http://www.rtoddking.com/chinawin2003_hb_if.htm

Beautiful.

I've got an idea. Let's build terrorist bait. Let's build a huge, beautiful, symbolic building, tell everyone that it's full of people, keep it empty, and let the terrorists blow it up. Then we can laugh at them.

Richard Clarke, former terrorism czar for the US, said in his testimony under oath to the 9/11 commission that he did not give approval for the flight of Saudis that left the US after 9/11 carrying members of Osama Bin Laden's family. Yesterday, in an interview, he took full responsibility for approving the flight. Honestly I think it's a lame issue and couldn't care less, except for one fact. The guy lied. Either he lied under oath, or he lied yesterday. If he lied once, how many other times has he lied that we don't know about yet? I'm sure the left will say it doesn't matter that he lied because the whole thing is a non-issue (though it wasn't when they though Bush might be responsible for the flight), but it's the lying itself, not the circumstances, that's important. The left seems to feel it's ok to lie as long as it's not important, but to those of us who have pride in being honest and moral people, this attitude seems morally bankrupt.

I'm getting tired of saying how tired I am of hearing various lies and such in the media. Now it's the Geneva Convention. The soldiers in Abu Gharib could have done anything they wanted to those prisoners and it would not have violated the Genvea Convention. They could have tied them spread-eagle to giant cart wheels and held cats over them with longs claws, hit the cats, and watch the scratching happen, and it would not have violated the Geneva Convention. They could have cut off the prisoner's balls and stuffed them in a blender and it would not have violated the Geneva Convention. It would have been even more sick and depraved than what they did do, but none of it is in any way a violation of the Geneva Convention. The soldiers who committed the atrocities should be punished for their actions, but they did not violate the Geneva Convention.

Why? Because the Geneva Convention protects conventional solderis from conventionals armies with ranks and serial numbers. These guys were not in any army, they didn't have uniforms or rank or serial numbers. They were insurgents using terror as a means to an end. They are not, nor ever were, part of the Geneva Convention. Convicting anyone in these cases for violating the Geneva Convention would be like arresting me for assaulting a police officer, when in fact I only assaulted a normal citizen. Bad, yes, and even bad on the same scale, but not the same thing at all. Something can only be itself, it cannot be something else also. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Can someone remind Al Gore that he lost the Presidential election? The guy ought to shut up and stop insulting the President. Criticism is one thing, but calling Bush incompetent, calling for people in the administration to quit, and implying that the White House is directly responsible for Abu Gharib is just ridiculous. The funniest part was when he claimed that world is a more dangerous place because of Bush's policies. Look at history. We had the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the US Cole bombing (2000?), and a couple in between. Clinton and Gore did nothing. So what happened? 9/11. So who's policies made the world a more dangerous place? My feeling is that ignoring the terrorism that was slowly on the rise made the world a more dangerous place. One can spend plenty of time making hacked together arguments that either Bush or Clinton could have stopped 9/11 if they had paid more attention. Forget that, hindsight is 20/20. All I'm saying is that terrorism basically got ignored by Clinton.. Had he made any strong moves after the '93 bombing, then 9/11 may never have gotten planned in the first place, so when Gore talks about making the world a more dangerous place, he's merely bragging about the success of his administrations policies. Congrats, Gore. You made the world a more dangerous place.

I was reading a little history the other day and ran across something that surprised me, as no history teacher I had ever had mentioned it, even when they very definitely should have. It's almost like a secrt that no one wants to let out, and it has to do with, what else... Slavery. Did you know that the vast majority of slaves that were brought over to the western hemisphere from Africa by whatever European country were sold out by their own people? That's right. The Dutch or whomever would find an African dude with some power, offer him a lot of money, and suddenly the boat would be full of brand new slaves. So next time you hear a black person asking about reparations, you remind them that if anyone owes them reparations, it's their own people, and they ought to go to Africa and ask for money. While you're at it, ask them why you, most likely a descendent of Europeans who moved to the U.S. after the Civil War, owe them anything. And ask them when they were slaveds, can they prove it, where is their owner, do they know the names of their ancestors that were enslaved, or did their family actually come to the U.S. after the Civil War, and now they are just trying to freeload off history.

