Written by: Beck

...and I still hate him.

Written by: Speculator

The global financial markets achieved a milestone overnight - the Yen crossed 105 to the USD in Tokyo trade and has strengthened further to trade slightly under 104 in NY at the time of this writing.

So, why is 105 such a big deal? The Ministry of Finance has long broadcasted that 105 was the "line in the sand" for this export dependent economy. It is no secret that the Bank of Japan is the champion of open-market currency intervention, and has been effectively a perma-bid for USD over the past several years. But their thirst for USDs (in the form of US Treas) has reached heretofore unseen levels of late, all in an attempt to protect the flooded glow plug of a '73 Mercedes diesel that is their economy.

Then they stopped. Out of nowhere. Why?

Well, lets just say that they built an IMPRESSIVE position in treasuries, to the tune of $350 billion, over the last twelve months (prevailing market consensus puts the estimated cost average at 113). The BOJ effectively became price sensitive - as they were witnessing that their attempt to support the dollar, albeit unprecedented, was working about as well as the Al Sharpton '04 Pro-Am out at the west course of the Westchester CC.

At 105, the market has estimated the losses for the WEAK YEN SONY DO WELL play to be around $27BB. Net this with estimated interest income of $5.5BB and things look bad. The BOJ has incurred a real economic loss of around $21,000,000,000. (This only speaks to their marginal position and says nothing to any previously existing position)

The bond market is now wondering whether Japan will blink. Here is why we need to worry about this: If the Ministry of Finance becomes sensitive to these capital losses and the BOJ begins to unwind $350 BB in US Treasuries, rates will move. Up. And there is nothing, nothing, that the Fed can do about it. When I have time, hopefully soon, I’ll discuss the implications, and they abound, due to the perverse proliferation of derivatives by guys who graduated "cum laude" from Metropolitan State University (lookie here, I can lay of RISK), of a spike in treasury yields for our financial system.

Written by: Dave

I am as surprised as Answerman is by the fact that Andrew Sullivan seems to think the Richard Clarke broo-ha-ha constitutes a meaningful debate. In reality, it is simply an opportunity for the media to over report the accusations and provide them an artificial legitimacy, knowing that the details of what Clarke said, or the worthiness or reliability of what he said, are for the most part irrelevant to the process.

Fortunately, in about a week or two, the only people who will remember Richard Clarke are the ones who had already made up their mind about Bush long before they even knew who Richard Clarke was.

Written by: Dave

The new weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, says he won't rule out the possibility of finding WMDs in Iraq. I really don't think it matters at this point, because the world has now officially decided that the whole WMD issue was a "myth".

We know this much for certain - an evil, America-hating, homicidal dictator who had used WMDs in the past and who had connections with numerous terrorist organizations willing to use WMDs, was violating UN resolutions on WMD by conducting prohibited biological research, deploying long range missiles capable of delivering WMD, and hiding components necessary for the development of a nuclear weapons program. None of these facts are in dispute. Also not in the dispute is the fact that many WMDs (particularly chemical) can be quickly produced and rely on technologies that have been with us since early in the last century.

So regardless of whether or not there were 12 million liters of anthrax stored in barrels marked NYC, L.A. and D.C., Iraq obviously posed a WMD threat. Indeed, any country which harbors terrorists and has long range missiles poses a WMD threat, as the critical limitation for many WMDs is not the ability to produce them, but the means to deliver them.

Anyone who thinks honestly about this issue realizes the truth of this statement, yet the issue of Iraq's WMD threat has still been discredited in the eyes of the world. Obviously, most of the world is more concerned with defeating Bush than in dealing with security threats. Which is why I think it won't really matter what Duelfer might find in Iraq.

Written by: Beck

According to a recent article on CNN.com, John Kerry has a plan to lower gas prices! Well bully for him and hooray for us. Let's have a look at this plan, shall we?

Kerry's plan is three-fold. First, he would have us stop filling the national oil reserve. Second, he would support tax breaks & other incentives to encourage exploration & production. Finally, he would take measures to "reducing price disparities across the country."

Now about that national oil reserve... you people are aware of where most of the world's oil comes from, right? Correct! It's the Middle-East. Now, boys and girls, what region of the world is the most hostile to the United States? I see you're catching on. So naturally, perhaps the single greatest vulnerability of the United States from a natural resources standpoint is availability of crude. Why, oh why, can't people see the importance of stocking the national oil reserve? At least the White House understands:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve must have enough resources to respond to an emergency disruption of oil supplies.

Oil purchases by the US government amount to 150,000 barrels a day. Global oil markets, by comparison, amount to 86 million barrels a day of sold production. That means the US government is responsible for driving up demand by less that 0.2%. The impact this will have on prices is going to be measured in cents/bbl, not dollars/bbl. Furthermore, try to keep in mind that there are 42 gallons to a barrel, so even a $1 increase in the price of crude only translates into a couple cents at the pump. OK, enough on that.

Here's the bit that surprises me the most:

Kerry's campaign aides said the Democratic candidate wants the United States to pressure the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase production and apply diplomatic pressure to the member nations to reduce prices.

Can I get a WTF!?! This man has spent the past year screeching about how the White House has been widening the divide between the Middle East and the United States. Kerry's plan for reducing the price of gasoline? Put pressure on the world's biggest oil producing region--which happens to hate us at present--all while "reducing tensions in the Mid-East." How in hell does the guy get away with this sort of thing? Kerry is not just a bad economist, he's a hypocritical one as well.

Finally, there's this scary tidbit:

If elected, Kerry also would seek to enact a national fuel strategy aimed at reducing price disparities across the country, the aides said.

Creeping socialism watchers beware! Disparities in fuel prices across the country originate from two sources: 1) differing state taxes, and 2) differing transport costs. How exactly does Kerry propose to alter these things? Quite simply, the only way that Kerry (or any politician for that matter) could ease disparity in gasoline prices across the United States is to raise prices on the places where it is least expensive. Kerry, then, would lower us all down to that lowest of the lowest common denominators: California.

One last point I'd like to make. In Kerry's speech in San Francisco late Monday, he observed that, "I noticed that gas is now close to three dollars a gallon here in California." Several things here folks. First of all, the national average for prices at the pump, according to CNN, is $1.80. Not quite $3. Furthermore, in San Diego, which has the nation's highest gas prices, the pump average is still only $2.12. Finally, gas prices in 1981, adjusted for inflation into 2003 dollars, averaged $2.90 at the pump. I just wanted to point that out.

Finally, a nice little money quote for you:

"If it keeps going up like that, folks, Dick Cheney and President Bush are going to have to car pool to work together," Kerry said at a fund-raiser Monday night in San Francisco, California.

It'd be nice if Bush would respond in kind. Maybe something like, "If Kerry's chin keeps getting bigger, I'll be able to land a fighter on the damn thing." Hey, is it the GOP's fault that John Kerry's head is shaped like an aircraft carrier?

Written by: Beck

Condoleezza Rice will testify before the 9/11 Commission, publicly and under oath! This is a good thing. The negative publicity from Clarke's attacks needed counteracting, and the cloud hanging over the White House's secrecy on this particular issue needed dispelling. The White House ingeniously agreed to allow full public sworn testimony from Rice only under the condition that:

the commission must agree in writing that Rice's appearance would not set a precedent for testimony by White House staff -- and that the commission "will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice."

This gives the public the circus they want, pulls the teeth of liberal criticism of Rice, and at the same time, protects against future circus performances of this nature.

NRO has a reproduction of the White House's letter demanding the commission's concessions.

Written by: Answerman

This morning, Andrew Sullivan waxes poetic about how our democracy is now debating the Richard Clarke testimony. He actually seems to think (1) there is an intelligent debate going on and (2) it is good and enlightened and all that. Are you kidding me? Millions of imbeciles catching a few TV soundbites and parroting either anti-Bush or pro-Bush propaganda is somehow equivalent to a meaningful debate? It's somehow good? We need to get over our righteous self-satisfaction with the "democratic process" and "good citizenship" and all the rest of that crap. We live in a declining, decadent culture that is fairly incapable of producing high-level political dialogue and debate. We are extraordinarily ill-informed, as a people, about . . . well, about damn near everything. To think that in this context we can mimic some sort of ancient civic virtue is laughable. My rule of thumb is the less the American public hears about, thinks about, or has even the least bit of indirect say in an important issue, the better.

Written by: Answerman

You know what I hate? Urban enterprise zones. Bear with me here, folks. Sometime around 25 years ago, at the only moment in American history since the 1920s that conservatives were poised to create a governing majority in this country, some "Republican strategist" (talk about an oxymoron) decided that conservatives as such could never win elections. Apparently the best we could do was trot out members of the Old Left -- who had become dissatisfied with Democrat foreign policy weakness, nihilism, and pure evil -- to lecture conservatives and the rest of America on how liberals' public policy goals were super, but Republicans would be more efficient at implementing them. In the meantime, these Old Leftists would spend a couple of decades ruthlessly branding as a racist and anti-Semite any true conservative in the Republican party who wasn't excited about this new direction.

Today, we call these Old Leftists "neoconservatives." That's like calling me a "neocommunist" or a "neo-Buffalo-Bills fan," because in our postmodern lexicon, "neo" apparently means "No way in hell am I." But I digress.

Neoconservatives like to give up a whole bunch of ground in the culture wars, execute occasional purges of actual conservatives from their "movement," and drone on and on about nifty little policy proposals like urban enterprise zones. An urban enterprise zone is an area inside the poverty-stricken inner city where Jack Kemp and his ilk want to devote a lot of time, energy, and -- of course! -- money building up minority businesses. Something about tax breaks and subsidies and free enterprise and a melting pot and a nation of immigrants and blah blah blah blah. Basically, these assclowns want to give up addressing the real reasons for crime and poverty in the inner city and instead figure out clever little ways to apply supply-side economics to the situation. That's right folks, bring all your problems -- cultural, racial, whatever -- to the neocons and they will cure them with 18th century economic theory!

How this is at all conservative I don't know. And that's my beef with these people. Can't they call themselves something else, like pseudo-conservative, or neo-liberal, or Lyndon Johnson? But for God's sake, take the damn "conservative" out of your moniker! I don't mind debating these issues and this very different philosophy and policy approach, but I do mind the dishonest way in which these people have infiltrated a party, rooted out all intellectual opposition, and defined themselves as the only legitimate voice on the Right to a generation of young conservatives.

They should all go live in an urban enterprise zone and see how they like it. In the meantime, the rest of us should take back the Republican party. Or repudiate it.

Written by: Answerman

Discuss.

Written by: Answerman

Discuss.

Written by: Answerman

Whatever one's views on homosexual "marriage," I hope we can agree that civil unions are perhaps the most pernicious public policy idea currently floating about. I happen to think that permitting homosexuals to "marry" will be yet another significant step in the abolition of marriage and ultimately Western civil society, but assuming we have to have one or the other, it seems "marriage" would be preferable to civil unions. At least in the case of the former the damage would be limited to a subset of 2-3% of the country's population. Sure, the cultural effect would be much magnified beyond the number of people involved, but it would be so much worse with civil unions. If civil unions become law in several states, they will eventually be extended to straight couple as well, and this revolution in the way society treats marriage and families will extend directly to the whole population. My guess is marriage would disappear as a positive social force within 2 generations. Assuming, that is, that we haven't all been blown up by a series of Chinese nuclear bombs within 2 generations.

Written by: Dave

The conventional wisdom is that the Michael Jackson trial is good for Bush because it will distract the public away from Iraq and the economy.

I am not so sure that this is actually a good thing, because the media has already succeeded in creating a negative tone on both Iraq and the economy. Over the summer and fall, however, the news from Iraq and the economy is likely to improve, and if Jacko distracts the public from anything, it might be the fact that things are continuing to get better.

On the other hand, I can see how the Jacko trial might actually still be a positive development for Bush. Fox is sure to provide more salacious (and far better) coverage of the trial than CNN, which will draw more viewers to Fox's coverage of other issues and away from CNN. Since Fox is less prejudiced against the Bush administration than CNN and the major networks are, this could have a positive effect.

Written by: Beck

The Mises Institute, official home of the Austrian school of economics, recently published an interesting article which is especially timely considering Answerman's recent writing about how 9/11 brought to the fore differences--previously relatively minor--among different flavors of conservatives. For those not familiar with the Austrian school of economics, they are essentially a fairly extreme offshoot of Libertarians who are heavily anti-government, pro-market, (very) anti-war, and pro-immigration.

The article, aptly titled The Awful Truth about Republicans, attempts to show that the behavior of Republicans during the Bush administration should come as no surprise to those familiar with the history of the Republican party. As authors Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., and Mark Thornton tellingly observe:

The Republican Party was established as a party of big government and economic intervention. Their reputation as a party of limited government is of more recent vintage and stands on a flimsy foundation.

The article goes on to give a resume of early Republican influences which would make a modern Conservative blush.

The Republican Party that emerged in the 1850s was an amalgamation of historical influences, third parties, and interest groups. One group that entered the Republican Party was the Free Soil Party, whose primary platform was free land and subsidies for farmers...

Also joining the Republican Party in the 1850s were supporters of the Know Nothing Party. The Know Nothings were most concerned about immigrants coming into the country, competing against labor, and suppressing wages. They favored restrictive immigration and protective tariffs to keep wages high...

The Whig Party formed the core of the Republican Party with its economic platform consisting of protectionism for industry, a national bank and currency, a large national debt, and a larger federal government engaged in extensive public works.

Also joining the Republican ranks were the Prohibitionists and the Abolitionists.

About the only thing the Republicans of 1850 got right was opposition to slavery.

While it is clearly a mistake to judge the party on beliefs it held over 150 years ago--it is no secret to political historians that Republican and Democratic parties largely traded sides, with the pivotal period occurring upon the election of FDR & his implementation of the New Deal--still, the historical comparison bears consideration for its value as a warning to modern conservatives. After all, we're certainly not going to do ourselves any favors by voting for a Democrat, and if you want to provide an example to the people of the world how NOT to do things, you need look no further than Europe. Take warning Republicans, with control of both the Legislative and the Executive branch, we have much to gain, but we have everything to lose.

Written by: Beck

A friend forwarded me a rather amusing discussion of taxes in America today. It's attributed to a Prof. David R. Kamerschen at the University of Georgia. Whether or not that's accurate I do not know. Regardless, I'm reprinting it here for the greater edification of the masses.

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten people go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this - The first four (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh $7. The eighth $12. The ninth $18. The tenth (the richest) would pay $59. So, that's what they decided to do.

They ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a problem. "Since you are all such good customers," the owner said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."

So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So, the first four were unaffected, they would still eat for free. What about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyonewould get their 'fair share'?

The six paying customers realised that $20 divided by six is $3.33. If they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth and the sixth would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal. So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each person's bill by roughly the same amount, and proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so - The fifth, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings). The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. The first four continued to eat for free. Once outside the restaurant, they began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth, pointing to the tenth diner "but they got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that they got ten times more than me!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh. "Why should they get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine surrounded and beat up the tenth diner.

The next night the tenth diner didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without number ten. When it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

That, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table any more. There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean.

Written by: Beck

The media has launched a full-court press against NSA Condoleezza Rice's refusal to testify before the 9/11 commission. CNN's article is a par for the course. They're doing the Democrats the favor of saving them from having to shoot their mouths off, thereby making it look like a non-political issue. Hell, the story is so juicy, the press doesn't even really have to lay on the sly insinuation. The administration is absolutely taking it on the chin on this one.

Evidently, her refusal to testify is a simple matter of principle--the NSA is the President's confidential adviser, and as such, they don't wish to set a precedent of exposing such an important adviser to interrogation. Rumsfeld and Powell have both pretty much said, in effect, "It would be really good for us if Rice could testify, but she really just can't. Sorry folks."

Quoth Rummy:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters Sunday, said Rice "would be a superb witness. She is anxious to testify. The president would dearly love to have her testify."

But the administration's lawyers have determined that her testifying "would leave the institution different than it was," he said.

Quoth Powell:

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he would not have testified publicly when he was national security adviser under President Reagan in the late 1980s.

"The president has to have a unique and confidential and private relationship with his immediate staff," Powell said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

I would absolutely love it if Rice would step up before that commission and spend an entire day giving them the works. It doesn't look like this will happen, and the Bush administration will take a beating. I suspect that her refusal to testify will be far more damaging to the re-election campaign than anything that buffoon Clarke could have said.

Written by: Dave

Writing a response to Answerman's provocative note on the crisis of conservatism is near the top of my to do list. Unfortunately I have been rather busy lately and don't have the mental energy to write anything really substantive right now. In the meantime I'll just write about a topic that comes easily to me -- my seething contempt for college kids.

Before I go any further, let me admit up front that I am unduly prejudiced by jealousy, as I suffered through four years of an institution dedicated to snuffing out all of the fun associated with the college experience. Let me also note that I was heavily influenced by my exposure to Answerman and Beck during their years in a different but highly distinguished academic institution. As far as I could tell, the greatest challenge of their college experience seemed to be finding a way to fill the time between registering for classes and showing up to these classes for the first time to ace the final exams.

Now I have nothing but respect for all those students working their way through college, or graduating with a degree in nuclear engineering in three years, or taking care of their sick grandmothers, etc, etc, but that's not the type of student I am writing about. He (or she) has a quite different existence. You probably knew someone like him yourself, or maybe it is or was you (as it would have been me had it not been for my inexplicable decision to put myself through four years of misery instead).

That's right, I am talking about all those students majoring in some ridiculously easy liberal arts field where earning a 3.5 requires showing up to a few classes, discussing feelings, and writing a few essays. True, these students also have some other responsibilities, such as pursuing the opposite sex, drinking a lot of alcohol, calling their parents to ask for more money, attending college sporting events, and occasionally bathing themselves.

Now my real problem isn't the students that get to enjoy this lifestyle, it's the students who get to enjoy this lifestyle but DON'T APPRECIATE IT! The typical college student is at the very apex of our society, enjoying most of its benefits while contributing nothing. But for some reason, many college students feel the need to reflexively denounce the society and armed forces that support their cushy lifestyle, and complain about how our culture is oppressing and exploiting them. I mean, c'mon, how can they keep a straight face when they talk about exploitation -- don't they realize that they're the first stop on the gravy train?

So if you are one of those college students out there living the good life, don't feel guilty, keep enjoying yourself while you have the opportunity. And naturally you shouldn't stop questioning our society and examining its many, many faults. But please just have enough humility to appreciate the fact that society is treating you pretty dang well right now.

Written by: Beck

You may have already noticed, but we have a new writer on the INCITE team--Captain Dave. He's a friend of mine that I've known for a frighteningly long time, and he has one of the best conservative minds that I know. He has served in the army, and he just recently got home from being stationed in Iraq. Currently, he's serving time in grad school over in the People's Republic of California. Hopefully you enjoy his stuff. Or hate it. Either way, it keeps things interesting.

Written by: Answerman

The more I think about it, the more September 11 looks to be a turning point for the worst in the tumultuous history of American conservatism. For most of my life, conservatives of many different stripes in the United States have banned together in an uncomfortable unity. This common front was largely due to the menace of international communism, and it frayed considerably in the 1990s, with libertarians, paleoconservatives, and neoconservatives going their separate ways. Still, these internecine quarrels were largely at the level of the conservative intellectual elites; right up and through the 2000 election, your average American conservative still considered himself part of something at least akin to a unified movement, and considered that movement to be aligned with the Republican party. No more.

