Pater's Place

Why keep tax rates low?

2011-11-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

We know what happens when there are high tax rates for high earners. They pay less.

During the Carter Administration, the tax rates were 70% at the highest level. The top 1% paid only 18% of the income tax. Now when they pay about 30%, the top 1% pays 30% of the income tax.

If you increase the top rate to 100%, they will pay zero. Who would work if they would not gain? Of course productive people, if they work less, produce less, so we are all poorer, with fewer houses, cars, cloths, or electronic devices.

The productive workers are not slaves. We can't whip them to force them to work. We depend on them handing the products of their work over to the government willingly. That happens best at low rates.

Better than a single tax at high rates, is many taxes at low rates. At low rates, it is easier to pay the tax than to change your behavior to avoid the tax. That means willing compliance.

Democrats like high rates, apparently. They can then broker tax exemptions for the very few in return for campaign contributions. GE used tax exemptions last year to pay less than no income tax. The Democrats then use the campaign contributions to tell stupid people how lucky they are that the rich have high tax rates, not that Democratic rich ever pay those rates.

Republicans seem to prefer lower rates. They use the threat of higher tax rates promoted by the Democrats to get campaign contributions from the mass of people who can't manage a special tax exemption.

Why a recession?

2011-11-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

http://modeledbehavior.com/2011/11/13/prices-clear-markets-ctd/

Above blog post has a good explaination of why there is a recession.

People want too much money for what they do. They don't understand that the value of money has increased. People are pulling their money from investments, and buying gold, a practically worthless commodity with high liquidity costs.

So the work that their money does leads to no production. Why do it? Because we don't trust the government's fiat money. We expect the government to respond with inflation. The government can create money from nothing, and increases in productivity can't keep up with that.

Why do people want too much money? Because they expect inflation, just as they expected inflation in the Carter Administration, and demanded a new job pay them in advance for the inflation they inspected. Inquiring minds may recall that the Phillips curve asserted that some inflation encouraged consumption, and it was thought that creating inflation would decrease unemployment. But that only worked until people caught on and expected unemployment. At that time, rather than accept a job that resulted in lower pay from inflation, they demanded higher wages to pre-empt the inflation they inspected. If they didn't get that job, they stayed unemployed or under employed for longer, and so the unemployment rate of the later Carter administration remained high.

Under Reagan's first term, the Fed chief cut money creation, and thus inflation expectations. People didn't expect so much inflationary compensation, and accepted jobs.

What is wrong with prices now? We have a Socialist as president. So soon as it became likely that he would be elected, it was expected that taxes would increase, that money would be created to pay for the government programs, and eventually inflation would be the result. People know that drill, and want to be paid up front for the money they will lose to inflation, and so don't take jobs. Company management don't see how they can raise prices for their products, and so don't increase production. Government has stopped or slowed the forclosure process to clear the housing glut. Housing prices are wrong, but not allowed to change.

Recession. Not man caused- Government caused.

Prices clear markets.

Illegal Immigration

2011-10-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

The US has about 9% unemployment, and about 10% of the people in the US are illegal aliens. One way to reduce unemployment is to reduce the number of illegal aliens.

1. Build a fence.
2. Patrol the country within the borders to capture and remove illegal aliens.
a. Offer a cash reward to state and local police for illegal aliens who are turned over to INS/Border Patrol
b. Offer a cash reward to private citizens for information on illegal aliens.
3. Require "instant check" of citizenship for schools, hospitals, landlords, employers.
4. Increase significantly the number of legal immigrants permitted from Mexico. Legal immigrants would have to apply at the US consulates in Mexico. Evidence of illegal entry into the US would be disqualifying.

Thus illegal immigration would be reduced, unemployment would be reduced.

2011-08-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

A good site to add to blog rolls.

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/

Site for political surveys.

2011-08-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

PQ Survey Results

Here’s your PQ: 4.1

Politicians with similar PQs are:

Michele Bachmann (R-Minn, 2007-09) PQ=-4.1
James DeMint (R-S.C. 1999-2009) PQ=5.1
Newt Gingrich (R-Ga., 1979-94) PQ=11.4
Richard Nixon (R-Calif., 1947-52) PQ=12.5

http://www.timgroseclose.com/pq-survey-results/

No surprise, except I was surprised how good taking this survey was at bringing back to mind how many seriously bad legislative and budgetary ideas have been passed in the last few years.

Sherman Tanks

2011-08-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

"If you can be seen, you can be hit. If you can be hit, you can be killed."

That was the mantra repeatedly drilled into our heads when I was a young Second Lieutenant of Infantry.

Observe
Orient
Decide
Act

Those are the 4 steps of John Boyd's decision making process. In combat you have to Observe what is going on, Orient yourself based on what you see of your enemies' acts in terms of what you understand of his doctrine, and make an attempt to understand what he is trying to do. Then you Decide what you do to counter, and you Act. If you can go through the 4 steps faster than your enemy, you have a big advantage. If your enemy goes through the 4 steps slower, then his fires are inaccurate, his maneuver is uncoordinated. Your advantage increases with each time you cycle through the OODA loop. Eventually your enemy will lose his will to resist, and attempt to escape.

The Sherman tank had superior ability to Observe. The Sherman gunner had a gunner's periscope that gave him better ability to pick up a target, rather than the very small optics of German tanks. The US tanks also were faster to act, having the ability to train their tank cannon while moving over fairly rough ground. The M-4 main gun stabilizer was, over fairly rough ground while moving at 15 miles per hour, had about a 70% probability of hit from 300 to 1200 meters. That meant they could hit repeatedly with the coax machine gun, and had a good chance of hitting with the main gun. The turret traverse was fast, 15 seconds to traverse 360 degrees, and for a 30 degree traverse, about a second and a half. In short, the Sherman could be the first to see, the first to hit, and its advantages would continue the longer a battle lasted.

By contrast, A Panther had to identify the target, command the vehicle to come to a halt. The driver would haft to shift to neutral, and then race the engine to permit the Panther's hydraulic traverse to use high rate. The Panther gunner had to pick up the directed target through the sight, and then make small corrections with hand wheels. The Panther had a very good gun (so good it was copied by the French and mounted by the Israelis to the Sherman after the war). and began many battles from an ambush position. There was a high price paid by US tankers when they were ambushed by Panthers. But as the battle continued, the US advantages increased as the battle continued. German fire became less effective. German maneuver became increasingly disjointed from the units mission.

The Sherman had lighter frontal armor, and its crews tried to engage M-4 front to Panther flank. LtC Abrams of the 4th Armored division was sent to the 12th Armored division to coach them in how to use the Sherman to win. M-4 has a weaker gun, thinner armor, but greater reliability, narrower width, and shorter height than Panther. Its fast traverse and ability to train the gun while moving gave the M-4 crews a great advantage when attacking from flanks. So get to the enemy flanks, sneak up on them. Play cowboys and Indians. Use covered and concealed routes.

And so, when US tankers took his coaching to heart, they were able to win. Not without losses, and not without risk. but in battle after battle the US was able to take ground defended by Panther, and take ground where there were no Panthers.

German armored units were only 5% of German combat units. The M-4 with its 75mm gun had a great HE round with good effectiveness against those 95% of German combat units. Against the 5% of German armor units, the US was able to concentrate more units. That itself was a great advantage.

The Lanchester equations are differential equations which describe combat effectiveness based on relative strengths. The relative strengths provide an advantage to the larger force, how much advantage is expressed as an exponent in the equations. When armed with spears, the exponent is 1. (A 5 to 1 numerical advantage gives to a 5 to 1 combat advantage). when armed with repeating weapons, the exponent is 2 (a 5 to 1 advantage in numbers gives a 25 to 1 advantage in combat power). The ability of the M-4 to conduct long road marches and still be able to fight at the end was of great advantage.

A German officer, captured by the 2nd Armored Division asked "how many 2nd Armored Divisions do you have?" His intelligence appreciation put the 2nd Armored Division 70 miles north of the Ardennes. It was not possible for an armored unit to break contact, drive 70 miles in winter, and fight at the end of such a road march. Well it wasn't possible for the German armored divisions. That is exactly what the 2nd Armored division had done. Nor was that rare. The 10th Armored Division at Bastogne, and the the 7th Armored Division at St. Vith had made similar road marches.

What happened during the Ardennes Offensive? The German main effort was to be made by the 6th Pz Army. They were to lead with an artillery barrage, and exploit with an infantry infiltration. Then the Armored striking force was to dash through the holes thus created. The artillery barrage was of little effect. The infantry infiltration did not succeed. The armored units were able to punch through a weak point, but had little backup. without the infantry followup, without the German artillery able to move forward, and above all without German air cover, the US engineers were able to blow bridge after bridge in front and on the flanks of the German attack. US truck companies were able to move fuel depots away from the identified attacks.

The main battlegroup of the 1st SS Panzer Division was Kampfgroup Peiper. He got the job because as a battalion commander he had taken two Russian towns, and murdered all the inhabitants prior to burning the towns. His mission was the bridges over the Meuse. He never came close. He lead his 5,800 men against the US, and only 770 were able to walk back without their vehicles. Over 500 were captured and interrogated as POWs on his actions, and their testimony was instrumental in his war crime trial. Peiper's unit murdered over 350 Belgian civilians, and about 135 US soldiers.

Further south, the 5th Panzer Army was also able to penetrate, and captured two regiments of the 106th Infantry Division. The 5th Pz Army was unable to accomplish their mission and that of the 6th Pz Army too. Their losses were too heavy, their progress too slow. The 2nd US Armored division was able to move from the north, the 4th Armored division from the south.

And so the Ardennes battles were decisive. Germany lost 6 months of their increasingly anemic armor production. They would never attack again.

Government Policy

2011-08-27T19:02:00.001-07:00

Now that the Republicans have increased the budget ceiling, there is no chance to cut back on government spending in the short term. What a revolting development.

What government departments should be cut 100%?
1. Department of Education: Department of Defense schools should be returned to Department of Defense. The rest should be cut.
2. Department of Energy: Nuclear weapons production facilities should be returned to Department of Defense. The rest should be cut.
3. Veterans Affairs should returned to Department of Defense.
4. Labor should be cut, without exception.
5. Health and Human Services should be cut without exception. To enable the market to adapt to the changes, the cuts would be scheduled to take effect over 10 years.
6. Housing and urban development should be cut without exception. To enable the market to adapt to the changes, the cuts would be scheduled to take effect over 10 years.
7. EPA should move portions that regulate government property to the Dept of the Interior. The rest is cut without exception. Laws that pretend to regulate emissions by protecting emitters from liability be repealed. Emitters would become liable for damages done by their emissions.
8. Department of Agriculture should be cut without exception. Government's regulations which permit substandard products to be sold without liability would be abolished. The death penalty for the organization is fitting for the perpetrators of the Pigford discrimination.

The government unilaterally made promises by law, they can change the terms or abolish the promise through law. If they were privatized, losing the right to coerce money, but having to provide cost competitive services or lose customers, then Social Security would offer more than a tenth of a percent of interest per year in benefit, or people would be free to make alternative arrangements. The money in the 'trust funds' would become available to productive businesses to borrow. Social Security could be cut up into many smaller funds, (A through Z) each in competition with each other, and in competition with OTHER PRIVATE ENTITIES. None of the new SSA-SSZ entities would be too big to fail.

How to Fix the Budget Crisis

2011-03-23T12:50:00.001-07:00

The proper legislation that the Republicans can use to fix things is to not extend the debt ceiling. The US govt revenue is 2.2 trillion a year. without borrowing, spending will have to drop to that level, rather than continue on at 3.7 trillion a year.

That will mean that the unconstitutional government Ponzi pseudo-insurance programs will have to be cut. They are about 60% of the budget, and cutting them to nothing would solve the problem nicely.

Happy New Year

2011-01-05T05:06:00.000-08:00

More on the Navier Stokes Equations:

Edward Lorenz developed a sample set of equations that use nonlinearities from the Navier Stokes equations. He has, kindly published "The Essence of Chaos" setting forth his developing understanding of the importance of that non-linearity. I recommend that book.

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-we-got-here-is-failure-to.html

2010-03-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

the unconstrained vision in action....

The Navier Stokes equations are nonlinear. It is impossible to predict weather far in advance. The Sun is nonlinear. It is impossible to predict far in advance.

The Economy is nonlinear. It is impossible to predict far in advance.

Life has to be lived. You need all your brain to live your own life. Noone can live your life for you. Noone should be allowed to command other's lives, or if they give commands, the commanded must assent, or the command becomes null.

Carbon Credits Here....Getcher Carbon Credits Here!

2010-02-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

Just in case anyone wants carbon credits, here are some at a very low rate: FREE.

For anyone who logs into the comments and enters a number, they will be granted for the current year, a number of carbon offsets, based on a ton of carbon dioxide that will not be emitted.

You see, California, where I live has bad forest fires every year, with tons of carbon dioxide being emitted by those fires. Fewer fires means less carbon dioxide.

I pledge to you that I will not set forest fires to cause carbon to be emitted. Based on the number of carbon credits for which people sign, I will not set forest fires large enough to emit that many tons of carbon dioxide.

So, you can sign in, sign up, and walk away feeling good about activities that burn hydrocarbons, knowing that I am out there not setting fires, and that this compensates for that many tons of carbon dioxide emitted by your activities.

Take that good feeling, and enjoy it. It should be at least equivalent to the Carbon Offsets used by Albert Gore Jr. to make his Billions, and probably even better, as you don't waste money paying for him to fly around spouting nonsense. Further, stopping the forest fires costs money. By me not setting fires, not only are tons of carbon dioxide not emitted, but the money required to fight fires, and the risk to fire fighters who fight the fires is not incurred. And I don't have to risk being jailed for starting fires.

So this is a win for everyone all round. You get a good feeling, Gaia gets less carbon, I get less legal risks. And I charge exactly the benefit that is incurred from Albert Gore Jr. 's company's carbon credits. Nothing.

Snort!

Plane crashes into IRS office by man driven crazy

2010-02-21T09:11:00.000-08:00

Mr. Joseph Stack III was mad, and it is madness to look for reasons behind his acts.

Still, it is unjust that IRS code forbids high technology workers from being self employed, able to sell their services to a variety of customers. The reasons why the code does this are as follows:

Lawyers wrote the IRS code.

Lawyers have arranged that noone else can bill like lawyers, able to get hundreds of dollars per hour.

Lawyers have enacted structural provisions that forbid engineers, programmers, accountants, or other high technology workers from working efficiently. This forced inefficiency lowers the average pay of non-lawyers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/opinion/21/shulman.html

National Review Post

2010-01-02T00:14:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney wants to waterboard terrorists until they qualify for federal wetlands status...

LoL.

Rachel Lucas went to Auschwitz....

2009-08-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

And nails it.

http://www.rachellucas.com/index.php/2009/08/24/we-have-to-go-into-the-despair-and-go-beyond-it-by-using-for-someone-else/

My effort to use my despair was to adopt two children, when I lost my wife and children to jealousy and the legal system. So I was able to continue, in the hope that someday I could make sense out of it.

I haven't yet, but I have done some good in the mean time.

Everyone loves Magic...

2009-06-27T21:21:00.001-07:00

http://sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/everyone-loves-magic/

The Stimulus Is Really a Stopulus

2009-06-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

http://poorandstupid.com/2009_06_07_chronArchive.asp#7824593798058793193

So the stopulus is doing its work. Unemployment is increasing. Just as FDR intervened unconstitutionally to keep unemployment high to permit him to justify more government intervention. BHO is doing the same.

Last time we paid 300,000 deaths when US weakness prevented our allies from stopping Hitler, and this time who knows.

On the good side, we are now in so much debt to China that they would never use an Electromagnetic Pulse weapon, as that would clear the books of all debts.

2009-03-07T22:29:00.000-08:00

Another great post from Don Luskin.

He appears frequently on Kudlow and Company, and is a financial type for Trend Macro. He suggests that the price of gold will go to and past 2000, making today's gold price of 1000 an ounce a bargain.

He recommends GOLD right now. A great deal to recommend gold. It is not denominated by dollars, and so is proof against the inflation we expect as the eventual response to economic slowing. When the government creates money from nothing, they get to spend it first. When the government creates 1 new dollar for every existing dollar, the value of existing dollars is now halved.

I expect the government will make gold illegal to own, just as FDR made it illegal to own gold. Too many people invest there, and thus become proof against the governments scheme to steal the value of their effort.

"Take a look at the chart, below. It shows the daily progress of the S&P 500 in terms of percentage change from the very top. The brown line is the change from the recent all-time highs on October 9, 2007. The blue line is the change from the all-time highs just before the Great Depression, September 6, 1929.
http://poorandstupid.com/2009_03_01_chronArchive.asp#7577755198963279094
As of yesterday's close (Thursday, March 5), the S&P 500 has lost 56.4% from its all-time highs 513 days ago. At the same point in the bear market associated with the Great Depression, that is at the 513 day mark, the S&P 500 had only lost -- only! -- 49%. "

Good luck kids.

401 K

2009-03-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

I can only hope that the people who voted for Obama had very big 401 K assets. I had little for him to steal by inflation, or to ruin by his economic policies, so as one who did not vote for Obama, poetic justice is thus less applicable to me. He could, by the twin policies of weakness and fecklessness, draw us into a war, so when he violates his pledged word by keeping us in Iraq to kill terrorists, and provide an alternative to violent Islam, that is for the good.

First Black president

2009-01-29T21:57:00.001-08:00

Add 1 to the candidates for the first black president. Condi Rice.

Since the President's term ends at 12:00 noon, and Obama had not yet taken the oath, we would start going down the succession list. Dick Cheney's term also ended. Speaker of the House Pelosi did not resign her position, nor did Dingy Harry Reid. That means the "acting President" prize went to Condi Rice as Secretary of State, for the 6 minutes or so before Joe Biden took his oath. Then Joe Biden held the honors until Senator Obama took the oath properly the next day.

They say that scabs don't heal if you keep picking at them!

Ate dinner with my brother Tom

2009-01-29T21:52:00.000-08:00

He was visiting on business, and close counts in this family. He will be moving to Savanah Ga. With luck he will be able to sell his current house. His kids are getting old, the youngest is 16!!!

He is the smarter brother.

I told my Dad's old joke about the French Foreign Legion jail... Well received. I guess I can tell a joke!

So Sorry

2008-12-27T12:33:00.000-08:00

Computer crashed back at the end of November. Finally got a new one.

I owed my legions of readers an explanation.

Hillary is disqualified from being Sec. State

2008-11-30T21:45:00.000-08:00

Because of the prohibition in the Constitution for a legislator taking office where the pay was raised during the previous session. Though she did not vote for such a raise, still, it is a provision put in to avoid corruption.

Anyone think that isn't important for the Clintons?

Another poem to commemorate Veteran's Day

2008-11-11T21:41:00.000-08:00

The Immortals

I killed them, but they would not die.
Yea! all the day and all the night
For them I could not rest or sleep,
Nor guard from them nor hide in flight.

Then in my agony I turned
And made my hands red in their gore.
In vain - for faster than I slew
They rose more cruel than before.

I killed and killed with slaughter mad;
I killed till all my strength was gone.
And still they rose to torture me,
For Devils only die in fun.

I used to think the Devil hid
In women’s smiles and wine’s carouse.
I called him Satan, Balzebub.
But now I call him, dirty louse.

Isaac Rosenberg

We should all appreciate that the old song 'the Hokey Pokey' is inspired by WWI delousing exercises, typically conducted in the nude, with cold water. That is what it is all about. War is nasty, brutal, but not the worst thing. The worst thing is a people so debased that they can imagine nothing worth fighting for.

I offer my poor thanks to those better men than I who bravely signed up for their tour of duty, not knowing the end, and had the courage to follow through.

Election Results

2008-11-05T02:56:00.000-08:00

During a war that cost 680,000 lives, a great American offered perspective and consolation on lost. The occasion was A. Lincoln's second inaugural address. Then, as now, many Democrats fought to destroy the Union and to establish and extend the systematic extension of the institution of human Slavery. Then, as now, Republicans and many Democrats served the cause of the Union, and to extend freedom within that Union. Then as now, there were too few Republicans to win election outright, and some compromise had to be made with the best Democrats to secure the future of the nation.

"Fellow-Countrymen:

AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Charles A. Beard, a famous historian was once asked "what are the lessons of History?".

His response: "The lessons of History are Four.
1. Whom the G-ds would destroy, they first make mad with Power.
2. The Mills of the G-ds grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
3. The Bee fertilizes the Flower it robs.
4. When it is Dark enough, you can see the Stars.

He also said:

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

FDR made the Great Depression Great.

2008-10-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

In case someone thought it was just my ravings:

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate
By Meg Sullivan| 8/10/2004 12:23:12 PM
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."

Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt's policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."

The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

Roosevelt's role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming him the 20th century's second-most influential figure.

"This is exciting and valuable research," said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. "The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can't understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won't happen again?"

NIRA's role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional within two years of its passage.

"Historians have assumed that the policies didn't have an impact because they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding," Ohanian said. "We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices."

Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt's anti-competition policies persisted — albeit under a different guise, the scholars found. Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four more years.

The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices. Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices, the UCLA economists calculate.

NIRA's labor provisions, meanwhile, were strengthened in the National Relations Act, signed into law in 1935. As union membership doubled, so did labor's bargaining power, rising from 14 million strike days in 1936 to about 28 million in 1937. By 1939 wages in protected industries remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been, based on 1929 figures, Cole and Ohanian calculate. Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high. By comparison, in May 2003, the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was the highest in nine years.

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

Now why did Enron failure not cause a general downturn, while the failure of Fannie May and Freddie Mac are causing a general downturn? Because the government intervention to save investments will screw up everything else.

The Panic of 1873

2008-10-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=477k3d8mh2wmtpc4b6h07p4hy9z83x18

An interesting article on the panic of 1873, and its similarity to today's market misfortunes.

Also provides insight to the origin of the words 'tramp' and 'bum'.

Why did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go bust?

2008-09-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

Follow the Money.

Lower tax rates, increase tax income. It works again.

2008-09-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

" According to the negative (Obama) view, when Bush's tax cuts took effect, the share of income taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans should have declined. The rich, in this scenario, benefited from the senseless giveaway, putting a greater and greater proportion of the tax burden on the poor. Under the positive view, by contrast, the share of income taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans might increase even when you cut their tax rates, since they will work harder and reduce their efforts to avoid taxes."

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.28544,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Of course, somepeople think that the rich should pay less in taxes. If so, they should raise tax rates on the highest income earners- repealing the Bush tax cuts would be one way to do this

I Am Covered with Glory!

2008-09-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am getting a T-shirt for correctly guessing that Sarah Palin would be McCain's pick AND that Biden would be Obama's pick.

Yes, I do usually have the right answers. Cassandra has nothing on me.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was resolved to vote for McCain as a sad duty, as better than the alternative. I looked at Senator McCain as a man of integrity, but a man who was not always on my side. I worry about McCain Feingold as legislation intended to shut down political speech. I am concerned about his enthusiasm for extending special status (beyond amnesty, but giving special rights as a reward for their crimes) to illegal aliens.

I know that all Presidents get some things right, and some things wrong. I was convinced that Ronald Reagan's tax cuts of 5% the first year, with 10% the next two years was too slow to have effect in time to avert recession. I was also convinced that Ronald Reagan's amnesty for illegal aliens was a mistake. Still, he was a great president for the things he was able to get right. He was able to convert Jimmy Carter's feckless concern about human rights to a stronger course of arming against the "Evil Empire".

McCain gets an 83% on the American Conservative Union scale. That is far superior to the 8% of Obama, or the 9% of H. Clinton, or the 14% of Biden. Still not so hot compared to the 92% of Duncan Hunter, but a clear difference, and enough to guide a voter like me.

