El Borak's Myopia

El Borak's Myopia

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Mitt Romney dont like black people

Mitt Romney don't like black people

“The best thing politically would be to stay as far away from that tar baby as I can,” he told a crowd of about 100 supporters in Ames, Iowa.

Black leaders were outraged at his use of the term, which dates to the 19th century Uncle Remus stories, referring to a doll made of tar that traps Br’er Rabbit.

The tar baby dates a lot further back than Br'er Rabbit. According to Random House - who might know a thing or two about words - the tar baby "is a form of a character widespread in African folklore. In various folktales, gum, wax, or other sticky material is used to trap a person." A person like Mitt Romney, no doubt.

Now it's obvious that there's no comparison between Romney's phrase and - to take a current example - Mel Gibson's. In fact, one has to reach very far indeed to make it even appear to be offensive. It's apparently worth that effort when Romney says it, but I don't seem to recall any outrage when Salon Magazine said that Peggy Noonan, "is ready to do her dance with the psychological tar baby that is HRC" or when the Daily Kos said, "Having fallen into bin-Ladin's trap, aided by 'intelligence' reports as reported by the Bush regime, we have grabbed the Tar Baby."

I would have a lot more respect for the GOP if once, just once, they would stand up to the professionally aggrieved and say, "You are the biggest bunch of crybabies this great nation has ever seen." Then simply turn and walk away.

What is gained by sucking up to these people? Apology for offense? There's no real offense because Romney wasn't being racial and no reasonable person could believe he was. To apologize for something you didn't do doesn't make you meek, it makes you craven. These 'leaders' are simply trying to humble Romney for the sin of being a Republican. If that's a sin, then apologize for that and go sin no more.

Is Romney trying to get their vote? The professionally-aggrieved will not vote for him anyway, and if I was a black voter considering voting for the GOP, I suspect I would be far more impressed with the character of a man who stands his ground when he's right than a gutless jello governor who is afraid that someone might call him a racist or who thinks that black people are too stupid to understand their own cultural references. If there's any racism here, it's the presumption that blacks are such children that their tender ears can't bear to hear any words that others have used to offend in the past. I just hope they don't watch BET.

Maybe the reason the aggrieved don't howl every time a black person asks for crackers with his chili is that they figure whites are grownups who can differentiate between common language and epithets. That these crybabies can't make that distinction themselves makes them walking stereotypes of the very kind they would try so hard to erase.

(hat tip: Sniffer)

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mel

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Yes your kid is a wuss

Yes, your kid is a wuss

Psychology Today says it's your fault:

...the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet, cruising along the dirt path... at three miles an hour. On his tricycle...

In changing the nature of childhood, Stearns argues, we've introduced a tendency to assume that children can't handle difficult situations.

"Middle-class parents especially assume that if kids start getting into difficulty they need to rush in and do it for them, rather than let them flounder a bit and learn from it. I don't mean we should abandon them," he says, "but give them more credit for figuring things out."

And recognize that parents themselves have created many of the stresses and anxieties children are suffering from, without giving them tools to manage them.

We've all seen them, those parents who accost the umpire every time their kid watches strike three, who call the principlal when their kid earns a 'C', whose child never experiences disappointment or want or anxiety. Eventually a situation, perhaps a death in the family, comes along that mommy can't fix, and rather than coping and learning, the child - often an adult by historical age standards - crumbles like a stale cookie. Faced with a normal unpleasant circumstance, he can't cope because mom and dad have never allowed any circumstance that would demand coping.

Too often - but excessively in the last 20 years, it seems - the goal of parenting has been transformed from training a child to become a balanced adult into creating a plastic bubble world, within which all children can dwell without anxiety or setback. The result has been the extension of adolescence into the child's 30s, creating a generation of Peter Pans ("growing up is awfuller than all the awful things that ever were") who live life as emotional cripples. When inevitable hardships come their way, it's invariably someone else's fault, ensuring the consequences are handled in the most damaging way for everyone around. When mother is not there to take care of them, it is expected that boss or teacher or Uncle Sam will become a surrogate mother whose responsibilty it is to smooth every bump and salve every wound. The result, of course, is a nation of wusses living in a national cradle, sucking on a taxpayer-funded pacifier.

We (and I especially) often blame the public schools for perpetuating childhood long past the time every prior society has expected its children to assume the responsibilities of adulthood. But in all fairness, the schools are just responding to the complaints of parents - they are inflating grades and lowering standards because mom and dad can't believe all their children are not above average.

Kids need to eat dirt on occasion. They need skinned knees and Ds in Algebra and belly flops, if only to learn that actions have consequences and those consequences are not always pleasant, to learn that they have their own life to live, to learn to be a competent human being.

We're not doing our kids any favors by shielding them from the real world; we are instead condemning them to live their lives among TR's "cold and timid souls" who have tasted neither victory nor defeat. If they had any backbone, they'd rise up and curse us for it.

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Top 10 Reasons

Nature of the Beast

The Prometheus Institute points out the top 10 reasons America's public schools are like its prisons. My favourite is #4:

Both are poorly administered and inefficient. Excessive bureaucracy and centralization plague both institutions. The heavy state regulation of American K-12 education has enjoyed a well-documented history of failure, wasting money and resources to little benefit to the students and parents. Prisons fare little better. Countless cases of prison rape are reported each year at federal penitentiaries, yet prison officials do little to try curb the problem.

The problem is as simple to diagnose as it is difficult to cure: the reason both systems are expensive, centralized, and all but immune to reform is that they are thoroughly socialist enterprises. They are run by government, do not answer to customers, and have no motive to be profitable - or even merely efficient.

The actions of all organizations and all individuals within those organizations are motivated over the long-term by external incentives which create "corporate culture." A new, small company trying to stay in business has a different culture than a large one that's been in business for a century, which has a different culture than a bureaucracy. And no matter the management genius, a large company cannot be made to act like a small one for very long because the avenues to personal promotion and market success are different. Nor can a bureau be made to act like a business for long because its employees' incentives (money and job security) and its corporate incentives (budget growth, political relevance) are only tangentially related to how well it services those who receive its main product. In short, a small business that fails to please those who use its product dies. A bureau that fails to please those who use its product grows.

Note that I did not say 'customers,' for that only applies in the case of business and is the reason business, unlike a government bureau, can reform itself. If one were to ask a teacher to name her customers, she'd loudly insist her students are her customers. And she would be as incorrect as she is certain. Students may receive her product but they do not pay for it. When she wants a raise she does not go to them for more money. In fact, teachers' unions work overtime to ensure that such a connection (whether vouchers or pay-for-performance) is never made. Like prison employees, teachers and administrators go to politicians, who are the true customers of both systems, though they do not - unless particularly careless - partake of those systems' products.

So long as the incentive of either system is to please (or at least bleed) the politicians who pay the bills, that system cannot be reformed, will never be responsive to its inmates or their families, and will be as efficient as a Soviet bust factory. It is simply the nature of the socialist beast.

