Agreement and compromise

Fish calls out a clot of statists:

...Kunstler desperately hopes that the oil runs out tomorrow...for our own good! ...what scares me the most about any potential oil scare is that Kunstler and the clot of statists residing on that half of the continent will get their way! We will have our command economy.....and then the real decline will begin!

I agree with Fish that possibly the biggest concern about Peak Oil is not the problem itself, but the potential solutions. Peak Oil, like global warming, has the potential to create far worse consequences once the government decides it's time for a solution. The choice is easy: either we decide that individuals have the ability (and the right) to deal with problems using their own solutions, or we believe that the wisdom of the government needs to be imposed to save us all. Many alarmists would like nothing better than to direct that imposition.

So I read with interest his link to David Deming's (of the University of Oklahoma’s School of Geology and Geophysics) article, "Are We Running Out of Oil?" Deming's answer is a hearty, "Yes, but..."

Deming knows the numbers far better than I, and so I will take them as read. I will also accept that the Peak Oilers have been wrong in a lot of specifics. Deming makes an excellent case that the Peak Oilers, because they don't know how much oil there is, cannot simply draw a bell curve, and a bell curve might not fit the data anyway, and that a bell curve fits coal usage very well though we are not remotely running out of coal. But I would like to take a look at his conclusions, because I think there's a bit of pollyanna there that might be unwarranted:

The primary problem with a Hubbert-type analysis is that it requires an accurate estimate of the total resource endowment. Yet estimates of the total endowment have grown systematically larger for at least 50 years as technology has made it possible to exploit petroleum resources previously not considered economical.

The sneaky part here is "previously not considered economical." One of the main arguments of the Peak Oilers is not just that production will decline, but that the cheap oil has been found and pumped, and whatever comes next will be harder to find and will take more energy and money to exploit. Deming backhandedly agrees with them by illustrating that more oil has always been available, so long as higher prices are paid - though he relies on technology as the agent rather than the prices that fund and drive it. Even with modern technology we can't pump gas for what we did in the 60s, and tar sands can be exploited only if the price remains high enough to develop the technology to process it. Things cost money, Louie.

But whether higher prices result in necessary and better technology or future supplies are available only at higher prices, it seems like 6 of 1, half dozen of the other. Higher prices are our future no matter who's right because we continue to need more and more oil and we need high prices to fund the technology to extract what remains in new and better ways.

In the long run, an economy that utilizes petroleum as a primary energy source is not sustainable, because the amount of oil in the Earth’s crust is finite. However, sustainability is a misleading concept, a chimera. No technology since the birth of civilization has been sustainable. All have been replaced as people devised better and more efficient technologies. The history of energy use is largely one of substitution. In the 19th century, the world’s primary energy source was wood. Around 1890, wood was replaced by coal. Coal remained the world’s largest source of energy until the 1960s when it was replaced by oil.

Rather than a substitution of energy, we have a bit of substitution of terms here. While agreeing with Peak Oilers that an oil-based economy is over the long-term unsustainable (meaning it cannot last relying primarily on that resource), he then applies "unsustainable" to past events where energy sources were voluntarily replaced by better sources. Was the coal age sustainable using the definition above? Yes, and for centuries at those population levels and usage rates. But it was replaced because there came available a better source of energy, and energy use and population exploded because energy in the form of oil was more convenient and useful than coal or wood or buffalo pies.

However, to say that "no technology since the birth of civilization has been sustainable" is simply untrue. Rural Chinese farmers, whose civilization goes back 5 millennia, rely on the same (low) technology that they have for many generations. Same with Africans, Amish, and Eskimos, and anyone else but the iPod-using developed world. What he means is that technology and population levels cannot advance unless new energy sources are constantly discovered. Renewable energy sources from solar to corn husks are sustainable, but they cannot sustain a population or standard of living that relies on cheap oil in increasing quantities as more uses for it are discovered - but that's another primary argument of the Peak Oilers.

But we didn't change from coal because we were running out of coal in the same way Peak Oilers say we must change from oil because we are running out of oil. In other words, we are really not talking about the same thing.

How long will (the oil age) last? No one can predict the future, but the world contains enough petroleum resources to last at least until the year 2100. This is so far in the future that it would be ludicrous for us to try to anticipate what energy sources our descendants will utilize. Over the next several decades the world likely will continue to see short-term spikes in the price of oil, but these will be caused by political instability and market interference — not by an irreversible decline in supply.

Here's our hard date. If we ran completely all out on oil, it will be depleted by 2100. But I doubt even Deming thinks we will run all out on it until the last drop is squeezed out of ANWR and the taps shut off simultaneously - Peak Oilers sure don't, even though many they believe oil will last until 2100 as well - but that it will be replaced by something better in the meantime. But what is it? Obviously we don't know, and to presume such a resource exists is a faith position.

Perhaps it's a solid faith, but it is not science, it's simply a trust in Progress, capitalized. I happen to share it, though to a lesser extent because I see just as many occasions in history where there was not a suitable replacement for a necessary resource (e.g. land) and the result was mass migration, starvation, and societal collapse. The Irish didn't find a replacement for potatoes, they migrated or starved.

But what I don't share is his faith that we "will likely see short-term spikes in the price of oil." We have already concluded that more oil is available, but only at higher prices and necessitating better technology. Therefore his spikes are not really spikes, because spikes come back to the baseline. What I think we will see instead is an inexorable climb in the price of oil as we make use of oil that is more difficult to extract than current oil, punctuated by occasional and temporary drops in price as technology makes more and more previously unrecoverable oil available. However, as China and India come screaming into the 21st century, the demands on that oil are going to be intense, as are the demands for more profits to build more ships, more refineries, and more pipelines.

So there is an agreement on the major points, that oil is finite and that it will cost more to extract (and therefore use) in the future. Whether production follows a bell-shaped curve is arguable, because while Deming illustrates that prior proposed curves have been wrong, he does not show what the chart ought to look like. Deming shows Hubbert was wrong about the magnitude of decline in American oil fields, but Hubbert was not wrong that they would go into decline. They are still declining even as prices rise, modern technology notwithstanding (see the chart above: US production has declined 40% since 1970 even as demand has grown and price has risen - it's the reason that no matter what we seem to do, we are ever more reliant on imported oil).

But what probably is going to hit us first is that our economy built on cheap oil is going to have to make some severe adjustments to a new primary energy source because of price, and that will necessarily involve tough personal choices on an individual level. But no one told Americans to switch to propane from coal to cook their burgers, they did so voluntarily because the new source was better and cheaper than the last. I hope that tradition will continue.

Technology, Deming's great hope and mine, may come along and make the transition seamless, or it may come along and make the transition less than catastrophic to the developed world, or it may not come along at all. Deming appears to believe in the first, Kunstler apparently pines for the last. I don't know, so I guess I'll plan for the muddled middle.

Not what you think

If a bunch of hillbillies wanted a stupider name for "beanbag toss," I can't think of what it might be. But it really is a game, and even has an association to promote it.

(hat tip: Boortz)

My, what big teeth you have

USA Today accidentally points out a wolf at the door:

Taxpayers owe more than a half-million dollars per household for financial promises made by government, mostly to cover the cost of retirement benefits for baby boomers, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

Federal, state and local governments have added nearly $10 trillion to taxpayer liabilities in the past two years, bringing the total of government's unfunded obligations to an unprecedented $57.8 trillion.

