The Great Ethanol Conspiracy

Ethanol


We know that ethanol use in this country was based on the needs of national politicians, all of whom want to be president, to cater to Iowa corn farmers. This is why the nation that is supposed to be for "free trade" and NAFTA has a 54 cent tariff per gallon of much cheaper sugar-based ethanol that comes primarily from Brazil. This is also why we all use corn syrup instead of sugar even though California and Hawaii are both sugar producing states.

Here is a great conspiracy to consider though. We are told that we need to use ethanol to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and clean up the air. Here is the problem. It requires twice as much farmland to produce corn-based ethanol than sugar-based ethanol. We have already seen food prices jump recently because of the increase price of corn which was brought about, at least in part, by an increased demand for ethanol (actually an increased requirement since consumers would not buy it of their own free will). Higher prices for corn should mean that increased production will become more lucrative. This, combined with the increased demand for ethanol means that a lot more land will come into production for producing corn. Keep in mind that right now we pay corn farmers not to grow to keep prices propped up.

So now more land in the U.S. will be farmed to produce corn which in turn will need to go through a manufacturing process in order to turn it into ethanol. What will power the tractors, the delivery trucks, and the manufacturing facilities? That's right, more fossil fuels. Not only that, but it may likely take more than a gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of ethanol. This means that the gasoline will be burned quicker and our fossil fuel pollution would actually go up due to ethanol. In the meantime, agricultural production, which would be better used as food than fuel, will be diverted away from food markets, resulting in higher prices for food. This will mean that more land will need to be brought into production to make up for the shortfall in demand for food - requiring more fossil fuel.

If I were an oil company, where would I want to sell more fuel? Probably the place that buys the most, the U.S. And how could I get the U.S. to increase its demand for fossil fuels, thereby driving up prices? I could come up with a scheme that requires an increased use of fossil fuels across the board. And what is seemingly the least likely way to do that which would be completely undetected or unbelieved by the public? Push the production of an alternative fuel that will actually require more fossil fuels to produce.

It sounds fun and obviously like an overboard conspiracy, but have you heard a single oil producing company complain about the U.S. push to switch to ethanol? If each gallon lost at the pump to ethanol represented two new gallons sold toward production, would you complain?

Iraq? What Iraq?

Dem voters no longer fight battle of Iraq

As predicted, the dems are no longer worried about Iraq. We should hardly be surprised since the front-runner, Clinton, is just a culpable as any neo-con for this tragedy that has no end in sight. However, since it will be more of a burden to Clinton than to any of her Republican challengers, the issue has gone away. Or at least it has gone away from the Iowa campaign and among top democratic insiders. They know the issue will bite them in the fall of 2008 if Hillary is their candidate.

The question though is why Obama is pursuing the strategy he is pursuing. His advocating an invasion of Pakistan to show that he is tough on...well tough enough to declare war for no reason...seems to be for the sake of looking like he is not afraid to declare war or use force...however poorly formulated the policy or tragic the results. It shows he is looking toward the fall of 2008 and that this is not just a test run. That may be why he is not exploiting the one issue that would allow him to trounce Hillary among the anti-war left. But perhaps he already has these votes and doesn't need to remind voters of the fact.

Hillary has been suffering in the polls lately, but her numbers are still strong. If the majority of democratic voters had any integrity (you remember, the ones opposed to the war and who wanted to impeach Bush 15 minutes after he took office) they would be savaging Hillary for her vote and abandoning her in droves. But just like politics in the GOP, personality trumps issues and principles. Granted, every candidate makes sure to massage the voter bases soft spots on the way to making the kill, but few, if any, have actually results to show. Most do the exact opposite of what they say because it has helped to ensure their re-election. Democrats move the right, Republicans to the left. The side that wins usually gets the opposite of what they were promised.

This is why I am almost tempted to vote for Hillary. I have agreed with almost nothing she has said on the campaign trail. On the other hand, I know in my heart that her sole goal in life is power through becoming president. That means that she will say anything to get elected and by saying anything we mean no-holes-barred "lying". So if someone says the opposite of what you agree with constantly and you know they are in all likelihood either lying about their beliefs or lying about what they are going to do, then chances are they will be almost exactly what you want.

In my own opinion, Hillary's personal goal for power trumps whatever her beliefs may be and she will sell out her party's base just as quickly as the democratic Congress has done in this past session. The same mentality existed with Nixon. This is probably why lawyers should be banned from the presidency.

Science trapped by religious thinking?

Comment From Slashdot:


I agree, but I disagree. So many people (Platonists) think these laws exist outside of human experience, and it's so obvious that they don't. WHAT they try to describe does, but there's a big difference. We can say a^2 + b^2 = c^2, but the very notion of a triangle is completely circumscribed by human experience, and the notion of abstract notation is also a human thing. To say such a relation exists a priori is where I believe rationalism runs off the rails into a kind of metaphysics of "belief" as opposed to empirical science, and where empirical science mistakes itself for reality.

We ARE creating the laws, but what we create them ABOUT is something we do not have control over. The universe and human evolution rolled those dice aeons ago. Yes, you COULD write a law that says gravity doesn't exist, IF the law you write permits the kind of observations we make regarding objects in space/time. In fact, this is an interesting example. The Einsteinian view is that gravity (in and of itself) doesn't exist. It is our perception of how objects behave in curved space time. In the other ring, you have physicists who are bound and determined to shoe-horn gravity into some grand design of particle physics, and are on a continuous (and IMHO, quixotic) quest for the Graviton.

So, you grab a brick, hold it out. Let go. It falls. The effect of it falling on release we can call "gravity", but whether gravity exists as a REAL force in the universe, or just some weird effect of space/time warpage is another issue. So, yes, you CAN write a law that says "gravity doesn't exist" as long as your law accounts for the behaviour exhibited in the test of your dropping the brick.

What is insightful about your brief post is the point that what we call "Scientific Laws" are merely descriptions of nature. The laws are Scientific, and are therefore, tentative. They will remain "true" only as long as they can be proven to be true. Once some genius comes along and disproves it, or, more likely, incorporates it into some larger understanding, it will cease to be "true". Science is not based on absolute permanent truth. Scientific truth is ALWAYS provisional. It is so, as it is a product of language - a tool of our species.


Science supposedly supplanted religion in the mind of the enlightened with regard to explaining the natural world. The one thing that many scientists have still not abandoned is that notion there is some supernatural force at the center that has decreed the way the world works. Early Christianity placed no limits on God and wrote off the investigation of the outside world as meaningless because it had nothing to do with spirituality or the next life. Later Christianity attempted to prove that God's mind was ordered and reasoned at that recurring patterns in natural phenomenon were a result of the dictates of God. The investigation of theologians/early scientists in the era was to "Discover the Mind of God."

Today, most scientist or at least those who purport to believe in science hold just as firmly as any fundamentalist Christian in the faith of a natural and mathematically precise order that is just waiting to be discovered once sufficient empirical evidence has been gathered an analyzed. While it may be impossible to ascribe the relative accuracy of Newtonian physics (something which is technically wrong, but still precise enough to work relatively well) to mere coincidence, it seems a bit arrogant or perhaps naive to think our tiny evolved brains can understand the Universe as we would a self-contained geometry problem.

For science to truly progress, we need to abandon our faith in a non-living, non-sentient, rationality laying down precise and discoverable laws governing the universe just as many have abandoned the idea of a living, sentient, rational being laying down precise and discoverable laws governing the universe. Scientific findings are great and often useful, but the irrational belief that each new empirically discovered law is "The Truth" leads us down false paths like (in all likelihood) looking for the GUT or gravitons.

Baseball

Baseball's Monopoly Status

Baseball is once again back in the news because of a report, by a former Senator no less, that about 100 players in the recent past, most of whom are still playing, took illegal steroids or other performance enhancing drugs.

They're are always calls for Congressional investigations every time this happens, and much like the tobacco warnings, all that happens is a collective mea culpa followed by a few surface changes. I am well aware the Congress never accomplishes anything with these spectacles and that they are mostly designed for PR purposes, but I always wondered what business it was of Congress.

The answer is that baseball is the only professional sport that has a monopoly. The somewhat confusing history of how this arose is in the article above, but there it is. Baseball is exempt from the Sherman anti-trust act and is not considered interstate commerce by the Supreme Court - although in the past the court has ruled that the gallon of milk that travels 2 miles from the dairy to the local store and then to your house without leaving your county is interstate commerce. Baseball players can engage in both collective and individual bargaining in contravention to federal labor laws. And, to boot, most baseball stadiums are funded by state and local (and perhaps federal) development money - because as we know, the American economy would come to a grinding halt if we couldn't watch steroid-fed overpaid 20 year-olds hit a little ball around.

So, at last, here is my point. Who cares if these idiots are shortening their lives and shrinking their privates for several million dollars? My problem is that no one else can start up a baseball league to compete. If you want to see baseball clean up its act, give it some competition. Nothing will make baseball start regulating itself faster than the threat of lost revenue with a direct competitor. Right now, their scandals cost them some revenue, but they can always bounce back. Why? Because they are a monopoly.