Google Bill Cosby's speech from some NAACP thing the other day. There's a man that's not afraid to tell the truth. Go Bill!

http://www.watleyreview.com/2004/052504-3.html
Link courtesy of Boortz.com

All about dog breeds. I have a coworker who owns a chihahua (spelling?), and it turns out they are descended from rats. The only thing that confused me is that the article seemed to imply that the yorkshire terrier has pigeon genes in it, and I just don't understand how that could happen.

Read about the alleged wedding that U.S. forces bombed in Iraq? Now I'm pretty convinced that this was a legitimate military target. My feeling, after reading a whole lot of whatever evidence is available online is that it was a terrorist meeting place/training camp and it is also very possible that a wedding did in fact occur on the day in question. I guess that puts me squarely in the "if you don't want to be killed, don't hang out with terrorists" camp.

With new technology coming in faster than Congress can legislate it, old school media types and Congress continue to shoot themselves in the foot. As soon as Congress decides to restrict access to something, a new technology will come out that allows people to circumvent said restrictions, and the people that wanted the restrictions passed in the first place to protect themselves suddenly lose money. Look at radio, for example. The FCC, because of Congressional legislation, is enforcing indecency fines to $750,000 per incident. Suddenly talk show hosts and and consumers start to move to XM radio, which is unregulated. Old school radio loses listeners. Congress ought to think more than five minutes in the future. If any of them bothered to learn anything about history, they's realize that any time they have restricted something previosuly available to the public, the public found something else that is similar but without the restrictions. To that I say, Go Public!

I can almsot understand the idea of giving some legitimacy to illegal aliens, though I am completely against it. What I can't understand even a bit is the idea of giving illegal aliens the right to pay instate tution to a state school. Why would you give them a better deal than an American citizen that lives in another state? What if I move to Texas illegally? Can I then get in-state tuition? Probably, but unless I'm on parole where I'm not allowed to leave the state, I can't really move illegally, so I don't get all the priveledges of illegal aliens.

You know, I'm really sick of all this "Why do they hate us?" crap! Who cares why they hate us? They do, and they've shown it by killing Americans. When someone hits you, you hit them back, or they'll just keep on hitting you. When someone mugs me, I don't ask why they hated me, I call the cops, and if I had a gun I'd go after the guy myself. His motives don't matter, all that matters is that he stole from me, and I'm not gonna let him get away with it.

Nick Berg's father, Michael, thinks we ought to have stopped speaking to the people who attacked us on 9/11, and started to listen to them. So the next time someone mugs you and shoots you, instead of being angry, ask them what you can do to keep them from shooting you next time.

It's funny the lies people will say when they want to make a point. For instance one letter writer (AJC, 5/24, letters to the editor) mentioned that terrorism attacks all over the world have risen over the last year, a point which is quite untrue. Subtracting attacks in Iraq, which is a warzone, the number of terror incidents around the world has fallen over the last year. And the guy that complains about people wanting to see the Nick Berg beheading. Well maybe if the media had shown it as much as they showed the Abu Gharib pictures then we wouldn't ahve to resort to search engines to see the truth. The media shows us what they want us to see, left or right, liberal or conservative. Conservatives describe those who disagree as "liberals," whereas liberals describe those who disagree as "morons" or as having "character flaws" or as being too stupid to see through George Bush. At least conservatives have some integrity in name-calling, they don't resort to insult. That's because they have logic on their side. Only the side without logic has to argue by name calling. If they had any real points to make, then they would have more to say than "you're stupid."

From Newsday.com:

'Some Hofstra professors said Doctorow was on target in discussing the war. "I thought this was a totally appropriate place to talk about politics because that's the world our students are entering," said sociology professor Cynthia Bogard. "I only wish their parents had provided them a better role model."'