That is the equivalent of a $510,678 credit card debt for every American household. Payments on this delinquent tax bill must start soon if financial promises to the elderly are to be kept.

Rather than payments starting soon, what's happening is that the debt climb is accelerating. Government liabilities are up 20% in two years (thus my seeming panic), Medicare by itself added debt equal to half of everything created in America last year. I freaked out when I saw the debt level at $47 trillion two years ago - $11 trillion of which was due to El Presidente's drug plan - now I wonder how much longer the press (and politicians) will keep saying "We must start soon." It is obvious that we are not starting, will not start, and have no intention of even pretending that we're going to start. We're just going to keep issuing paper to cover it.

"Unprecedented," while perhaps not creating the emotional shotgun blast to the midsection that it ought, is exactly correct: no one has ever carried this much debt or made this many promises and no one who even came close has managed to keep their currency or their government. There is no solution that will save the dollar or fulfil the promises, not while the laws of mathematics exist.

Plan accordingly.

UPDATE: Apparently, what I have contracted from reading too many government financial reports is not ebola or dysentery, but TMEE:

If you are not laughing at the idea of deficit-spending 15% of GDP, then you have not achieved True Mogambo Economic Enlightenment (TMEE). As a little Mogambo Tip, the instant that TMEE happens to you for the first time, expect to vomit up blood in your panic and fear, and to cry like a little baby. Maybe make a mess in your pants, too. Don't worry; it's perfectly natural, and we all went through it.

Somehow putting a name on it doesn't make me feel any better...

The Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism

A good piece (Stolen via Metal Dad) that illustrates what happens when we draw our theology from our hymnals. Among my favourites:

9. Q: What is the assurance of thy salvation?
A: The assurance of thy salvation is, that I know the date on which I prayed the Sinner's Prayer, and have duly written this date on an official Decision card.

16. Q: What doth this tract principally teach?
A: The Four Spiritual Laws principally teach, that God's entire plan for history and the universe centereth on me, and that I am powerful enough to thwart His divine purpose if I refuse to let Him pursue His Wonderful Plan for my life.

31. Q: What is the Lord's Supper?
A: The Lord's Supper is a dispensing of saltines and grape juice, in which we remember Christ's command to pretend that they are His body and blood.

I did a piece a few years ago called "Christian Urban Legends" in which I bagged on Christians for being among the most gullible of people when it comes to things spiritual (not the most gullible - that belongs to naked New Age drum beaters). But in addition to sending one another emails about the Well to Hell and Madalyn Murray O'Hare, we share any number of other nearly as silly rituals. Here are a few of them:

Ending a prayer with "In Jesus' Name" as if God is suddenly tricked into thinking that it's not really us praying. OK, I know Jesus said in John 14:13 that whatever we ask in his name, he will do. But let me ask something, is there a single prayer anywhere in the Bible where the apostles (or anyone else in the first 19 centuries of Christianity) tacks a quick "In Jesus' Name" onto the end of it? If not, perhaps we ought to consider whether we are applying the promise correctly. Probably we're just signaling the others that they'd best get ready to pass the corn.

Praying in 16th Century English as if God learned to speak from Oliver Cromwell. When thou who speakest aforetimes modern English openeth thine mouth and speaketh like unto this manner, what thinkest thou? That God hearkeneth not unto thee except thine words be adorned like unto a goodly codpiece?

Using "My Personal Savior" as if Jesus is a trading card or a good luck charm. "Hey, did you see the cool Personal Savior (tm) I picked up today? It's in the glove box right behind the highway flares." Jesus did not rise from the grave as my cosmic valet or a genie in a bottle that I control. It's not about me no matter how much I would like it to be, and it's not about you, either. God is not on our side: he is on his own side. And Jesus is not my Personal Savior any more than Ronald Reagan was my Personal President.

We all do them, just like we all use religious words that mean one thing to us and another (or nothing) to everyone else - but that's a post for another day. In fact, we often have to make a conscious effort to NOT end prayers by tacking on a magical formula that's supposed to trick a God whom we suppose is not paying very close attention. But it just goes to show how many influences we have in our lives that we imitate but never truly ponder.

The Temptation of Peak Oil

James Howard Kunstler prescribes leeches for your gas price induced high blood pressure:

A true Progressivism would concern itself with the comprehensive reform of all land use laws, policies, codes, and tax incentives that promote more new car-dependent suburban development. A new Progressivism would put dwindling public monies into the re-activation of our harbors and shipping infrastructure. We're going to need it. It would direct remaining agricultural subsidies into explictly organic, local farming enterprises, not to the Archer Daniel Midland corporation. It would revive the legal practice of restricting monopolies in business. It has to lead us in the direction of making other arrangements for how we live.

The obvious problem, of course, is that the American public doesn't want to make other arrangements.

As the world awakens to the possibility that we are enjoying today as much oil as we'll ever have and that the future may not involve cheap gas, food, or metals ever again, the temptation arises for those who are smarter than the rest of us (at least in their own estimation) to begin to make other arrangements on our behalf.

The first Progressive Era began in the late 19th Century as industrial capitalism began to produce so much wealth that the government decided that in the interests of fairness it would take upon itself the job of allocating that wealth. It peaked in the second decade of the 20th Century with the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and the War to End All Wars, and carried over in the socialization of nearly all the risks of living (deposit insurance, full employment policies, Social Security). Under communism - established in Russia at the same time the US got its permanent income tax - the government stole everything first and mandated production through central planning. Under corporate capitalism, the government allowed individuals to produce and later stole most of the profit. It was only the fact that industrial capitalism was able to out-produce the thefts by its government that the West has managed to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union thus far.

But should Peak Oil or a dollar crash or bird flu manage to crater our confidence-based economy and paper money, the dilemma - in the face of angry and disillusioned voters - will be a stark one: either the government must free the economic system to produce efficiently with fewer inputs or it must step in to manage scarce resources through negotiation (think "campaign contributions") and compulsion. In other words, once our easy money society bites us in the butt, we will need to choose real capitalism (as opposed to our current corporatism) or full-blown socialism. Unfortunately most Peak Oil adherents, however correct they are in diagnosing the disease, prefer the latter as a cure. They propose that government-directed agricultural subsidies and infrastructure projects be designed to save us all, whether or not we desire to be saved according to their wisdom.

As correct as Kunstler is that the government has no business subsidizing ADM, he fails to see that taking money from people to give to those newer companies that will most directly benefit from the unavailability of inexpensive oil-based products (like smaller farms and railroads) is but another chance for the government to rob Peter to pay Peter back - after taking his required cut, of course.

If the government would simply decide that having millions of workers producing nothing but income tax forms and other legalistic busywork is a luxury that we can no longer afford, we might be able to produce enough for ourselves, even without the incredible bounty of cheap oil. But if they decide that the free choices of Americans will be overruled by law, then we can look forward to the equality of poverty that is the universal byproduct of the command economy.

It would be comforting if Peak Oilers realized that our currently-unsustainable lifestyle is a result of the printed money of the first Progressive Era as much as cheap oil - that way they might put a little less trust in those whose most important product is consumer confidence. But as is always the temptation when given an opportunity to harness the power of government, they appear to relish the chance to rise and save us from ourselves.

Old Goats

Must be sweeps week in Florida:

Doctors said sexually transmitted diseases among senior citizens are running rampant at a popular Central Florida retirement community, according to a Local 6 News report...

