So, 9/11 and Iraq ARE connected

At least according to this story about the chairman of the University of Colorado Ethnic Studies Dept., Ward Churchill. From the article:

Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.

Harry Browne on Social Security

Financial advisor Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party's candidate for President in 1996 and 2000, has a flair for the "Goverment breaks your leg, gives you a crutch, and then tells you you're better off because of them" argument:

Final fix for Social Security

By Harry Browne
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23948

The president's Social Security Commission has acknowledged what politicians have been denying for decades - that Social Security has no true reserve fund and that much higher taxes will be required to make good on the promises made to you.

The politicians don't put your Social Security taxes into a "lock box" for your retirement. They give part of the money to current retirees and squander the rest on their favorite boondoggles. Since they've set nothing aside for your rainy day, they can pay you a pension only by taxing your children and grandchildren at higher and higher rates.

"Solving" the Social Security problem wouldn't be as difficult as the politicians and pundits make it seem. But to understand the solution, we must first deal with a few clichés.

Investing for retirement Cliché No. 1: "Some people can't invest properly for their own retirement."

This is typical of politicians' justifying their interference by citing a problem they caused themselves. If they didn't tax interest payments, and if their monetary policies didn't create inflation, anyone could ensure a secure retirement simply by putting 5 percent of his earnings in a bank savings account. No speculation or investing expertise is necessary.

Cliché No. 2: "Some people are too irresponsible to plan ahead for their own retirement."

Of course, some people wouldn't provide for their own retirement - just as some of them won't brush their teeth. But it's wrong to hold the rest of us hostage - to force us into a fraudulent Social Security scheme (or force us to display our teeth for government hygiene inspectors) - simply because some people won't take responsibility for their own lives.

Cliché No. 3: "Social Security would be more solvent if the politicians could increase the system's earnings by
investing the reserves in the stock market."

Social Security brings a new dimension to such concepts as annuities, insurance and retirement. No long, complicated contracts. No actuarial tables to pore over. Social Security operates on a very simple principle: The politicians take your money from you and squander it. Allowing the politicians to boost Social Security's earnings by investing its reserves in the stock market would just give them more money to squander - and they'd still be back soon enough to increase your taxes again.

Cliché No. 4: "Gradually 'privatizing' Social Security will wean people off the system."

The first time the stock market dives, the politicians (both Democratic and Republican) will jump on that as an excuse to take away from you any further control over your own retirement.

The problem and solution Social Security is inherently unsound because it's a political program - run by politicians for political purposes. It will never work. And no attempts to fix it, reform it, or refinance it can make a silk purse out of a politician's ear.

Only a purely libertarian solution can make things right: Shut Social Security down - completely, immediately and for good. End the Social Security tax tomorrow morning and stop making Social Security payments tomorrow evening. Anyone under 50 can have a better retirement putting 10 percent of his income in the bank instead of 15 percent into Social Security.

And what happens to those who are currently dependent on Social Security and those too close to retirement to build a new nest egg?

Have the government make a one-time purchase of private annuities - secure, non-political annuities that guarantee the same income Social Security is paying now to senior citizens.

How will the annuities be paid for?

Sell off assets the federal government shouldn't own anyway - power companies, pipelines, unused military bases, Western lands, oil rights, mineral rights, and the hundreds of thousands of federal buildings that serve no constitutional purpose.

This approach doesn't appeal to politicians, because it takes tax money and power away from them. But the only alternative to it is to resign yourself to having more and more of your income taken from you and poured down the drain.

Three questions

Before we go supporting legislation to reduce human-caused global warming, it would be well if we were all aware of the answers to the following questions:

1. What gas is responsible for approximately 95% of the "greenhouse effect" on planet Earth?

2. Is the United States a net A) Emitter, or B) Absorber of carbon dioxide?

3. Is the global climate now A) Warmer, or B) Cooler than it was approximately 1,000 to 1,100 years ago?

These questions come from a letter on Jerry Pournelles' web site. Here's the complete text.