Eliminate the monopoly, open baseball up to competition, and the problems will start to disappear as the threat of lost revenue appears. Competition may even drive down the salaries and open up the number of baseball jobs to potential players. Someone might take steroids to go from having no job to earning $5 million a year, but a lot fewer players will take steroids if it is the difference between a job that pay $200,000 per year and a job that pays $300,000 a year. Two or three competing baseball leagues (and the money is obviously there to sustain it) mean a lot more jobs for players and lot more competition for the fan's dollars.

The Sicilian Expedition

The Sicilian Expedition

In many ways, the Iraq war has now become the American version of Athen's Sicilian Expedition. There are, of course, many superficial similarities, but some day I will get into the deeper aspects and see if the average Athenian's view of the Sicilian expedition and why it was necessary bears any resemblance to the modern American's view of the war in Iraq.

The main idea though is that we have an empire that just emerged from a major war using a minor and unconnected causus belli to declare war on a smaller, but relatively powerful independent nation. The empire, with the full backing of its people, sends out a huge military expedition that essentially comprises the bulk of their military. Due to the far flung nature of the enterprise, the associated expenses are also a major drain on the finances of the empire.

Because the original goal of the planners of the expedition was different than the publicly announced goal, and because the planners were more interested in their own glory than any final goal, the war was plagued with uncertainty at the highest levels. This uncertainty led to confusion and contradiction in executing the war which resulted in several reversals even though the empire's military forces were superior in every way when compared to the rest of the world at that time. Frequently the civilian leaders ignored the assessments of the war from the commanders in the field.

In the end, the war dragged on for several years without accomplishment until the empire withdrew its forces. Because it was so badly depleted both militarily and economically, the empire's allies and tributaries, seething with resentment for decades, began to rebel. The empire's traditional enemies took their weakness as an invitation to renew hostilities to the point where the empire could no longer defend its own allies (leading to further defections) and was so weak that it could not defend its own territories. The resulting economic and political crises that followed saw the end of democracy in the empire and a quick succession of ruinous governments that could not prevent (and in some cases hastened) the fall of the empire.

It should be remembered that after the end of the second Peloponnesian War, Athens fades from greatness in history forever.

Warfare

Warfare is the most horrendous and counter-productive of all human endeavors. It is the decision to destroy (on the other side) and sacrifice (on one's own side) life, liberty, and property on a large scale. A defensive war, one waged against a person or country involuntarily is one matter. The decision to voluntarily undertake a war is another altogether. As an aside, proponents of voluntary wars constantly attempt to make the latter look like the former and even in democracies find many who are all too willing to suspend their disbelief and reason when their patriotism is called upon or into question.

In any event, a voluntary war should never be undertaken lightly by a democracy. Before making the decision to undertake a war, a democracy should make sure that it is capable of sticking to several principles throughout the course of the war:

1. The enemy must be clearly defined.
2. The goal must be total victory.
3. The details of a victory must be clear and achievable.

We have failed both in Iraq and Afghanistan on these counts and will likely do the same in future wars.

In Afghanistan, our fundamental failure was limiting our resolve to achieve victory by not clearly defining our enemy and seeking their defeat. The Taliban are back with a vengeance because we thought our goal was democracy in a land where none has ever existed. Our goal should have been the annihilation of the Taliban - no exceptions. That was the only way to achieve victory in Afghanistan and now that opportunity is long gone. That is why the resolve to enter the war must be 100% before it is undertaken. When wars are undertaken under less than true pretenses or with unclear and unrealistic goals, it often has an effect of lowering the resolve of those in charge of the war.

The Taliban waged a war of annihilation against the non-Taliban ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Thinking they would abandon those goals because some magnanimous foreign power attacked them was shear lunacy. We should have been prepared to go village by village and essentially execute their soldiers. That is why war should never be undertaken lightly. Once the decision is made, the resolve must be total to commit the seemingly worst acts of humanity. But that is how wars are won.

War should only be entered into voluntarily under the most extreme circumstances and should only be fought with the most extreme ferocity once that decision has been made.

The Iraq war needs a whole essay. Not only was the war undertaken with fake pretenses, the mission has changed from month to month. Our only clearly defined enemy was one person who is now dead. In the meantime a million new enemies have sprung up, leaving us without absolutely nothing to achieve as far as remaining in Iraq goes.

Soft Bigotry

"The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations"

The soft bigotry of a bad law

This has nothing directly to do with the article, but this phrase, which apparently came from a George W. Bush speech on the dreaded "No Child Left Behind" program, is something I've been searching for, for many years. I've usually expressed it as paternalistic notions of government treating non-whites as children in the way that government seems to express the goals and methods of programs. I often hear just as much racism in these supposedly altruistic goals as anything else short of a Klan member.

Think of Joe Biden talking about Indians working at the 7-11. Never mind how many doctors, programmers, engineers, and other professionals living in this country have Indian ancestry. This is the type of bigotry that comes from whites who have lowered expectations of non-whites and therefore think we need to help them overcome what Hunter Thompson called their "racial handicap".

These are absolutely horrible sentiments that only make the problem worse since it often appears that some members of these groups start to buy into other people's sense of low expectations. It becomes a social construct after a while. Like your Irish friends who pride themselves on having drinking and fighting problems. They think it is part of their identity.

I've been trying to think of ways to classify different types of racism, since people cry foul over racism all the time in this country. We have a gut reaction some times as to whether something is or is not an example of racism and I believe our varying notions of what constitutes racism in a given instance is usually determined by our subconscious notions about what type of racism is being exercised.

A. There is outright racism. The kind where people want someone killed or otherwise physically hurt because of their race. This is obviously the worst kind. It can be completely irrational drive against everyone encountered of a particular race or (perhaps worse) a methodical, albeit insane, notion that the elimination of an entire race will somehow be a benefit. Call this Hitler racism.

B. There is what I call "petty" racism. This is when a person has a notion that is or might be considered racist, but does not otherwise act on it in any discernible (or at least aggressive) way. This is the sort of racism where people outright believe and think that a particular race is inferior to their own and/or others in one or more particular areas for whatever reason. People may even be able to point to some basis in fact for arriving at their conclusions whether or not they are correct. People who have these particular beliefs can usually function with the race that they find inferior. In fact, I have noticed that they are often much better at social interaction with the races they believe inferior than those in category C or D. Call this Dog the Bounty Hunter racism.

C. The "low expectations" racism. This is the notion that special exceptions need to be made in order to help members of a particular race because "they don't have it as well as we do" or some other false pretense that brushes everyone of a particular race with as broad a stroke as any real racist. It usually practiced by those who like to cry racism where none exists - often as a way to alleviate their own self-doubt about their beliefs. This is the quintessential "white guilt" that really accomplishes nothing. This type of racism, to me, is more detestable than that in B above, because it is contrary to the notion that people are and should be treated as individuals and also since it helps enable the beliefs of people with type-B racist tendencies. When you say group X, where X is defined by a particular racial or cultural characteristic, needs special treatment different than the rest of us, you are ultimately saying group X is inferior on some level. The problem is that if you are giving away money or other benefits, you may have no trouble finding a large number of members of group X willing to play the part of the needy inferior. Only a fool would reject free money. The problem is when it starts to infect people's individual pride or translates into a social construct that members of X are ALL inferior. Hence the phrase, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" - you're inferior, but it's not your fault. This is how you treat an infant or a young child - never an adult. Call this Joe Biden racism.

A final note is that I almost called category C "Michael Richards" racism. I believe that people who fall into category C are really people who are in category B but feel that since racism is wrong they have to make up for it somehow. They cannot get past the idea of judging people by categories. The idea of making individual assessments never enters their minds because they have never done it. When they have pent up these thoughts long enough, they sometimes come out in outbursts like the Michael Richards' rant. Is he a racist? Yes. Is he a category A racist? No. Chances are he has followed the rest of Hollywood by calling everyone else in the world racist and saying we need to give money to people of a particular race because they are less fortunate than us. Then two black hecklers come along and instead of treating them as hecklers, he treats them as black people, you know, the ones he has been helping in order to sooth his white guilt and show what a non-racist person he is.

D. Post-modern "other" racism. This is another bad form of racism and I will have to say that I likely suffered from it from time to time. This is the notion that members of another racial group are somehow "superior" to our own in some manner. This is where you have white kids pretending to be black. This is where Mrs. Costanza completely throws away someone's advice because she thought she was Chinese, but wasn't. The idea that the "other" somehow has more wisdom and knowledge than you because they are a different race is still racism - not judging individuals as individuals. I view this type of racism as just a different stage of B and C. You believe that all members of a particular race are inferior, so you compensate by convincing yourself that they are superior in some other way whether in music, fashion, language, or some other sense.