So E.L. Doctorow gave a graduation speech at which he basically accused Bush of being a liar and repeated a lot of the typical mating calls of the left-wing demogogue. He got booed so much he had to pause for a bit. Most students and parents interviewed afterward felt that a graduation speech should be united and not political. More the be inspired and involve yourself type speech was expected. The above professor, however, knows better. She knows the problem is not that the speech was a divider, but that if the parents present had raised their children better, then everyone would have agreed with the speaker. It's such an incredibly closed-minded attitude, but unfortunately is reflected by so much of what passes for the left-wing today. No logic, no thought, just emotion, and most of that is negative energy like hate. Whatever happened to "make love, not war?" The extremists that have co-opted the "intellectual elite" that has led the left-wing since the 60's changed it to "make hate, not thought."

I just read about the tradgedy in Paris, where part of their "futuristic" Charles DeGaulle Airport collapsed. 6 people died, and I feel very bad for them, but at the same time, my first thought as, "I wonder if you could trace this back to the socialistic attitude of France?" My roommate agrees. Most likely it was built shoddily and as a jobs program to employ as many people as possible for 35 hours a week. Who cares if it's done well, look at all the jobs it has created!

Not that I'm changing my stance or anything, I'm still pretty much pro-choice, but I read an interesting point earlier today, though I cannot remember where. At any rate, someone mentioned that whenever pro-lifers try to show pictures of aborted fetuses and such like that, they are drowned out with calls of inappropriatness and the like. Usually by the left, the hotbed of pro-choice. When disgusting pictures of prison abuse come out, we are told that it's neccesary to show them, that we need to see what's really happening, what it's all about. Why is that so important regarding Iraqi prisoners, but not abortion? Because seeing abused prisoners supports a left-wing agenda, but seeing aborted fetuses goes against a left-wing agenda. More unacknowledged bias.

Blogs versus traditional media... It really comes down to one issue. When you read a blog you generally can discover the author's biases fairly easily. Check their biography or whatever. Most blog writers will tell you where they lie politically. They aren't trying to hide anything in order to remain "non-patisan." Big media, on the other hand, does it's very best to say they are objective and non-partisan, without significant bias. Since everyone has opinions, and journalists most of all, this is a ridiculous attitude that is going to have to change. No matter how objective a person attempts to be, they will always insert some amount of bias into their work. It's impossible to be human and not do so. So for newspapers to say they are non-partisan and objective tells me that they are either lying, or incredibly stupid and naive.

Why do people keep making completely untrue statements about Abu Gharib? Because the mainstream media is deliberately misleading the public. Two common misconceptions are that the media broke this story or it would never have come out, and that before the story came out the administration was trying to sweep it under the carpet and not do anything to fix the situation. First off, the media did not break this story. Soldiers approached the media with pictures and misgivings. Second, the investigation was well under way, the Red Cross was aware of both the problems and the investigation, and a Red Cross spokesman has said that significant progress had been made to fix whatever led to such horrible actions before the story broke in the media. Most of the press will do whatever they can to bury this, as it makes the administration look better. To me, however, the truth is always best.

Oh, and that Iraq wedding the US supposedly attacked... A bunch of men in their 30's with guns in the middle of the desert at 3 in the morning? That's not a wedding, sorry. It's funny how when Bush says something, no one believes him, but if an Iraqi says something like, "They attacked my wedding," everyone believes.

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/04/05/06/1929205.shtml

Fascinating article about virtual economies. Did you know that, according to at least one economist, the economy of Everquest places it as the 76th richest country in the world? As soon as people began to sell their virtual goods, be it a virtual sword or even the player's in-game character, in reallife on eBay and other venues, the virtual items got real life value. It's a hint of things to come, as the internet creates non-government-regulated methods of trading goods. Eventually there will be a virtual currency set up by a private organization that can actually be used in real life for real goods. And eventually a virtual currency will come along that has so much cachet online that governments won't be able to ignore it, or their real economies will face severe problems. This could be the first step to world-wide anarchy based on free markets.