September 11 brought conservative differences on critical issues such as immigration, interventionism, and accommodation of the welfare state from the think tanks and policy magazines to local politics and the concerns of the average conservative. Some of the most bitter policy quarrels I have seen over the past couple of years have been between different strains of the old conservative movement (these strains are not limited, by the way, to the three I identified above; American conservatism has become a quite complex and fractious creature). Foregin policy is no longer an academic game like it seemed to the unconcerned in the 1990s, where the price of getting it wrong was spending too much money in Haiti, or accidentally bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Now foreign policy is quite literally about life and death, and not surprisingly, non-interventionist paleocons and recklessly-interventionist neocons have become mortal enemies. At the same time, the long-simmering immigration issue has reached the tipping point, as we stand merely a few years away from a demographic and cultural catastrophe brought upon us by the open borders lobby. When the catastrophe was visible but more distant, the stakes weren't as high; moreover, immigration itself has become a life-and-death issue in the context of Islamic terrorists and the ease with which they enter this country to do us harm.

Foreign policy and immigration are the key issues of difference among conservatives that have become so fundamental and irreconcilable since September 11, but they are really just the tip of the iceberg in that they are symptoms of deeper ideological differences. The Patriot Act, for instance, has raised to the fore differences between traditional conservatives and libertarians on so-called ''civil" liberties issues. And affirmative action, political correctness, and racial profiling divide different wings of the old Cold War conservative coalition.

I actually have a proposal for averting this continuing separation and increasing animosity among conservatives of different stripes in the face of the ever-more-powerful liberal menace (let us not forget the simple point made by both Sam Francis and Paul Weyrich -- American conservatism has been defeated on every issue of importance to it over the past two generations, no matter what the goofy neocon revisionists try to tell you). But I need to think things out a little more and would like to make a different, simpler point today.

The most striking thing about conservative discord since September 11 is how separated leading national conservative policymakers and thinkers have become from the public on whose support they rely. On most of the critical long-term issues -- race, immigration, the asinine neocon version of a "New World Order" -- leading Republican politicians and leading so-called conservative publications such as National Review and the Weekly Standard differ fundamentally with their constituents and readers. Regardless of one's views on any of these particular issues, the fact remains that this ever-widening gorge between the movement leadership and its rank-and-file members can only do harm, and given the age we live in and the nature of the liberal opposition serious harm at that, to American conservatism and America itself.

The Bush administration and the ahistorical former Trotskyites who have hijacked it had soon better realize the harm they're doing in fawning over men like Tony Blair -- an unabashed supporter of the welfare state, racial preferences, global government, and coddling of criminals -- while issuing ridiculous Ayn-Rand-style edicts against men like Pat Buchanan -- a true conservative who, despite his significant failings on economic issues and foreign policy, remains a positive and important figure within the increasingly technocratic and leftward leaning conservative movement. These essentially left-wing functionaries who have invaded the upper ranks of American conservatism must be stopped, but in stopping them, we cannot resort to a reactionary populism whose time, if it ever truly existed, is long past.

COMING SOON: how I propose to do all that.

Written by: Beck

Blackfive provides a link to an online Bush ad. Someone should definitely look into getting this on TV--assuming that particular first ammendment right hasn't already been stripped by Demopublican Sentaor John McCain's campaign finance reform law. Anyway, the ad is a 1.6mb file in Shockwave format. Be sure your speakers are on.

Written by: Dave

This is great, I got a reader comment on my first post - the one about clitoral peircing. It raises an interesting question too.

L.J. writes:

"Given that cultures have been doing similar, and more damaging, things to their bodies for generations, I assume all cultures, except for Georgia, are degenerate?"


L.J., please let me clarify. Georgia's culture is degenerate too, along with the rest of the cultures in the first world.

I would stop short of saying that ALL cultures are degenerate though. To qualify as a degenerate culture, a culture must have reached some high point from which it can descend, which would disqualify most of cultures where serious genital mutilation is practiced.

Written by: Beck

Bush supporters outside of a Bush fundraiser were assaulted by some steelworkers unionists. True colors anyone?

Written by: Beck

Let me give you just one brief excerpt from a recent CNN article. In the article, Bush talks about how the economy has been steadily growing stronger (it is), and Kerry slaps him down through plain old fabrication (the article doesn't mention the fabrication bit).

Presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts issued a news release Saturday headlined: "Worst job loss since Great Depression, Bush can't see the problem."

"Nearly 3 million Americans have lost their jobs since George Bush took office and the president's response is to give himself a pat on the back," Kerry said. "American jobs are being shipped overseas, health care costs are overwhelming working families and George Bush still doesn't get it."

Does the observation that job loss is the worst since the depression seem a bit out of kilter with what you observe going on around you? It should. During the great depression, unemployment reached 29%. Hell, during the Reagan administration, unemployment hit 10%. What in hell is Kerry's point? In September of 2003, unemployment was at 6.1%, it's already down to 5.6%.

That's right, unemployment is down to 5.6%, and that less then three years after an attack which destroyed the world trade towers doing literally hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to the broader economy. Think about it folks. The already struggling stock market was completely wrecked. We've rebounded in fewer than three years. This economy is doing amazingly well.

John Kerry likes to point out that "nearly" 3 million jobs (I'd like to see by just how much he's rounding up) have been lost since Bush took office. He's playing a simple game of semantics. He doesn't mention the number of jobs that have been GAINED. Oops.

Finally, there's his announcement that Bush just "doesn't get it." He really said that. That's the kind of thing you expect to hear from some disaffected teenager to his parents, not from a presidential candidate. I can't remember the last time I've used that phrase. Anytime someone DOES use that phrase, it's almost unfailingly intended as self-deprecatory humor. This man wants to be your president ladies and gentlemen. Big congratulations to the Democratic party for nominating this guy. Naturally, the only two "adult" democratic candidates from the 300 or so who began the race, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, were thoroughly thrashed at the polls.

Written by: Beck

Nancy Reagan may have consulted an astrologer, but in Fort Myers, Florida the police consult psychics. And act on it. A flight from Southwest Florida International airport to Dallas was canceled yesterday when a psychic phoned in a tip that there might be a bomb on board. Guess what? THEY DIDN'T FIND ANY FREAKING BOMBS. Are you as surprised as I am? Here's the money quote:

The purported psychic's call was "unusual," conceded Doug Perkins, local administrator for the federal Transportation Security Administration director.

"But in these times, we can't ignore anything. We want to take the appropriate measures," he said.

Written by: Beck

Those keeping up with the comment thread on my French Bashing post from Thursday likely noted one gentleman, a certain Raymond, observing that:

[France is] not rogue, just a throwback. Little ovr 100 years ago, this was how all civilized nations conducted business.

And why are we surprised by a nation building a coalition against us? Isn't that what nations do to one another?

There's more to it than that--read the comment thread if interested (it's worth it--there's a very lively conversation going on between Goe and Raymond). Anyway, one reader had a response that wouldn't come anywhere close to fitting under the 1000 letter cap, so he emailed it to me. I felt it was worth sharing with everyone, so here ya go.

100 years ago, most of europe was ruled by empires with so many clerks that
even their emperors were unable to effect any real change, not that they
were inclined to. 100 years ago, china was a dictatorship in which free
thought was punishable by death. 100 years ago, most of russia was mired in
poverty, despite living in one of the most resource rich portions of the
planet. 100 years ago, world leaders detested the united states and it's
brash president. 100 years ago, most of latin america was dominated by
local warlords who gave themselves titles such as 'president', 'governor',
and 'mayor' to sound like they were chosen by the people they tormented.
100 years ago, most of africa was run by goons working for europe, as the
european powers tried to wipe out the locals and take everything for
themselves. 100 years ago, most of southern asia was loosely governed, so
long as the spices and silk kept moving. 100 years ago, the middle east was
kept under tight control so that it's population couldn't interfere with the
flow of spices and silk.

the only thing that's changed in a hundred years is swapping the middle east
and southern asia, and spices and silk for oil.

europe is waging a war on us, because europe thinks that we are going to cut
them off from resources they think they will die without. a similar belief
is what turned serbian land-grabs into the first world war. most of the
world sided with serbia, even though it was invading everyone around it, and
against austria, who tried to impose peace on the region. now we're the
ones trying to impose peace, and the world is lining up against us, with the
europeans footing their bills, and providing them arms. if you view the
world the way the europeans did a hundred years ago, the united states will
be divied up between canada, mexico, and a couple of small, new eurofriendly
countries by the end of 2018, with millions dead.

either we need to smack the europeans into not looking at the world the way
they did 100 years ago, or we need to launch an overt propaganda war against
europe, build up our army, and find allies before the shooting gets heavy.

Goe

The comments thread has already moved past this argument, but, well, it took a couple days to get the author's permission to reprint his email. So there you go.

Written by: Dave

Beck, thanks for letting me join your site, it's an honor.

I would like to first clear up a question I had in regards to your post on Georgia's law banning genital mutilation.

You titled the post "Creeping Fascism watch..." What exactly is the linkage to a growing threat of Fascism? Is it that this law is evidence of an out of control state trampling on the rights of the masses to pierce their clitorises? Or is it that the procedure's popularity is evidence of an abundance of individuals in our population willing to forgo modesty and suffer pain and humiliation so that they can please others and achieve a modicum more of stimulation in their lives? I assume that this is what you meant, since this type of person obviously makes great fodder for a fascist movement.

All right, all right, sarcasm aside I agree that this is not the State of Georgia's business and that the law should not have been passed. But I am not as worried about the efforts of misguided Georgia legislators to outlaw clitoral piercing as I am by our culture's degeneration to the point where this sort of thing is not only popular but socially acceptable.

Written by: Beck

Police raided a family's home looking for marijuana and found nothing there. It was just a normal family. So what was the probable cause for launching the raid? A high electric bill.

Homes were targeted largely based on unusually high utility bills, which often result from the 24-hour use of grow lights, according to court records.

Hmmm... of course police then went on to give two different explanations, just in case we weren't happy with a justification likely stemming form a family preferring to keep the air conditioner a few degrees lower.

[Police Lt. Rowland] noted a drug-sniffing dog showed interest in the home when it was taken there before Friday's search.

I'd be fascinated to learn what exactly constitutes "showing interest," from a dog. Finally, in one last bit of CYA, the police assert that:

In his sworn affidavit, Carlsbad Detective Mark Reyes states an unidentified, confidential source told a county Narcotics Task Force agent that someone might be growing pot in the house.

Oh, OK. Nothing creepy here. An unidentified source said someone might be growing pot.

I wonder what the odds are that this mystery source was a sock-puppet named "Mr. Binky." Actually, it was probably the dog.

Link credit to Fark.

Written by: Answerman

Is there anyone who can tell me how Maureen Dowd got a column at the New York Times? Did she sleep with the entire editorial board? Better yet, did she get the column in exchange for NOT sleeping with them? Folks, this woman is a raging imbecile, and yet she is one of a handful of regular columnists for the newspaper that is ostensibly this country's most important.

Now, let me tell you what I mean when I say Dowd is a moron. She's not a moron in the way that John Kerry, Paul Krugman, and your average Democrat voter are morons. All those types have asinine life philosophies and fairly shabby personalities to boot, but at least in Krugman's case (not so much Kerry's, I guess) the third-rate conspiratorial dementia is balanced by some baseline ability to string together coherent thoughts on paper. Not in Dowd's case. I'm not sure the woman has ever written a complete sentence. She usually just tosses out political references here, pop-culture references there, and mixes them together with a witless sarcasm that makes me wonder if there should even be women columnists. Is this the best the fairer sex can do?

What put me over the top with this cretin was her recent emoto-screed against Justice Scalia's reasoned opinion refusing to recuse himself from a case on account of his accompanying Vice-President Cheney, among numerous others, on a hunting trip to Louisiana. Dowd sprinkled her column with quotations from Scalia's opinion, which she followed with asinine sarcasm. The woman actually thought she had something to say about a legal opinion discussing legal precedent, despite the facts that (1) she has no legal training and (2) she has the IQ of butternut squash. Anyway, the notion of a man of Scalia's intelligence and stature having his reasoned legal opinion "fisked" by a mentally retarded likely whore was too much for me to take, so I had to speak my mind.

Written by: Beck

Good news for everyone worried about the eschaton: once WWIII sends us back to the stone age, we won't have to rely on Kevin Costner to deliver our mail for us, thanks to a team of Linux users (who else!) who conducted a successful test of Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol. Yes, you read that correctly. What's more, the protocol has been around since 1990, before the real mainstreaming of the internet even began (i.e. before the development of Netscape). Why would people do such a thing? Funny you should ask...

Why bother with such a pokey protocol? "Because it could be done, and because no one had done it before," Engen said.

The best part of that article is the little info box showing comparative internet speeds, all the way from OC768 fibre optic cable (40 gigabits/sec)all the way down to pigeon (.08 bits/sec).

Written by: Beck

Georgia (of course) has passed a new law making female genital mutilation illegal--this includes piercing. I get the vague hunch that this was intended to keep obscure Yemenese religious sects from cutting off women's... hmm, no real way to keep this work safe so I'll just stop. Anyway, even adult women who choose to, uh, participate in such activities are prevented. Male circumcision is naturally unaffected. Money quote for you:

Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings.

"What? I've never seen such a thing," Heath said. "I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing."

Thank god we've got Bill Heath looking out for us. God forbid someone accidentally do something he "wouldn't approve of."

Written by: Beck

Oh, it was Canada? Close enough. Canadian prison guards in maximum security "correctional facilities" (jails? what are those?) are not going to be allowed to wear stab-proof vests. Why not you ask? BECAUSE IT WOULD HURT THE INMATES FEELINGS, THAT'S WHY. You inconsiderate bastards. Criminals are people too, damnit, and they deserve as much of a free, unobstructed shot at stabbing a prison guard as anyone else.

Oh, you think I'm kidding?

EDMONTON -- Corrections Canada won't let guards at maximum security prisons wear stab-proof vests because it sends a confrontational "signal" to prisoners. "If you have that kind of presence symbolized by (a stab-proof vest), you're sending a signal to the prisoner that you consider him to be a dangerous person," said Tim Krause.

Because obviously all that nonsense with bars, locks, walls, razor wire, guard towers, spot lights, and attack dogs has nothing to do with these people being dangerous.

Written by: Beck

Jamie Olis, former vice president of finance of Dynegy, was sentenced to 292 months in prison today. That's 24 years for the mathematically disinclined.

He was involved in a little Enron-esque project known innocuously as "Project Alpha," in which he misstated nat gas trades as loan cash flows. Oops.

Written by: Beck

Reason Online has an intriguing article up to consider extra-judicial killings. In one form, these executions sans court procedures take the form of terrorist attacks, in others, they take the form of Israel's recent incineration of Yassin. Many people make no distinction between these two varieties of death dealing. Others seem to get it completely backwards--such as when the UN representative for Displaced Arabs (they have a UN representative?) tried to ram a resolution through the Security Council condemning Israel and praising Hamas.

Ronald Bailey makes the (correct) distinction that there are times when "assassinations" are perfectly justified, yet terrorist attacks on civilians never are. I know, I know, this distinction seems obvious and self-evident (ooh, nice redundancy there Beck), but in a world in which Europe so often sets the parameters of any dialogue of this sort, it's important some times to make absolutely certain everyone is aware that there IS indeed a distinction. Here's a nice money quote for ya:

So when are extra-judicial killings acceptable, if ever? Although, our former and current foreign affairs, intelligence, and military officials are busily trying to exonerate themselves for failing to stop the 9/11 atrocities, they all admit that both the Clinton and Bush Administrations were considering ways to extra-judicially kill Osama bin Laden. If Osama bin Laden had been killed in 1998 by the air strikes on his Afghanistan training camps ordered by President Clinton, the World Trade Center towers could well still be standing. In any case, the U.S. resorted to judicial proceeding against bin Laden later in 1998, when a U.S. Federal grand jury did indict him for the murders of 244 people who died when the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by his confederates.

At the end of his article, Bailey tries to make a case for how criteria for green-lighting extra-judicial killings, such as the Yassin termination, can be formalized and made transparent. I'm afraid he falters here, as he concludes that some sort of legal court can be established whose transparent workings would issue death sentences from on high in special cases. It's just these judicial approaches to terrorism that bogged down US policy so much before 9/11, we don't need to create further layers of unelected bureaucracy between decision makers and the men on the ground.

Meanwhile, over at National Review Online, Lee Casey and David Rivkin argue that the killing of Yassin was perfectly legal. Their (quite valid) point is that Europe applies a double standard to what they're willing to "allow" Israel to do in their conflict with Palestine.

Ironically, for years, European leaders--along with various non-governmental organizations--have demanded that Israel apply the Geneva Conventions to its fight against the Palestinians and its so-called occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. This suggests that Europe and the NGOs fully accept that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is an armed conflict to which the laws and customs of war apply. Of course, if Israel is engaged in an armed conflict with Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, as it surely is, then the Israeli military is legally entitled to target and attack any Hamas combatant, high or low, at any time--so long as the attack does not result in disproportionate damage to civilians or civilian objects.

In condemning Yassin's killing, then, Europe contradicts itself. It has made clear that Israel must apply the laws of armed conflict vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Now, however, it says that individual militants cannot lawfully be targeted. Indeed Europe's outrage over the Yassin assassination is far more troubling than a little Israel- (and by implication America-) bashing. It reveals, once again, the ever-widening canyon that separates the United States, and Israel, from its NATO allies on the question of fighting terror and on the laws of war themselves.

Casey and Rivkin go on to make a further legalistic argument that Israel was perfectly within the dictates of the Geneva Convention when targeting Yassin. Definitely an interesting read.

Written by: Beck

So anyway, with the creation of this blog, I also created a new email address to post under. I wanted to make life easier on myself--providing a nice separation between any blog-related emails and, well, everything else. Makes perfect sense, right? And since I only use my blogging email address (incite3000@hotmail.com) for blog-related stuff, I assumed that it would be relatively hard for me to show up on the spam-mailers email lists. After all, I haven't used it on any commercial sites that don't have a strict privacy statement. The only exception I can think of is using it to post in the comments thread of others' blogs. Still, it had to be only a matter of time before I finally got my first bit of spam. Today was the day. It's a great one. The spammers decided to open in style. No penis enlargement offers, no herbal viagra or online pharmaceutical offers. No online degree offers or low home refinancing deals. Not even a XXX site. No, folks, it was much better than that. And the good news is, with the $28,000,000 I've inherited, I'll be able to retire and devote my time entirely to building this blog! Oh happy day! And all I have to do to take receipt is send my personal banking information to Mr. Wang Qin of Hang Seng Bank!

And it must be true because it's email!

I am Mr.Wang Qin, credit officer of Hang Seng Bank Ltd, sorry if my English may not be well composed [Strangely the English is surprisingly good--I always figured the bad English in these things was more art than accident] but I have a confidential business proposition for you. I honestly apologize and hope I do not cause you much embarrassment by contacting you through this means for a transaction of this magnitude,but this is due to confidentiality and prompt access reposed on this medium. [Makes perfect sense to me.] Furthermore,due to this issue on my hands now,it became necessary for me to seek your assistance, and it is imperative for me to know your opinion. [Oh, don't worry, you'll get to know my opinion.]

On June 6,1998, a British Oil consultant/contractor with the Chinese Solid Minerals Corporation, Mr.Smith Lawrence made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at US 28,000,000.00 (Twenty-eight Million Dollars only) in my branch. Upon maturity,I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and finally we discovered from
his contract employers, the Hong Kong Solid Minerals Corporation that Mr. Smith Lawrence died from an automobile accident. On further investigation, I found out that he died without making a WILL, [that silly Mr. Smith!]and all attempts to trace his next of kin was fruitless.