Sarah Palin! What a wonderful lady! In high school she was Sarah-Cuda, the Point Guard who led the team, called plays, and made the winning free throw for her state basketball championship with a broken foot. That alone is more leadership than ever shown by Obama. A hunter, who knows responsibility to the land, and to the animals harvested. As Mayor for 10 years she couldn't put out a nice speech and then run for higher office. She had to meet people where they were, and perform the 'art of the possible' over and over again, and as part of her work she cut the mayor's salary. As a member of the oil and gas commission, she found evidence of corruption and then quit, to have the freedom to report on the corruption of its members. She supports drilling for oil in the US, which will reduce the income of the Arab and Russian terrorist states.

She also worked as a professional fisher, and has experience with the silly regulations associated with that industry. She plead 'no contest' to a charge of using a gill net without the proper permit. She was permitted to use the gill net as a member of a fishing boat crew, but when she took over the boat (another leadership position) she didn't re-register quickly enough. I submit that she has learned how minor details in regulations can be used to enable corruption among enforcement officials.

She ran for Governor without the help of the Republican party and defeated the incumbent Republican governor in the primary.

There is an ethics complaint against her. As governor she fired the head of a police agency. That she had the authority to do so is not in question. The defense of the police agency head seems to be weak: he alleges he was fired because he would not discipline an officer who drove his patrol car drunk, shot a cow moose out of season, and shot his 11 year old son with a taser gun). An officer who does this should not be protected from discipline because he is the Governor's brother in law. I know this is an unusual concept in Alaska where the former governor's daughter replaced him as US Senator. The rest of us understand.

McCain has plenty of National Security credentials. Palin's are minimal, but still more than Biden or Obama. As governor of the only State with two international boundaries, her duty as head of the Alaska National Guard is more than the honorary position associated with, say the National Guard of Arkansas.

I am impressed with Senator McCain's choice. I will, for the first time in my life, contribute to a presidential campaign. Good job John! Great choice!

Update: for more information see following web site.
http://www.audacityofhypocrisy.com/2008/08/30/sarah-palin-vs-barack-obama/

Update again: About half way through her speech, she seemed to get better. What happened, is the teleprompter malfunctioned, and continued scrolling through the applause. It basically ran away from where she was in the speech. So. She. Gave. The. Rest. Of. The. Speech. Without. It. From. Memory.

Way to go Sarah-Cuda! Another winning basket with a broken leg!

Update the third: http://www.overstream.net/view.php?oid=n1ronxelmtin&query=Palin&pt=1&pn=1&pc=1&pu=1&pl=-1&related=search&skip=0

Has a video of the Lion King scene where Scar lays out his plan to murder his brother and betray the pride to the Hyenas, only now we have German voice over with a scheme to lie about Sarah Palin. Very nice match of the lyrics to the character's movements.

Pistol lethality, and trancendent things.

2008-08-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

Most important for a pistol round is hitting the target. You get zero to negative points for all rounds that miss.

Second most important is penetration. The important bits are at the back, and you may have to shoot through the bad guy’s arms.

Third most important is the size of the round, and the important parameter is area diameter squared divided by 4 times 3.14…. Because the target is probably movin, you don’t know exactly what bit of the body the bullet will destroy, so the advantage is to the bullet that destroys a little more.

The.380 is functionally the same as .357, .38 special, or 9mm. between 0.355 and 0.357 inches diameter. The .380 doesn’t have a lot of energy, so if your bullet expands, it won’t penetrate. If it penetrates, it must not expand. .357 magnum has more energy, so the bullet can be designed to expand a bit, and will still penetrate enough. A round that starts off at .45 inches diameter, aside from being heavier (which helps penetration) starts off with more area. An expanding .45 round (flying ash tray) can expand to larger than a 12 gauge slug.

Of course the best is not a pistol, but a shotgun. The 12 gauge, with number 1 shot puts (with 3 inch magnums) 25 each thirty caliber pellets through your enemy. That is 25 opportunities to cut a spinal chord.

Lavoisier, the discoverer of Oxygen dabbled in politics during the French Revolution, and was sent to the guillotine. His last experiment was to blink his eyes as long as possible after his head was severed. It took 16 seconds for that head to die, and another 1000 years will not produce another like it.

This was originally posted as a comment here:
http://www.justinbuist.org/blog/2008/08/15/okay-so-380-sucks/#comment-16403

John Edwards, et al.

2008-08-08T20:31:00.001-07:00

Mr. Edwards has shown us that he is as sleazy in his personal life as he was in his professional life. Just as he had damaged defendents perform in front of juries, so that he could make money off them, he has had his wife, damaged by his own narcissism, and disregard of marital oaths, perform in front of the public, so that he could make what ever capital he could from her performance. In particular, her post at "Daily Kos" admits that she was lying to them, as she covered up her husband's philandering, in an attempt to further his pursuit of political power.

At some time we have to stop feeling sorry for the woman scorned, and start feeling revulsion for the performance. The scorning was a wound inflicted by Mr. Edwards. The damage from the recent stories about Mr. Edwards and his continuing liason with Ms. Hunter (and child) are caused by his continuing efforts to not pay a penalty of shame. It is his continuing sleaziness that strikes us, and his wife's continuing willingness to support his sleazy life. If it was an affair, and the child is not his, I suppose his visit (documented by the National Inquirer) was only to have one moreadditional illicit sexual liason. This is the behavior she admits to defending. This truly makes her Hillary's soulmate.

I really liked the old days better, when a cad was caught in an improper relationship that he would, or would not apologize for himself, but would never trot out his wife, child, or girl friend to protect him from the contempt that he deserved. This hiding behind the skirts of ones scorned wife is truly cowardly. That is exactly what we have learned to expect from Silky Pony or Slick Willy.

Psychology, Its Uses and Limits

2008-08-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

Humans are a social animal. We do our best work with others. We modify our behaviors based on the preferences of the people with which we spend time. This is natural and desirable. When we lose the people with whom we spend time, we care, and the loss hurts. Nothing fills the void, but new friends, loves, can paper over the hole. This papering over is what we have to do, to keep going. It is not a disrespect of those we have lost (or misplaced) but rather, it is an affirmation of the great love we have that we seek out others. We need Love.

Depression is tough. Now there is effective medicine to treat it. It is not something to take recreationally. When I took it, (A seratonin uptake inhibitor) I was expected to produce a great product, of significant importance, with minimal help, while I was in the grip of a legal battle with my ex-wife. I couldn't do it. My inability to perform was horribly frustrating, and made everything worse. The anti-depressants were lifesaving for me. Seeing a psychologist got the workload lifted. The antidepressants let me perform better, though not heroically. Then for a long time I took the antidepressants because it took the edge off my depression. That means that I didn't have to keep watching my train of thought, to keep from drifing into a sad pattern. Finally life was good enough that I could stop taking them. I am smarter without them, but must school myself to avoid getting back into trouble.

If life gets tough enough, I will take them again.

Psychologists make a living by keeping people on the string, coming back. They don't get paid for empty spots on their appointment book. The old saw is "If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails." Lawyers are paid 300 dollars an hour and up to think of ways to resolve problems with legal papers, testimony, and documents. Psychologists are cheaper than lawyers (in part because they are not locked into opposition with other shrinks, as lawyers are in opposition to other lawyers.) Always remember, the psychologist does not fix the problem. Only you can do that. A Lawyer or a Psychologist may cut down on murder or suicide rates, but is no substitute for Love.

My advice: Get the help you need, but if you don't have a resolution in 3 sessions, find a different shrink. That doesn't mean you should stop going after 3 sessions, but there should be substantial progress. There are so many "schools" of psychology, that if one doesn't work, see someone else who uses a different one. Read Victor Frankl's book "Man Searches for Meaning". A slim book that did me more good than any psychologist. Worth rereading every 5 years or so.

On the Anniversary of the First Use of Nuclear Weapons

2008-08-06T19:13:00.000-07:00

It is important to appreciate that the Japanese nuclear physicists got samples of the dust, and determined that Little Boy was a Uranium-235 bomb. They had their own nuclear program, and knew that Uranium 235 is hard to separate from U-238. They reported to the cabinet that this was a catastrophe, but would not happen again. The Japanese cabinet decided to continue the war, with the intent of accepting 30 million Japanese deaths if that was necessary to cause 1 million US deaths. They were sure that the US would not accept that many casualties. They were certain that they would be able to force the US to negotiate with them.

Fat Man, dropped later on Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb, as shown by analysis of the dust. The Japanese physicists knew that plutonium could be chemically separated from Uranium 238, and mass production of nuclear bombs must be anticipated.

The US knew the Japanese strategy, due to masterful decryption efforts, grouped under the code name MAGIC. Fat Man saved a million US lives, and 30 million Japanese lives. It also prevented Soviet occupation of part of Japan.

Happy Flu

2008-07-25T08:18:00.001-07:00

Medical Progress, shown by our evolutionary past

2008-07-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30708_New_Yorker-_Darwins_Surprise

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/03/071203fa_fact_specter?currentPage=all

I have said for years that we need a manufactured retrovirus that inserts the code to correct juvenile diabetes, HIV, poryphria, or other genetic diseases. Perhaps Crohn's, and when we get really good at it, Tay-Sachs and Down's Syndrome.

Besides the HIV, the other retrovirus that is commonly known is Parrot Fever, which can also be passed to humans from other birds.

It would be a wonderful way to provide immunity to many diseases, such as measels, polio, mumps, chickenpox, malaria, anthrax, mad cow disease, flu. Malaria kills over a million people each year. Diabetes kills half that. Syphillis, Chamidia, gonorhea.

And instead of having to immunize people with every passing generation, this would provide lasting immunity to you, and all your descendants. Never to have to see your child get malaria. Never to worry about menegitis. We could even begin to make progress on the hundreds of cold viruses.

Then there are the cattle diseases. Hoof and mouth, Mad Cow.

Global Warming

2008-07-17T22:05:00.001-07:00

1. First, Global Warming would be a good thing if it was to occur. Hot is associated with more growth, more life. Cold is less life. Iowa under a mile of ice grows no corn.

2. Global warming, if it was to occur would be caused by the Sun. The Sun is much much bigger than the Earth. A small change in the Sun would outweigh a big change in the Earth.

3. Global warming has stopped. The hottest year on record was in 1934, the second hottest year was 1998. Since that time temperature changes has flattened, if you take 2002 as an average year. If you take 1998 as your baseline, the Earth has cooled markedly. California had a billion dollars in fruit damage last year from cold. This year it snowed in Jerusalem and Baghdad. That hasn't happened in 40 years.

4. In fact the Sun's output has slowed. High solar output is marked by many sunspots. There are few the last few years. This year, only one little one. Not much we can do about it.

5. Global warming enthusiasts use climate models that are flawed, unable to predict the weather, (an easy task) they pretend to foretell climate. Bogus.

6. The most important greenhouse gas is Water vapor. Carbon dioxide is much less prevalent, and so, had much less of an effect. Increased carbon dioxide levels would lead to increased growth of the plants we eat, and the diatoms that are a major source of energy for fish in the sea. Again, what the global warmed overs would have us believe is bad, would in fact be good.

7. NASA's record of ground measurements are misleading. Long term measurements only go back 200 years. Most measurement locations are in the center of what are now growing cities. The city affects temperature measurements, because of hot parking lots, air conditioning outflow, car exhausts. NASA's record of airborne/satillite measurements only go back 40 years or so. Again, it is hard to compare 1998 with 1934 if you don't have any measurements for 1934.

8. Even if manmade global warming was real, the worst thing we could do is to move decisions from the distributed intelligence that is the market, and move them to the limited intelligence that is the posturing preening politicians. Governments are responsible for the worst disasters of our experience, from the Nazi Concentration Camps, or Soviet Gulag, or the destruction of the Owens valley of California by the LA County Water district.

Colonel Bud Day

2008-07-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

Bud Day is, to say the least, an interesting man. He was John McCain's cellmate in the North Vietnamese hellhole. He nursed John McCain, when John was down to 95 lbs, with various limbs in a cast.

Bud Day holds both the Medal of Honor, and Air Cross. He served in the Marines in WWII, in the Army Reserve, and the Air Force. He has a Juris Doctor in law.

Bud Day has 35 years of military service. He was shot down over North Vietnam in a F-100 and was captured. Despite injuries, he escaped, and made it almost to South Vietnam before being recaptured. The NVA broke his arm, then put it in a cast at a crazy angle with exposed bone ends sticking out. The intent was to be sure that he could never again fly. After John McCain was somewhat better, they gathered small bits of bamboo. John McCain was able to rebreak Bud Day's arm, and then set it using bits of bamboo as a splint. Some of John McCain's bandages were used as a dressing for Bud Day.

Bud Day survived, and was able to fly again. Upon being repatriated, he was told that the success of his treatment showed that the North Vietnamese provided good medical care. Bud Day was able to correct that doctor, and told of his treatment by Dr. McCain.

So, some more dirt for the Obama campaign: In addition to not paying income tax for 5 years, John McCain also practiced medicine without a license.

As Paul Harvey used to say, "Now you know the rest of the story. Good day!"

Obama and the 13th Amendment

2008-07-04T19:54:00.000-07:00

"when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service. We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities."

So, how does this square with the 13th Amendment which prohibits involuntary servitude? Is this the change that the first Black President brings us? A return to slavery for our children? What tasks will the slave children be required to perform? When a child tries to escape, will there be a class of slave catchers to go after them? Will the authorities be empowered to shoot them down lest they escape?

Note that children who's parents can afford to attend send them to elite private schools are exempt from Obama-Slavery.

Slavery- Its for the Children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dev%C5%9Firme
July 27, 2008 Update: The Ottoman Turks had a practice called "Devshirme" whereby they collected boys from Christian homes, and enslaved them. They were converted to the state religion, Islam for the Turks. I have no doubt that under Obama, the conscripted slaves would be converted to the new approved state religion- Communism.

Happy Fourth of July

2008-07-04T12:45:00.001-07:00

YANKS

O’Leary, from Chicago, and a first-class fightin’ man,
For his father was from Kerry, where the gentle art began:
Sergeant Dennis P. O’Leary, from somewhere on Archie Road,
Dodgin’ shells and smellin’ powder while the battle ebbed and flowed.

And the captain says: “O’Leary, from your fightin’ company
Pick a dozen fightin’ Yankees and come skirmishin’ with me;
Pick a dozen fightin’ devils, and I know it’s you who can.”
And O’Leary, he saluted like a first-class fightin’ man.

O’Leary’s eye was piercin’ and O’Leary’s voice was clear:
“Dimitri Georgoupoulos!” And Dimitri answered “Here!”
Then “Vladimir Slaminsky! Step three paces to the front,
For we’re wantin’ you to join us in a little Heinie hunt!”

“Garibaldi Ravioli!” Garibaldi was to share;
And “Ole Axel Kettleson!” and “Thomas Scalp-the-Bear!”
Who was Choctaw by inheritance, bred in the blood and bones,
But set down in army records by the name of Thomas Jones.

“Van Winkle Schuyler Stuyvesant!” Van Winkle was a bud
From the ancient tree of Stuyvesant and had it in his blood;
“Don Miguel de Colombo!” Don Miguel’s next of kin
Were across the Rio Grande when Don Miguel went in.

“Ulysses Grant O’Sheridan!” Ulysses’ sire, you see,
Had been at Appomattox near the famous apple-tree;
And “Patrick Michael Casey!” Patrick Michael, you can tell,
Was a fightin’ man by nature with three fightin’ names as well.

“Joe Wheeler Lee!” And Joseph had a pair of fightin’ eyes;
And his granddad was a Johnny, as perhaps you might surmise;
Then “Robert Bruce MacPherson!” And the Yankee squad was done
With “Isaac Abie Cohen!” once a lightweight champion.

Then O’Leary paced ‘em forward and, says he: “You Yanks, fall in!”
And he marched ‘em to the captain. “Let the skirmishin’ begin.”
Says he, “The Yanks are comin’, and you beat ‘em if you can!”
And saluted like a soldier and first-class fightin’ man!

–James W. Foley

Thanks to Tam, at "View From the Porch" http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/
and Munchkin Wrangler. http://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/

Point of History: Congress voted for independence on 2 July, accepted the text of the declaration on 3 July, which was copied out by a minor civil servant over night. On the 4th of July, Congress left town.

The Aftermath of Heller....

2008-06-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

From: Lanier, Cathy (MPD)
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 6:35 PM
Subject: Supreme Court Update

[INDENT]Residents,
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court today struck down part of the District of Columbia's
handgun ban. I wanted to drop you a note to let you know the immediate impact of this
decision.

The Supreme Court's ruling is limited and leaves intact various other laws that apply to
private residents who would purchase handguns or other firearms for home possession. It
is important that everyone know that:
[INDENT]a.. First, all firearms must be registered with the Metropolitan Police Department's
Firearms Registration Section before they may be lawfully possessed.
a.. Second, automatic and semiautomatic handguns generally remain illegal and may not
be registered.
a.. Third, the Supreme Court's ruling is limited to handguns in the home and does not
entitle anyone to carry firearms outside his or her own home.[/INDENT]

Lastly, although the Court struck the safe storage provision on the ground that it was too
broadly written, in my opinion firearms in the home should be kept either unloaded and
disassembled or locked.

I will comply with the Court's reading of the Second Amendment in its letter and spirit. At
the same time, I will continue to vigorously enforce the District's other gun-related laws. I
will also continue to find additional ways to protect the District's residents against the
scourge of gun violence.

Residents who want additional information can visit the Metropolitan Police Website at
[url=http://www.mpdc.dc.gov/gunregistration]Metropolitan Police Department: Gun
Registration[/url]. Residents with questions are encouraged to contact the Firearms
Registration Section at 202-727-9490.

Sncerely,
Cathy Lanier
Chief of Police[/INDENT]

Future failure of Social Security will lead to change

2008-06-25T20:05:00.000-07:00

I anticipate Social Security will change to provide 7 years vacation after 20 years of work. Then, after you take the 7 years off, supplemented by as much money as you managed to accumulate (and it may be possible to accumulate money every year, through thrift and investments!) then you go back to work, to earn a second 7 year retirement, then you go back to work again.

Mark Twain in his "Letters from the Earth" describes what Methuselah's many times great grandchildren thought about him. One of his descendants was Noah, who was quite upset that the old guy kept dropping by and making fun of the ark.

So, live long enough to be a problem for the children. Then be a problem for the grandchildren, then the great grandchildren...

See, It just gets better and better. Someday you will have more time in Civil Service than you have in the uniform Air Force. That will be a big day.

Kipling has a story about "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat" , where a gentleman lives what to him is a perfect life: 20 years a student, 20 years a soldier, 20 years a head of household, rising to be prime minister of his country. Then he leaves his position, and becomes a traveling, begging holy man, spending 20 years a priest. At the end of that time he is permitted to perform a miracle, in the commission of which he sits down to rest in the position of prayer, and dies. The villiage who he saved built a shrine to him, and worshiped him as a very G-d.

Each life well lived has different roles. Actions suitable for one role are abhorrent in another, only to the extent that they are not ridiculous. Life is the point. In all the vast expanse of space, the only place where we know of life is here. Of all the world teaming with life, the only intelligent species is Man. And some of us aren't too bright, and those of us who are have our bad days. Everyone is ignorant, just on different subjects.

Don't worry. Be happy!

George Friedman gets it wrong. Completely wrong.

2008-06-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

Jewish World Review June 12, 2008 / 9 Sivan 5768

The U.S. Air Force and the Next War

By George Friedman

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has fired the secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force chief of staff. The official reason given for the firings was the mishandling of nuclear weapons and equipment related to nuclear weapons, which included allowing an aircraft to fly within the United States with six armed nuclear weapons on board and accidentally shipping nuclear triggers to Taiwan. An investigation conducted by a Navy admiral concluded that Air Force expertise in handling nuclear weapons had declined.

We should keep in mind that the Air Force did away with Strategic Air Command, which had the expertise in handling nuclear missions. They combined SAC with Tactical Air Command (TAC) that had no mission. TAC had the duty of training fighter pilots and fighter units who would be forwarded to Pacific Command or NATO in the event of a conventional war. Now any association with large aircraft (B-52, B-1, B-2) is NOT career enhancing.

FOCUSING ON PRESENT CONFLICTS
While Gates insisted that this was the immediate reason for the firings, he has sharply criticized the Air Force for failing to reorient itself to the types of conflict in which the United States is currently engaged. Where the Air Force leadership wanted to focus on deploying a new generation of fighter aircraft, Gates wanted them deploying additional unmanned aircraft able to provide reconnaissance and carry out airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is a matter of balance. Certainly the stealthy F-22 is not needed to fly the friendly skies of Iraq, performing close air support missions. The AC-130 and A-10 are much more suited to that mission. The F-22 and its little brother the F-35 have few weapons. They are not weapons suitable against massed enemy ground forces. They are weapons suitable against poorer countries attempting to match US and allies in high technology fighters. F-22 against other fighters in the air, or F-35 against other fighters in the air, or on the ground, both using Precision guided missiles: These are battles that the US will not lose.

But there are many more potential battles than "Wack a Mole" against terrorists, or Wannabe powers like Iran, Venezuala.

There are Naval battles defending Taiwan, Phillipines, or South Korea from Communist China. There is a conventional battle for western Europe against an agressive Russia. In either of these scenarios, the F-22 and F-35 would be essential in defensive actions to protect US allies, or US bases from attempts at coercion.

These are not trivial issues, but they are the tip of the iceberg in a much more fundamental strategic debate going on in the U.S. defense community. Gates put the issue succinctly when he recently said that "I have noticed too much of a tendency toward what might be called 'next-war-itis' — the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict." This is what the firings were about.

Naturally, as soon as the firings were announced, there were people who assumed they occurred because these two were unwilling to go along with plans to bomb Iran. At this point, the urban legend of an imminent war with Iran has permeated the culture. But the Air Force is the one place where calls for an air attack would find little resistance, particularly at the top, because it would give the Air Force the kind of mission it really knows how to do and is good at. The whole issue in these firings is whether what the Air Force is good at is what the United States needs.

A good rule of thumb. Those who talk about things like that, don't know. Those who know, don't talk. The "Bush Lied" crowd are long on accusation, and absolutely lacking on any evidence.

There is a neat alignment of the issues involved in the firings. Nuclear arms were the quintessential weapons of the Cold War, the last generation. Predators and similar unmanned aircraft are part of this generation's warfare. The Air Force sees F-22s and other conventional technology as the key weapons of the next generation. The Air Force leadership, facing decades-long timelines in fielding new weapons systems, feels it must focus on the next war now. Gates, responsible for fighting this generation's war, sees the Air Force as neglecting current requirements. He also views it as essentially having lost interest and expertise in the last generation's weapons, which are still important — not to mention extremely dangerous.

Mr. Friedman has this right. The threat of Nuclear Incineration was indeed the weapon of the last war, and like most weapons against freedom, was aimed at the people, not the Government of democratic nations. Mr. Friedman doesn't see looking past the last war as a virtue. Nor do I. I see present and future wars as a continuium, and we have to be ready for nearly any possible situation, while providing enough force to win and win big in the current war. You don't win big with papercuts. You don't get allies for a war against a strong nation by promising them they will lose.

FIGHTING THE LAST WAR
The classic charge against generals is that they always want to fight the last war again. In charging the Air Force with wanting to fight the next war now, Gates is saying the Air Force has replaced the old problem with a new one. The Air Force's view of the situation is that if all resources are poured into fighting this war, the United States will emerge from it unprepared to fight the next war. Underneath this discussion of past and future wars is a more important and defining set of questions. First, can the United States afford to fight this war while simultaneously preparing for the next one? Second, what will the next war look like; will it be different from this one?

There is a school of thought in the military that argues that we have now entered the fourth generation of warfare. The first generation of war, according to this theory, involved columns and lines of troops firing muzzle-loaded weapons in volleys. The second generation consisted of warfare involving indirect fire (artillery) and massed movement, as seen in World War I. Third-generation warfare comprised mobile warfare, focused on outmaneuvering the enemy, penetrating enemy lines and encircling them, as was done with armor during World War II. The first three generations of warfare involved large numbers of troops, equipment and logistics. Large territorial organizations — namely, nation-states — were required to carry them out.

I don't find the counting generations of much value. The very successful defense of Ft. Driant in WWII shows that WWI technology had great utility during WWII. The Korean war had a combination of WWII bombers, new jet fighters, WWII tanks, biplanes more suitable for WWI, and ended with trench warfare and infantry assults, all under the threat of escalation to nuclear war.