What do you think of the long-standing tradition of tax exemptions for religious institutions? I don't know what the mindset was when they first came up with it, but to me there is absolutely no defending such a thing. Churches, synogogues, and mosques should be taxed like any other institution. Especially as they have become hotbeds of politicalization. Where do you think the Civil Rights Movement came from? Martin Luther King Jr. and many of his most renowned associates were churchmen. There's nothing wrong with that, nor with church leaders getting involved in politics in any way, but there is a problem with allowing them to not have to pay taxes. As long as any Democrat can walk into a black church and rant about how Bush is destroying the world, then churches should be taxed. As long as the Catholic Church can recomend that their priests deny the communion to pro-choice politicians, the church should be taxed. As long as Imams can insult American soldiers from the pulpits of mosques, the mosques should be taxed. I'm not in any manner denouncing these institutions for politicizing themseles. I think it's important that they do, as it gets a lot of people interested in world events that may not have been otherwise. I just feel they should pay their fair share of taxes as long as the rest of us do. Of course if the country decided to follow a logical tax plan, like the "Fair Tax," then it wouldn't matter. Everyone, whether they represent a church or are gay or whatever, would pay tax when they buy something, and at no other time.

I tire of hearing people moan and whine about how America's values don't include invading other countries, abusing prisoners, blah blah blah. They're wrong. Just about everything that is good in the US came from something like the above. Ever heard of manifest destiny? All the Native Americans that died or were displaced because European-Americans decided it was their destiny to rule the continent from shore to shore. We invaded Puerto Rico, we've screwed so many Latin American countries so many times, yet people like Michael Moore isgnore this sort of thing so that they can say that Bush is taking us in a different direction. In fact he is. Instead of invading countries and killing people and all that sort of thing for material or geographic gain, he is doing it to free people, to put down evil, and to be a shining beacon to the rest of the world that America will not stand by and allow horrible things to happen to good people. Grnated, we aren't in the Sudan where wholesale slaughter is occuring at the hands of, surprise, Muslims, but we can't save everyone at once. The UN is supposed to be there, but they refuse to stand up to their principles, or maybe they just don't have any. At any rate, the United States has done some horrible things in its past, and thank god for men like George W. Bush who try to do good things, despite whether the world wants them or not.

As far as prisoner abuse, that sort of thing happens in our own prisons all the time. Not that I'm defending that, but I did find it funny that Carl Levin, one of the members of Congress that is most outspoken about wanting Rumsfeld to resign because of the prisoner abuse scandal, works for a state (Michigan) where prisons are currently being investigated for maltreatment of prisoners. May Mr. Levin should resign also. He's a hypocrite, that we know for sure.

Straight from Boortz. It's almost like a short version of Atlas Shrugged.


THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper,and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake. Tom Daschle & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share." Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood. MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't vote for the Poodle.


The above is almost like Atlas Shrugged, but in Atlas the ant doesn't die. Instead he and his like-minded friends decide to leave before next winter and create their own warm homes somewhere else. The grasshopper and his friends don't have anyone to steal from, so they are all dying until they beg the ant to come back and promise not to steal from the ant anymore.

I just read about a nifty poll with some results that would probably surprise a lot of people who think they know everything. The poll was directed at Arab-Israelis, whcih mostly consists of the descendents of Palestinians that decided to stay in Israel in 1948. They are full citizens and, on average, just as prosperous as their Jewish countrymen. They live in peace, unlike their unhappy non-Israeli Palestinian relatives who can't let go of their hate long enough to realize that the only people keeping them from peace and success are themselves. Anyway, the poll basically said that they supported Israeli actions, and that Israel should be allowed to keep the 1967 borders (including the disputed territories). 36% or so, a fairly large minority, said that the idea of the Palestinian "right of return" shouldn't happen.

All the Palestinians who are not Israelis need to do is stop killing Jews and stop hating Jews, and get on with their own lives. If all that energy they put in to digging tunnels and finding spectacular ways of killing off all their young men was put in to farming and trade and economic development, they'd probably have a nice, thriving state by now and everyone would be happy. But their leaders prefer to be in power, and that means they have to distract the people from bettering themselves by villifying Israel.

