Bill Quick is mad! I'm sooo scared!

All right, I know I'm acting like an idiot, but Quick won't even listen(see comments) to the facts about AIDS. He's got his facts and won't accept any argument. Some people have hot buttons and this is definitely one of them, like ID. I can't imagine being in that situation, though. Not even wanting to hear the basic arguments on a topic. I don't ever, ever want to hear anybody defend such a state of mind. And especially not you, Bill Quick! Hey, he could do like Esmay and write a book.

Bribery is a positive step

Bill Quick still doesn't think that Mideasterners can ever participate in a meaningful election:

The Big Pharaoh says that in Egypt, the current elections are a matter of mammon or Allah. Yet another reason why I think western notions of democracy will experience hard going in the entrenched medieval cultures of the middle east.

I assert that at least that day is closer:

The only important result of an election, of course, is how people feel about it. I think the fact that people will vote for 500LE shows there isn't that much determined and principled opposition to democracy in Egypt. If potential voters don't feel strongly enough that elections are evil and anti-Islamic to reject the payments, that gives those in favor of democracy some hope. It also shows how ineffective anti-voting terror has been - or maybe how the other side isn't willing to pay enough to get people NOT to vote.

Why does it seem to me these days I'm making the same points I've made many times before? Hey, wait a minute, didn't I say that before? Well, anyway, Bill Quick opined at some length about patriotism:

Patriotism isn't, or at least it shouldn't be, "My country right or wrong." If your country is wrong, you should work to fix the problem. But it is "My country..." first and foremost. Unfortunately, to observe the efforts of those of the antiwar left - most of them Democrats, even Democrats in high office, sad to say - to peddle lies about how we came to invade Iraq, lies about their own roles in supporting that invasion, and lies about the intelligence they themselves placed full credence in at the time - for the sole purpose of advancing their own political power - is to watch men and women who have forgotten about the well-being and safety of their country, who have forgotten that "My country" is "Their country" as well, who have forgotten what it means to be a patriot.

So I had to toss in a somewhat prissy-sounding reservation:

I don't regard patriotism as a good thing unless the country you are being patriotic about is a good country. I support America's actions in the war on terror because I believe they are right, not because they are America's. I don't support the war on drugs, even though it is official policy and probably supported by a majority of Americans, because I believe it's wrong, morally and practically. So what bothers me about the Dems' insanity is not the patriotism aspect, but their lack of good judgment.

New/Old Mexico
Bill Quick worries about Latino irredentism:

Would Congress or a Republican administration ever endorse irredentism? The White House and elements of congress already have. The disastrous Akaka Bill aims at creating a race-based, sovereign, territorially-endowed entity in Hawaii, and its precedent would threaten the mainland's cohesiveness. That Akaka stands a real chance of being enacted is proof Americans need to get a two-handed grip on Washington before the White House and Congress wreck our nation.

So I come up with a constructive if somewhat snarky suggestion:

Just as an experiment, we should give New Mexico, say, to the Mexican government and let them run it for a while. Most of the Anglos would leave immediately, but it wouldn't be long before Latinos would be flooding into Colorado, Arizona, even California because of the "economic conditions" in New/Old Mexico. At least the point would be made that it ain't not having enough land that keeps Mexico poor.

I've made this suggestion, only half-heartedly, before, and probably will again. The problem would be that the Mexicanos would say we didn't give them the right kind of land or everything was non-metric or it rained too little or some darn thing. But as a gedenkenexperiment it makes a point.

Froze-o Bozo

Eric Raymond thinks that "commons" language is disgusting, or at least vaguely icky:

My problem with the language of “the commons” is that to me it it sounds, at best, like idealistic blather. At worst, and far more usually, it sounds like an attempt to conceal all kinds of individual decisions about cooperation under a vague collectivist metaphor so the individuals who made those decisions can be propagandized and jerked around.

He was talking about the internet, but I brought up the annoying example I run into just about every day over on Park Street here in Tally:

Public libraries exemplify how a “common” resource can be destroyed - or at least made less usable - by too-enthusiastic deployment of “rights” language. Hobos (short for “homeless bozos”) have taken over most of them. So even though all the people “own” the library, no one can kick out the hobos from “their” libraries so they can read without stench and noise. Most people go to a library to get books. Hobos use it for entirely different reasons, as a social center and warm (or cool) place. And of course the hobos don’t pay anything for this “common” resource. A true commons would have to be supported by anyone who wanted to use it, like a video rental store.

Of course, this does have implications for the internet. The web, as visited selectively by individual users in their homes, has become the new public library, minus bozos and with beer and hot dogs easily available. Oddly enough, one of the most common uses of the public library these days is to go online. Even the hobos slip up and do that occasionally. I wonder if book usage has gone down since every public library installed dozens of computer stations. And why is it necessary to have everyone in a building all together just so they can play on the internet? The authorities will eventually give everyone free computers and broadband in their homes and close all the libraries. Uh-oh. I smell frozen bozos!

St. George's again

What is it about getting older that makes you think of your childhood? I've heard that happens, but maybe now at 57 I am experiencing it. A simple inquiry from Dean Esmay brought back a trivial day at St. George's School in Mill Hill, near London, when a little American boy in short trousers, facing the English educational system for the first time, was racking his brain trying to do well at his new school:

I remember using "bachelorette" as a response to the question, "What is the term for an unmarried older woman?" in a test in my first day at a school in England when I was nine years old (in the Fifties). I couldn't think of the word "spinster". I managed to convince the master that "bachelorette" was the received American usage, and he gave me credit. I rather like "bachelorette" but I get it confused with "majorette" and can't help thinking of happy unmarried women kicking up their heels in skimpy costumes while twirling batons and blowing whistles. "Old maid" is certainly most descriptive but perhaps "Auntie" is the cruelest.

I also sense more evidence that political correctness is running its obnoxious course. It can't be soon enough to get rid of monsters like "he/she" and "chairperson". (Well, which is it, a chair or a man or a woman or both?)

The important freedom

In response to a rather silly post by someone named Greg on Belgravia Dispatch, I had to belabor the obvious:

The right thing to spread is not "liberalism" or even democracy. It is capitalism, pure and simple. Most people everywhere want to be prosperous and to be able to keep the fruits of their labor. That's something everyone can understand. And that, not "neo-Wilsonianism" is in essence what America stands for. We have restored capitalism to Afghanistan and Iraq and it is prospering in China. Even in undemocratic venues like Pakistan and Singapore, capitalism is strong and serves the interests of most of the population. Freedom to start your own business and grow rich is the only freedom worth bothering about. America's interests lie in supporting capitalism wherever it exists.

This doesn't get said enough, though. We aren't, or shouldn't be, out to spread "good government" or "civic virtue". We won't truly be safe until everyone in the world is rich, through their own efforts.