Consequently, my proposal is that I will like you as a foreigner [You like me! You really really like me!] to stand in as the next of kin to Mr. Smith Lawrence so that the fruits of this old man's labor will not get into the hands of some corrupt government officials. [That last sentence was almost poetic. I'm getting a bit weepy, give me a minute] This is simple, I will like you to provide immediately your full names and address so that the attorney will prepare the necessary documents and affidavits that will put you in place as the next of kin.[Note to aspiring legal professionals: you can accomplish anything so long as you have "necessary documents and affidavits."] We shall employ the services of an attorney for drafting and notarization of the WILL and to obtain the necessary documents and letter of probate/administration in your favor for the transfer. A bank account either a new one or existng one in any part of the world that you will provide will then facilitate the transfer of this money to you as the beneficiary/next of kin. The money will be paid into your account for us to share in the ratio of 78% for me and 20% for you and 2%for any expenses Incurred in the course of the transaction. [$560,000 in expenses. Normally this might cause me to take pause, but inclusion of a third percentage in the breakdown has convinced me this is entirely realistic! Where do I sign up, Mr. Wang?]

There is no risk at all [reassuring!]as all the paperwork for this transaction will be done by the attorney and with my position as the credit officer guarantees the successful execution of this transaction. If you are interested,please reply immediately.You may reply to my email box, qin2004@levele.com [Note the email address. More on that in a second] Upon your response, I shall then provide you with more details and relevant documents that will help you understand the transaction. Please send me your confidential telephone and fax numbers for easy communication. You should observe utmost confidentiality, and rest assured that this transaction would be most profitable for both of us because I shall require your assistance to
invest my share in your country.

Awaiting your reply.

Thanks and regards.

Mr.Wang Qin.

The email this was sent from was qin2003@snowboard.com, with the vastly amusing result that at the bottom of the email is appended this lovely nugget:

==============================================
Join the World's Largest Snowboard Community for FREE!!!
www.snowboard.com

So, naturally, I felt compelled to send a response:

You can hardly imagine how excited I was when I received your email notifying me that I stood to receive 78% of $28,000,000 and all that was required was necessary documents and affidavits. In anticipation of this great windfall, I've already taken the liberty of quitting my job and buying a new car. It's red! Do you like red? I sure hope you do, as I'm not certain I would be willing to enter into such an important business transaction with someone who doesn't like red. One quick question: why is your reply-to email address qin2004@levele.com while you originally sent the email from qin2003@snoboard.com. Are you just, like, some kind of snowboarding freak? I'm cool with that, if you are. Never tried it myself, but then, there's a lot of things I haven't tried that you probably have.

So what do we do next?

John Beck.

I'll keep y'all posted on any future correspondence from Mr. Qin.

Written by: Beck

The EU has fined Microsoft $613 million for alleged anti-trust violations. Furthermore, they're requiring MS to strip Media Player out of versions of their operating software sold in Europe. In case that weren't enough, they're required to take measures to "open up," MS server software.

Am I surprised? Not in the least. You should read the article, actually--it's quite long, but rather interesting.

You know what I would like to see? I'd like to see Billy Gates calmly turn to the East, raise his right hand, and extend his middle finger, giving a big F-U to Europe. There has been no other company in history better positioned to pull off such a dramatic move. There will likely never be another company better positioned. Over 90% of European desktop computers use MS operating systems--to say nothing of dependence on MS Server, Office, and Networking software. How glorious would it be to see Gates, John Galt style, stand up and tell the EU that they're not getting their hands on a single dollar of his, and if they don't want to use his software, they don't have to. Then just pull all software sales and support from EU and watch the dominos tumble. Inside of a week, virtually every business and computer using citizen would be writing, calling, and emailing their respective elected officials and telling them to settle the hell down. Naturally, the magnitude of lefty outrage might just be enough to deafen out the right-thinking individuals, but ah, it would be lovely to see.

Naturally, it will never happen.

Written by: Beck

Most Americans have an instinctive disdain for the French. We engage in French bashing with reckless abandon. Even as PC as our culture has become, it seems France bashing has remained an island of allowable discrimination. And I love it. It's one of the last truly bipartisan pastimes Americans can enjoy together. Take the phrase "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys." It was the Simpson's, whose creator/writer Matt Groening is a Democrat (he donated $2000 to the John Kerry campaign), that coined the famous meme to describe the French, while arch-conservative Jonah Goldberg has adopted it as one of his favorite phrases.

While no one really needs an explanation for this cross-Atlantic antipathy (especially not after French refusal to back the Iraq invasion, followed by the emergence of evidence of just how much French intermediaries, many of them closely connected to the French government, profited off of the oil-for-food program), still, if you ask the average American for an explanation of the origins of this animosity, the best most of them can come up with is that the French are generally disdainful, have rude waiters, and smell funny.

Well Gabriel Gonzales over at Winds of Change has written an extensive article explaining just why in hell it is Americans can't stand the French. Turns out, it's for some pretty good reasons. In his article Gonzales argues that France isn't just an ordinary nation pursuing its self interest, but rather, structural and cultural aspects of France lead to a systemicly confrontational stance with the United States, and frankly, the entire Anglosphere.

For starters, a bit that nicely summarizes French foreign policy:

Timmerman points out France's irresponsible dealings with Iraq, which included conditional oil contracts, huge infrastructure deals (construction, roads, utilities, etc.), as well as illegal weapons sales and perhaps even bribes under the UN oil-for-food regime. This was a major part of French policy to undermine the sanctions regime, which was an aspect of its broader policy of triangulating against the U.S. to promote its commercial and strategic interests, especially with corrupt regimes abandoned by the U.S. (Saddam, Iran, Sudan, Cuba...).

Gonzales goes on to argue that protecting these lucrative Iraq deals wasn't even the root cause of French interference in the UN Security Council against an Iraq invasion. Rather, it was part of a broader strategy of courting dictatorial regimes across the world in an attempt to build a bloc in opposition to America's sphere of influence.

He also points out that an American government could never get away with such overtly nefarious behavior. His explanation for why France's government has carte blanche from its citizens to pursue such goals was, in my opinion, the most telling point in the entire article.

What allows France to engage in such conduct much more freely than the U.S. is:

1. A thoroughly corrupt business culture and state bureaucracy (that has a paranoid view of itself as being in a fierce Machiavellian competition with a U.S. business establishment presumed to be equally or more ruthless),


2. The demonization of an imperialist United States as a distraction, and


3. The passive support of its citizenry.

This last point - the passive support of the citizenry - is very important to understand: unlike the U.S., France has effectively no political or citizen control over its foreign policy, which is a purely executive function. This stems from the relationship of the citizen to the State: whereas state power is perceived as inherently dangerous by Americans in our historical tradition of skepticism towards official power, the French centralized state is glorified by its citizenry as the ultimate protector of citizen interests, rather than as a danger to them. As a result, the citizenry has little interest in the details, substance or moral dimension of foreign policy, which are fully delegated and blindly entrusted to this Collective Protector.

Essentially, the French have neither a concept of nor a concern for the frank and unashamed corrupt behavior of their government.

In the frigate bribes scandal, there is no public or media curiosity to speak of about which government officials were using bribes to procure these contracts and what they might of done. Who cares? The sole preoccupation is how much the state and thus the citizenry stands to lose in the lawsuit brought by Taiwan (currently the subject of French military intimidation, as mentioned). In the Executive Life matter, it took 6 months for the opposition even to raise any question about the propriety of the government using the public treasury to negotiate protection from criminal prosecution for Chirac's personal friend, the billionaire Francois Pinault.

Anyway, I highly recommend reading the article in its entire. It's lucid and well reasoned points make a strong case for why the US should not consider France an ally in any way, shape, or form. And now I leave you with a money quote:

I am not sure that "evil" is the right word, but France is, among Western powers, the closest one can get to a "rogue" state.

Written by: Beck

So I finally headed over to Fundrace's website to see what all the hype was about. And it's all kinds of fun. You can search areas by zipcode, people by name, or look at national & city maps to see who is giving to whom and how much. I found a few surprises too. I always had Billy Gates pegged as a lefty but it turns out he gave $2000... to George Bush. As someone pointed out to me over at IMAO, the massive anti-trust assault from Clinton's Justice Department must've left a mark.

Aaron over at the Rantblog has a great break down on his home territory of LA, with special emphasis on celebrity giving and how much money has been wasted by Dems on failed candidates. Granted, money spent on a losing candidate isn't completely wasted, as it does go to fund anti-Republican advertising, but it's still a little nice to think about what it must feel like for these people to spend $2000 on Howard Dean and then watch him implode like a black hole.

Written by: Beck

From Reuters, link credit to Salon.com. Hamas has moved quickly to reassure America that they don't have any intention of targeting Americans or American interests.

That's hardly the story they were singing prior to the invation of Iraq.

Written by: Beck

What the hell is wrong with you people!?! First, go read this article. It's about a man whose home was broken into by four men, armed with guns, intent on robbing him. The guy grabbed a samurai sword (probably only because he couldn't legally procure a firearm) and cut one of the assailants to ribbons.

In America, we call someone like that a "Hero." In Brittain, you can now call him a "Convict Doing Eight Years In Prison."

Would someone care to explain the logic of this to me?

Link credit to John Derbyshire.

Written by: Beck

OK, one last post before I get some sleep. A county in Oregon has made the dreams of the anti-gay "marriage" slippery-slope argument supporters wet with glee. They have banned marriage. All marriage. They made the mental leap of deciding that they could save everyone some time in the incremental process of trivializing marriage by just doing away with it entirely. Granted, that's not exactly the way they see it, but why give their arguments any credit?

It's really a shame Andrew Sullivan has gone on vacation. I'd love to see what he has to say about this.

Finally, a money quote:

State Attorney General Hardy Myers said in a statement that he was "very pleased" with Benton County's decision. "It is my sincere hope that legal process will provide clarity for each of Oregon's counties."

Written by: Beck

In Indiana, a 4 year old child brought a big fat bag of crack cocaine to school.

In an unrelated event, a 5 year old Miami child brought a big fat bag of marijuana to school. What's more, he sprinkled some of it on a class mate's lasagna (it went uneaten).

I think it's pretty obvious what needs to be said here, but I'm going to spell it out anyway. THESE CHILDREN SHOULD BE THROWN BEHIND BARS FOR THE REST OF THEIR NATURAL LIVES!!!

Well, it was either that, or say something pithy about making new laws... For The Children!(tm)

Try not to think of this in context of Answerman's post about prison rape. Damnit, I TOLD you not to think about it!

Written by: Beck

First, be sure to read my previous two posts. The juxtaposition should be obvious. We're losing a highly organized propaganda war against Islamist forces in the Middle East and doing virtually nothing to fight back. These people know exactly what they're doing. They have a well defined strategy and clearly they are executing it masterfully. In the West, front organizations for pro-Palestine and pro-Wahabi Islamist organizations routinely preach that Islam is a religion of love, and immediately denounce as racist anyone openly criticizing the goings on in the Middle East (it doesn't really matter what, they defend anything in any way related to Islam or the Middle East on principle). Meanwhile, back at the ranch, leaders both religious and secular--backed by the exact same organizations--preach hatred to the gullible masses. Hatred folks. HATE. There aren't sufficient adjectives to describe the magnitude with which these people hate Jews. And America too. But especially Jews. After all, America takes its marching orders from Israel, so the two are really one and the same. It must have been too hard to take time out from all their Jew hating to hate the United States as well, so it was very convenient when they concluded that America was just a puppet of the Israeli state. That allows them to be more efficient in their hate.

The worst part of all? That we Westerners are so often guilty of believing this "Islam is love," nonsense, while turning a completely deaf ear to priests who declare that all non-Muslims must die. In a world where The Guardian can eulogize a mass-murderer who founded an organization whose charter stipulates that Israel must be annihilated and not be forced to apologize or lose 99% of their readership as a consequence, the Islamists aren't just winning the propaganda war... they've won it.

Written by: Beck

The one television channel that you can get inside the territory of the Palestinian Authority has a special Friday sermon special every week. The special is filled with unabashedly anti-Semetic vitriol and hate. The Weekly Standard has a nice bit of coverage of one of their more recent Friday specials.

History repeats itself, explained the imam. Once again, the Jews, characterized by "miserliness and cowardice," are the terrorists. "They deserve death, and we deserve life, because we are the people of Truth."

Written by: Beck

Muslims love Jesus! I bet you didn't know that. Money quote:

CAIR claims to be a civil-rights group that represents mainstream Muslims in the U.S., but the group is a spin-off of the Islamic Association For Palestine, labeled a "front group" for the terrorist organization Hamas by two former heads of the FBI's counterterrorism section.

Next week, we'll be bringing you features on Jews for Zoroaster and Buddhists for Baal.

Written by: Beck

It's easy for an anti-war protester to blather tripe like, "The average Iraqi citizen is worse off today than he was prior to the American invasion," but it's hard for a pro-war supporter to refute it. You're left with a battle of rhetoric which doesn't ultimately do the pro-war cause any good. After all, the anti-war people have the luxury of ranting about what-ifs, while the pro-war people are saddled with the body counts and the suicide bombers. As such, I was happy to see this article by Andrew Cline over on NRO in which he gives some good, hard statistics which nicely demonstrate that the invasion was the right thing to do. Some numbers for you:

...[A] poll conducted for ABC News and the BBC found that 48 percent of Iraqis called the war "right" while only 39 percent called it "wrong," and 56 percent said their lives were better after the war. Seventy percent of Iraqis said their lives were either "very good" (13 percent) or "quite good" (57 percent). Someone should ask Howard Dean, who in January said that Iraqi living standards are "a whole lot worse now," about these results.

Seventy-one percent of Iraqis said the job market was better now than before the war. Thirty-nine percent said the availability of electricity was better after the war, compared to 25 percent who said it was worse. Fifty-four percent said security was better after the war, compared to only 26 percent who said it was worse.

On every subject, from security to medical care to schools, more Iraqis said their lives were better after the war.

Written by: Beck

Are you legally required to identify yourself? The supreme court begins hearing arguments Monday.

I myself have mixed emotions. I firmly believe that the police's presumed attitude that they have the right to demand anything of anyone at anytime is a grievous violation of human rights. Furthermore, I believe that incremental things--such as requiring that people show identification on demand--lead to much worse violations of liberty.

Then I think about an Arab terrorist driving across New York, and for whatever reason--a hunch, an instinct, an anonymous tip--a police officer pulls that terrorist over. Inasmuch as the terrorist isn't required to show ID the officer has no choice to set him free, so long as he was breaking no laws. Then the terrorist blows up a few thousand people.

Like I said. Mixed emotions.

Comments invited. Just click that little link below and to the right.

Written by: Beck

But the world's population has officially gone over 6 billion now. Malthusians in the 80s who were predicting a population crisis of epic proportions seem to have been stymied again, however. The rate of increase is decreasing, and is currently forecast to drop below the replacement rate some time around 2050. Money quote for ya:

US demographers also projected that a number of African countries will experience levels of mortality during this decade that will lower the average life expectancy at birth to around 30 years by 2010, a level not seen since the beginning of the 20th century.

Much of this decline in life expectancy is likely to result from the AIDS epidemic.

Written by: Speculator

What can we say of an actively intrusive central bank? Is it possible for a central economic authority to micromanage an economy; can the business cycle be massaged to achieve some preconceived optimal oscillation? Furthermore, can it be considered sapient to have a collective aiming to do just that? Or is it better to have each economic agent acting on its own behalf, unfettered from synthetic shocks?

To be sure, we are witnessing the most reflexively activist Fed in its 70 year history. There seem to be those who subscribe to the thought that booms can be replaced with booms, all without the nonsense of those silly busts. And thus far, things look pretty darn good. Heck, even the captain of this mighty ship is just silly with it: "Mr. Greenspan's view is that household balance sheets are 'in good shape', and perhaps stronger than ever, because the value of people's homes and stock portfolios have risen faster than their debts" - New York Times, 3/16/04. Uh huh.

I was utterly shocked when I read this line last week, as the NYT was reporting on Greenspan's testimony to Congress earlier this month. A few things: housing prices, in general, are actually a derivative. Have you ever met the guy that buys cars based upon what monthly payment he can afford, actually ignoring the price that he pays for the car? Homes, in many ways, work the same way. The purchase price of a home is eventually the principal that is "backed-out" from the monthly mortgage payment that one can afford, which is a direct function of mortgage interest rates. As debt service has achieved an all-time low on the Scale of Burden, people are finding that their dollar can buy a hell of a lot more home. And as more and more people enter the amusement park of contemporary home-buying, with their eyes wide and hearts pitter-patting, they bid up the price of homes with arguably reckless abandon. Why? Because they can 'afford' to. And, as some know, when a home in a neighborhood sells for 110% of the ask, all homes in the relative vicinity are "marked-to-market" - holy cowballs honey! we've got EQUITY in this thing!. And the banks are more than pleased to "unlock" it for you, at, yep, a lower rate than your previous. (Much more on this psycho clown circus stunt show in later posts)

But the key here point here is that it takes only ONE home sale at an appreciated price for many to enjoy price appreciation. It takes little imagination to envision what would occur if more than three owners within a neighborhood came to roost and attempted to sell at these recently appreciated levels. But no need, the refi wizards down at your local branch can help you with that.

So, as banks refi the Joneses and the Smiths at, lets say, principals of 120% of original purchase (which were probably already inflated), they sit smug knowing that they are well secured - the home backs their credit extension. We should all do our best to get a prize seat to watch the cacophony that will result as Joe banker attempts to fetch all he can for the principal extension of 1.2X he made only a short 18 months prior.

Now, as you will soon come to find, I am somewhat of a hyperbolist at times: I don't really believe that there is going to be a devastating liquidity crisis. But it's fun to think about.

Nonetheless, I was beside myself to hear the venerated Mr. Andrea Mitchell speak as he did. Surely he didn't find bona-fide evidence of health in household balance sheets as he said he did.

More commentary on active intervention by a central bank later.

Written by: Beck

Foreign Affairs magazine has a phenomenal article online about the effects of the outsourcing of American jobs written by a professor of political economy at the University of Chicago. If the subject at all interests you, you should definitely hop over and give it a read. One word of warning: this article is LONG. Definitely not lightweight stuff. It would be nice if someone would send a flying tackle into John Kerry and force him to read the entire thing. Actually, inasmuch as I don't think Kerry would change his campaign message one whit regardless of what he reads, it would be nice if someone would just send a flying tackle into John Kerry for no reason at all.

For those without the patience Foreign Affairs kindly provides a summary:

Summary: According to the election-year bluster of politicians and pundits, the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries has become a problem of epic proportion. Fortunately, this alarmism is misguided. Outsourcing actually brings far more benefits than costs, both now and in the long run. If its critics succeed in provoking a new wave of American protectionism, the consequences will be disastrous -- for the U.S. economy and for the American workers they claim to defend. [emphasis mine]

And where would I be without a money quote for you ladies and gentlemen?

The outsourcing phenomenon has shown that globalization can affect white-collar professions, heretofore immune to foreign competition, in the same way that it has affected manufacturing jobs for years... [T]he law of comparative advantage does not stop working just because 401(k) plans are involved. The creation of new jobs overseas will eventually lead to more jobs and higher incomes in the United States. Because the economy -- and especially job growth -- is sluggish at the moment, commentators are attempting to draw a connection between offshore outsourcing and high unemployment. But believing that offshore outsourcing causes unemployment is the economic equivalent of believing that the sun revolves around the earth: intuitively compelling but clearly wrong.

OK, so it's more of a money paragraph than a money quote, but you get the point.

