Genius is where you find it, I guess

Oh let it go already

RJ Elliot has some thoughts on thoughtcrime:

Michael Irvin is a racist.

On Monday, Irvin was on Dan Patrick's radio program and had much to say about Dallas Cowboys' quarterback Tony Romo:

He doesn't look like he's that type of an athlete, but he is. He is, man. I don't know if some brother down in that line somewhere, I don't know who saw what or where, his great great great great grandma ran over in the 'hood or something went down...

If great great great great great great great great grandma pulled one of them studs up out of the barn, "Come on in here for a second," you know, and they go out and work in the yard. You know, back in the day.

Let's try to break down and "analyze" Irvin's semi-lucid rant:

• Tony Romo doesn't "look like" a great athlete (because he is white)
• But Tony Romo is a good athlete
• Therefore, Tony Romo must be at least part-black
• And Irvin feels this is a reasonable assumption because people who are 100 percent white are incapable of being good athletes
• BONUS RACIST/SEXIST STEREOTYPE: Romo's supposed black ancestry must have come about from one of his female ancestors having sex with a black man on the side. It is not plausible, nor even thinkable, that one of Romo's male ancestors would have voluntarily had sex with a black woman...

Clearly, the precedent has been well established: If you make a racist comment while working as a sports broadcaster, you lose your job. Michael Irvin has made an overtly racist comment. Therefore, he needs to be fired.

Compared to John Kerry's insights on education, Irvin's joke is a riot. I don't say that because I'm a big fan of Irvin -"semi-lucid" is right on: half the time I can barely understand what the man's saying (and I hate the Cowboys anyway) - but because his remarks were a compliment. He was saying, "Damn, that boy's good. He must be one of us." And I'll admit, I smirked once I found out Romo was white.

I'd never seen him, but when I heard about this athletic rookie quarterback, I immediately assumed he was black. So maybe I'm a racist like Michael Irvin, or maybe I can just count. What can I count? The number of pro quarterbacks who are known primarily for their athleticism who are white. And I guess now I count one.

On the first 4 points, Elliot simply misses the boat. Irvin didn't say "good athlete," he said "that kind of athlete." He's talking about the type of quarterback personified by Michael Vick or Donovan McNabb, the kind that is almost but not quite exactly unlike Brad Johnson. Johnson is a good athlete; if he wasn't, he would not be in his second decade as a starting NFL quarterback. Vick, on the other hand, is "that kind of athlete." There's a huge difference in both style and substance.

The last item is laughable. If the blackness came through a mother, don't you think the family (who would probably have been pretty black themselves) would have known about it? The only way it could possibly be the secret that Irvin is "discovering" is to have a black father in the line. Think these things through, people.

But Elliot does make one good point: this is exactly the same kind of thing that got Jimmy the Greek fired. It's the same thing that got Limbaugh tossed from MNF. It's the same thing that got Fisher DeBerry fired from Air force. And it's a double standard.

So let's fix it, but not by calling for the head of a guy who made a harmless if obvious point about Romo's athleticism. Rather we should be insisting that people we rely on to entertain us can do so even when they are not politically correct.

So my lovely wife buys me a ringtone...

I didn't even know you could buy ringtones. Seriously. My phone has like 80,000 of the things, only a handful of which I can stand, so for the last 6 months it's just been on vibrate. Rogue magically added some to her phone, but they were all so excessively lame that I laughed out loud at them, and still do whenever I remember to.

But apparently sick of my telephonic conservatism, Rogue spent a couple bucks jazzing up my cell phone on my behalf. I now have a background(?) desktop(?) whatever it is, with the Iron Maiden logo on it. That's cool.

Then when I was basking in the glow of my newly-recovered coolness, she called me. Suddenly my phone starts playing the theme from "Halloween." Now that's really cool. But it still freaks me out every time my phone rings.

And that's why I let myself be tricked into marrying her...

There is simply nothing more I can add

I have been getting heat from people who want me to relax my strident antipathy to the proposed hike in the minimum wage, which will make business costs go up, which will make prices go up, which is what the low-wage worker is complaining about to start with!

So let me be as forthright as I can be when I say that I pity them, and the essential message of the Mogambo Guru newsletter in the first place is to object loud and long against the creation of excess money and credit, which will prevent inflation, which will prevent this suffering from inflation from even happening.

But, and hopefully conveying all the venom and contempt that I can muster, I have no compassion for the damned poor or the middle class, who have consistently used their massive electoral power to consistently elect socialists, communists, fascists and morons to every elected office in the land, and it is these lying, brain-diseased politicians who have spent us into the economic grave, as has happened every other time in the last 3,000 years when a government, any government, tried such monetary crap. So it is not like this is anything new.

And so, given the stark lessons of the sheer tonnage of the last 3,000 years of history, it is obvious that government constantly growing, and especially by constantly deficit-spending to accomplish it, is suicidal stupidity writ large, and we also learn that allowing unfettered growth in money, credit and debt is suicidal stupidity writ large. Thus, the behavior of Americans is inexcusable, as it bespeaks a nation of ignoramuses and lunatics, and the historical fate of such persons, and their brain-dead countries, is always bleak. Very, very bleak.

And it has to be the poor who first suffer the coming avalanche of pain, as they have no cushion against it. But as more and more people become poor, and poorer, as prices continue to rise faster than wages, then this cohort will collectively soon have the sheer physical clout to violently overthrow the government and arrest the treacherous politicians (a la the French Revolution) and Federal Reserve numbskulls who have gotten us into such a wretched, miserable state, which is how Mother Nature instills in future politicians and citizens the reluctance to commit the staggering, unbelievable economic idiocies that we Americans have been blithely committing for half a freaking century.
-- Mogambo Guru

Are we sure he's the angriest guy in economics? I just don't see it, personally...

Nicholas Cage like you've never smelled him before

So long, and thanks for all the lead

ABC News catches the first move out:

Nov. 28, 2006 — ABC News has learned that Pentagon officials are considering a major strategic shift in Iraq, to move U.S. forces out of the dangerous Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province and join the fight to secure Baghdad...

The region is a Sunni stronghold and the main base of operations for al Qaeda in Iraq and has been a place of increasing frustration to U.S. commanders.

In a recent intelligence assessment, top Marine in al-Anbar, Col. Peter Devlin, concluded that without a massive infusement of more troops, the battle in al-Anbar is unwinnable.

The next move ought to be to commit all of our troops to securing the Kuwaiti border. Then once that's done (10 minutes? 15?) they can be moved to a similar duty near El Paso.