Fourth-generation warfare is warfare carried out by nonstate actors using small, decentralized units and individuals to strike at enemy forces and, more important, create political support among the population. The classic example of fourth-generation warfare would be the intifadas carried out by Palestinians against Israel. They involved everything from rioters throwing rocks to kidnappings to suicide bombings. The Palestinians could not defeat the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a classic third-generation force, in any conventional sense — but neither could the IDF vanquish the intifadas, since the battlefield was the Palestinians themselves. So long as the Palestinians were prepared to support their fourth-generation warriors, they could extract an ongoing price against Israeli civilians and soldiers. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict thus became one of morale rather than materiel. This was the model, of course, the United States encountered in Iraq.

Fourth-generation warfare has always existed. Imperial Britain faced it in Afghanistan. The United States faced it at the turn of the last century in the Philippines. King David waged fourth-generation warfare in Galilee. It has been a constant mode of warfare. The theorists of fourth-generational warfare are not arguing that the United States will face this type of war along with others, but that going forward, this type of warfare will dominate — that the wars of the future will be fourth-generation wars.

That blending of different generations seems to confirm that the "generation" paradigm is of little utility. So, is it a strawman? Shouldn't someone be cited as using it to argue?

NATION-STATES AND FOURTH-GENERATION WARFARE
Implicit in this argument is the view that the nation-state, which has dominated warfare since the invention of firearms, is no longer the primary agent of wars. Each of the previous three generations of warfare required manpower and resources on a very large scale that only a nation-state could provide. Fidel Castro in the Cuban mountains, for example, could not field an armored division, an infantry brigade or a rifle regiment; it took a nation to fight the first three generations of warfare.

The Communist nation state was critical in supporting terrorists such as the Red Army Faction, the Baader Meinhof gangs. The Taliban, created by Pakistan Intelligence, created the nation state from which 9-11 was launched. Nation states provide secure bases, and are an essential part of terrorist war.

The argument now is that nations are not the agents of wars but its victims. Wars will not be fought between nations, but between nations and subnational groups that are decentralized, sparse, dispersed and primarily conducting war to attack their target's morale. The very size of the forces dispersed by a nation-state makes them vulnerable to subnational groups by providing a target-rich environment. Being sparse and politically capable, the insurgent groups blend into the population and are difficult to ferret out and defeat.

Nations are rarely the victims of terrorist wars. President Bush was not killed. Rather, the citizens of those nations are the target, through the medium of the news media. Terrorism is an information war, disguized as a guerilla war.

In such a war, the nation-state's primary mission is to identify the enemy, separate him from the population and destroy him. It is critical to be surgical in attacking the enemy, since the enemy wins whenever an attack by the nation-state hits the noncombatant population, even if its own forces are destroyed — this is political warfare. Therefore, the key to success — if success is possible — is intelligence. It is necessary to know the enemy's whereabouts, and strike him when he is not near the noncombatant population.

It is also the news media's job to report facts, not terrorist propaganda.

THE AIR FORCE AND UAVs
In fourth-generation warfare, therefore, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are one of the keys to defeating the substate actor. They gather intelligence, wait until the target is not surrounded by noncombatants and strike suddenly and without warning. It is the quintessential warfare for a technologically advanced nation fighting a subnational insurgent group embedded in the population. It is not surprising that Gates, charged with prosecuting a fourth-generation war, is furious at the Air Force for focusing on fighter planes when what it needs are more and better UAVs.

In truth, unmanned aerial vehicles have long been part of war. In that broad category are rocks, arrows, bullets, bombs, cruise missiles, grenades, and ballistic missiles. Pretending that any one service should have a monopoly on "things that fly through the air" would reduce the Navy to operating Rams, and the Army to spears, and swords. Ludicrous!

The Air Force, which was built around the concept of air superiority and strategic bombing, has a visceral objection to unmanned aircraft. From its inception, the Air Force (and the Army Air Corps before it) argued that modern warfare would be fought between nation-states, and that the defining weapon in this kind of war would be the manned bomber attacking targets with precision. When it became apparent that the manned bomber was highly vulnerable to enemy fighters and anti-aircraft systems, the doctrine was modified with the argument that the Air Force's task was to establish air superiority using fighter aircraft to sweep the skies of the enemy and strike aircraft to take out anti-aircraft systems — clearing the way for bombers or, later, the attack aircraft.

The Air Force was built on the foundation provided by Guilio Douhet and the US Army Air Corps. The ability to tactically move a concentrate of effect from left to right on the field of battle is a classic response to enemy action. Airpower expands that to Operational and Strategic levels, as demonstrated in North Africa. That reaction in time is due to long range, and the ability to run multiple bases from which the operational commander can choose to launch his forces.

The response to the Air Force position is that the United States is no longer fighting the first three types of war, and that the only wars the United States will fight now will be fourth-generation wars where command of the air is both a given and irrelevant. The Air Force's mission would thus be obsolete. Only nation-states have the resources to resist U.S. airpower, and the United States isn't going to be fighting one of them again.

This should be the key point of contention for the Air Force, which should argue that there is no such thing as fourth-generation warfare. There have always been guerrillas, assassins and other forms of politico-military operatives. With the invention of explosives, they have been able to kill more people than before, but there is nothing new in this. What is called fourth-generation warfare is simply a type of war faced by everyone from Alexander to Hitler. It is just resistance. This has not superseded third-generation warfare; it merely happens to be the type of warfare the United States has faced recently.

Terrorism is not resistance. Terrorism using illegal methods of resistance because you know that there is no concequence to the illegality of your methods. There is no consequence of terrorism launched by the Soviet State against West Germany and Italy because of the nuclear standoff. There is no consequence to terrorism by Pakistan Intelligence because of the cover of Saudi religious fanatics, Saudi money, and Communist news media, horribly dissappointed that the US won the Cold War.

Wars between nation-states, such as World War I and World War II, are rare in the sense that the United States fought many more wars like the Huk rising in the Philippines or the Vietnam War in its guerrilla phase than it did world wars. Nevertheless, it was the two world wars that determined the future of the world and threatened fundamental U.S. interests. The United States can lose a dozen Vietnams or Iraqs and not have its interests harmed. But losing a war with a nation-state could be catastrophic.

Vietnam was, in fact, a proxi war launched by communists in North Vietnam, supported by Communists in China and Russia, under the cover of the Nuclear Standoff which was the Cold War. The methods of the Vietnamese Communists ranged from terrorism when the US and South Vietnamese allies were strong, to conventional invasion when the US military was constrained by traitors in the US news media, Congress and Senate (call your office Senator Kerry.)

THE NEXT WAR VS. THE WAR THAT MATTERS
The response to Gates, therefore, is that the Air Force is not preparing for the next war. It is preparing for the war that really matters rather than focusing on an insurgency that ultimately cannot threaten fundamental U.S. interests. Gates, of course, would answer that the Air Force is cavalier with the lives of troops who are fighting the current war as it prepares to fight some notional war. The Air Force would counter that the notional war it is preparing to fight could decide the survival of the United States, while the war being fought by Gates won't. At this point, the argument would deadlock, and the president and Congress would decide where to place their bets.

There is only one war. The war against freedom. The people who hate freedom don't care about ideology, and accept allies where they can. How else to explain Communist Homosexuals support of Islamicist terrorists who have demonstrated by castration and murder their distain for sexual freedom?

But the argument is not quite over at this point. The Air Force's point about preparing for the decisive wars is, in our mind, well-taken. It is hard for us to accept the idea that the nation-state is helpless in front of determined subnational groups. More important, it is hard for us to accept the idea that international warfare is at an end. There have been long periods in the past of relative tranquility between nation-states — such as, for example, the period between the fall of Napoleon and World War I. Wars between nations were sparse, and the European powers focused on fourth-generational resistance in their colonies. But when war came in 1914, it came with a vengeance.

We get to choose what the decisive war will look like when we decide what kind of war we do not prepare to win. There is, at present, little reason for nuclear bombers, since land and sea based ICBMs can precisely deliver nuclear weapons far more quickly. Still, we should keep our bombers ready for nuclear war, becaust with nuclear bombers, there is no advantage for an enemy to invest in an enemy anti-missile system. The Submarine basing mode makes direct attack on land based missles worse than useless. The land baseing mode makes defense against airbreathing of little value. It is an admirable recipe to prevent any effective defense. It worked, and the US won the Cold War in large part because of it. Even traitors in Washington (Senator Kennedy call your office) couldn't credibly pretend that the Soviets would win a nuclear exchange.

Our question regards the weapons the Air Force wants to procure. It wants to build the F-22 fighter at enormous cost, which is designed to penetrate enemy airspace, defeat enemy fighter aircraft and deliver ordnance with precision to a particular point on the map. Why would one use a manned aircraft for that mission? The evolution of cruise missiles with greater range and speed permits the delivery of the same ordnance to the same target without having a pilot in the cockpit. Indeed, cruise missiles can engage in evasive maneuvers at g-forces that would kill a pilot. And cruise missiles exist that could serve as unmanned aircraft, flying to the target, releasing submunitions and returning home. The combination of space-based reconnaissance and the unmanned cruise missile — in particular, next-generation systems able to move at hypersonic speeds (in excess of five times the speed of sound) — would appear a much more efficient and effective solution to the problem of the next generation of warfare.

The F-22 makes all other fighters obsolete. No other nation can field a stealty fighter at present. No nation wants to contest the air with the US. Soviet design bureaus are operating as a form of welfare. European production plants are being supported as suppliers to the F-35 and Northrop-Grumman/EACS tankers. This is the perfect way to both get something useful at market prices, AND correct the anti-Americanism that Communists have tried to incite through Europe. This will resolve attempts to separate the US from our allies.

We could argue that both Gates and the Air Force are missing the point. Gates is right that the Air Force should focus on unmanned aircraft; technology has simply moved beyond the piloted aircraft as a model. But this does not mean the Air Force should not be preparing for the next war. Just as the military should have been preparing for the U.S.-jihadist war while also waging the Cold War, so too, the military should be preparing for the next conflict while fighting this war. For a country that spends as much time in wars as the United States (about 17 percent of the 20th century in major wars, almost all of the 21st century), Gates' wish to focus so narrowly on this war seems reckless.

Continuing the Nuclear Triad is not to prepare for the next war, it is to assure that the next war will not be conducted by training nuclear missiles an anti-missile equipped Nuclear China.

At the same time, building a new and fiendishly expensive version of the last generation's weapons does not necessarily constitute preparing for the next war. The Air Force was built around the piloted combat aircraft. The Navy was built around sailing ships. Those who flew and those who sailed were necessary and courageous. But sailing ships don't fit into the modern fleet, and it is not clear to us that manned aircraft will fit into high-intensity peer conflict in the future.

Mr. Friedman doesn't get it. If you desire peace, prepare for war. I will go further, and say prepare for the war you don't want to fight. Strong conventional and nuclear forces means that no enemy can hide behind a nuclear standoff. No Conventional army can conduct agression. No Terrorist cabal can feel secure in the base areas provided by a friendly host nation.

We do not agree that preparing for the next war is pathological. We should always be fighting this war and preparing for the next. But we don't believe the Air Force is preparing for the next war. There will be wars between nations, fought with all the chips on the table. Gates is right that the Air Force should focus on unmanned aircraft. But not because of this war alone.

Pirates are the enemies of all mankind, and are properly denied sanctuary by all civilized nations. No nation would host such an uncontrollable force, unless by doing so they secured protection from the terrorists, AND weakened an enemy. Since the treaty of Westphalia, sovereign nations had to control their territory, and
were responsible for attacks launched from their territory, unless they were unable to control their territory. In that event, they no longer able to claim sovereign immunity from their neighbors, and their neighbors are justified if they drive out the pirates. The US Army did that under General Andrew Jackson, acting against pirates who used a base in Spanish Florida. Spain protested, but the US was acting only aginst forces which Spain claimed they was unable to control. Terrorists are like Pirates. They deserve nothing but summary execution. They are unprotected by the Geneva Conventions.

Nation states who permit criminals, pirates, or terrorists to operate from their territory against other countries forfeit any claim to sovereignity. Let the Mexican government look for US invasion of the swath of land controlled by drug trafficers and smugglers. Let Pakistan look for more attacks against Taliban bases. Let Iran look for destruction of training camps and weapons production facilities.

Video from Reason

2008-06-09T19:02:00.001-07:00

Ok, I tried it, but no video. Again the Dragon wins.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

Originally begun as a day off for government civil servants to decorate local graves for soldiers lost in suppression of the late rebellion, Memorial day was expanded to those service men and women lost for any purpose. That expansion was probably necessary to get the agreement of southern neo-confederates to the expanded holiday.

That number of US servicemen's deaths averages close to a thousand a year in peacetime, due to rigorous training, and the high rate of deaths normally seen by young men in the service members key demographics.

The bravest thing anyone can do is sign up. You then, with some degree of foreknowledge, accept the added risk of the service, and reduced control of the situations to which you will be subjected. After that, you are following through. Following through is not a trivial thing, but it is rare that our servicemen do not follow through. It is common for young men to not sign up.

All men die, and everyone dies alone. Not all die giving their last full measure of love and devotion to the last best hope of mankind.

Let us today remember the lives of those wonderful men and women who, by their service, have made us safer, and more free.

Some Lessons of History That Got Us Where We Are

2008-05-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

The Barbary pirates taught us that our merchant marine needs to be defended and secured by a strong Navy.

The Spanish American War taught us that we could not ignore attacks on our Navy in foreign waters, and the business of getting men to the battle was as big a job as the battle itself.

In WWI the US fought with British designed rifles (P-17) and French (ChauChat machineguns and 75mm quick firing artillery) weapons. We were able to benefit from instruction from French Alpine and Chasseur infanty. We learned from that, and instituted an industry mobilization program in time for WWII.

In WWII the US started behind, because our non-intervention policy let the murderous thugs like Stalin, Hitler and Tojo get their war machine manned and trained, with combat experience before we got in. We paid dearly for that.

In Korea we learned that the potential strength of the US was not enough to stop aggressors, and a smaller force with high readiness would be needed.

In Vietnam we learned that it was not enough to win the battles, but that traitors in the US could throw away the results of our soldiers valor. John Kerry call your office.

After Desert Storm we learned that pushing back a murderous thug to his own country didn't provide protection from attacks on our friends or ourselves.

Of course some people have learned nothing.

Congrats Kacey, and Suzanne

2008-05-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

Today Kacey graduates from college. On her way she has made hardly any missteps, unlike me. She graduates with several honors, and has presented various papers. She also had a taste of being the local celebrity with her heading the 'human hamster wheel' project. I am very happy for her. She continues on with higher education. I would say 'I am proud of her' but I am not sure that my contribution is enough to claim that honor. I am a modest man, with much to be modest about.

By contrast, my two bachelor degrees, my masters degree, I never attended my own graduation. I was commissioned, but I completed my course work at a different time of year than graduation, and didn't care enough about the ceremony to travel from Georgia to Missouri, from California to Arizona, or even from Edwards to Fresno. When I got the Certificate in Systems Engineering, I didn't go to the ceremony for that either.

I guess I am the kind of person who doesn't stand on ceremony.

I had my fill as a high school validictorian, gave a speech which was instantly forgotten, and have very rarely returned since.

Kacey gets from me, my enduring love, a copy of the book 'Why do you care what they think Mr. Feynmann" and Dale Carnagie's book "How to Win Friends and Influence People". The point: A broad range of behavior is acceptable in humans.

Bob Heinlein had it right. A human can set a trap, kill dinner, skin it, prepare a tasty meal, write a sonnet, solve a differential equation, Specialization is for insects.

Brother Doug told me that young people feel a need to do something with their bodies. For women it is often flirting-acting-modeling-motherhood. For men it is often sports-military-philandering. Some of those are honorable, some can, with too much emphasis, lead to a lack of balance that becomes dishonorable. With luck, kids will survive their youth with traits, virtues, and skills which serve them in their maturity.

Happy Mother's day Suzanne. Certainly Kacey's success is very largely due to Kacey, but Suzanne's role was far greater than mine. Not by my choice, but I do recognize reality.

Some notes on virtue

2008-04-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

From Grim's Hall http://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2004_05_30_grimbeorn_archive.html#108619407558263312

Virtue:
I normally don't link to things that The Sage of Knoxville links to first, simply because I assume most people will have seen it. However, Professor Bainbridge's post on civil and military virtue is one that everyone should take a moment to read. I'm not sure that the subject heading will entice everyone--few are interested in reading about, let alone practicing virtue--but the matter could not be more important:

The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. The military man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues. And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in contemporary Europe. There never was a time when nations were more militarist. There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneously the deterioration of the man and the fantastic perfection of the arms.
There the good Professor relies upon Chesterton, who wrote just before the horrors of the first World War. He then turns to General Washington:
An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the capital security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.
It is the introduction and diffusion of vice, and corruption of manners, into the mass of the people, that renders a standing army necessary. It is when public spirit is despised, and avarice, indolence, and effeminacy of manners predominate, and prevent the establishment of institutions which would elevate the minds of the youth in the paths of virtue and honor, that a standing army is formed and riveted for ever.

Is that not precisely where we are? Do we not see each year bringing more public odium upon the Boy Scouts? What do you suppose would be said about an organization that was today 'established to elevate the minds of the youth in the ways of honor and virtue' except for cries that it was 'Hitler Youth' redux? Does not each year bring more demands that "effeminancy of manners" be set aside as an outdated concept, while the practice of such manners by men be accepted? Is not public spirit degraded by people who say that the poor soldiers in Iraq joined the military only because of their poverty and the hope of college money? By people who say they are slaves?
Aristotle taught that the ethics of a man should be precisely mirrored in the politics of the state--that, if you can develop the right kind of man, the state will follow. Aristotle begins his treatment of right ethics with the virtue of bravery. His overview sounds familiar after Washington:

[W]isdom is goodness of the rational part, gentleness and courage of the passionate, of the appetitive sobriety of mind and self-control, and of the spirit as a whole righteousness, liberality and, great-spiritedness.
There is a further treatment of each of those concepts here, for the interested. See also the writings of other men, less famous but many as brave as any Ancient Greek, at the Mudville Gazette.
How to restore the martial virtues in the public generally? It is a difficult undertaking--indeed, it is plagued by several 'chicken and egg' problems, as most of the public steps you could take to encourage them require the acceptance of the virtues that you're hoping to encourage. How would you get a state legislature to vote to institute courses in military science at the high school level? (There is another question as to whether that would work--Plato's Laches begins with the question of whether practice-fighting in armor encourages bravery in the young. That bravery in fighting should be encouraged was never in question for them.) How to approve any such program? You'd need a strong bloc of voters to speak to their legislators.

Where to get them? Through argument--and yet I was approached just the other day on the streets of D.C. by a fellow from something called the Center for Nonviolence, who was canvassing in the opposite direction. He was rather dismayed, even shocked, by my assertion that nonviolence in and of itself was not something to be encouraged. Nonviolence is not a virtue. Nonviolence is a state--usually a pleasant one, but demonstrably inferior to, and to be set aside in favor of, the state of justice. Violence can be a very good thing. Yet this "Stop the Violence" movement has won so many converts that I hear children echoing the slogan the way they might say "Go Team!"--as a blandly acceptable premise that should win approval from all quarters.

We would have a lot less of the sort of violence people wish to stop if we encouraged more people to be prepared to fight bravely for the common peace. This I'll treat separately in another post.

letter to the Democratic Party

2008-03-30T11:40:00.001-07:00

http://www.lincolnheritage.org/About_Us/Resources/Weekly_Magazine/New_Articles/An_Open_Letter_to_the_Democrat/an_open_letter_to_the_democrat.html

I know that most black voters don't know this, or don't think it matters.

Keller vs. DC case heard today.

2008-03-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

I am always amazed that noone uses the militia argument for gun rights. Title 10, Section 311 makes all men between 17 and 45 members of the unorganized militia. Former officers retain membership in the militia until age 65.

Should militia membership be extended to women? Of course! But until the legislature gets it right, the right to keep and bear for members of the militia is very widely drawn.

In like manner, firearms that use military calibers should have special protection. That means that any regulation of weapons in military caliber should receive 'strict scrutiny' from the courts. That would include .38Special, .45Colt, .45ACP, and rifle cartriges in .30/40 Krag, .30/06, 7.62X51, 12 gauge, 12.7X99 (aka .50BMG), and 5.56X45.

Also we should keep in mind for future cases, the 14th Amendment extends Federal rights to citizens of the states, even against the states. And privately owned crew served weapons are protected, as they would be necessary if Congress was to use its power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.

Thanks to the 'Bitch Girls' for an opportunity to comment. http://www.thebitchgirls.us/?p=7991#comment-51685

Another Tragedy for Gun Control

2008-03-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

http://bamapachyderm.com/archives/2008/03/13/your-daughter-two-options/

Eve Carson was, by all accounts, a very bright kid, with much to live for. Now she is dead. The people sho murdered her are responsible for it, but others, those who seek to ban defensive firearms, have a least a contributory responsibility.

May my children never come to her end. May we come to the wisdom that honest people should not be relatively disarmed compared to dishonest thugs.

Clauswitz and Personnel Management

2008-03-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

Clauswitz in his book "On War" suggested that people are either smart, or stupid, and either hard working, or lazy.

Those smart and hard working are suited for command.
Those smart and lazy make the best staff officers.
You can find some job for the stupid and lazy.
You have to fire those who are stupid and hard working. They make mistakes, and never learn, even from the deaths of thousands.

So, after the Charnel houses of the Soviet Union under Stalin, the perversion and butchery of Red China under Mao, and the torture and murder of National Socialist Germany under Hitler, Daniel Ortega's child molestation in Nicaragua, how stupid do you have to be to try that same old collectivist method again. Only this time try harder!

Jury Nullification

2008-03-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

My comments from Patterico's blog discussing jury nullification:
http://patterico.com/2008/03/07/balko-asking-prospective-jurors-if-they-would-follow-the-law-is-a-perjury-trap/#comments

"Lawyers view juries as irksome limitations on their ability to get their way. Prosecutors view Criminal Defense Lawyers as irksome limitations on their ability to get their way. Criminal Defense lawyers view prosecutors as irksome limitations on the ability to get their way.

Our government is not “of the lawyers, by the lawyers, and for the lawyers”, nor should it be. Lawyers are specially trained servants, not masters. Consider a court with no lawyers. A pro per plantiff against a pro se defendant. The jury would still weigh the evidence against their own concepts of fairness, with little regard to the standards of fairness embodied in the law by other men, at an other time.

A bureaucracy is a mindset that applies rules developed to resolve problem A to problem B. A bureaucrat not only thinks that is a good idea, but also thinks that there is no possible alternative.

A non bureaucrat thinks about the problem at hand, and selects from his past experience, and the other experiences of his team, and tries to come up with the best solution. Imagine if a car manufacturer selected wooden wheels for his car because of some authoritative prescedent? We would still be using horses! And in the legal system, we are!"

In short, when lawyers restrict information to influence the Jury's ability to act as the sole judge of fact, then the Jury has the right and duty to act as judge of fact and law. To deny information to the Jury is to set the stage for the Jury to deny information to the Judge/prosecutor/defense.

Reading Level for this blog is "High School"

2007-11-15T21:45:00.000-08:00

Cash Advance Loans

Since my middle child is in high school, this is about what I wanted.

Veterans Day

2007-11-11T18:20:00.001-08:00

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Since last year, our magnificant soldiers have, with the able and crucial help of our allies in Iraq (that includes the Iraqis!) won the war in Iraq. As the war was being won, the party of Traitors in the United States (and look, I don't like that we have a party of traitors any more than you do, but since you know which party I mean without me naming them, we can agree which party is which) has taken over the House and Senate by running earnest and centrist candidates, and then ignored them when it comes to governing. Senator Joe Lieberman has correctly identified the problem. Some democrats would be willing to have the United States lose, if only they could give a really good speech blaming they're surrender on him.