Twofer
I haven't been to Eric Raymond's site for a while. But this post, cited on Dean Esmay, spurred me into action. Not only that, but I got to bring in the AIDS delusion:

I here register my extreme skepticism that the “Montreal Protocol” or any actions by man made any difference to the extent of ozone in the upper atmosphere, a “problem” that never existed. Well, those are always the easiest kind to fix, aren’t they, and the most pleasant if you’re part of the power structure whose power is enhanced by the “cure”? Oh, yes and what was the mechanism whereby chlorofluorocarbons actually got up to the stratosphere, again? Anybody actually figure that out? Must be hiding in the same database where they’re keeping the proof that the HIV causes any diseases. But I look forward to the imminent declaration that HIV/AIDS has been “cured” by some extremely expensive drug or vaccine. When the truth is no one ever died from HIV.

And this was on a post about Peak Oil! A "threefer"?

John D. Rockefeller or not?
On Dailypundit, I try to confuse the neocons AND the leftoids by implying that John D. Rockefeller is now a senator from West Virginia. Do I do a good job?:

Is this the John D. Rockefeller the leftists have been inveighing against since, oh, 1888? Rather old, isn't he? Aren't the leftoids at all surprised that John D. Rockefeller is being attacked by the "neocons" and capitalist brigands? Why doesn't John D. Rockefeller give away all his money to the poor and colonialized? Why is anyone surprised that John D. Rockefeller should give advice to another oil billionaire robber baron just because his name is Saddam?

I'm such a card. I must be getting money for this from someone rich like, oh, I don't know, JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER???

Jonathan Pearce on Samizdata.net bemoans the loss of at least some protection against double jeopardy in Great Britain. Pearce pointed out at least one bad consequence, perhaps the least of their troubles, "If people can be repeatedly tried for the same crime, it creates a potential very bad and unintended consequence: police and the Crown Prosecution Service will become lazy in the preparation of cases."
That reminded me of a TV show I saw:

I recall seeing a Law and Order episode that pointed out that the double jeopardy protection in the US constitution isn't absolute. The example was a trial where the judge was corrupt, I believe. That defendant could be tried again because he never had a "real" trial in the first place. This exception, however, just emphasized the unusual circumstances that have to occur to justify disregarding this protection. The "new and compelling evidence" standard that now appears to be in place in Britain sets a much lower hurdle. Sometimes there is such a thing as a "slippery slope".

Robert Bidinotto wrote an eloquent post on the despair that's affecting most libertarian-leaning objectivists such as myself. I don't seem to have been able to get my comment to post, but here's what it would have been:

I agree. The political sphere is useless, even counter-productive as an arena within which to fight for individual freedoms. Luckily, in the US, for now, we have another arena - the economy. I am abandoning politics and will from now on concentrate solely on economics, not just to get rich - though I hope that happens - but to reclaim my soul as a free man.

Now I know that makes the politicians tremble in their boots, but what I mean is I'm not going to worry about politics any more. It's something about the wisdom of Scooter Libby, that "all the aspens are connected at the roots" that has made me feel that rooting for any side in the political wars is a mug's game. So I'll read my Raymond Chandler book, watch Maigret and conspire to become prosperous in my old age.

Another invasion of private property rights is laid out in this post on Samizdata:

And why, just because a premises is open to the public, does the owner therefore lose all right to control who enters? He still owns it, his money is still at risk, he still pays taxes. Why are his preferences and his judgment of no value whatever? Under what collectivist theory is this valid or good?

That Euan Gray really gets my goat! He seems to think that every conventional cliched restriction on individual freedom is its own justification.

Qui sème le vent récolte la tempete.

First report I've seen of a firebomb being thrown AT a mosque in France (not my translation! Babelfish?):

Attempt to set fire to a mosque with Annemasse in France
In the night of Monday to Tuesday a machine flamer was launched "in direction of a room of Moslem prayer" in Annemasse (Haute-Savoie), without making damage, indicates an official statement of the prefecture in Annecy.
According to AFP's, the incident occurred towards 0h20 Tuesday. The frontage of this mosque, located in a sensitive district, was slightly blackened by smoke. According to the official statement, the prefect of Haute-Savoie made share with the president of the association NOUR, which is occupied of the place of worship, "of his firm judgment of the act which struck the mosque, of his consideration for the faithful ones of this room of prayer, and of the support of the services of the State". In Annemasse, city frontier with Geneva, 3 cars were burnt in the night. For the whole of the department of Haute-Savoie, 16 vehicles were destroyed by fire.

"Machine flamer" indeed! Link leads to French version.

11 Novembre

I can't stand the lily-livered "social concern" expressed by a Parisian resident in this post on Dean Esmay's blog. So I opened fire with both barrels:

Yep. They can't help it. They have to do it. They're being oppressed. This appeasement makes me sick to my stomach. Why are all the poor French youth not rioting? Is this fellow saying the Vietnamese youth are pampered while the Algerians are not? How about the Poles and the Italians? They're not subject to French arrogance? Nonsense. Mostly, it's the example of the Palestinians which is uppermost. Rioting and destroying and killing are the ways to get respect and money and the tsk tsking of the liberal elite. Meanwhile, this blog is interesting.

The blog I link to is truly fascinating. I've asked my sister, currently a librarian in Nigeria, for her expertise in understanding it. The site has automatic translation, although it's not very good. Thinking about Esmay's post, I am probably overreacting by assuming Dean is expressing approval of the Paris-guy's statements. He could be citing him as a horrible example. We'll see how the comment thread develops.

I give dietary advice to the world via Marginal Revolution:

Maybe the problem isn't eating between meals but insisting on "meals" at all. Why eat food in huge glumps when you could just graze and never really get hungry? I know there are work reasons, but even there you could keep snacks in your desk. If you want to have a meal for social reasons, just treat it as a grazing opportunity. That way you never feel deprived and have less compulsion to upload cubic yards of fodder as you see happening at every table in every restaurant these days.

So how's this working for me, you ask? I've been doing this for a couple of months now and can still fit into my clothes, though I may have put on a couple of pounds (I threw my scale out). I feel a hundred per cent better, though, knowing I'm never going to diet again.

I'm branching out, a bit, to Belgravia Dispatch:

Does anyone really think that what these rioters want is a job in a store selling souvenirs, a little apartment on the Seine and a tiny car? Nonsense. They want to bring down the government, establish Islamic law, attack Jews and send suicide bombers into every remaining territory of the West. And until they establish control, they want the UN and the EU to give them money to live on and to spend on armaments and to stash in Swiss bank accounts. In other words, they want to be the Palestinian heros so beloved by de Villepin and his cronies, but on the Left Bank, not in the West Bank.

Lost province

Alright, I admit it, I've lost it, with this comment:

So, if Saddam were still in control of Iraq, he could declare the parts of Denmark containing majority-Islamic populations as a "nineteenth province" (or would it be the twentieth?) of Iraq and invade to liberate these twenty-first century Sudeten Germans. I've heard there are somewhere around a half-million Iraqis in Germany. Dusseldorf has always been part of Babylon!

on this post.