I probably have the start of a good doctoral thesis here although I'm sure someone has already come up with these notions. Something to be explored later perhaps.

Pet Peeve

I am frequently held up in line at convenience stores by smokers who absolutely must have a particular brand of cigarettes in a particular type of package. Everyone seems to smoke something obscure which is almost never available. This happened to me once again today. The delay is really brief, but still annoying.

The question on my mind though, having just seen "Thank you for Smoking", is why the hell anyone in this country still smokes? We've been told for at least the last 50 years that it will kill us in school, on warning labels, and even by Yule Brenner on TV in the 80s after he died a horrible death.

You, the smoker, have now been taxed to death so that a pack now costs what a carton did in the 70s. It costs you a fortune every year and makes your clothes and breath stink. No one is impressed by the fact that you smoke. Your main goal upon entering any new building is figuring out where you can find an ashtray. You are now being put upon to not smoke anywhere except at home underneath a blanket with the lights turned out and still you want to fight to keep smoking. You have kids now and you want to make sure they can't breathe it in so you hide outside to smoke. Why? Because you know it's killing you.

So the question is, why do you keep smoking. Is it really like a heroine addiction? Is it really that tough to quit? Do you really lack that much will power? Can it really be that enjoyable?

Every time I see a smoker I can only think of someone paying to have their hand slammed repeatedly in a car door. I cannot see the logic in any of it.

Neverending L in Philly

Urban Warrior | 'I CAN'T TAKE IT MUCH LONGER'

This is an interesting article and could raise several points for discussion.

The "L" isn't named for fact that the line looks like an "L" on a subway map, but rather because it is an "elevated" rail platform for the paltry city subway. The idea behind these types of elevated railways is that they are much less expensive and much quicker to build (in theory) than actual subways such as the NYC system.

The problem here is that the city has apparently been taking forever to reconstruct the L which has apparently been in bad need of repair for years. Merchants along the L are demanding money to reimburse them for business losses generated by L reconstruction.

Given that the reconstruction has hurt these business (it seems pretty clear), what are we to make of this crisis?

One question is whether an early investment in an underground subway system in this part of the city would have paid off now by not interfering with established businesses that have grown up around the subway system. The L itself is a tremendous eyesore and my impression is that its presence actually makes the neighborhood uglier and more dangerous to drive in. Compare this with DC where nearly everything is underground and I think it is obvious that while the city may have saved a ton of money in initial construction, the economic fallout is much worse. Another thought. If an L style railway is so great, why did they only use it in the poorer neighborhoods of West Philly instead of the whole system?

Another question is whether this crisis is the result of SEPTA and the City avoiding basic maintenance and thereby making the problem much worse when if finally came time to decide to make the repairs. The answer is probably yes.

Another question is that why should the government pay to help private businesses that are hurt by this reconstruction. This is actually a moral question. Obviously the business owners have taken a hit, but is this really a government taking? They have obviously benefited from the presence of the L, although they have likely paid for it with hire rents and property taxes. The question is whether this is a place to draw a line.

This crisis does tend to show what happens when government takes over too much control of something. A corporation running the system could theoretically do the same thing, but the corporation has a much stronger motivation to get the system repaired quickly because they lose money just as much as anyone else when there is less L traffic. On this point, though, I'm not sure if L traffic has gone down or that the lost foot traffic is from local neighbors who are going to other business that aren't near the L even though they still commute using the L.

Yet another question is whether the L would have been better run by a private company. I've taken the L. It isn't horrible, but it isn't all that great either. Every few years SEPTA makes a bad decision regarding the cars they purchase and then never seem to learn form their mistakes. They tend to get dirty and the stations themselves are pretty horrendous as far as cleanliness and associated businesses go. I'm not sure if a private company could make the line profitable, but I'm sure they could do a much better job than SEPTA and the City. The repairs would have been done a long time ago as well.

Back to article.

For one thing, the customers have not likely disappeared. Since it is appears that a reduction in pedestrian traffic is what has cost these businesses, chances are the customers have started going to other establishments. This means, of course, that when the L is back up and running, those businesses will suffer from a loss of customers. Does the city need to compensate them? I'm sure we'll be reading articles along those lines some time.

An irony here, of course, is that the City is now shelling out more money as direct welfare payments to hurt businesses just to keep them afloat because of its decision to save money by constructing an L instead of an underground subway, by not performing timely maintenance, and by being its usual corrupt, inefficient self when it comes to spending money on public works.

We all know that Philly is a bottomless pit for state and federal funding and that any money that gets spent there usually winds up in the hands of everyone except the people it is intended to help, but this is a fairly egregious case of the city ineptness. L construction should have been done years ago. It's continued problems are a beacon for how poorly run the City is.

Cal Thomas drinks the cool-aid again

None dare call it ‘victory’

A follow-up from Krauthammer's column:

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

Also, two months of semi-good news in a 4.5 year war do not constitute solid statistical evidence of a trend. Only the neo-cons could call 35 deaths in a war that didn't need to be fought "good news". What if the deaths stopped altogether? How does that help us against Al Quaeda and terrorism? All of this "progress" is simply quelling a power struggle between Iraqis who want to control Iraq. It has NOTHING to do with terrorism.

When Cal Thomas is quoting the pages of the New York Times claiming that they have finally come around to seeing things his way and the way of the Bush administration, watch out. I don't have any stats to prove it, but I have been noticing that the press is reporting anti-war news ever since it became apparent that it is a strong negative for the presumed democratic front-runner - Clinton. Cindy Sheehan? She is a nut case now to the press - especially after she started attacking Hillary.

The New York Times editorial board will kick itself if it's anti-war rhetoric leads to another GOP victory because they front runner was just as involved in the invasion as any neo-con. That is why they are toning it down. If the war is successful, it becomes a non-issue. If the war continues to be a big issue, the average voter will trust Giuliani or Romney or Thompson over Clinton any day of the week since they always trust the GOP over the dems in matters of foreign policy. Things can always change, but only a fool would ignore past trends when formulating a strategy in this area.

This is, by the way, all perception. 2007 has actually been the WORST year for U.S. casualties. More of our partners have pulled out - including soon Australia after John Howard's recent defeat. We are no closer to finding bin Laden, and our so-called ally Musharraf has basically turned into a Saddam Hussein by jailing all opposition political figures, disbanding the Pakistani Supreme Court and filling it himself so that they can rule his reign "constitutional". The only difference is he has nukes and he hasn't started killing his people en masse yet. Look for that on the horizon whether he "wins" or loses the next election.

Cal Thomas, kool-aid drinker

Cal Thomas on the Presidential Debates

The Republicans, who rarely mention the president, agree that Hillary Clinton would be a bad president and each could fight terrorists better than any Democrat, except for Ron Paul who doesn't want to fight anyone.

OK, I'll admit it. I'm a Ron Paul supporter. This article really isn't about Ron Paul, but it should be. The quoted statement above should be "Ron Paul who doesn't want to fight anyone without a declaration of war". So apparently people like Cal Thomas who like to give a pretense of loving the Constitution at every turn and use it whenever they need a handy tool to decry someone else's opinion, pretty much ignore it if they are in favor of any policy that clearly violates the Constitution. Policies, for example, of invading foreign countries without a declaration of war from Congress. Remember that Ron Paul introduced a bill calling for a letter of marque to be issued against bin Laden shortly after 9/11. Here is one blog calling this "wacky" - apparently they haven't read the Constitution either.

So Cal Thomas in this article has the same complaint as a lot of people watching the presidential debate. This is a collection of meaningless sound-bites from polished C+ students seeing who can promise the most government handouts. The point he is misses is that Ron Paul is the only candidate in either forum whose platform is taking away benefits and abolishing segments of the government that both take away and hand out taxpayer money. How Cal Thomas missed this is anyone's guess.

Clueless Casey

Casey says Pa. facing urgent business challenges

Often, politicians decry things that they know they cannot change.

Often, politicians support legislation that they know will never pass for the sake of looking like they are doing something.

Often, politicians pass legislation that appears to do something, but in actuality accomplishes nothing.

Sometimes, politicians start speaking about complex issues that they do not understand and make it very clear that they are utterly unqualified for their positions. Witness the statements of Bob Casey in this article.

I have always thought the man sounded rather slow-witted, but I figured that was just his style. His old man seemed to be pretty sharp, but I was perhaps a little less critical of politicians back in the day. I am now convinced that Casey is a full-fledged incompetent at being a U.S. Senator. Sure he won the race for the Senate and is likely in their for years, but he is unfortunately a complete lightweight.

A U.S. Senator who has completely failed to understand the basics of U.S. monetary policy and the consequences of what he is saying is just an absolute embarrassment to the state and the country. Fortunately his rhetorical style is slightly less enthusiastic than a Ben Stein's professor character, so he will likely be ignored by everyone including the sleeping members of the audience.

I'll save the analysis for tomorrow.