Written by: Beck

A problem Answerman has brought up repeatedly is that while two nations may both benefit from free trade, they do not necessarily benefit equally. This assertion is 100% true. In trade, the ratio of exchanged items isn't necessarily going to be Pareto optimal--a situation in which neither party can be made better off without making the other worse off. Both sides, naturally, will try to squeeze every last drop of blood out of the other's proverbial turnip, and at the end of the day, the party who comes out ahead more often than not is the best negotiator.

Governments often step in to try and swing things in favor of their nation's companies. This invariably leads to inefficiencies and lost economic gain for both parties. Yet while that is a problem, a far greater problem occurs when one side's government interferes and the other side's passively allows it to happen, doing nothing to thwart the interference. For this reason, tit-for-tat trade incentive/penalty programs and such tools as withholding Most Favored Nation trade status are valuable tools which the government shouldn't be too quick to surrender (those who've been keeping up with the comments threads on all these trade posts have already heard as much from me). The Clinton administrations push for Congress to make MFN status for China permanent was a horrible decision, and I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Chinese contributions to the Clinton/Gore election campaigns played a significant roll in that decision.

Written by: Beck

Richard Clarke is being defensive. For those not up to speed on Clark(e)s Not Named Wesley, Richard Clarke was Clinton's anti-terrorism expert (he was a thirty year White House veteran, and worked for a while under the Bush administration, before being forced out), and having remained relatively silent in the two years since September 11, is now doing the talk-show circuit. Why? Well because he has a new book out of course!

The man's tenure in the Clinton White House was a failure. He spent his time focusing loudly on cyber-terrorism. His one great accomplishment was making sure the US government didn't completely implode from the Y2K bug. Judging from the fact that no ICBMs up and decided to launch themselves at midnight on December 31, 1999, I assume he was successful. In everything else, the Clinton administration soundly failed. Between 1992 and 2000, the United States sustained a bomb attack on the world trade tower, a bomb attack against a naval destroyer, and two bomb attacks against embassies of ours in Africa. Our retaliation involved throwing a few Arabs in jail, blowing up a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan, and lobbing a cruise missile into Afghanistan. We're not entirely sure about the effect of the cruise missile, but we're pretty sure it scared the bajeezus out of some goats.

And so, Clarke has gone on the offensive, declaring in essence that Bush's failure to completely dismantle and destroy Al Qaeda in the 9 months he was in office prior to the WTT and Pentagon attacks was 100% the fault of the Bush administration and 0% the fault of the god-like, infallible, and much more fashionable Clinton administration. Surely the timing of this book release--in an election year--is pure coincidence! I would hate to ascribe sinister motives to poor Mr. Clarke.

Anyway, the White House has launched a full court press to make this guy look like the hammer-pickle he is. (If you want to know what a hammer-pickle is, ask Speculator, I'm not really sure myself). Now he's being very defensive, and looking rather silly in the process. The problem is that it doesn't even matter if the White House comes out fully vindicated and everyone pretty much concludes that Clarke needs to get back to things he's good at like huffing paint fumes, damage has still been done to the credibility of the White House. It's just another salvo in what I'm quite certain is going to be the dirtiest campaigning by the Democrats in my lifetime. Money quote for you:

Rice has characterized as "ridiculous" Clarke's statement in his book that she seemed unaware of al Qaeda until he told her about it.

Update: It would seem Clarke is launching a job at a Homeland Security consulting firm with a former Clinton White House employee. To say that this guy's motives in writing this book and publishing it now are suspect would be to say that the sky has a "bluish tendency."

Update:William F. Buckley rips in to Clarke over on National Review Online.

Update:Another article about the Richard Clarke mess. Nothing especially new, except for these wonderful quotes from two Democratic senators, including Joe Lieberman:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said Sunday he doesn't believe Clarke's charge that the Bush administration -- which defeated him and former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election -- was focused more on Iraq than al-Qaida during the days after the terror attacks.

"I see no basis for it," Lieberman said on Fox News Sunday. "I think we've got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric."

And Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that while he has been critical of Bush policies on Iraq, "I think it's unfair to blame the president for the spread of terror and the diffuseness of it. Even if he had followed the advice of me and many other people, I still think the same thing would have happened."

Written by: Answerman

My broad trade strategy would be as follows: create a free trade block with countries with similar economic systems, political rights, and cultural backgrounds, then expand trading policy outwards from this nest of strength. I would start with Andrew Sullivan's concept of the Anglosphere. The British should be at the top of our list of free trade partners, not the Mexicans and Chileans and such. In my view, our dogmatic approach to trade has caused us to go about this in a wrongheaded, haphazard fashion, and it has prevented us from taking a strategic approach to a complex problem. Perhaps my particular strategy has flaws, but I don't think you can deny that (1) we should have a trading strategy and (2) the one we have is too beholden to dogma and pure economic theory to be an effective component of our national grand strategy, which involves a lot more than economics.

Written by: Beck

Aaron over at the estimable Rantblog wants you to know about the second annual Buy A Gun Day this April 15. I highly encourage you to do two things. First, read about BAG Day over at Rantlog. Second, GO BUY A GUN. It's the responsibility of every American citizen to be prepared to protect themselves and their property.

Aaron has some other suggestions for how to celebrate BAG Day:

• Join the NRA, Liberty Belles, the JPFO or similar organization.


• Spread the word about BAG Day II.


• Take a non-shooter to a firing range.


• Link to the National Ammo Day website.


• Lobby a conservative judge or mayor in California or New York or Massachusetts to issue 10 concealed carry permits for each gay marriage performed in San Francisco, New York or elsewhere it is legal.

Written by: Answerman

Nationalism is important because I speak as someone interested primarily in American policy-making, not in growing the global economic pie. If I need to do the latter to satisfy the former, or if it is a side effect, then great. But it is not my focus, nor do I think it should be the focus of U.S. economic policy. It certainly should not be the focus of U.S. foreign policy.

The fact of the matter is that free trade can, in theory, cause a country to do something in its net economic interest that is not in its overall national interest. Beck agrees with this point, perhaps Spectator does as well. In my view, Beck ignores the fact that this not only can happen in theory, but does happen, and often, in practice. Sometimes economist-types who are smart concede the obvious theoretical point and then pretend that it is only a marginal problem that doesn't crop up very often. They assume that a confluence of theoretical economic and actual national interests is the norm, and that deviations only occur a small percentage of the time. I think this is incorrect, and that our overall national interest often deviates from our theoretical economic interest.

You guys make the same error in logic when you write off the peace and cooperation point. You say, "Sure you need it, but hey, the U.S. can impose it," or, "Sure you need it, but hey, it's not like China is suddenly going to close its doors." The fact is that peace and cooperation is extraordinarily rare; it is the exception, not the norm. If the exception is a necessary assumption underlying free trade theory, then free trade theory is by definition less useful than everyone seems to think it is. Moreover, the proposition is not either/or. China currently, although it is not taking drastic measures (and remember, I only use China as an illustration), could be "harming" our national interest by taking advantage of our trade policy. In fact, it is. Where do you think their nuclear and satellite technology comes from (assume for a moment that the Clinton administration didn't give them a bunch of stuff)?

Finally, no one has answered my point about relative economic power, which is yet another reason nationalism is important to trade policy. If free trade with China results in China closing the relative gap in economic power between it and the United States, then free trade with China may not be in the U.S. national interest. Do you dispute that statement?

I'm not saying any of this means we should pursue autarky. What I am saying is that it means we should develop a sensible industrial policy, with exceptions to our baseline free trade strategy where warranted. And that we should stop dismissing as "protectionist nonsense" intelligent propositions along these lines, as if having an industrial policy is something akin to preferring horses to cars and typewriters to computers.

Written by: Speculator

I agree with Answerman: nationalism is effectively ignored in the free-trade argument. But, so what? In effect the global free-trade argument, when taken to its logical extreme, nullifies any nationality discussion at all; save the differentiation provided by national currencies, global free-trade, in this context, eliminates borders. Raw mats will be procured and processed in the countries that have "volunteered" to host such activity and material such as the Bose-Einstein condensate will be produced by the countries that have the ability to host such activity. The simple point here is that economic activity will be relegated to the marginal provider--there is really little you can do, outside of artificial and despicable intervention, to arrest this process. It should happen.

Your point is well taken, that free-trade necessitates the continued existence of peace and cooperation. I think we are understating, or perhaps even ignoring, the possibility that the US is in a singular position to install and ensure the preservation of these qualities (but this may very well invite an entirely different discussion).

I found myself in an interesting argument with a seasoned macro professor a while back. I argued that the current account deficit that the US is currently running, and has been now for almost 10 years, will from henceforth on remain a deficit, save an unprecedented puke of the USD. He was astonished and began to vaticinate all sorts of doom. Why is this so bad? The world has become our grand outsource project--China included. They (the world) produces what we could but have found to be less than optimal, and we engage in the development of products and ideas that will only serve to enhance our dominance as the greatest experiment in the human condition. (Lest we forget, this is the country where a man who should have died in a coal mining accident finds himself with a six-figure salary and no responsibility) Just because China is involved in raw material processing and is gaining on a relative scale, doesn't mean that they have the domestic investment opportunity set that we here in the US do. We are progressing at a rate that China is categorically unable to replicate.

Written by: Speculator

But let us not forget one primary problem with China--uncertainty. Uncertainty is the kryptonite of global financial progression. Foreign direct investment to China has spiked over the past few years, and will continue to do so, up to a point. That point will be reached when the returns being garnered in China have 'matured'. By this I mean that the 'first mover advantage' has been exhausted, and the return required by the aggregate investor base that is commensurate with the level of uncertainty, or risk, that is inherent with investment in China, is no longer available.

Make no mistake: China remains one of the most opaque investment opportunities on the global investment menu. This nebulousness begets outsized risk premiums, and in so far as the premiums are no longer available, due primarily to oversubscription to the China-play, China will suffer.

Written by: Beck

Unless you've spent the day trying to decide what color to paint your new tin foil hat, you've already heard that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and leader of Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, was killed last night by rockets fired from an Israeli helecopter.

You can read the full story here

The only thing about his death that I'm unhappy about is that it was relatively quick and painless.

Written by: Answerman

"Through our free-trade industrial policy, we are funding the relative economic rise of a great power competitor in China."

Dicsuss.

Written by: Answerman

Who cares if regulatory and labor costs are artificially high in the US? They are also artificially low elsewhere. And in any event, they are what they are; the question is what does that mean in terms of our industrial policy. Just because in the best of all possible worlds I would deregulate in the United States does not mean that I should be willing to toss my country's fortunes to the wind in a mindless devotion to a theory whose baseline assumptions about the world and its level playing field are incorrect.

Second, if free trade theory rests on the assumptions not only of peace, cooperation, etc. but also on the continuation of the validity of those assumptions well into the future, and if human history has hardly known periods of peace, cooperation, etc., then you do the math. What we have here is an economic theory based on a set of assumptions that rarely exist. That makes the theory somewhat less useful than its strongest proponents are ever likely to admit.

Written by: Answerman

Most of the context for how free trade helps or hurts a particular country is determined in the pre-free-trade-era, according to the successes and/or failure of the particular industrial policy pursued by that country. History tells us that both Britain and the United States reached unparalleled world economic power through the implementation of extremely protectionist industrial policies -- Britain through its mercantilist system and the United States through Alexander Hamilton's policies as furthered by Henry Clay's American System. I think these success stories developed in this manner for two reasons -- (1) a focus on the concept of relative economic power/advantage as discussed in my "Pieces of the Pie" post below, and (2) a focus on creating the conditions for exercising comparative advantage in certain fields once the free trade "game" began in earnest after World War II.

Free traders often distort history by claiming that Britain and the United States achieved the economic power they achieved through free trade. That's simply a lie. Regardless of the merits of any economic theory, the rise of Britain and the United States occurred when both countries were pursuing protectionist industrial policies. One can argue that the rises would have been stronger or quicker had they pursued free trade, but the facts are the facts.

It makes sense that a country's position in the free trade pecking order is determined by the conditions existing at the time the trading begins. Mercantilism and Hamiltonianism and the American System allowed Britain and the United States to build up certain industries in which they later enjoyed a comparative advantage they would not have enjoyed absent the protectionist buildup. If free trade had been the regime of the day in the late 1700s and Americans had played by those rules, it is quite possible we would have simply developed into the granary of Europe and nothing more.

Incidentally, Britain's relative economic decline can be traced back to her embrace of a free trade ideology that allowed and encouraged competition in certain industries where she had previously enjoyed an artificial advantage. There may be no causal relationship, but the temporal one is simply undeniable, and questions must be asked. Britain has become much richer absolutely in the days since she embraced free trade dogma, but she has also become a second-rate power.

Written by: Answerman

I think the one things Beck's free trade answer fails to take account of is the issue of relative economic power versus absolute economic power. I accept that if one country can specialize in good A while another country specializes in good B, their comparative advantages result in a larger economic pie from which both countries gain absolutely. But what if one country gains more? If free trade helps the world pie and helps China and the United States individually, but China gains more of the increase in the pie than does the United States (this is what has occurred), then the United States' relative economic power decreases relative to China. Because I think relative economic power is much more important in a world of competing states than absolute economic power, I view this is a huge problem with free trade theory. Yet again, the theory fails to take into account that as an American, I want America to be better-positioned to do certain things; I'm not satisfied simply if America is making more money than it used to.

And this is the nub of my overall problem with free trade theory. It rejects any nationalism whatsoever. It gives a nod to national well-being by explaining an increase in absolute economic power, but that's it. And for me, that's not enough.

Written by: Beck

You took my first argument out of my mouth--that labor and regulatory costs are artificially high in the US. And you are correct also in observing that my arguments (I should say free-trade arguments in general) are predicated on peace, cooperation, and the like. When the chips are on the table, then, it comes down to an argument over to what extent peace and stability can be assumed to exist going forward.

It would be foolish to think that China can be counted on as a long-term source of beneficial exchange (though I think there's a chance that China does not turn out to be the huge negative it has the potential to be. Their government's incremental progress towards pro-business and pro-growth policies can likewise develop into a more open, stable, friendly nation. After all, the more they successfully develop into an industrialized nation, the more they, like Japan, will need to depend on foreign markets for their products; however, while one can reasonably hope for such an outcome, I will concede that it would be naive to base planning for the future on such assumptions. This detail actually brings up an argument made much earlier by Answerman about how congress was foolish to vote to normalize most favored nation trade status with China. Passing the MFN decision was a huge pet project of the Clinton administration, and I think we all know the roots of the motivation for that bit of legislation. In case any doubt remains, I agree 100% with Answerman that MFN trade status with China should NOT have been made permanent). Still, China is far from the only trading partner of the United States.

India has very near the same sized population as China, and it is India, after all to which so many of our white collar jobs are flying. Furthermore, many jobs in high-tech are flying to Japan and the Asian tigers (and have for decades now), and to South and Central America. Herein lies my confidence for the future of American economic health and for the future success of free trade policies. Even if the United States were to lose 100% of Chinese industrial production at some hypothetical point twenty years down the road, and even if that production were assumed to be a substantial source of American imports, I nonetheless feel confident in saying that there will be a surplus of alternate, friendly markets for the US to originate alternate supply routes.

Finally, if China does get to such a prosperous position in the world and they suddenly cut off exports to America--the world's largest market for manufactured goods--the impact would be crushing to the Chinese economy while causing only minor inconvenience to ours.

Written by: Answerman

I believe that most Buchanan-style rants about the precipitous decline of the United States as a manufacturing nation are false. The real numbers simply don't bear this out. But assume for a moment that such reports are correct, as pure free trade theory certainly permits them to be. Assume that the principle of comparative advantage means that over time, other nations will be the manufacturing nations. They will be the manufacturing nations because of their artificially cheap labor and their artificially lax environmental laws. Because we do not have artificially cheap labor and artificially lax environmental laws (instead, we have artificially expensive labor and artificially repressive environmental laws), assume that we will slowly become a largely non-manufacturing nation. Instead, we will be the consulting nation, the financial services nation, or whatever.

I simply refuse to believe that this would be a good or stable state of affairs. I refuse to belive it would even be in our long-term economic interest alone, given the inherent instability. It seems to me that the case for global free trade rests on a whole lot of asusmptions about great power peace, international cooperation, and the like -- assumptions which may have held up between 1993 and 2000, but which have not held up historically. In an environment where such assumptions hold up, the value-free attitude that free trade requires ("it doesn't matter what we make as long as what we make maximizes our economic advantage, and it doesn't matter where manufactured goods come from as long as we have access to them") is harmless. But in the real world, if China gets a significantly bigger share of manufacturing and we get a significantly smaller one, and China (as it will) tries to leverage this state of affairs against us for political gains, we are worse off. Under free trade. And it doesn't require a bunch of countries ganging up to deprive us of steel all at once; all it requires is a clear enemy whom we're building up industrially to use the changed state of affairs against us.

Written by: Beck

Too many people have forgotten. Too many people have forgiven.

During my most recent bout of web-surfing, I stumbled upon a little website which has a ~7mb movie file on display over at a free webhosting service, angelife.com. I remember seeing this same movie about two years ago. At the time, I wondered how anyone could ever forget the visceral feeling of pain and emotion shared by every true American on the day that the United States was attacked, September 11, 2001. And today, while watching this movie again, it occurred to me that America HAS lost that sense of violation. We have lost our way, so to speak. Forgive me for being melodramatic, but people need to be reminded of the World Trade Tower attacks. Often. So I added a link to INCITE--you'll notice it over on the right--and there that link shall remain. I encourage others who have websites of their own to link it. For those with bandwidth to spare, I'd encourage you to host a mirror of this movie.

Anyway, go and watch it. You too may have seen it before. See it again. Post a link to it. Email it to your friends. Remember.

Written by: Beck

I have discovered the most humiliating job in the world. I cannot imagine putting this on my resume. Even as a joke. No political content to see here. Thankyoudrivethrough.

Link credit to Dave Barry.

Written by: Beck

Ever wonder what to do if confronted by a terrorist? Well now you can read the FAQ and find out. Warning: those who do not recognize satire WILL be offended. An excerpt:

Q. How can I identify a terrorist?
A. Sometime the differences between terrorists and non-terrorists are quite subtle. While a non-terrorist would carry a briefcase, a terrorist would carry an AK-47. If a non-terrorist bumps into you, he will say, "Pardon me, sir." If a terrorist bumps into you, he will say, "Death to the infidels!" The main way to identify a terrorist, though, is the evil look in their eyes. Also, they're Arab.

Q. What about those people who set bombs in Ireland?
A. I believe they are also Arab.

Written by: Beck

At long last, I finished reading Les Miserables--the 1458 page unabridged phone book sized version. It took about a year to compete, as I kept getting sick of it and putting it down for something else. I must've completed thirty other books between cracking the first page and closing the last. So, you ask, what did I think of it?

Good question.

Victor Hugo has never encountered the word "succinct." The word has never come within a league of him. I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the word "succinct" was first coined by someone wishing to define "the opposite of the manner in which Victor Hugo writes." I got over it. Hugo uses Les Miserables not to tell a story--the story seems almost incidental--rather, he uses it as a vehicle for expounding on every single aspect of the human condition--from the heights of blissful happiness to the depths of human misery (despite the title, it's not only about miserable people). It was a letter to the illuminati of Parisian society particularly and the world generally in which he declares his official stance on every important topic he can think of. As such, Les Mis is worth reading simply for its virtue as a primer on the leading edge of Enlightenment era thought in Europe.