Local 6 featured Louis Franklin, who used to date in the community at least three times a week.

"I have had a better dating life since I have been here than I have ever had," Franklin said. "I know there are things going around."

A doctor blamed Viagra, a lack of sex education and no risk for pregnancy for the spike in sexually transmitted diseases at The Villages.

A lack of sex education? How about blaming a herd of bored and randy old goats for whom sex is simply another pastime? For as much crap as kids catch about sleeping around, it's ironic that their grandparents appear to be doing much the same. Better living through chemistry, I guess.

But the funny thing about sex education for the kiddies is the assumption that they pass VD around because they don't know any better. Yet the 80-ish crowd, who ought to know better and do, suffer the same results.

Pontifications of the humanist philosophers aside, the solution to humankind's ills and follies is not education, because its problem is not ignorance. Its problem is that man is not a rational creature but a rationalizing one who uses reason to find justification for what its heart wishes to do.

And "it won't happen to me" seems a perfectly logical argument once the little blue pill kicks in.

A tale of two maps

Stormhound finds a seeming corelation: (via email)

As part of the occasional poking around I do now that the topic interests me (i.e., I feel my pain), I decided to look at the following pair of maps (one of which, at least, I'm sure is quite familiar to you): First, the current national "Gas Temperature" map:

And then a map showing the effective gas tax rates per gallon, by state:

I don't have the inclination to color the latter to match the former, but I'm betting that if I did, the two maps would look *awfully* similar. (Perhaps more interesting would be to recolor the temperature map by subtracting the taxes, to get a notion of what base prices are per region...just how much does the gas REALLY cost before the gummint sticks its finger in the pie?) I recall that during my three trips in the past year (driving down to SC and back, up to NY, and then recently flying out to Vegas), I noted how different the gas prices were in different areas, but I never really thought much about *why* other than thinking it had something to do with supply points and transportation costs. Apparently, something else is a major cause (as well, if not instead).

I did a quick check and every area marked in the top 4 gas price ranges happens, coincidentally, to be in the 10 states that have the highest gas taxes.

What more proof do you need that greedy oil companies are the cause of high gas prices?

Feast of the Venerable Bede

Most people don't realize that a Benedictine monk living in the eighth century is responsible for the fact that Jesus was the world's biggest preemie.

Bede, the author of Historia Ecclesiastica - one of the few historical writings from the English Dark Ages* - was the first popular historian to start dividing time into BC and AD periods. Unfortunately he made a slight error in calculation - which no one will ever bother to fix - which resulted in Christ being born 4 years before Christ.

But one thing he did get right was his vehement insistence that the Earth was round, not flat as a (very) few of his contemporaries argued. This was, of course, more than 700 years before Columbus and 700 years after the Romans who also knew the Earth was round, so when you hear the fable that everyone before Christopher Columbus thought the world was flat, realize you're dealing with somebody that went to the kind of school where they don't read real history.

And yes, we're celebrating the Feast of the Venerable Bede tomorrow with a real feast. Chinese, what else?

* A period which many modern historians would argue did not really exist in anything close to the "popular" understanding. To the extent that I have any knowledge, I concur. I just use the name because I think it sounds pretty cool.

Well, that ought to do it

In a small, mirror-paneled room guarded by a Secret Service agent and packed with some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential political donors, Mr. McCain got right to the point.

“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,’” said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.

Yeah, I'm betting the only reason Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting across Asia for a thousand years is because no one of Mr. McCain's stature has ever sat them down and told them to stop the bullshit.

Then he can re-unify Catholics and Protestants, reassemble Yugoslavia, and maybe sit down with oil and water and convince them that this segregation they've been pursuing all these years is really not the American way.

Authoritative Guide to Liberals

Courtesy of Sniffer (language warning):

Nasty Ass Liberals: These are the people with the shaggy, nasty and unclean hair and/or beards, people who never shower, have strong body odors, smoke disgusting-smelling cigarettes and wear sandals. While I have no problem with these people doing any of these things, I do have a problem with these people trying to represent that they have America’s interest at heart when they don’t. Who wants to listen to someone you can’t stand within three feet of because of the stench? But yes I’m suppose to respect what they are saying.

Ignorant Ass liberals: People that don’t know what they’re talking about should shut up. The key to discussing politics and policies is knowing something, even a little something about politics and policies. These are people who only read the far-left blogs or other media and regurgitate Democratic Party line bullshit.

Boo Hoo liberals: Amongst this group are those who don’t vote or those that say things like: “how could you bring a child into a world like this.” Those who don’t vote help make the world a worse place by allowing the enemy, which does vote, to win the positions of power in society.
They bitch and whine about this country but they won’t take their tired ass to Canada, or get involved in something positive. But they will devote every waking hour sitting in front of a computer blogging and bitching about how evil conservatives are.

Spiritualist Wacko liberals: These are the people that reject religion (make fun of and malign Christians) and then go off into some pseudo-scientific, new age, wacky, Mother Earth, extremist belief system that has little to do with the real world. Going off into the woods to bang a drum with a bunch of other naked crazy bastards doesn’t make the world a better place or get you any closer to nature.

Abusive liberals: These may be the most destructive people to the liberal movement. These are the people that yell at those who disagree with them, throw paint on people with different beliefs and assassinate politicians they don’t like. Liberals, who resort to these tactics, are no better than the evil conservatives they supposedly oppose. Interrupting speeches, throwing pies at conservative speakers, throwing Oreo cookies at black conservatives is just tired, childish and counterproductive. No one ever stopped wearing a fur because someone threw paint on them. Rich people will just buy another dead animal.

Liberal Communists/socialists: Leftists who advocate Communism are totally fucked up. The Communist system is unworkable in a real human society. Socialism, while it can work in the real world, is so at odds with American history and the traditions and ideals of Americans, that it is unworkable in the United States. Those who advocate these corrosive ideologies alienate the mass of the voters who associate such things with evil. When such extremism is advocated by the wacko left, it keeps right leaning (more sensible) views in power.

Win-at-any costs liberals: Many liberals advocate no-holds-barred, win-at-any cost tactics. These people see politics as an “us-against-them” struggle in which the liberal side must win at any cost. The goal of U.S. politics is to do what is best for the American people first and the people of the world second. When liberals make it about winning elections and not about winning for the people, they seek to destroy the political system and hence destroy the country. Just like it’s not enough to disagree with Bush and his policies, his presidency must be destroyed to preserve liberal ideals.

Liberal Conspiracy theorists: Conspiracy theories from the left just prove how out of touch they are with the real world. Idiots who forward these wacked theories overestimate the competence of most people in positions of power. Pulling off a conspiracy takes such a huge amount of effort and involves a huge number of people. Almost no conspiracy can long survive. People too often change their minds. People too often fall for the financial gain that can be obtained by revealing a conspiracy. There are few books that sell more than tell-all inside jobs that let us in on the secrets of the powerful. Particularly in the age of technology, it is almost impossible to keep a conspiracy secret for long. And non-secret conspiracies tend to be failed conspiracies. So these liberals spouting off about how every American foreign policy action is 100% about oil and those who claim that Bush secretly planned 9/11 for his own benefit or that the Skull and Bones Society is secretly running the country for the sake of the whatever. Shut the fuck up. If you truly believe these types of things, then you are just plain nuts and you should be locked up in a padded room.