Here are the answers from the letter:

1. Water vapor is responsible for about 95% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is less than 2% of the total effect, with methane taking up most of the balance, and other gasses responsible for the remainder. But all we EVER hear about is CO2.

2. The U.S., with it's vast forests (more now than in pre-Columbian times) and farmlands is a net ABSORBER of CO2...as opposed to Europe and Japan, which are net emitters.

3. Let's see...they were raising crops of oats in Greenland, and the Icelandic/Viking explorers were calling what is now the chilly area of Newfoundland "Vinland" because of the grapes which grew there. It's an era referred to as the "Medieval Climate Optimum" in old climate textbooks, and was followed by the spread of Black Plague (the fleas of the rats taking advantage of the warmer climate to spread to northern Europe). That period was followed by what used to be referred to as the "Little Ice Age", in which England saw snow in areas never before seen, and the River Thames froze quite solidly on a regular basis. That period ended in the early/middle 1700's, and we've been in a warming trend ever since.

We need to see more like this

The London Times Online published this story today. An excerpt:

One thing not in doubt is that the elections will go ahead and that there will be a result sometime next month. “I think that despite everything, many Iraqis will vote on Sunday,” Fadel Alfatlwi, the head of the Iraqi Institute for Peace and an independent candidate, said. “With the occupation and all the horrible things that have happened, people dream that they will be wealthy and happy. That dream starts with the election.”

We're pulling for them.

You can't make this stuff up!

Man pees his way out of an avalanche after drinking 60 bottles of beer. Oh, man!

It's hard to beat Fred

Fred Reed has a nice rant on education. An excerpt:

How is it possible to spend twelve years in school and not be able to read? How? It is beyond me. A sheet of dry wall would be reading in less time.

How indeed?

Oh, gawd! VI

They're still going. Jesse Jackson and the Democrat supporters of the idea that Bush really lost in Ohio are pushing ahead with charges of vote suppression, intimidation, and fraud. The Dec. 30th MSNBC interview with Jackson is very mild compared to the unbelievable frothing at the mouth on the DemocraticUnderground.com web log.

And, of course, there's more on the book front. Former New Jersey governor, Christine Todd Whitman, has a new book called "It's My Party, Too," in which she

details her many scars and frustrations in dealing with what she calls the "antiregulatory lobbyists and extreme antigovernment ideologues" that she suggests hold too much sway over the Republican party.

according to the Drudge Report.

I love stories like this XV

From ZeroIntelligence.net comes this story of terrorism in our government-funded public schools. A school suspension administered to a 10-year-old girl, Kelli Ilyankoff, for drawing silly pictures. The ultimate giggle from this story is this paragraph:

The [zero tolerance] policy defines terrorism as "a threat to commit violence communicated with the intent to terrorize another". In order to arrive at their conclusion that Kelli terrorized her friend you would have to define laughing together as communicating an intent to terrorize.

Kyoto won't work

I'm sorry that I missed this the first time around:

Despite the fact that green groups at the U.N. climate summit in Buenos Aires called President George Bush "immoral" and "illegitimate" for not supporting the Kyoto Protocol, the groups themselves concede the Protocol will only have "symbolic" effect on climate because they believe it is too weak. Kyoto is an international treaty that seeks to limit greenhouse gases of the developed countries by 2012.

So even though the Senate has to ratify any treaties (and it rejected Kyoto by something like 95-5) it's all right for these enivironmental ministers to insult the President on their way to admitting that the Kyoto Protocols will have no effect, a "symbolic" effect.

Heinlein said that there are only two kinds of people in the world: "those that want people to be controlled and those that have no such desire." The well-fed ministers at these global environment meetings are the first sort...and rude to boot.

I love stories like this XIV

Walter Williams often has some very trenchant things to say about education. This time he's produced two columns (1 and 2) on the state of college education. My favorite part of his second column comes from a reader:

An English professor wrote, "One of the items that I assigned was a two-page essay that described a favorite vacation or holiday. One student turned in two pictures drawn with crayon depicting the beach. When I gave her a failing grade, she was indignant and said that she put a great deal of work into the pictures. When I told her that she did not do the assignment and that she was supposed to write an essay, she said, ‘But I don't know what an essay is!'"