Most sighted people can't see the difference, either

Every now and then a blind man wins a lawsuit:

The government discriminates against blind people by printing money that all looks and feels the same, a federal judge said Tuesday in a ruling that could change the face of American currency.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the Treasury Department to come up with ways for the blind to tell bills apart. He said he wouldn't tell officials how to fix the problem, but he ordered them to begin working on it...

He said the government was violating the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in government programs.

I'm pretty sure this one will be appealed and the Supremes will find some way to overturn the result. And there's probably a very simple way for them to do it, though going there might be a little more dangerous than they want to risk: they could simply admit that Federal Reserve Notes are not a "government program" and are therefore not subject to the Rehabilitation Act.

Federal Reserve notes are "issued at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System," (link) and the Federal Reserve itself is an independent central bank chartered by the government, not a federal agency. The government does not run or even own the Federal Reserve: the Fed is a stock corporation (its stock is owned by member banks) which provides money to the government and member banks. It could conceivably be abolished by Congress (which would be the most useful thing they have done in a century) but the bills it creates are not liabilities of the government. They are the liabilities of a chartered corporation that creates them from nothing, buys government debt with them, and then lives off the interest you pay on that debt with your taxes.

The escamotage of replacing paper claims on real gold and silver held by the government with paper promises to pay nothing from a chartered bank was so well orchestrated that I can't blame the blind for missing the real issue. Even those who can see were so distracted by the magician's sleight of hand that they missed it completely.

UPDATE: The Brit press certainly seems more interested than our own in our descent into economic hell:

The dollar tumbled to a near a 15-year low against sterling yesterday on fresh signs of economic trouble in the United States.

An 8.3pc crash in US industrial orders and an admission by the Federal Reserve chairman that Washington does not know how bad housing really is set off another day of wild gyrations on the currency markets...Mr Bernanke said official figures did not pick up the "sharp increase" in cancellations on house deals and might understate the inventory glut.

Don't worry guys, your system is built on the same foundation of plum pudding as ours. We'll save a spot by the fire for you.

That's when the monsters come out...

Any list with "Tremors" on it has to be good

Checking in at #5, the best Kevin Bacon film (ok, the only good Kevin Bacon film) since "Animal House." Plus it stars Michael Gross as a right-wing survivalist gun nut who kind of saves the day (after he betrays his former liberalism by breaking into a whiny fit when things don't go his way, but I digress). Plus it has Reba McIntyre discussing the relative merits of max firepower vs. penetration - it's just that politically incorrect all around - and some very creative and intelligent monsters. How can you go wrong?

But what will be the #1 Conservative horror film of all time?

And where can I get me one of them toys?

For this we need science?

The Daily Mail lets us in on a dirty little secret:

It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.

In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man...

And, if that wasn't enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high.

The dirty little secret isn't that women talk more (I think it's funny to count, out loud, the number of words some women use in denying the obvious) but that they get a junkie fix from filling the air with words. From the cacophany my daughters make, I conclude it must be some pretty good stuff.

That said, I don't know that it really adds to the sum of human knowledge for scientists to quantitize what every person already knows. It seems to me that's like calculating pi to 100 significant digits instead of 4: interesting if you like that sort of thing, but not all that useful.

On the other hand, maybe the authoress just wrote the book so she could go on TV and talk about it...

Worth a Thousand Words

I always appreciate a doe with a nice rack

It's probably a given that her oppressor is a white male:

MICHIGAN, N.D. - When Carmen Erickson dropped a deer with a single shot in a cattail slough south of here, he thought he'd downed a nice buck. Unlike his shot, he was a little off. The deer was a doe.

"It's got no male utilities," said Erickson, who lives in Minot. "It has teats ... it was pretty unusual."

Six hunting partners with Erickson witnessed the doe with a 4-by-4 rack.

"I'm sure this story will be around for 10 years," he said. "At least in our group."

What I can't figure out is who's going to protest first, PETA or LAMBDA.

Maybe this time we'll keep it

The next time we invade, there may not be any Quebecois to displace:

[L]ast month, prominent Quebec leader and former premier Lucien Bouchard generated a lot of protest when he condemned Quebec’s combination of massive debt, low productivity, and abysmal birthrate. He pointed out that the situation could not continue much longer.

“We don't work hard enough. We work less than Ontarians and infinitely less than Americans,” he said. He said that Quebec cannot sustain her large social programs and other benefits, such as low college tuition, while working much less than Americans and having few children.

“In Quebec it's like being in a big plane,” he said. “It's warm and comfortable, with no problems. But when you look out the pilot's window, you see a big mountain, and it's certain we're going to crash into it.”

I would hasten to point out that some problems are self-correcting: the decision to not have children probably means that subsidizing college tuition will become less of an issue in years future.

But given that the rest of Canada's birthrate and work ethic is not all that different from the aging Quebecois, it's only a question of whether Canada will collapse financially before it dissolves politically. My bet is on political dissolution in order to stave off the collapse (Quebec could go a lot longer without its portion of the national debt hanging around its neck), but either way I suspect it won't be all that long before much of Canada's incredible national resources are under a government of a different name.

Given that we've got a shorter walk there than anyone else, I should also not be surprised if for at least a few provinces, that government is nominally American.

It's simply a matter of mathematics. As bad as America's debt problems are, Canada's are worse. While our birthrate is nearly replacement level (and immigration keeps us growing), theirs is far below, almost as low as Italy, which itself will likely not last another generation. If a man (or a culture) chooses not to replace himself, someone else will replace him. He hardly has any cause to complain about that fact.

It is said that when the Romans conquered Greece, there was nary a young man there to fight back. For whatever reason, Greek birthrates plunged and within a generation or two they were swallowed into a larger whole. With Russia, Europe, and Canada all neglecting to create the next generation they are expecting to fund their lavish retirements, I suspect maps will change long before mathematics will be shown to have carved out a Socialist exception to the multiplication tables.

That's why they call him "Solo"

Let's try this again

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. Mint is hoping that Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore can do what Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea couldn't - get Americans to use dollar coins...

The Mint is hoping the continually changing faces will entice consumers to break their traditional reluctance to use dollar coins.

"We think Americans are going to want to collect the series, and that will drive the coins through the economy," said U.S. Mint Director Edmund Moy.

I'm not sure how people wanting to collect the coins is going to drive them through the economy; usually when people collect coins tht means taking them out of circulation and not spending them. Maybe they mean they'll trade them or whatever, but even then you're talking about less than 50 coins per collector over a 12-year period with most of the collectors having exactly the same coins at the same time. I doubt collectors are going to be a big factor one way or another.

Or perhaps the mint is just setting up for failure, creating a pre-fabricated excuse for when the Fillmore Dollar does as poorly as a circulating medium as did the Squaw Dollar: collectors are to blame because they are hoarding (that excuse was used when all the silver coinage began to disappear back in the 60s, so we know it works). Maybe Argentina should try it today now that all their coinage is disappearing.