Tyranny for your own good

There's a new commercial on the all-Metallica online station I occasionally listen to, and it starts out something like, "You've heard for years that it's a good idea to wear your seatbelt. It makes sense. It saves lives. But now, there's another reason to click it. If you don't, you'll get a ticket..."

So we've gone from embracing a technology that saves lives to laws based on the benefits of that technology to flat out threats - wear your seat belt or the government will punish you. Such is the well-trodden path of messianic government.

Williams this week picks up a theme that I have bagged on for years. If the government can force you to wear your seat belt (and everyone seems to think that's a good idea), for what logical reason should they not force you to excercise:

For example, my weekly exercise routine consists of three days' weight training and three days' aerobic training. I think it's a good idea. Like seatbelt use, regular exercise extends lives and reduces health care costs. Here's my question to government officials and others who sanction the "Click It or Ticket" campaign: Should the government mandate daily exercise for the same reasons they cite to support mandatory seatbelt use, namely, that to do so would save lives and save billions of health care dollars?

If we accept the notion that government ought to protect us from ourselves, we're on a steep slippery slope. Obesity is a major contributor to hypertension, coronary disease and diabetes, and leads not only to many premature deaths but billions of dollars in health care costs. Should government enforce, depending on a person's height, sex and age, a daily 1,400 to 2,000-calorie intake limit? There's absolutely no dietary reason to add salt to our meals. High salt consumption can lead to high blood pressure, which can then lead to stroke, heart attack, osteoporosis and asthma. Should government outlaw adding salt to meals? While you might think that these government mandates would never happen, be advised that there are busybody groups currently pushing for government mandates on how much and what we can eat.

We have embraced the notion that government ought to protect us from ourselves - we simply justify it individually by saying that other people are so stupid that government needs to protect them from themselves - and there is today nothing that a majority of voters will not turn over to the politicians to enforce, so long as they think it's a good idea.

But I wonder who is a greater threat to America, Osama bin Laden or politicians who will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, or oppose any foe for a chance to run your life in your name and best interest?

No, that's not true. I really don't wonder at all...

Secrets of Levitation

I always think stuff like this is pretty cool...

A little perspective, please

Morton Kondrake says the CIA will be the death of us yet:

Enough already! It's harmful enough that ideological conflict and partisan politics are preventing this country from solving its long-term challenges on health care, fiscal policy and energy. Now, it's threatening our national survival.

I do not exaggerate. Bush-hatred has reached such intensity that CIA officers and other bureaucrats are leaking major secrets about anti-terrorism policy and communications intelligence that undermine our ability to fight Islamic extremism.

Would newspapers in the midst of World War II have printed the fact that the U.S. had broken German and Japanese codes, enabling the enemy to secure its communications? Or revealed how and where Nazi spies were being interrogated? Nowadays, newspapers win Pulitzer Prizes for such disclosures.

I hate to be a party pooper, but yes, he does exaggerate. There is simply no way terrorism can threaten our national survival. Israel manages to survive, right in the middle of thousands of terrorists who are (literally) dying to get in there and blow themselves and Israelis up. Other nations suffer terrorism on a daily or weekly basis, yet somehow they manage to press on. Hell, Ivory Coast is in the middle of a Civil War but still manages to send a soccer team to the World Cup. Yet somehow the fact that terrorists know we might be listening to their phone calls is going to end America?

A little perspective is surely in order. 9/11 killed ~4000 people. 10 times that number died on our highways the same year. Somehow, America survives that, every single year, without being materially altered. The fact that 9/11 changed our entire national character just shows how out of real history America has been. What other nation has not had a foreign army marching on its soil in 194 years? Maybe Canada, and only because no one can get there but us.

Sure, maybe the terrorists will get nukes and blow up a major city. If they had nukes already they would have done so, no doubt. Such an attack would be truly horrible, but it would still not be the end of America. If Katrina, which made a large American city virtually uninhabitable for 6 months, did not destroy America (or even cause a recession) then a bombing or even a series of bombings are not going to make us all into Canadians or Mexicans or anything other than Americans.

Mort has a silly faith in politics; he views our capital and government as the very nation itself and an amalgamation of divine omnipotence and incredible frailty - able to remake entire nations, yet unable to survive a few car bombs - and because this perspective is mired in Beltway myopia, even his examples are preposterous. If a newspaper had revealed where Nazis were being interrogated, would that have lost the war, much less destroyed America? Not remotely. If they revealed that we had broken the enemy's codes, would that have lost the war? Um, the answer is still nein.

As for national survival, we freaking bombed Germany into the stone age, killed millions of its citizens, executed its leadership, broke it into four pieces, and have occupied it militarily for more than 6 decades. Yet Germany still exists, but we are in danger over printed leaks? Terrorism is a method of attack chosen because those who use it have few fighters and less technology. It cannot conquer - it can only disrupt - and therefore our national survival is not in jeapordy.

If terrorists really wanted to destroy America, if they really wanted to kill off what it stands for and impoverish its citizens and bring down its government, they’d build a printing press and flood our economy with trillions of dollars in counterfeit money, knowing that America can only be destroyed from within. Oh, wait a minute, that’s what we’re doing to ourselves.

UPDATE: Pat Buchanan this morning says that the nation state itself is a walking dead man. He's absolutely correct. The only question that remains to be answered is whether the next iteration of human government is trans-national (e.g. NAFTA, EU), ethnic/cultural (e.g. Bosnia, Quebec) or some combination of the two. Whatever it turns out to be, you can bet on two things: that our politicians hastened our downfall by squandering the national wealth, and that when it comes time to lay blame, Osama bin Laden will receive what rightly belongs in Washington.

A fool and his borrowed money...

With stock markets in crash mode from Europe (Sweden down 5% today) to Asia (India down 30% in a week), there's a familiar refrain building:

Indian police are watching out for brokers and investors attempting suicide after a market slide wiped out billions of dollars in share values.

Policemen were keeping a watch near lakes and canals on Monday - possible places where people in distress could head to kill themselves. They said rescue teams were on alert.

OK, I just put that in there because I thought the idea of cops watching fish ponds for people trying to drown themselves was pretty funny. I wonder if they have firemen with those portable trampolines standing under tall buildings just in case. There haven't been any market-related suicides as of yet, at least that I've heard of.

But there has been a lot of this:

Sanjay Joshi, a small investor, said: "I borrowed money to trade in the market. I lost it all in the past two days.

"I don't know how will I repay my loans."

Why, oh why would you borrow money to play in the stock market? Because you're a moron, that's why, following a noble, centuries-long tradition of fleeced investment sheep who lose everything on a sure thing. Margin wiped out thousands of investors in the 1929 crash, and it will wipe out millions when we get another one. Small investors love leverage, the ability to ride a tiger twice or ten times as fast as it's running, yet when the beast turns on them they are swallowed whole. Then they have the audacity to act surprised.

It's coming in American real estate very soon as well, maybe this year, as rising interest rates start to drive house prices down. Adios, Morons of the 110% Mortgage. You really thought we could all get rich selling our houses to one another?

I have seen the future

and it homeschools:

A mother of seven, Brentwood mother Mitzi Lowe also was hesitant at first. Lowe even had strong reservations initially about her friend choosing to homeschool her daughter after the girl had spent kindergarten in a public school.