This virtue is also the book's greatest fault. Hugo's determination to cover every topic imaginable in complete depth and breadth results in such miscarriages of justice as twenty-five pages being devoted to a discussion of whether argot--the language of the Parisian criminal underground--is suitable for inclusion in formal literary composition (his conclusion: yes). There are perhaps a dozen topics at best only tangentially related to the story line in which Hugo devotes twenty pages or more to serious discussion (including, seriously, the entire history of the Paris sewer system). It can be hard going, not because the subject matter is dense, but because it's profoundly uninteresting. Here's the test: if you can get through the famed eighty page opening discussion of the Bishop who helps Jean Val Jean get back on his feet after release from prison (summary of those eighty pages: the Bishop was a really, really, really, really, really good person), then you can make it through the rest of the book.

Many of the digressions are fascinating. Hugo's discussion of the Battle of Waterloo as seen from the point of view of a Villa fallen into ruins comes to mind. My biggest complaint is that Hugo's writing is tedious in the extreme. It's insufficient for him to say, "The sun rose like a flower opening its petals in the hands of a young maiden," or, "It rose like a breath of fresh air after a month spent trapped in a wine cellar with nothing but a dyspeptic cocker spaniel for company," or, "The rising sun was like discovering that a diamond which you had thought real but then discovered was fake was actually real in the first place and discovering all this on the day in which your rent came due and you had thought you were going to have to sell your grandmother into slavery to cover the medical costs of getting your left big toe amputated and then after that discovering that your toe didn't really even have to be amputated." No, Hugo must say all three of those things, and then he must say ten more. The man chronically describes single events, scenes, thoughts, emotions, etc., in two to five page long metaphor choked monstrosities. Without removing a single substantive element of the book, a good editor could have foreshortened it with ease by over 400 pages, and therein lies the book's greatest weakness. War & Peace, the mega-novel to which Les Mis often finds itself compared, does not suffer from this same malady. While one might not approve of Tolstoy's hundreds of pages devoted to the fundamentals of historical thought and analysis, they nonetheless could not be foreshortened much without losing the actual substantive content of Tolstoy's argument. The same is not true for Les Miserables, and therein lies its greatest weakness.

Without further rambling (looking back on what I've written thus far I fear that reading too much Hugo has infected my own writing style), I'll conclude with this: it's a good book overall, it's worth reading--and not just in the sense that it qualifies as one of the two dozen or so books which people who consider themselves educated should strive to read at some point--and while it has many weaknesses, they are outweighed for the most part by its many strengths.

That succinct enough for you? Didn't figure.

Written by: Beck

The hardest part about writing this is preventing it from turning into a five page long dissertation. I apologize in advance in case it happens anyway.

Paul Craig Roberts has an amazing resume. It amazes me, then, that he made an elementary mistake in his column which Answerman draws from. Comparative advantage will exist between two countries even if absolute advantage works as well. Let's take a very simple scenario: say two countries make two products, A & B, and let's say further that the first country makes both A & B more efficiently than the second country. These two countries will still both benefit from unencumbered trade. The first country can focus entirely on what they're the most productive at, say A, and leave B to the second country, which even though less productive at that than the first country, still allows the first country to benefit by freeing up more of their ultra-productive resources for additional A production. This will always hold so long as the principle of decreasing marginal utility holds (i.e. each additional unit of a thing which you have is of slightly less value to you than the previous unit). Anyone who would like a mathematical example complete with production functions and utility curves, feel free to email me (follow the link at the bottom of the post). I'm not going to burden anyone else with intro macrotheory.

Paul Craig Roberts' second point is correct, that countries must have different relative costs of producing different goods in order for them to benefit from trade. I disagree with Answerman's conclusion that this may no longer obtain in the modern economy. It absolutely holds, and always will. On a small level, the cost of raw materials will differ in small amounts due to shipping costs. On a larger scale, labor costs will always be different, largely due to differing government labor regulations from nation to nation. Third, building plant & property assets will always differ by location. Fourth, while one WOULD expect to see leveling in the production of certain products (say steel, where both the production inputs and end product are relatively uniform no matter where it's produced and by whom), benefits to trade only erode when goods production costs are uniform across the board. To apply our earlier example, if any nation can produce product B at the same cost, but product A is something complex and requires an advanced, industrialized, educated nation to produce, advantages to trade will still hold. Advantages to trade only disappear when both nations have identical production functions for both A & B (in which case you have neither comparative advantage NOR absolute advantage between nations).

Answerman brings up another issue--the impact of trade on national security--as well. To put the argument in simple terms, if one nation relies on another to supply it with vital goods and services, then that nation is at the mercy of the supplier. This is a strong argument, and for the most part, I agree with it. The real question, then, is a matter of asking to what magnitude one should intervene to prevent this loss of control of vital resources. Do we want to rely on others to supply us with fighter jets, precision missile weaponry, and sensitive computing and communications systems? Obviously not. What about guns and bullets then, they're simpler to make and easier to acquire from alternate sources? What about production of steel? You need steel, after all, to make fighters, missiles, and guns.

I think the United States government should absolutely intervene to protect Boeing in any way, shape or form. This includes more subtle measures (like trying to force Europe to stop financially supporting Airbus, Boeing's biggest competitor, for the simple reason that it means more profits for Boeing, and as such, makes for a healthier company), to more overt and obvious things (like physically preventing them from moving manufacturing facilities over seas). Boeing's capabilities and capacity are far too important to our national security, and it is definitely worthwhile to take any minor economic hits to avoid losing them.

So how about steel? This country would be seriously harmed should our capacity to import steel be cut-off, assuming we didn't have the ability to replace the lost supply from domestic production in a timely manner. Given unfettered free trade and another twenty years of economic development, it's entirely possible that the United States could completely get out of the steel production business. Logically, then, the US should move to protect this industry UNLESS we can count on a relatively secure alternate supply from friendly trading partners (such as Japan).

In the case of steel, and of the vast majority of other products, I feel quite confident in relying upon other nations to make those low value-added products while our own workers move further up the value chain to more productive jobs producing higher profit-margin goods and services. For my confidence to be betrayed, a significant number of our trade partners would have to completely cut us off simultaneously. I have a hard time imagining a realistic scenario where something so extreme could actually happen, and I think the economic damage we would have to sustain to insulate ourselves against such a scenario would be both extreme and unecessary.

Written by: Beck

William F. Buckley can be very hit or miss. An article written by him today for National Review Online falls under the hit category, making a number of good points. The concluding brace of paragraphs are especially worth the read.

Bush vs. Kerry? Looking back on Bush vs. Gore, Professor Joseph Olson of the Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, gives us a shrewd perspective. Adding up the counties in the U.S. won by the two candidates, it was Gore 677, Bush 2,434. Taking the population of those counties, it was 143 million for Bush, 127 million for Gore. In square miles of land won, Gore 580,000, Bush 2,427,000. The murder rate in Gore counties, 13.2 per 100,000 residents, contrasted with 2.1 in the Bush counties.

This tells us how wrong it is to make facile generalities about the workings of democracy. How would the Iraqis themselves vote, if given the option between tranquilization under a Saddam successor, or months and years of terrorism? The United States suffers from the immaterialization of an objectifiable enemy: there is no Berlin, no Tokyo, no enemy fleet. There is just John Stuart Mill.

Written by: Answerman

I tend to like Andrew Sullivan. I read his blog almost every day, and he's always posted some interesting bit of analysis. I've never been able to figure out exactly what kind of "conservative" he is (heck neither has he; witness the semi-annual attempts to define some sort of new conservative movement, such as "Eagles" or "South Park Republicans"), but hey, no one ever said you have to be a conservative to be interesting or have something intelligent to say.

But sometimes the guy is just maddening. Witness this gem:

MCCAIN ON KERRY: Here's a question worth asking: whatever John Kerry's record, could he afford in office to be weak on terror? Wouldn't he be obliged to continue Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and even, as he has already promised, actually increase troop levels in those countries? I don't think it's out of the question. John McCain knows Kerry and says he doesn't believe he'd be "weak on defense." Sometimes, a Democrat has to be tougher than a Republican in this area - if only to credentialize himself. I can certainly conceive of Richard Holbrooke being a tougher secretary of state than Colin Powell. I'm not yet convinced and want to hear much more from Kerry. But I'm persuadable. Four more years of religious-right social policy and Nixonian fiscal policy is not something I really want to support.

That's great, Andrew. Look, we know you're pissed at Bush about homosexual "marriage," and you're obviously entitled to your opinion. And you're entitled not to vote for the guy. Heck, you're even entitled to vote for John Kerry if you want to, and if you have a death-wish. But get it over with already!! I've read enough of your articles and posts these last couple of years to know that in your heart of hearts, you KNOW John Kerry is the wrong answer when it comes to the national security of the United States. You KNOW that a Kerry administration would be a foreign policy disaster for this country if there ever was one. So if it's so important to you that Barney Frank and his latest boyfriend get hitched in the next few years, more important than your country's security, then vote for the guy! And endorse him on your website! I would disagree strongly with your priorities, but we're all entitled to our opinions. I simply ask that you stop rationalizing and engaging in this semi-public process of talking yourself into thinking that this joker can hack it as commander-in-chief. Be honest, Andrew. Your credibility on the War is at stake.

Written by: Answerman

The president is apparently prepared to sign the infamous 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, which would turn roughly 7/10ths of the earth's surface over to the United Nations and some kangaroo court dominated by orangutans, known in the sophisticated press as "judges from developing countries." That's just fantastic. I don't know how much longer I can stomach the liberalism of this administration. Bush is basically an honest version of LBJ with a few socially conservative but utterly meaningless rhetorical flourishes about abortion and homosexual "marriage" thrown in for good measure every few months. It's enough to make me almost regret not supporting the Buchanan candidacy in 2000.

I mean, aside from tax cuts and the broad war vision, I don't think I've agreed with a single concrete thing this president's done. And even those two accomplishments were pursued for vastly different reasons than I would have preferred. The demand-side claptrap surrounding the tax cuts, as well as those horrendous rebate checks, was bad enough. But then we have to develop some sort of messianic mission to install "democracy," by which I mean "a legalized manner for insane, violent morons to elect other insane violent morons to power in potentially nuclear-armed nations," in the Middle East. And we propose to do it with about 69 troops, or however many Rumsfeld has over in Iraq pursuing his quixotic goal of demonstrating how the U.S. military can take over and run countries with 4 Army guys, their extended family, and a computer. Is this really the time to be dabbling in revolutions in military thinking?

At the end of the day, Bush is the best of a bad lot. But if he continues to open our doors to an invasion by poor and angry Mexicans bent on destroying our Anglo-Protestant culture, and if he keeps doing things like giving the UN control over the deep seas, then it might get to a point where Kerry wouldn't be THAT much worse an alternative.

Of course, I say that, but then I realize that IF I VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY, MY ODDS OF MEETING A PREMATURE, VIOLENT DEATH INCREASE. Ah, the beauties of democracy!

Written by: Speculator

I like perspective. Don't you?
Here is a selection from the right-side of the menu - All in USD.

The 2002 nominal GDP of Israel: 117.4 BB
The 2002 nominal GSP of Kentucky: 120.3 BB

Some who dabble in these figures far more than I do try to champion the use of Per Capita GDP.

The 2002 nominal Per Capita GDP of Israel: 19,500
The 2002 nominal Per Capita GSP of Kentucky: 29,389

Kentucky is the 25th most populous state in the Union.

Written by: Answerman

I don't like the phrase "civil liberties." I think it's pretty clear that the word "civil" is only there as some sort of failed attempt at consistency by ACLU types who insist that we have the First Amendment freedom to do all sorts of asinine, offensive, meaningless things that have nothing to do with the Constitution, while at the same time supporting proto-communist economic policies.

Written by: Beck

Link credit goes to Andrew Stuttaford for this article. Port Orange, FL has passed a law that bans smoking in public... when in view of children. You can get away with imposing any new restriction so long as it's justified by being FOR THE CHILDREN.

Port Orange council members said the smoking ban is to protect kids from second-hand smoke and to prevent them from starting in the first place.

I'm reminded of Dennis Leary's rant from his No Cure for Cancer routine. Paraphrasing: "What's the law now, you can only smoke in your apartment with the lights out under the covers? 'This is the police, we know you have the cigarettes, come out with the cigarettes over your head.'"

Apart from the raw offensiveness of seeing yet another civil liberty curtailed, the worst part is their justification for it. Basically, Port Orange is announcing that their children are so fricking insipidly dim that the mere sight of a smoker immediately prompts them to want a butt of their own to suck down. Hell, I think they could benefit from seeing a few smokers. Line up the homeless people, the drunks, and the other misfits and let them puff away. "Scared straight," is the phrase, I believe. But don't belittle our intelligence with this, "Bow to our unbending will... FOR THE CHILDREN," crap. If your children need this law to avoid becoming cancer statistics, then your children deserve to die.

Written by: Beck

In life I have sought to find what I call "Virtues." When I talk about Virtues, what I mean is principles which have positive value regardless of the circumstances. Two that I have settled on are Discipline and Patience. Perhaps I'll discuss that some other time. Regardless, at one point, I was contemplating adding Balance to the list. I bounced this off of a very good friend of mine, who happens, incidentally, to have one of the best minds for markets and finance that I know. His response? "Balance is all well and good, but if you're not careful it can lead to another 'B' word... 'Boring.'"

And it is with that little story that I introduce the newest writer to INCITE, calling himself "Speculator." The name is fitting. Trust me. Suffice it to say, he'll be bringing absolutely zero balance to the table.

Written by: Answerman

On ESPN's "Dream Job," in which contestants compete for a one-year contract as a SportsCenter anchor, two contestants get eliminated every week according to a combination of votes by viewers and 4 judges. In last week's episode, the two worst contestants, by far, were Maggie (a woman) and Chet (a black guy). The viewers and Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser voted both of them off the show. Because Chet was so horrendous, 2 of the other judges voted him off, and he was mercifully gone. A black Redskins linebacker who served as the fourth judge somehow found 2 other people to vote off. Clearly, his vote was influenced by some potent combination of racial solidarity and mind-numbing stupidity.

Meanwhile, all the judges but Kornheiser voted a white guy named Nick off instead of Maggie, so poor Nick had to join Chet in elimination. Trust me when I tell you that it is a matter of objective fact that Maggie stunk and Nick was at worst average. And yet this poor guy got screwed out of an opportunity of a lifetime because these PC jackasses just couldn't bear to elminate the one black guy AND the one woman all in the same week. How depressing.

Written by: Beck

I should have plenty of time this weekend while theoretically doing "work," to put together a reasoned, insightful, and thorough response to Answerman on free trade. Inasmuch as it's an issue that I care a lot about and consider myself something of an expert on, I don't want to half-ass it. So for today instead, I've decided to half-ass something requiring much less brain power.

Who here didn't see THIS coming? Omarosa finally got "fired" from the reality show The Apprentice. She somehow managed to hang on through one mind-boggling blow up after another, then, when fired, immediately cried racism. This is wrong on a whole lot of levels (and don't worry, I plan to slog through each and every one), but the most offensive thing of all is that people are actually taking her and this whole "controversy" (which I firmly believe was manufactured out of whole cloth by Omarosa with the aid of a gleefully complicitous sensation-starves media) seriously.

FIRST and foremost, Omarosa deserved to be fired. In one episode she lost over $100 of her team's money. In another episode, she declared that she couldn't do ANY work for her team because she had some sort of injury or illness--I forget the detail because I hate reality TV on principle and get the sordid details second-hand. Compounding that, she went out and played basketball when she was supposedly incapacitated. She was perpetually rude, incompetent, and counter-productive. The only amazing thing is that she lasted as long as she did. While most people have a sinking feeling why she lasted as long as she did, they're terrified to actually voice that opinion, so I'll do it for them. She lasted as long as she did because the show's producers were terrified of firing a black person. They were afraid that unless she horribly screwed up and they had an absolutely clear-cut reason to fire her, they'd be accused of racism. Well, they had their clear-cut reasons, but they got accused of racism anyway.

I often wonder if people like Omarosa and the race-baitors who encourage her realize what a disservice they are doing to the ordinary hard-working black person.

SECOND, as soon as she was fired, she began make wild accusations of racism against her fellow cast members. The first thing she cites?

On ABC's "The View" Wednesday, host Star Jones asked [Omarosa] about an angry scene that aired in an earlier episode of the show. During an argument with [Omarosa], fellow contestant Ereka Vetrini made the comment that [Omarosa] was "the pot calling the kettle black."

Omarosa told Jones that the use of this metaphor was a racial slur and said that she was also called something much worse that was not aired. "I was responding to a much, much worse term than that, that I won't even say because it's so repulsive," she said. [Oh please with the veiled hints. We all know you're getting at the word "nigger." Yes, I actually spelled it out, the most profane word left in American society.] She later added that it was the "N" word and that it was her "worst experience on the show."

I recall some time ago a college athletics coach losing his job over the use of the word "niggardly." It's a word, it has a meaning, it's not racist. The same is true of the pot and the kettle figure of speech. People will use any excuse to make accusations of racism. It's disingenuous and it's sickening.

THIRD, the media is eating it up. Her role on The Apprentice of Designated Bitch, compounded with evidently unfounded accusations of racism (read the article linked above to get the details), are going to make Omarosa rich. She has a line of clothes coming out, a book, and is on the A-list of TV talk shows. There's even talk that she may do TV presidential election coverage.

[Omarosa] has been making talk-show circuit saying that she has been fielding offers to host her own talk show. I really got a lot of interest when I first got on the show, and started getting calls from a lot of different places, she said.

Media encouragement of this sort of behavior only serves to fuel the fire that creates this sort of behavior in the first place.

The only racist that I see here is Omarosa herself. The people enabling her behavior should be duly castigated for their behavior as well.

Written by: Answerman

I think even the most ardent free trader would agree that certain indsutries need protection because of their national importance. Various defense industries, for example. (I also happen to think there may be other industries deserving protection because of certain social values, but as this is a more disputable point, I want to focus for the time being on industries necessary for the national defense.) The necessity for protection is based not on economics, but rather on other policy considerations.

Given this necessity, what about industries that are necessary to produce the component parts that go into the defense industries? I'm way beyond my knowledge base here, but if we need, say, steel to produce weapons, and if we agree that our weapons industry is not an appropriate subject of "free trade," then isn't it at least possible that we need some baseline native steel industry? Even if economics would dictate that all steel should be made elsewhere while we focus on our alleged comparative advantage in financial services, etc.? And if so, how significant does our baseline production of steel need to be?

I should note that I opposed the Bush steel tariffs. In my view, there was no non-economic policy rationale given that outweighed the clear net economic loss to the United States. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't support other, better-reasoned deviations from free trade dogma.

Written by: Beck

Donald Luskin is one of my favorite economic pundits. I like him because he's so overwhelmingly obnoxious. He pulls no punches whatsoever. He heads a group of writers who call themselves The Krugman Truth Squad, dedicated expressly to exposing the lies of economist Paul Krugman, whom he calls, "America's most dangerous liberal pundit." He's also the author of the book, The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid, and runs a website complete with blog which expands on the themes of the book.

Anyway, you should definitely read his stuff over on National Review Online and his own page, poorandstupid.com. Here's a nice money quote from his latest article, illustrating how the economy is in much better shape than the Democratic Party would like us to think:

And the lies are working. In a post-9/11 world, fear is never very far beneath the surface. Appeals to insecurity can be very effective--especially when they can be linked to isolationist urges. Despite all the evidence of economic health around us, last Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported a poll showing that only 45 percent of Americans approve of President Bush's handling of the economy, down from 49 percent one year ago. Overall, Bush is virtually tied in the polls with John Kerry, a candidate whose economic policy (to the extent it can be discerned) seems to center on a rollback of Bush's tax cuts--the very tax cuts that set the economic recovery in motion in the first place.