So it turns out that this year is the 50th anniversery of Brown v Topeka Board of Education, the case that reversed the "Seperate but Equal" doctrine which rules American society for so long. With Brown came school busing and a lot of rezoning, and supposedly a racial harmony. The problem is that fixing the schools was like using a band-aid to fix a broken arm. The problem is not superficial.

I don't see much racial hatred, and that is a very good thing. Residential segregation is the real issue. In Atlanta, generally speaking, the white people live in the north and the black people live in the south. Obviously there are plenty of each in both areas, but this is truth in at least a 50%+1 manner. There was busing, and the white man learned that the black man was a human and deserved to be treated like one, or something like that. Even so, once they got home, nothing had changed from before. Their neighbors were mostly like them, the local playgrounds were full of the same. After spending their time at home with others of their race, children went to school and hung out with their friends, the same people that they live by and play with. The Supreme Court cannot force people to associate with other races, nor can the Supreme Court force people to live where they don't want to.

There is no way to legislate racial integration into residential demographics. That said, things are changing, just very slowly. In another hundred years or so we may finally be able to throw off the legacy of racism and segregation, but it's going to take a natural maturing of social attitudes, not a decree from above.

Damn.

http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004_05_01_archive.html#108449781669329797

http://www.kensei-news.com/bizdev/publish/factoids_us/article_23374.shtml

This is just sick! The RIAA has been cooking their books this whole time to convince people that downloading music has caused them to lose money. A simplified example I read of what they are doing comes out to this:
Last year they shipped 1000 CDs and sold 700. This year they shipped 900 CDs and sold 770. Even though they actually sold more, they say that they lsot money because they shipped fewer units. They ought to all be thrown in jail, but not before they repay in triplicate all the people they have sued and gotten money from.

Don't buy CDs. Download them, because now they deserve to be fucked, just as they have fucked the American public for so many years.

Between ridiculous zero tolerance inspired idiocy (zerointelligence.net), gang violence, lack of decent teachers, and continual substandard scores for public schools, one wonders when the concept of competition will end government funded education. More and more people are putting their kids in private schools. What's going to happen in 20 years when the only people still putting their kids in public school wish they could afford to do otherwise? Will the educaitonal system wake up and smell the coffee? I don't know what the solution is, but I know it's not zero tolerance, it's not the continuing idiocy of giving tenure to teachers based on their length of employment and not on their performance, and I know improvements won't come from the big teacher's unions.

Just found out that the AJC's editorial page only allows a person to have a letter published once a month. I got one in there for tomorrow. I also discovered that John Sugg, editor of Atlanta Creative Loafing, is as incredibly partisan and one-sided as the right wing radio commentators that he loves to bash. Read his latest at atlanta.creativeloafing.com, but remember to take it all with a grain of salt. Several of his "facts" are outdated and proven to be incorrect, but the truth seems to take a backseat to making a point to Mr. Sugg. Of course a point that is based on false information is not a point at all, but instead the meaningless ramblings of a man who depends on the ignorance of his readers to keep his job.

This is taken entirely from James Taranto's Best of the Web Today (http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/). My god, there are some dumb people out there. You ought to get a good laugh from this.

"Onion Rings
We cracked up last night when we read this e-mail from an anonymous reader (quoted verbatim):

Obviously,it is in your assignment,to malign Kerry any way you can.Since you have a staff who looks for articles that are controversial,why not track down the following to determine if it is true.Today,I read that our "benefactor" Haliburton will dock Hamill 3 weeks pay(while he was in captivity).Further it was stated that he will also have to pay for the structural damage to the truck(not within his control). I am sure your staff must be aware of this.They log onto many websites that are against BUsh and his "junta" who are adverse to telling the TRUTH.Even today,the finger pointing goes on.Even Harry Truman(who was no great brain) knew where "the buck stopped".