"I thought it was nuts because I didn't know anything about (homeschooling)," Lowe said. "But for three years I watched her and saw how well it worked."

Four of Lowe's seven children now participate in home education at grade levels ranging between first and seventh grade. The other three are merely too young to begin school, but likely will follow the path of their siblings.

My son Nick graduated from high school last night, even though he's never set foot inside one. In fact, when he goes back to college this fall (he's already completed about half a semester at the local Juco) it will remain the only classroom he's ever taken a class in.

There were 69 kids in his graduating class, though as the MC announced, it was less a class of 69 than a combination 69-school graduation. He also announced that since Midwest Parent Educators (the support group hosting the event) began 20 years ago, it has grown from 13 families to more than 1200.

With each graduation, the parents had a chance to say something to and about their kids in front of everyone. To their kids it was usually a charge from the Bible: be a real man or woman, trust God, do what's right in his eyes. But about their kids, there was an interesting theme: John is the first of 8 kids, all homeschooled; Jenny is the fourth of 6 kids, all homeschooled; Joshua is the youngest of 10 kids, all homeschooled. I looked around at the full arena: there were schoolkids (and babies) everywhere.

And I thought about a statistic shared by one of the senior speakers (who, much to my joy, were shorter-winded and far more interesting than most commencement speakers): 86% of people who are homeschooled go on to homeschool at least one of their kids.

Add it up any way you like. That's a freaking mess of homeschoolers coming down the pike.

Quote of the (Vox) Day:

I think I'm going to join Emily's List. The USA is doomed anyhow, so just for kicks, let's see what would happen with a female President and a 100 percent female Senate and House of Representatives.

My guess is that the tattered remnants of our civilization would be conquered by the militarily fearsome Grenada-Cuban alliance within eighteen months.

Feminists are so cute. Seriously. They bare their claws like furry little kittens and snarl, about as ferocious as my 5-year-old when she doesn't want to do something. And the funny thing is that a lot of men will go out of their way to say that they're wrong, that they don't understand, that they really aren't helpless in the face of the Patriarchy.

Frankly, I think they are correct: men run everything. Men invent everything, accomplish everything, own everything. And you know the sad part? There's nothing feminists can do about that, and they know it.

Want to understand the rage and frustration of a feminist? Then ponder a situation that is both hateful and hopeless at the same time. Consider a situation where your only chance to feel some manner of power is to march in a "Take Back the Night" rally - then ride the subway home in abject terror that someone stronger than you will not let you keep it. Imagine what it must be like to need to feel hated, because being hated is better than being ignored - at least the hated are important enough for others to expend emotion on. Feel the frustration that everything you accomplish is being won not over the power of men, but with their patronizing permission. Understand that "the first woman to do x" simply means that men have done it many times before and will do it many times again.

Then imagine not understanding that when your silliness results in the ending of the material abundance that men have wrought, your beloved ideology will simply be batted aside by the hairy and calloused hand of survival while men build it again.

The shallow theological answer

Misty has a question for God (language warning if you click thru):

I woke up last night punching a wall (okay, a canvas camper shell, and my poor many-times-sprained wrist was grateful). For the first time in my life, the somnolent rage that fueled it was not for myself. I was not dreaming of hurting the people who’ve hurt me, but of hurting the people who hurt them.

So someday, I’m going to have to account for the life I’ve lived, and the sentiments I’ve held towards my fellow human beings. And when that happens, I’m going to be truly repentant for almost all of the judgment and wrath I’ve heaped upon the rest of the human race. But so help me, I will hold my head high before my Creator and not be ashamed of the hate and rage that I feel towards these children’s parents. If He condemns me for that, then He’s not any sort of God I want to have spent my life loving and worshipping, anyway.

And you know what? He's going to have some explaining to do to me, about how He could put them on the earth to begin with, and how He could give into their care helpless infants to starve and terrorize and rape. And He'd better have some pretty damned good answers then, because he sure as hell isn't giving me any in the here and now.

While the sentimental or those not used to Misty's honest style might recoil from such a bluntly stated desire to "hurt the people who hurt them" or with her rage, anger, and compulsion to strike out at others, what that feeling is - when directed in protection of others rather than in our own self-interest - is justice. It is the sense of justice that is built into every one of us by a just Creator. We all know right and wrong, we all appeal to the standard - even those who loudly disbelieve in God have no problem appealing to his justice though they call it something else ("It's not fair"). We feel within us God's sense of justice because we are created in his image and sometimes we see the world through his eyes, a little. We feel his wrath at sin, on occasion, even if we call it something else.

But as God is morally perfect (by definition, as the iron meter pole at the bureau of standards and measures is a perfect one meter long), his justice is perfect. And if it is perfect, it is complete. And if it is complete, then it is not limited to some bad acts, but to all bad acts and all bad intentions and all badness itself. Doubtless God's sense of justice is more riled when one murders a child than when one smashes a bug simply to be mean - as ours is - but the quality of badness inherent in the act is the same, and perfect justice demands perfect punishment for all acts, not simply ones that fall above some quantity of badness threshhold. It doesn't mean the punishment is the same (duh) but for every bad act there must be a proportionately bad consequence. In a just universe there must be Justice, capitalized, squared, and loaded with g juice.

And it is a slide downhill, forever, because justice does not fix the problem of evil; it simply squares the books, and often, like karma, perpetuates it. And eye for an eye gives you two half-blind men. They are even, but neither of them is where he was. And since all of us are to a greater or lesser extent unjust, then we are all under the very condemnation that we agree is just when the standard is applied to others.

(Insert here the Gospel, in which Christians believe that Jesus' death on the cross somehow satisfied God's justice on behalf of all men. I'm not going to explain it - I believe it; I do not understand it - I'm just inserting it because it is a necessary step to get to where we're going, mercy)

God wants more than justice, He wants restoration. He wants those who lost eyes to see. We live in a just universe, but we live also in a broken universe - broken by the very sin that demands justice - and that universe can only be fixed by going beyond justice.

So back to the Evil People and a crime for which we demand justice. There is a bill to be paid, and our sense of justice demands that it be paid. Would we be within our rights to see such a person shot, stabbed, hung, dead, buried, dug up, dragged, and stomped on? Yep. Absolutely. Without a doubt. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to see absolute and permanent justice done. There is nothing wrong - in fact there is everything right - with carrying that justice out so long is it is truly justice and not simply striking out because of how we feel. Justice, to be justice, must be cold and calculated and impersonal and merciless.

But what then? Then we have a child who is dead and a perp who is dead. All is even, except that the perp was a father and now we have orphans. How can they be made whole? We have other people who hurt and are hurting, and the more justice we get, the more people we have affected by it. We have a world full of half blind, many of whom go on to blind others. We have stopped the evil, for now, in specifics, but we have not undone it. God's desire is that his people, as the body of Christ, work to undo it - not to simply stop evil external acts, but to unmake evil hearts, which are the wellsprings from which evil acts arise.

That does not mean excuse the evil. Say all the bad things you wish about the evil people, and the merciful should agree with every word, because they are bad people. It does not mean to seek to understand it, although the more one reflects on the evil that is in oneself, one can't help to come to a better understanding of the evil that is in others. It does not mean to deny justice; in fact, it may mean to carry it out in some fashion personally, and it certainly means doing everything to see that it is carried out by the authorities. It does not mean being a spineless liberal; placing evil in objects like guns or in situations like poverty; it means placing evil uncompromisingly where it belongs: in the human heart. But that's not the first step. In fact, it doesn't even really help.