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Iceland

From what are we defending them anyway?

The United States, which had assured Iceland's defence for decades, stunned the country in March when it announced that it would be closing its bases on the island, withdrawing its F-15 fighters and thousands of servicemen in the space of just six months...

But Iceland was not likely to build its own army, (Prime Minister) Haarde argued.

"We have no military tradition, and I think it would be very difficult politically to get the public here interested in developing that kind of capability, and spending the required resources on it."

Mr Haarde remains focused on salvaging the best defence deal possible with the US.

It seems that the US military serves two purposes in Europe: a mercenary force and a syringe for the injection of American currency into local economies. Often the complaints of the Euros about American 'Empire' are only drowned by the wails of agony when we decide it's time to leave.

However, it's fairly hard to make an argument that 6 decades after we defeated Germany we still need a garrison there, or in Iceland, where we never went to war but just moved in one happy morning in 1940.

Of course, the removal of Iceland's free defense ride probably should have been handled better by us: when we change a policy this significant to the interests of our allies, we probably ought to manage a little more than a phone call from some faceless State Department bureaucrat and a letter from the Ambassador - in that respect we've certainly earned our caddish reputation. On the other hand, it doesn't seem as though the Icelanders consider the service very valuable, since they have very little interest in doing it themselves. If the Icelanders don't care about defending themselves, why should that job fall to the American taxpayer?

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Lock and load

Lock and load

For those of you following along at home, it's going to be a January 1 before Kansas concealed carry permits are issued. An update is available on AG Kline's page here.

In the meantime, I just found out that one of Bourbon County's three certified concealed carry instructors just happens to be my next door neighbor.

How cool is that?

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A few performance upgrades

A few performance upgrades...

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never one to take a hint

My daughter Jaley has never been one to take a hint

From other daughter Bethie's mommyblog:

So, I mailed Jaley my pregnancy test so that she would know I'm pregnant.

I addressed the envelope to "Aunt Jaley."

She opened it and said, "Mom, what is this?"

Mom goes, "it's a pregnancy test. See, one line means you aren't pregnant and two lines means you are pregnant. Look, there's two lines."

Jaley's eyes got wide and she said, "but mom, I'm NOT pregnant."

Yep, El B's gonna be a grandpappy...

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On the efficacy of homeschooling

On the efficacy of homeschooling

PORTLAND, ORE. - A man and his 12-year-old daughter spent the last four years living in a remote hillside in Portland's Forest Park, police said...

The pair went into the city twice a week to stop by the bank, attend church, buy groceries and clothes from Goodwill. Frank, a devout Christian, said he taught his daughter using the old encyclopedias...

Even though the child and father lived for such a long time disconnected from society, the girl had been home schooled and was in good physical shape.

In fact, the girl received a very good education from her father while living among the trees. Officials said the girl, who would be normally in 7th grade, is at a 12th grade equivalency.

"When we interviewed this little girl, she was very impressive. She really was very responsible, and she really looked as though she was way advanced in her years," said Portland Police Cmdr. Scott Anderson said.

So using my fuzzy public-school math and assuming that the girl started off 4 years ago as an average, public-schooled 3rd grader, she managed to learn 9 years of public school equivalence in 4 years, or a little better than twice as well as in school, with nothing but a committed parent and some books bought at Goodwill. Compare that to the fact that a public school will receive around $50,000 to do the same job in twice the time and you'll understand why I believe public schools don't need to be funded or reformed; they need to be dismantled. Schools are a menace to education.

The Uber-wise MikeT made a comment the other day about vouchers (he supports, I oppose) that strikes to the heart of the issue, however:

The only problem with having no vouchers is that most parents will scream about having to pay for their kids’ own education and even when that’s resolved, others will worry about the “vast number” of kids whose parents won’t be able to afford to pay for it.

The problem is that parents will scream about being responsible for their own children.

Of course, busy parents are a perfect fit for a school system designed to create docile, maleducated consumers, just like those parents. It means no matter how much money is thrown at schools, the results will be no different, because the schools are creating the product they were designed to create. But it also means that parents have no excuse for not educating their children - or at least ensuring that an individual (not a system) - does it. It is not difficult and it is not expensive. All it takes is time.

Unfortunately, for most parents that's too high a price to pay.

(hat tip: Vox Day)

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Roses RINO Refuge

Rose's RINO Refuge

Steve Rose laments red-state RINO hunting:

To the Right Wing, there is no such thing as a moderate Republican. To them, all moderate Republicans are really Democrats, disguised as Republicans, and so do not deserve to be in office under the guise of a Republican officeholder.

When Mark Parkinson, former Republican chairman, switched to Democrat; and when District Attorney Paul Morrison also switched to Democrat, it seemed to prove their point. See, they said. We said all along they were RINOs.

Of course, there is another way of looking at it, which is that moderate Republicans have been told they are not welcome under the big tent, so they go find another tent that will have them. To the moderates, the party has moved so far to the right, they have marginalized the moderates.

The way to figure out whether there is a significant difference between moderate Republicans and the Kansas Democrats is not to look at the actions of Parkinson or Morrison (as politicians, they can be expected to trade principles for a shot at power), but to look at the actions of the Democrats, whether elected officials or rank-and-file, whose party they joined.

Not only did the Democrats slide Morrison through their own Attorney General primary unopposed, but they put Parkinson - a former GOP chairman, state rep and state senator - on their own ticket as Lieutanant Governor. The party gave two of the five statewide ballot positions to GOP defectors, and they did it without a peep of protest from other Democrats. This at least shows they are not terribly worried that those candidates, should they win, will do anything too Republican - or at least anything too unlike what the old Republicans used to do. In other words, there's not enough difference between Democrats and moderate Republicans for the Democrats to worry about.

And that's exactly what worries conservative Republicans.

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World ends*, women hardest hit:

GHANA - Politician and women's rights activist Emelia Arthur has said women are worse hit by the increasing petroleum prices in Ghana and the world at large.

She has therefore called on the government to reduce of the burden of the increasing petroleum products on women by removing some of the taxes on the commodity...

According to her, women are worse affected by petroleum increment since many women do not have cars and have to depend on public transport which charges higher fares.

Ghana apparently has the only economy in the world where those who drive cars are less impacted by rising fuel prices than those who take public transportation. But perhaps this is some heretofore unnoted economic principle - one we Americans can take advantage of - and therefore the impact of rising gas prices should be dulled here by eliminating public transportation. I mean, how can we punish all these bus-riding poor people by making them bear the brunt of high gas prices by themselves? Obviously, the rich are getting off scot-free once again by driving SUVs. Will the oppression never end?

* As evidenced by the green Earth Advisory Board banner on the left, the world hasn't really ended, but sometimes I wonder if that headline isn't already written, just waiting for the day...