The real reason coin dollars won't circulate is the same reason that governments have been able to perpetrate the massive monetary fraud they have over the past century: paper is more convenient than coin for anyting but the smallest purchases. Were the government to stop printing $1 bills, which make up 1/3 of all printed money, the problem would be solved. But Congress won't do it (ask Trent Lott why that is), so the mint is stuck with the unenviable task of minting money nobody wants to use so they can make up for the loss they take creating pennies and nickels, which accidentally became our only real money somewhere on the road to inflationary hell.

If you're falling fast enough

the landing doesn't hurt a bit:

A sharpening slide in the US dollar unnerved global markets on Friday as investors sought to protect themselves from the possibility of sustained dollar weakness...

The dollar has now fallen this year by more than 10 per cent against the euro and 12 per cent against sterling. Some economists suggest the greenback has further to slide given a weak economic outlook in the US, and the prospect of interest rate cuts there next year...

The gaping US trade deficit, the near certainty of a December rise in eurozone interest rates, rising expectations of a cut in US rates in the spring and wariness about borrowing in yen to finance investments in the US all continued to weigh on the dollar, analysts said.

Poor Ben Bernanke. It seems that markets are wont to test new Fed chairmen anyway (the Crash of '87 occurred in Alan Greenspan's first year) but he's been crammed into a box that seems to have no outlet. If he raises rates, he kills the housing market, the last source of consumer spending, and traps millions underwater in their foolish no-money-down ARM loans. If he lowers rates the dollar tanks, bringing inflation home in a big way. If he does nothing, Congress' and el Presidente's profligacy will likely force the latter result anyway.

He can save housing or the dollar, but not both. And so long as voters believe in something for nothing, the politically easy solution will be to sacrifice the dollar. No voter or politician wants to be told that the cupboard is bare, not so long as we have, in Ben's own words, "a technology called the printing press." They know full well we can make as many dollars as we wish.

But as it looks like we'll see, we can't make those dollars worth holding.

Hammity ham, wonderful ham

The Missouri Department of Conservations proposes ham for Thanksgiving:

In Missouri last week state wildlife officials publicly urged the nearly 500,000 licensed deer hunters to kill feral pigs too.

Feral hogs are often found in the remote, rugged portions of the state's Ozarks mountain range, where thick brush and timber make it hard to locate and kill the animals.

Adding to the problem is the rising occurrence of people illegally releasing hogs around the state for recreational hunting, says Rex Martensen, field program supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation.

More than 10,000 pigs freely roam across public land, primarily in the southern half of the state, he says.

Being located four miles to the Jayhawk side of southern Missouri, I can testify that they roam on private land as well. The lovely Rogue and I ran across a huge boar a while back - the thing was absolutely monstrous - that I would have gladly enjoyed for Thanksgiving if my better-armed next door neighbor hadn't gotten to it first.

It seems that his dog Chesty (who has no sense, even for a dog) decided to pick a fight with it as soon as it crossed onto the neighbor's property. While the pig was playing a game of volleydog, tossing Chesty into the air repeatedly, said neighbor dropped all 400 pounds of said pig with a well-placed 30.06 shot.

But he didn't eat it. About the same time, the phone company guys were moving a bunch of lines on our road, burying some, replacing poles on others. Neighbor traded the pig to the phone guys for some poles. Phone guys barbequed the boar at their company picnic that weekend.

I love rural America.

And you thought Kramer was out of line

Oh my poor, poor employees

Nearly one in six city residents lived in households that could not afford to buy enough food during the three year period ending in 2005, according to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger report released Tuesday...

"I do think there's an increased demand, especially when I know that many of my staff in my own agency utilize food kitchens in between pay periods," the city's top welfare official, Human Resources Commissioner Verna Eggleston, said Monday in testimony at a City Council hearing on hunger.

What? Where's the living wage when you need it?

All seriousness aside, I once had a boss who told me he preferred his employees to be one paycheck from starvation so he could count on them to come to work. I guess the Big Apple follows this Ebenezer Scrooge School of Management as well.

Like father, dislike son

CNN finds that ole nostalgia creeping up on W:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Only one in four Americans believe President Bush is a better president than his father, George H. W. Bush, a new CNN poll has found.

Six in 10 said the elder Bush, who served one term from 1989-1993, did a better job in office, according to a poll conducted by Opinion Research Corporation. Twelve percent said both were equally good or bad, and 2 percent offered no opinion.

Personally, I wish I'd had the balls to vote for Ron Paul in 1988 rather than the the first Bush, and it certainly wasn't long into his term that I was missing Reagan something fierce. Into Clinton's first term, I found myself missing Bush, though less than I'd expected. And it wasn't long into W's term that I thought the good old days of cigars and aspirin factory bombings were to be longed for. I never missed Carter and still lament the fact that he never really went away.

So either I, along with many Americans, tend to grow fond of Presidents once they are no longer able to eat out our substance, or we truly have moved through a period of good presidents to mostly harmless ones to those whom the Republic would have benefitted if they had taken up miming rather than politics.

Is it just me?

Woman's Work

Around the dollar in 60 seconds

Not much happening in the world tonight, at least not much that no one saw coming:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The dollar fell against other major currencies Friday after a government report showed starts of new homes plunged to more than a six-year low last month and on market talk that a major hedge fund is in trouble.

I mentioned before that Amaranth was but the first in what will turn into a major series of hedge fund dominoes. Amaranth was a little fishie in a big pond. There are bigger fishies out there and they have the same problems because they are based on the same bad math.

Housing: It's gonna be a mess, folks. But record mortgage defaults nationwide nearly guarantee that the next FED interest rate move will be down, not up as the market expects.

NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The yield spread between 10-year and two-year Treasury notes briefly widened to 20 basis points on Wednesday, marking the deepest inversion since December 2000.

When the "yield curve" is inverted, with longer maturities' yields trading below shorter maturities, it has often heralded an economic downturn or recession.

It's important to remind the economic bears out there that "often" does not equal "always." But why someone would be stupid enough to lend the government their money for 10 years at a lower rate than for 2 years is beyond me. I lend it to them for 90 days at a time, max.

LONDON (Reuters) - A surfeit of liquidity in the financial markets is tempting bankers to underwrite and finance deals that may come back to haunt them, a top banker at Goldman Sachs said on Thursday...

"The things we are seeing being done, both on the investment grade side and the non-investment grade side, are I would say borderline stupid," (Eugene Leouzon, the chief underwriting officer for Europe and Asia) told the Reuters Investment Banking Summit in London.

Forget the "bordeline." They are historically unparalleled in their stupidity. That voters approved $78.6 billion in new state and local government borrowing last week just means they deserve the consequences of that stupidity (and the outright fraud) along with the bankers.