Of course, Paul Krugman--America's most dangerous liberal pundit--has been doing his ample share of the lying. In his Friday column for the New York Times there are a couple of howlers.

First, Krugman lies to make his case for a jobs crisis--even though the unemployment rate is 5.6 percent. Bear in mind that 5.6 percent is nothing unusual. It is precisely the long-term average since the statistic was first compiled in 1948. It is lower that it was, on average, during President Clinton's first term, and precisely the same as it was at this point of Clinton's first term. If there is anything unusual about 5.6 percent, it's that it is dangerously close to the 5.5 percent level that Krugman himself once claimed was indicative of excessive employment pointing to inflation.

OK, so that was something of a long "quote." You don't like it? Get your own blog.

Written by: Beck

Invading Afghanistan didn't really impress anyone. Invading Iraq did. Libya handed over 55,000 pounds of equipment designed for making nuclear weapons in January. The rest of their gear is en route.

The first shipment flown out of Libya included some of the most sensitive items in Libya's nuclear inventory, including three canisters of uranium hexafluoride gas. A ship carrying 500 tons of cargo, including most of the rest of Libya's nuclear weapons equipment, is scheduled to dock at a North Carolina port later this month.

It's just further evidence that the war on terror yields results.

Written by: Answerman

Beck concludes his reasoning in favor of free trade and against protectionism with the following penultimate observation: "And it's better still if you can just buy the car from someone else and go about providing financial services to the guy who built the damn thing."

But is it really better? What if "someone else" decides for whatever reason to stop sending you cars, no matter the economic loss or, more accurately, lack of economic gain, to them? What good are your financial services then? It strikes me that a healthy society might want to retain the capacity to make cars as well as numerous other things that might be "outsourced" under fully-applied free trade dogma.

Written by: Answerman

From an emailer to NRO's Corner: "All reports indicate that almost every neighborhood in Tehran is on fire. People are throwing home-made bombs, Molotov cocktails, etc. into the homes of mullahs, and burning pictures of Khamenei in complete defiance of his recent edict to mourn during the month of Muharram."

Has the counterrevolution finally begun? If so, was it spurred in part by America's firm stand in Iraq? Can a wax statue win the American presidency just because the Democrats were dumb enough to nominate one as their candidate? For the answers to these and other questions, stay tuned to Incite.

Written by: Answerman

Republicans tend, on the whole, to be better people than Democrats. Conservatives, even more so, tend to be better people than liberals. This is because one's identity as a Republican, a Democrat, a conservative, or a liberal is not some sort of randomly-generated condition, but rather is a result, usually, of a deliberative, philosophical process inside one's mind that is informed by, among other things, one's moral compass. For various reasons that are incredibly obvious to myself and should be but are not incredibly obvious to your average jackass voter, Republicans and conservatives, on the whole, have stronger moral compasses than do Democrats and liberals.

All this is just my long-winded way of saying that George Bush is a nice guy and John Kerry is pond-scum. Perhaps more importantly, George Bush's campaign operatives are, again on average, much nicer and better people than are John Kerry's. As a result, those of us who realize the mortal danger that Islamic fundamentalism and Democratic politicians pose to American national interests are forced to suffer through a campaign season where Kerry and his folks call the president a moron, a liar, and the like, while Bush and his folks respectfully engage Kerry in a legitimate political debate of which the average American voter is too dumb to comprehend the importance.

Which brings me to Spain (try to keep up, people). For those of you who have been living under or repeatedly beating yourselves over the head with a rock these last few days, here's a newsflash: Al Qaeda just won a fair and square election. Well, "fair and square" if you think that term means allowing several million morons and cowards to vote to make it more likely that the rest of us get slaughtered by Islamic miltants in the near future. But I digress. Last week, Spain's Partido Popular was poised to get reelected, and the Socialists who were yammering about surrendering to the Islamists had no chance of getting access to the levers of power. Then the Islamists blew up a train. Then the Spaniards elected the Socialists. Then the Socialists formally announced their surrender to the Islamists. It doesn't take an expert in the nuances of Spanish politics to understand what's important about all this -- Al Qaeda is going to walk away from this thinking they influenced the course of a Western election to their immediate advantage. And they're going to try to do it again in Eastern Europe, in Australia, in Britain, and here. And as a result, lots of people are likely to die. Perhaps even you.

Which brings me back to Kerry. It doesn't matter what you think about gay marriage, midnight basketball leagues, or the pharmaceutical woes of crabby old people. IF YOU VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY THIS YEAR, YOU INCREASE YOUR ODDS OF AN EARLY AND VIOLENT DEATH. It's just that simple, folks. Al Qaeda wants Bush out, and if we vote him out, they're going to think it's because they scared us, and that's going to cause them to try to scare us into doing other things....by killing us. You may question Al Qaeda's logic in this regard, but understand that we're talking about a bunch of fanatical imbeciles who hang out in caves and still use words like "infidel." They also don't care or (the horror!) even know about the pharmaceutical woes of crabby old people in Del Boca Vista, Florida.

We're at war, and the other side wants to change our leadership to a moral cretin who doesn't even think we're at war. Voting for Bush is a no-brainer, which means given the American public's mental capacity that this is going to be a close election. That's why Bush needs to stop being a nice guy and get ads on the airwaves warning the moronic, uh, I mean voting, public that a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Qaeda and a vote for their own deaths. I have no faith that he'll actually do this, because like I said, Republicans are too damn nice.

Written by: Answerman

Recent debates over steel tariffs and outsourcing certain IT jobs to India, as well as Democratic Senators Kerry's and Edwards' craven willingness to ride the populist, protectionist bandwagon when they see a political advantage in doing so, have called into question the theory of "free trade" that had come to dominate thinking in respectable economic circles by the 1990s. Because I have always believed in that theory, and yet always have an instinctive distrust for any theory that dominates thinking in "respectable circles" of any sort, I would like to take this opportunity to begin to rethink the whole issue.

I want to confine my rethinking largely to the economic realm. In my view, it goes without saying that despite the economic merits of free trade, the cultural and foreign policy tradeoffs of such a policy can be and have been devastating. Witness the demise of rural America and the economic stagnation of several states and communities throughout this country during the past several decades, as so many people have crowded into a handful of cities that sustain our orgiastic "New Economy." Witness the blow to American national interests that was the Congressional grant of Most-Favored-Nation status to Communist China.

But what about the economic theory itself? Is it still valid? Does it require revision in light of 200 years of history and, necessarily, contextual change? After all, we live in a very different world, based on very different assumptions, than did Adam Smith.

Free trade has always been based on the principle of comparative advantage. Comparative advantage requires two conditions to operate: (1) a country's factors of production must seek comparative advantage within the country and not move to absolute advantage abroad; and (2) countries must have different relative costs of producing different goods (Credit: Paul Craig Roberts). It strikes me right off the bat that the second condition may no longer obtain in the modern world economy. Climate and natural resources are not the important components of GDP that they were in Adam Smith's day; today, institutionally-acquired knowledge seems a much more important component. And institutionally-acquired knowledge is not limited by geography. As a result, modern production operates more or less the same regardless of location. Given this state of affairs, it seems to me that there is no necessary reason for relative production costs to vary from one country to another.

If relative production costs must not vary, then it follows that only absolute costs vary, according to what I will call "artificial" variables such as labor costs. If this is true, then countries with some form of an industrial policy can manipulate such variables (as it seems they do; witness China) to wrest control of whole industries from countries that cling blindly to their faith in free trade. These countries gain an ever-increasing share of the world's production, resulting in an ever-increasing share of the world's income.

But the free trader's response is, "Sure, such countries increase their share of the current pie. But the pie doesn't remain constant, and in fact free trade causes the pie that is the world's income to increase exponentially, drowning out any relative losses for the free trading country associated with other countries' increasing shares of the current pie." This response raises two points in my mind. First, can we see some empirical proof? It seems that the question is easily answered based on empirical study, and I can't say that I know the answer. Second, if shares of even the increased pie go disporportionately to countries with an industrial policy, then the free trading country is likely worse off depsite the increase in the overall pie. I guess what it comes down to in my mind is: How can we say that America exporting jobs, capital, and technology abroad is an unqualified good thing? What do we get in return? And is what we get in return such an advantage, and such an immediate and necessary consequence of 100% adherence to free trade dogma that these types of questions aren't even legitimate in the first place? I don't know the answers to all these questions, but I'm fairly certain that the answer to the last one is a clear "No." That's why this is an important subject of debate this election year. Too bad John Kerry is the crappy vehicle through which it's going to have to be raised.

Written by: Beck

MSNBC carried an article recently on Kerry's move to the defensive, now that the Bush campaign is finally calling him out on a few of his more over-the-top statements. As I read the article, however, it seemed each sentence brought new mind boggling statements--things that I can't believe anyone can take seriously. How can people hear tripe like this and not just shake their heads, laugh, and walk away? So I decided to just break the thing down one piece at a time (fisking I believe it's called in the blogosphere). Blockquotes to follow.

First, the issue at hand:

The White House kept up the pressure Monday. Senator Kerry is going to say he has support from foreign leaders, then he needs to be straightforward with the American people and say who it is that he has spoken with and who it is that supports him, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters.

And now, the news release from Kerry's campaign:

With so many serious questions facing this nation, it is unfortunate that this White House is resorting to engaging in campaign tactics, the statement said.

Were I not protected by a thick layer of cynicism, my head might have actually exploded upon reading that. I apologize, belatedly, for those of you whose own heads just suffered damage.

Let's make sure I'm perfectly clear on this point. The Kerry campaign is criticizing the Bush campaign... for ENGAGING IN CAMPAIGN TACTICS. What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with a world in which a serious contender for the job of Most Powerful Man in the World can issue a statement like that? Seriously, people, could someone please explain to me how one engages in a campaign that does not involve, um, let's see, tactics? The two are integral... virtually one and the same. Inseparable. Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas, actually refused to go about campaigning for his election. He felt that it wasn't appropriate that someone go about the base, contemptible act of campaigning for such an important position. Somehow, he won the election. But still, his refusal to campaign was a tactic. Moving on...

The theme was raised by Cedric Brown, a participant in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania. He wondered whether Kerry was meeting with foreign leaders to help you overthrow the Bush presidency.

Pressed repeatedly by Brown, Kerry finally declared: "That's none of your business

I've used the NOYB argument many times. Of course, that was in elementary school, and there we said, "bees-wax." It seemed clever at the time. Nothing coming from John Kerry seems that clever (or is it that he's too clever by half?)

Quoth Colin Powell:

I don't know what foreign leaders Senator Kerry is talking about. It's an easy charge, an easy assertion to make. But if he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names, Powell said. If he can't list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about.

At least someone is talking sense. Now, on a somewhat more serious note,

The point is that all across the world, America is meeting with a new level of hostility, [Kerry] said. There are relationships that have been broken. I think what's important for us as a country is to rebuild those relationships.

The Democrats are all about building relationships. It's far more important to them that everyone like us than that we be safe, prosperous, or respected. It's as if their goal is to restore our roll as the biggest mark for the world's con artists. If you wonder what I mean by that, just read P.J. O'Rourke's comments on the UN Millennium Summit. You can find it excerpted on Amazon.com--just skip forward to Page 6.

Moving on...

He's pushed away our allies at a time when we need them the most, Kerry said in his appearance at the firefighters union's legislative conference. He hasn't pursued a strategy to win the hearts and minds of people around the world and win the war of ideas against the radical ideology of Osama bin Laden.

Pushed away our allies? What allies would those be? France? Germany? Saudi Arabia? How is it that we're supposed to value closeness with nations like those over the security of our own citizens? Worse than that, though, is his blather about "winning the war of ideas," against Islamic militants. He just doesn't get it. You can't win a war of ideas with people whose ideas are absolute and inflexible. Their notion of fighting the war of ideas is to kill all non-Muslims, even if you have to kill a bunch of Muslims in the process. Kerry wants to fight these people with, what, different ideas? You can't beat them that way. You can only earn their contempt. I will tell you right now how you convince a terrorist to cease to be a terrorist, and at the same time, to discourage others from following in that terrorist's footsteps: put a bullet in him.

Kerry told the 263,000-member firefighters union, which has endorsed his candidacy, that Bush talked tough on terrorism but failed to back it up with the financial resources firefighters and other first responders needed.

OK, first of all, that's factually incorrect (support coming up), but second of all, how is it that the war on terror is won by supporting those who respond to terrorist incidents (i.e. firemen) instead of support of those who prevent terrorism (i.e. soldiers, the CIA, etc)? Anyway, about Kerry's assertions that the White House hasn't supported firemen:

The Bush-Cheney campaign responded that Bush's budget request for fiscal year 2005 called for $500 million in grants for firefighters, a 400 percent increase since 2001.

Now, would someone please explain this to me:

I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the war on terror. I believe he's done too little, Kerry said. I think this administration has it backward. President Bush says we can't afford to fund homeland security. I say we can't afford not to.

The department of homeland security didn't EXIST before the Bush administration took power. It was the White House that pushed forward the creation of said department. And you're going to tell me that the administration hasn't supported homeland security?

Finally, a money quote for you, as the Bush campaign engages in some more tactics:

When John Kerry shows up to meet with union bosses today, he should explain why he didn't show up for the vote on last year's $29.3 billion Homeland Security appropriations bill, said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Written by: Beck

Howard Fineman argues (correctly, I think), that Sen. John McCain wouldn't seriously consider running as John Kerry's running mate. But the mere fact that it could even be contemplated reflects very negatively on McCain. That he despises Bush is no secret. That he is incapable of recognizing what a vastly worse person Kerry is, however, just brings forward even more of the doubts many aready have about his conservative credentials.

And to think... November isn't even close. And now, the money quote:

McCain’s rhetorical flirtation with the idea of becoming Sen. John Kerry’s running mate is just the latest act in an ongoing intramural psychodrama that began in 1999, and no amount of common geostrategic purpose in the post-9/11 world can end it.

Written by: Beck

In a scene from The Matrix Revolutions, a huge battle is fought between machines and humans, with the humans wearing huge mechanical combat suits (APUs, or Armored Personnel Units, for those who care) straight out of dozens of mech warrior style computer games. That future is closer than you think. This is some great stuff:

"The design of this exoskeleton really benefits from human intellect and the strength of the machine," says Homayoon Kazerooni, who directs the Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley.

...

More than 40 sensors and hydraulic mechanisms function like a human nervous system, constantly calculating how to distribute the weight being borne and create a minimal load for the wearer.

"There is no joystick, no keyboard, no push button to drive the device," says Kazerooni, a professor of mechanical engineering. "The pilot becomes an integral part of the exoskeleton."

Written by: Beck

Evidently the whole Greek/Roman gods theme was wearing thin. Meet Sedna, the Inuit goddess of sea creatures.

Written by: Beck

Terrorists know they cannot hope to defeat Western nations in the traditional sense of military victory. Instead, they seek to demoralize their enemy through infliction of intolerable civilian casualties, thinking that a sufficiently demoralized enemy will concede whatever it takes to make the attacks stop. Essentially, they hope to effect favorable policy change through terror. They seem to have won a major victory this Sunday.

Liberals, who are more often in sympathy with the terrorists than with the terrorized, are likely sharing a common thought this week: "One down, two to go." I'm speaking of the defeat of one of the main anti-terror, pro-American leaders in the West (Bush counts as a pro-American leader, since his opposition in the Democratic party is most certainly anti-American). The third, of course, is Britain's (liberal) Prime Minister Tony Blair. The conservative Spanish Popular Party lost a significant defeat in parliamentary elections to the Socialist Workers Party over the weekend.

For eight years, the conservatives have been in power in Spain. For eight years, they brought fiscal discipline to the Spanish government and brought significant economic progress and growth to Spain, far surpassing anything the socialist parties of the past had accomplished. Prime Minister Aznar brought ire down upon his party by supporting the United States, along with Blair, in the war in Iraq. The Spanish socialists ran on a simple platform--they vowed they would pull Spanish soldiers out of Iraq if elected. The terrorists struck their blow in perfectly timed fashion. They struck three days before the election, and then announced that they attacked in retaliation to Spain's support of the United States. The Socialist's lead in polls was cemented by this attack. The Spanish voters were in effect tacitly, if not condoning, at least "understanding," the terrorists motivation in killing 199 Spaniards and wounding thousands.

Here is what I would like someone to explain to me: how is the following paragraph not completely at odds with an intention to pull troops out of Iraq?

Three days after terror attacks killed 200 people in Madrid, socialist leader Jose-Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has vowed to make the defeat of terrorism his immediate priority.

Update: Samizdata comments on the issue.

Update: David Frum agrees with me as well.

Update: A Frenchman even agrees.

Written by: Beck

The House of Representatives passed the "Cheeseburger Bill," effectively preventing anyone from bringing lawsuits against the food & restaurant industry for making them fat. And you just thought that when people in DC talked about Cheeseburger Bill, they meant Clinton.

Now Big Mother can move on to her next big project: a class action lawsuit against the internet for all the work that doesn't get done while people surf the web. Perhaps Al Gore, as inventor, will be a co-defendant.

Written by: Beck

John Kerry's campaign staff seems to have had a brilliant revelation--it doesn't matter what the "truth" actually is, all that matters is what you tell people the truth is. As such, Bush can have an ad in which he states that Kerry wants to raise taxes by $900 billion--a statement of fact which is provably true or false, and Kerry responds with an ad saying, "We're going to give every single man, woman, and child in America a check for $900 billion, and in one stroke, we will eradicate all poverty."

OK, so he didn't exactly say that, but they've realized that spin is neither sufficient nor necessary. Spin has been replaced by a new marketing method known, to those who like to know the technical terminology, as, "lying through your teeth." The nineties taught us one key thing about marketing and lies. Stick to your lie. O.J. did. Clinton didn't. Clinton wound up telling the entire world, on prime-time TV, that he porked a pudgy intern. O.J., on the other hand, got away with double homicide. Kerry evidently has learned this lesson well.

For those who want to read something a little more detail heavy and a little less sarcasm heavy, an article from you over at that bastion of unbiased reporting, CNN.

Written by: Beck

Congress is mulling legislation to protect the fast food industry from class action lawsuits. Let's hope this actually passes. If it does, I'm sure it wont be too long before some new hot topic steals the attention of the Big Mother lobby who wants to control every aspect of your life, but at least things will be a little less farcical. Here's a money quote for you:

Democrats called the bill a Republican political ploy aimed at hurting trial lawyers and helping the multibillion dollar food business.

Yep, you heard it folks. The Democratic party is all about leaping to the defense of trial lawyers. Just remember, any time you hear some mediocrity ramble about "Helping the little guy," that the liberal definition of, "Little guy," is, "Trial lawyer."

Even if it doesn't pass congress, it may not matter:

Louisiana has passed similar state legislation. Nineteen other state legislatures — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin — were considering similar bills as of March 1, the National Conference of State Legislatures said Wednesday.

And yes, I know that the French word for two is, "Deux." Keep your pants on.

Written by: Beck

While the accomplice gets the death penalty, the man who pulled the trigger gets just a life sentence.

Things aren't over, though. Several other states want a chance to take a crack at him as well.

It's unclear what will happen next with Malvo. Prosecutors in other states, including Alabama and Louisiana, are seeking his extradition to face potential death-penalty charges there for killings that occurred in the weeks before the D.C. sniper spree.

To put things as baldly as possible, justice will not be served until this man's head is on a pike.