SEPTA and its Idiocracy

SEPTA to offer 'fare credit' to ease onboard ticket buy

Another brilliant decision from SEPTA management designed to punish the casual rider - the one group that could actually help it achieve some financial viability.

Every five years or so that have to recall automatic ticketing machines because no one in management ever seems to know or care about their past mistakes with the previous set of ticketing machines. Until about five years ago, these geniuses still had system maps in all of the stations that showed the trains going on lines that were shut down in the mid-80s.

They should spin-off and privatize the regional rail (if they can find a buyer). Then maybe someone will take their ticketing system out of the 19th century and eliminate the need for one union member per car on each train, some of whom make it their full-time job to be surly with passengers who aren’t familiar with the system.

Pakistan

Ann Coulter on Musharraf

I like reading Ann Coulter's because of her wit and writing style. Watching her on TV is painful however since she interviews the same way she writes. It makes her sound like a conspiracy theorists with ADA.

I have to say I totally disagree with several of her conclusions in this article which is apparently demonstrating her neo-con leanings. I disagree with her spin on the democrats position in this area. I do not think that they have any of the motivations or ideals that she states they have. My own conclusion is that the foreign policy of the democrats for the last 30 or so years has been to wait to see what the GOP leadership position is on an issue and deride it as being the wrong approach to achieve the exact same solution. The democrats want us in as much of a perpetual state of war as the neo-cons, right now they don't hold the presidency, so what the Bush administration does they will decry it as the wrong solution. When the dems are back in power, the republicans will go back to doing the exact same thing.

There is just so much to go after in this article it's not even funny:

The entire history of Pakistan is this: There are lots of crazy people living there, they have nuclear weapons, and any Pakistani leader who prevents the crazies from getting the nukes is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all rolled into one.

This is an interesting analysis since Pakistan developed nukes under the prior regime of which Musharraf was a member, before he ousted them in a coup. A bunch of Islamic crazies didn't do it, his buddies did it before he stabbed them in the back. And when they did it, we basically did nothing to stop them or admonish them. And once he took power, he did nothing to dismantle or destroy the weapons. He just sat on them.

Now the technology has now apparently made it over to Iran directly from Pakistan and so we are now threating to invade Iran even though they don't have the weapons yet. Why didn't we do the same for Musharraf when he thumbed his nose at us, the U.N., and the non-proliferation treaty (you know, the things we are using as excuses to invade Iran)? Because even though he is a thug, he is our thug. For now at least.

Musharraf has been a crucial ally of ours since Sept. 12, 2001. His loyal friendship to the United States while governing a country that is loyal to al-Qaida might prove dispiriting to the terrorists.

As I recall, Musharraf refused to help us initially when we wanted to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan. That is why we are still using bases from the former Soviet republics is Asia. For this completely lack of cooperation, we forgave billions in Pakistan's debt and gave him approximately $2 billion per year since 2001. This is not loyalty. It is a mix of extortion and welfare. By the way, he hasn't done a thing to shut down the Islamist schools and all intelligence reports indicate that bin Laden has been hiding in his country virtually since day one. All of our reports also indicate that the Pakistan secret service is riddled with Taliban and bin Laden sympathizers, which is why his help as yielded no results. So since he has no control over several regions and segments of his population or Islamic extremists who basically live as independent enclaves, his solution is to lock up all the remaining secular Muslims who want to restore Pakistan to a democracy.

Remember democracy? That is supposedly the latest reason why we need to stay in Iraq. We just can't afford to have it in one of the few Muslim nations with a democratic tradition.

Now, with the surge in Iraq working, Democrats are completely demoralized. Al-Qaida was counting on them. (We know the surge in Iraq is working because it is no longer front page news.)

The surge is not working in Iraq. The casualty rates are as high as ever. The difference now is that the media has stopped sensationalizing it since it may hurt the chances of the democratic front-runners who want to keep us in Iraq until at least 2013.

You wouldn't know it to read the headlines, but Musharraf has not staged a military coup. In fact, he was re-elected — in a landslide — just weeks ago under Pakistan's own parliamentary system.

Wow, the unelected leader who has controlled Pakistan as a military despot since he overthrew the last democratically elected government won in a landslide. I'm sure this had nothing to do with him being the supreme leader of the country through military force and shutting down all the opposition parties and media outlets prior to the election.

But the Pakistani Supreme Court, like our own Supreme Court, believes it is above the president and refused to acknowledge Musharraf's election on the grounds that he is disqualified because he is still wearing a military uniform. That's when Musharraf sent them home.

Perhaps it is because they were reading their constitution, a document which neo-cons find offensive when you bring it to their attention in discussing the role of our government.

Musharraf's election was certainly more legitimate than that of Syrian president Bashar Assad (with whom every leading Democrat has had a photo-op) or Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (adjunct professor at Columbia University) or Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (loon).

Wow. This really warms my heart about Musharraf. She has certainly placed him in the right company in this paragraph even if she doesn't see the irony.

Pakistan is a country where local Islamic courts order women to be raped as punishment for the crimes of their male relatives. Among the Islamists' bill of particulars against Musharraf is the fact that he has promoted the Women's Protection Bill, which would punish rape, rather than using it as a device for social control.

This situation exists precisely because Musharraf has been doing absolutely nothing since 9/11 to reign in Islamic fundamentalists in his own backyard. He is the world's best paid welfare recipient. I suppose Coulter thinks the if Bhutto takes over she would be in favor of this type of treatment for women? No, but Bhutto has never proven to be our thug.

The Litte Green Book

One of the biggest crimes with our education system - especially in history and social studies - is the lack of explanation about what could be called basic conservatism and basic capitalism. Instead, our history is mostly taught around personalities, not principles. This might be because younger minds do not understand such abstract concepts or see their application to the world. It could also be that we are lazy and prefer to make history into fun stories.

What I would define as true conservatism is perhaps more like libertarianism. It is the idea that the focus on individual rights and freedoms should be the foundation of society. This train of thought is apparently fundamental in the Federalist Papers and perhaps more so the Anti-Federalist Papers. The idea is that the founder fathers, when forming a new government, decided to make the individual the focus rather than the state or someone who represented the state. This was a fundamental change in Western Thought, which, although based on earlier philosophers (Locke, Hume, and Hobbes), was tried for the first time in practice with the United States.

I call this idea of the focus on the individual true conservatism for two reasons: (1) it hearkens back to the philosophical origins of the nation and (2) it repeats the sentiments in Goldwaters's Conscience of a Conservative.

Dovetailing into this is the capitalism propounded by Adam Smith which could also be accurately characterized as philosophy focusing on the individual. Pure capitalism, however, has taken much of a beating in the 20th Century in the form of the welfare state, the creation of the Federal Reserve, Social Security, and the advent of Keynesian Economics. What we have now is the freedom to engage in capitalism within the confines of a welfare state that takes a substantial portion of our earnings no matter how we choose to earn a living. This does not prevent some from amassing great fortunes, but many of those fortunes are made on the back of the masses in the form of coerced spending from the government (such as military spending) or monopoly created by government fiat (such as cable TV companies).

But here is my point. Conservatism and Capitalism, as I have defined them above, based on the focus on the individual, appear to have a tough time making converts in the U.S. The democratic party, has more or less become hostile to the free market in every form decrying every problem that occurs as a result of the "excesses of capitalism". The Republican party claims to be for both of these items, but in recent years has done the exact opposite on nearly all fronts. What's more, is that many regular people registered as Republicans do not understand the ideals of capitalism or conservatism as anything more than a platitude. The Republican party has, in reality, become the party that professes to keep taxes low and to support the pro-life movement. It does nothing else to forward the ideals of capitalism and conservatism, and often acts against these interests to steal issues from the democrats by either expanding government programs or bringing home government pork.

What struck me most recently about all of this is that my sentiments are neither new nor original nor recent. What is written above is basically a paraphrase of the opening of Conscience of a Conservative by Goldwater (or his ghostwriter actually). These sentiments are repeated today in the Ron Paul campaign as well as by the Austrian School of Economics with its emphasis on individual behavior and pure capitalism. These sentiments are also found in Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. To my great misfortune, I have only starting to embrace the ideals contained in the books recently. To my horror I realized that most people in the U.S. have no real concept of any of these ideas, even the few that are informed about them, because the ideals of conservatism are either loathed because of the label, or not understood by their supposed supporters.

As much as I have enjoyed reading portions of these works, I have to admit that they can be tough reading. They are written with passion but they are not passionate reads. Even Atlas Shrugged, which attempted to turn these ideals into a more enjoyable novel format, was not something I was able to finish - and I have read Moby Dick at least three times. In my mind, the problems is perhaps one of formatting. Essays to a great job of explaining how you reach your points, but the essayist often forgets to concisely summarize these points, obviating the need to constantly reread these works to try and understand their conclusions.