Half of all college students now take Bonehead English and Bonehead Math. You have to wonder about the value attached to college degrees if so many students have to make up so much ground lost in high school. Williams says:

Colleges should not admit students requiring remedial education. That's not to say youngsters shouldn't receive remedial education, but let them get it elsewhere -- maybe at the high school that awarded them a fraudulent diploma.

Why Rumsfeld should NOT go

Victor Davis Hanson posted a fine piece on National Review on-line last week. It's another reminder that the modern media mavens have a perspective about as broad as a sidewalk and as deep as a puddle:

A thousand brave Americans gave their lives in combat to ensure that the most wicked nation in the Middle East might soon be the best, and the odds are that those remarkable dead, not the columnists in New York, will be proven right — no thanks to post-facto harping from thousands of American academics and insiders in chorus with that continent of appeasement Europe.

Please give it a read.

Recent commentary: Bush's resolution

What would you suggest as a New Year's resolution for President Bush?

(published 27-Dec-2004, Appleton Post-Crescent)

To have compassion for those Democrats who want so badly to reverse the election result in Ohio. Those poor, benighted and clueless Dems still believe that those dastardly Republicans could simultaneously, pervasively and secretly prevent paper ballots from being used; prevent sufficient voting machines from being distributed; keep Democrats waiting in long lines and then not allow them to vote; throw out only Democrats’ provisional ballots; reprogram electronic voting machines to change Kerry votes to Bush; do all these things in every state that should by rights be blue; and steal the election by 3.5 million votes. They are in need of a lot of sympathy and hugs, and the president is just the guy for the job. The rest of us know that the Electoral College voted a couple of weeks ago already, but those Dems still feel victimized. The hamster is dead but the wheel still spins. Sad.

I love stories like this XIII

Apparently the Brits have determined that historical dates are a "good thing" after all. That is, that teaching history to schoolchildren should include when historical events occured as well as what occured. I particularly enjoyed this recommendation by England's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority:

Among the classroom activities suggested in the QCA's new guidance are "timelines with attitude", requiring pupils to place events on a timeline which acts as the horizontal axis of a graph while the vertical axis is used to describe feelings.So they might imagine being peasants between 1348 and 1381, veering in mood from ecstatic to despairing, it says.

This emphasis on the feelings of the schoolchildren is most gratifying. I would hope that the children recognize that this period -- which encompassed the outbreak of the Black Death -- was one to engender feelings of some unpleasantness and deconvenience.

Maybe this revolutionary idea will jump the pond and be incorporated into our own government-funded public schools. On second thought, perhaps not. The teachers' unions might not like it.

Just how big of an LOTR geek am I?

This big: when I came to the end of the actor commentary on the extended edition of "The Return of the King," I heard Sean Astin remark that the little girl playing Sam Gamgee's daughter at the end of the film was Astin's own daughter. One of the others asked him what the hobbit child's name was and Astin said, "Goldilocks." I happen to know that that is incorrect. Sam Gamgee's first-born daughter was named Elanor. I wondered how many other Tolkien freaks groaned when they heard "Goldilocks?"

Oh, gawd! V

Now, really! How many of you feel as this guy does?

I had a Thought. What if we really lost?? I don't think for a minute we did. But imagine how low and how hopeless America would be if Bush actually did win in Ohio? I mean really, would there be any hope whatsoever if over 50% of American has grown this evil and stupid? Im quite certain that the recounts will unveal much to the world and maybe even correct the situation, and give Kerry the inauguration that he deserves. But still. The only thing worse than having the election stolen....would be if we actually lost.

I guess there's no helping these people.