The Dailypundit folks seem to be waking up to the scope of the ethical problems involved in surrogate births, and abortions. So I had to comment:

Someday it might be possible to avoid the problems with surrogate human mothers, before complete in vitro births are possible, by implanting a human embryo in a pig or cow or gorilla. The delivery would have to be by Caesarean, I assume. The status of the surrogate "mother" would be much less problematic. So the attention will shift to the fetus. With no human at risk, does the human mother or father have absolute powers of dispensation over the life of the fetus, at any stage before birth? Any change of mind could not be justified by any appeal to the danger to the "mother" or her right to control her body. Convenience would emerge as the only consideration. Hmm ... how about if the life of the animal surrogate is at risk and the human fetus is not yet viable? Does the fetus' life trump that of a gorilla? Why not?

Oh, what a brave new world ...

And why oh why is no one considering the emotional toll on the computer involved in an in vitro pregnancy when the fetus is aborted because the genetic mother can't afford day care?

someone

Someone seems to think that Joe Wilson was an agent provocateur:

Enter our hero, Joseph C. Wilson, from stage left. The French forgery about Niger led straight to Wilson’s bogus trip to Africa. Wilson supposedly went there to find out the truth for the CIA. But every government involved already knew the truth about the bogus document, because it showed incorrect names of Niger officials. A single telephone call to Niger would have established that fact.

The reason why Wilson had to travel to Niger in person to “investigate,” while drinking mint tea with his uranium mining friends, was to establish his bona fides – to make him an instant “expert witness” on Saddam’s dealings with Niger. Did French intelligence urge Wilson to make his trip and enlist his wiufe Valerie to propose him? Without that trip, Joseph C. Wilson had no special claim to any expertise about Saddam’s weapons. It was Valerie Plame who was the CIA WMD expert, but it was Wilson who became the front man.

When are they going to come around to the truth, that the real agent was Libby? Although I suppose you could call him a mole rather than a public con man like Wilson.

1875

My grandfather, Arthur Colchester, was born in 1875. I remember as a child of 8 or so playing with him in our home in Florida, in about 1955. He must then have been 80. Just think what he lived through. In 1875, Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States. The Civil War had only been over for a decade. Queen Victoria still had more than a quarter of a century to reign over the British Empire. The Declaration of Independence had been signed only 99 years before. The Constitution had been in effect for 86 years. The telephone would not be invented until the next year. Marconi was only a year old, although Tesla was already 19. Their dispute about who invented the radio would not be resolved for more than sixty years. General George Armstrong Custer still had a year to live, although the Indian Wars were in full spate. San Francisco was experiencing the first Tong War. The first Kentucky Derby ran in May. William Backhouse Astor, the richest man in the United States, died in 1875. He had been born in 1792. If my grandfather had, at the age of 8 in 1883, had a chat with his 83-year old grandfather, he would have been talking to a man born in the eighteenth century.

Practical automobiles were not to be invented for another ten years or so. Henry Ford was twelve years old. Neither of the Wright brothers was ten yet. Kitty Hawk lay 28 years in the future. Railroads had only been prevalent for thirty years. My grandfather, in his twenties, worked for the Canadian Pacific Railroad as it was extended across Canada. His job was shooting mountain lions that threatened the railroad workers.

In 1875, Tchaikovsky was still working on Swan Lake. Bizet's Carmen was first performed. Gaslight was the new miracle technology. The transAtlantic telegraph cable had been operating for nine years, Most people got from place to place by foot, or horse if they were lucky. Only in the most heavily populated places were trolleys and horse-drawn busses available. Life was nasty, brutish and short to a degree that most of the people alive today, even in the poorest countries, could barely imagine. But in the most forward-thinking lands, it seemed like the best time ever. Because it was. Medicine, industry, transport, food production and research were entering an era of unbelievably rapid progress.

Full life

It struck me this morning: If I were to die now, at the age of 57, people would say, "He had children, a marriage, a career of sorts, some experiences, but still what a shame he had to die so young." But if I survive thirty more years and die at 87, they would say, "Well, he had a full life." The fulness of life lies ahead.

Cui bono?

A Samizdata quote from P.J. O'Rourke sends me drifting back in time to Greenfield, Massachusetts, where I started my not-particularly-successful career in government jobbery:

Starting a job as a welfare "financial assistance social worker" decades ago in Massachusetts, I was challenged to consider "who was really on welfare?" the recipients or the workers? Certainly the workers got more benefits from the system. And the workers were overwhelmingly liberal college graduates. They did, of course, have to show up every day and at least pretend to work. All the recipients had to do was whine convincingly. No, wait a minute, that's right. The workers whined, too. And certainly the money spent on the system went mostly to administration, not to paying benefits. Years later a program was started to give recipients jobs handing out benefits. It was universally noted that the ex-recipients were much harder on new recipients than the college kids ever had been.

Osama bin Libby!

Lileks hits the bullseye again:

Letter-writer talking points: The above was a transparent attempt to shift attention away from Scooter. Because that's really the biggest problem the nation has faced in the last five years. Osama bin Libby.

Kaus gets curious

Mickey Kaus starts wondering about some of the same things that struck me yesterday:

Would Libby really have been dumb enough to contradict his own notes (which the prosecutor has had from the start) under oath?

He even has a link to info about the Marc Rich/Clinton/Libby connection. He hasn't stumbled on Sailer yet, though. Maybe in a couple of weeks everyone will be in the same ballpark with me, or I'll be exposed as just another blognut. More here. And a mention of Chandra Levy!? Could Vince Foster be tied in next?

Curiouser and curiouser

Who is "Scooter" Libby? And why does he still use a sixth-grade nickname at the age of 55? Anyway, after reading this more than troubling information from Steve Sailer, I am beginning to think that Mr. Libby's recent activities could use even more scrutiny than Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald gave them. Why did Dick Cheney hire Marc Rich's lawyer? Most of all, why did Scooter lie so unconvincingly and amateurishly to the investigators and the grand jury, if the indictment is true? Why in the world would a professional politician and high-stakes Washington lawyer do something like that? Why would Scooter get involved, even tangentially, with a reporter like Judith Miller? What kind of game is he playing? Maybe I'm nuts, but it sure looks like he's some sort of agent provocateur or mole. What did he mean in that silly (?) note to Judith Miller about "the aspens are all quaking together this time of year because they're all connected at the roots."? Was Scooter setting a petard in the office of the VP and was he hoist by it because Fitzgerald wouldn't go along with the game? If it starts coming out that Scooter and Joe Wilson were seen having mint tea together in Niger, I'm really going to start freaking!

Indictment Day

As Glenn Reynolds said, "The mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse."

And in response to Bill Quick's indignation at the fact that the indictments don't even address the underlying crime, I became a tad indignant myself:

Have you read the indictment? Libby is essentially being indicted for making "false statements" to Tim Russert on Meet the Press!! It's like indicting George Stephanopolous for statements he made on TV after the Monica investigation started - or Rahm Emanuel or James Carville or Paul Begala. Heck, Ken Starr didn't even indict Klintoon himself, when he clearly made actual false statements to the grand jury itself. Sure, Libby should have been smarter. But this indictment, as Glenn Reynolds said, is "lame".