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The use of derivatives grew at the fastest pace in eight years during the first half of 2006, boosting earnings at securities firms and reducing costs for investors.

The face value of derivatives based on corporate bonds, currencies, interest rates, commodities and stocks jumped 24 percent to $370 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. It was the biggest percentage rise since the bank began keeping records in 1998.

In the meantime, the money managers have created a market in trading risk that is now almost 10 times the sum of everything created in the world annually and growing at a truly incredible rate of 50% a year. The dollar value of financial instruments based on the moves in prices of other financial instruments is now about 3 times the value of all the real estate in the entire world.

But derivatives "reduce risks by making financial markets resilient to shocks" says Alan Greenspan.

Well, that's what we're about to find out.

That'll put the Democrats in a fowl temper

He forgot "Leave a whoopie cushion on the Speaker's chair"

Republicans are no longer in charge of Congress, but they still have to show up and act like they give a crap for a few more weeks. The Extrapolater has discovered a top-secret memo detailing the remaining priorities for the outgoing majority.

• Re-arrange the deck chairs
• Institute “Casual Fridays”
• Use franking priveleges to mail out resumes
• Get interns to polish our… shoes one last time
• Make sure Pelosi doesn’t put any more of those little soaps and seashells in the men’s room until we’re gone
• Remind George that the preferred term is “Macaca-American”
• Get drunk and moon the White House
• Dance like nobody’s watching
  

Hat tip: The Extrapolator

Another reason to hate England

And mountian oysters aren't seafood

A SPICY sausage known as the Welsh Dragon will have to be renamed after trading standards’ officers warned the manufacturers that they could face prosecution because it does not contain dragon...

Jon Carthew, 45, who makes the sausages, said yesterday that he had not received any complaints about the absence of real dragon meat. He said: “I don’t think any of our customers believe that we use dragon meat in our sausages." ...

A Powys County Council spokesman said: “The product was not sufficiently precise to inform a purchaser of the true nature of the food.”

What do you mean, it doesn't contain dragon? Is there a lawyer in the house? I smell a lawsuit a-brewing...

Yeah, I thought about that, too...

The Voice of China comes out against gold investment:

Chinanews, Beijing, November 16 – With the rising of gold price in China*, many people have begun to show great enthusiasm for investment on gold, making the country the fourth biggest gold consumer in the world.

Investment is one of those wierd areas where the laws of supply and demand stand directly upon their heads. Economic law tells us that a higher price leads to less demand for goods and more production of them, allowing a new equilibrium to be established (it never is, but that's a different story). Investment goods, however, are different: when things are going up in price, people want them and demand rises. Gold is a perfect case in point: 5 years ago, when the price was less than half what it is today, no one wanted it; today it's occasionally mentioned; in 5 years it'll be 5 times the current price and on the cover of every magazine in the world.

But China has been a consumer (a misnomer to be sure because gold is not consumed) of gold for thousands of years. Since the Chinese were the first to create paper money, Chinese peasants have had centuries of practice protecting their savings from the depredations of government, and they have always done so with gold and silver. The rising price of gold may be creating some marginal excitement, but China's love of gold, like India's, is rooted deep in the culture.

However, gold price is determined by many unpredictable factors, investment on gold will pose greater risks even than on stocks. “Even professionals like us can not always tell whether gold price will fall or rise, not to mention ordinary consumers,”said an expert.

An expert who may or may not exist, I might note. While the gold price is truly determined by many unpedictable factors (and the price of what, exactly, is not?) the idea that gold poses a greater risk than stocks is so laughable that only a communist or a Democrat (insert joke here) could say so with a straight face. As we all know, gold goes bankrupt all the time, right? Or was that third-world companies? I get so confused by economics sometimes.

Furthermore, many Chinese put their investment on gold ornaments, rather than pure gold bars; however, the value of these ornaments depends largely on their art layout rather than their material, and it is much harder to realize the value of gold ornaments than gold bars. Thus gold ornaments are not rational choices for investment.

And as we all know, art is a terrible investment, right? But if the value depends on the art, then why is the rising or falling price of gold even an issue?

Gold ornaments are indeed an irrational choice if the purpose is to invest in gold; if that's the case, only gold will do. But that doesn't make gold artwork an irrational investment any more than rare gold coins are a poor investment.

I've gotta admit I don't follow the Chinese words, but their deeds. Along that vein I tried to purchase the golden picture of Shorty above, but alas the price got away from me. Because my purpose was to buy gold and not history I didn't chase it up. There will be other chances. At least until the price of gold rises again and then everyone wants in.

I suspect by then those lying Commie bastages will own just about all the gold.

* The reason the price of gold is rising in China is not because there's any less gold or more Chinese, but because the yuan is tied fairly tightly to the US dollar, which is falling against gold at an alarming (if you have no gold) or profitable (if you have gold) rate.

From the department of unnecessary denials

Look, we're just friends, ok?

Nevada's senators - both winning leadership posts in opposite parties - pledged Wednesday to stay close on issues of mutual interest, but not too close.

"He and I just like each other...," (Majority Leader-elect Harry) Reid told reporters. "It's not a 'Brokeback Mountain' situation," he added, referring to last year's film about two gay cowboy lovers.

Senator, I wish I could quit you.

Hey, where's my rubber stamp?

Off to a smooth start

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats picked Rep. Steny Hoyer to be House majority leader on Thursday, spurning Rep. Nancy Pelosi's handpicked choice moments after unanimously backing her election as speaker when Congress convenes in January.

A Marylander and 25-year veteran of Congress, Hoyer defeated Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania in a vote of 149-86...

Of Pelosi's endorsement of Murtha, (Rep. Barney) Frank said, "She's a very smart woman who made an error in judgment."

Maybe she just didn't study hard and uh, uh, get good grades.

In retrospect, it turns out to not only be unprecedented for a Speaker-to-be to inject herself into a down-ticket race, but pretty dumb as well. Murtha was running around yesterday saying he had committments from a majority of Dems, which means either they were lying to him or he was lying to us. But no matter: Nancy's own party b-slapping her publicly the first time she asks a favor is not the stuff of smooth leadership. It should probably comfort Republicans that this won't be the last time it happens.

Not to say that the GOP is any better. Yesterday they celebrated America Recycles Day by bringing Trent Lott back from a well-deserved back bench seat. The fact that he was running against Lamar "What if I ran for president twice and nobody noticed?" Alexander might explain the result. Or not. Either way it appears the GOP is planning to re-live the glory days by doing exactly what brought them to an end.

As one wag asked, "Is it just me, or is it becoming increasingly apparent that the Republicans and Democrats are determined to engage in a two year dumb-off?"