I would propose that modern capitalism and conservatism really need a sort of new "little green book" or something similar to a short Bible to help spread the message. The message has to be one of simple, short sentences, organized by topic or along some other lines that clearly expose the basic tenants of modern conservatism. Perhaps literary stories or actual history could be used to illustrate points. The point is that we need a work that either gives basic principles to help define modern conservatism and also to help shape arguments whenever a question arises as to "what is best" for a particular situation. A work that can be quoted as chapter and verse - even if only guidelines. In addition, it is probably a good idea to have a work of literature that is really enjoyable and relatively short that exemplifies these tenants. It can be an historical novel. It could be pure history. Both these philosophical/economic and literary works could even be combined just as the Bible combines Genesis with the laws of Leviticus. There may be such a book out there that explains conservatism so succinctly, but I have not seen it.

NATO and Giuliani

"Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die." - Charley Reese

NATO "established a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party." - Wikipedia

NATO formed in 1949 in reaction to the Soviet Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. When the Cold War ended, NATO did what any other entrenched bureaucracy would do when it's original purpose had ended: it attempted to expand.

And what exactly has this mutual protection bought us since the Cold War ended? Well, every time we are attacked or seek to go to war as NATO, France, one of the only NATO members with a functioning military, refuses to support us. What happens when two NATO members threaten to go to war with each other as Turkey and Greece nearly did on a few occasions? Nothing. Or rather we act as a mediator, which has nothing to do with our role in NATO and does not depend one iota on our role in NATO. We also likely sent money to both sides as supposed foreign aid to keep them quiet.

So now Giuliani wants to expand NATO to Japan, India, and apparently the rest of the known world. Which will mean what? Nothing except more expenses. Pakistan, our long-time quasi-ally, has been involved in three major wars with India since their independence after WWII. Would we defend a NATO India against a non-NATO Pakistan, then? A better question, of course, is why we would spend U.S. money and risk U.S. lives over who controls Kashmir? Would we attack China if India engaged in another war over Sikkim? Has Giuliani ever even heard of these wars?

I'll write more on this later, but for now it seems that our only reason to keep expanding NATO is basically to give the appearance and perhaps the reality of diplomatically isolating Russia and China from the rest of the world. Constitutionally this is the wrong decision. Morally it is the wrong decision. In practical terms it will ruin our economy and just give us new enemies that we do not need to fight wars over lands where no American lives. Do we really need to gear our foreign policy to making sure their is an American soldier buried in every square mile of soil on Earth just to show we can do it?

GOP keeps promoting clueless as qualified

Fred Thompson's stunning error

Romney may flip-flop, but at least he has enough understanding of both sides of the issue to intelligently talk about his position - whatever it happens to be at the time. We already know Thompson has no work ethic. Now he shows he has no understanding of his own party's platform or what his own position on abortion actually means. I could care less about the abortion issue, but this guy has millions of social conservatives thinking he is an incarnation of Reagan (who was also a flip-flopper). Reagan could at least pretend to be pro-life effectively. Thompson just keeps showing he isn't even township supervisor material.

Think about it this way. If he can't extemporaneously answer a basic question that has dominated American politics for 35 years - a question that he should have known was coming and about which he has probably been coached hundreds of times - what hope to we have for this guy making any intelligent decisions about any other issues that he may face? Especially ones that are a little more complicated than the abortion issue.

Is a vote for Rudy a vote for war?

Rudy once again demonstrating that he has no idea about anything regarding foreign policy. "Show you support the military" his advisers tell him. "I know, I'll call for the expansion of NATO to India!" Brilliant. He also wants to include Japan, with whom we already have a treaty, even though Japan's constitution prevents it from having military forces operating outside of its own defense. That is kind of the antithesis of what NATO is about. Again, absolutely brilliant.

Beyond Obscene

Pennsylvania taxpayers fund rapping groundhog, G-Hog

Monica Yant Kinney | Rapping G-Hog got this to say...

People should get worked up about this but won't. Our state government is truly a laughing stock.

The worst part is that our government is being used to encourage people to enter the health care industry not because there is a shortage of people, but because they want a cheaper labor market. Think about it this way. If these jobs paid well enough, they would have not trouble finding people to work in the industry. But why pay $40,000 a year if you can hire someone for $25,000 a year? How do you do that? Get state government to foot the bill to increase the supply of people in the job market. That way, when you have a new job to fill, instead of 2 applicants, you can have 10 and then you can start to lower the pay when you realize there are more qualified workers than available jobs.

This is the same thing the IT field does with claiming there is a shortage of qualified IT people, necessitating an increase is the supply of H-1B visas.

General Motors Loses $39 Billion

I believe I have ranted about this before. GM and Ford and a lot of other American companies need to be completely restructured or allowed to die a quick and painless death if we want to continue having manufacturing in this country for anything.

Anectodal evidence suggests:

• Most executives are overpaid (at least based on the results they produce)
  
• Most companies are strapped with labor deals that leave them unable to make quick changes or innovate in any areas
  
• Detroit has no clue what the markets want and are always five years behind in trends
  
• Government will bend over backwards to subsidize these dinosaurs with unfair tax breaks and tax money (corporate welfare) which only keeps them alive to get more subsidies instead of actually forcing them to change
  
• At the same time, government will step in to over-regulate these businesses to the point that they can't produce anything at a competitive price
  

As a simple moral point, it is time to end the subsidies (and some of the regulations while we're at it) and let these companies either adapt on their own or die.

Carter Country

Carter, unlike Bush, faces reality on West Bank issue

My respect for President Carter disappeared years ago. My respect for Bob Novak has been knocked down a nudge on this issue.

Israel leaving the West Bank will not end Palestinian terrorism against Israel or bring peace to the region. A substantial number, if not most, of Palestinians view ALL of Israel as being an illegal occupation and will not rest until it is "wiped off the map" like the Iranian president has predicted.

Look at the simple facts of just the past few years. In Gaza, Israel completely dismantled all of its settlements, pulled out, and let the Palestinians run things on their own. What did the Palestinians do with their new found freedom from Israel? Before the last Israeli soldier left, they started launching rockets into Israel from their now liberated homeland. In the first few months they dug an underground tunnel into Israel and kidnapped an Israeli soldier (who is still missing by the way). Then they overthrew their own elected government and declared Gaze to be under Sharia.

This did not happen because Israel refuses to leave the West Bank. It happened because Israel left Gaza. If Israel leaves the West Bank, the exact same thing will happen. Those who want Israel destroyed will continue to attack Israel and no concession in the world will change that. To this day, the rocket attacks continue from Gaza. The West Bank, on the other hand, is relatively peaceful because the legitimately elected government of Palestine is running the show. The instant Israel leaves, that government will again be overthrown and Hamas and its backers will get another safe haven from which to attack Israel.

Palestine is not nor will ever be a democracy any time in the near future. If it was, you might see concessions from Israel resulting in a two-state solution. Instead, Palestine will be like every other Arab nation. Whoever has the most guns runs the country. And the people who have the most guns in the West Bank and Gaza are the ones who want to destroy Israel. Even if 90% of Palestinians would be satisfied with a two-state solution, none of them would ever stand up for Israel's right to exist or work against Hamas or other groups. This is because they would taken out in the street and shot within five minutes of saying anything that might be construed as a positive comment about Israel. You can negotiate with a democracy. You cannot negotiate with armed thugs. This is something Carter never understood as president and never will.

Also, by the way, the two-state solution was what the original UN mandate called for and what Israel went along with in 1948. The sole reason Israel has had to occupy so many other territories is because every time they attempted to play nice with their neighbors and try to work within the mandate of the two-state solution, they would be invaded. After implementing almost 90% of Oslo, they got Arafat flipping over tables and calling for a new intifada. Why? Because without Israel as an enemy, Arafat and his thug successors in Palestine have nothing to offer their own people.

A two-state solution is what the U.S. wants. It is not what the majority of Palestinians want and it is not what Israel should want unless they are willing to do what they should have done a long time ago. I stick by what I said several years ago, which is Israel should completely withdraw from the West Bank, and as soon as the militants start up their attacks again, Israel should go full force into both territories and occupy and settle them for good. Right now, the status quo is about Israel's only good alternative to keep the violence to a minimum. The day they withdraw from the West Bank, they should either be prepared to fight another major war or just give up the fight altogether.

Black on Black Image Portrayal

Protesting Demeaning Images in Media

Normally I dismiss many cries of racism that involve perception rather than overt acts against people or individuals as being without any substance, but I found some interesting points that the protesters here bring up with which I agree:

(1) America is a segregated country.

(2) Media portrayals of one segment of the population can affect they way a group as a whole is perceived by groups that have little or no contact with that group.

I think I agree with both of these statements, however, I do not ultimately side with the protesters on this for a number of reasons. This is primarily because of my moral convictions that bright line rules are often the best for society to use not because they necessarily always yield the best outcome in every situation, but because they make it a lot easier for everyone to make decisions. It's saves time when we know the rules and they are easy to apply to reality. That way we don't spend years and years fighting over minutiae building toward some amorphous ideal or sentiment that is not easily quantifiable and subject to abuse through subjective and selective interpretation. In this case, my bright line rule is against censorship of any kind by adults free to make their own decisions.