GS Patton Jr. said regarding the soldiers who have given us so much: "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

Disease test

2007-11-04T18:12:00.000-08:00

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Political Dream

2007-10-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

I will be visiting Federal Tax Court in November. For the year 2004, the IRS decided that all the dependents that I listed should not count. Why? Who knows. The IRS has not seen fit to share their reasons.

So of course, I dreamed about my "closing arguments" which in best Hollywood fashion, would lead to the shocking embarassment of the Government Attorney. Well, this was my dream. I know in fact that the government attorney, as well as the judge know that the system is broken, and don't care. They know that they really want to get a nice fast settlement, or a conviction (or judgement) that doesn't look too bad on their records if against all odds I find a way to appeal. They will cheat as necessary to get it. The Government lawyer is probably the son in law of the Federal Tax Court Judge. I will probably be screwed to the tune of 10,000 dollars. There is no way around it, other than to pay 20,000 to a government certified lawyer, and have the appearance of being able to appeal.

It is interesting. The one place where the Government has the most control over the inmates is in prison. No pesky "rights", no need to give the serfs any freedom in return for a bit of productivity. Of course there is a book on how the Mexican Mafia has used the prison system as the basis for a nationwide system of intimidation. Government certified lawyers are a key link in this system bringing in drugs and information from the outside, and taking out orders to gang members and straphangers. The Government is completely unable to keep control of this limited artificial environment.

A close second to the violence of the Prison system is the Indian Reservation system, also under rather more than usual Government Control.

So based on these failures, some would have us turn our lives over to the Government.

My friend Marty got a letter from the Veterans Administration telling him he had an appointment with a doctor. Marty has to drive some 70 miles to get to his doctor's appointment. Included in the letter is a letter to another veteran who lives about 100 miles away, telling him of his appointment. This fellow has to drive 170 miles to his doctor's appointment.

It took Marty over 6 months after his operation before the VA decided that being slit from his guggle to his zatch (expression from "13 Clocks"!) meant that he was not capable of working, and hence "DISABLED".

Marty is supposed to get his dental care from the VA. Alas, the only VA dental service is in Sacramento, about 365 miles away.

So based on the model of VA as an efficient provider of health care services, some would have us turn all health care over to the Government.

Where Have I Been?

2007-10-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.world66.com/myworld66/visitedCountries/worldmap?visited=CAUSMXAWBBBMCQMQANKKVIVEBEDKFRDEIELUNLCHUK">
> your own visited country map

But in truth, a Man lives in his mind, not in a Place.

The Poison is in the Dose

2007-10-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

One of the confusing things about life is this: A behavior which works once, doesn't work the next time. It would be nice if there were good behaviors, and bad behaviors. As a parent, one could reward the good, punish the bad, and ignore the in between. Fortunately, life is not that simple.

A behavior (say, going to the bathroom) is appropriate if you go, say 4 times a day. It is not appropriate if you go 10,000 times a day. The poison is in the dose.

There is, contrary to the protestations of my Libertarian (capital L) friends, nothing wrong with a group of people forming a representative government, and then deciding to fund that government by contributions. If the government (a monopoly over use of force, over a certain geographical area) uses force to make sure all pay their fair share, that can be either good or bad. The fair share would be determined by the people, as represented by their government. Still, the government would not be a good government if it took too much of the people's money, as most government spending is less efficient than the spending of the people for themselves. Still government spending can be effective for some small specialties where the 'good' produced is widely agreed to be necessary, and is also understood to not be for the small benefit of any particular person. For example, national defense is a diffuse good, necessary, but not terribly easy to fund by private contributions.

On the other hand, health care, entertainment, and religous satisfaction are the most personal 'goods that can be imagined. Government spending is not appropriate, and attempts to fund personal goods with public funds lead to horrid inefficiencies, amazing levels of corruption, and even flight of citizens from the wasteful goods which are produced. For example, a major product of the vaunted Canadian health care program is your position on the waiting list. Since 90% of Canada's population are within 2 hours of the US border, Canadians with any money available will chose to get heath care from the US doctors. They can also seek care from Canadian doctors who also practice in the US to avoid some of the regulation and limitations provided by the Canadian system. Both Canadian health care providers and Canadian patients will willingly do without the 'list position value' provided by the Canadian system. US health care is highly regulated, by the national Medicare system which sets prices, insurance companies which limit the procedures for which they will pay, and by the market, which limits the health insurance price that employers are willing to pay. Why do Canadians come south to get health care under US rules, rather than US citizens flocking north to take up their places on the Canadian waiting lists? The poison is in the dose.

In general, if the dose is too high, the right answer is to cut the dose. It is odd to have to say it, but when a problem is caused by government intervention, the solution will not be more government intervention. Rather, a better result will be found by cutting government regulation, taxes, and reducing prosecution priority. Why? The poison is in the dose.

Odd thing.

2007-09-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

I got a hate e-mail last night from some coprophilic swine. I don't get them often. Fellow needs therapy. I figure the guy has a problem with something I wrote, somewhere.

Atlas Mugged: How a Gang of Scrappy, Individual Bloggers Broke the Stranglehold of the Mainstream Mediaby Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.

2007-09-25T05:43:00.000-07:00

Comments by Don Meaker in Bold.
From: http://www.atlassociety.org/ct-1966-Atlas_mugged.aspx

The twentieth century was the high point of mass culture—or “the overculture” as some call it. Any culture that could produce Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Honeymooners can’t be all bad.

The Honeymooners? Yech! The problem is it also created 'Triumph of the Will'. Bad history kills more certainly than bad water.

But eventually, the connection between media elites and their audiences began to fracture. Though apocryphal, the line frequently attributed to Pauline Kael of the New Yorker in 1972 sums up the growing chasm between the overculture—particularly the media—and its audience: “I don’t know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him.”
Just as the Big Three car manufacturers, with a once-monolithic hold on American consumers, seemed unaware that the public wanted a wider choice of cars (until Japan listened and responded), Pauline Kael’s in-crowd of coastal elites has, if anything, become even more clueless and resistant to emerging changes in the culture and dissemination of information.
How clueless? In 2004, Jonathan Klein, the former executive vice president of CBS News, described blogging as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.” Last May, Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons was quoted as saying, “The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”
Just how did the mainstream media (“MSM”) become so monolithic and unresponsive in the first place? And how is the rise of “Weblogs” helping to establish a new, more “fair and balanced” form of journalism?

The Birth of “Objective Media”
Prior to the 1920s, American newspapers and pamphleteers had a long, diverse history of vigorous, partisan debate. Which is why there are still newspapers with names like the Springfield Democrat and Shelbyville Republican.
That began to change with the rise of competition from the broadcast media. In the 1920s, because radio frequencies were finite, their allocation became heavily regulated by the federal government. As Shannon Love of the classically liberal Chicago Boyz (www.chicagoboyz.net) economics blog explains, the federal government “took the radio spectrum, and instead of auctioning it off like land, essentially socialized it. And then they made the distribution of the broadcast spectrum basically a political decision.”

Socialism begins with lies, moves on to theft, slavery, murder, and finally as those who enjoy theft, slavery, and murder get promoted, to perversion. Hence, Dan Rather.

That, combined later with the FCC’s so-called “Fairness Doctrine—which required broadcasting networks to give “equal time” to opposing viewpoints—compelled broadcasters to maintain at least a veneer of impartiality in order to get and keep their licenses. A de facto political compromise was reached, Love says, “that the broadcast news would not be political—it would be objective and nonpartisan, was basically the idea. And then that carried over from radio to TV,” and eventually to print media. (That conceit continues to this day, as the media toss around words like “unbiased” and “objective” as easily as Dan Rather tosses off hoary, made-up Texas-isms.)

Completely dependent on the federal government, the broadcast industry’s most urgent priority became “don’t rock the boat.” And aping their broadcast competitors, newspapers began to adopt the mantle of impartiality, as well. A mass media that increasingly eschewed vibrant political debate helped FDR win four presidential elections handily, and Ike’s refusal to dismantle the New Deal in the 1950s only perpetuated its soft socialism. That era’s pervasive desire for consensus was symbolized by the ubiquitous Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and his centrist politics.

Most people don't understand that the conflict between Hitler and Roosevelt was between a lower class amateur and an upperclass professional. jTheir goals were the same, but the methods of the former were less subtle.

By the early 1970s, mass media had reached its zenith (if you’ll pardon the pun). Most Americans were getting their news from one of three TV networks’ half-hour nightly broadcasts. With the exception of New York, most big cities had only one or two primary newspapers. And no matter what a modern newspaper’s lineage, by and large its articles, except for local issues, came from global wire services like the Associated Press or Reuters; it took its editorial lead from the New York Times; and it claimed to be impartial (while usually failing miserably).
Up until the Reagan years, Love says, “definitely fewer than one hundred people, and maybe as few as twenty people, actually decided what constituted national news in the United States.”

A dictatorship of the proletariat, led by the vangard of the workers!

These individuals were principally concentrated within a few square blocks of midtown Manhattan, the middle of which was home to the offices of the New York Times. The aptly nicknamed “Gray Lady” largely shaped the editorial agendas not just of newspapers but of television, as well. As veteran TV news correspondent Bernard Goldberg wrote in his 2003 book Arrogance, “If the New York Times went on strike tomorrow morning, they’d have to cancel the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening newscasts tomorrow night.”
Love calls this “the Parliament of Clocks”: creating the illusion of truth or accuracy by force of consensus. “Really, the only way that consumers can tell that they’re getting accurate information is to check another media source,” Love says. “And unfortunately, that creates an incentive for the media sources to all agree on the same story.”

History is lies, agreed upon. Mark Twain

De-massifying the Mass Media
Journalism by consensus remained essentially unchallenged until President Ronald Reagan—arguably the most media-savvy president in American history— repealed the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine in 1987. That opened the door for “talk radio.”
AM radio had been considered largely obsolete thanks to clear, stereophonic FM. But then along came Rush Limbaugh. Having been largely ignored by and shut out of other media, conservatives began to follow his example, and soon came to dominate AM talk radio. Politically, the consequences were soon far-reaching; in fact, many credit Limbaugh’s persuasive presence for the GOP’s congressional triumph in 1994.

Reagan created the climate for Limbaugh.

But talk radio was not the only challenger to the entrenched MSM. Also in 1994, a program called Mosaic Netscape 0.9 was released. This allowed personal computer owners to access the then-nascent World Wide Web—the graphical interface riding atop the Internet, which since its inception in 1969 had been predominantly the province of the military and academics. And that has opened up a whole new world of journalistic competition.
From the outset, the mainstream media’s relationship to the Web has been a curious love-hate thing—often, just a hate thing. For example, when Matt Drudge became the new medium’s first journalistic superstar in 1997, he was crucified by the elite media.

After all, Drudge was evil because he told the stories that the news media thought they had killed.

You see, despite making their living reporting news, journalists, by and large, are remarkably cynical toward any innovation. Just as Detroit failed to notice the growing influence of Japan’s auto industry until the lights went out in the 1970s, newspapers paid little attention to what the media of the future would look like, despite accurate predictions of electronic news as early as the mid-1960s by futurists such as Alvin Toffler and Arthur C. Clarke.
So, by the late 1990s, an increasingly lethargic, dinosaur media, which mocked the Web’s biggest players and was slow to adopt its technology, had created an opening for those willing to experiment—particularly conservatives, who had felt unrepresented by the media even before Spiro Agnew’s famous 1970 “nattering nabobs of negativism” speech. Additionally, during that same period, liberals were moving to the left of then–President Bill Clinton, and they too felt underserved by a media that needed to at least maintain the pretense of centrism.

Birth of the Blogs
Around that time, a few journalists of varying ideologies—including Virginia Postrel, then editor of the libertarian Reason magazine; “New Democrat” Mickey Kaus; former liberal New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan; and center-right James Lileks of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune—began building on Matt Drudge’s example and launched their own self-published “e-zines”.
Simultaneously, some online pioneers began to type their daily thoughts onto Web pages specially designed for quick and easy updating. The earliest “Weblogs” were online diaries, hence their name. But eventually, several professional journalists and pundits found that these “blogs,” as they came to be known, could be used for much more than recording stray thoughts about trips to the shopping mall or the latest episode of The X-Files. In August 2001, a University of Tennessee law professor, Glenn Reynolds, began using Blogger.com’s software to self-publish his own links to and opinions about the news. Calling his blog InstaPundit, Reynolds figured he’d get a couple of hundred academic readers.
But then came September 11th.
During that awful, endless day, millions of Americans desperate for information found that the servers for most major news websites, such as those of CNN and the New York Times, had crashed due to the sheer numbers of online visitors. Getting little more than error messages from these elite news sites, many started surfing alternative Web sources. Blogs and e-zines, such as Reynolds and Postrel’s, linked to smaller newspapers whose servers were still functioning, and they relayed whatever scant information was being offered by television and radio. These early blogs drew enormous traffic on that day—and many of their readers remained afterwards, during 2001’s tense autumn.
It was during this period that television and newspapers earned their well-deserved sobriquet as “the legacy media.” Consensus liberalism began to color their descriptions of America’s early efforts to fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan, as they reverted to “quagmire”-laced language straight out of Walter Cronkite and David Halberstam’s salad days in the late 1960s. In contrast, the bloggers’ tone was a breath of fresh air to those who had grown accustomed to—not to mention bored stiff by—the groupthink of the “Parliament of Clocks.”

There is nothing so old as the news, and nothing so fresh as Homer's Illiad.

Soon, there was a blog for every interest, bias, and worldview. But this development put the old media in something of a bind. On the one hand, the left had been preaching endlessly about the need for “diversity.” Well, here it was; but just as they had assaulted Matt Drudge a few years earlier, the mainstream media now attacked these upstart bloggers with a vengeance. As journalists became increasingly scared of the new upstarts, epithets about “navel gazers” and “amateur hour” began to pour out of newspaper op-ed columns. And though reporters claimed to be for the little guy, once that little guy started to talk back to them, they became more defensively elitist and guild-oriented than ever.

Glen Reynolds was one of the first "Meta bloggers" who read many, and provided links or pointers to items of interest. Much like the NYT "News in Brief" section.

Glenn Reynolds’ quick rise to prominence helped to foster a hospitable environment for new bloggers. His background in DIY music may have been a factor: Punk and new-wave music, plus the home-recording boom of the early 1980s, encouraged an “Anybody can do this” attitude, a spirit that Reynolds carried into the emerging “Blogosphere.” In 2002, he published a list of well over two hundred blogs that claimed to be directly inspired by his own. That list has grown exponentially since.

To include me!

As has the size of the Blogosphere as a whole. In 2004, I estimated that there were a few million blogs. Today, the blog search engine Technorati.com claims to track some 87 million blogs—an endlessly and rapidly growing number.
Death of the Overculture
The ever-expanding number of blogs has helped to neutralize much of the major media’s attempts to influence culture unilaterally and from the top down. As a result, says James Lileks, “we don’t have an overculture anymore.” He adds that “people are no longer having to stifle their own interests in order to absorb mass culture. In the old days, they used to create their own communities by very low-tech means: fanzines, Star Trek convention clubs, things like that. But now, you can find like-minded individuals all over the place, and half of them seem to be creating content in the exact genre that you like.”
An idiosyncrasy of many blogs is that they create spontaneous communities by linking and riffing off each other—occasionally, even linking to those outside their ideology or interests.

Some people are born to be bad examples.

Compare that attitude of cooperation to traditional journalism. For decades, American newspapers have practiced guild socialism, adhering to the belief that a long tenure in journalism school was required before working for a newspaper. They’ve tried to give those working in a formerly blue-collar industry the appearance of having the vision of an anointed elite (to paraphrase the title of a classic book by Thomas Sowell).
In contrast, the Blogosphere provides avenues for both apprenticeship and endless experimentation. Bloggers openly modify, amplify, and correct each other (and often themselves). While many have only small but loyal readerships, linking creates vast online networking opportunities. A few major blogs attract in excess of 150,000 readers a day; and when one of those mega-blogs links to a tiny niche blog, 150,000 new readers are exposed to a fresh voice and a new topic. By comparison, the daily viewers of cable TV’s CNN, who number only about 400,000, see the same faces and hear the same perspectives each day.
Because Internet bandwidth is so cheap when compared with the enormous capital investments required to own a newspaper or television station, it’s possible for a blogger to experiment radically with new technologies as they come along, including burgeoning multimedia formats. It’s the advantage that the flea has over the elephant: Though the elephant may be mighty, he’s awfully slow. As Alvin Toffler once told me, “The flea is fast. The flea is fleet. . .that’s the paradox: The more power you have, the less free you are to exercise it.”
One trend that virtually no newspaper foresaw was the emergence of sites like Craigslist.com and eBay, which are pulling their classified-ad business right out from under them. Classified-ad revenue traditionally has generated a significant portion of newspapers’ profits, and as that income shrinks, so does the budget to pay for journalists. Traditional “dead tree” publishers, burdened with high start-up and operating costs, are seeing online competitors dramatically cut into a big profit center.
In short, blog publishing is not only much quicker and more flexible than mainstream media publishing, but infinitely cheaper.
Where Do Blogs Go from Here?
In 2004, the mainstream media gave us “RatherGate” and other examples of blatant partisanship. The 2008 presidential election will provide other tests for the legacy media and their putative successors. Will there be another RatherGate? Perhaps not, because the current Republican candidates don’t seem to generate the same feverish media anger that President Bush did. But there will be plenty of other examples of partisanship, as the Big Media’s remaining claims to “objectivity” ring increasingly hollow.
Most likely, the Blogosphere will continue to consolidate. While plenty of new one-man sites will crop up, group blogs, many resembling small magazines, will continue to flourish and gain prominence—as will sites that blend blogs and discussion forums. Expect more multimedia blogs, such as Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air, which combines slick, broadcast-quality daily videos with plenty of traditional blogging. Or England’s revolutionary 18 Doughty Street website, which combines hours of live, nightly, C-Span-style video chat shows with blogging. Or Pajamas Media, which also offers a mix of audio, video, and text blogging, in both short, hit-and-run and long-form styles. Pajamas is also one of a handful of blog consortiums that pays its contributors. Expect that trend to grow as well.
Since blogs exist partly in reaction to a mainstream media that seems increasingly lobotomized by political correctness, expect new blogs to pop up in reaction to the latest liberal fads and follies. For example, because a pro-Israel tone is anathema at the New York Times and virtually all wire services, Little Green Footballs has become a clearinghouse for news on the Middle East. Zombietime.com, launched by a frequent commenter at LGF, runs photos of leftwing protestors in the San Francisco area that no newspaper or TV network (except for Fox News, of course) would touch.
And what of Big Media itself? Glenn Reynolds says, “About five years ago, I did a piece for Tech Central Station [www.tcsdaily.com] in which I wrote that while blogs are starting to report more hard news, big media is getting ‘bloggier.’ That seems to hold up pretty well, and I think we’ll see more of that.”
Indeed, many newspapers have added blog elements to their websites, typically using their own in-house journalists. The blog format allows them to quickly upload content without worrying about space requirements. And, for many journalists, it provides an outlet for their biases, while their traditional articles remain more-or-less, sorta-kinda objective.
Reynolds isn’t so sure that blogging is a smart idea for newspapers, however. “As I keep saying over and over again, the ‘killer app’ for Big Media is hard news, accurately reported. That seems like something that they resist. It’s almost like their position is that they didn’t go into the news business to report facts accurately,” he chuckles; “that’s boring!”

But it does pay the bills. All else they do is fraud.

Speaking of boring, most newspaper blogs are a bit on the dull side compared with the freewheeling, independent bloggers who don’t have a Big Journalism pedigree. The publishers of most newspaper blogs have confused form with content; rare is the paper that has the equivalent of a James Lileks on its payroll to oversee in-house blogging.

And the paper that does have James Lileks doesn't know what to do with him. A fish rots from the head.

At this writing, the Blogosphere and conservative talk radio are being credited (or blamed, depending on your point of view) with the recent defeat of “immigration reform” legislation. In retaliation, will Congress attempt to regulate blogs (and talk radio) out of existence with some sort of mega-version of the Fairness Doctrine? “I think they’ll try,” Reynolds says. “How much of it is sort of a brush-back pitch—which I think will be counterproductive if that’s the intent—and how much of it is a serious effort, I’m really not sure.”
If that does happen, Reynolds believes we can expect “the creation of quote-‘fair’-unquote rightwing opinion networks that will do the kind of slant that left networks always did.” He cites the National Rifle Association’s website (www.nra.org) as an example; indeed, the NRA, under decades of attack from the left, has been a model of creative Web use, combining blogging, Internet video, and other forms of multimedia content.
That’s the leveling power of blogs.
Big Media isn’t going away. They still generate enormous sums of advertising revenue, despite a declining—and rapidly aging—audience. But fortunately, information alternatives are becoming increasingly available. The forms of blogging will become increasingly diversified, too, to the point where the words “blogs” and “blogging” soon may become passé.
But whatever its future form, the idea and ideal of individual self-publishing—something that our pamphleteer-era Founding Fathers would instantly understand and enthusiastically applaud—is safely here to stay.

I took the nerd test, and did rather well....

2007-09-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

After All, How Much Damage Can They Do

2007-09-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

It would make a lot of sense for anyone running for federal office to be required to own fully automatic weapons.

To own fully automatic weapons, you have to have an extensive background check, both from the Federal government, and usually from the state where you reside. Of course some states don't allow privately owned automatic weapons, so those states should not have any representation in the US Senate or House. States which deny their citizens private ownership of fully automatic weapons should not have their electors (the real voters in the presidential election) recognized.

After all the US Government spends about 3 trillion dollars per year. With only 100 Senators, that gives each Senator some 30 billion dollars each year that is his share of the budget. A Senator can do a lot more damage with his vote than he could with an .50 Caliber Browning Machine Gun (Heavy Barrel).

Ownership of fully automatic weapons is one of the civil rights guaranteed to the citizens of the several states under the 14th Amendment. Losing representation to the federal government is the penalty prescribed in the 14th Amendment for denying civil rights to citizens.

The most important article you will read this year.

2007-09-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

I'd like ... two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers ... an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.

The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not be put on display but from whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That's the army in which I should like to fight.

Read the rest.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200708u/kaplan-vietnam

He provides a good anthology of books written by veterans, but not published by the big publishers. The books tell the story of professonal soldiers, who fought, perhaps were tortured, perhaps were murdered by the North Vietnamese. I wonder why the publishing industry doesn't pick up any of these stories.

It is a good anthology, but I can accept the anthology without following the author to his conclusion that "frustrated professional soldiers mean that the Democracy is healthy". I am the first to accept that the soldiers are an instrument of the government, but asking total commitment to the national goals, while adding niggling restrictions in the permitted methods is not necessary for the Democracy, and is conterproductive. If the enemy has no fear of our armed forces (because the Armed Forces are hobbled by the rules of engagement) then the national goals are delayed in their achievement. That can never be positive for the Democracy.

The soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors who put their lives on the line for those goals should never be frustrated by restrictions that prevent success. That is different from necessary discussion and reasonable disagreement about what methods are best calculated to accomplish those goals.

Letter to "Contact V-Day"

2007-09-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

V-day is a protest against violence against women. The following is a letter I sent to their organization.

http://www.vday.org/

If "Shall Issue" standards were enacted for concealed carry permit, women and responsible children (say age 12 to 18) could defend them selves from hooligans.
No criminal can get a decent string of robberies and rapes against an armed and trained woman. even a 10 percent chance of sudden perforation will make criminals seek another line of work.
Perhaps you recall when in Florida, the first large state concealed carry law took effect. The criminals began to focus on Rental Cars (which had a convenient sticker and license plate number) coming from the airport.
Be sure when you protest, protest with holsters, a key fashion accesory. Of course your fashion will be empty, and kept so by those whose profession profits from citizens kept dependent and helpless.

I am sure that I am not among those, are you?

A Gun Control Poem

2007-08-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

A match, a knife, a stone, a stick;
A car, a rope, a spike, a brick,
With these, crimes happen every day;
But only guns we take away.
Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao;
All confiscated guns somehow.
Thus suppressed, their people fled
Or joined 100 million dead.