It ain't just you, dude. But it seems to me that it's lasted a lot more than 2 years already.

When good marketers go bad

Cough syrup of the beast

Westernksgirl sends along a gem:

I was walking the aisles of the local IGA grocery store with my friend Diane when she stopped and silently pointed to an item on the top shelf. It was a yellow box marked with the mark.

You know the one I mean—THE mark: the number 666. Closer inspection revealed (1) this was a box containing a bottle of cough syrup, and (2) it was the only box the store had. (I've since been on the lookout every time I go to a grocery or drug store, but this is the only instance I've witnessed of a Satanic haunting of an Arizona cough-syrup aisle.)

Naturally, I had to find out why in the name of Madison Avenue anyone would name their product after one of the most enduring prophecies of evil in all the Western world. Stuffing the sides of my mouth with bunched up Glad baggies and affecting a hick-ish weedbender accent, I called the maker of 666 cough syrup, a tiny company down in Florida. It turned out to be a hapless receptionist's initiation into the secret history of the Beast...

Everyone but Larry King can read the rest of the story by clicking here.

A hard day's night

We're doomed, I tell you

I have seen the future

And it sings what the government mandates:

Parents could be forced to go to special classes to learn to sing their children nursery rhymes, a minister said.

Those who fail to read stories or sing to their youngsters threaten their children's future and the state must put them right, Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said...

The threat of action against parents who fail to sing nursery rhymes was unveiled by Mrs Hughes as she gave the first details of Mr Blair's 'national parenting academy', a body that will train teachers, psychologists and social workers to intervene in the lives of families and become the 'parenting workforce'...

Mrs Hughes condemned the way governments before 1997 thought they had no role in the upbringing of children, which it 'regarded as the entirely private arrangements families make.'

She praised the Government's record of pouring billions into state benefits for single parents, into providing subsidies for childcare, into pushing mothers into work, and into the 'Sure Start' children's centres...

Read the entire article. It's absolutely frightening to realize these people are not only saying all this with a straight face, but that this is the position of the government of England. And given our historical propensity for following trends set across the pond, it is only a matter of time before we are speaking in all seriousness about federally mandated nursery rhymes.

It must be so. People mock the slippery slope, but they simply lack the patience and perspective to watch it play out. Once the government begins down a path, it has no choice but to follow it to the end, because both success and failure are rewarded with more money, more power, more dependency.

GWB's federal marriage counseling is different only in degree from his friend Tony's mandatory nursery rhyme singing. They have the same underlying logic: it is the government's responsibility to direct the lives of its subjects according to the wisdom of the politicians. "Compassionate Conservatism" is simply Christian socialism.

Once President Rodham establishes "for the children" as the national motto, we shall begin singing our way - at gunpoint - down the same happy trail as the Brits. It will begin with expanding the role of the Department of Education (the same one the GOP should have killed but doubled instead) and the appointment of a Czarina. The Democrats will cloak the program differently than the GOP did, but it won't matter: the rhetoric is only incidental to the final result anyway.

The only good news is that since Europe is not even having enough children to replace itself, such programs will be necessarily short-lived - the Middle Easterners and North Africans who will rule the continent in a generation will have enough sense to get rid of them. The bad news is that America will probably still ride it out to the very end.

Incompetence

Senator Jackson, call your office

Trouser snakes on a plane

So maybe it wasn't that big:

A couple's ill-concealed sexual play aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles got them charged with violating the Patriot Act, intended for terrorist acts, and could land them in jail for 20 years.

According to their indictment, Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell were allegedly snuggling and kissing inappropriately, "making other passengers uncomfortable," when a flight attendant asked them to stop.

"Persing was observed nuzzling or kissing Sewell on the neck, and ... with his face pressed against Sewell's vaginal area. During these actions, Sewell was observed smiling," reads the indictment filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

If pretending to join the Mile High Club turns out to be a violation of the Save Us From Terrorists law, a big bunch O Congressmen are going to come out and say, "Hey! That's not what we thought we were voting for." But the very existence of PATRIOT is simply another reason to disbelieve that the Dems will actually be able to accomplish anything:

"We killed the Patriot Act," boasted Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, to cheers from a crowd at a political rally after the vote.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, invoked abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in defending his vote against the Patriot Act. "Earlier today, the Senate voted to stop a bill that would have allowed the abuses of American civil liberties to continue for another four years," he said in a floor statement.

"Mission Accomplished," eh, Harry?

In all fairness to Harry, he follows a well-established Democratic tradition: he supported it before he opposed it before he supported it:

I support the PATRIOT Act. I voted for it in 2001, and I voted for a reauthorization bill that passed the Senate unanimously last summer. In December, however, I voted against cloture on a conference report to reauthorize the PATRIOT ACT.

Now if anyone wants to complain that I'm picking on Nerdy Harry for what is really a crime of el Presidente', I can only plead that back when the GOP controlled everything, I promised to spend my time picking mostly on them because they were in change. The GOP ran the show and the Dems got a pass because they didn't matter.

But guess what, Harry? Now you matter.

I should not be at all surprised if when PATRIOT again expires, this time in the middle of President Rodham's administration, it'll be the Dems who declare that overbearing federal legislation is needed to keep snakes off the planes.

After all, Samuel L. Jackson can't be eveywhere.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Nothing is over until the NJCAA Bowl Committee says it is.

And that means Fort Scott has one more game, the CHAMPS Heart of Texas Bowl on December 2nd against #17 Kilgore College.

Maybe I'll make some popcorn for Squeaker Ann as we listen to it on the radio. I like the Greyhounds*, but I'm not driving to Copperas Cove, Texas (wherever that is) to watch them play.

* OK, so I'm a total piker compared to some. In my real job I manage an alumi database for a state college (not FSCC) known for its football. I just found out today we have a couple in there with a temporary address: most of the year they live in Texas, but during football season they live in Kansas so they can attend all their alma mater's home games. That's dedication. Or something.

So obviously he's clean as a baby's bottom

Never convicted

Buffalo News kicks the gullibles while they're up:

WASHINGTON - Democratic House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi has endorsed Rep. John P. Murtha's bid for House majority leader, setting off a furor on Capitol Hill, with critics charging Monday that she is undercutting her pledge to clean up corruption by backing a veteran lawmaker who they say has repeatedly skirted ethical boundaries...

Some Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups say they are baffled that Pelosi would go out of her way to back Murtha's candidacy after pledging to make the new 110th Congress the most ethical and corruption-free in history.

A longtime senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Murtha has battled accusations over the years that he has traded federal spending for campaign contributions, has abused his post as ranking party member on the Appropriations defense subcommittee and has stood in the way of ethics investigations. Those charges come on top of Murtha's involvement 26 years ago in the FBI's Abscam bribery sting...