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It's not discrimination

if only men are excluded:

I love the Cairo Metro’s womens compartment. Really, I do. Unlike my friend, the acclaimed (and very secular) documentary filmmaker Atiyat El-Abnoudy, I don’t think it’s a form of discrimination at all. If you’ve ever been harassed on Cairo’s streets, you know what it’s like to get even a little respite.

Frankly, I don't care if women have their own exclusive clubs, cars, colleges, trade unions, or campus organizations (for that matter, I don't care if anyone has their own exclusive clubs based on whatever they wish). But it ought to be obvious that those who support female-exclusive arrangements don't really believe in non-discrimination, they just prefer to call their discrimination something else.

As does Jill at Feministe:

I’m not sure how I feel about the “discrimination” angle, but at the very least I think that’s the wrong word for it. Cairo has a fairly low crime rate, and when I was there I was never worried about being physically attacked — but I did come home crying almost every day after being out on the streets and being continually hissed at and harassed. So I can understand the demand for women-only spaces on public transportation...

And there is the benefit of women-only spaces in certain contexts: They allow women to experience things that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

Jill proposes that in her ideal world, such things would not be necessary, but apparently since in this world they are it's important to pretend that when a man can't enter a subway car because of his sex, discrimination is "the wrong word for it." I wonder why it's suddenly the right word when men need a respite to enjoy a nice round of golf?

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Well you could lower a rope or a tree branch...

I'm in need of a bit of tech help. It seems that Blogspot catalogues all posts at the end of the month into one big fat post in the archives. Fine for me, because I never read them again, but not so good for the myriad people who hit this blog through Google or MSN and get a whole month's worth of posts rather than the one they're looking for.

For those of you who use Blogspot: am I setting something wrong that the search engines find archive posts rather than individual ones? Help out a brother here...

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I'm lacking compassion I think

Somehow, I know I should feel more sorry for this telemarketer than I do. But it's just not in me. Rather I feel just a twinge of jealousy at the ability of the woman on the other end to sustain a meandering, paranoid, insane, yet eminently entertaining rant for a full 8 minutes. If I could do that, I might actually answer the phone on occassion.

(language warning)

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Neocons, Neocons everywhere

Harris News Service finds them under every bed:

TOPEKA - A group defending the state's new science testing standards for public schools plans a road show next week through Kansas just days before state school board elections.

A leader of the Intelligent Design Network says the speaking tour has nothing to do with efforts to promote re-election of neo-conservative school board members friendly to their cause.

Given that neoconservatism is primarily a hawkish Wilsonian foreign policy ideology (strong defense, interventionism, exporting democracy), one has to wonder how anti-evolution grandmothers running for school board in rural Kansas managed to acquire the moniker.

Unless "neocon," in the mind of the reporter, just means "bad person."

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What is a corporation's civic responsibility?

Amnesty International makes some callouts:

Amnesty International accused Yahoo, Microsoft and Google on Thursday of violating human rights principles by cooperating with China's efforts to censor the Web and called on them to lobby for the release of jailed cyber-dissidents.

The London-based human rights group also called on the Internet companies to publicly oppose Chinese government requests that violate human rights standards.

"The Internet should promote free speech, not restrict it. We have to guard against the creation of two Internets _ one for expression and one for repression," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty's U.S. branch, in a statement.

Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft are drawing to an inside straight here. There is no way they are going to convince China to drop their long-standing censorship; this is a Communist dictatorship, after all, even though they have made tremendous strides economically by instituting market-based reforms. So they are left with a choice: go to China under China's terms or don't go to China at all.

It's easy for Amnesty to take the purist road; they're not missing out on the potential of losing billions in revenue and losing market share - in the world's largest market - to an upstart that is willing to play China's game. But it's also easy to say that the corporation has no responsibility other than to make money for its shareholders, and if that means keeping the Chinese enslaved, then so be it. The lesser of two evils is still an evil.

But the question Amnesty does not ask is, "What is the best way to get China to voluntarily make the reforms that Amnesty wants?" The boycott strategy simply doesn't work on dictatorships (ask Fidel Castro), but the blue jean strategy just might. Ask Sergei Boukhonine, who as a native of Ukraine saw what Soviet propaganda failed to hide:

...blue jeans were the best counterargument against the Soviet propaganda, much more effective than the Voice of America. Consider the following. When the Soviet TV showed the West and especially the United States, it didn’t so much lie as did not tell the whole truth. The Soviet TV showed poor people in urban ghettos, student protesters, trade union strikes, etc. (rather than suburban soccer moms and country clubs). All these people were angry at the capitalist system, or life, or whatever. The Soviet people were supposed to watch and become more confident about the superiority of the socialist system. However, there was a small but crucial problem… you guessed it – blue jeans! All poor urban folks and union marchers wore the coveted blue jeans!!! Even the homeless people in the West wore them. So, the wheels of Soviet minds turned, these people couldn’t be all that poor and miserable if they all wore the pants which we couldn’t afford!

Technology is counterrevolutionary, because it transmits information that the government does not want people to know and images it does not want people to see. Even if GoogleChina doesn't carry blogs or censors the words "human rights," it matters very little. One can amass an incredible amount of subversive information even when ideas are banned. Or rather I should say when those words are banned, for ideas can come in many forms and spread far faster than the Chinese can gather lists of subversive sites to censor. For it is not the sites that are subversive, it is the entire internet, which is one reason the US government is so perplexed by it as well. The internet doesn't stop at the border.

We should give the Chinese as much as we can (just like we should trade freely with Cuba, but that's another issue). We can't keep the government from mistreating its serfs, but subversive technology can help develop those serfs to the point that their government must change or die. It has worked before and may be the only hope, other than a economic collapse/civil war, to see China ditch the last remnants of totalitarianism.

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I want my 2 dollars

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Actor John Cusack, star of such offbeat films as "Grosse Point Blank" and "Being John Malkovich," obtained a restraining order Tuesday against a woman he claims has been stalking him.

Jeez, just pay the kid already...

(hat tip: Rebel Mum)

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Break out the banjos

They say you should never get involved in genealogy unless you're prepared to find that your family is just as messed up as everyone else's - in my own I've uncovered adoption myths, untrue tales of harrowing escapes from dangerous nations at war, and dearly-held lies about ancestry. But one of the things most people are seldom prepared for is when they find that their family tree branches a lot less than it ought to, so to speak.

John Stossel says it's ok, though:

I'd always thought marrying a blood relative as close as a cousin was immoral, and certainly risky if you plan to have kids. Conventional wisdom says only primitive people who live in isolated places marry cousins. It leads to stupid children. But that's a myth.

It's the sort of myth that leads to stupid laws. Half the states in America have banned cousin marriage, but there's no good reason for it. You can marry your cousin and have perfectly intelligent kids.

Take Albert Einstein -- was he intelligent enough for you? His parents were cousins, and he married his cousin. So did Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria. Worldwide, 20 percent of all married couples are cousins...