I love stories like this XII

Does it sound reasonable to you to arrest and handcuff a 10-year-old girl and take her to the police station and suspend her from school for five days because a pair of scissors was found in her bookbag? Not only that but the school district still has to decide whether "to expel her to a disciplinary school." This is the so-called "zero tolerance" policy at work in our publicly-funded government schools.

This contrasts with what my 18-year-old son reports from his high school. He claims to see fights between girls in which the combatants roll around on the floor doing various hurtful things to one another. He claims that when male teachers see this activity they walk on by. It's the female teachers that intervene. He also claims that if he were to step in and try to break up the fight he, himself, would be subject to disciplinary action by the school.

It seems obvious to me

OpinionJournal.com's "Best of the Web Today" featured a review of the liberal reaction to the conservative reaction to Sen. Harry Reid's disparagement of Justice Clarence Thomas. James Taranto concludes his review with this very interesting paragraph:

Perhaps in due course black voters will drift away from the Democrats too; after all, what do they really get for holding their noses and voting for someone like Kerry? If that happens, it will spell disaster for the Democrats, who (as Josh Marshall hates to be reminded) simply cannot win elections without overwhelming black support.

Inducing katzenjammers

Can anybody figure out what this means?

A recent view displays that it requires usually of only 3.2 drinkings to induce a katzenjammer. But my lozenges supports you evade hangovers and wake up sensitive magnificent from caput to stomach and everywhere additional.

I find that it usually takes me 4.7 drinkings to induce a katzenjammer.

This was one of the spam messages that snuck through my spam filter, but it makes no sense! The only other thing in this message was a link that said "Click to buy." Do these things actually draw enough response to make it worthwhile? What am I saying? How could this take any effort at all to write? The only effort, I suppose, lies in automating the mailing list so that 15 million people receive it in one day. Sheesh!

I'm now girding my loins to change my main e-mail address that I've had since I've had a cable modem. That should slow down the spam somewhat for a while. I guess I don't get a huge amount but it's averaged 1,085 per month since June.

So, you think Hillary will be nominated in '08?

Peggy Noonan has some perceptive things to say today about Mrs. Clinton. Notwithstanding Ms. Noonan's insights, I'm no longer convinced that Mrs. Clinton will win the Democrat nomination in '08, although I went out on a limb and predicted in '00 that she'd be the nominee this year. Read what Noonan has to say and then tell me whether Mrs. Clinton's got what it takes to head the Democrat ticket in four years.

Oh, gawd! IV

I guess it isn't over until Jesse Jackson sings. Some Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee plus some of the usual suspects gathered at the Rayburn House Office Building in D.C. to whine, complain, bleat, and blather about the results of the Ohio election:

"It ain't over," Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder Jesse Jackson declared. "This race is not over until it is certified -- every vote is counted and honored."

The (media) event was called "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio," and was emceed by U.S. Rep. John Conyers from Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. More from the Reverend Jackson:

"I urge Congress to act before Michael Moore comes and exposes the violation and the capitulation again," Jackson said to applause...Ralph Neas, the president of the liberal group People for the American Way, said he had come to the meeting with "anger and sadness at the travesty, the injustice, the hypocrisy that we have seen, especially in Ohio." Neas also indicated that Blackwell should face criminal charges for his role in voter fraud.

Sheesh! And what's this all about?

Hilary Shelton, the director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, described what he called deception techniques targeting minorities on Election Day. Flyers were sent to black voters telling them the election was two days after the actual date, Shelton charged. "We were told that if you were for one party, you would vote on one day, on November 2, but if you were the member of another party -- a party that over 88 percent of African Americans supported in this last election -- your day to vote was two days later," Shelton said. "And indeed people came out to vote two days later and found out they could not cast that vote because of the kind of trickery that [they] were still experiencing," he added. "The trickery has become much more insidious than ever before."

Whaaa? Is this supported by any physical evidence? Or is this more of the old, "It isn't the preponderance of the evidence, it's the seriousness of the charge?"

And there were other moonbats:

David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 presidential candidate, said "ballot access is easier in most states of the former Soviet Union than in many states in this country."

My God, give it a rest!