Maybe the saddest thing about this is the disappointment of those liberals who really, really, in their heart of hearts, honestly, truly believed that the Democrats were in any way interested in changing the culture of corruption in Washington. Hold on a second while I flick away a tear.

Hey, Murtha was never convicted of anything in Abscam. He was never even indicted. He never even accepted a bribe. When offered a $50,000 bribe, Congressman Murtha answered, and I quote, "I'm not interested...at this point."

Maybe he needed to go out and buy a freezer first.

Oh, this is going to be a fun dozen years...

Is gingervitis the same as dumb disease?

Dude, I hate this game

Newsbusters runs to the defense of ginger kids:

How long do you think it will be that we must stay under the thumb of the kind of PCism that posits that all white people are evil, wrong, losers, stupid or otherwise weak and bad?

Apparently Cisco Systems hasn't seen the end of it and that is why, in their TV commercial for their new TelePresence video conferencing system, the white kid loses.

The commercial starts off with a white boy in an obviously American class room staring at the camera. Then cuts to an obvious foreign class room with a little Asian boy doing the same. As the commercial rolls all the children in their two respective classes gather around their intensely staring classmate to see what will happen.

Then the white boy blinks.

The white boy's classmates erupt in a raucous yell, while the classmates of the Asian child jump up in victory because their boy won the staring contest being made possible by the video conference system that can obviously span the globe.

Why is it that the white kid had to lose?

...and the reason I hate this game is that it is a futile and subjective guessing game about motives. I guess I'm far more annoyed by it because this kind of whining has long been the playground of the left - where objectivity is unnecessary and facts are often a hindrance to getting the results one wants. Conservatives have apparently decided that if they can't beat liberals, maybe it's time to join them in the cesspool of reactionary sentimentalism.

However, I'm not above playing the game on occasion, so let me present a couple of alternative interpretations which, while I don't know that they are correct, might allow our obviously racially-conscious conservative to sleep a little better knowing the goblins of political correctness might not be infesting technology commercials after all.

Here's the commercial:


What follows are some other similarly unprovable interpretations of it. Feel free to add your own.

Alternative interpretation #1: Nips have those wierd, slanty eyes and can hold them open like snakes. They are inhuman. We should have never have stopped at just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Alternative interpretation #2: all Real Americans are white. If you put a Hispanic kid on the American side, no one will know he's American. People in Texas and California will think it's a Mexican classroom; those in Florida will think it's Cuban; New Yorkers will think the school is in Puerto Rico. People in other states might think something else, but that's flyover country and no one cares what they think.

Alternative interpretation #3: eating rice gives you very powerful eyelids.

Alternative interpretation #4: Only caucasians are racially secure enough to handle losing on TV. If you show a black kid and he loses, legions of black kids will be deprived of 30 seconds of role modeling, which when multiplied by the 2 million black kids in school, adds up to a full year of mentoring lost every time the commercial is shown. Every time. You want to destroy Black America over teleconferencing?

Alternative interpretation #5: the white kid let him win, duh. It's part of the plan to get the Tiawanese overconfident for the Little League World Series.

Alternative interpretation #6: since the Chinese made the electronics, they obviously inserted code that would give the result they want, just like Republicans do with voting machines when they want to win elections.

Alternative interpretation #7: It's just a commercial. Shut up, go get a beer, and it'll be over before you get back.

One is a flaming Nazi gasbag

...and the other is a dirigible

WASHINGTON -- Fannie Mae, the largest U S mortgage finance company, said it will spend $850 million this year to fix accounting errors and complete a $10.8 billion restatement...

The SEC and Fannie Mae's regulator on May 23 fined the company $400 million after finding executives from 1998 until mid-2004 used "cookie jar" reserves and deferred expenses to smooth earnings and meet bonus targets.

Fannie Mae owns or guarantees about 20 percent of the $10.5 trillion U S home loan market. It is restating earnings because of errors in how it accounted for mortgage holdings and other derivatives...

Congress is considering creating a tougher regulator for Fannie Mae and rival Freddie Mac, which in 2003 revealed $5 billion in similar accounting mistakes.

There is probably no bigger derivatives bomb in the world than these two corporations, both created by Congress to make it easier for those with marginal credit to buy homes. The government guarantees of their securities (which are implied* rather than stated) allow them to purchase mortgages and re-sell them to investors at a lower rate than the original mortgages. Freddie and Fannie live off the interest differential. They are also both insanely leveraged and rife with the kind of fraud that infests all socialistic enterprises.

When you hear that a company used "cookie jar" reserves and manipulated earnings so the executives could receive big bonuses, when their accounting "mistakes" to cover up this activity cause them to fail to file legally-mandated financial statements for years, you can be pretty sure someone's going to prison. Unless, of course, the entity doing that is created by the government. Then they are simply illustrating the fact that the rules government creates only apply to others. Even the New York Stock Exchange allows the company stock to trade publicly, though the failure to file timely would cause any other company to be kicked to the curb.

Sadly, fraud is not so much the problem as rising mortgage defaults, which attack Fannie's capital base directly. Every foreclosure is a mortgage payment that's not made, and therefore an interest payment Fannie must pay to its bondholders out of capital. Every foreclosure that drops the price of nearby houses reduces the value of the assets underwriting Fannie's bonds, which together with Freddie's debt, account for 40% of all public debt in the US. That debt is held by retirement funds, mutual funds, and foreign governments, and it serves as collateral for other over-leveraged financial endevors like hedge funds. If (when) housing goes into a significant slump, Fannie's crash-and-burn will make the Hindenburg seem like a three-point landing.

According to the Palm Beach Post, mortgage foreclosures are up 43% nationwide year-on-year and one in every 150 houses in Palm Beach County is currently in foreclosure. They are up 50% in Dallas and have doubled in New Hampshire in 12 months. But there will be no financial crisis the day all those lawyers and accountants slap their briefcases shut and head for bankruptcy court.

After all, they're guaranteed by the government.

* See item #2 in the Senate RPC's executive summary of Problems at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: Too Big to Fail?

Midnight comes

Congratulations to the #4 Butler Grizzlies who defeated the #11 FSCC Greyhounds in the KJCCC championship game today, 28-14. All cinderella stories come to an end, and the third Top-10 team FSCC faced in three weeks was too much for them.

So Squeaker Anne (my 9-year-old daughter) asks me tonight when we're going to another football game.

"They're all done, sweetie."

(horrified look) "FOREVER?!?"

"No, it's just the end of the season. They'll play again next year."

(relieved) "Well, I can't wait to go again."

"I thought you didn't like football..." Now I'm confused.