Written by: Beck

Rock legend David Crosby, founding member of both the Byrds, and Crosby Stills Nash, & Young, was arrested in New York early Saturday. He's 62 years old, and could conceivably spend the rest of his natural life in prison for the crimes he's charged with. What horrible deeds brought New York City's finest down on the benighted Mr. Crosby, you ask? Possession of a firearm and an ounce of marijuana.

The veteran rocker had checked out of the hotel after the Manhattan show, but left behind a piece of luggage, police said. A hotel worker found the luggage Friday and went through it looking for identification and discovered the marijuana, gun and knives and called authorities, police said.

Crosby later called the hotel to say he would be returning to pick up the luggage, and was greeted by police when he came back, investigators said.

How dare they?

I could rant at great length about both of these "crimes", but I'll spare you for now. After all, I have to save something to rant about in the future, don't I? So allow me, simply, to state my personal view of both of these issues. Ownership and possession of a hand gun should be legal. Apart from the minor legal technicality called the Second amendment to the Constitution, which explicitly makes it legal, all people not previously convicted of a violent crime should have the right to protect themselves with a gun. Possession and use of marijuana, so long as one does not then endanger others in the process (i.e. by getting behind the wheel of a car), should be legal.

End of story.

Written by: Beck

...did this happen?

Have you noticed that leftists of all breeds are busily attempting to re-label themselves under the sobriquet "Progressive?" The title of Socialists has been contaminated by the fall of the Soviet Union, especially in Europe (it never really took hold in the USA where "Socialist" was regarded by many as simply a synonym for "Communist"), but even the term Liberal seems to have become something of a bad word too. John Kerry is working hard to make Bush-camp attacks look like "Attempts to brand him as a Liberal." Well isn't that what he is?

The word, "Progressive," had the greatest disservice done to it in history when the 16th amendment to the US Constitution allowed for the creation of a progressive income-tax. "Progressive", here, is used in the sense of "increasing"--the tax percentage increases in line with income--and isn't actually spelled out in the amendment, but rather, was a later addition. By linking a heinous crime, income tax, with a positive act, progressing, the whole concept was easily marketed to the masses. After all, who wants to oppose progress? The alternatives, stagnation and regression, are desired by none. Regardless, it wasn't too long ago that leftists in Europe and America were happy to be called Socialists and Liberals respectively.

Today, though, even the 'L' word has become a negative. While I have to give credit to the left for an excellent job of re-branding (the left always has been good at marketing), I also have to say that it warms my heart just a tiny bit to know that in our society, Liberal is rapidly becoming a four letter word.

Now we just have to get the word "progress" back.

Written by: Beck

If American political campaigns were a little more like this, I'd wager voter turnout would be a whole lot better. Not to mention the ratings the debates would get.

Learn people!

Link stolen from Dave Barry's blog.

Written by: Answerman

This column needs no introduction, just reflection on its truths and their significance:

Who rapes in prison?
By Sam Francis

Jim Crow lives, the New York Times reports, not in Mississippi or Alabama but in California, or at least the California state prison system, in which the penal authorities have for long routinely separated inmates of different races for the first 60 days of their extended vacation at the expense of the taxpayers. Now, the iron logic of egalitarianism is catching up with this insidious vestige of white supremacy in a lawsuit launched by a black inmate who feels deeply wounded because his rights have been violated.

This citizen is a gentleman named Garrison S. Johnson, convicted murderer, who has been demanding redress since 1997, with the pro bono assistance of a New York law firm. Two federal courts have already rejected Johnson's suit, but now it's going before the Supreme Court on appeal.

"The decision below undermines a national imperative to eliminate racial discrimination," the appeal argues, and those who defend the system have to tiptoe their way around that particular holy cow. The defense of the prison policy usually offered is that it's not permanent and doesn't confer any advantage on one race or another (it's applied to several different racial groups known for animosity toward each other, not just to blacks and whites—Japanese and Chinese, Vietnamese and Laotians, etc.) and is necessary simply to avoid interracial violence among chaps who are violent by their nature. [Justices Agree to Evaluate Prison Policy Based on Race, By Linda Greenhouse, March 2, 2004]

The Times doesn't mention it, but the in-prison segregation needs to be preserved for yet another reason—to keep non-white inmates from raping whites, which they reportedly do routinely and with little concern for punishment or retaliation.

In a 2001 report published by the liberal Human Rights Watch, a researcher named Joanne Mariner disclosed facts the mainstream media have long ignored or denied: There are more men raped in the United States—about 90,000 every year—than women—a mere 40,000. Most of the male rapes take place in prison, and good many of them are interracial, with blacks and Hispanics searching out and raping white men. [No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons]

The stories the report recounts, described in a 2002 article in the newsletter American Renaissance, are graphic and repellent. "I had no choice but to submit to being Inmate B's prison wife," one white convict said. "In all reality, I was his slave.… I determined I'd be better off to willingly have sex with one person, than I would be to face violence and rape by multiple people. The most tragic part to this is that the person I chose to 'be with' has AIDS."

Another white prisoner in Michigan reported that the black inmate who "claimed me as his property" "publicly humiliated and degraded me, making sure all the inmates and guards knew that I was a queen and his property. Within a week he was pimping me out to other inmates at $3.00 a man. This state of existence continued for two months until he sold me for $25.00 to another black male who purchased me to be his wife." Those are only a couple of the less lurid stories from the Human Rights Watch report.

And why does this sort of thing happen? It happens not only because prison authorities don't stop it but because white prisoners themselves won't either. The report recounts that though neither black nor Hispanic convicts will tolerate a white man raping one of their own races, whites do virtually nothing to protect each other against black and Hispanic rapists.

As the report puts it, "African Americans typically face sexual abuse at the hands of other African Americans, and Hispanics at the hands of other Hispanics. Some inmates told Human Rights Watch that this pattern reflected an inmate rule, one that was strictly enforced: 'only a black can turn out [rape] a black, and only a chicano can turn out a chicano.' Breaking this rule by sexually abusing someone of another race or ethnicity, with the exception of a white inmate, could lead to racial or ethnic unrest, as other members of the victim's group would retaliate against the perpetrator's group."

The American Renaissance article put it a bit more bluntly: "The racial dynamic in prisons puts whites at a tremendous disadvantage. First, whites are often outnumbered by both blacks and Hispanics. But far more important, just as they show no racial solidarity in 'the free world,' whites in prison do not band together to protect each other from predators."

All of which helps explain why prison authorities want to keep the races segregated, at least until newcomers learn their way around. It may also explain why Garrison Johnson brought the lawsuit in the first place. But most of all, it helps explain what's wrong with white people—and not just those in prison.

Written by: Beck

So I went ahead and took the Libertarian Purity Test. Scored a 71.

So now you know.

Written by: Beck

Big Brother (perhaps a better analogy would be Big Mother), cares about what you eat. It's no longer sufficient that you're bombarded day-in and day-out with the latest health fad buzz. In the brief time I've been on this earth, I can recall many: calorie counting, low fat/no fat diets, fiber, oat bran (whatever happened to oat bran? That was huge for a solid two or three years), the cholesterol watching fad, low carb diets (fat is ok again!), and the newest craze, watching out for trans-fatty acids. I always figured that the simple fact of the matter was that espousing, "Eat less, better food, and get more exercise," just didn't generate enough money for the self-improvement service industry, so they felt the need to shake up the program every couple of years. But that's no longer the case. It used to be simple enough that marketing firms would shame you into buying their products and plans. Now a healthy lifestyle will be forced on you by the government. And Big Mother is not going to let you go out and play until you've eaten all of your broccoli.

I've been reading more and more on this over the past few months. At first, I paid it no heed. It was ludicrous enough that New York wanted to sue gun companies in a tobacco-esque class action law suit (makes perfect sense--gun companies make a product which, when used properly, kill people, and market it accordingly. The more properly guns are used, the more effective they are at the killing. Time to sue the gun companies for making the product which they're legally allowed to make! OK, so I'm kicking a dead horse, I'll move on.) How much more ludicrous, then, that people would want to sue fast food restaurants and the makers of junk food. Still, the juggernaut of state intervention in the daily activities of our lives moves inexorably forward.

The Center for Disease Control, in its great wisdom (its wisdom must be greater than mine, since this makes no frigging sense to me), has declared that being a lazy bastard is a Chronic Disease (cue the ominous music). The Europeans are on board this train too. It's already having an impact. McDonald's has announced that they will begin phasing out their ultra-mega-uber sized serving portions of soft-drinks and fries. What the hell is going on! I like those! If I'm willing to pay for an ultra-mega-uber sized thing of french fries, and I'm willing to pay for it, how is it exactly that it's in the nation's best interest that I not?

I'll be honest with you folks. I'm having a hard time coming up with clever ways to point out why it's absurd and wrong for the government to try to dictate what kind of food people eat and how much exercise they get. I'm having a hard time because the answers all seem self evident. That two parallel lines shall never intersect is a self-evident axiom (I'd give you a link, but Euclid doesn't seem to have a web page), but you'd have a harder time than you might imagine explaining why to a child who, upon hearing that axiom, asked, "Why not?" In the same way, I have a hard time explaining how this and this and this and this could even appear in the press, let alone get taken seriously. The list goes on.

Read it. Try not to weep.

As a result, a cadre of the nation's top doctors and nutrition researchers agree that ground zero of the obesity crisis is this: America has no idea how to eat normally. [Are you #&*@(!^ kidding me?]

"Super-sizing is a public health issue of the highest priority," said Harvard University's Dr. George Blackburn, a professor of nutrition and surgery, in testimony at a recent hearing of the Food and Drug Administration's obesity working group, whose recommendations are due out this month.

Super-sizing has become so controversial that McDonald's, the corporation that popularized the concept, last week announced it was discontinuing its 42-ounce super-size soda and its 7-ounce super-size order of fries at its 13,000 U.S. stores as part of a "healthy lifestyle initiative."

Written by: Beck

Byron York agrees with my earlier conclusions--the dems are out for blood, and they're not going to pull a single punch. This could be the meanest presidential campaign we've ever seen. I love his conclusion:

Finally, the poll had one more surprising finding. Gallup asked respondents, "Regardless of whom you support, and trying to be as objective as possible, who do you think will win the election in November?" Fifty-two percent said Bush, while 42 percent said Kerry. Six percent had no opinion.

Written by: Beck

One down, far too many still to go. Here's the money quote:

[Judge] Millette said the jury correctly found that Muhammad, 43, would be a "continuing, serious threat to society" if allowed to live.

Written by: Beck

You know what I hate? (fine, fine, so a complete answer to that question would take up enough webspace to crash blogspot.com, just settle down and read on). I hate the fact that idiotic liberal pundits seem to think that any argument about economics can be refuted based on a combination of fantasy and scorn. Actually, it's worse than that, they treat arguments based in sound economic theory as inherently deceitful, and as such, completely refuse to engage any thought which proclaims, "You're wrong, and this is why." If you tell them that free trade is good and the export of jobs oversees is not only desirable, but necessary for the growth of an economy, they just shout something inane like "Voodoo economics!" and think they've somehow proven their point.

What is so god damned sacred about steel workers? Sure, it sucks any time someone loses their job, but why in hell is it that people want to keep jobs around that add very little value when people oversees will do it for less? How is it not self evident that the higher up your nations' citizens are in the value-added chain of production, the better it is for your nation as a whole? I mean, if they were to redistribute all the jobs in the world, each country picking jobs from a list in turn like kids on a playground picking teammates for a kickball game (you remember kickball, right?), do you really think the Chinese would be champing at the bit to select "Textile Worker," and, "Jack-in-the-Box Antenna Ball Assembler?" Yet these @#$%!^& protectionists would have us doing precisely that. Hell, even Bush joined in the fun when he slapped a bunch of protectionist tariffs on steel. Steel is a raw material, folks. It is better to assemble products made out of steel than to be making the steel. It's even better than that to be building final goods which incorporate parts made of all sorts of products. Let me make sure I'm absolutely clear on this point--it's better to make the car than to assemble the engine, better to assemble the engine than to make the engine block, and better to make then engine block than to smelt the iron that goes into it. And it's better still if you can just buy the car from someone else and go about providing financial services to the guy who built the damn thing. To cite a Jodie Allen editorial from the Washington Post (free registration required),

Mankiw [the Bush administration's top economist] ruffled feathers recently by saying that outsourcing white-collar jobs was no big deal; after all, America has been shipping jobs overseas for decades. True the "churn" produces permanent losses for some individuals. But the lost jobs have always been replaced by more productive and hence better-paying ones. Sooner or later that will happen again. "This is a fact of life that Americans have to get used to," said Brookings economist Barry Bosworth at a recent American Enterprise Institute colloquium.

Once upon a time, the phrase, "cottage industry," actually referred to something made in cottages by families' wives & daughters who wouldn't otherwise contribute to their family's bottom line. Some entrepreneurial guy would buy up all the wool in the area, then part it out to these women who would spend all day carding and spinning wool for a tiny amount of money. Then one day, someone built a machine which could automate the whole process. The women rioted. Today, it's easy to look back and say, gee, it sure is nice that my wife and daughters can work providing financial services to the guy who operates the wool carding and spinning machine instead of wearing their hands to tatters shearing sheep all day long. But god help us if someone wants to pay a third-world worker fifty cents an hour to weld steel. Meanwhile, John Kerry's protectionist policies advocate this very sort of anti-progress.

The standard objection to this sort of thinking is, "The steel workers in Pittsburgh don't know how to do anything BUT weld steel." Well, if they once learned how to weld steel, they can learn something else too. Progress doesn't occur without a measure of dislocation and disruption. The women working in cottages found other ways to be productive for their families (assuming they didn't live in Islamic societies who don't allow women to do anything other than wear solid black head-to-toe clothing, no matter the fact that black ain't exactly the color you want to wear if you live in the middle of a freaking desert). Those steel workers will find something better too. Either that, or they'll suffer horribly and wind up miserable and homeless (i.e. living off the state). Regardless, do you think the average steel worker, assuming he can be honest with himself, really wants his children, grand children, and great grand children to be welding steel? John Kerry does. Hell, where else is he going to find cheap labor to help maintain his mansions?

I conclude with an excerpt from a NYT op-ed piece (free registration required), quoting from an American educated Indian woman living in Bangalore:

"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

Written by: Beck

You know what you never seem to hear about anymore? Quicksand. What's up with that? Used to be you could hardly get through a day of Lassie, Leave it to Beaver, Little Rascals, or some other children's sitcom (did people really watch this stuff?) without someone getting stuck in quicksand. The last quicksand reference I can remember seeing is from the 1974 Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles.

My guess is that it's a function of education. I can seem to recall in elementary school a teacher telling the class that we'd probably never even see quicksand, but that if we did, it was easier to float on than water. Howstuffworks.com puts it this way: "While quicksand remains the hackneyed convention of bad adventure movies, there's very little to be afraid of in real life. As long as you keep a cool head in the situation, the worst result will be a shoe full of wet sand."

I guess the notion of quicksand just doesn't seem that scary anymore, what with how you can turn on the news any day of the week and find vastly scarier stuff.

Written by: Beck

John Kerry, in a show of brazenness calculated to send a message rather than win a state, stopped in my home state of Texas for some campaigning today.

Not to be outdone, President Bush one-upped Kerry by campaigning for votes from a completely different country.

My favorite part is the big shiny belt buckle worn by Mexico's President Vincente Fox. Putting your name on your belt ain't just for redneck girls anymore.

Here's the long and the short of it: Kerry is playing for keeps, and he's not pulling his punches. He wants to win. Badly. 90% of his campaign is not for himself, but rather, against Bush. Meanwhile, Bush is doing everything in his power to make it possible for illegal immigrants to become permenant residents. At what point does the entire conservative base of the Republican party get fed up with this shit and not vote?

Written by: Beck

OK, this is definitely one of the coolest things I've yet encountered on the internet. Turn up your volume, sit back, relax, and enjoy. Linkage credit to Jonah Goldberg over on The Corner.

Written by: Beck

Martha Stewart was found guilty of all charges in her obstruction of justice trial.

She was never even tried for insider trading.

Basically, she's guilty of proclaiming her innocence of guilt. Talk about a catch twenty-two.

What a joke.

For a much more thorough breakdown on the whole issue, read Christopher Westley's excellent article over at the Mises institute's web page. Try not to get too distracted by the fact that he naively assumes that Stewart would win the case, as he wrote it two weeks prior to the verdict coming out. Some choice words:

This statement highlights what this trial is about--not insider trading, but the right to declare one's innocence, even when the government later agrees with the declaration. Surely if others attempted a similar defense in the face of a Kafka-esque judicial machine, the bullying Justice Department would be seen for what it is, forcing it to assume a lower profile and move somewhere behind the front line of the government's funding trough.

Best of luck with that appeal, Martha.

Written by: Beck

The blog Instapundit, grabbing a post from the blog Harry's Place, posted an excerpt from a BBC piece reprinting the complete transcript of a Tony Blair speech. If you're reading it here first, know that it's now 4 times removed from its point of origin.

You don't have to read too far into this to understand why Tony Blair is many conservatives' favorite liberal, and many Americans' favorite European.

But the key point is that it is the threat that is the issue.

The characterisation of the threat is where the difference lies. Here is where I feel so passionately that we are in mortal danger of mistaking the nature of the new world in which we live.

Everything about our world is changing: its economy, its technology, its culture, its way of living.

If the 20th century scripted our conventional way of thinking, the 21st century is unconventional in almost every respect.

This is true also of our security.

The threat we face is not conventional. It is a challenge of a different nature from anything the world has faced before. It is to the world's security, what globalisation is to the world's economy.

It was defined not by Iraq but by September 11th. September 11th did not create the threat Saddam posed.

But it altered crucially the balance of risk as to whether to deal with it or simply carry on, however imperfectly, trying to contain it. . . .

The point about September 11th was not its detailed planning; not its devilish execution; not even, simply, that it happened in America, on the streets of New York. All of this made it an astonishing, terrible and wicked tragedy, a barbaric murder of innocent people.

But what galvanised me was that it was a declaration of war by religious fanatics who were prepared to wage that war without limit. They killed 3000.

But if they could have killed 30,000 or 300,000 they would have rejoiced in it.

The purpose was to cause such hatred between Moslems and the West that a religious jihad became reality; and the world engulfed by it. . . .

This is not a time to err on the side of caution; not a time to weigh the risks to an infinite balance; not a time for the cynicism of the worldly wise who favour playing it long. [emphasis mine]

Their worldly wise cynicism is actually at best naivete and at worst dereliction.

Written by: Beck

Now that things at INCITE are off the ground, up and running, and several other catch-phrases with little to no meaning, I've begun the long and arduous process of trying to actually build volume. Part of that involves telling friends to read it, but that only gets you so far. The real magic comes from LINKAGE. So, I'm happy to announce the first successful pimpage of INCITE (does it count as an announcement when the likely audience is fewer than five people?). Our friend Roach, over at mansizedtarget, who, I might add, has a very cool firearms collection, put a nice write-up about us and linked us from his own blog. I'm not sure how big a readership that will get us, but judging from the size of his archives, he hasn't been ranting just to himself. But then, with Roach, you never can be too certain.

Regardless, go read his stuff--either through the link above, or from the blogs link page to the right. He's smart, worth listening to, and crazy enough that he just might shoot you if you don't.

You've been warned.