Rather, the first step in undoing the evil is Jesus' command to love your enemies. Sure, they are still your enemies, they are the enemies of all that is right and good. They are still bad people. They are still dangerous. Love them anyway. Give something of yourself to them, even when in your heart you would rather see them impaled on a greased pole or strangled slowly (because perhaps they will be - we seek justice because God is just, but justice will be done because God is just.)

Jesus didn't say to pretend they are not that bad, or that it's someone else's fault. He didn't say to love them because they deserved it. And he didn't say to love them because they'll return that love. Instead he said to love them "hoping for no earthly gain...and you will be called children of God. Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful."

Mercy is harder than justice because it demands that we pay something for the sins of others. It means that we suffer, voluntarily, because of acts that others have committed. Loving the unlovely means you'll be hurt by them as others have been. Serving the unworthy means that they'll spit on you as they have spit on others. Giving to those who don't deserve it means that you'll be ripped off by them like others before you. Mercy demands that it be done anyway, because the step beyond justice is the necessary step to undo evil.

And it's not simply hard to go beyond justice - the justice built into us and the very fabric of the universe - to mercy; it's impossible without help from God.

But why bother? You don't do it simply because God said so. God said so because that is the only way to straighten those who are bent, and we are all bent to some extent. Does threat of punishment keep us from evil? Yes. Does it change our evil desires? No, it doesn't. Merciless justice suppresses evil, but only when it's combined with mercy can it begin to change evil people into the kind of people who are concerned with doing right rather than being afraid of getting caught doing wrong. It is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. Justice makes the books even, but only love and mercy can increase the bottom line.

So to answer Misty's original question, Why did God put evil people on earth? I don't know. I don't have an answer for that, and you know what? Neither does anybody else. What am I to do knowing that they are here and the damage they do? That one I have an answer for.

Now might be a good time to go shopping

I answered Bethie's question earlier this month about buying silver thusly:

"My advice is to get some, but to wait until a pullback to do so. No market goes straight up; no market goes straight down. The time to buy is still when no one else seems to want it. So wait for the market to get its butt kicked, when silver drops a dollar in a day, or falls below $12 or so an ounce, or when your favourite ignoramus econ reporter declares the bull market over...in other words, wait until you are scared to buy. That's when everyone else is, too, and when you'll get the best deal."

And while I'm not going to make a habit of buy and sell calls in this market, the expected pullback has been nasty and brutish (silver is now $12.25, gold is down more than $60 in a week, and more than $20 today) but what is even better is that nothing has changed in the world. Gold got ahead of itself and pulled back (with a little help, but that doesn't matter, it just is), giving someone who wants to get in a reasonably safe entry point.

I don't recommend gold stocks for those who know nothing about them - the market is volatile and nasty and often manipulated - but I have recommended putting aside some physical gold and silver (and copper) for a long time. And if one has the urge, the next week or so might be a good time to go shopping.

You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair...

Regarding Vox's latest column (with the offensive reference having now been rescinded by WND, there's no sense in linking to it), normally literate James Taranto writes:

"Vox Day," a pseudonymous commentator who has been playing electronic games since 1978, weighs in on the immigration debate in his WorldNetDaily column:

[President Bush] lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic--it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

The bio at the end of the column describes "Day" as a "Christian libertarian." It seems a conservative nativist is one who celebrates America's wartime excesses, whereas a libertarian nativist is one who thinks our totalitarian enemies had something to offer too.

It seems, rather, that this quote is the only thing Taranto read of the article. He's normally more careful than that, and I say that as one who reads him every day - in fact, I was one of the contributors mentioned at the bottom of his column yesterday (a silver dime to the first person who can guess my contribution).

But Vox is exactly correct: it is not a difficult physics problem to deport 12 million people, especially over the course of 8 or 10 years. For the President to say that it can't be done ignores the fact that in his speech Monday he claimed that we deported half that number already in 5 years at the border. According to the INS we deported several more million who were already inside in the last 20 years through the legal process and even more who volunteered to leave rather than go through that process. There are also doubless those who left voluntarily when dad or mom took a boat ride home. To say it can't be done is rubbish; we're doing it now. Bush simply doesn't want it to be done and is pretending that it's an insoluble physics problem to keep from having to do anything in the short term.

The funny thing is that Vox doesn't even want the kind of mass deportation under discussion (which makes the hysteria and hyperventilation all the funnier), because as he has said repeatedly on his blog, it's as unnecessary as it is manageable. All you have to do to solve the problem is stop more from coming in and immediately deport the ones you happen across. No busting down doors, no secret police. No ovens.

Of course, if there's one place Vox is wrong - and there is - it's on the major point of the article, that a fence with Mexico is dangerous because it can be used to keep people in. But that's a point that hasn't even been argued because illiterati on the right and left are too busy confusing references with incitements or libertarians with totalitarians.

Tyler Hangs Dead

I'm going to enjoy him. Every bite of him. For the next year and a half, I'm going to think about today as I chew a half ton of red meat.

As of today, Tyler hangs dead.

Tyler was named after a former boyfriend of my daughter*. He was a 3 year old steer that was supposed to go the the butcher in September, but he was the most skittish cow I've ever seen. He would not come near when needed, would not get on the trailer. Twice I had to call the butcher to re-schedule because I simply could not get him loaded. We tried to lure him into the trailer, push him, trick him. No dice.

But last night, after failing all week to get him more than 2 legs in (even though he was eating range cubes out of my hand), I had had enough.

The first thing I tried was to run him along the fences between the barn and the old chicken yard. I got him trapped, rolling a circular bail of hay to block his escape, then tried to force him down the line to the trailer. He seemed to take exception to that, and pushed me out of the way, rolled the bail, and got back into the field. I left range cubes in the trailer which he would eat as far as he could reach from outside, but as soon as I left the house, he'd skitter out into the field (yes, skitter, at 1100 pounds or so - he's huge but has the moves of a pole dancer).

So I talked to my neighbor about using his chutes. All I had to do was get Tyler over there. I got my bucket of cubes and walked him through the back yard to the south field then out onto the road. All he had to do was turn left. He turned right and ran up the road a quarter mile, so I had to get the car and drive past him (I couldn't walk without him running further), then leave the car in the road and follow him home on foot.

I lured him into the barn, where I could trap him with a swinging gate. After half an hour and half a bag of range cubes, I finally got he and Summer (his half sister) trapped in there, and I shut the gate behind him.

Then I was stuck with the unenviable task of pulling the trailer (with the bookmobile, our 12-passenger van) through a tight gate, making a hairpin turn, and then cutting down a section of fence so I could drive out into the back yard and thence to the driveway. Lynn said it would never work. She was right.

The trailer hung on the gate post (not enough room to make the turn) and after I unhitched the van, it got stuck in the mud. Tyler was happily eating range cubes and watching me the whole time through the gate. Laughing at me, the bastage.

So I went back to my neighbor's, borrowed his bobcat, cut down a section of the fence, and towed the van through it. I had the trailer halfway to the barn when it got dark and my neighbors arrived to ask me to join the volunteer fire department**. I left the bobcat (it was stuck in the mud now) overnight, hoping the ground would freeze so I could work. Instead, the clouds rolled in.