While I agree with the protesters that they are likely right as to the result and affect of these negative portrayals having a negative effect on black people as a whole, I abhor the idea of censorship. The simple argument when the media is playing this type of crap is, of course "turn it off", however, their argument is they can turn it off, but that won't prevent other people from watching and getting the wrong message. Absolutely true. In this case, of course, it is even more ironic because the protest is against a black run and owned network who employs black actors to play roles that other black people find demeaning to all black people as a whole. Not being a minority in this country, I cannot really relate exactly to the concerns, but I do understand and do believe it is problem. However, my moral guidelines that speak out against censorship tells me that telling the network "thou shalt not do anything which offends" is not the way to go. I do not have the solution just yet though.

As far as the US being a segregated country, yes. It is segregated racially, religiously, and any other number of ways depending on the criteria you select. Racial segregation, however, is obviously something that we have struggled with in this country for a long time. We have not needed laws to keep Lutherans and Methodists from fighting with each other, but we have needed laws and the force of arms to keep places from being segregated. We are probably more obsessed with racial equality in this country than any other country in the world. In Belgium the two native populations are at each other's throats figuratively. In the rest of the world, when there are two or more distinct races, one usually dominates the others through force of law. In those countries, racism is the official undeclared policy, but often the issue does not get a lot of attention until it breaks into full scale war or genocide (e.g. Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc.). In this country the official policy is to oppose racism and we almost seem to celebrate it the way we overdo it by finding it where it doesn't exist or exaggerating what I would call petty racism into a major crisis. These episodes wind up taking away from the real fight against racial equality because it is something that already exists under law and can only be won in people's minds. Turning a flip, unscripted remark from Imus into a showcase for why America is a racist country just convinces many people that there is no struggle left if the country goes DEF-CON 1 on a one-time idiotic remark.

The problem is, however, that this nation will always be segregated racially one way or another because this nation will likely have a steady stream of immigrants from one part of the world or another for the foreseeable future. Right now, we are seeing areas that are essentially segregated Mexican areas. There are stories of some basically acted as independent enclaves and those stories are only likely to increase. So do we take the complicate route of constantly emerging standards to fight different prejudices or stereotypes as they arise, or do we draw the bright line of saying censorship is never the answer? I say the latter of course because I believe in the long run it is the most sustainable and easiest to administer.

So in my mind, using segregation as an issue, while valid, only further complicates the formula for determining how and when the media is allowed to portray members of one group of another (even if only collectively as a by-product of a trend). Would there ever be a time where a white portrayal in the media is viewed as being so negative and wide-spread that it should be censored? It is, of course, always argued that because whites are the majority of the population in this country, the problem isn't the same. I think that is valid, but let me ask what is more damaging to society as a whole: (a) negative fictitious portrayals of black youth in the media or (b) the seeming glorification of the actual lives of young white females such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears (not to mention the Girls Gone Wild genre).

I can tell you which will more likely have a negative impact on my family. I have black neighbors and friends that my family will come into contact with on a regular basis, so there is likely no risk of my children assuming that Snoop Dogg or Flavor Flav are representative of black people as whole. There is, however, a huge risk that my daughters will grow up thinking that being sexualized at a young age is OK. But, I will not protest the networks. I will shut off the TV. I will have to deal with the fact that the rest of the world likely has the media-warped perception of young white girls as glorified, out-of-control hedonists.

Armenian Genocide Resolution - part III

Pelosi's Armenian gambit

And, of course, leave it to Krauthammer to cut through the issue, lay it out clearly, and make the points that everyone needs to know to understand this issue.

He also clearly points out how quite a few members of Congress not only have a tin ear but are astoundingly clueless when it comes to grasping not only current U.S. foreign policy, but also history and the entire purpose of even having a foreign policy. Remember these people make decisions about how billions of our money gets shipped abroad to despot A or to insurgent B who may one day become despot B.

Do we really think the U.S Congress is capable of handling any critical thinking in intricate matters like this when most seem to base their opinions solely on what their constituents say in opinion polls? That, by the way, is the answer to the third question. Pelosi was pandering for donations and to pass some "feel-good" legislation. She probably figured the controversy would give her more publicity and make her seem tough.

All it proves is how badly she and most of Congress on both sides of the aisle do not understand foreign policy. This also once again clearly demonstrates why the U.S. really should be out of these types of regional struggles on the other side of the planet altogether. Congress of course doesn't care since it is not their money and foreign policy is just another issue to generate talking points for the next campaign.

As we now know, the Democrats have no intention of pulling out of Iraq even if they take the White House. This is because their feigned opposition to the war was solely for the purpose of increasing their numbers in Congress in 2006. At least some of the more strident anti-war dems have figured out that they have been sold out. The rest of them will return to the sheep fold as it is explained why a 180 degree turn isn't really that dramatic and was actually the right thing all along. War is peace.

"Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away..."

Armenian Genocide Resolution - part II

Cal Thomas on the Armenian Genocide resolution


A well-reasoned article as to why passing the resolution is a bad idea in terms of current U.S. foreign policy. This is no doubt the same reasoning that both parties have decided is correct as to why the U.S. Congress should not pass the resolution.

Now read the article again and ask yourself why are we so concerned about the internal affairs of Turkey? Why are we worried about a country who has only proven itself to be a semi-democracy? Turkey is a democracy basically until the Muslim fundamentalists win election in which case, they are always immediately overthrown by a military coup. Doesn't that really make this more of a military dictatorship? One which, by the way, is the direct descendant of the secular Turkish military who carried out the Genocide.

Read the article again. I will try to boil down the big and convoluted picture. We are worried that a rebellious group who is using terrorist tactics to liberate a compatriot ethnic enclave operating out of a foreign nation that we are now occupying as the only stable military force available in order to create a peaceful democracy in that foreign nation might be attacked inside that foreign nation by an long-time ally in a war that ended 20 years ago that is a nominal democracy as a result of a resolution from Congress condemning events that took place 92 years ago and that are still the subject of much controversy and speculation which might in turn result in that long-time ally voting invading that foreign nation and electing a fundamentalist government as it has routinely done in the past when it has had the chance to act as a full democracy, which it isn't. All of this is of course being done in the context of spreading democracy in the region, which of course we don't really support fully for Turkey because it would lead to the creation of a state that supports fundamentalist Islam which would undermine our long-term attempts to stabilize (and interfere) in the region.

Is any of this really authorized by the Constitution? Isn't this the antithesis of avoiding the "entangling alliances" that George Washington warned about before he left office? Haven't we been burned enough by intervening in wars that aren't really our wars to begin with?

In the end, of course, the U.S. government will continue to give away as much or our money as possible to everyone involved on every side of this conflict and say that it somehow makes our country safer to be not only the world's policeman, but also the world's nanny and janitor.

Armenian Genocide Resolution

Pat Buchanan on Armenian Genocide Resolution


I have few Armenian friends and have heard a few second-hand stories about how various people survived the genocide in 1915. So, of course I believe it was a real event and as significant as the Holocaust. But I'm not sure if I'm missing Buchanan's point here. He has typically been against the expansion of the role of the U.S. military in the world, but he doesn't make that point here. He mostly condemns the democrats for pushing this resolution at a very critical time for what is likely nothing more than pandering for donations.

I agree with him that Turkey has been a very good ally to the U.S. and that the democrats are demonstrating their tin ear for world diplomacy (not that the neo-cons have fared much better in this decade). But if he is suggesting that we should continue to help out Turkey and reward them as allies, that seems to counter his usual sentiments arguing against the war in Iraq and the expansion of the U.S. military to every corner of the world now that the Cold War has ended.

Here are my points for what they are worth:

• I'm not a big fan of government doing anything it isn't expressly authorized to do. The passage of a measure like this, while the subject is obviously serious, strikes me as being about as useless as national broccoli awareness week or the 10,000 other resolutions passed by Congress. If the Armenian Genocide becomes an important issue in one context or another that involves the federal government, then by all means talk about it. Resolutions of this type which don't serve any purpose strike me as the worst sort of pandering. We should make sure it's in the history books, but what role the federal government should play in that is likely none.
  
• I agree with Pat that this is likely going to cause us a lot of trouble with Turkey when we really can't afford it. Ironically, perhaps, the Kurds were also implicated in helping the Turks carry out the Genocide. They should probably also be included in any resolution. Even if they are not, they are likely to feel the negative consequences of it's passage when Turkey invades northern Iraq.
  
• As long as we are a world of nation-states, I accept whole-heartedly the notion that national borders should be drawn along current ethnic and cultural lines for historic ethnic groups (multi-cultural nations such as the U.S. excepted). As such, I think that there should be a Kurdistan and that the northeast quadrant of Turkey should go to Armenia while the southeast should go to an independent Kurdistan.
  