ANON

It has become known that the murder rate in the old Soviet Union was 4 times that of the US, despite or because of the stiff gun control laws in the old Soviet Union.

Of course the high murder rates in Washington, D.C. have won that city the opposite of fame.

When someone begins to advocate Gun Control, you have to ask, do they emulate Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mao?

Or do they just want gun control for you, their slave, set to labor on their Plantation, while they have plenty of guns in the Big House, just to keep you safe, no doubt.

Socialism

2007-08-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

http://haloscan.com/tb/kender/5026140715125883820

At the library last week a fellow told me that the market could not determine everything, unless the government controlled the market. Of course the fellow was from Canada, where they have been fed socialist propaganda for the last 20 to 30 years. Canada, the land where women give birth in toilets because the line for midwives is too long.

If you don't believe in markets, which are voluntary associations by free agents in their mutual self interest, the alternative is coercion. In California, medical corporations are coerced, if they work in emergency rooms. They are required to treat people even if the patient is unable to pay. Of course, they pass the costs on to the few people with the ability to pay who can't postpone their visit. That passes the coercion on to those unfortunates who can not resist, at a moment of weakness.

What would be the alternative? A market based system would use discriminatory pricing, to provide various grades of medical care in different qualities for different amounts of money, rather like alternative seats at a baseball game. Those who can't pay could still be treated at the basic level, but as a charity case, with the doctors/nurses/pharmacists/corporations compensated by charitable organizations. Those who pay only small amounts would get dormitory care with generic drugs, and ugly and grumpy nurses. Those who can pay full fare would be glad to pay rather more if they got up to date designer drugs, private rooms, and prettier nurses.

Projection

2007-08-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

The following is a quote from Wikipedia

"Projection is the opposite defense mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have."

"A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."
"Attributing one's own undesirable traits to other people or agencies." The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest."
"People attribute their own undesirable traits onto others. An individual who possesses malicious characteristics, but who is unwilling to perceive himself as an antagonist, convinces himself that his opponent feels and would act the same way."

I found out about the power of projection when I got divorced. My ex-wife who had voluntarily engaged in numerous sexual perversions (without me, I may add!) used the Texas legal system to accuse me of desiring various perversions. It is projection that leads to Muslims who support the attack on Western nations by terrorism to complain about the subsquent invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. It protects Muslims, who look at Mohamet as an ideal man, from acknowledging both his guilt as a child molestor (for his marriage of Ayisha at 6) and the guilt of Abu Bakkar, her father, who sold her to Mohamet in return for a leg up in the subsquent power struggle wherein Abu Bakkar became the first Caliph. It protects Muslims who demand that non-Muslims follow Muslim practice (such as not eating lunch at their desks during RAMADAN), even as Muslim taxi drivers refuse to take fares based on illegal discrimination against the blind (with guide dogs) or based on cargo (say a bottle of whisky).

Projection is a primitive defense mechanism. Reason has no part of it. You can not be reasoned out of things into which you were not reasoned.

Innovation and Destiny

2007-08-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/nbodley5.htm
http://home.teleport.com/~gregsa/curta/
http://www.vcalc.net/curta_simulator_en.htm
Above links are to sites that discuss the worlds first pocket calculator. The Curta is a hand held mechanical calculator developed in Buchenwald concentration camp by an inmate, Curt Herzstark. It hit the market in 1953, and was just the thing for road rally calculations.

"The Curta is basically a cylinder with a handcrank on the end. It has an amusing resemblance to a pepper mill. The mechanism that does the job of the carriage in desktop machines is like a large knob, on the crank end of the cylinder. The dials are tiny cylinders (thick disks) on shafts with their axes extending radially from the center. You shift the "knob carriage" (let's call it a "display") by pulling it against spring tension away from the main body of the machine and rotating it to its new position, then gently letting go."

Just for comparison, the entire nation of Pakistan has, in its 42 years of existence, obtained 8 patents.

Oldies but goodies

2007-08-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

Tamara at http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/ has a link to her "Cosmoline and Rust" blog http://cosmolineandrust.blogspot.com/2007/08/sunday-smith-9.html where she points out that the Smith and Wesson M&P revolver in .38 special has been in continuous production since 1899, 4 years before the Wright brother's first flight, 7 years before the patent on the tungsten filament light bulb.

I, too, am enamored of older designs from the steam era. the 1891 Mosin Nagant rifle was still in production in 1995. The 7.62X54R round is still standard for several countries around the world. My own version was made in 1932 in Finland, and has the SA stamps and dovetailed fore-end for the Finnish Army. There has to be a few gory stories of how that particular rifle served! Finnish Mosin-Nagants tend to have half the error of the usual Soviet Russian editions, in part because the dovetailed stock fixes the tendency for the wood to warp and deform the barrel. The oddly complex bolt was designed to get around the Mauser patents. In so doing, it was more successful than the Springfield '03, for which the US ended up paying royalty payments to Mauser. It also is absolutely bombproof, an important consideration for any nation trying to field and form a large conscript army made up of mechanically illiterate peasants.

Now if I can find an old Remington Model 8 (or the later Model 81). Another wonderful transition rifle, it uses a detachable box magazine, a stripper clip loader, and a spring loaded recoil operating system. The bolt itself locks directly into the barrel with a rotating lugged bolt, rather like the M-16. The safety is on the right side of the receiver, and looks like the prototype for the Kalashnikov safety. Chambered in .35 Remington for the East Coast, or .300 Savage (later itself modified into the 7.62X51 NATO) for the rest of the country, it would be fully capable as any modern rifle. Since it had no gas operation system, clogging of the port or piston could never be a problem. I imagine that the operating spring located between the barrel and the sheet metal sleeve would heat up, and could even lose some tension, leading to failure to cycle. On the other hand, it had an easy takedown lever which would made it very effective for Paratroops.

My Savage 99 lever action is another design from that era, in .308 Winchester, another modification from the .300 Savage, but with a rotary internal magazine. I still hope to take this to hunting camp, but the Boyd stock is a few inches long for me. Cutting it off, and replacing the rubber pad with a proper Savage butt plate is a project that I will have to complete this summer.

Tam's blogs are always fun for me to read. She is a great writer, and includes pictures from the magnificent Oleg Volk. Gosh, I love the internet!

My Favorite Car

2007-08-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

Way back in the late 70s (told you I was old) I bought a Fiat X1/9 from Jim V___, my company commander. She was red-orange (code 408 from the Volvo catalog, oddly enough not in the Fiat color catalog), and I drove her all over Western Europe. She was certainly a chick magnet. I drove from battlefield to battlefield from Omaha to the German Border. I popped up to the "inter-German border" and even wandered around the Alps a bit.

I used to like to walk in the woods, and combined business with pleasure by driving the X1/9 up to one of our defensive positions, and walking (in liederhosen or knickers, and hunter's hat) around our assigned defensive sector. Once dressed like a local, I was wandering, and paused to use a handy shovel to move some extra cowpies from the path. A troop of German boyscouts came around the corner, and I leaned on the shovel to watch them. Their leader asked me to show where they were on his map. Of course I knew EXACTLY where I was, and reached down to pull up a stalk of grass. I used that stalk to point to his map. My friend Cyrus L__, also in mufti, snickered at my precision. I could have shown them a lovely field of fire to a main east west route across the valley.

Boy could that car take corners. The X1/9 looks a bit like a doorstop, and had a removeable top that could be stowed into the front end. Only two seats, the engine was for all intents and purposes in the back seat. The back trunk was small, and the muffler was just under it, so you didn't want to stow your beer there. When I went through a car wash, a bit of water would come back in from the rear, wetting my (closely cropped!) hair. Rain would drip onto the distributor, and it rained every day in Germany.

I picked up a French college student between Le Havre and Paris. Boy she was amazed to hitch a ride with an American who even spoke a bit of French (with, I must confess a very Canadian accent!). She had never been to Paris, but had an address. I drove through Paris, and even remembered the streets from my high school French class (Thanks Mrs. Huchro!). I asked her when she had to be there, and took her around to the sights before her appointment, all without a map. She was amazed that I knew Paris so very well. Of course the X1/9 handled like a dream in the dense traffic over the cobblestones. I could just about think about changing lanes and would be there. The ease of driving permitted me to call up memories of the maps.

I had a few dates with a Hanau high school girl. I was only 23 then, so I wasn't quite a pervert. Her father was a teacher at the local American school. She was cute, and played a very good game of tennis, but was offended that I, a muscular schmuck, could beat her, the star of her school tennis team. I didn't tell her that my dad taught me tennis when I was in high school, and that I had further taken a class in tennis in college. I never saw the point in letting someone win, if I could beat them. If they beat me, they earned it. She did like for me to pick her up in my X1/9 after her tennis practice, but her personality was a little too self absorbed-prissy for my taste. Her younger sister was 10, but had a much nicer (tomboyish!) personality. Of course there was no question of taking the younger sister out.

One winter, ,my friend Cyrus L__ and I went to a few battlefields, and on the way back from Bastogne, the heater released a hot stream of water-ethylene glycol onto his leg. We stopped, and he moved so the scalding fluid wouldnt land on him. Eventually I turned off the heater, and mirable Dieu! the fluid stopped spurting! We even continued our trip with a side trip to the ruins of the Bridge at Remagen. A replacement hose (used the same clamps) and all was well after we got back to the base.

We had a big inspection, and First Sergeant C___ was tired after a long period of working long hours to prepare. He hopped in his car and backed out smashing my poor little Fiat's door. She was actually so small that there was no way he could have seen her from his rear view mirror. His insurance paid for a new door, and new coat of paint down that side of the car.

As Battalion stayback commander I got notified that a sergeant had gotten injured in the field. We tried to notify his wife, but eventually we were given the information that she had returned to the US. Accordingly, notification would be devolved to some lucky group in the US. A few hours later she stormed into my office, angry that she had found out from the person who had told us that she was no longer in Europe. I was sorry about how she found out, it was normally a "unit representitive-chaplain" thing. The important thing was to get her to see her husband, then in a hospital room in Wurzburg. The little X1/9 came to the rescue, and I drove the lady to her to her house for a ditty bag, then we dashed to the hospital. Her husband had caught a face full of brass from an exploded .50 BMG round. One eye was covered with gauze, and he looked like Bruce Campbell in "Army of Darkness", but he was mostly ok. We were able, as I remember, to get her checked into a hotel near the hospital, and I went back home with an empty seat beside me.

Soon my younger cousin Suzanne came over from the US to attend college at Fredrich-Alexander Universitat in Erlangen. She was 18, athletic, full figured, and had played field hockey, syncronized swimming, and softball. Very attractive, VERY smart, very tomboyish. Who could want more? But there was an instant jealousy between the X1/9 and Suzanne. Suzanne became my first wife. The X1/9 handed me off to the lady responsible for the next phase of my life. I was married to Suzanne for 17 years.

I sold her (the X1/9) before leaving Germany, to another officer who lived down the hall in the Batchelor Officer's Quarters. I had a lot of good memories from that little doorstop. Mechanically not so reliable, the engine took up so much room that the carburetor would overheat, and evaporate the fuel, starving its little 4 cylinder 1300 engine. Later versions had a special fan to cool the carburetor. She only weighed 645 kilograms, so was not all that underpowered. With the amid-ship engine, she powered through hairpin turns, and the nose was light enough to steer with only one hand. The steering became ineffective at much over 90mph (150 km), as the air dam at the front would deflect. Still she was a wonderful "poor man's Ferrari ". Being small, she fit well through the narrow streets of the old German towns.

It would have required heroic measures to get her brought back to the US, as it didn't meet US bumper/air pollution requirements. Though perhaps, I may have gotten some kind of waiver with money in escrow with a promise to upgrade her, I knew that such upgrades were darned expensive. And I knew that Suzanne and the X1/9 would never get along.

Ah, to be young, single, muscular, with a cool car, and adored by the French girls again. Well, it happened to me once, and that will have to be enough!

I Fisk Diane Feinstein's reply to my letter

2007-07-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

Below is a response to my letter to Diane Feinstein. My snarky comments are in Bold.

Dear Mr. Meaker:

Thank you for your letter concerning the situation in Iraq. I appreciate hearing your views on this important issue.

I am deeply concerned about our Iraq strategy. President Bush sent our military into Iraq using faulty intelligence...

Earth to Diane F. Intelligence is always faulty. The fact is, we went in before sanctions broke down completely, before Saddam was able to reconstitute his WMD programs. We, rather cleverly, fought them before they were ready. That is better than waiting until our soldiers could be killed in tens of thousands by mustard gas, and nerve gas. The Senate was right to vote to authorize War. The Administration was right to go in, knock out the Saddam government, and then make war against any and all terrorists who came. Every terrorist killed or scared off in Iraq will not attack disarmed civilians in the US.

and inadequate planning. The Administration has consistently ignored the advice of high-ranking military commanders, our allies around the world...

The Administration has consistantly selected carefully from the best advice of the best commanders. Results speak for themselves. A country of more than 20 million is conquered, occupied, and civilian government is reconstituted despite no recent democratic experience. Significant parts of Iraq are now being run by Iraqis. Larger areas are being run by Iraqis with the US in support. The terrorists to include Baath holdouts, are on the run all over Iraq. Al Queda in Iraq are currently on their fourth "capital" in Iraq. The Administration ignored the advice of the French government, which had been suborned by Saddam. What world leader would you have us follow? George Galloway, the corrupt? Abscam Murtha? Cold Cash Jefferson? Please, don't embarass yourself.

, Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, and the Iraq Study Group by refusing to acknowledge that there is no military solution to the problems plaguing Iraq.

Every terrorist killed is a military solution. Saddam's sons killed are a military solution. Every tribal leader in Anbar province who shifts his allegience from Al Queda to the Iraqi government is a military solution. The place where there is no military solution is the US Senate. Really, you must get out more.

Conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate by the day,...

Conditions in Iraq improve by the day. Although the Iraqi parliment has its shortcomings, you perhaps have some understanding of how a minority can stymie majority desires in a democracy. So far the Iraqi government has come! Certainly under Saddam there was no such ability to thwart the corrupt Ba'ath government.

with an increasing number of U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqi civilians killed monthly in horrific violence.

I would be amazed if fewer US troops and Iraqi civilians were killed monthly, as that would require resurrection from the dead.

Our troops find themselves caught in the midst of a complex civil war.

By the definition of Civil war, no such thing is happening. The terrorists are mostly from outside Iraq. That is no kind of Civil War.

This sectarian conflict cannot be solved by military intervention but only by the Iraqi leadership taking tough political actions to stem long standing grievances and hatred between Sunnis and Shi'as.

This is not a sectarian conflict. Though Sunni Al Queda murder Shia, they also murder Christians in US forces, Sunni Kurds, and Sunni government personnel. Shia in Iran support Sunni terrorists in Iraq to make trouble for the US. In the US, I have learned to be glad for each day the Legislature does not pass bad law. I don't think we should have much higher standards for the legislature of the new government of Iraq.

To date, more than 3,400 of our brave men and women in uniform have lost their lives and over 26,000 have been injured; tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been brutally murdered. The current situation is simply unsustainable.

In 4 years we have lost less than a single day of WWII, when the US had half the population of today. They have not "lost their lives", they have been killed in action, mostly by illegal combatants who also murder women, children, and non-combatants. We must not let such tactics defeat us, or our enemies, foreign and domestic, will increasingly use such methods against us.

For this reason, I joined my colleagues in the United States Senate in supporting a provision in the fiscal year 2007 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill, to require the President to begin a phased redeployment of our combat troops from Iraq no later than 120 days after passage of the bill, with funding for combat operations ending by April 2008, except for a limited supporting force focused on training Iraqi security forces and targeting terrorists.

As you are my representitive to the US Senate, I direct you to vote for support for the troops by providing the funding, equipment, and training for them to win against our horrific enemy. I forbid you to vote for any provision to abandon our allies in Iraq to such an enemy.

I was very disappointed that the President yet again ignored the calls of the American people to bring our troops home, and chose instead to veto this bill.

I am proud of President Bush for keeping faith with our allies and our soldiers. I am pleased that he has chosen to fight the terrorists overseas, where they can not select the time and place for their attacks. I am glad the Senate authorized this action. I am disappointed that the US Senate seems too dull to remember that they too are a target for the dull knives of Al Queda.

In order to ensure that our troops have the resources they need to carry out their missions safely, improve the standards of medical treatment for wounded troops and veterans, and provide critical assistance to those affected by domestic natural disasters, the United States Congress passed a second version of the Supplemental Appropriations bill, which was signed into law by the President on May 25th.

Passing supplemental appropriations is a good idea when the US is at war.

While this bill did not include important timelines for reducing our troop levels in Iraq, I remain committed to bringing our troops home soon and will continue to work with my colleagues in the Senate to push for a political and diplomatic solution to the situation in Iraq.

As my representitive in the US Senate, I direct you to vote for bringing the troops home only after Iraq has, in the judgement of the senior military commanders on the scene, the ability to defend themselves from the terrorists, and from unfriendly nations in the area such as Iran and Syria. As my representitive to the US Senate, I forbid you to deny soldiers in Iraq funding for continuing operations.

Again, thank you for writing. For your review, I have included my most recent statement on this issue. Best regards.

Best wishes. I hope you find new and better sources of information. Your current sources are betraying you, and hope to betray the United States, our service members, and our allies. Shame on them!

Donald L. Meaker

Review of Laffer Curve

2007-07-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.poorandstupid.com/2007_07_15_chronArchive.asp#8552863794098008868

Don Luskin has an interesting discussion on the Laffer Curve. Rather famously, Arthur Laffer drew it on a napkin for Gerald Ford, to explain how a tax rate cut could increase government revenue from that tax. Just a review. Government revenue is expected to be zero if the tax rate is zero. Government revenue is expected to be zero if the tax rate is 100%, because noone would do the job. (If there are other non-cash benefits to the job, then the tax rate is not 100%). If tax rates are low enough, there is less incentive to cheat/ or modify behavior, which leads to very high expected revenue from very low tax rates.

Government revenue from a given tax rate is expected to be positive when the tax rate is between 0 and 100%. This suggests you can increase government revenue from a high tax rate by lowering it, and can increase government revenue from a low tax rate by increasing it. Increasing revenue from a tax rate cut is refered to as "The tax cuts paid for themselves..."

One example in recent years was the luxury boat market. A high tax rate was placed on luxury boats, and revenue from the tax was nearly zero: noone wanted to buy a luxury boat when they were going to buy their boat, and essentially buy another boat for Uncle Sam. The luxury boat industry was essentially destroyed. When the tax rate was reduced, the luxury boat industry came back.

I took the data under discussion, and fit the data using Excel. It fit best to a 4th order polynomial, that is with 0 income associated with 0% tax rate and two positive government revenue humps. (I can not refrain from calling it a camel curve!) I submit that the hump at the very low 10 to 15% level is the tax rate where it begins to make more sense to hire accountants and lawyers rather than to pay the tax. The maximum government revenue point is about 25%, where the rational manager pays for accountants and lawyers, but still has to pay. Higher than 25% the rational investor begins to stop producing. Tax rates above 15% tend to be welfare for accountants and lawyers, but produce very little added revenue for the Government. Tax rates above 25 percent seem to reduce revenue for the government, showing that accountants and lawyers in government who advise government tax rate policy makers are obeying Director's Law: They are optimizing their personal life, not that of their government client.

If the countries which are not identified are removed (using Excel "hide" command) the R value shoots up to .43 for the 4th order curve. Not too shabby for a single parameter to have that much influence on a very complex data set with literally thousands of input parameters from many different countries.

Because I can, I append my comments to Brad Delong's blog, since he will soon delete them.

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal

That there is a tax rate where human behavoir is changed can not really honestly questioned. Even the most liberal economist will advocate vice taxes on alcohol and tobacco as a means to reduce drinking or smoking. What is a criminal statue but an attempt to increase the cost of unacceptable behavior?

I took the data estimates provided in your comments, and used Excel to find the best fit. The best fit was a 4th order "Camel Curve". I found it didn't make any difference if I forced a fit to (0,0) or not. The exclusion of Norway, Luxemburg, or UAE didn't seem to make a difference.
I didn't know some of the countries, so used excel to hide the countries that were not identified. The R value for this "identified country data only" data was .43, rather high for one input parameter in a system that should literally have thousands of input parameters.

Why a 4th order curve? I think there are two Laffer curves. One where people (who can) start hiring accountants and lawyers rather than just paying their 10% to 15% tax rate, and another where people begin to not produce rather than pay the 25% to 30% tax rate after already hiring the accountants and lawyers. The revenue increase from increased tax rates from 15% to 25% is minimal but the demand for accountants and lawyers will greatly increase.

This would indicate that accountants and lawyers who recommend tax increases beyond 15% in their policy advice to government are being more loyal to their personal self interest, than they are to the well being of their government clients.

Hope this helps.

Update: As expected Brad DeLong deleted my comments. Big surprise! Don Luskin included my letter, complete with the camel curve. Thanks Mr. Luskin!

I impatiently await the sure arrival of a mass of heavy red gold for my wonderful writing.

Piece of string as machinegun...

2007-07-12T19:13:00.000-07:00

How nice of the ATF to permit us peons small bits of string...

The odd thing is I haven't managed to scrape together the cash for a Garand, Ruger Mini-14, or M-1A just yet. The same approach would probably work for a SKS too.

Why Mommy Votes Democrat...

2007-07-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is in response to the toddler propaganda "Why Mommy is a Democrat".

Mommy votes Democrat because she wants to have that nice black lady visit to clean the toilet, cook, and do the laundry for her.

Mommy votes Democrat because the nice man who speaks Spanish mows the lawn, so daddy doesn't get sweaty.

Mommy votes Democrat because she wants to have higher pay than she has earned.

Mommy votes Democrat because that keeps the mean man who pays her from firing her.

Mommy votes Democrat so that the nice teachers don't have to give mean red marks on your paper when you don't know the answer.

Mommy votes Democrat because she is too scared of the terrorists to fight them. She would rather tax the Grocer and Gas Station Owner to pay them off.

Mommy votes Democrat to keep the Grocer and Gas Station Owner from raising their prices.

Mommy votes Democrat because she hopes to make lots of money by suing your wicked doctor for making you better.

Mommy votes Democrat to keep the doctor from raising his prices.

Mommy votes Democrat because the union thugs will beat up Daddy if she doesn't.

Mommy votes Democrat because she murdered your little sister, and doesn't want to feel bad.

I am Pro Amnesty.

2007-06-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Amnesty. What would that mean?

All illegal aliens should immediately be given legal status upon their return to their home country, and should retain it so long as they stay in their home country, or legally apply from their home country (and be accepted by the US), for legal entry into the US.

If the illegal has US born dependents, he/she should be allowed to take these US born dependents with them. I don't know if the US born dependents should be US citizens or not. I figure there is a strong case that, especially after they returned to their parent's home country, they would not fall under the 14th Amendment provision "and subject to the jurisdition thereof".

If they don't have enough cash for the ticket, the illegal aliens would register with ICE, be fingerprinted for secure ID, and be shipped to their home country at no cost to the Federal Government (ie the cost would be born by the illegal). Perhaps on their way, they would even be given help filling out the forms to become a legal alien.

The important thing is that the illegal should be in line behind anyone who applied for legal entry to the US the way you are supposed to do it. Further, the illegal would have to pay taxes on all work they did inside the US before their application would be accepted. I am indifferent on if the US born foreign raised dependent should be permitted back into the US after they reach the age of majority.

That would be amnesty. Anything that is kinder to the illegal than that would be a benefit to a law breaker, and as such would be guaranteed to attract more illegals. I am opposed to being kinder to law breakers than to non-law breakers.

It is important to note that any illegal alien not confined by law (ie. in jail) can become legal at any time they want by returning to their home country.

Yes, I am very happy that the current attempt at fly by night amnest failed in the Senate today.

Cheney having to provide reports to a minor federal bureaucrat.

2007-06-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

It is the made up issue by Pat Leahy, Socialist, Vermont. Beldar, at http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2007/06/does-cheney-hav.html
Has the right answer.