My understanding is that inbreeding doesn't just pose a danger of dumb kids, but increases the odds of exceptional (good or bad) ones, and you never know which you'll get or whether both will be mixed together. First cousins share half their genetic makeup (sharing half their grandparents) which tends to multiply good traits with good, but bad with bad. I suppose that's one reason why royalty - notorious for inbreeding - begins with strength and vigor but eventually abounds in bleeders and droolers. Historians put it delicately: "The prince was a sickly child." No, he's a six-toed mutant born without hemoglobin, melanin, or eyelids. Oh, and he's going to be king one day, too.

Geneticists are probably right in the short term: one generation of your family tree not branching won't guarantee your descendents a place in the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. But it's still probably not a good idea to make a habit of hooking up at family picnics. After all, most stereotypes are more true than we care to admit. And if your cousin really looks that hot, well, maybe it's better to just lay off the keg for a while - unless you really like the sound of banjos.

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Statistical Chicanery

My lovely wife received the following via email from a relative who has never been comfortable with (or quiet about) the fact that we homeschooled:

WASHINGTON, July 14 — The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, found that fourth graders attending public school did significantly better in math than comparable fourth graders in private schools. Additionally, it found that students in conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools on eighth-grade math.

This study has been all over the blogosphere, especially on the port side where anything the government does is by definition superior to what individuals do. And it's an especially good dig when government schools outperform "conservative Christian" ones.

But any time liberals use statistics to prove what you know isn't true, the first thing to do is look for weasel words. And here they are: "comparable children." What does that mean? I didn't know, so I did something relatives and liberal bloggers can't be bothered to do: I read the report. And I discovered that it doesn't support the conclusion that relatives and liberal bloggers draw - that public school kids perform just as well as private school kids.

The report at first gets a bit redundant:

In the first set of analyses, all private schools were compared to all public schools. The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score...

In the first set of analyses, all private schools were again compared to all public schools. The average private school mean mathematics score was 7.8 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score...

In the first set of analyses, all private schools were compared to all public schools. The average private school mean reading score was 18.1 points higher than the average public school mean reading score...

In the first set of analyses, all private schools were again compared to all public schools. The average private school mean mathematics score was 12.3 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score...

And it gets redundant because in every single category private schools outperformed public ones, just like everyone with a room temperature IQ already knew would be the case. In fact, the higher the grade, the bigger the difference in performance.

So how can one look at those facts and conclude there is no difference? Leave the liars and damned liars and head straight for statistics, of course. In this case "hierarchical linear modeling," which is a fancy way to adjust student scores for gender, race, ethnicity, disabilities, eligibility for reduced-price school lunches (no kidding), computers and books in the home, Title I, and my personal favourite: number of absences. Think of it as Affirmative Action for people who can't be bothered to go to class.

Then they adjusted scores by school for aggregate student absences, teacher experience and certification, school size, ethnic makeup, and a host of other factors, because a big warehouse school full of kids who never go to class can't be compared to a small school where children are expected to attend. That wouldn't be fair. So don't change the school, adjust the numbers and the school will come out just fine.

Once they adjusted out every aggregate difference between students and schools they concluded that schools were all the same. Brilliant, except for one thing: the differences are important in the real world. Private schools still outperform public schools in every measured category, which is why people who want the best for their kids send them to private school or school them themselves. They want their kids in small schools where they are expected to attend and are more likely to excel.

But since we're playing with statistics, I found one that matters:

Nationwide, public school teachers are almost twice as likely as other parents to choose private schools for their own children, the study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found.

'nuff said.

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A strange definition of "unscrupulous"

Soaring metal prices have forced the Reserve Bank of India to mull replacement of the current copper-nickel combination coins with stainless steel Rs 2 and Rs 5 coins, reports Financial Express...

Currently, the intrinsic value of coins is higher than their metal value...Moreover, unscruplous traders can melt metal coins, which gives the apex bank another reason to replace them with stainless steel ones.

I promised I wouldn't mention pennies again until their metal value reached 300% of face value. Since they are only at 241% according to coinflation, this is me not mentioning them. However, I didn't promise not to mention nickels, which as of today are worth 130% of their face value because nickel is up 50% in the past month. It'll probably come down from here, but not far and not for long.

It won't be long until our own government has to remove the value from the last coins that hold any. Having broken the dollar, they have no choice: we will have steel or aluminum pennies and nickels, just like they do in India. As an aside, the PPI, even massaged as it is, is still up at a 6.7% rate last quarter, and a Boston University professor says, "Yes, Virginia, Uncle Sam is bankrupt." There is no choice but to pay unpayable bills in worthless money. And that means that any money that has value must disappear. Ask Gresham why.

But here's the moral quandary of the day: "unscrupulous traders" can melt metal coins, extracting their remaining value and causing them to disappear from circulation. Obviously that's an annoyance for the government, which mints those coins at a considerable loss - only government could possibly lose money making money - but why are those who recognize the intrinsic value of money considered unscrupulous?

Are they not rather unscrupulous who must destroy the value of everyone else's money in order to pretend to keep their promises?

UPDATE: Won't be long now...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Representative Jim Kolbe wants to do away with the penny - and for a second time has introduced legislation that would effectively kill it.

The Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (COIN) Act ... also provides for a study of less costly metals to replace zinc, copper and other materials used in American coins.

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Damn it feels good to be a gangsta

DALLAS (AP) -- Dallas Cowboys safety Keith Davis was shot twice while driving on a Dallas highway early Sunday and was hospitalized in stable condition after undergoing surgery to remove bullet fragments...

This is the second time in three years that Davis has been shot. He was an innocent bystander last time, and this time (agent Curt) Stephens said the player was driving home from a family vacation.

"The thing that's really pertinent here is that Keith was not involved in any type of criminal activity or anything like that," Stephens said. "This is not the residual effect of that."

If Davis isn't involved in any kind of criminal activity, he's gotta have the worst luck of anyone in the NFL. "Honest, Officer, I was just flying home from Disney World when these guys opened fire...just like last year."

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Sheila in the Morning

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Too Many Secrets

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Amid tight security, alleged al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla is personally viewing U.S. government secrets in advance of his trial...

Under a federal judge's order, Padilla is being allowed to examine classified documents and videotapes detailing his statements during 3-1/2 years in Defense Department custody as an unlawful "enemy combatant."

Does anyone else find it at least a little silly that Padilla's own statements are considered 'government secrets,' deserving of classified status?

That kind of special treatment sums up the entire problem I've had with Padilla's case from the beginning. There is no such designation in the Constitution as an "enemy combatant" that allows the government to lock citizens away in secret locations, even if they're really bad people. Rather the 6th Amendment says, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial..." How many criminal prosecutions? All of them. To hold Padilla for 4 years under some gossamer legal fabrication in direct violation of the Constitution is itself criminal, and if Bush is to be impeached, there's as fine a reason as any.