• That being said, if you look at an ethnic map of the Middle East, you will see that Iraq, Turkey, and especially Iran, are such hodge-podges of different ethnic groups that it's any wonder they should be single nations at all. The fact that we are now being steadily drawn into a conflict that resulted from the failure to create an independent Kurdistan in 1921 just goes along with my overall thesis that the U.S. just needs to stop intervening in the world, period, unless our safety is directly (directly) threatened. Otherwise, we wind up with the current mess we are in with Iraq and the likely messes that will arise with Turkey and Iran in the next six months to a year.
  
• I would be more than happy to lose Turkey as an ally if it also meant we would be gone from intervening in the Middle East for good.
  

Blog Action Day

Today is supposedly "Blog Action Day", but I refuse to get involved is these kind of hokey promotions, so I will not be posting anything today.

Getty Spacey about Science

Pinkerton: After Sputnik we aimed high, now our aims are low

Krauthammer: What Sputnik launched

The more I read Jim Pinkerton, the more I am convinced he has no understanding of history, science, or technology. Krauthammer still thinks we should be going to the Moon, but if you read the two articles you will see what an intellectual midget Pinkerton is compared to Krauthammer in terms of understanding the significance of Sputnik and local space travel.

Going to the Moon was a PR event and nothing more. It may have had some impact on the Cold War or our perception as a superpower in the rest of the world, for good or bad, but any positive effects would be impossible to quantify. The real positive by-product of the race for math and science technology spurred (perhaps) by hysterical overreaction to Sputnick was satellite communication, computer technology, and yes even the Internet that Pinkerton says has turned into a collosal time waster.

Then again these things might have happened on their own with government grants or focus on science and math. We love to worship the false gods of politicians who take credit for things that really happened on their own through the invisible hand of people making their own decisions about how to spend their time and money.

I disagree with Pinkerton's negative assessment of the internet being a waste in the form of introspection (i.e. "staring at our bellybuttons") since exploring one's own mind and thoughts can be one of the most productive human activities if used positively to achieve self-understanding or progress our understanding of others. In other words, increasing our own happiness and sense of satisfaction in life. Pinkerton would rather have us wasting billions to go to some cold, desolate place where there is absolutely nothing of value for us. Why not dig a 20 mile deep hole in the Earth and send people down there on exploratory missions? All this money wasted so that the baby-boomers can feel they are part of something big. A giant Woodstock with other people's money which, at the end of the day, is meaningless.

2001 imagined daily shuttle flights to the moon because there was still a sense that there might actually be some purpose to having people on the moon. There might be hidden water or valuable and rare minerals hidden under the surface. I think the flights in the movie were even done by private companies (I remember seeing ads on the TV monitors at least). This has not happened with either the private sector or the government sector for one key reason: it serves no purpose. The moon is a giant desolate rock up close and there is nothing to be gained by populating it.

So let's abandon the belief that spending billions of dollars to put a few people on the moon is "science". It is a reflection of technological achievement, but it is neither science nor anything that benefits humanity other than some government contractors and bureaucrats. Saying that we need to be in space or we will lose our edge on science (by which he really means technological advancement) is like saying American businesses will not be productive unless we have the world's tallest building. A trip to the moon is like holding the record for the world's largest pizza - it's a trivial event that shows you have the ability to do something. Imagine if we spent that money on something productive or let people keep it instead of having it forced away by the government.

Phony Giuliani

GIULIANI HANGS UP ON PHONIES

My mind is pretty much set against Giuliani as being anything other than an opportunist politician. I believe that he handled the 9/11 crisis well from a political perspective (as opposed to say Nagin and the governor of New Orleans in their political handling of Katrina). But as far as what he did in actual work on the ground as mayor, historians will have to sort that out since I've heard both positive and negative. A friend also reminded me that he was basically despised prior to 9/11 although I think Dinkins and Koch were not all that popular at times either. New Yorkers, after all, love to complain even more than the average American.

Here is my favorite quote from the brief article:

"If I had chased all of these frivolous issues, I never would have turned around the deficit in New York City. I never would have reduced crime . . . welfare . . . and I wouldn't have been able to handle Sept. 11," he said.

Besides his usually schtick of riding the corpses of the victims of 9/11, he is doing something that every politician who was fortunate enough to serve in the 90s has done - taken credit for something they had nothing to do with. I stand by my theory that every politician in the US got a free ride in the 90s because of the economy doing so well. Is it just coincidence that the national, state, and local governments all ran surpluses in the 90s? Did we suddenly elect perfect and brilliant leaders who knew how to make things happen? No. They all got lucky because for whatever reason (to be explored later) the US economy boomed in the 90s. Philadelphia eliminated its deficit, Pennsylvania eliminated its deficit, New York City eliminated its deficit, the national government eliminated its deficit, every local school district ran a surplus in the region except a handful. County government didn't need to raise taxes in the 90s.

Now Rendell is in the governor's mansion and we are running a huge deficit. Where is his magic? The batch of politicians from the 90s have all moved up the ladder but the magic seems to be gone. Why? Because they all got lucky. None of them will ever admit this publicly because the public will believe them when they say that they turned around the governments they lead. The truth is that spending, as always, kept increasing, but that tax revenue increased faster than they could spend it. Now that the economy has gone back to its normal pace, we are back to deficits.

As for Giuliani reducing crime and welfare, these are just as much results of an improving economy as turning around deficits and he knows it. But we will eat up anything we hear if it is said with a smile. Giuliani is not by far the only one guilty of this lie, but he is certainly one of the most prominent liars right now.

I'm now convinced that basic practical economics should be a part of every high school curriculum just so students can learn a little bit more about the way the real world works. By that I mean an explanation of government spending, revenue, the consequences of FIAT money, the role of Federal Reserve, and the use of the Dollar as a currency peg for other currencies. That is just as if not more important that basic civics lessons about how government is supposed to work. Especially in the day and age when most "legislation" is actually passed in the form of an executive order. Who cares about the details of the legislative process? The more important thing is what factors influence how the government makes its decisions and passes laws.

Health Care in Canada

Stronach went to U.S. for cancer treatment: report

Stronach is a Canadian MP.

This is of course a tragedy, but proves the point that if you want good health care, you have to come to the United States. Why? Because where there is profit involved, there is a need to compete to be the best. In countries with socialized medicine like Canada and Britain, the lack of profit and motivation on the part of health care providers means consistent and slow mediocrity. You need only talk to someone who lives in such a system to realize how utterly horrendous socialized medicine is for those who have to use it.

Actually, from what I have been reading, the best places in the world right now to get good, affordable medical care are in southeast Asia and parts of Latin America. This is because it is still the "Wild West" there in terms of government interference in health care. Regulations are few so doctors can charge less and still do well. In the western world, your doctor bill is almost more a reflection of HIPAA, malpractice insurance, and other regulations than it is of the actual medical care.

Pennsylvania and its immediate needs

Reform Government
* Eliminate Pension for government
* Eliminate Health Insurance for government
* Eliminate Corruption
* Reduce size of legislature and government in general.
* Appointment of Appellate Court Judges
* Real Open Records Law
* Open government
* Eliminate PHEAA
* More open Lobbying Law

Apply Capitalism
* Eliminate PHEAA
* Lease the Turnpike (use money to fix bridges)
* School Choice
* Eliminate Government subsidies for everything (PNC, Professional Sports, Comcast, etc.)
* Eliminate PA Gaming Commission
* Sell the State Stores
* Repeal and statewide smoking ban in privately owned businesses

Cospicuous Consumption or Capital Investment?

Dubai Tower Now World's Tallest Building


Eventually the oil will run out in the Middle East. Not any time real soon, of course, but almost certainly in the next 50 years. It will likely start declining in the next 30 years, maybe sooner, but as someone who has heard and read such predictions of a sudden shortage occurring in 10 years for roughly the last 30 years, I don't want to make to rash a prediction.

Here is the question though regarding the recent construction of the world's tallest building. There is something called "Dutch Disease" by economists, somewhat unfairly against the Dutch, but it applies primarily to countries that have large natural resource reserves. What appears to happen in these countries is that because so much wealth initially flows from natural resources, the economy develops around exportation of those resources at the expense of manufacturing or other productive industries. The resulting economy is therefore built on a foundation that will ultimately one day collapse through the disappearance of a limited resource.

The problem can witness right now in countries like Iran where, ironically, gasoline is relatively expensive, because so much of the refining of their oil is actually done outside of the country. Other oil wealthy countries seem to suffer the same problem of a lack of other industries because everything is focused on the oil. A roughly similar problem happened historically with Spain. It was noticed that Spain was a wealthy country that was buying up and importing from other countries in Europe and the world beyond, but that this was based primarily on the wealth being taken from Latin America, primarily in the form of gold and silver. Because of this Spain's economy moved to one dependent solely on that supply of money (which was not even produced from other capital such as farming or manufacturing). When the supply of money eventually ran out, Spain's economy collapsed because their natural resource in the form of gold and silver dried up.