John Edwards

2007-06-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently John Edwards jokes are all the rage. They are the opposite of the Chuck Norris jokes of a few years ago.

"Chuck Norris never sleeps. He waits."

Since John Edwards is poofy, his jokes usually make light of that.

"John Edwards doesn't know what the bottom of the toilet seat looks like."

"John Edwards. One drop of his blood has enough estrogen to stop menopause."

Feel free to add your own.

Constitution in Exile

2007-06-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Fourteenth and Second Amendments, in light of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11: Letters of Marque and Reprisal.

The Second Amendment is simple, and breathtaking in its scope.

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

As used in each of the amendments, “the people” is a term of art that indicates all citizens and legal, free residents. The people in the Second Amendment is the same term used in the First , Third and Fourth Amendments, and is reasonably construed to have the same meaning.
The Dred Scott decision, as delivered, turned on the SCOTUS understanding of the limitation of that term “the people” to residents who were not Negroes.

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in response to the decision written by Judge Taney, on Dred Scott that stated that no Negro had standing in the United States. In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permiting (sic) slavery in all of the country's territories. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2933.html
Dred Scott “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his (the white man’s) benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."

It was this decision that revealed the failure of the policies of antislavery wing of the Whig party which relied upon the 1820 Missouri Compromise to limit slavery in Federal Territories. It was this decision, in the wake of conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces in Kansas, stated that even free states could not ban slavery. It was this decision that lead to the successful Republican effort to find a President who could add an amendment to limit human slavery to the states where it existed. The Missouri Compromise had three provisions.

Missouri would be admitted as a Slave State.
No further Slave states would be admitted north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
Fugitive slaves captured anywhere in the United States would be surrendered by federal marshals upon demand by the owners (or their agents).

Though the Missouri Compromise was overturned, Missouri remained as a slave state, and the Fugitive Slave Law continued to be enforced. The only part that was overturned was the restriction of Slavery to existing Slave States and the Southern parts of Federal Territories.
The Missouri Compromise was modified by the Compromise of 1850 that had 5 provisions, that were enacted, two for the antislavery forces, two for the pro-slavery forces, and the 5th as a balance between the two.

California was admitted as a Free State
The Slave Trade (though not Slavery) was forbidden in Washington, D.C.
New Mexico and Utah Territories were organized without prohibition of Slavery
The Fugitive Slave Act expanded upon that of 1820, and required all US Citizens to assist in return of escaped slaves.
Texas gave up title a great deal of western land to which it had good claim, but received 10 million dollars in compensation.

The Fugitive Slave Law continued to be enforced, even during the Civil War. This enforcement was necessary to keep the northern slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware) in the Union. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation!

The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by California on May 6th, 1959, and implicitly recognizes

that States may wrongfully inhibit the liberty of their citizens or residents, and
that it is a duty of the Federal government to assure that Civil Rights would be honored by states.

That was the experience of the Great Rebellion, where state governments not only asserted the right to leave the union, but also asserted the right to unilaterally set the terms upon which that separation would take place. Examples of their unilateral acts to set the terms of separation include:

Rebellious States asserted their continued authority over US Citizens within their territory by enacting and enforcing conscription of US Citizens within their territory. Exemptions were granted to large plantation owners.
Southern state militias attacked federal forces, to include Harper’s Ferry and Ft Sumter.
Southern state militias, acting for the southern state, appropriated federal property.
Southern state militias blocked navigation on Federal Waterways, to include the Mississippi River and Charleston Harbor.
Southern state militias prevented the collection of Federal tariffs within and adjacent to their borders, even for merchants who were willing to pay tariff as necessary to penetrate the Federal Blockade.

Having lost political validation in the election of the President, rather than seek political validation in the legislature, and seeing no hope in legal validation in the Supreme Court, the rebel Southern States sought validation by force, and appealed to the sword. When the southern states lost, the last support of their position was lost with their armies. A condition of the restoration of rights for the rebel southern states was acceptance of the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment clarified the words of Article 4., Section 4.

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. “

That was the section by which President Lincoln asserted his authority to maintain the perpetual union of the States, codified in the Articles of Confederation, that predated the Constitution.

The key provision of the 14th Amendment is in Section 1.:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

This forbids States from depriving its citizens of rights, as well as privileges and immunities, and further assures “equal protection of the laws”. Just as a state can not circumvent the requirement for equal protection of laws by creating an arbitrary class of persons called “Negro” and enacting special reductions in their status, so the states can not create an arbitrary class of persons called “Ordinary Citizens ” and remove their rights. This is what California has done, by banning meaningful self defense to all citizens of several counties without police powers.
Now it must be admitted that if the 2nd Amendment provides an individual right to keep and bear arms, that the 14th Amendment forbids States from acts that would abridge that right. If a citizen is immune from laws infringing upon his duty (delineated in Title 10, section 311) to be prepared for militia service, then States may not abridge upon that immunity.

The next question is: To what extent does the individual right of the 2nd Amendment extend?

“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). The term “not within judicial notice” is a term of art which implies that the facts may be what they are, but the evidence has not been presented and recorded. United States v. Miller suggests that it extends at least to the possession of weapons useful for militia service, holding constitutional a ban on sawed off shotguns in the absence of evidence that such weapons were useful for militia service. Such evidence could have been provided by testimony of many men, called up from the militia to federal service during WWI, who used sawed off shotguns as “trench brooms” in the severe close combat environment of that war. During Vietnam doctors were provided short shotguns to permit them to defend themselves and their patients from an enemy that did not respect the Red Cross. During Desert Storm, tank commanders used shotguns to remove enemy infantry from tank aft decks. During the present operations in Iraq short shotguns are used by combatants to breach locks on heavy doors, and special purpose breaching rounds are provided for that purpose. This long experience of use of shotguns, many with barrels shortened far beyond 18 inches suggests that competent defense would allow Miller’s presumption of non-utility to be overcome.

Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 264-66 (1886) [State law barred "any body of men, other than the organized militia of the state and the troops of the United States, from associating as a military company and drilling with arms in any city or town of the state"; the Court held:] The first [claim is based on] the second amendment, which declares: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." We think it clear that the sections under consideration, which only forbid bodies of men to associate together as military organizations, or to drill or parade with arms in cities and towns unless authorized by law, do not infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms. But a conclusive answer to the contention that this amendment prohibits the legislation in question lies in the fact that the amendment is a limitation only upon the power of congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state. It was so held by this court in the case of U. S. v. Cruikshank, in which the chief justice, in delivering the judgment of the court, said that the right of the people to keep and bear arms "is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government . . . ." . . . It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the states, and, in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the states cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government. But, as already stated, we think it clear that the sections under consideration do not have this effect. “

What is not known is whether a law forbidding the people from keeping arms, not just in cities and towns, but generally, would deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security.

Some assert that the right to keep and bear is limited to manually operated or self loading (confusingly called "semiautomatic") rifles, since once manually operated or semiautomatic rifles were individual weapons, and fully automatic rifles were reserved for crew served weapons. This is not factually correct. The famous M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle was a fully automatic weapon, but was not crew served, rather being issued during WWI, WWII, and Korea to one man per infantry squad in the Army and during WWII and Korea to one man per infantry fire team in the Marine Corps. As technology has improved, the fully automatic M-1 submachine gun, the M-3 submachine gun and the M2 Carbine are not crew served, and each of these were issued to individuals during WWII during the Korean War, and the fully automatic M-16, M16A1, as well as the burst fire M16A2 and burst fire M4 Carbine are issued to individual soldiers.

Since fully automatic assault rifles are provided to the Organized Militia (National Guard) when in State and Federal service, then presuming competent decision making on the part of the national military authorities, one can confidently state that fully automatic assault rifles are useful for militia service. This is backed up by legislative votes that authorize and appropriate funds to purchase fully automatic rifles, given their well known issue to individual soldiers. These fully automatic rifles are not crew served weapons, but rather individual weapons used in modern tactics to attack and defend, by individual soldiers.

Even Crew Served weapons may be useful to the Militia. Certainly infantry mortars (typically from 60mm to 120mm in diameter) are crew served weapons, because of the size and weight of the weapons themselves, and the weight and bulk associated with meaningful amounts of ammunition. Some anti-tank weapons, to include the LAW (Light Antitank Weapon) are issued as a round of ammunition, and carried and employed by individual soldiers, and correspondingly members of the National Guard. Others (such as TOW, Javelin, and Hellfire) are crew-served, and signed to the commanding officer and thence hand receipted down to Non-Commissioned Officers. National Guard units are provided with Armored Vehicles, with large cannon, and multiple automatic weapons. Members of the unorganized Militia members may be assigned to operate these weapons in the event that the Organized Militia is called to federal service. During the early days of WWII, local militias obtained artillery for local self defense by appropriating weapons that had previously been in front of various Post Offices. Certainly crew served antiaircraft weapons could have provided some useful local defense to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, if only they had been available to the occupants of the large buildings that were targets of that atrocity. Those who would ban crew served weapons, assent to continued similar attacks of American Citizens, as they perpetuate the inability of Citizens to protect themselves from evil, unless they announce the details of their “better plan”.

Certainly the rights to private ownership of one form of Crew Served Weapon is referenced in the Constitution itself: During the early Federal period, the contemporary wooden merchant ship, supplemented with weapons is a crew served weapon, able to transport itself by concerted efforts of a team of sailors to set the sails, and trim the rudder. Its weapons could have good effect only if private gun crews serviced their weapon as ordered by the gun officer, and trained its guns as commanded by the ship’s captain. The ship as a crew served weapon would be trained in peace for useful self defense on the high seas, or to have good effectiveness in time of war under Congressionally Granted Letters of Marque and Reprisal. The members of a ship’s company would train together during peace, as part of their normal occupation (as a merchant seaman) so that during war, the Congress could expand the effective naval force available. Such figures as John Paul Jones served as Privateers, sailing under authority of Letters of Marque and Reprisal. It should be noted that John Paul Jones did not wait to get his training until the United States had issued the LMR. Time is money, and LMR were paid for by the parties, and expected to make a profit. He, and much of his crew were already competent. Merchant Seaman at that time had to be ready to defend their ships cargo from violent non-governmental pirates as well as from government belligerents. In that respect that time was much like the present.

If the right of a citizen extends even to crew served weapons, as well as to individual weapons, then where is the limit of right, which may not be abridged by legislature, and where is the beginning of privilege, which may be governed by legislative law? Can an individual have legal access to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and if so, of what toxicity, and to how many kilotons?

Artillery and mortars are used by the active services, as well as the National Guard. As such, they would be available to members of the militia. Ammunition would be regulated just as ammunition storage for the active service and National Guard is stored carefully. Though artillery and mortars could be kept, the artillery for them could reasonably be controlled. Militia members would have to be expert in drawing ammunition from storage and returning unused ammunition to storage. Locations where artillery, mortars, or missiles could be fired would be controlled, just as these locations are carefully controlled in the active service. Training with dummy rounds would be uncontrolled, and training with and storage of sub-caliber practice devices would be controlled commensurate with the reduced lethality of such ammunition.
Chemical agents as weapons as now understood were first used by Imperial Germany during the First World War. Chlorine gas, followed by Phosgene and Mustard agents were used. Later National Socialist Germany developed Nerve agents, but did not routinely use them against combatants. Zyclon B was used in the extermination camps against non-combatants. US treaties and agreements have forbidden use of these weapons, and so no aspiring militia member need be expert in their use. These weapons would not be available for militia use.
Certainly nuclear weapons are beyond the means of all but the most unusually wealthy individuals. Nuclear weapons were first developed by the United States Government, and used during WWII. They have since only been developed by government actors. In the United States, access and information on them is highly classified, and by stripping special access clearance from any person not employed, the right to access to nuclear weapons is well controlled. That would not change. Nuclear weapons manufactured abroad and imported would be subject to a substantial duty, and this duty or tariff could easily be made so large as to practically prevent them from importation.

Update: Vin Suprnowicz also points out the link between the second and 14th amendment in a current issue of Shotgun News. http://www.shotgunnews.com/suprynowicz/

Hat tip to Tam from View From the Porch at http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/

References

US Constitution
Second Amendment to US Constitution
Fourteenth Amendment to US constitution
Article XIV.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,(See Note 15) and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Proposal and Ratification
The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the Thirty-ninth Congress, on the 13th of June, 1866. It was declared, in a certificate of the Secretary of State dated July 28, 1868 to have been ratified by the legislatures of 28 of the 37 States. The dates of ratification were: Connecticut, June 25, 1866; New Hampshire, July 6, 1866; Tennessee, July 19, 1866; New Jersey, September 11, 1866 (subsequently the legislature rescinded its ratification, and on March 24, 1868, readopted its resolution of rescission over the Governor's veto, and on Nov. 12, 1980, expressed support for the amendment); Oregon, September 19, 1866 (and rescinded its ratification on October 15, 1868); Vermont, October 30, 1866; Ohio, January 4, 1867 (and rescinded its ratification on January 15, 1868); New York, January 10, 1867; Kansas, January 11, 1867; Illinois, January 15, 1867; West Virginia, January 16, 1867; Michigan, January 16, 1867; Minnesota, January 16, 1867; Maine, January 19, 1867; Nevada, January 22, 1867; Indiana, January 23, 1867; Missouri, January 25, 1867; Rhode Island, February 7, 1867; Wisconsin, February 7, 1867; Pennsylvania, February 12, 1867; Massachusetts, March 20, 1867; Nebraska, June 15, 1867; Iowa, March 16, 1868; Arkansas, April 6, 1868; Florida, June 9, 1868; North Carolina, July 4, 1868 (after having rejected it on December 14, 1866); Louisiana, July 9, 1868 (after having rejected it on February 6, 1867); South Carolina, July 9, 1868 (after having rejected it on December 20, 1866). Ratification was completed on July 9, 1868.

The amendment was subsequently ratified by Alabama, July 13, 1868; Georgia, July 21, 1868 (after having rejected it on November 9, 1866); Virginia, October 8, 1869 (after having rejected it on January 9, 1867); Mississippi, January 17, 1870; Texas, February 18, 1870 (after having rejected it on October 27, 1866); Delaware, February 12, 1901 (after having rejected it on February 8, 1867); Maryland, April 4, 1959 (after having rejected it on March 23, 1867); California, May 6, 1959; Kentucky, March 18, 1976 (after having rejected it on January 8, 1867).

Brainwashed schmucks!

2007-06-10T18:58:00.001-07:00

Alas, this http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/06/from_the_kgb_playbook_demorali.php explains the poor misleaded people at Daily Kos and Democratic Underground.

The communists had a contining problem. Their best and brightest went into Marxist Leninist philosophy, as they were told that such was critically important to the success of their country. Further they were told that correct application of Marxist Leninist theory would lead to higher living standards, higher morality, and eventually build a heaven on earth.

But it didn't. Of course the smart guys who studied ML theory eventually noticed that. Since they were party members, and they were "True Believers" they spoke up in an attempt to make the small changes that they thought were needed to improve Marxist Leninist theory. Once they pointed out the various shortcomings, and suggested their improvements they were identified and murdered. Trotsky was murdered in 1939, but he was far from the first. There is a fairly famous picture which had the early party comrades assembled in a group shot. As one after another was murdered or executed (little difference in the USSR), they were airbrushed out until only Stalin remained.

Fred Thompson pointed out in his recent You Tube response to Michael Moore that a Cuban journalist is confined to an insane asylum, given frequent shock treatments as a corrective for his crime of speaking the truth about the Castro regime. Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katy Couric, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barny Frank, they would all be quickly executed in a Marxist Leninist version of the USA. Poor things, they don't know how rotten is the system for which they work.

They are kind of like the homosexual activists who oppose our war against Islamic Fascists, despite the sad fact that the Islamic Fascists would have them murdered within minutes of their takeover.
.

2007-06-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

I want a seal skin coat!

Seal skins are used to make coats, mittens, muffs, and even boots. They make garments that are warm and dry even if it is cold and wet.
Imagine: If everyone wore sealskin winter clothes, we would have less carbon emissions from people heating their houses and cars. Medical costs from frostbite would drop.

The baby seals pelts are white, which helps the aboriginal people as they eke out their existance in the cold northern wastes. Without sealskin, you are pushed to use oil based plastics, which do not vent moisture so fast, leading to frostbite or at least chilblains and trenchfoot.

The beef and pork industry kill their animals by hitting them on the head too. Alas, the baby seals are not so cooperative as to be driven into a pristine slaughterhouse. So if you don't want to see it, close your eyes.

The number of seal pups taken each year is monitored and adjusted so that the population of seals doesn't increase beyond what the fisheries can bear. The management process is similar to all other animals taken for sport, meat, and skins. That is as it should be.

So hurrah for Canada and their enlightened game management programs. Next time I hit the liquor store, in honor of the Canadian seal harvesters I will get a fifth of Canadian Club.

Army Combat Uniform(ACU)

2007-06-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

I was reading about some dissatisfaction with the new ACU. The intent was to take advantage of digital technology to create a pattern that was not super at any terrain, but would be not all that bad at any terrain. As is usual, computerized idiocy is idiocy. When you take an average of arctic winter and Jungle, you get something that is not particularly good for anything.

Now, just to establish my credentials, I served in the Army/Infantry/Europe/7th Army/3rd Armored Division/2nd Bde/2nd Bn 48th Infantry, back during the Carter Administration. I left as a Captain. Since that time I got two Engineering degrees, and have worked for the Navy, the Air Force, and two defense contractors. I have seen new camouflage patterns come and go, each proclaimed the greatest yet, each changed because something new was supposedly even better.

Ah, the Army. Like Rodney Dangerfield, they "Don't get no respect." More aircraft than the Air Force, more boats than the Navy, and more amphibious landings than the Marine Corps. Although the Marines are the worlds best two division force this side of Fort Hood, they have their own feet of clay. Odd that they would copyright their “superior” pattern to prevent their brothers in arms from using it. I don’t think the very small Marine Emblems on the MarPat uniform meet the Geneva requirement for “distinguishable at a distance”.

The Army is big. It hast to be managed differently than the small services. Reducing the number of uniforms saves big bucks. When the Army got rid of the Green (a semi dress uniform modeled after the WWI combat uniform) it saved a lot. The army retained the Army Blues a full dress uniform modeled after the Civil War and Indian War combat uniform. The Army Blue trousers are a lighter shade than the Jacket: In the summer heat soldiers would still wear their trousers, and lay aside their jacket, and the trousers would accordingly fade. Money was short then too.

Before the recent surge the US had 140,000 men in Iraq. The Army had 99,000 of them. The other three (four counting he Coast Guard!) contribute to the 41,000. The Army is also underfunded, getting only 24 percent of the budget for 2/3s of the fighting. The Army doesn't have billets at posh embassies around the world, nor do they have comfortable billets with a sheet and pillowcase on Navy ships. The Army is the only service that has been continuously in existance since the Revolution, and before. The Army has units with traditions that go back to American Colonial Forces in the French and Indian War (7 Years War for any European readers). By contrast, the Navy and Marines were disbanded. The Air Force traces its pseudo history to the WWI Army Air Service, by which time the Army Aviation had been in action for 50 years, and completed two deployments. (in 1898, Army aviation units adjusted artillery fire on the Spanish in Cuba, 5 years before the Wright Brother's first flight.

During WWII there were 248 US amphibious invasions. 200 of them were conducted by the Army, using the doctrines . The Marine Corps used Army regulations when operating on land until 1834. That means that the celebrated Lt O'Bannon cutting down the flag of the Bey of Algiers on the shores of Tripoli was conducting his operation in accordance with Army Regulations. In the 1920s the Marine Corps moved its birthday from July 11th, 1834 when they got their own regulations back to 1776 when the Navywas recruiting for Shipboard Police (the British Marine was mostly that). The British experience was to disband the Marines after every war, which hindered learning from mistakes. When the Marines landed at Inchon, the Army was there too in the persons of the US 7th Division. At the same time, the Army fought the length of Korea, from Pusan to Seoul. The Marines took half of Seoul. Task force Lynch was equipped with Pershing Tanks, and accompanied by General Gay, formerly of Patton's 3rd Army Staff.

I don't want to disparage the Marines. They are good, proud men, (and ladies). They do a great job even outside the realm of publicity. It was rather amusing that the Army worked with the Northern alliance to clear 3/4s of Afghanistan, outnumbered some 1000 to 1. The Marines took a hop to the airport at Khandhar, which was secured by the Army, and thought they merited a headline. The Germans didn't call the Marines Devil Dogs, and to assert otherwise is a lie. "Teufelhunden" is not German. It is merely propaganda of the crude WWI sort. Teufelshunde would be German. No German dispatches have been found that so refered to the Marines during WWI.

The Navy was recreated during the early federal period. Prior to that, the US mostly used privateers, private citizens operating privately owned crew served weapons, sailing under terms of Letters of Marque and Reprisal. John Paul Jones hated privateers, but the Continental Navy had 5 ships at sea in 1978 when privateers had over 3000! George Washington created the first riverine force to float his men across the Delaware river. The Continental Navy was disbanded after the Revolution. There was no need for one, as the British provided security for merchantmen under their merchantile policies.

Camouflage was historically not needed, and is currently overrated. After you begin fighting, camouflage doesn't work unless it can hide muzzleflashes. In the days of black powder, clouds of white smoke further emphasized the location of any unit that fired.

Camouflage is a patrol technique. On patrols you walk a lot, and shoot very little. Before you fire, camouflage may be useful, but hiding behind things is even more useful. There is a powerful difference between cover and concealment. Before your patrol you should prepare your detachment for the operation, and this includes tailoring your uniform (no rattles, no shine, no swish, and helmets festooned to break up the outline) your equipment (magazines with open end down in the pouch, and bandoleers attached tight so they don't swing or bump). Faces are easy to recognize, so they are colored to break up the familiar two eyes, nose and mouth outline that every 5 year old has mastered.

The ACU doesn’t have black, but it doesn’t matter, since the ACU are worn UNDER armor, knee pads, web gear and associated bandoleer straps. That should, with careful selection, break up the outline of the ACUs. The previous 3 color desert camouflage uniform was thought to be an improvement over the 5 color chocolate chip and 4 color desert because the unform light colors worked better in Arabia. Now a uniform light color is not satisfactory?

What would make sense is a 3 layer approach.

1. Cotton wicking undergarments. The innermost layer would have built in tourniquet tapes for rapid field treatment of injuries to the limbs, even before the armor can be removed. The inner cloth garment should have evaporation beds to permit heat removal from sweat evaporation. The evaporation beds are connected to rubber bladders under the heels, knees and elbows, so that common movement techniques (walking, crawling) get the benefit of an air cushion under the hard protection, and create cooling airflow under the armor.

2. An intermediate layer of body armor and web gear. The web gear must be integrated with the armor, so neither is completely parasitic. This means lighter weight for the same function. The web gear should have two water bladders (in case one breaks!) arranged vertically along either side of the spine with a connected hose and valve to permit drinking on the move, with a quick attachment to the NBC protective mask. Ammunition pouches should be attached to the web gear so as to ride side of the hips. Access would be by slits with flaps, held open or closed by velcro. Hooks that attach the back pack to the webgear would be attached through holes in the over-uniform. Again, the holes would have flaps that could be held open and closed. The back pack would be modular, with each piece able to be dropped by quick detachable connectors. This would let infantry drop off ammunition at the company/platoon base of fire, while still retaining the amunition for their squad weapons.

3. A top layer camouflage surcoat. The camouflage surcoat would be flame resistant, have slits for access to the web gear pouches, and pockets for first aid pouch, rations, maps, and notebooks, and a selection of different size, shape, and patterns cloth strips with which the outer camouflage can be festooned to break up the outline.

If you are fighting in urban areas, camouflage uniforms don’t matter. If you are 3 foot from your enemy, no camouflage matters. If you are behind a door, you can wear a clown suit. If you are in a Hummer, Bradley, Stryker, or Abrams, no camouflage matters. If you have fired your rifle, the muzzleflash will attract enemy return fire, no matter what your uniform pattern. If your uniform doesn’t match your likely background, modify your uniform with tapes, ghilli fibers, and spray paint. Then select your movement paths and techniques to take advantage of cover and concealment. Behind a bush with a clown suit is better than in front of a bush with the best camouflage devised by man.