With Conservatives screaming so loudly about the NYT among others revealing government 'secrets,' they ought to think long and hard about why 13 states refused to ratify the Constitution without a few modifications: the necessary purpose of the Constitution's guarantees of a speedy and public trial is to keep the government from keeping the kinds of secrets it loves so dearly.

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Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain't

Jerry Bowyer offers a biblical lesson:

The biblical case against abortion is inferential. The Bible doesn't speak directly to the topic. It lays out some principles -- sacredness of life, humanity of the unborn -- that lead to the conclusion that abortion is not permitted. It's the same with stem cells, child tax credits, faith-based social service provisions, etc.

Immigration is different: The Bible is explicit. In the Torah, Moses commanded, "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt." The Bible is unabashedly pro-immigrant.

As they say in these parts, "Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain't."

The same Torah commanded the Israelites, when they entered the promised land, "But of the cities of these people, which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall leave nothing alive that breathes. You shall utterly destroy them - Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites - as the LORD your God has commanded you."

Does that command give us permission to, in the words of Mr. Taggart, "slaughter every last Indian in the West"? How about if our army takes Matamoros, should we put every Mexican there to the sword? Of course not. Why not? Because the command is not given to us as a nation, just as Bowyer's command is not given to us as a nation. As soon as someone tries to create American political policy based on what God told the Israelites, the klaxon ought to go off in your head. Danger, Will Robinson: there is a world of difference between how the individual ought to act and how a nation ought to act, especially when that nation is not chosen of God for a specific purpose precisely as we're not.

There is a lot of truth to what Bowyer is saying on a personal level. We as Christians, if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, must include those who are strangers and pilgrims among us in that love; we have no right to pass them by on the Samaritan road and leave them bleeding simply because they don't belong here. They are our neighbor, they are created in the image of God, and we owe them the same love we owe our fellow countrymen, individually.

But there is another issue than the personal, and that is the political. Paul said in Acts that God "has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." There is a separation of peoples for a reason (it goes back to Babel) and there are nations and national boundaries for a reason (think of it as the American "separation of powers" but on an international level).

So what is the "biblical" policy regarding whether a non-Israelite nation should allow foreigners to enter or to become citizens? The truth is that there isn't one. While Christians have a duty to love their neighbor, they have no duty to make their government let more neighbors in. Such is completely the province of government, to be organized for the purposes of the government. Nations, like individuals, will answer to God, but they will answer for different things.

To say the Bible is pro-immigrant (person) is not to say that it is pro-immigration (policy). Mandated national policies are few and far between in the Bible, and we ought to be very careful about trying to construct them from commands that God gave someone else.

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And you thought it was just Mary on the Tortilla

ALMATY (Reuters) - A chicken in a Kazakh village has laid an egg with the word Allah" inscribed on its shell, state media reported Thursday.

"Our mosque confirmed that it says 'Allah' in Arabic," Bites Amantayeva, a farmer from the village of Stepnoi in eastern Kazakhstan, told state news agency Kazinform.

"We'll keep this egg and we don't think it'll go bad."

Umm... yeah, ok. Happy Easter, guys.

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Asking my favourite question

The St. Louis Fed answers it this way:

Is the United States bankrupt? Many would scoff at this notion. Others would argue that financial implosion is just around the corner. This paper explores these views from both partial and general equilibrium perspectives. It concludes that countries can go broke, that the United States is going broke, that remaining open to foreign investment can help stave off bankruptcy, but that radical reform of U.S. fiscal institutions is essential to secure the nation’s economic future...
Operative words being, "...the United States is going broke..."

At 16 pages, it's well worth the read. Of course, their answers (a sales tax, privatized SocSec, and universal health care) have more or less attractiveness, depending on how they are implemented (e.g. a sales tax is fine by me, so long as it replaces rather than supplements the income tax). But they hardly represent radical reform; they are simply more of the collectivist ideology that brought us to where we are today.

Radical reform is this: elimination of fractional reserve banking, whereby banks create debt/money by lending it into existence, and a return to a constitutional currency, "no state shall accept anything but gold or silver in tender of debt." Of course, that would mean the end of the Federal Reserve itself, and they don't mean that radical.

When your money is debt, the incentive is for your nation and everyone in it to go deeper and deeper into debt. It will, it must, eventually go bankrupt. Rearranging deck chairs will not avoid it, it will simply give the illusion of activity that provides political cover until we can find some foreigner to pin our inevitable collapse on.

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I hate those commercials too

(hat tip: Vox) (language warning)

Since I'm on the road for a few days, this might be all you get. Enjoy...

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A fiscal fish story

Red State celebrates the new budget numbers:

A new estimate for the federal budget in FY 2006 was released today, and it has great news for Americans and Republicans interested in lowering the debt...

Then when the 2005 FY budget was released, it forecast an increase up to $427 billion. When the numbers came in at the end of the year, though, the actual deficit was down again to $319 billion!

Back in February when the FY2006 budget was released, an increase to $423 billion was forecast. Now, however, due to larger than anticipated tax revenue from corporations and wealthy Americans, the estimate has been decreased to just $296 billion.

In all fairness to Red State, they are calling for decreased spending, though El Presidente consistently fails to heed their sage advice. But they make 2 mistakes in cheering his latest fiscal fish story: they believe the numbers, and they believe the numbers are good.

Because debt doesn't care if it's duly recorded in a budget - try it with your family, you'll see - budget numbers do not tell the real story. The actual Treasury debt for FY05 started (Sep04) at $7379 billion and ended (Sep05) at $7933 billion, for a true debt increase of $554 billion, 50% larger than the $319 billion "budget deficit" claimed by Bush.

The FY06 debt increase from Sep05 has gone from $7933b to $8408b, or $475b in 10 months. If that rate ($47.5b/mo) continues for the next 2 months, the actual debt increase will be $570b, almost twice the $296b claimed by Bush.

In other words, the actual fiscal deficit over those 2 years is not ~$600b and falling, it's more than $1000b and rising.

Decreased deficits are better than increased ones - all things being equal - and so I'm happy deficit numbers are down. But this is not "great news for Republicans interested in lowering the debt," because as Treasury Department numbers show, the debt is piling up faster than the government can sweep it under the rug. And dishonesty in the budget process is hardly a reason for rejoicing, no matter what color your state.

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Gatto's good news

A 4-time Teacher of the Year explains that schools are not failing - they are doing exactly what they are designed to do. But the good news is your kids don't have to be inmates:

Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently.

Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned.

Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

Excellent education requires innovation, the act of creating an educational experience tailored toward the child. All children are different and they all learn differently. One size fits them all in education as well as it does in bathing suits.

But in a system as large - and politicized - as the public schools, there is no more room for innovation than there was in early medieval agriculture, and for the same reason: innovation brings variability of results. Sometimes when you innovate you win big, sometimes you lose big, and such is not acceptable for the public schools, because they are a product of the masses, of the lowest common denominator. Consistency, even a mediocre consistency, is the goal.