Update
Continuing on Dean Esmay:

Didn't Fitzgerald seem VERY nervous, voice shaking and all, in the press conference? He's an experienced prosecutor, it couldn't have just been public speaking that got to him. I think he knows he's got nothing and he's worried - even a little ashamed - about presenting such a ridiculous case to the Grand Jury. I also don't think he did a very good job presenting the indictment. He went on about how important it was to prevent leaks of CIA agent identities, but then not only didn't indict anyone for leaks, he didn't even say a prosecutable leak had occurred. Sounds like he's worried about justifying two years of work.

Teddy is right for once?
Not hardly. Peggy Noonan is getting down in the dumps. But she just should remember, anything Teddy Kennedy says:

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford's lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It's called "Symptoms of Withdrawal." At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford's mother's apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn't gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. "Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta." Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

is wrong.
I'm optimistic. I certainly don't think things are worse than they were in, say, 1970. Now there was a year to forget, when things were really and truly going downhill and stayed down there for a long time. At least we can't rationally expect to lose a war, lose control of gas prices, see inflation at all-time highs, watch with horror the rise of disco and suffer through four years of Jimmy Carter again within the next ten years. Via the Corner.

Self-consciousness

I'm getting in a lot of my favorite ideas these days. Dailypundit reported on a Reason article extolling the individual. So I had to wonder:

What happens when the very meaning of "individual" changes? The worldview of artificial but fully intelligent and conscious brains connected to multiple sensors of all different types has to be different from that of a man with two eyes and ears and a nose. We are so used to thinking of the individual as man-sized with a head-sized brain that I'm not sure it will be easy to adapt to an individual that can sense and think like a god. What will the appropriate "unit of consciousness" be?

Well, what do you know, my security code included "666"!(looks around nervously)

Grocery stores - again


Gene Expression linked to a story about remotely controlling people's behavior, so I had to feed my two main obsessions - beer and green beans - with this comment:

Maybe competing hackers could try to remotely control you when you step into a grocery store, one making you feel like it would be such a good idea to get some Budweiser, then another taking over and making you switch to Miller. Of course, that wouldn't really constitute much of a change in behavior outwardly ... I'm sure many people will be relieved at not having to make their own decisions any more. This reminds me of the sight of shoppers in front of the cans of green beans, with a cell phone stuck to their ears, calling someone to decide for them whether they want the french cut or straight beans.

I for one welcome our new hacker overlords.

Religion and science - again

Stephen Green links to an Ann Applebaum piece about the "bird flu" doom that awaits us all. Boy is she going to look silly in a couple of years. But I just had to comment on her gratuitous slap at all things religious:

The history of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution which brought so many good things to so many people is the story of religion and science finding a way to coexist, not the story of science condemning any and every religious idea out of hand. The last three hundred years in the West have demonstrated that scientific progress is possible when religion is not exterminated, as long as it does not dominate.

Sure, I'm an objectivist. And I see much evidence that anti-scientific thinking is a worse pandemic than the bird flu ever will be. But it's truly important that those who harbor religious feelings and yet understand and work with science every day - and that means most people - be tolerated while they are encouraged to drop those silly emotional sentiments. The genius of capitalism is that it finds a way to accommodate everyone, no matter how wrong they might be, as long as they don't get physically violent. And science and capitalism are two sides of the same coin, whose substance is, do I have to say it? Logic.

Nano! Nano!

Nano-science has apparently come up with a potential successor to the lightbulb. You know, those round glass things GE keeps making with shorter and shorter lives as electricity gets more and more expensive? Perhaps you've noticed leds in turn signals and traffic lights. Now, thanks to nano-wizardry every home could have not just one but billions:

Take an LED that produces intense, blue light. Coat it with a thin layer of special microscopic beads called quantum dots. And you have what could become the successor to the venerable light bulb.

The resulting hybrid LED gives off a warm white light with a slightly yellow cast, similar to that of the incandescent lamp.

Note in the whole article the interesting use of the word "magic". As in "any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic". Keep waving that magic wand, electrical engineers. Before too long our electric bills will be down to zero like our phone bills.

Bumper Sticker

What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it's all about?

OT and loving it

Shopping carts, buggies, grocery carts, whatever you call them, they are a menace, as laid out in this Dailypundit post. But I desert the topic - kid's play-themed monstrosity carts - to beat up on lonely elderlies:

Ah, shopping carts. As aisles get wider, oldsters get better and better at placing their carts just kitty-cornered enough so no one can get by on either side while they debate with themselves which of seventy-six brands of denture adhesive will get them through the day. Of course, I sympathize with their pathetic need to have some sort of interaction with another human being, even if it's just to say, "Oh, sorry, am I in your way?" since their kids haven't called in six months, but really, JUST GET YOUR DAMNED BUGGY OUT OF MY WAY, YOU OLD FART! I need to get to the beer aisle NOW!

OT is my life.

Dean's World and me

Dean Esmay had a Beatles obsequy to which I had to comment and crush Paul (I refuse to call him "Sir Paul". Nonsense.):

Paul on his lonesome justified his critics. I mean, "Band on the Run"???!!! Could anything be more banal and formulaic and out-of-ideas? It's bleeding Hanna-Barbera. And "Hands across the water" ain't much better. We won't even mention "Standing Stone". The Beatles together were far more than four times as good as any one of them singly. But Paul was/is by far the worst as a solo act.

Another Esmay post, which reminded me of something Jane Galt would put up, stimulated this somewhat incoherent mini-rant:

The State gives corporate status. The State can take away corporate status. Blessed be the Name of the State.
Why should someone's liability be limited because he's taken advantage of the State's corporate status opportunity? Now if two people could agree that they would regard assets that they put into certain entities as immune from liability, vis a vis each other, perhaps the State could legitimately enforce that agreement. Call it an anti-corporation. But for the State to say to everyone, "look, you can't reach this fellow's personal assets, because he was acting as an agent of a corporation when he did that stupid thing", with no real consent involved, well, that's just nuts.

I've been trying to get people to listen to my hatred for the corporate concept for a long time. It reminds me of patents and copyrights: They sound like a good idea, but don't really work and just strengthen the power of the almighty State.

Next topic - evolution and cellular automata!

This is why I love blogs and the Internet in general. TallDave on Dean Esmay's blog put up this post about politics and fractals but I just had to bring in evolution:

Perhaps the response to those who say that random mutation cannot be powerful enough to explain evolution lies in the effect those mutations have on the progress of the cellular automata patterns so thoroughly described by Wolfram. A mutation in just one gene at just the right time could cause a major change in the phenotype. The unexplained "leaps" and "gaps" cited by anti-evolutionists - and Stephen Jay Gould! - may be part and parcel of this mechanism. The only kicker may be that the whole process is so difficult to understand and predict that we may be at the mercy of supercomputers more complex than human brains to get a handle on what's really going on.

I sent the following email to Richard Cohen of the Washington Post in comment on this post.

Dear Mr. Cohen,

I've always thought it would be instructive to ask a firmly pro-choice woman whether she would favor a woman's right to abortion if the baby in question was being carried by another woman. That is, if a surrogate mother had been implanted with another woman's fertilized egg, does the egg's owner still retain any rights to the disposition of the fetus? Or is it entirely up to the birth-mother? What if the two mothers disagreed? Whose opinion should govern? The question would be even more pointed if a completely in vitro birth were possible. This question is triggered by the observation that abortions are so often triggered not by health concerns or unwillingness to go through the process of giving birth, but by the inconvenience of having to bring a child up. I suspect that the cry of "A woman has the right to control her body" is just a smokescreen for that "right to convenience" that has doomed so many potential children.
As a professedly "pro-choice" man, would you be willing to say that the state could intervene, or that simple morality would dictate the necessity to keep a fetus on the road to life if the genetic mother's body were not at risk?

Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida

Followup to yesterday's "kabuki" comment to Jane Galt's post:

Voting is absurd. Let's just let everybody, including illegals and children and animals, vote as often as they want. Could we really wind up with a less reasonable system? The problem, though, is not that voting is absurd, but that voting determines far too much. A rational polity would restrict voting to the smallest sphere consistent with keeping people from rioting in the streets. All other issues would be decided by market forces.

I may have taken the agent provocateur theme a bit too far. Don't want to be banned. But really. I wish someone could explain to me exactly how voting makes any sense. It's a sacred mystery, I guess.

Riposte to further comments stemming from yesterday's Samizdata comment on this post:

Goodness. Maybe I was being sarcastic? But certainly I've heard that European birth rates are way down. Doesn't that apply to the UK as well? And also I realize the interdependency of economies. But ever since 1812 we've realized here in Jesusland the necessity for destroying the British economy in order to safeguard US prosperity from the ravages of the King's Navy. And you guys are doing the job for us!
Of course, if your birth rates are extremely low, the whole paternity leave issue is yet another pointless - and low-cost - exercise in saying the popular thing.

I seem to have run into some flak:

As an American worker, I hail the wisdom of the almighty British state. Anything that makes British industry less competitive can only help America's prosperity.

Robert I may not be an economist but even I realise that if we Englanders are worse off the whole world will end up being worse off, we can buy less of your goods.



Posted by steved at October 19, 2005 09:08 PM

I'm equally mystified as to why Robert Speirs thinks that "us folks" had given up on child rearing.

Could he explain?Posted by HJHJ at October 19, 2005 09:35 PM
Robert Speirs, your grasp of economics is rather tenuous as your remarks strongly suggest you have fallen prey to the notorious Fixed Quantity of Wealth fallacy.

Britain's economy being weaker does not therefore mean the US economy will become stronger and seeing as how Britain is one of the larger trading partners of the US, the opposite result is more likely: less British people buying things (an inevitable consequence of a weakening economy) means they buy less things from the USA and sell less to the USA of the things the UK previously had a comparative advantage in, increasing prices to US consumers.

Posted by Perry de Havilland at October 19, 2005 11:33 PM

From Samizdata, I found a dietblog called The Singleton Diet. So I had to put in my two cents about dieting:

Read this book: “Overcoming Overeating”. Diets don’t work. Exercise can be fatal. Graze, don’t eat meals. Throw away your scale and tape measure and get a full-length mirror. That’s just a start. You can be as thin as you want but if you still wish you were eating, it’s no good. Don’t ever let yourself get legitimately hungry. And this nonsense about “good food” and “junk” is delusion. Maybe the first step is to ask, “Why do I need to weigh less again?”

How's it going, you may ask. I don't know. I feel pretty good and am not worried about how much I eat, except for not letting myself get "stomach hungry". My clothes still fit and I can walk every day. And I love not having to think about dieting. For the last twenty years or more every day I have obsessed about whether I'm eating the right stuff and exercising enough. No more.

A Samizdata post on new UK government rules allowing men to take off three months for paternity leave - and get paid for it! - stimulated this response:

As an American worker, I hail the wisdom of the almighty British state. Anything that makes British industry less competitive can only help America's prosperity. On the other hand, scratch that. The British economy is so small a threat it really doesn't matter. And at least the pub owners will profit. Nobody really thinks the men are going to stay home with the crumb-crunchers, do they? By the way, I thought you folks had given up on child-rearing.

Jane Galt's ruminations on the voting ID controversy in Georgia give me the opportunity to pontificate on the electoral system:

I vote for kabuki. When you realize that illiterates and the profoundly ignorant are just as entitled to vote as people who actually know something about the political system, how can such a travesty be anything but a group hug? Sure the purpose of the system may be to elect someone, but it's how it's run that matters to whether the best candidate wins.

A sarcastic mini-rant emerges from my frustrated mind at the prospect of Megan McArdle losing focus on the war in Iraq:

Yes, of course, we should re-install Saddam as President and it would only be fair that we give him the names of any Iraqi who collaborated with us. That's the only way to save Iraq now that Bushitler has messed it up so badly. Unless someone has a better idea?

Just in case anyone took me seriously, I followed up with:

My point is: we can't go back. We must support the best civil polity we can come up with in Iraq. None of the critics seem to have a better way of doing that than what Bush is doing right now.

As to domestic spending, does anyone really think that a Democratic president with a Republican congress would spend LESS than a Republican president with the same congress? How could that happen? The Democrat would move heaven and earth to raise taxes. And wouldn't the election of a Democratic president be accompanied by the election of more Congressional Democrats anyway?

An Ann Althouse post about hurricanes and global warming elicited this thought, on record-citing behavior which I've noticed before:

Interesting. "Warmest September ever" er- since record keeping began. Doesn't that mean that August was NOT the warmest August ever? You can be sure that if August had been a record, that fact would have been mentioned: WARMEST AUGUST-SEPTEMBER EVER!!!!
In fact, doesn't that mean that August was below average? If it had been above average, the two-month period would probably have been a record, no? Funny I didn't see that reported anywhere.

Green's post on Vodkapundit about the Iraqi constitution and slavery stimulated me to comment on something I'd been thinking about a lot lately.

Maybe a little OT:
How many people realize that slavery in the US wasn't based on race? If this were so, there would not have been any free blacks before Emancipation. You'll not find any laws that state "Africans are slaves because of their race". Article 1 of the US Constitution does not mention race, only distinguishes between "free" persons, "those bound to service for a term of years" and "all other" persons. Even the "Indians not taxed" provision makes clear that Indians' status was not based on their race, but on their exemption from paying taxes. Slavery was based on property rights. Indentured slavery, which involved many whites, was based on contractual promise.

How many Americans believe that black people were enslaved because they were black? How many blacks? Of course, the reasons behind the (temporary) acceptance of slavery are complex. But it boils down to the fact that black Africans could not protect and provide for their own surplus population and Europeans took advantage of that fact. And the nature of the property system as it was accepted all over the world at the time made slavery acceptable to parts of the US population until 1865. Another point: would slavery have lasted as long as it did if the Constitution had refused to define men as property under any circumstances? Since importation of African slaves ended just about as the Constitution was being written, would it have made any difference?

Freedom from government jobs
Freedom and Whisky, one of my favorite blogs, had this post about the descent of Scotland into the abyss of socialism:

So while 39% of Lothian's current economic activity is in the state sector, only 38% of the jobs being advertised are not with the government. The percentage of advertised private vacancies is probably even less when we consider all those so-called charity jobs.