No combat ready unit ever passed inspection. No inspection ready unit ever passed combat. I was always quite content to have the Marines known for the prettiest dress uniform.

New Invention: 6 Stroke Engine

2007-05-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

An article in Popular Science described a new engine cycle. Hat Tip to the magnificent Instapundit.http://instapundit.com/archives2/005565.php

The common Otto or Diesel engine uses "Intake, Compression, Power, Exhaust" strokes. This new engine adds to that "Steam Power, and Steam Exhaust" strokes. The steam ejector sprays water into the piston, which forms steam upon contact with the cylinder walls. The steam pressure pushes the piston down. The piston pushes up and the steam is exhausted through a special steam valve, where it is recondensed for reuse. By removing the heat directly from the cylinder walls, the needed metal around the cylinder (weight of the engine) would be much reduced. The added cost is the second set of injectors for water, and the steam exhaust valve. The change in cost for a new shape crankshaft in this day of computer operated milling machines should be just about zero.

This should create about 40 percent more power, according to the inventor. It should also reduce the necessary size of the radiator.

That one man will have done more to resolve any future energy crisis than the entire group which negotiated the Kyoto Accord. (the one that was rejected 95-0 by the US Senate during the Clinton Administration, the one that doesn't require China to do anything, and the one whose carbon dioxide targets the European Union is missing despite their fudging the starting point through bookkeeping shennanigans.

Memorial Day

2007-05-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead.
Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

– Lt. Col. John McCrae, 1872-1918

This is one of very few poems that my grandfather quoted to me. Later, when I was in the service I walked many of the WWI and WWII battlefields in Northwestern Europe, with my friend Cyrus.

Live every day to its fullest! Each day was bought for you by Men of Courage and Honor. They loved you before you were born, and forsook their lives to purchase this day, and all days for you.

What kind of courage it that? The kind that "The Four Chaplains" had. http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/05/it-happened-one-night.html
Rather a pity there was not a remake of this incident, rather than that darned "Titanic" movie.

List of Worst US Presidents

2007-05-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

My very own list of worst US Presidents, in order:

1. Buchanan: Result-620,000 deaths in Civil War
Kicker1: Supported Dred Scott decision which asserted that a colored man has no rights that a white man, or the government need observe.
Kicker 2: To the extent possible, disarmed northerners who moved to Kansas, so they could be safely murdered by pro-slavery partisans.
Kicker 3: Secretary of War Floyd moved all US cannon and small arms to southern bases/arsenals where they could be stolen by rebel forces.
Kicker 4: Provided US Government weapons to rebellious militia companies formed in the District of Columbia, in an attempt to prevent Lincoln from being inaugurated.
Mitigating: When loyal soldiers (including Abner Doubleday) inspected rebellious militia with a loyalty oath for the members to sign, he did not interfere. Militia companies who refused to sign the oath had their government provided muskets seized, and reissued to loyal companies.

2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Result- 407,000 US Military Deaths in WWII. German military participation could have been stopped with minimal casualties by a single US Marine Regiment sent to enforce the demilitarization of the Rhineland in 1935. He didn't do it, and rather, supported continued violations of treaty in the forced Anchluss with Austria, and the betrayal and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
Kicker1: Vice President Wallace was a paid Communist Agent, as verified by reading the Soviet side of the Venona Files after the fall of the Soviet Union. His affiliation was known to the US government long before that through signal decrypts. Wallace's treason was ignored.
Kicker2: Put US back into depression with his massive tax increases and bad government programs.
Kicker3: New Deal programs paid southern land owners, but didn't pay a cent to their poor sharecroppers, black or white.

3. Woodrow Wilson: Result: 117,000 US Military deaths in WWI
Kicker1: Re-segregated Federal Government
Kicker2: Prohibition jumpstarted organized crime in cities, and the southern rural branch, the Ku Klux Klan.
Kicker3: Drafted to fill army, and destroyed State Militia units. First man drafted was, irony of irony, a black man named Leo Pinckey. Many blacks didn't wait for the draft, some 700,000 volunteered and most served with valor.
Mitigating: Blacks exposed to less oppressive atmosphere in France could look forward to a more free environment when they returned. Many black units won major awards from the French, though denied comparable recognition by the US. The Harlem Hellcats had, at one time, a rather good commander, one Douglas MacArthur.
Kicker4: Centralized Army bases were breeding grounds for Influenza, which killed 650,000 to 850,000 Americans. Nearly 25 mission people were killed by flu around the world in the first year.

4. Lyndon Baynes Johnson: 58,000 deaths in Vietnam
Kicker1: Destroyed Black Families with Great Society welfare rules that only paid aid if the Father was not at home.
Kicker 2: Energized the long tradition of Democratic corruption in buying, creating and suppressing votes from the South to everywhere else.
Mitigating: Signed Civil Rights Act, passed by Republicans, which ended Democratic Oppression of Blacks in southern States. He had realize this would make it very hard for Democrats to win fair elections.

5. Harry Truman: 36,000 deaths in Korean War
Mitigating1: Desegregated Army
Mitigating2: Said "Marines? Isn't that the Navy's police force, but with a propaganda arm that would embarass Joe Stalin." Apologized afterwards, the wuss.

6. Jimmy Carter: Worst living former president. Result: Sold out US ally and provided an oil rich territory from which Islamic fascist nutballs could launch terrorist attacks.
Kicker1: Gave free amnesty to Vietnam era traitors, draft dodgers, deserters, and servicemen with bad conduct discharges (See John Forbes Kerry, hey what about that SF Form 180?) .
Kicker 2: Misery Index (Sum of interest rate, inflation, and unemployment) reached a US record.
Mitigating: Preaching about Human Rights was instrumental to fall of Soviet Union, a logical precursor to Reagan's "Evil Empire".

7. Slick Willie Clinton: Result: Flipped by Islamic Terrorists, bombed Christians that opposed Islamic Terrorists, thus guaranteeing additional terrorism since it worked so well.
Kicker1: fired 93 US attorneys General to hid his firing of the Attorney investigating him for fraud in Arkansas. Firing an attorney to influence an investigation is a felony.
Kicker2: Hid Iraqi involvement in first World Trade Center bombing, and hid fact that cyanide was laced inside the explosive in an attempt by the terrorists to release poison gas into the ventilation system. It was only good fortune, and terrorist incompetence, that the explosive burned hot enough to consume most of the poison.
Mitigating: Familiarized an entire generation of young women with the concept of Oral Sex.

Ok, I don't think that last is necessarily a good thing.

John Edwards

2007-05-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

http://proteinwisdom.com/index.php?/weblog/entry/23077/

"Not In My Name, You Slimeball!"

courtesy of Instapundit.

Edwards and his campaign spam me almost every day. This hateful liar for hire wants to drag two countries down for a second chance at Vice President. He sought for years to profit from his lies about medical treatment, and succeeded. He sought to get elected as Vice President by lying about the US economic engine, its prowess, and the astounding evenness with which its bounty is bestowed. Now he seeks to destroy a holiday dedicated to the honored memory of US Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen who gave their lives in the last full measure of devotion.

Edwards seeks to destroy the concept of Government of the People, By the People, and For the People, and replace it with a Government of lawyers, by lawyers, and for lawyers.

What a shameless man. What a shame that he finds even as many followers as Vidkun Quisling. If only we could cut out his tongue (as was done to the quislings in Norway after WWII) before he costs us our freedom.

RAPE

2007-04-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

I saw a poster today with one of the stars from "Sex and the City" wearing jeans as a statement against rape.

It was rather odd, that wearing jeans could be taken as a statement that rape is not allowed.

I thought most sane people knew that rape was not committed because of the way that the victim is dressed. To accept that the victim "wanted it" because of dress would put you on the side of the rapist, and their criminal defense lawyer/enablers. It puts one on the side of the Islamicist nutters who invented the Islamicist head scarf in the 1970s, so that Islamicist women could mark themselves as not targets for the Islamicist rapists, and hence only Christian women, or non-Islamicist women would be (in theory) selected as rape targets.

I thought that most educated people knew that rape is not a crime of sexual desire, but rather a crime of violence, meant to enlarge the feelings of power in the rapist, and to demean the victim.

An invention was developed in South Africa to be worn by a women, and if raped, small needles stab into the penis of the offender. It was invented in South Africa, but the government thugs felt monopoly was threatened, and made it illegal. Their reasoning? The rapist might murder the woman after he was damaged. Of course, a rapist would never murder his victim otherwise, would he? Well, of course he would. Further, if a substantial number of women wore such a thing, then rapists would perhaps give up their perversion. Well, the police couldn't have that, because then the police would lose their steady income from rapists paying them off. Can't have that.

I guess it is rather too much to hope that people know that more men are raped than women. Yes, that is true. Man on man rape occurs in prisons. It is not terribly secret, and is an offensive part of the incompetent administration of the government prisons. When the Government takes all choices away from people under its control, the Government becomes reponsible for the outcomes. Every rape that occurs in prison is the sole responsibility of government employees who permit the conditions where the rape occurs. Along with homosexual rape in prisons come high rates of veneral disease (to include HIV).

What would be a legitimate act for concerned people to take to make a statement that rape is not acceptable? Well, it would be darned hard for a rapist to maintain his rigidity after he was puntured with a few .38 Special bullets. Of course in Southern California, the local sheriff demands a 5,000 dollar payment to his reelection campaign before he will sign off on a concealed carry permit. Darned few can afford it, considering the low expectation of a rape attempt on any given day/week/month/year. Men and women are prevented from defending themselves so that rapists can pursue their avocation without fear. Criminal defense attorneys raid the public treasury when they get paid for defending rapists from charges pressed by their victims. Our county sheriffs get paid to supervise convicted rapists in jail. Public health professionals get paid to provide free medical care to rapists in prison, to treat them for the venereal diseases that they contract and spread.

I would recommend that everyone who is truly opposed to rape should wear a pistol holster, with a pistol, if legal for you, empty if you are, like most Californians, legally prevented from protecting yourself in the most effective way possible: with a side arm.

A law that demands that victims not defend themselves is a Pretend Law. If ever a law deserved to be ignored, it would be a law that prevented small slight women from defending themselves from large vicious rapists. The Second Amendment forbids infringement of the right to keep and bear arms, which would include side arms. The 14th Amendment would apply that right to every state, whether the state constitution has a right to keep and bear arms, or not. A law that is contrary to the US constitution is invalid, of no force, just as invalid as a law passed by me and my brother that all banks must deposit a million dollars each month into our account. I have no authority to make or enforce such a law, and the State Governments have no authority to oppress US citizens, residents, militia members, or other variety of "people".

People should know that the California State Government encourages rapists, by funding their legal defense, preventing victims from effectively fighting back, and organizing facilities (our prisons) where rapists can continue to practice their avocation against a population that can not effectively resist, and can not effectively protest. Armed, we are citizens. Disarmed we are subjects, not just to legitmate authority, but also subject to the vilest assault from the worst among us.

Fisking Lee Iacocca

2007-04-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

I got this at work, and sent it to my home email address. I haven't seen tripe like this since the last time I was hunting wild pigs. I rather think that Lee should sit in his rocking chair and get his meds adjusted. My comments are below in offset type. Lee Iacocca seems to have lost what ever ability he ever had to track a complex situation, along with what ever humility might be expected in writing about a field in which he has little experience. Catherine Whitney appears to be a professional ghost writer, by which we know her opinions would be universally ignored unless she gave someone else royalties and top billings.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind,

(by the way, Iacocca was a corporate gangster, robbing the US taxpayer by "saving" chrysler with government guaranteed loans.)

and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But

(by the way, cleaning up after a hurricane isn't a federal job, is it?)

instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones,

(by the way, he can only tap your phone if you are talking overseas, or with a court ordered warrant, as it has always been. Back during Kennedy/Johnson administrations the FBI did wire taps without court orders. This president has correctly reined in the FBI.)

and lead us to war on a pack of lies.

(That is itself a lie. Most famously, British Intelligence still asserts that Saddam tried to purchase yellowcake from Africa. That was actually confirmed by the Ambassador Wilson, the husband of famous Non-Covert Agent Valerie Plame. Wilson lied in the editorials he wrote for Kerry. Czech intelligence still asserts that Mohammed Atta of the 9/11 scum met with an Iraqi Intelligence officer in Prague.)

Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge
tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it).

(In the immortal words of Don Luskin, what is right about taxing a hard working taxi driver who works 2 shifts, more than a lazy taxi driver that works one shift? Aside from that, lowering tax rates increases tax revenues. If the tax rate was 100% then noone would work. Sure you don't have to, but some of the rest of us do. Lowering the tax rate provides incentive for the rest of us.)

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs.

(Shame on you. Then publicize an innovator, like Bill Gates, Woz of Apple, or Seymour Cray. Use that tax rate reduction to risk some money on an innovation. Put up or shut up.)

While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do.

(by the way, we know what to do. We kill and imprison the killers. We arrange elections to bring meaningful self government. We work with the elected governments, such as Israel, Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan to resist the terrorists.)

And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions.

(by the way, I can always tell when Iraq is getting better: The news focuses on silly things, such as Anna Nichol, or whether a political appointee was hired or fired for political reasons.)

That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

(I have had enough of wealthy Democrats accusing honest people, and demanding that the government ruin the country so that wealthy democrats can take power, ruining the country even faster. Guess who I am thinking of Lee...)

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not
outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to˜as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young
folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.

Who Are These Guys, Anyway?

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech
treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

(I agree, we didn't suspend the Constitution, except under FDR, who wanted to regulate everything, despite the clear limitations of the Constitution. The Commerce Clause only gave power to the federal government to regulate INTERSTATE Commerce. Thomas and Scalia seem to be willing to fix that error, made by a Supreme Court under pressure from the FDR's unconstitutional "Court Packing" scheme. Roe v. Wade and Kelo are other Supreme court decisions not, in my view justified by the Text and intent of the Founders.)

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman?

(It was the party of Lincoln that gave us our first income tax, first found unconstitutional. I cut Lincoln some slack as he was under serious stress with the Civil War and all. FDR threw a recovering nation into depression with his taxes. Kennedy, Reagan, and GW Bush by cutting tax rates, brought economic prosperity. Is that what you are really against?)

There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

The Test of a Leader

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO.

(And you were dropped from Ford like a bad habit. The next company you were CEO of was bought out by a foreign company, and is now for sale, having had its pockets picked for intellectual property. Something of which I am sure you are proud.)

I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine
points, not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine C's of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009.

Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my C list:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or
newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to
prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

(As an MBA, Bush knows that his time is valuable. Rather than reading stuff written by traitors (see NY Times) or incompetent liars (See CBS) he reads position papers prepared for him by experts. More efficient.)

(by the way, I don't read the newspapers, rather I read blogs and bulletin boards. I start my morning with Instapundit, and end my day with Little Green Footballs. Newspapers tend to be written by journalists, hardly informed about key matters, and alas, sadly twisted by their agenda. Newspapers used to send a reporter to the bar to listen to conversations. They are not much more accurate now. The Hearst Newspapers inflamed opinion to lead the US into the Spanish American War. The NY Times is slightly more biased than the Socialist Worker Daily. Network News, aside from Fox actually leaves you dumber when you finish than when you start. Noone should think that is admirable.)

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care.

(Pres. Bush is so willing to go outside his comfort zone that he kept CIA director Tenet on. Now one can argue that he spent too much time listening to Tenet, but not that Bush doesn't listen. By constrast, Clinton had Stansfield Turner as his CIA director for 2 years, and never had a single meeting with him. So Lee, you have a point, but your finger is in the wrong direction.)

Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

(Clinton famously governed by polls, and because of that was paralyzed when terrorists were murdering US citizens, and innocents who happened to be trying to see a US Embassy in Africa. Rather than respond to a real threat against the US, he attacked [without UN sanctions, or declaration of war] a Christian nation defending itself against Muslim terrorists. I suppose you think that is better?)

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different.

(Something creative? Like reskinning the Ford Falcon and showing the product in advertising with pretty girls? Don't make me laugh. You wouldn't know creativity if it bit you on the Arse. The Special Forces and Airpower takedown of the Taliban will be studied by military schools for the next hundred years. Now that was creative. Clinton's creativity was limited to ways to hide the Rose Law Firm billing records, how to move Vince Foster's body, and how to look sad and then lie to the camera. Even his perversions were of the most pedestrian kinds.)

You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping.

(I suppose you think it bad that noone ever accused him of Treason, like Kerry, or of draft dodging like Clinton. Rather, your crowd complains that he won't commit treason fast enough!)

There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President˜the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.

(This is the Joe Biden, who plagerized Neil Kinnock's biography? Well, if he said it, then it must be true, after all, he would never lie, would he?
The Iraqi army was disbanded because all the survivors had gone home. They disbanded themselves, showing ability to act without government direction that gives hope that Iraq may someday be more than a charnel house with a madman at the gate.
Tough love is tough. It isn't the right thing to do, it is the only thing to do. We now have to continue with tough love. A large number of troops in Iraq would have meant no reason for the Iraqis to step up and govern themselves. We would have just replaced one dictatorship with another. Iraqis are beginning to come around. The sheiks of Al Anbar are resisting Al Queda, and shutting down the Baathists. The Shi'ites are tired of Al Sadr and his bullies. We have had two elections, rather quicker than we had two elections after WWII. Rather than 295,000 deaths during WWII when we had the leaders you crave, we have had just over one 50th that casualty rate. We still have service members in Cuba, long after the Spanish American war of 1898. We still have service men in Germany (some 72,000, so there is really no shortage of service members), and Japan, long after the victories of 1945. We still have service members in South Korea. Why pull out of a fight that we are winning when we don't pull out of places where we have already won?)

Leadership is all about managing change˜whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.

(Lee, the current administration has changed, and the soldiers on the ground are changing tactics and techniques daily. What you don't change is strategy, because strategy is a long lead item. Our friends need to know we won't run out on them. Our enemies need to know they can't out wait them. Telling people that we should quick, surrender before we do something silly like win, well that is just not very helpful for the good guys.)

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I

don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while.

(Compare the butcher bill. Civil War 680,000 deaths. WWI 100,000 deaths. WWII: 295,000 deaths. Korea 28,000 deaths. Vietnam 58,000 deaths. First Gulf War: 140 deaths. War on Terror: 6,200 deaths, including the civilians murdered in the 9/11 atrocity. Wait, where are the rest of those zeros? I would say things are going swimmingly.)

Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

(That is such a silly statement. How about this: Communications starts with saying something meaningful, rather than something meaningless. If the casualties dropped we would have soldiers rising from the dead. That would be something! Of course casualties mount. They can not do other. That you could make such a foolish statement means your ability to tell the truth is in question.

The alternative to fighting Al Queda and Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan is [a] to fight them in the US or [b] to fight them in Syria and Iran. It may come to [b], but at present the terrorists are being killed by the bushel basket in Iraq, and attracting Jihadis from all over the Middle East. As a "fly paper strategy" it is working very very well. The Iraqi Army is getting better and better, and is being built from the ground up, rather than trying to reform Ba'athist thugs while they remain in charge of groups of armed men with government funding. Kurdistan is booming, with Shiia areas beginning to get Jealous and will soon look past Muqtada Al Sadr to find someone who offers a future. Anbar Province is setting up anti-Al Queda councils, to provide for local security. Al Queda has been run out of both of the capitals they have declared in Iraq , to add to the two Al Queda capitals they were run out of in Afghanistan.)

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths˜for what?

(The 1993 WTC bombing used passports stolen by Iraqi intelligence during their occupation of Kuwait. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizen calcualties were invented by statistical legerdemain in a Lancet Study ie, they lied. Al Queda may still exist, but Bin Laden's production values have sure dropped. The very bad people murdering our soldiers [I say murder, because what illegal combatants do is not legal combat] would be more than happy to put YOUR NECK under the knife. The exchange rate, with the enemy using every illegal trick they can muster is 30 to 1. That is 30 jihadis under the ground, to the improvement of the world, and more captured for each soldier's regretable death. The US didn't do so well in WWII until Okinawa.)
To build our oil reserves?

(Iraq's oil production is still below prewar levels, but now it funds a free Iraq rather than terrorists.I guess Bush didn't go to war for oil.)

To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and
the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

(One more time, for the demented.
[a] Saddam Husayne had murdered over a million of his countrymen.
[b] Saddam Husayne had supported terrorism, to include the 1993 WTC bombing [which included an attempt to release cyanide gas into the WTC].
[c] Saddam Husayne had used WMD (mustard gas) against the Kurds.
[d] Saddam Husayne supported the 1993 WTC bombing, which had cyanide compounds mixed in with the explosives. It was our good fortune that the cyanide was mostly destroyed by the heat of the explosive.
[e] 17 UN resolutions asserted that Saddam Husayne had not met his responsibilities after the Gulf War armistice. It is unlikely that he was waiting for the 18th to suddenly change his tune.
[f] Saddam Husayne had bribed key players in France and Russia to help him end sanctions. Once he ended sanctions the WMD programs would have continued.
[g] Saddam Husayne would have again provided WMD materials and training to terrorists.
[h] Once, in the history of the world, a dictator was actually deposed, put on trial, convicted, and executed by the people he had oppressed. That dictator's name is Saddam Husayne. A great success, a world-historical achievement.)

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy.

(By the way, GW Bush grew up in Texas. His dad, GHW Bush was an oil executive and his company developed the technology used for off shore oil wells. GHW Bush was also a Navy aviator during WWII, elected representitive, UN Ambassador, Director of Central Intelligence, Vice President, and President. Rather racistto disparage all that by saying "blue blood".)

You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

(I guess you suggest that true courage is surrender. I wonder, how many US citizens you would be willing to have Al Queda murder. They want to murder all of us, because we are infidels. So you would negotiate. How many would you be willing to hand over to them in the first batch? A million? Perhaps only a few hundred thousand? Would you volunteer to be in the first batch? How do you negotiate with someone who gets his orders from a mad G-d who demands mass murder?....crickets chirping....)

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

(There you are, complaining about his courage. Bush just won't surrender fast enough. He has an unreasonable adversion to treason. Darn him.)

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION˜a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President˜four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.

(Bush knows that this is a marathon, not a sprint. If you think you are indispensible, you aren't.)

It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

(A do nothing congress is all we can hope for. A friend and coworker told me that Government is like Chemotherapy. You want it to be effective. You want it to have minimal side effects. The fact is, most of the time Chemotherapy is not as effective as you want it to be, and it has truly rotten side effects. Less Chemotherapy is actually a good idea, nearly all the time. Mark Twain said, "Noone's life or property is safe while the legislature is in session.)

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.

(Sorry, I don't know what her East German feelings have to do with President Bush's ability to do the diplomatic necessities. By comparison, you didn't complain when Clinton groped the help, so I presume this is just more of your partisan BS.)

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent?

Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

( you claim "The largest deficit in history" The fact is the growing economy is stuffing federal coffers at an unprecedented rate. Alas, government spending is also at a high rate. As for largest deficeit as a metric ...That is a moving target. Washington had the largest deficit in history. So did Lincoln, so did FDR. So did Reagan. The US share of spending on defense is lower now than was for FDR, Truman, Johnson, Kennedy, and Reagan. The US economy GREW in the last 5 years by the size of the economy of CHINA. Not bad, even for an MBA. As for solving problems, I don't want the government to solve problems. I want them to stop creating problems. Think of anything. say toilets, transportation, or library. If you put the word "public" in front of it, does that make it sound higher quality, or lower quality? Government starts with theft, then moves to coercion. You don't often get to the right answer from that kind of start. When you recruit for government workers they have to be willing to use theft and coercion. Guess what you get when you recruit to fill that pool? Thieves and Thugs!)

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know˜Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.

(This is homey assertion, but not factual. Actually, they did welcome us as liberators. Actually, Brownie did one hell of a job with a very small FMEA taskforce, but not enough to make up for DECADES of CORRUPTION and stupidity. The levees which were "designed to withstand a force 3 hurricane, in 1963, didn't. Maintenance money for the levees was skimmed by local corruption. Housing was built below sea level, to make bribe and tax money for local corrupt officials, and make the real estate and building trades wealthy. The Mayor didn't order evacuation until too late, and allowed the school busses to be flooded. One third of the local police force didn't exist... Corruption. When you find that magic wand, Lee, let me know.)

Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world˜and I like it here."

(I didn't have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky... See, I can quote Clinton too. So what?)

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.

(Lee, I hope you are getting some from Whitney, because she is draining your credibility, and you never had that much with me at the start.)

The Biggest C is Crisis

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down. On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day˜and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker.

We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

(Actually I wasn't scared. I was working for a defense contractor, and getting the Army's equipment, which our company built, fine tuned and ready for a long hard deployment, which initially turned out to be Afghanistan. The strength of America is WE DON'T NEED THE GREAT LEADER TO TELL US WHAT TO DO. Until you figure that our, you are not an American. If you disagree, I suggest you move to North Korea.)

That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed.

(The first aircraft, well that has happened before, and since. A B-25 bomber hit the Empire State Building, and did fairly minor damage, but that was built by private enterprise. A Yankee pitcher hit an apartment building. It was an accident. A student pilot hit an office building in Miami. All except the first happened since 9/11.

The city officials of NYC knew that the WTC (owned by the NYC Port Authority) was only built to withstand a hit by a Boeing 707. Rather than redesign/ refit it to increase its fire protection, in the long years since 1967 when Boeing came out with the 747, they studied, and they fiddled and they pissed away millions, but did nothing. NYC firefighters didn't have radios that worked, and they had no common frequency set up with the Police. NYC's kerosene for the emergency generators in WTC 7 [the location of the emergency command center] was not stored according to code, and was a major cause of the later collapse of WTC 7.)
And what did he do when he'd regained his composure?

(President Bush used diplomacy to get Pakistan on our side, rather than supporting the Taliban as they had done for years. He dispatched US forces into Afghanistan, where the Soviets had been stymied for 10 years, freeing it from the Taliban in 6 weeks. Because he sent only small forces, to work with the locals, it was obvious we were not invading destroyers like the Soviets. Afghanistan has had the first free elections since Khandahar was built by Alexander the Great.)

He led us down the road to Iraq˜a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

(We knew after 9/11 that we couldn't sit on our sand castle, safe, and watch the tide come in. If you don't learn, then what is your brain for? Saddam was close to getting sanctions ended. After that, the chemical weapons would have arrived in our major cities. Carried by Al Queda suicide bombers who would have had a safe haven in Iraq. Iraq had weaponized anthrax, had deployed mustard gas, and used it against the Kurds. Perhaps some of the Arabs in Dearborn might have given aid and comfort to a cousin-terrorist, perhaps not even knowing that the cousin-terrorist was about to unleash hell and destroy a city. Consider that quietly.)

A Hell of a Mess

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving.

(We have a plan for winning. We kill the terrorists, and leave a self governing nation when they are ready. To some extent that depends on the Iraqis our coalition partners. To some extent it depends on how many foreign terrorists want to come to Iraq to get killed.)

We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country.

(Not true. See above. Deficits are not uncommon. Certainly you didn't mind borrowing money with the faith and credit of the US when it helped Crysler Corp.)
We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs.

(Actually our truly great companies are doing just fine. New companies are started, old companies fold when they stop making a product that people want at a reasonale price. Better than keeping a corrupt entity, such as Enron or an ineffective company such as AMC alive at the cost of strangling new companies in their cribs.)

(Health care costs are inflated by illegal aliens who are flooding our emergency medical centers, and stupid laws which enslave doctors and nurses, forcing them to care for people who are unable to pay, and should be deported, rather than be provided free health care.)

Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy.

(Energy policy? I bet those 5 year plans the Soviets had were really effective, weren't they? Is that really what you want?)

Our ^Government schools are in trouble.

(There, I fixed it for you. Homeschoolers are doing just fine.)

Our borders are like sieves.

(Only a problem if people are abandoning the US, and you want to coerce them so that they stay. People vote with their feet. The US was, and continues to be, a great success, and people in other countries want in on it. Thank goodness for that. By contrast, consider the countries who are hemoraging people. Ask yourself why. Ask yourself what wonderful policies they have that drive people away. Ask yourself why you want to duplicate those policies here.)

The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?

(L. Neil Smith suggests that we should carry our pistols around with us, rather than go about socially naked. Then when a terrorist with a box cutter, or a nutty student for that matter, does something inappropriate, he can be put down quickly. The point is good people should out number the bad people, so the bad people are only a problem when they have better weapons. Better weapons to good people = fewer problems from bad people. Hey, it might work as well as it did in Israel. The terrorists there don't go after schools because teachers and parents are well armed.)

We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

(Duh. You learn from what has happened. This offends you?)

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.

(I hope that we have developed a healthy skepticism for "Leaders" from Katrina. The Mayor of New Orleans went from being a joke to an irrelevancy. That is a good thing. But if you need a name, I would suggest the national guard officer who said "Don't get stuck on Stupid". Lt General Russel Honore.)

Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

(how about this for a plan. Don't build below sea level. As for accountability, the dummies of New Orleans reelected the same corrupt mayor. Perhaps that is who they deserve. To my mind Katrina provided the accountablility for years of corruption and voter fraud. You just don't like accountability.)

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing.

(If you need a name, Burt Rutan)

Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen˜and more important, what
are we going to do about it?

(It happened because clever people like you didn't learn from Deming. Clever people like you didn't have enough courage and balls to stand up to the Unions as they demanded salary and benefit increases out of proportion to the value they added. Also because people like you helped develop the Japanese car companies by importing Dodge Colts, which introduced the American people to high quality and low price they could expect from cars made in Japan. That is right Lee, the fickle finger points to you.)

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

( The Government Leaders who could quickly cut back Government to the limited powers stated in the Constitution begin with Scalia and Thomas in the Supreme Court, who suggest in a recent decision that the Commerce Clause was wrongly decided in FDR's administration. Other than that, I would suggest Duncan Hunter or Ron Paul. But we don't select our government to lead us. Rather we select them to do what we want. Too many Americans want unconstitutional "free" services. We get the government we deserve.)

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.

What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

(When it comes to name calling, try Keith Olberman. Been off his meds for a while. Again, doing nothing is preferred to doing the wrong thing. Surrender is the wrong thing. Announcing terms by which the enemy can win, and providing advance notice of deployment details [loose lips sink ships] to the enemy should be considered treason.)

Had Enough?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises˜the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970's oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11.

(WWII was caused by FDR. Hoover got us out of the depression, while FDR put us back into one. He managed to keep the US in depression while Germany rebuilt its armed forces. Rather than respond to Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland with a single Marine Regiment [following which, Hitler would have been assassinated by the German Army, because they were not ready for any kind of war] FDR continued copying the National Socialists, and ruining the US economy as Hitler took over Austria, again in violation of treaty. Japan's economy was even smaller than Germany's, and the US did nothing to hinder their aggression in Manchuria, or their Naval build up to 10 aircraft carriers to the US Navy's 7 (even including the little Langley only good for biplanes). FDR supported the Munich Agreement which sold out an ally [Czechoslovakia] to Germany, and still did nothing during the invasion of Norway, or during Italy's invasion of Albania, or Greece. The much maligned George W. Bush has learned from that lesson. Better to stop a bad mad man when you are ready, and when he isn't.)

If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play.

That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.

(So you complain that G.W Bush didn't stand on the side line as Saddam Husayne got sanctions dropped, rebuilt his WMD programs, and then murdered more Kurds, more Shia, and provided WMD to terrorists, leading to the eventual murder of millions of Americans. Then you could blame him for NOT taking action. As it is, he ruined your game. Is that about right?)

Excerpted from Where Have All the Leaders Gone?.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Lee Iacocca. All rights reserved.
Comments by Don Meaker

Day by Day

2007-04-18T19:03:00.001-07:00

VT Shootings

2007-04-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

The VT shootings were an atrocity, not a tragedy. Tragedy is an art form where good people's flaws are combined to make the author's point. No reason to ask why the killer did what he did. He was crazy. Shooting a bunch of people you don't know isn't the act of a sane guy. Note: he was a killer, not a gunman. We don't call a knife murderer a "Knife-man". We wouldn't call a reckless driver a "Car-man". The act is abhorrent, not the tool.

It appears* the killer was committed for insanity, so he should not have been able to buy the pistols. I guess the folks responsible for entering that data into the magical Brady Campaign Database just took a little break. Guess their fingers were just too tired. I bet they are so proud.

When a guy goes nuts, he will either be stopped by the bottom of his last magazine, or by a bullet at the top of the magazine of someone else. VT used to allow students to carry pistols, but changed to "help the students feel safe". Most recently, they voted down a proposal to permit students and employees with Virginia Concealed Carry Weapons permits to exercise their right to be ready to defend themselves on Campus. Boy, that sure worked out well.

Tam at "View from the Porch" [http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/] has a good idea if asked by someone about licenses and registration. Tear a piece of paper in two, and hand the fellow one. Say "this piece of paper is my license, your piece of paper is my registration. My pen is my gun. Now, with just these two pieces of paper, explain to me how you would keep me from shooting someone." She reports that the results are hilarious.

An article [http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/80510] from a student that has a CCW, but is not "allowed" to exercise it on the VT campus. Mausergirl [http://mausergirl.blogspot.com/2007/04/shoot-me-now.html] also has some good comments.

Lawdog suggests (http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2007/04/we-license-cars-yackyackyack.html) that if someone suggests "we license cars, don't we?" that you call them a liar to their face. He gives examples of what that would mean. He doesn't mention, but I will that we lose about 40,000 lives a year to cars, and guns take much less, say, 16,000 a year, even if you leave in police shootings, and legitimate self defense. Deaths now counted as gun suicides would probably not be prevented by gun laws, because suicides would select a different method to accomplish their goals. Perhaps cars, pills, knives, tall buildings.

The previous worst shooting was in Ruby's Restaurant in Texas. A Texas State legislator was a survivor, and was able to push through the Texas law that permitted good citizens, with training to obtain a Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) permit. It passed over the veto of the then Democratic Governor, Ann Richards. Two weeks later, a similar shooting occured in a different restaurant. The shooter was stopped after only getting two rounds off. No headlines, many lives saved. I bet Ann Richards was so proud of her position. Did she really want all those people who survived the second shooting to die?

If you want to know what kills more than guns, more than cars, start with medical malpractice, about 100,000 deaths a year. Oh, and we already license doctors, pharmacists, physyican assistants, and nurses. Doesn't seem to help much. Perhaps if medical people had to post their success/fail rates on the internet, they would be more careful.

The Environmental movement is also a great killer. By banning DDT, they made the world safe for the mosquito, which murders about a million every year, the number who die of Malaria in Africa. That is about 40 million since DDT was banned.

The greatest killer of humans of all time? Bad history (thanks Karl Marx). That lead to 100 million deaths in China (thanks Mao Tse Tung), 70 million in the Soviet Union (Thanks Stalin, Lenin, Trotksky) and National Socialist Germany (thanks Shicklegruber, aka Hitler). If only more Germans had enough weapons to fight back. If only more Jews had decided to fight back as they did in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Hitler's "Union of All Germans" became notably less aggressive when faced with the resolute defense preparations of the German Majority in Switzerland. Swiss citizens were advised that any report that the Swiss government had surrendered, or agreed to union were to be regarded as a trick by the enemy. Swiss independence is maintained by a well prepared army, now the largest in Europe. It was not always so. Before the First World War, a Swiss Officer in response to a German's assertion that Germany could field an army twice the size of the Swiss Army replied: "Shoot twice, go home."

* Update: It appears that he agreed to be committed, and so was not involuntarily committed. That distinction would have been responsible for passing the instant check. My remarks about the data base enterer were incorrect, and they have my apology. The Brady database is thus revealed as less useful than I thought it was.

Fighting to Win

2007-04-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

The United States occupied the Phillipines from 1898 to 1946, with a brief absence from 1942 to 1944. The war to secure Mindinao took a good long time, but eventually the locals decided (mostly) to support the US backed colonial government. A key event occured when the US paid the local Sultan to give up his sovereignity. The Sultan kept his religious authority. After that event, rebellion against the US colonial government was no longer supported in the Mosques.

Those who fought the US backed colonial government were eventually forced out of the villages to an extinct volcano Bud Budsak. They were taken out by Phillipine Scouts, with a few US units in support, and many US officers among the Scouts.

The Muslims of that time and place didn't trust their women outside their sight. The Muslim Moros of that day fought with their women at their left elbow. This was tough on the US soldiers, so a unique tactic was developed. The Scouts approached the fortified crater, and opened fire, then withdrew, rather than shelling the comingled male and female Muslims.

The withdrawal was to a prepared base camp, and the Muslims sought to exploit their mobility, their courage, and their use of drugs to keep fighting even after taking a fatal hit. The Scouts and US units used well laid out bands of interlocking and overlapping fires to prevent the Moros from breaking into the base camps. .30/40 Krag Jorgensen rifles worked well, supplementing the Colt "Potato Digger" Browning designed machineguns. Officers used mostly Colt single action revolvers in .45 Colt, with a few .45ACP pistols (M1911) focusing their fire on the few Moros who made their way through the outer bands of fire.

After the men of the Moros were shot down, the women were permitted to return to their villages unmolested.

Because the US was steadfast, in 1933 the Moros protested when the US announced its intent to end colonial government in the Phillipines. The Moros thought that submission to the US was honorable, and the US was trusted to not interfere with the local Muslim religion. There was concern that submission to the local Christians would not be so honorable, and there were memories of the Spanish colonial support for Catholicism. The Muslims of Mindinao were not happy with the change.

The US soldiers in Mindinao during WWII were treated well by the local Muslims. That can't be said of the Japanese.

The US fought to win in that colonial conflict. We should fight to win in the current conflict.

Important to keep a perspective on things.

2007-04-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

Steve says to his Dad...

"Susan and I have been dating for a couple of years, and I was wondering, how much does it cost to get married?"

Dad says...
"Son, I don't know. Your mother and I have been married for over 20 years, and I'm still paying."

Getting married is the only contract where you don't know the terms until the period of performance is complete. Marriage can be darned good, but being married to the wrong person is pretty rotten. Divorce doesn't end the relationship, it codifies the terms, and the terms can still be changed by either party, and backed up by court order, if they have enough money.

Odd, but when a woman uses child support sent to her for the support of children to pay a lawyer, that is just fine. If a man withholds child support and pays a lawyer, he goes to jail. One more proof that we don't have a Justice System, but rather, a Legal System.

Don Imus et al.

2007-04-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, sure Don Imus said something stupid.

It is stupid to feel good, or bad because of something someone else has said about you. You should feel good or bad because of what you have done.

Now let us consider the Duke Lacross players. Lots of fun there. Innocent of any crime, they were accused of horrendous things, by a prosecutor who shamelessly manipulated pubiic opinion to get elected. Nifong created, and recruited for a conspiracy to obstruct justice. He accepted his appointment as District Attorney from the governor with the understanding that he would not run for the post. Then he fired his likely opponent, another deputy DA. She ran against him, and he was losing. He had to do something, so why not commit a crime, sure that would be ok if he got elected...

And by the way, Lacrosse is not a "white boy" sport. It is an adaptation of game played by the Iroquois, and the all time best player (still holds lots of records) is James Brown. Yes, the one who later was a football halfback for Cleveland. Set a bunch more records. I had a room mate at West Point who played Lacrosse (Yes, that's you Rick!). When my mother came to visit during spring break, she saw the implement (he played on offense, so it was the smaller one) picked it up, bounced the ball against the wall and caught it a couple of times, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Well it seems you didn't grow up in central New York without playing a little Lacrosse.

Al Sharpton, found in court to be a liar, has nothing to say. Jesse Jackson, (who called New York City "Hymietown") who embezzled money to pay his adulterous partner off to keep silent about his bastard child, should have nothing to say. It is odd that we have higher standards for over the hill liberal radio shock jocks (Like Imus, who recommended Kerry in the last election) than we do for Civil Rights leaders. Or perhaps we have higher standards for civil rights leaders, but low standards for civil rights pimps.

Having said that, I had a lot of respect for the Rutgers girls basketball team, until they cried because someone called them a mean name. Gives their next opponent something to try.

Mistakes in Speaking

2006-12-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

Pater's place

A fellow says to a friend, "I need to find a porcupine, to get some steady action in bed."

His friend is shocked. "What? A Porcupine?"

"Oops! I meant a concubine."

Cluster bombs and the Geneva Convention

2006-10-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

Human Rights Watch recently disclosed that Hezbollah used cluster bomb warheads as they launched rockets at noncombatants in Israel.

They have been yammering for quite a while about how awful it was that Israel had used cluster bombs against Hezbollah. They have it wrong. The evil thing is targeting non-combatants, not the use, or misuse of cluster bombs.

Here are the facts.
Cluster muntions are the right weapon to use against light mobile truck mounted enemy forces launching soft skinned rockets, in the close proximity to noncombatants.

If the non-combatants (many civilians are not "innocent") are in the area, they would hide in cellars and basements. There they would be safe from cluster bombs, but not safe from heavy iron bombs, which would smash through the buildings, and kill everyone in the building, as they did with Zarqawi in Iraq.

A key difference is when Israel sends cluster bombs, it is, I understand, because the Hezbollah rocket launchers, and rocket launcher teams are there. The Hezbollah clusterbombs are not launched at Israeli military forces, but rather, intended to do random murder of Israeli civilians. The same weapon can thus be used legally, or illegally, depending on who you aim it at. Like any other weapon. As I recall, some 12 Israeli reservists coming up from the south did not take cover in a civilian bomb shelter, and were killed by one rocket attack. Their unfortunate deaths were perhaps the only Israeli deaths IN ISRAEL that were not war crimes by Hezbollah.

Although it is true that clusterbombs have a high "dud" rate, it would be the choice of noncombatants to remain in the area after the bombing stopped. Unless, of course, the noncombatants were forced to remain in the area by the terrorists. In which case, the noncombatants casualties would be the fault of the terrorists.

Historical note: The cluster bombs were first used in Vietnam, to attack soft skinned anti-aircraft gun and missile sites in North Vietnam. These gun and missile sites were located on top of irrigation and flood prevention dikes. Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam in an attempt to give credance to the Communist assertion that bombing these "non-combatant" structures were war crimes on the part of the US. Of course when she had her picture taken while shooting at US aircraft, it showed that the North Vietnamese had placed military forces right on top of their so called "non-combatant" structures, thus removing them from any protected status.

Cluster bombs made little pops, and hence didn't do much damage to the dikes. Napalm was also used there for the same reason. By contrast, 500 pound bombs would tear up the dikes, and permit flooding.

It may seem that the rules are stacked against Hezbollah. They have no aircraft, and hence can not fight Israel legally on anything like even terms. That is a feature of the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention sets rules for combat that disadvantage legal combatants, compared to civilians. To protect non-combatants, legal combatants wear uniforms, which mark them as targets. Hezbollah does not. Part of the point of the Geneva Convention is that war should be eventually stopped. People who continue a fight long after they have lost, by disregarding the rules, hiding among noncombatants, hiding inside religious facilities, or in civilian hospitals, are not intended to have their likelihood of victory increased by such actions, but rather, inflict suffering upon "their" non-combatants. Legal combatants are protected if they are defeated and if they surrender. Illegal combatants forfeit those protections.

It would be better for Hezbollah to accept a loss, than to fight on as illegal combatants. Israel has only once used the death penalty, for Adolf Eichmann. Rather than contribute to the murder of noncombatants by illegal acts, the moral thing for Hezbollah, or any fighter would be to surrender to a foe which follows the Geneva Conventions. Since Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Queda do not follow the Geneva Convention, do not provide prisoners with protection, and in fact murder their prisoners, seeking to humiliate them (again contrary to the Geneva Convention) there is nothing that ANY NATION can do except fight to the last breath against such a heinous foe.

The Power of Positive Thinking

2006-10-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/simon-and-garfunkel/richard-cory.html

In a casual conversation at work, song "Richard Cory" came up. The Simon and Garfunkel song was derived from an Richard Cory" poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson. I think I like the song better. Art Garfunkel has a wonderful voice, but his own writings never seemed to be as lyrical as his combinations with Paul Simon.

There are two lessons from the song/poem, at least...
First, you never know very much about the inner life of another person, so should hesitate to feel envy, or pride.
Second, the material things in life may not (often cannot) bring happiness.

I made the mistake once at work of sharing my inner (sad) self to my coworkers. All I got from it is ostracized. Noone wanted to be around a morose, and unproductive person. I eventually got a rehabilitative transfer, with the knowledge that if that didn't work, I would be laid off.

The good news is, I learned. My next position I tried to keep a positive outlook, and if I couldn't, I faked it, out of kindness to my coworkers. I even became somewhat useful, and perhaps a little popular. This fairly happy work environment continued even though my homelife disintegrated.

The work environment did not cause the home life to disintegrate, but rather "internal contraditions" of my relationship with my then-wife could no longer be painted over. At least while this happened, I had the security of a good job, was able to help my then-wife through medical school, and was still able to continue to support my children. I could even affort plane trips from California to Texas to visit them. Eventually I was able to get a job in Texas that was closer to them.

All those good things were the direct result of keeping a positive attitude. Let those with ears, let them hear.

Snakes on the Plain!

2006-10-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

The next door neighbor has a mouse problem, so he got some sticky traps. The traps are moderately successful at catching mice, but very successfull at catching snakes.

To date, we have gotten 3 gopher snakes, all apparently from the same clutch.

Diamond was first.
Amythest was second.
NO-NAME is third. NO-NAME perhaps is big enough that we can release her. The other two are in a terrarium, and get fed once a week or so with infant mice ("pinkies"). So far Diamond has been much more interested in eating, and Amythest has to constantly have the small mice hung in her face. Diamond has a second name of "Miss Piggie" after she beat Amythest twice to both pinkies.

Crystal has a web page. Oddly, people get offended that we feed the rescued snakes with live mice. I wonder what they would eat otherwise. We also tried a grasshopper, caught in our back yard, but the snakes don't seem interested.

Pater's place

2006-10-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

Eugenics is a combination of mercantilism and darwinism.

After we got a bit smarter, we figured out that the government can't pick winning businesses, and correspondingly, cant pick winning characteristics. Not that people in government aren't well meaning or smart, just that when you assemble well meaning and smart people in a bureaucracy/heirarchy, they are not allowed to express their genius, or their preferences, rather they are bound by rules written for one situation, and applied in another situation. That is why bureaucracies ALWAYS seem to act stupidly.

Having said that, individuals and capitalists can pick winning stocks and horses. We all practice Eugenics when we pick our spouse with a view to having children that have qualities that we find attractive in our spouse!

It is the thousands of different choices we all make that create a diverse background, and then the diverse background is selected (in a horse race).

The Eugenicist would substitute expert opinion for the horse race. If that was to happen in the horse breeding business, you would get beautiful horses, but not necessarily fast horses. In the horse breeding industry the modern Nazis are represented by the breeders of Arab horses which are beautiful, but are not in the first rank of speed. The royalists are, oddly enough, represented by the breeders of Morgan horses, who demand that all real Morgan horses be desended from Justin Morgan's horse.

The capitalists are represented by the Standard Bred. You run, you demonstrate you meet the standard, and your horse is "standard bred".

In business, Mercantilists try to meet approval of "experts" include process oriented people try to get Deming Awards, or Baldridge Awards. Nice, but the real Capitalists seek the rewards of the market place. Toyota and Nissan spend millions of dollars in their effort to win the Deming Award. Honda: decided that the right answer was to win in the market. Honda does just fine in the market!

The ISO 9000 folks are analogous to the 'Standard bred', setting up minimum standards for quality, that nearly everyone can meet. All ISO 9000 companies, like all standard bred horses will be competitive.

Pater's place

2006-10-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

Virtue

2006-09-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

Virtues for Today

http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Roman_Virtues

Above is a pretty good list of virtues. If you don't have any of these, you are lacking. If you don't have at least half, you need to look at yourself in the mirror, and make a plan to improve.