And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.
-- Little Boxes

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Fitting symbolism

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - The candidates say they offer legitimate political differences. Their conservative critics say it's a campaign dirty trick.

Jeff Ippel is a Republican, involved in a three-way primary race for a seat in the Kansas House. His wife, Pam, is unopposed in the August Democratic primary — for the same seat...

Hmmm... two candidates who say they offer legitimate political differences but who in reality are in bed together. The parties better be more careful or people are going to figure out it's not just this race...

UPDATE: Just a quote, actually:

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.

… Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."
-- Carrol Quigley, "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time"

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If you don't wear clothes, do you still have to irony?

TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas Libertarians were stopped from holding a fundraiser at a nudist camp in southwest Shawnee County, when sheriff's deputies blocked people from entering.

Shawnee County deputies said they were merely enforcing a court order when they stopped people from accessing Lake Edun on Friday. Last year, Shawnee County District Judge Terry Bullock issued a court order banning "commercial or recreational activities" on the property unless the owners get a permit for such events - something the county refuses to provide.

It would be tough to find a way to make Libertarians' points about private property rights better than to Catch-22 their political fundraisers under zoning laws. You must have a permit to meet, but we won't issue you one. Come back when we're not here and we'll be happy to see that you get one.

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This week's winner

CNN.com sings a familiar refrain:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Saturday urged the Senate to back increased government spending...

Who is our winner this week of a hundred and thirty six thousand million dollars in tax-free cash? Could it be marriage counseling? How about bird flu? Improved dikes for cities that are in the words of Carlos Mencia, bowls surrounded by soup? No, ladies and gentlemen, we have a new winner, science teachers and R&D tax credits. This week's radio address urged the Senate to cough up $136 billion over 10 years to ensure that the government shoulders the cost of businesses that want to improve their products and to put bunsen burners in every classroom from sea to shining sea.

Bush said in his weekly radio address that his proposals are vital for America to "remain an innovative nation that competes with confidence" and would help ensure that every U.S. child has the math and science skills needed for the jobs of the future.

Your party of fiscal restraint at work.

But the problem is not simply another proposal for the federal government to do something it has no constitutional authority to do. It runs much deeper than that. 150 years ago Bastiat explained what he called "the seductive lure of socialism":

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation...

Bush's spending binges are not simply irresponsible, they are directly counter to the kind of government that keeps people free, because they presume - and this is a very important point - that people will do nothing unless the government makes them do it. Freedom is not enough, there must be law to make people act to better themselves. Liberty is not sufficient, the government must direct the befuddled masses yearning to be led. Socialists "look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations" (ibid.) and those politicians who look upon people and write laws to organize and move and direct them are socialists.

The problem with Bush's government is not that it is big (thought that is a problem) but that it is socialist, just as socialist as the Democrats and far bigger than anything they have accomplished.

But that's probably drawing to an end. As our first woman president tries on crowns in preparation for a sixth consecutive Bush/Clinton administration, the socialism of El Presidente will serve her well. The machinery is in place, the gears oiled. All that is needed now is raw material, and there are 300 million wretched refuse in the hopper, ready to be molded into what they cannot be trusted to make themselves.

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Get out of jail free

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) -- U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a musician in his own right, helped secure the release of Atlanta R&B producer Dallas Austin from a United Arab Emirates jail after a drug conviction, the senator's office confirmed Saturday.

In a statement released through his staff, the conservative Republican said he was contacted by Austin's attorneys, then called the ambassador and UAE consul in Washington on Austin's behalf...

On Tuesday a court sentenced (Austin) to four years in jail and said Austin, 34, should be deported after serving the term. Hours later, Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum pardoned and released Austin.

You know, I really wonder how Americans would take the following scenario: a foreigner flies into our nation and is stopped at the border carrying something against the law. He's convicted in our courts and sentenced, fair and square. A foreign politician calls the governor of the state where the conviction occurred and hours later the prisoner is pardoned and released.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong - and I'm sure Austin is glad to be home, the idiot - I'm just saying that freeing the guilty from other people's jails is an interesting use of political power...

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Shotgun marriage, Boston style

Memo to Boston Globe gay and lesbian Guild employees: Get married or lose your domestic partner benefits.

Globe staffers have been told that health and dental benefits for gay employees’ domestic partners are being discontinued. Gay couples who want to keep their benefits must marry by Jan. 1.

Oops, bet they didn't see that one coming. Can't say I blame the Herald, and it's been said that those who make beds will eventually have to sleep in them.

But it does make me wonder; since IMO the whole push for gay marriage is about societal acceptance of homosexuality and not about gays truly wanting to get married, it will be interesting to see what percentage jump through this legal ring, er, hoop, to keep their benefits. They could prove me wrong of course, and I'm cool with that, but I'll bet it's not long before we start hearing people complain about how unfair - even, gasp, discriminatory - it is that gays will now be required to shoulder the same civil responsibilities as straights in order to keep their health coverage.

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O my God, Libertarians killed Kenny

Russell Shaw says we're bastards:

Libertarian philosophy has a certain appeal to many techies. Keep the government out of the boardroom AND the bedroom, keep government small, and out of the way of innovative price (sic) enterprise. Nice if you are a 27 year-old code jock with a fancy sports car, nice stock options and income, and living with a partner who does not want to get pregnant...

I believe the best lesson we can all learn from Ken Lay's now ended-life is that unregulated free markets are subject to greed and pillage in the name of the few.

Because the only force that can restrain the worst impulse of free markets is government, you should be prepared to shout down those who would remove government entirely- or almost entirely- from the boardroom...

I know you Libertarian techies disdain politics. So did the tech firms who have found themselves out-lobbied on Capital Hill. Finally, they are getting wise to the immutable fact that if technologists either treat politics with disdain, or espouse a political agenda that is reflexively anti-regulatory, you are cruisin' for a losin.'

As of right now, there's a single comment on the above blog. It says, "Huh?" My thoughts exactly.

I understand the pull of libertarianism to techies, being both. But what I don't understand is how a person can so completely misunderstand his intended subject. Unless, of course, one starts with wildly incorrect premises.

But let's start with his main argument. I suggest you set down your drink before reading it:

I believe the best lesson we can all learn from Ken Lay's now ended-life is that unregulated free markets are subject to greed and pillage in the name of the few.

Tell me that's the lesson you learned, and that you didn't bring the idea with you when you entered stage left. Then tell me why Ken Lay gave money to politicians.

Energy production is, with the possible exception of telecommunications, the most heavily regulated market in existence. A myriad of agencies from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to the Kansas Energy Council do nothing but regulate the energy industry. In other words, they write rules that tell the market how to work. Politicians established these commissions and also write laws that the agencies interpret. They set prices. They secure contracts. They underwrite research. They define what the companies must tell their customers and investors. Millions of pages of energy regulations prove that whatever the energy market is, it's not remotely a free market. That, my friend, is why Ken Lay personally gave more than 3/4 of a million dollars to politicans: to get them to write laws in his favor.