Apparently Margaret Thatcher wasn't able to hold off the forces of chaos forever. Well, we didn't really expect all that North Sea oil money to go to the benefit of those who put capital at risk to find and develop it, did we? I guess all the ambitious Scots got out. If Freedom and Whisky is any guide, though, some Scots still think the world is for winning, not whining. Ironically, my father came from Scotland in the Twenties and ended up working for the US government! But he was an officer in the Air Force, providing the one service that a state should arguably be engaged in.

I had to get in a crack about Reagan's Republican Senate majority on Captain's Quarters, in response to some of the commenters here:

Sure, Reagan had 53 or 54 Republican Senators for six of his eight years, although the House, which spends the money, was pretty heavily Democratic. That just shows how useless Republican Senators can be. A Republican President has to have at least 60 Senators on his side to compensate for the RINOs on spending issues. And that's pretty rare. In fact, it's never happened.

Hey, I even did some research! And one can quibble, in that the divisions between the parties were somewhat one-sided at times. But it's too difficult to figure out the percentages in every case when there were fewer than 100 senators, so I just let my comment stand. Interesting that some of the very earliest Senates had "Republicans" in them, but of course these weren't the same as the Party of Lincoln. Whigs and Free Soilers had much more interesting names!

Apropos of this post on Samizdata about identity theft, I opined:

Checking your credit card accounts on the internet should be reducing the scope and frequency of ID theft. I used to go over my account every thirty days, when the paper came. Nowadays I look at all my accounts at least every other day. If anything suspicious were to happen, I'd know it right away. And at least in the US maximum liability is really low if you catch problems right away. That has changed for the better. Debit cards are still a problem, though. And I do wish Wachovia would stop sending those credit card checks in the mail. Not that there's enough headroom in my cc accounts so I should worry much!

In response to this post on Dailypundit, I observed:

Uh oh. I'm agreeing with Quick and LT on this one. If they come for your cigarettes and you don't do anything it won't be long before they come for your guns. And then it's your butter. Now there's a slippery slope!
Odd, though. One reason some do-gooders don't want to push the $280 billion penalty is that they don't think it will be enough, that the smokers will just pay up. But then of course the govt. will come up with some other excuse to impose another, more drastic penalty. Why do we have that darn "no tobacco" clause in the Constitution, anyway? How did that get in there? And why didn't those evil tobacconists do something like put warning notices on every pack of cigarettes long ago?

I seem to be in a totally sarcastic mood today. Maybe because it was 52 degrees this morning, I saw my breath on my walk into work and I'm feeling great!

On Dailypundit, in response to a post about Bashir Assad possibly leaving power in Syria, in reference to the Interior Minister who was just found dead:

Russian missiles won't protect him from "committing suicide" with a gun equipped with a silencer.

and in response to Bill's comment defending the honor of Debkafile:

OTOH, "more reliable than the NYT" pretty much defines "damning with faint praise", non?

Then, in response to a statement about how Bush sycophants keep making excuses for him and that he really hasn't done anything effective against terror:

No, a major point of GWB's presidency is to protect America by defusing explosive totalitarianism, starting with the Taliban and Saddam and handling threats in descending order of seriousness. A caution. In 1973 it looked like Nixon would successfully get US forces out of Vietnam and establish links with China and pursue peace in the Middle East and combat inflation. Then, thanks to Congress and E. Howard Hunt's little group, it all fell apart. But until something like that happens to GWB, it would be difficult to call his presidency unsuccessful.

and

From the lack of effective attacks in the US in the last few years, one can deduce that the best way to protect oneself from terrorist attacks is to make sure such attacks have no good consequences for the terrorists. So far, Bush has done that. As to "moving the goalposts", I had no idea in 2000, when I did not vote, that I would vote for Bush in 2004 because I saw him as more able to deal with the problems than the Democrats. That was just barely enough to get me to vote in '04. I had no illusions. As of today, I expect much more from GWB than I did in 2000. So my goalposts are not closer but farther away. But, to beat the metaphor to death, I am also more confident than I was in 2004 that he will score enough points to prevail.

and moreover:

No, Bill, I don't think anyone can guarantee no attacks ever, never. What I worry about is that the terrorists aren't rational at all and that they don't care that all their butchery has gained them is the loss of two friendly regimes and disruption of their system. But then how do you explain the lack of attacks in the US? My best guess is that, wait for it, Bush scares them silly. Yep, they're afraid to attack us again lest we do something like nuking Mecca. So they attack Madrid and London and Istanbul and Saudi Arabia and Morocco and Bali and the Philippines. If that's true, Bush is indispensable in his present attitude. Ahh, that's good Koolaid!

Who knows where this argument ends?

I posted the following comment to this post on Bill Quick's Dailypundit blog:

Tell it to all the hard-working students who have been passed over in favor of lower-achieving affirmative-action "victims" and policemen and firemen who have to do their jobs and the jobs of the incompetent women "working" with them. This is not a new phenomenon with George W. Bush. The question is how does one best combat the new forms of racism, sexism and collectivism in general? Unfortunately the libertarian way does not work, gets no traction whatever. Neither does slamming Bush. So what other ideas WILL work, in the long run? Because that's what W has always been about, whether in the war on terror or in cutting budgets - the long run, when we're all dead but maybe, just maybe things will be better.

Because if libertarians have no idea how to achieve political goals, they might as well retreat into theorizing like me and the other objectivists, but they shouldn't criticize Bush for not being effective.

I posted the following comment at Dean Esmay's blog, in response to this post.

Hitchens reinforces the idea that AlQaeda isn't really interested in results, just in the struggle. What positive consequence resulted from 9/11 or 7/7 or any of the other examples for Wahhabism? Even the Madrid bombings can't be seen as having positive results if the point wasn't really Iraq but Andalusia. If anything, the War on Terror is reinvigorated every time a bomb goes off. So, as Hitchens says, the point for AlQaeda must not be to win in any conventional sense, but to continue until death the utterly futile struggle against rationality and the humane. Only by doing so will the likes of bin Laden and Zarqawi make themselves fit for paradise and enhance their reputation as holy warriors. Winning is for Turks, Mongols and Westerners. Losing gloriously is better in the long (very long!) run. Shades of Hitler in '45. No wonder they like Mein Kampf.

I posted this comment on this article on Angry in the Great White North:

"Maybe it's about time society stopped being colour-blind"?? The problem is that society isn't colour-blind and never has been. Black kids are allowed to get away with stuff that would never be tolerated from white kids. The justifications range from "well, they're oppressed, after all" to "What do you expect from THEM, anyway?" (that last one hardly ever stated outright, but always there as subtext.)

Maybe I am turning into Steve Sailer. This thought, though, is directly related to my year's experience as a detention counselor at a Florida juvenile detention center, featuring eighty to ninety percent black "kids" and my observations of the different expectations and standards applied to kids based on the color of their skins. Black kids routinely boasted of how many crimes they had got away with before getting busted. Cops routinely ignored most black crime. Let a white kid offend at all and he was in big trouble. One has to wonder at the cesspool of futile and stupid motives for such a policy, but one cannot doubt its reality.

The Bad news is that they're vicious buffoons. The good news is that they're buffoons.



The Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Roberts as reported by the AP expose the Democrats, especially Ted Kennedy, as clueless, incompetent and irresponsible beyond what even I realized. And that takes some doing, to make me even more aware of the true vacuousness of Kennedy, Biden, Schumer, Turban et al. Live and learn. This political system is dangerous. I'm beginning to think it's actively malignant, specifically with reference to me. Who, me, paranoid? But even if I'm not an intended target, I'm surely collateral damage.

Indictment

This photo in and of itself should be sufficient to indict the Mayor of New Orleans for malfeasance, corruption and incompetence. Yes, that idiot who tried to blame Bush like every other liberal, Did any students go to N.O. public schools on Monday? So, OK, Mr. Mayor - and School Superintendent and Police Chief - why weren't those buses used to get people out of New Orleans? Oh, I see, everybody was too busy looting, including the cops? Now I understand. And so should everyone else.

Rescued!

Fats Domino has apparently been rescued from the New Orleans disaster. OK, so now that's out of the way, how about getting everyone out and just nuking the place? The obvious parallel is Port Royal, the pirate city in Jamaica destroyed in 1692:

Once known as the 'Wickedest City on Earth,' Port Royal on the island of Jamaica was one of the largest towns in the English colonies during the late 17th century. It was a haven for privateers and pirates, such as the famed Sir Henry Morgan, due to its excellent geographic location in the middle of the Caribbean. From Port Royal, these buccaneers preyed upon and plundered the heavily laden treasure fleets departing from the Spanish Main.

Shortly before noon on 7 June 1692, 33 acres (66 percent) of the "storehouse and treasury of the West Indies" sank into Kingston Harbor in a disastrous earthquake. An estimated 2000 persons were killed in an instant. An additional 3000 citizens died of injuries and disease in the following days (Pawson and Buisseret 1975:121). Salvage and outright looting began almost immediately and continued off and on for years. A pocket watch, made ca. 1686 by Paul Blondel, a Frenchman living in the Netherlands, was recovered during Link's (1960:173) underwater excavations near Fort James. Its hands, frozen at 11:43 a.m., serve as an eerie reminder of the catastrophe.

Following the earthquake, Port Royal underwent a dramatic revival only to fall again when it was ravaged by fire in 1703. A total of 16 hurricanes between 1712 and 1951 have consistently smashed Jamaica, as have an additional six earthquakes between 1770 and 1956 (Cox 1984:Appendix B). Following a severe storm, a hurricane, and two earthquakes in 1722, Port Royal as it once was disappeared for the last time.

Maybe they could build a real sane city somewhere further inland.

Fats Domino is missing

The New Orleans songster, now 76 years old, has apparently gone missing. I wonder what happened to him. The last anyone saw of him he was at home in the Katrina-devastated section of the city. OK, I've got to say it, "Ain't that a shame?" I will keep track of any reports of his whereabouts. He could be a symbol of the revival of Sin City, that focus of evil of the Gulf Coast, or a sad token of its decline and disappearance. Sort of reminds one of Pompeii, gone never to return. How many cities have been alive, if corrupt and frustrating, one week and then gone forever the next? A thousand years from now will an archeologist digging through the ruins of what used to be New Orleans find a jolly skeleton in a porkpie hat surrounded by gold records?

Kassorla
I'm quite enthusiastic about the career and self-development advice contained in Irene Kassorla's book "Go For It". After all she's the "Shrink to the Stars" and that must be true because Merv Griffin said it. And my admiration is not diminished by the news that she gave psychological counseling to Monica Lewinsky after the traumatic events of the late 1990's. I note with approval that Monica never did run for office or protest against the liberation of Iraq. Which shows that someone put some sense into her. Overall, I'd have to say that Miss Lewinsky's effect was positive, at least as positive as Woodward and Bernstein's.

Boil, pot, boil!
CQ again has a daily step toward the truth in the Able-Danger-Gate story. Mary Jo White's participation is particularly interesting because she was appointed by the Clintons. But she apparently had an instinct for long-term self-preservation and for doing her job.

Does the system work?
Cap'n's Quarters, as usual, is one of the few out front on the Able Danger-gate story. Let's see if the new system (Blogs unearth a story, Fox brings it to the mass media, MSM derides and plays it down, blogs keep it alive, MSM finally caves) works to bring this story to everyone's attention and keep it going. It's only a hundred times bigger than the Joe Wilson moronism. The Sandy Burglar angle is only one of a hundred delicious penumbrae to AD-gate. Now if only Hillary could show up with some relevant printouts that had been "lost" for a few months. Wasn't Jamie Gorelick tight with Hill? Maybe that's just the way I want it to have been.

Ambassador Spyhusband is going to be speaking in Tallahassee sometime soon, BTW, but it will cost $25 to go and I am not going to contribute to further stoking of this non-story.

And didn't the NY Times try awfully hard to get out in front on this story? And where are they now? Something going on there. Maybe they just need a blog. Ahh. Fresh, spicy-smooth bloggy goodness.

So what?

I agree strongly with this column about steroid use in baseball. It pushes every libertarian button I've got:

The main argument against steroids and similar drugs is that they somehow screw with the "natural" abilities of players and disrupt the "level playing field." That is, they give "unfair" advantages to players willing to use them. That's why Commissioner Selig frets over the "integrity" of baseball. Steroids, goes this line of thought, turn an authentic competition into something less...real? But if any of that is true, why not ban, say, weight training or off-season workouts? Or special nutritional regimens that stop short of including certain banned supplements? What should be done about Lasik and other interventions that result in better than 20/20 vision? Or reconstructive surgeries that let pitchers throw faster than before undergoing the knife (just ask Chicago Cubs' hurler Kerry Wood)? All of these things muddy that wholly mythical level playing field.

Exactly. It's a sport, after all, not a religion. It's not like the z-car races, where they give each driver exactly the same car, tuned the same way and they have to use the same fuel. It's as though nature gave some drivers a two-cylinder Citroen and others a Ferrari. And that's ok. But if one of the Citroen drivers has an extra cup of coffee, oh, my! That's not "fair"! I hate that word.

HOW again?

Can someone tell me how taking tax money from taxpayers, filtering it through a federal bureaucracy with the expected deductions and giving it to construction companies, thereby making the money unavailable to the companies from which the taxes are taken, so they have fewer jobs to offer, and spending the money on construction jobs instead of the jobs the market would have dictated should be offered, how exactly does this procedure create jobs??

I found a forum for Ayn Rand fans here. It appears to be quite interesting. I left this comment, among others:

Rees-Mogg, in The Sovereign Individual, assumes that it is impossible to reform a large nation-state so that it protects individual liberties appropriately. He predicts that Internet technology will develop to the point that assets and privacy can be protected cheaply from anywhere in the world. He suggests that a number of mini-states will arise offering citizenship "packages" to wealthy or merely well-off sovereign individuals. He cites Hong Kong and Switzerland as examples of highly efficient, extremely prosperous regimes where an individual can now or soon will be able to purchase the protection he needs from the activities of the welfare/warfare nation-states that dominate the world.