"I don't, Daddy. I just want to eat some popcorn."

Guess I shoulda known...

Sabbath Economics

I'm not surprised to see it filled with liberals...

Among religious congregations across the country, a new calling is emerging: Don’t just give money to the poor. Invest it in financial programs that will help them.

Sometimes called “Sabbath Economics,” the movement pushes people of faith to reject the capitalist model of economics in favor of the biblical one. That biblical model, outlined in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament, views God’s creation as abundant, but also requires that community members distribute it justly and not try to accumulate it all for themselves...

I was pretty sure - even before I looked it up - that such a movement would be filled with academics and leaders of liberal churches. They are not necessarily incorrect in what they are trying to accomplish - feeding the poor and improving their lives - but the fact that they incorrectly define even the most basic words (like "capitalist") was a good indication that we are dealing with a group of people who would institute socialism under another name, this time "Sabbath Economics." As soon as a religious person starts talking about the "community" distributing resources, grab your wallet; they mean they will be distributing yours to their friends.

But rather than take on their specific arguments, I'd rather go right to the point: there are only two possible economic models once all the linguistic rubbish is cleared out: either the individual owns the means of production (capitalism) or the group, however organized, owns it (socialism). All isms (fascism, communism, corporatism, mercantilism) belong more or less in one of those two camps, and usually the latter.

But what does the Bible say about economics? One could write whole books and some have; I will constrain myself to the main underlying principle: "you shall not steal."

Of course, this is a mainstay of the Scriptures and not coincidentally one of the few legitimate concerns of government. You shall not steal. We all agree. But what are the implications of that command?

It means that things are owned by people. If there is no property ownership, there can be no theft; conversely since there can be theft, there must be ownership. There is nothing in the bible owned by "the government" or "the community" nor any command for "collective" economic action in the civic sense. There are things owned by individuals, there are things owned by God, there are things owned by the King, but everything is owned and controlled by some identifyable person and never by an abstraction.

It means that no one can steal. No one. There is no "except by majority vote" clause in the commandment. Property rights are absolute and trump the desire of the community to put property to better use according to their collective wisdom.

If things are owned by individuals, and if they cannot be stolen even by groups, then there is only one economic system that fits the biblical model: private enterprise, capitalism unfettered by distributive taxation. One can argue about organization (for example "incorporation" might be considered an extrabiblical concept), but any Biblical economics must be built foursquare upon private ownership of assets, not upon any sort of collectivism that holds some prior moral claim on material things.

Only once that's established can we begin a conversation with the liberals about personal action. They are correct in that the poor are a responsibility, that people ought to give more, that they ought to help. They are absolutely correct that people should not try "to hoard everything for themselves," but should give gladly and willingly. They are absolutely correct in everything they want to do to help the poor. Everything, that is, but use the power of force, theft, and taxation to raise the means to do it.

As the Jewish scholar Gamaliel once counseled, "if this is the work of men, it will come to nothing. If it is of God, you can't overthrow it, but (be careful): you might find yourself fighting against God." Socialism and coerced collective distribution is the opposite of biblical economics and will come to nothing even while it ostensibly pursues a biblical purpose. It is but the work of men to coerce other men and God will never bless the thief nor his work no matter how religious his intensions appear to be.

Obviously

(hat tip: Snoop)

Medved freaks out

The losertarians have apparently piled on the last straw:

If you’re running as a Losertarian, however, or a representative of the Green weenies, or the Constipation Party, you’ll seldom face primary opposition (what sort of crazed narcissist actually wants such embarrassing nominations?) so you can qualify for the general election with a dozen primary votes or less. You get to play in the general election without going through one of the toughest ordeals of the election process. Why should we make it harder for a Republican or Democrat to qualify for the November sweepstakes than it is for weirdo fringies with zero chance of victory? ...

The egomaniacs who get their jollies by running oddball campaigns for high office have a right to their dreams and their obsessions, but the rest of us have a right to a sane political selection process that’s free (in its final, all important stages) from distortion, distraction and destruction by self-indulgent fools with no real support.

Nothing makes it harder for a Republican to get on the ballot than for anyone else. The GOP as a party gets to nominate one candidate; them's the rules and they were written by Republicans and Democrats who have separate primaries in every state but Louisiana. If some poor Republican is scared of a primary fight, he may simply switch parties (cough, Paul Morrison) or start his own (cough, Lowell Weicker). Many, perhaps most, Republicans get on the ballot without a primary anyway. And this might come as a surprise to Medved, but most third parties don't have primaries: they nominate their candidates in convention like the GOP and Dems used to do. The only reason the GOP even has a primary is because they have decided to choose their candidates that way.

But hey, let's try a test: from now on, in the general election, let's allow both of the top vote-getting Republicans on the ballot. That's fair, they've earned it. How do you suppose that would turn out, Mike?

But the real issue is that these fringies should not be allowed on the ballot at all. For that Medved offers two reasons: third parties don't get enough votes, and third parties get too many votes.

Not getting enough votes is the reason Medved is able to dismiss them as fringe parties in the first place. They are fringe by definition since they do not represent the mainstream. They shouldn't be on the ballot because they have "no real support."

Medved also asserts that the third parties get too many votes; they are keeping his guys from winning by drawing away votes that should be his. Whether true or not (and in my case, it's not...I purposely did not vote in several races because I was offered two identical candidates I didn't like) it's actually an argument that says the ballot ought to be limited to the point that people who wouldn't otherwise will choose his guys.

A self-serving argument to be sure, and one that would apply just as well to Democrats. So why stop with fringe parties? Wouldn't it be far more efficient for the GOP Congress (while it still has the power) to simply pass a law that says that only the party that has the Presidency can be on the ballot and everyone else has to write-in? Just think how big the GOP majority would be then.

What he's really calling for is a national system like they have in Louisiana, where everyone meets in the primary and the two top vote-getters of whatever party square off in the general. Hey, I have no problem with that. After all, for more than two centuries Louisiana has represented the very pinnacle of democracy, known around the world for its incredible dearth of distortion, distraction, and destruction.

After all, if it's good enough for Kathleen Blanco, David Duke, Edwin Edwards, and Huey Long, it ought to be good enough for us.

(hat tip: Vox)

Good boy, Sparky. Now, don't be gay.

What? Didn't everyone know he was gay?

Rev. Lou Sheldon lets us in on a little secret:

Then, as if things could not get worse, there was the disgrace of Sheldon’s own friend and colleague, Rev. Ted Haggard, the Colorado mega-church leader and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an even bigger pillar of Republican support on the Christian right. Sheldon disclosed that he and “a lot” of others knew about Haggard’s homosexuality “for awhile ... but we weren’t sure just how to deal with it.”