Independent bookstores on the other hand do not give a lot of money to politicians. Why? Because politicians don't regulate our industry, i.e. there's no point in buying politicians because they can do nothing for us. And yet you can find nearly any book you want in America, and "the few" haven't managed to pillage just yet.

Is it because bookstore owners are less greedy than energy company executives? Not really. People are greedy by nature. But the constant that government-loving liberals like Russel Shaw never account for is the greed of politicians. In a free market, the greed of competitor A exists, but his ability to impose it is offset by the greed of competitor B, which is offset by the greed of competitor A. In a regulated market, the greed of competitor A is offset by the force of Regulator B. But who offsets the greed of the regulator? Perhaps people who make careers of government aren't subject to the foibles of mortal men? Tell me again why Ken Lay gave money to politicians.

I treat politics (at least the 90% that deals with regulation of this or that) with disdain because that's exactly what it deserves. Lay bought politicians to move markets in his favor, and they did, to the tune of billions of dollars. Enron used these political assets to secure favorable contracts and regulations with governments on 4 continents, and its accounting fraud was perpetrated in the face of regulation by the FERC, the SEC, the FTC, and an alphabet soup of other governmental entities.

If one's going to draw a lesson from Ken Lay, it ought to be that it is the most regulated markets that are most subject to pillage, legal and illegal, from tax credits to accounting fraud. Sure, I brought that lesson with me as well, but at least it fits the facts.

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Finding fault with God's little joke

Thomas Paine, one of the most widely published Founding Fathers (his pamphlet "Common Sense" was one of the great instigators of the American Revolution), saved some his his most witty repartee for use against the Bible and the "priesthood" (he was virulently - though understandably - anti-Catholic) whom he believed used it to keep people ignorant. Even today, some of his arguments are dredged up as "contradictions" by those looking for the finest in 18th century theology, archaeology, and Biblical exposition.

I ran across his comments on the Tower of Babel episode tonight. And since I've been spending some time lately in early Genesis, I thought I'd use it as a chance to explore Babel just a bit. I won't quote the Genesis passage to which he refers, so if you're unfamiliar with it, it's here, toward the bottom. I've removed the chapter and verse notations because they annoy me, so don't bother looking for them ;)

As to the project of building a tower whose top should reach to heaven, there never could be a people so foolish as to have such a notion; but to represent the Almighty as jealous of the attempt, as the writer of the story has done, is adding profanation to folly... The story is too ridiculous, even as a fable, to account for the diversity of languages in the world, for which it seems to have been intended.."

There's a little error I refer to as the "Everyone Before Me Was A Moron" fallacy, which presumes that the silliness we see so obviously today was never noticed by the ancients because they were too stupid to see it. Examples, of course, are legion (e.g. the Gospel writers didn't know where babies really come from and so were mistaken about the Virgin Birth) and they each share the distinction of being written off by moderns who forget the simple idea that if something seems too ridiculous, it probably is. In other words, if you're reading a story that doesn't make sense, it's more likely that you're reading it wrong than that it never made sense but people preserved it for millennia anyway. Such is the case with Paine.

If it is obviously impossible to build a tower all the way to heaven, then the ancients - who had sufficient engineering knowledge to build enormous ziggurats and pyramids all over the world - realized it too, and we're probably reading the story wrong if we assume they wanted to build a tower that really reached Heaven. The Babel tower was literally built with "a top onto heaven" and as with other similar towers in the ANE it was probably an observatory for astronomy and astrology. Many ancient wonders (e.g. the Giza Sphinx and Pyramid, Stonehenge, the Mayan observatories) were built with those considerations clearly in mind.

The simplistic narrative style, however, is one thing that annoys Paine. I suggest it is sarcastic: man says, "Go to, let's build a tower so we're not scattered as God commanded," and God says, "Go to, let's knock it down and scatter them anyway." The reality of waking up one day with languages confused, the tower knocked down, and - if I'm speculating right - a meteor strike that breaks the crust of the Earth into continents was doubtless far more severe and long-lasting than the abbreviated commentary of Gen 11 might suggest. But given the necessity of brevity (Genesis 10-11 covers hundreds of years) picturing God tapping his toes at the base of the tower asking, "Well, what have we here?" is quite effective at getting his unique contribution to the effort across. Call it God's litotes.

As to the project of confounding their language for the purpose of making them separate, it is altogether inconsistent; because instead of producing this effect, it would, by increasing their difficulties, render them more necessary to each other, and cause them to keep together. Where could they go to better themselves?

I really have a hard time following Paine here. Why would making it harder for people to get together - the purpose of confusing languages - make it more necessary for them to stay together? And even if it were more necessary, does that make it necessarily possible? Even the most necessary project fails when faced with an insurmountable problem. The inability to communicate effectively is probably the most insurmountable as most project managers and military planners know; they also know that just because something needs to be done is no guarantee that it will be.

Another observation upon this story is, the inconsistency of it with respect to the opinion that the Bible is the Word of God given for the information of mankind; for nothing could so effectually prevent such a word from being known by mankind as confounding their language. The people, who after this spoke different languages, could no more understand such a Word generally, than the builders of Babel could understand one another. It would have been necessary, therefore, had such Word ever been given or intended to be given, that the whole earth should be, as they say it was at first, of one language and of one speech, and that it should never have been confounded.

Here Paine falls into the temptation of many who don't like how God does things: "if *I* were God, I'd do it another way." Whether the Bible is the word of God for mankind is irrelevant, because it would not come into its final form for three millennia and the first book would not be completed for 15 centuries. There was no Bible at Babel, so to say that God could not confound the languages because it would keep him from spreading his word presumes too much - that the only way God could communicate was thru the written word. I'm pretty sure God spoke all the post-Babel languages pretty well, and as early Genesis and pagan mythology are filled with inspired dreams and direct, personal revelation, apparently God figured multiple languages did not constitute too high a hurdle to jump later.

In fact, it appears that God did not intend to use the Bible to spread his word at all, at least originally. If one follows dispensationalism (and I do, but from quite a safe distance), it's apparent that God teaches mankind in many ways and that most of the Bible stories are object lessons, on paper for us but in real life for the ancients.

God is nothing if not a science teacher. He first tried innocence to get man to respond to him. Result: the fall. Then conscience. Result: the flood. Then human government. Result: Babel. Then promise. Result: Hebrew slavery in Egypt. Then theocratic law. Result: Destruction of Israel. Finally, He taught through a man who was God who fulfilled the law, re-instituted the promises, and will someday head up a government as King. Only after Jesus - as we're seeing in PQ's Popology series - was the Bible sent outside a tiny tinhorn kingdom in the Ancient Near East, and then by a language universal enough for his purposes (Greek) and using a road system (Roman) that would allow his word to follow the peoples scattered at Babel to the ends of the Earth. In each iteration He demonstrated that man alone is helpless and self-destructive by letting man self-destruct. Think of us as a class experiment with really smart rats in a millennia-long labyrinth. Guess who the rats are.