I think he's right in that the project of coming up with a scheme to protect individual rights in a large democracy is a fool's quest. What's important is to develop a strategy to protect one's own interests, as one does not owe anything to others. If one could realize Galt's Gulch, why worry about the rest of the world reeling along on its merry destructive way?

Maybe I can construct my own mini-state somewhere near Trebizond/Trabzon.

Cloned appetizers

This article claims that Koreans are cloning dogs to be "companion animals"! Right. Companion to the kimchee and rice, I bet. I wonder if they've heard of "hush puppies"?

Tiny houses
I'm amazed at the variety of small affordable houses available, such as these. I love the pictures, but the words are all about "saving the planet" and "sustainability" and other stupid nonsense. Darn it, I want a cheap place to live that doesn't take a lot of cleaning and that is easy to heat and cool. Maybe when I get rich I'll add another, or maybe four of them around an atrium with a swimming pool. I am glad there are so many varieties. I also like the idea of trailering one of the itsy bitsies, although the peaked roofs on most of them would appear to make them dangerous to take on roads with overpasses. I wonder if my Peugeot 505 could drag one safely over the Rockies? Maybe one could come up with a peaked-roof tiny house with the loft attic arranged so that it could be folded down for traveling, like a tent trailer. I'm encouraged, anyway.

My latest obsession is with Trabzon, Turkey, where maybe someday I can buy a tiny house. Or maybe buy a boat and keep it in the harbor. Hmm, a houseboat. Now I'm thinking. Tiny house on the Black Sea, duplicating the Argo. Off to find the Golden Fleece and fight the Amazons. Metaphorically!

London duds

No, not the socialists. Futile bombings today in London had an odd aspect. All four attempts at bombings failed to go off properly. The detonators detonated but the explosives didn't catch. In all four. How likely is it that this was an accident? My theory is that the bombing group was infiltrated by agents who made sure the bombs weren't going to work properly. Then the bombs and with any luck the bombers could be captured and mucho intelligence gleaned. Sounds like the only reasonable thesis.

Islam and Communism

For seventy years the civilized world fought the adherents of a collectivist ideology who thought nothing of killing millions to enforce their dogma on the entire world. Then the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet empire broke up and Communism was discredited everywhere except in certain universities.

Now the civilized world faces a similar threat from Islam, a collective dogma of a different kind, but similar in that it advocates the use of limitless violence against those who refuse to accept its ideology and will not cease being violent until its advocates are entirely exterminated or its empire is broken as the Communist empire was. The good news is that Islam does not have military forces that begin to compare with the Soviets. The bad news is that it cannot be defeated by containment or military assault or even internal revolt against a particular regime. It needs to be faced on the battlefield of ideology. But that is an advantatge in some ways. I hope to address this topic further in coming days.

Right about 200 pounds now. Wondering if I can nail that level by the end of April and head lower before 5/17. Personal concerns outweigh political at this point. Is there any doubt about going to Istanbul this fall? How can I not?

Sovereign Individual
Just finished reading Davidson and Rees-Mogg's The Sovereign Individual. Every so often you read a book that changes your view of life. I now look at government power with a more jaundiced eye than ever before. And I wasn't exactly a collectivist in any case! I've been a confirmed objectivist (note the small "o") for some years.

It struck me that a lot of the crises cobbled up by environmentalists and health crusaders have a perhaps not unintended effect. Global warming, for instance, enforces the logic that only national or supernational (not "supranational" - the UN is just a bigger state, not a different kind of state) entities can solve the terrible problems caused by greedy stupid capitalist white men. The same rationale applies to acid rain, the ozone non-hole, AIDS, world hunger and every other putative problem of recent years. Without these problems, we wouldn't need anywhere near as much government power. The Sovereign Individual predicts the decline of the nation-state, as well as the frantic efforts of those who depend on and profit from the nation-state to retain and strengthen its power. It all makes sense now, how the media and the political system work together. Hey, paranoia is when you think you know what's going on, right?

Starving
Funny living in Tallahassee how sometimes national events jump up and grab you. I walk through the Capitol courtyard several noontimes a week, on my way to the library or a restaurant. Yesterday I headed over to the library and bought a book (I never borrow books from the library, but have found it a good source of bargain tomes) on dieting: Kurzweil's rant about low-fat living The 10% Solution. I've tried Atkins and not been able to stay on it, so thought I'd give the much-despised low-fat regimen a try. So I'm heading back to work through the Capitol plaza, thinking about how hungry I'm going to be for the next, oh, thirty years or so. Then I see a couple of "Don't let Terri Schiavo die!" protesters wandering around aimlessly looking for a TV camera or at least a couple of legislators. One of them was holding a sign reading: "Don't starve the living!" So I'm thinking, is this a message for me from the diet gods? But then I realized it was OK. If the low-fat fanaticism turns out to be as painful as all that, I'll never stick with it, anyway, and go back to high living - high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high anxiety and gout all day every day. Now Terri's husband has chosen the ultimate low-fat, low-calorie diet for her. I just wish I knew more about her mental state or lack thereof, so I could get all worked up over keeping her "alive" or letting her die, whichever is more appropriate. The case is an education in how people take sides without having full information. And in these days of blogging, more information than anyone could want is available somewhere. But deciding rationally spoils all the fun. Where are the MRI's, EEGs and all the other brain scans that might prove whether anything's going on in her brain? You would think the educated populace would be clamoring for them. But I guess they're more concerned with soundbites.

The Intellectual Terrorist

Nah little poufters*.
I have stumbled upon the basic misconception (!) that has led to this recent idea that men can or should, in some sense, "marry" men and women can or should "marry" women. This obviously monstrous absurdity can only have come about because some addle-pated "gays" (but I repeat myself) must not ever have been told the facts of life. They must be harboring the fond but biologically impossible hope that after they have whatever they consider an approximation of heterosexual sex, little poufters will suddenly, from some bodily orifice, emerge nine months or so later. Or maybe the new little addlepates will spring full-grown from their heads, like the gods and goddesses used to do. It reminds one of the pathos-soaked cargo cults of the Pacific Islanders, who after seeing US GIs call up on radios and have large airplanes full of trade goods descend, copied the GIs after they left, but with radios made of wood and vines for antennas. Needless to say, no C-47s full of Hershey bars and nylon stockings ever responded to these primitive entreaties.
The idea of marriage - and the fact I have to say this demonstrates the depths to which this discourse has descended - is to have children emerge that display a mixture of the characteristics of the husband and the wife. That is why a man looking for a wife carefully observes not only a woman's physical conformation but her intellectual shape and size as well. Does she have a good sense of humor? Ah, our child may share that. How jolly. Does she have flashing green eyes? Imagine a boy with my muscles and her eyes! He will be a great warrior and a triumphant conqueror of women! Is her mother a scold? Later, baby.
Perhaps it's understandable that those whose sexual "preferences" make it impossible for them to have a biological family would think that by standing up in front of a fake religious figure and going through a fake ceremony and having fake sex they can share some of the juju associated with the most basic relationship of the tribe of Man. But, as they say on MTV, get over it. Ain't gonna happen.
*reference is of course to the Constitution of Australia, which consists of two words: Nah poufters.