The question with Dubai is this: is this building (and the other development in Dubai) really adding to the assets and capital of the country or is just conspicuous consumption. The question is who is going to be occupying those offices and apartments. If they are all solely connected to the oil wealth, than this will be an empty shell in about 50 years. If, on the other hand, Dubai hopes to become a Honk Kong or Singapore (which it can undoubtedly do with the leverage it has now) then we may see a wealthy Arab country looking toward its future.

The problem now with most if not all of these wealthy Arab countries is that they use their money to buy consumer goods and luxury housing for themselves. They do not actually produce anything but oil. This has made the owners of the oil and those closely connected to the owners wealthy, but it has resulted in a country where cheap labor has to be imported from other countries and where there are very few modern jobs in other sectors of the economy.

I realize I don't have any facts to back this up, but when is the last time you saw or heard of anything for sale manufactured in Saudi Arabia? Why are there no major stock exchanges or financial international companies in the Arab World? We all know about Arab sheiks who own luxury real estate in this country and who gamble in Monte Carlo and Vegas, but even what they own eventually will depreciate. Even real estate can become a drain on finances if it is a white elephant not generating any rental income.

I have referred to this type of conspicuous consumption in the oil-rich states as "Elvis Syndrome" because they, like Elvis, suffered from the problem of getting too much wealth too quickly with relatively little effort. Those who don't work hard enough for their money tend to spend it on extravagances that border on the tasteless and gaudy. Gold-plated everything, diamond studded dog collars, etc. Things that scream, look at me, I'm rich! The problem is that most of these items are almost worthless as soon as they are created because they could never be resold at for the same value at which they were purchased.

The question is whether building the world's tallest building is just the cherry on top of a serious investment in Dubai's future or a multi-stories Graceland without the musical heritage.

Three or Four Easy Pieces instead of an Uneasy Peace

The Partitioning of Iraq

Jim Pinkerton: Iraq War storyline has three parts

So the story is not necessarily that the Surge is working, but a de facto partitioning of Iraq has been steadily taking place and that as a result of this loosening of central authority, some of the strife between insurgents (especially the Sunnis) and the central government has disappeared. A Shi'ite civil war of sorts appears to be taking place in southern Iraq, but no one really cares.

In short, partitioning is happening whether anyone wants it or not. I believe this was the best solution to begin with and think that Pinkerton and Krauthammer do not understand why this is a much better outcome than any hope for a strong central AND democratic government. Iraq is simply not ready for that and likely never will be since it is not a nation-state and can only become a nation-state through direct coercion - the antithesis of democracy.

Hoping for democracy and a strong central government in Iraq is sort of like making a college graduate a jet pilot without any training. He might have all of the intelligence in the world, but nothing short of real training and real experience will make him capable of handling a complex and powerful machine correctly. Iraq needs to go through the same process that every other thriving democracy on the planet has undergone in order to evolve to representative government controlled by a written constitution. This has always been a multi-generational process, so don't hope for any magic in this area any time soon.

Avoiding Accountability

Retreat of the anti-war Democrats

Another good one from Pat Buchanan who, like me, was opposed to the invasion of Iraq in the first place. He is once again highlighting the hypocrisy of the democrats on this issue, who have spent much of the past several years criticizing being "misled" into voting for the war and then criticizing the way Bush has handled the war.

Now that they are in power in Congress they continue to prove that they are truly the party without ideas. This is because their basis for any vote continues to come from whatever they think will keep them in office. They voted for the war not because Bush "lied" to them (they had the same information available from which to draw their own conclusions), but because they were afraid that if the war succeeded they wouldn't be able to take credit or that their lack of support might be used to portray them negatively. So much for having principles.

Now that the democrats finally have power and have the ability to end the war or put more pressure to bring the troops back, they are still stuck with the idea of criticizing being their #1 aim and goal. Being a critic is easy because you can never fail. If they actually made decisions based on what they believe (or what they said they believed last year) then they could change current U.S. policy on the issue. Instead, they have decided that it is much safer to criticize and pretend they have no control over the situation rather than carry out their promises and risk the consequences.

They even attempted to undermine General Petraeus' credibility before his report was released this week in order to keep up the criticism without actually offering any ideas. The point isn't whether things are going good or bad to them, the point is that no matter what happens Bush's policies are wrong. One day, they may come up with their own. In the meantime they will sit back and claim that all of the wasted lives and money are Bush's fault entirely and that they are merely reluctant passengers along for the ride. It would be interesting if we could one of the dems on the spot and have them elaborate a detailed strategy, implement it, and see what happens. That is, of course, impossible, but an interesting thought.

High Speed Rail

Gas Costs Spark High-Speed Rail Interest

Amtrak booming amid bust

I'll probably have more on the specifics of these articles later - although the topic will undoubtedly come up again.

I am a big fan of high speed rail and have ridden on it in Europe and Japan. It is expensive, but much cheaper than the airlines. I'm not sure how much of a subsidy it gets from the various governments, but a guess is that both the airline and rail get a rough equivalent in subsidies which is why they are both pricey but not astronomical. In the U.S., we subsidize the roads and the air traffic control system (and bailout the airlines periodically), but the rail lines, without a subsidy, that compete with heavily subsidized forms of transportation, lose money, and so are accused of being inefficient, a relic of the past, a waste, etc.

The stats are already out there regarding how little public rail gets compared to our roads and air traffic control system, so I won't go into that here.

My thinking though is not to worsen the problem of government subsidies by giving even more taxpayer money away - this time to the railroads, but that the subsidies for the other forms of transportation should be taken away. Let the airlines pay for the air traffic control system or add it to the price of the airline ticket. Toll the interstates and make them independent commissions so that the money goes solely to funding the care and maintenance of the road instead of just another source of revenue for government to waste. I'm sure that will keep the tolls sufficiently low enough to not burden interstate commerce while lifting that expense out of the federal budget. If not, then the amount of money to support the highways must be for out of proportion for the benefit they bring.

If all of these forms of transportation were allowed to compete fairly - without government subsidies, we would see a huge turn-around in the use and profitability of passenger rail. It could likely be turned over to a private company and a private company would probably bring high speed rail to the country a lot faster and on better terms than any central planning from the government.

That said, I think the government may have a role to play in passenger rail in two major areas. The first is deregulation so that trains can travel faster in residential areas. The second is in straightening out the right of ways. I don't like the idea of government seizing private land for someone else's gain, but this would be a public need. Even then, although I'm not fond of the idea of government seizing property except for emergencies, I think the government could at least help in obtaining the rights for the right of way to avoid litigation that might be undertaken solely for the purpose of driving up costs, rather than giving people a strictly fair sum for their house. The devil will be in the details of that undertaking however.

So, in short, stop subsidizing everything with our tax dollars, give them back to us, and we will use them to determine what forms of transportation we want to take. Right now we all have to drive in cars or take planes because that still makes the most economic sense since we are already keeping those prices low with our tax dollars. Let the trains compete on equal terms and I'm sure we will see high-speed passenger rail in 10 years. At the going rate, we will either have no change or have some massive tax increase to cover a government controlled fiasco/boondoggle that will promise high-speed rail and deliver an Edsel.

And if we follow this plan and passenger rail still fails, we should let private companies take over Amtrak. They will immediately increase the amount of freight on those lines and be able to deliver freight at a much cheaper costs that trucking. This will take more trucks off the roads and decrease the amount we have to spend on maintenance of the roads.

The Cult of Global Warming

Have you ever noticed how Al Gore and the cult of Global Warming resemble a lot of other cults from our recent past. Remember the Bagwan Shree Rajneesh? He encouraged all of his followers to give up their belongings in order to achieve peace and enlightenment. He then used their belongings to purchase and travel around in several Rolls Royces.

So now we see Gore proclaiming the message of Global Warming encouraging all of us to achieve peace and happiness by abandoning our greedy and consumptive ways as he darts between his three giant houses in a Gulf Stream. It's hard for me not see the parallels.

Add to the is the overriding need for the members of the cult to threaten, belittle, and shout down anyone who dares to defy the orthodox opinion that everyone already agrees that Global Warming is definite and that it is definitely causes primarily by human activity and you have all the makings of a loyal cult following.

I still have to do a little more investigation of the matter, but I have read and seen that the so-called "Global Warming" statistics and facts all stop around the late 1990s, because the meteorological data shows a slight cooling trend.

By the way, what happened to the massive hurricane season were we supposed to have the last several years? Is the theory wrong? No. The great thing about the cult of Global Warming is that if any prediction about the weather is wrong, it is because Global Warming has so radically changed the environment that even predictions about the effects of Global Warming are no longer accurate! Pure sophistry. Unfortunately a cult based on a sophistry that has government funding and a brainwashed following can change the world.

The times is soon!