I wonder why he didn't know what to do about it. According to Paul, it's pretty simple: no man who is sexually immoral may be a leader in the church. It's not difficult to figure out what to do about that. The difficulty in "how to deal with it" of course really means "how to do what God says without mucking up the election." And therein lies the rub. His church did the correct thing once they found out - of course, by then they had little choice. Those who knew beforehand apparently hoped to get a little more mileage out of the man before they dumped him overboard to the sharks.

I've got no problem with Haggard personally; in fact, I pity him. Forgive him? Of what? He did nothing to me. Pray for him? Absolutely, if a man in this world needs it, it's him. But I do have a problem with Evangelical "leadership" that is more concerned with holding onto its own power and influence than it is on keeping the wolves out of the sheeps' pen.

I believe you have my stapler?

Milton is coming for you.

What's the matter with Kansas?

I'll bet you're glad this will be my last post about the election...

Despite what I said below about the Democrats winning everything in sight, the damage is not all that bad for Republicans in Kansas. Yes, Sebelius and Morrison cleaned house and Boyda surprised everyone (well, not *quite* everyone - I saw her 80 squillion yard signs), but there is far less bad news for the Kansas GOP once one looks behind the wall cloud.

Seige Mentality (hat tip: In this Moment) wraps up an excellent county-by-county analysis of Boyda's victory this way:

So where did Boyda's votes come from? Were Boyda's totals the result of 2004 Ryun voters switching sides, or did Boyda '04 voters show up while Ryun '04 voters stayed home?

The most likely explanation is that Boyda's 2004 supporters were energized and Ryun's weren't. While we won't know for sure until all the election results are certified, it looks like Democratic turnout was strong nationwide. Pre-election polling data indicated a large enthusiasm gap favoring Democrats. From my own experiences, I think Charlie Cook nailed this year's mood among Democrats when said they were "spitting nails and can't wait to vote." The lack of a viable Republican challenge to Sebelius probably also helped to depress Republican turnout. It's hard to motivate voters to get to the polls for someone who has no chance of winning.

From these numbers, it's clear that talk of a realignment in Kansas politics is premature...

A realignment in Kansas politics is not just premature, it's wishful thinking.

Boyda (a former Republican) ran a great campaign, no doubt. She was everywhere and took advantage of a specific disappointment: that of moderate and conservative voters with the national Republican party. But that Democrat vote, even among "energized" Democrat voters, did not carry down the ticket, as we'll see.

And while Sebelius won, she did so with the former head of the GOP as her lieutenant governor (this doesn't mean he helped - I'll bet 90% of voters don't know who Mark Parkinson is - but again this will play in below).

Paul Morrison won, but he's an immensely popular crossover Republican from the state's most Republican county who was unopposed in the Dem primary.

Republicans Sandy Praeger and Ron Thornburg won the other statewide offices with margins similar to Sebelius and Morrison. Republican congressman Tiahrt and Moran won huge as well.

But down ticket, where we should see incredible damage if there was a true shift in Kansas politics in play, Republicans lost a total of 4 state house seats, leaving their majority (and here's the important number) at 79-46, only 5 seats less than the 2/3 needed to override a gubernatorial veto. The Kansas Senate, which was not up for re-election, remains 30-10 Republican.

In short, the Democrats remain a party of a few stars (Sebelius, Moore, and now Boyda and Morrison) but with no farm team whatsoever. The GOP has an incredible farm team, but lacked star power at the top this time around.

This is illustrated best by the addition of Parkinson - who is, like Sebelius, a former state senator, but he was a Republican state senator from a Republican county - to the top Dem ticket. Why did Sebelius not choose a real Democrat? The official reason is that she wanted to illustrate crossover appeal and to alienate the conservative right. And there may be some truth to that. But the major reason is that there is not a Democrat she could have chosen who would have added anything more to the ticket than she brought (don't believe me? Name one, then tell me why he wasn't chosen). Sebelius can't run again in 4 years. Who will be the Dem nominee? The former head of the GOP? The Dems not only failed to add to Sebelius' appeal, but they failed to bring a promising player up from the minors as well. That's because they have so few with potential.

And Morrison himself is not going to change just because he wears a jackass lapel pin instead of an elephant one. He'll still be the oft-re-elected Johnson County DA and until 6 months ago, a Republican.

Rather than saying that the Dems are making inroads into the moderate Republican vote, it is probably just as accurate to say that the GOP itself has branched out and now holds a number of the top elected Democrat offices in addition to all the GOP ones. This is less a GOP split than a GOP invasion of a weaker party.

Which brings me back to again to something I've been pondering but may be setting down here for the first time. Given that the Dem farm team (especially the local party structure in rural areas) is incredibly weak, the smart thing for conservatives to do now, in order to ensure center-right government in Kansas continues forever, might be to follow the lead of Boyda, Morrison, and Parkinson and join the Democrat party.

Think about it. What is the marginal return from adding yet one more pro-life, pro-gun Republican? Pretty low: not only is the Kansas House is full of them already, it just means fighting in the primaries. What is the marginal return of joining the Democrats and offering an alternative to the GOP that may very well be to the right of it? I'd say the potential return is pretty high. Should enough Democrats in the mold of Joan Finney or Tom Love get involved in the party - which already has trouble finding candidates - they could truly develop a bi-partisan coalition on issues important to conservatives. And besides that, imagine Steve Rose's conundrum as he has to choose between 2 Religious Right candidates.

Can pro-life, pro-gun, small government Democrats win in the Dem primary? They have in the past, so long as they run outside the few truly liberal strongholds (e.g. Lawrence). A pro-life black or Hispanic in Wyandotte or Sedgewick would probably find he fits those voters' preferences quite well (and why bother to run a Republican in Wyandotte County when a conservative Democrat will serve just as well? The Republican is not going to win anyway). Kansas right-to-carry legislation last year was shepherded thru the house by just such a Democrat, Rep. Candy Ruff of Leavenworth.

Of course, all the above is just strategery, not recommendation. I'm just saying that if I were head of the GOP (Hi, Derrick) and was interested in ensuring the continuity of GOP policy, I'd at least give it some thought.

Or maybe just the evil of two lessers

Well, that didn't take long...

Q: Mr. President, I'd like to ask you: Nancy Pelosi has been quite clear about her agenda for the first 100 hours. She mentions things like raising minimum wage, cutting interest rates on student loans, broadening stem cell research and rolling back tax cuts.

Which of those can you support, sir?

BUSH: ...In that very same interview you quoted, one of these three characters asked me about minimum wage. I said: There's an area where I believe we can make some - find common ground.

And as we do, I'll be, of course, making sure that our small businesses - there's compensation for the small businesses in the bill..

I only pray years will teach what the days never understood.