It was an hour before sunrise when I got back on it and finally got the trailer (almost) positioned. My neighbor arrived to help. We opened the gate into the barn, Kevin jumped in and made a noise like a snake or something, and Tyler hopped into the trailer like it was his long-lost home. 3 months of work and my neighbor does it in 5 seconds. Thank God for neighbors.

But now I've got to get the trailer to the driveway, so I hooked it (via the safety chains) to the bucket of the bobcat and towed it through the yard (killing one cherry tree that I haven't told my wife about yet) and finally got it to the driveway. Then I called the butcher to double (triple) check that today was the day and sent Nick to town for a can or three of Fix-a-Flat. With Tyler's added weight, the tires did not look good.

I tried cranking the trailer up so I could hook it to the bookmobile's trailer hitch, but it wouldn't go up, and Tyler was too heavy for me to force it, but he did manage to keep it moving enough that I couldn't hitch it even when the front of it popped up as he was running laps inside. I blocked the tires and went for my 10-ton jack.

Upon jacking it up, I cranked the wheel up and found out why it wouldn't lift: there was a piece of metal caught in the rifling. I removed it, hitched up the safety chains and went to plug it in.

This is the first time we've used this van with this trailer and guess what? The plug is wrong. But this trailer is going today, come hell or high water, so I hand-drew a sign in block letters that said "STAY BACK! NO LIGHTS" and taped it to the back of the trailer. Then I pumped up the tires and Nick and I pulled out.

Arma is 20 miles away by highway and about 300 by the back roads, because the only paved road (hell, the only straight road) that runs from here to there is closed. So we headed down the dirt road past the neighbor's house. There were 50 cows and one huge bull standing in his front yard.

So Nick and I located where they had gone thru the fence, got them home, and jury-rigged it as best we could. It was now less than an hour before Tyler had to be at the butcher, so we couldn't stay to do a better job.

We drove the back roads all the way to Arma and apparently the butcher was getting worried so they called my lovely wife, who alas, could not help them: I was so far out in the middle of nowhere that she couldn't call me. She told them to call her if (yes, she said 'if') I made it.

After three (pathetic) attempts, I got the trailer backed up to the butcher's chute, then at last Tyler trotted contentedly down the path which will eventually end at my freezer.

We got back on the road (the one that's closed) and missed the last turnoff before the signs, so we had to drive it...no way could I back this trailer a half mile or turn around on the tiny (and I mean TINY) belt of pavement. But I'm happy to report that there are two very nice new bridges on it and they will both support an F-350 van pulling an empty trailer. I'm sure the county will be happy to know that.

We got it home, and Nick's reward was that he got to drive the bobcat back to our neighbor's (yes, that's a reward for a 15-year-old), after I moved some dirt to make our gates "legal" for the foster care workers***.

Then I took a shower and came to work, 4 hours late.

But Lynn called and said the butcher called her as soon as I arrived**** and let her know I had successfully gotten Tyler off my hands.

"I didn't know you could do that," she said.

Neither did I. And I'll never do it again.

* Don't laugh, the kids named our pigs after our next-door neighbors, too. I never told them.
** which I did... no longer being in the Capitol Monday thru Friday removed my last excuse.
*** apparently, if your gates are more than 12" off the ground, a toddler could get under them, crawl 100 yards to the cattle pond, and drown. But that's done.
**** I was unaware that there was an office pool on whether I would make it... thus the long face on the butcher, I guess.

Not exactly Mario Brothers

An Internet-based computer game that puts players in the army boots and black trench coats of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as they kill Columbine High School classmates is attracting attention and sparking controversy.

Called Super Columbine Massacre RPG, the game mixes cartoonish scenes with photographs of Harris and Klebold, pictures taken from newspapers and television stations and excerpts from their writings.

The game's creator, who refused to identify himself to the Rocky Mountain News, did agree to an online interview. He said he wanted to create something profoundly unique and confrontational that would "promote a real dialogue on the subject of school shootings."

Promote a real dialogue on the subject of school shootings? I can just imagine it floating across the lunch tables of American schools:

"So I heard there were these two guys, right? And they wore trenchcoats every day, right? Well check this out: they totally killed everyone at their school and then shot themselves."

"Dude! Weak! Where was that?"

"Columbian."

"Columbian? That's like in Mexico, right? No wonder all those beaners want to come here."

"You got that right. America rocks! So you taking Angie to prom or what?"

And yeah, I got it downloaded before the Drudge link results in the meltdown of the server.

Even gold investors get the blues

An email that would scare you spitless if you understood it

Yeah, dude, treehuggers are all horrified that these companies have all this land, and I'm drooling all over my keyboard looking for HOs that I hadn't seen before...BTW, that Volcanic Gold is a Montana play, ~10m shares (m/c ~$300k), run by the same guys that own California Engels, and somebody keeps selling 100 share blocks at 3 (last 3 days running). I've got a little bit (bought at 2.5 and a little @ 4 just to test liquidity). I'm not big on Montana, but it's one of those that's too bargain basement to pass up. You know me, always a sucker for a cheap HO.

I just sold outta IDAM, too... bought at 2&3, sold at 5&5.5. That's ANOTHER pos that's not going anywhere but is worth owning when it's cheap. Who am I kidding? It's never worth owning, but it is nice to make $500 with very little effort...

On gold, I sure don't hope that was our correction...I've got some warrants off 20% and dude, that's not a correction. I've got no worries that gold's going to top the old high - it's already topped the meaningful old high - but this straight up stuff worries me. That means bad, bad things are coming our way. Guess that's what all the preparation's been for.

I want an orderly market with bigger swings. I mean, what's the point of taking profits if you never get the chance to re-invest them on the cheap? I'm not complaining, I guess, just getting used to the fact that waves may be $140 up and $20 down all the way to the moon.

But the dollar's at 83.6, falling off a cliff, and a trade deficit that's ~90% of the all-time high is being touted as good news. I don't see gold going anywhere but up, but I've gotta say it still scares me a bit. It's one thing to believe your own noise, but quite ANOTHER to see it unfold before your eyes.

Translation: even guys who are making a ton of money in the current gold bull market aren't completely happy about it...

Taste the irony

FORT TARIK, IRAQ - They look more like motels in rural America than forts in a war zone, but a string of low concrete structures is the U.S.-led coalition's first line of defense against foreign fighters trying to sneak into Iraq from Iran and Syria.

The United States has built or renovated nearly 260 forts along Iraq's borders, and installations like Fort Tarik south of the Iranian city of Mehran have taken on new importance because of the showdown with Iran over its disputed nuclear program...

"We are very concerned about this border..." said U.S. Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli....

Obviously the most important border our military can be guarding is the one between Iraq and Iran. After all, there are potentially hundreds or even thousands of foreign nationals coming into Iraq. And some of them might be bad.

Meanwhile, there's another border that might be getting a little attention. Proposals are being floated this week for using the National Guard to secure the border with Mexico. Bill Frist, the Senate GOP leader, while dismissing the Dems' complaints that maybe our guardsmen aren't the right guys for the job, seems to miss the correct answer:

"We've got to secure our borders," he said. "We hear it from the American people, we've got millions of people coming across that border -- first and foremost, secure the border whatever it takes.

"Everything else we've done has failed. We've got to face that. And so we need to bring in, I believe, the National Guard."

"Whatever it takes" apparently doesn't include using real federal troops to guard the real federal border. After all, if we use the American military to guard America, the terrorosts win. Or something.