The case, however, is, that the Bible will not bear examination in any part of it, which it would do if it was the Word of God. Those who most believe it are those who know least about it, and priests always take care to keep the inconsistent and contradictory parts out of sight.

While I'm not a priest, I find that the "inconsistent and contradictory parts" of the Bible are the most valuable. But one has to get beyond his own culture and assumptions make sense of the whole thing. It is precisely the difficult parts that allow, nay force us to do so.

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Subversive Cartoons, Part Deux

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Maybe the UN can cite him for littering

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea angrily mocked international criticism of its multiple missile tests, threatening on Thursday to fire off more rockets...

The aggressive stance from Pyongyang coincided with intense diplomatic activity in world capitals to formulate a response to the tests. Washington and its allies - particularly Japan - clamored for sanctions against the North, but struggled against resistance by China and Russia.

I'll be the first to admit that there seem to be no good answers in regards to the North Korean ballistic littering campaign, but surely the least bad answer is not running around the world seeking condemnations and sanctions (see: Castro, Fidel) against a nation we already have sanctions against and have not had diplomatic relations with since Truman was President.

There is only one nation that has any ability to talk to NK - China - for the simple reason that China is the only nation that has military leverage against them. South Korea? No fear. Japan? Hatred but no fear. The US? NK is generating power from nuke plants we gave them the last time they promised to play nice.

If we want the Puppetmaster of Pyongyang to show the world who pulls the strings, we are certainly doing a fine job of it, running around and very publicly failing at various "responses" that would be worthless even if we succeeded in getting the Chinese and Russians to join us in writing them a letter, telling them how angry we are (where's Hans Brix when you need him?)

This is the time to speak softly, not blahblahblah at the UN or all over the news. It is unbecoming to cry in public about NK violating this treaty or that promise. They know, ok? They are doing what they are doing in the way they are doing it to get a reaction. Everybody else knows, too. And they are watching us, measuring that reaction.

As you know, I'm not a fan of the Iraq or Afghan wars for at least the reason that losing wars in backward Asian nations makes us look like pantywaists, just like when the Russians lost in Afghanistan before us and the French lost in Vietnam before us. Losing worthless wars is bad for your reputation, and it's sad but true that the choice to be at peace depends first and foremost on that reputation.

There are two possible non-pantywaist reactions to Kim Jong Il waving his private parts at our aunties - stony silence or bombing their missile sites to powder - and we would be wise to avail ourselves of one of them. If there is no real danger to us, then one course is obvious. If there is a clear and present danger to Americans, the other course ought to be just as obvious.

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I say tell 'em

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Is it OK for doctors and parents to tell children and teens they're fat?

That seems to be at the heart of a debate over whether to replace the fuzzy language favored by the U.S. government with the painful truth -- if kids are obese or overweight, telling them.

Let me ask a silly, silly question: do the parents not know their kid's fat? If they are the parents and they know the kid's fat, is it not their responsibility not just to say something, but to DO something?

Seriously, whether we submit to government obfuscation, politically-correct euphemism, or just call a shovel a shovel and a shoveler of food a fatass, it doesn't change the fact that kids are kids and will eat sugar all day long if you let them. They don't know any better, have not developed self control, and don't understand the long-term consequences of their choices. You, parent, are presumed to know better.

If your kid looks like the one above, he's fat. If you look like that, you're fat too. Turn off the TV, put away the twinkies or the corn chips and ketchup, and go take Spanky for a walk. You're not doing him (or yourself) any favors by sparing his feelings: you're just putting a round coffin on layaway for him.

However, there are certainly some who disagree:

Obese "sounds mean. It doesn't sound good," said Trisha Leu, 17, who thinks the proposed change is a bad idea.

Of course it doesn't sound good. That's because IT'S NOT GOOD. But perhaps we ought to change "diabetes" to "shiny apple" and "arteriosclerosis" to "happy birthday." Those don't sound mean at all.

And that's what's important, right?

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Subversive cartoons

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...and a bottle of rum

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Pirates have attacked three ships, including two U.N.-chartered vessels and a Japanese bulk carrier, in Indonesian waters around the Malacca Strait in recent days, maritime and police officials said on Wednesday.

Two attacks occurred on ships carrying relief material to tsunami-stricken Aceh province at the weekend, while a Japanese bulk carrier was targeted on Monday, Noel Choong, head of the piracy reporting center of the International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur, told Reuters.

I didn't even realize they had "piracy reporting centers" anymore. I'd have thought they'd be like those guys in the Maytag commercials.

You know, "Any piracy today, John?"

"Nope."

"Any piracy yesterday?"

"Nope."

"There sure aren't many pirates around these days, huh?"

"It's 'cause they're afraid of being reported."

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A New Declaration

by Rep. Ron Paul

On the fourth day of July, in 1776, a small group of men, representing 13 colonies in the far-off Americas, boldly told the most powerful nation on earth that they were free.

They declared, in terms that still are radical today, that all men are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights that government neither grants nor can take away.

In the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers sought to demonstrate to the world that they were rejecting a tyrannical king. They listed the “injuries and usurpations” that contain the philosophical basis for our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

One point of consternation to our founding fathers was that the king had been “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” But 230 years later, taxation with representation has not worked out much better.

Indeed, one has to wonder how Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would react to the current state of affairs. After all, they were outraged by mere import tariffs of a few pennies on the dollar. Today, the average American pays roughly 50 percent of their income in direct and indirect taxes.

In fact, most Texans will not start working for themselves for another week. Texans, like most Americans, work from January until early July just to pay their federal income taxes, state and local taxes, and the enormous costs of regulation. Only about half the year is spent working to pay for food, clothing, shelter, or education.

It is easy to simply blame faceless bureaucrats and politicians for our current state of affairs, and they do bear much of the blame. But blame also rests with those who expect Washington DC to solve every problem under the sun. If the public demanded that Congress abide by the Constitution and pass only constitutional spending bills, politicians would have no choice but to respond.

Everybody seems to agree that government waste is rampant and spending should but cut—but not when it comes to their communities or pet projects. So members of Congress have every incentive to support spending bills and adopt a go-along, get-along attitude. This leads to the famous compromises, but the bill eventually comes due on April 15th.

Our basic problem is that we have lost sight of the simple premise that guided the actions of our founding fathers. That premise? The government that governs least is the government that governs best.

When we cut the size of government, our taxes will fall. When we reduce the power of the federal bureaucracy, the cost of government will plummet. And when we firmly fix our eyes, undistracted, on the principles of liberty, Americans truly will be free. That should be our new declaration.

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A good, old-fashioned Coot-off

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