Written by: Beck

The first person I had a conversation with about the movie, The Passion of the Christ, coincidentally, was Jewish. He had (and likely has) no desire to see the movie. He felt uncomfortable about the whole thing, what with the controversy over anti-semitism and all, and seemed a bit nervous talking about it, even with someone he knew wasn't religious. I assured him it wasn't anti-semitic, and gave as balanced a view of it as I could. The one thing he had heard of substance and brought up was the coddling of Pontius Pilate. Five minutes of half-assed online research doesn't say much about him that is all that shocking. Regardless, we've strayed from the topic at hand: what did I think of the movie?

I liked it. I wasn't moved by it. I felt nothing spiritual awakening inside of me. I was entranced by the sheer brutality of the treatment of Jesus who is brutalized from scene one until the credits roll (I wont spoil the ending by telling you whether or not Christ makes it through, don't worry). But I walked out of the theater feeling that I had gotten my $8 worth (and also that I needed to find a nearby movie theater that charges less).

Here's the best way for me to explain it. In any given movie, the director has two directions in which to develop his subject matter: breadth, and depth. By breadth, I mean the amount of topics, events, characters, subjects, and meanings which the movie attempts to convey. By depth, I mean the extent to which those given topics, events, characters, subjects, and meanings are explored, explained, analyzed, deconstructed, reconstructed, and, well, you get my point. Both take up time, so there is a trade off involved. The only way to have a movie which covers an immensely broad story line AND a significantly developed depth of characters, messages, and so on is if you make it 12 hours long (i.e. the three extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy--and even then, neither the story nor the characters are as deeply developed in the movies as they are in the book). Indeed, the only way to have both complete depth and breadth to a story is in written form, and then you wind up with something like War & Peace or Les Miserables.

The Passion of the Christ was not broad. At two hours and seven minutes long, it covers very little subject matter, and brings in very few biblical elements outside of the strict "Stations of the Cross" from the Gospels. You hardly see the other disciples, and the only person other than Jesus to get significant facetime with the camera is Mary (who didn't look nearly old enough in my opinion, not that that's really very relevant). Jesus is captured, Jesus is tried, Jesus is condemned, Jesus is tortured, Jesus is crucified. That's the movie right there.

But the movie DOES have depth. As I told a friend, for me, the movie could have been The Passion of Bob and it would have been just as good. People in life suffer. Some of them suffer horribly. Jesus, considering what he sought to accomplish through his suffering, should have suffered most of all. And indeed, this movie is just that: a movie about just how greatly one man can suffer, and just how horribly humans can treat each other. It's a character study, of sorts. The movie virtually demands that we put ourselves in the shoes of the victim and imagine it happening to ourselves, and as Answerman pointed out to me, the movie would have worked just as well without the subtitles.

The Passion is a movie that everyone should see once, because every decade or so, people need to be reminded of what horror mankind is capable of. Throughout life, we try to avoid scenes of unpleasantness and discomfort. Without reminders, we forget ourselves, and invariably, atrocities follow in our wake. Several days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, all the networks agreed together to stop showing images of the World Trade Towers falling. And apart from the live broadcasts and the HBO special which came later, never were shown the people leaping to their deaths because an instant death from hitting the ground was the only alternative to being slowly roasted alive by burning jet fuel. Now it's only two years later, but people have already forgotten the horror that was inflicted upon us. They wince at taking action, preferring to hide back in their secure feeling holes and hope that the rest of the world will just Leave Us Alone. Well, folks, it doesn't work that way. The world is a mean place, and there are bad people out there. Either you deal with them, or they deal with you. And that's the lesson we learn, if indirectly, from The Passion.

Oh yeah, and good acting, cinematography, and all that crap too.

Written by: Answerman

I saw the movie last night. I am incredibly comfortable telling all of you (and I realize that "all of you" means John) that anyone who watches that movie and charges it with anti-Semitism is a moron. Plain and simple.

But I want to talk more broadly about the issue of anti-Semitism, because I was repelled by some comments I read by David Frum on National Review Online. Let me start by saying I don't know who's crazy idea it was to bill this guy as a conservative. I mean, it's cool if National Review wants him to work for them; there doesn't need to be some sort of ideological litmus test for writers at a conservative magazine. Frankly, having lots of writers coming from various political perspectives makes a magazine, and certainly an opinion blog like NRO's the Corner, more interesting. What I object to is the mislableing of guys like Frum and David Brooks over at the Weekly Standard, not the airing of their views.

In any event, Frum takes Mel Gibson to task for how he answered interview questions about his father's Holocaust comments. According to Frum, we don't know whether Gibson is anti-Semitic or not because while he said that the Holocaust was horrible, lots of atrocities occurred between 1933 and 1945 that were horrible as well. What's the problem here? Everything in that statement is true. Why are their so many alleged spokesmen for the Jewish community out there looking to jump all over anyone who points out the forced starvations in the Ukraine by Stalin, the treatment of POWs and civilians by both German and Russian forces, the number of Chinese peasants slaughtered by Mao, and the like? Why is one ethnic group entitled to a monopoly on genocide stories? I don't get it. Here's a newsflash for you, David Frum -- Mel Gibson doesn't have to prove to you that he's no anti-Semite, and he certainly doesn't have to do so with a correct recitation of the number of Jews killed by Hitler, or by stifling any discussion of atrocities against other people by the same man and by others of his era and later. Most people are willing to assume Mel Gibson's no anti-Semite, just as we assume anyone we meet is a reasonable person with no ethnic animosities, until someone proves otherwise. And Mel Gibson's true statement about other Nazi-era atrocities doesn't even come close to proving otherwise, or even to raising an interesting question.

But guys like Frum want to find anti-Semitism anywhere they look, so they trump up charges against innocent folks like Mel Gibson. Well, take it to the Nation, to the New York Times, to CNN, or to the DNC Convention this year, David. I don't want to see it sullying the pages of National Review.

Written by: Beck

...and there was much rejoicing.

Written by: Beck

At the lat minute, leading Shiites in the Iraqi governing coalition deep-sixed the already agreed to interim constitution. The reasons? Three of them.

The first two you'll find in greater detail in the linked article above. Essentially, they objected to a clause in the interim constitution which would give Kurds a veto over any final constitution. Frankly, while I understand the need to create extraordinary protection for the long-suffering Kurdish population, I'm surprised they would handle it in this manner. Giving the Kurds an effective veto over the wording of the final constitution places an enormous amount of power in their hands--power which they lose just as soon as the final constitution goes into effect. Structuring things this way pretty much guarantees that the final constitution would have similar structure, basically turning federalism on its head--wherein regional populations have ultimate power over the central government.

The second objection of the hard-line Shiites was much more predictable, and much more contemptible. It has to do with the structure of the presidency. The form of government everyone had agreed to up until the day of the scheduled signing ceremony called for one president with two deputies. The form the Shiite would like calls for a rotating five man presidency with one Kurd, one Sunni, and THREE Shiites. Bosnia-Herzegovinia is the only other country I can think of to have attempted the rotating-presidency style system. Feel free to go ask them how it worked out if you're curious as to just how successful such a system is. All it truly accomplishes is to further divide people along ethnic lines, since by hard-coding ethnicity into the nation's governing document, you forever legitimize any arguments made in the form of "I am right and you are wrong because I say I am right." OK, so it's more complicated than that, but it's pretty cut and dried to say that if your nation's constitution makes ethnicity a factor dividing the nation, your nation will be forever ethnically divided.

The third reason is one you wont find in the article linked above. It's that the Shiites want to run the entire show, and humiliate America in the process. Shiite clerics everywhere were overjoyed when the US ousted Saddam Hussein--because it meant they finally got to run the show in Iraq, a nation where they were the largest ethnic group. Now that Saddam is gone, the next order of business for them is getting rid of the Americans and seizing power for themselves. They know they can't get rid of the Americans through violence, so instead they seek to do it through a gradual process of humiliation and making things extraordinarily difficult and complicated for us.

Case in point: the Shiite members of the Iraqi governing coalition had agreed upon the final form of the interim constitution which was to be signed today. Paul Bremmer had pushed long, marathon sessions to get a final form to the constitution which could be agreed upon by everyone. They all agreed. They were several days past the original deadline set to have a final document, but everyone agreed that having a GOOD document was more important than meeting an arbitrarily set deadline. The US then planned a huge ceremony for the document signing. Fountain pens were lined up on a table used by Feisal I, Iraq's first monarch. Children garbed in traditional clothing from all over the country had been rounded up. As things began to derail, the US administrators told people not to leave, that there was just a temporary delay.

Nope. There are grave problems in Iraq, running far deeper than simple minor delays and setbacks. If we're not careful, Iraq could easily turn out to be the next, well, Iraq.

Written by: Beck

Why college athletic programs have a reputation for poor academic standards.

It's not like they offer athletes classes whose final exams have questions like:

How many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a Basketball Game?
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 4

Oh wait. I stand corrected. Relative to this story, Jimmy Carter makes Georgia look GOOD.

Written by: Beck

The Bush campaign kicked off in force this week with a series of TV ad spots. I'd like you to take a moment now, and imagine what sorts of things President Bush might put in a (positive) campaign ad. You'd think he'd do things like highlight his successes and strong points, right? He'd most likely want to illustrate the challenges our nation faces, and how those challenges are uniquely suited to his brand of leadership.

As much as the Kerry camp would like to make this election about anything BUT the War on Terror, there is no denying that in the minds of a whole lot of people, the real issue is which person would be the most likely to maximize the Dead Terrorist to Dead American ratio. It should be self evident what I'm zeroing in on at this point. The challenge, leadership, all that--they all became relevant on 9/11/01. I can't count the number of people I heard saying, in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Tower attacks, "Thank God Gore isn't president." Say what you will of the potential merits of a peacetime Gore administration, when it comes time to kick ass and take names, people want someone who doesn't take marching orders from France.

And I have now completely digressed from what I originally wanted to harp on. Bush's new TV ads feature footage of the World Trade Tower disaster. One features an American flag flying in the debris, another features fire fighters climbing through the wreckage. These are images of heroism and of the strength of the American spirit; furthermore, they are images of the severity and seriousness of the threat to our nation--no, to our very way of life--posed by terrorism and Islamic extremism. These images are relevant and appropriate. Frankly, nothing could be more relevant to the up coming presidential election.

So, naturally, the liberal spin machine is already gearing up to criticize the Bush election team for making use of these images.

"It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the twin towers, told the New York Daily News for its Thursday editions. "It is unconscionable."

No, Ms. Gabrielle, it is unconscionable to turn away from the wake-up call of 9/11. It is a slap in the face of those fallen New Yorkers to pretend that it didn't happen. The American people need to be continually reminded of the horror of that day, lest they forget for one moment what we are up against.

UPDATE: Instapundit tackles the issue, noting that the dems have done it too, that FDR did it, and a whole slew of other things. Read it and weep.

Written by: Beck

People will never run out of ideas for new sporting fads it seems. The newest fad/sport involves hoisting yourself up to the top of a ~200 foot tree and hanging out (HAW!) there for the night.

[T]he emerging sport of tree climbing, a pursuit that takes the childhood passion of hoisting oneself into a favorite tree's branches to new—and sometimes extreme—heights.

And ya know... I can kind of see the appeal to this. I used to climb trees at my grandparents' house when I was a kid, and I've climbed up rock cliffs when there was a perfectly good rock ground I could have stayed on. So why not hoist yourself up a tree and hang out in a hammock for a while?

Naturally, you can't have a sport that involves trees without people acting all... Californian.

"It's a mystical experience," says certified arborist Peter Jenkins, founder of Atlanta-based Tree Climbers International, which teaches a climbing course that takes people to points among the canopy from 60 to 200 feet high. "The wind comes up and stirs the tree, like it's speaking to you. It's about being with nature, and being with yourself."

Why can't these people just learn to enjoy themselves without trying to attribute something "spiritual" do everything from their recreational activities to their bodily functions?

Written by: Beck

I'd like to point out certain historical, rather than religious, aspects of marriage, and how they're relevant to this whole discussion.

The institution of marriage (I refuse to speak of "heterosexual marriage," as by definition, marriage IS heterosexual) was a very necessary civic and social institution which dates back to the earliest periods of recorded civilization. Why? Because women needed the protection afforded by having the men who fathered children upon them held responsible for their actions. The tie can be spiritual or legal--that aspect isn't really what's key. Men, by nature, want to sow their seed as widely as possible. Often, though certainly not always, those men want to spend the rest of their time doing ANYTHING BUT taking care of those children and women. They just want the nookie. Without marriage there was little to nothing preventing them from taking no responsibility for the nasty pranks their sperm tended to pull. The alternative is to have society provide that support in the style of Plato's Republic in which children are outright communally raised and don't even know their parents. While that might sound good on paper to some, I don't think it's even necessary to explain why children raised by society instead of by two loving parents is not effective, ideal, good, or in any way desirable.

As such, marriage loses its meaning when the potential for procreation is removed from the equation.

I'm not opposed to civil unions between homosexuals (Answerman might have a rather different opinion on this point than I). Married people enjoy certain legal protections and benefits which are necessary, once again, for protecting women and children--things like inheritance and the carry-over of pension benefits in the event of the death of the pensioner. There is no reason why a gay man shouldn't be able to designate a beneficiary for a benefit, such as a pension, which he earned as a consequence of his years of employment in the past.

When you realize just how many conservatives are opposed not to civil unions and their inherent marriage-like legal structure, but only to assigning the label of Marriage to those unions, one has to wonder why the debate on gay "marriage" is so heated. The only possible answer, then, is that elements of the radical left are bent on taking away that which their opponents consider of value. Their motive, then, must be one of purely spiteful bitterness. I welcome any arguments to the contrary--I delight in punching holes in irrational thought.

And another thing... if you redefine marriage as simply being the "union of people who care deeply about each other," then what reason is there to object to polygamy? Or the incestuous marriages? Or even more perverted things? Is it so wrong to fear that opening the door to gay "marriage" ultimately opens the door to the eventual complete devaluation of marriage in any form? Is it so wrong to think that this is leading us down the road to the ultimate demise of the institution of marriage entirely? Why get married, when the only significance of the act is attainment of certain legal benefits no different from a corporate partnership? If Enron were still around, there would probably be traders right now making markets on shares of married couples. Hell, it makes more sense than trading bandwidth.

Written by: Answerman

Written by: Answerman

In the midst of this national debate about homosexual "marriage," I'd like to take a break from the cynical accusations of bigotry to make one simple point. Why are we letting these social radicals who want to change the very definition of a term that has been an institution for thousands of years pretend that their opponents are the extremists? Has the English language been perverted to the point that it is now "extreme" to be opposed to a massive, sudden, poorly-thought-out, and judicially-imposed change in one of the fundamental bedrocks underlying Western civil society? These radicals want to change what marriage means -- fine. Let them prove to us why that's a good idea. The burden of proof is on them.

And one more thing -- who came up with the asinine liberal talking point that we shouldn't debate a Constitutional amendment on the subject because to do so would be "divisive"? Was this one of Terry McAuliffe's brain farts? Here 3 percent of the population wants to redefine an important social institution, they want to do it through the courts, they want to do it in spite of the fact that a majority of Americans don't want them to do it, and they don't want a debate to take place on the subject. To the likes of Andrew Sullivan and company, the logic goes something like this: (1) this is the most important civil rights issue of our day, and all Americans should join together in a show of force against the reactionary bigots who won't let Ben and Jerry exchange vows with one another; and (2) this is a divisive issue that should not be a part of our national debate.

Written by: Answerman

You heard it here first. Save all congratulatory comments for mid-October.

Written by: Beck

Yesterday, I had the great misfortune of attending a required training session for a bunch of systems and policies here at work that, in two months, will no longer be in any way relevant to me. I spent the bulk of the session trying to make the guy next to me burst out laughing at a nice and inappropriate moment (i.e. any moment). One upshot of this whole productivity destroying activity (by which I mean the meeting, not the trying to make Clint laugh) was a top-ten list I penned on the back of a handout. I still have the handout, and for lack of anything else to post while I kill the last few minutes of today's shift, I'm reprinting it here for everyone's reading enjoyment.

Hopefully management (who will no doubt stumble upon this the moment it's out there on the internet) won't fire me the minute they read it.

Top 10 signs that your energy trading company is screwed:
10) Acronym DOA used for employee trading guidelines. (Seriously--we have this).
9) When you need to have a meeting so you can be instructed not to trade with a counterparty listed on something called the "Do Not Trade List"
8) Employees spend time in meetings writing top 10 lists.
7) More power plants than employees
6) Your boss asks you if you know anyone who's hiring
5) "Back office" refers to the big stall in the men's room
4) Art gets fired, but -------- still has a job
3) Vice-president level authorization required to send someone a shirt
2) Asset analysts replaced by CEO's cat "Mister Binky."
1) Three words: Voluntary Severance Package

Written by: Answerman

John insisted that I write something serious, so here goes.

Over the past couple of weeks, a social controversy swirling around the national news has particularly grabbed my attention for its exquisite demonstration of the deceitful, bankrupt ideology that informs modern liberal philosophy and larges swathes of the Democrat party membership. The so-called "Culture War" began a generation ago, long before Pat Buchanan stated the obvious at the 1992 Republican National Convention. One of its staples has been a debate about the true meaning of the First Amendement to the United States Constitution -- what really constitutes protected free speech? Liberals have spent years summoning a deep outrage whenever anyone suggests that Piss Christ and images of the Virgin Mary smeared in elephant feces are inappropriate as publicly-funded "art." Of course, no one has ever demanded that the talentless poseurs who spend their lives creating such "art" should not be permitted to do so, but no matter. Liberals get lathered up at the modest suggestion that such "art" not be paid for by unwilling Christian taxpayers. The liberals' arguments in this regard, however weak, cannot be said to be contradictory.

But along comes The Passion of the Christ -- by all sober accounts a Gospel-based protrayal of the final 12 hours of Jesus' life on Earth -- and our liberal friends in the free speech movement turn into 1940s-style Hollywood censors. Piss Christ may offend the Christian citizens of the Christian (for now) nation in which we live, but our Constitution somehow requires that it be taxpayer-funded. Yet due to a hysterical fear that someone watching a faithful account of the last hours of Jesus' life may get worked up against Jews, Mel Gibson should never have filmed The Passion. The naked hypocrisy is clear, and I can't say I'm surprised by the likes of moral cretins such as Frank Rich engaging in it.

What the liberal reaction to The Passion reveals is not mere hypocrisy and intellectual inconsistency though, but also a rabid anti-Christianity that animates the modern Left. Liberals, except for the truly stupid ones, do not fear some sort of mass pogrom as a result of Americans seeing this movie. What they fear is anything approaching a spiritual re-awakening on the parts of American viewers. Their materialist, secularist (as opposed to secular) ideology demands no less of them. But since a majority of American voters isn't anti-Christian, just like a majority of American voters don't think compulsively lying degenerate socialists make good leaders as long as they support midnight basketball leagues and bigger school lunch programs, the liberals have to lie to us. And they do. With targeted abandon. And it's about time someone called them on it. Preferably someone with a readership.

Written by: Beck

I'd like to take this moment to point out to future readers who may some day materialize and actually read this page that any comments made by Answerman are to be understood to contain such things as "exaggerations," or, "misstatements," or even, "outright fabrications."

As a case in point, I'd like to observe that not only does John Kerry not have sex with basset hounds, but Answerman doesn't even actually think that John Kerry has sex with basset hounds. No self respecting basset hound would ever consent to have anything at all to do with John Kerry. He most likely has sex with pomeranians, or perhaps toy poodles.

Thank you for your consideration and understanding.

Written by: Answerman

No event in which John Kerry can claim a "victory" should have the word "super" in the title. I bet he has sex with basset hounds.

Written by: Beck

Basset hounds are by far the best of all dog breeds.