Tell me I'm not enjoying this one

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Not a single state will have a highly qualified teacher in every core class this school year as promised by President Bush's education law. Nine states along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico face penalties.

The Department of Education on Friday ordered every state to explain how it will have 100 percent of its core teachers qualified -- belatedly -- in the 2006-07 school year...

Department officials would not say how much aid could be withheld from states to force compliance. But Johnson said, "In some cases, we're talking about large amounts of money."

I'm not going to bag on the law or the nationalization of education again. It was a bad idea, an unconstitutional power grab, and a betrayal of the republican principles upon which this nation was founded, but I've beat that dead horse long enough. Nope, instead I'm going to do something far more infantile and satisfying: I'm going to laugh. I'm going to watch it fail and laugh until it hurts.

Then I'm going to spend some time with my wonderful daughter who is home from Hawaii for a couple weeks. And when I come back tonight, I'm going to laugh again.

No, it's not, really

In the wake of the (USA Today) report, President Bush -- without confirming or denying the existence of such a program -- insisted that NSA intelligence activities are lawful and target only al Qaeda.

"The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval," he said Thursday. "The privacy of ordinary Americans is being fiercely protected."

What Bush means is, "even though we're collecting this data, we're not going to use it against regular guys." But that's not remotely the same as saying that privacy is being protected. Privacy, like liberty, is one of those things that exists naturally and perfectly so long as no one infringes on it. It's not a thing government can give you; it's something the government can only protect by leaving it alone.

But collecting data, even if that data is never used, is an infringement of privacy, which is, according to Webster: "The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others." When the government uncovers your actions, when it looks at you, your things, or what you are doing, it is invading your privacy.

Of course, none of us can have an expectation of perfect privacy. Anytime we go out in public, we forfeit the right to not be looked at. And most of us don't particularly care. Madonna summed up much of American thinking when she asked what the point of doing something was if no one was watching. Americans are not a private people.

But if the privacy of Americans was being fiercely protected, the government would not only be not collecting that data itself, it would be ensuring that others do not collect it either. The very act of collecting it ensures that someday, somehow (like in the case of the Clinton White House's perusal of hundreds of FBI files) that data will be used, and someone's privacy will be violated, eventually, by the very government that is supposedly protecting it.

UPDATE: I probably ought to qualify this by admitting that I run a government database, filled with all manner of personal data. Most of it is collected from direct interaction with those whose records I keep, some of it is gathered from public records, a little of it is purchased from others who mine it from sources unknown to me but which I assume to be public, and I am responsible not only for making sure that data is accurate, but that it is used only for the purposes for which it is collected.

So how does that differ from the above? The first way is that I don't claim to be fiercely protecting the privacy of individuals. I guard data. Maybe there's no difference to the individual, but if I can look at your data (and I can) then it's not private. Secondly, I understand that it could be abused and have procedures in place to ensure that it's not abused. But - and this is a huge but - *I* have uninhibited access to it all and could abuse it, just like the guys who run the database above.

The database I operate must exist for many reasons, not the least of which is tax accounting. I can do everything in my power to secure the data, but I'll never deny that an individual's privacy would be more secure if I didn't collect it in the first place.

I am waiting your response

Good piece from the New Yorker on a Nigerian scam that sent a Massachusetts psychotherapist to prison. Short version, he believed the story in the face of all the evidence, passed bad checks on their behalf, was conned out of $40,000, went to jail, and has to pay back about half a million dollars. In other words, he got greedy and he'll die broke.

So what does he say?

When I asked Worley what he wished he had done differently, he didn’t answer directly. Instead, he spoke about hoping that the Abachas would get back in touch with him. However, before they could resume work on the multimillion-dollar transfer, he expected them to send the six hundred thousand dollars that he needs for restitution.

“What if they sent you a check?” Barbara demanded. “Would you put it in the bank to see if it cleared again?”

“Yeah.”

“John!” she said.

“I don’t know,” Worley said finally, sounding defeated. “I have to have time to think about what I would do in that situation.”

“My husband is naïve,” she explained to me. “He trusts people.”

Naïve, greedy, and stupid is no way to go through life. But the most frightening thing about this is that Worley is (well, was) a pastor and medical professional...you know, the kind of people regular guys go to when they have problems...

Silver answers for a silly girl

My Silly Girl breaks her kiss long enough to ask:

should we be buying silver? i checked ajpm and prices are way up. are they gonna' keep going up? omg is gold worth more now or is money worth less!?!?!?!

David Craft gets the last question correct with a terse, "Yes, it is." Playing straight is the essence of comedy, right Dave?

But on the first question, it's not whether people should be buying silver (I've been saying they should for 10 years) but whether they should be buying it *today*. I haven't bought any physical silver since it was under $5 an ounce. It's almost tripled since then and it is not the compelling investment it once was.

That's the problem with many investments: no one wants them when they're unpopular, but let them triple and people can't get enough of them. But that's just my pet peeve; I'm a bottom feeder and speculator and simply do not understand the herd mentality.

My advice is to get some, but to wait until a pullback to do so. No market goes straight up; no market goes straight down. The time to buy is still when no one else seems to want it. So wait for the market to get its butt kicked, when silver drops a dollar in a day, or falls below $12 or so an ounce, or when your favourite ignoramus econ reporter declares the bull market over...in other words, wait until you are scared to buy. That's when everyone else is, too, and when you'll get the best deal.

The idea is to maximize return, for sure. But it's also to minimize risk by buying at a point where it is more likely to immediately go up than to go down. As much noise as I make about the death of the dollar, it's not coming by this Sunday. It IS coming before you retire. So sometime between Sunday and that day will be the day to spend your dying dollars on silver and gold and oil and anything else that's real.

Pick it wisely.

UPDATE: Ignore the morons except to do the opposite of what they say:

SD's Union Trib tells us the bull run might be over today:

If Bernanke signals the Fed's intent to continue raising rates, it could cool the gold market by making the dollar more attractive to foreign investors. But if Bernanke suggests a pause in rate increases, gold could continue its climb.

Even ignoring the weasel world 'could,' this makes no sense whatsoever. The Fed has raised rates at 15 straight meetings going back 2 years. During that same time, gold has more than doubled. It's gone up $200 since November and $100 in the last month. But a 16th rate or 17th or 18th increase, that's going to cool the gold market? Shallow, shallow, shallow.

The sign to watch is not interest rates; it's the medium-term strength of the dollar compared to other currencies and commodities. So long as it continues down, it doesn't matter what the Fed does. Well, with the notable exception that it's the Fed's debt/credit issuance that's destroying the dollar in the first place.

Why do they have to take the fun out of everything?

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Hopes or fears that the Earth has been visited by alien life forms have been dismissed in an official report by British defense specialists.

The Ministry of Defense confirmed on Sunday a secret study completed in December 2000 had found no evidence that "flying saucers" or unidentified flying objects were anything other than natural phenomena.

Now that's a shame. I particularly enjoyed the scene in ID4 where the spaceship is above the LA skyscraper and all the Democrats are on top of the building with signs that say, "Welcome, Aliens" and "Take me with you" and whatnot. Zap, roast, scrape out the shallow end of the gene pool. Now a bunch of eggheads in the UK are telling us that's not going to happen?

To quote Slim Pickens, "Well, I am depressed."