As it happens, earlier in the day we had indeed read the Hamill story--in the Onion. (Scroll down to "News in Brief," in the center column.) We thought everyone knew by now, but the Onion is a satirical newspaper."

What do you do when a coworker is not only not doing their job correctly, but is deliberately and regularly skipping over some duties, however small, because that person jsut doesn't like said duties? I don't want to be a tattletale, but today I was in a position where I had a lot of extra work to do because of the person who did not do their work. It makes me angry, but I don't want others to not confide in me for fear I might tell management something. On the other hand, management can promote me, my colleagues in my department cannot.

I suppose I'll just keep doing my work the right way, and eventually the truth will come out on it's own.

I've noticed, several times lately, instances wherre big media has printed and stood behind "facts" that have already been disproven by bloggers. When confronted with such, big media seems defensive and resentful, as if the bloggers are interlopers in their world. They want to be able to present the information they want to, when they want to, regardless of truth, and they don't like it when the non-initiated scoop them and make them look dumb. It's rather silly of them, really, because the more this sort fo thing happens, the more the public will distrust traditional media outlets. Right now the average American may not know that they can look at The Drudge Report (not really a blog, but certainly a non-traditional source of news, www.drudgereport.com) or Instapundit (www.instapundit.com) to find stories or links to stories about most major news stories, with points of view not covered in the typical newspaper, which often have an unacknowledged slant one way or the other. Within a few years, however, venues like The Volokh Conspiracy (www.volokh.com) will be much more widely known, especially as more and more people realize that they can get the real story online. For an example, the London Guardian has been running pictures of prison abuses in Iraq that have been oouted as fakes for a week in the blogosphere. The Guardian, days after publishing the photos, printed a retraction in which they said that the photos were not up to Guardian standards and should not have been run. In other words they said the photos were too graphic to run, as opposed to actually saying the photos were fakes and they didn't do their due diligence in verifying statements they presented as facts. With so many journalists being scooped, you'd think they'd start looking in obvious places for verification before they print things on sketchy evidence.

I was ruminating on what will happen when one of the big European countries suffers from a major terrorist attack. Spain already has, but the big boys don't consider Spain very important. I'm talking France or Germany, really. Europeans have shown, historically, that they really know how to hold a grudge, and they like to take revenge. See the end of WWI for an example of how this behavior led to worse events in the future. The reparations charged to Germany were a major cause of WWII. So if Bin Laden and the boys decide it's time for the Eiffel Tower to go, you can bet the French will forget everything they ever said about multi-lateralism and restraint and such, and will be clamoring for an all out war against everyone in the Middle East that might be involved. Europe, when forced to take action, usually takes it to the extreme, and if Islamists really want chaos in the world, France is probably the place to hit and hit hard. I hope it doesn't happen, but if it does I'll be lined right up to throw their own words right back at them.

So Hamas and other Palestinian groups continually decry the "occupation" of Palestine by Israel. So Ariel Sharon comes up with his plan to disengage, pull out of the territories, build a wall, and leave the Palestinians alone. So then Palestinians decry that plan. There's a huge contradiction there, and most of the world seems to miss it. I just don't get it. The Palestinians brag about killing innocent women and children, they want Israel to leave, Israel says they'll leave, the Palestinians get mad, they talk about how they want to destroy Israel, they spit in the face of the backers of the Roadmap to Peace, yet, somehow, to most of the world it is all Israel's fault. How can this be explained? Is the rest of the world that anti-Semitic?

I remember when I was a little kid sometimes another kid would hit me. I'd hit him back, and then he would hit me back again in retribution, and so I would have to hit back to make it even, and he'd hit back again. The Iraqis that beheaded Nick Berg on video remind me of the other kid. Despite the fact that the Abu Gharib atrocities were not really American payback for anything, one could say the Iraqis involved are like the other kid, always feeling like being even means you discount the first hit.

To those who feel that all the Jihadists want is for America to stay out of the Middle East, and then terrorism will stop, and that Islam is a religion of peace and the root cause of the terrorism is Western opression, I ask you to take your head out fo the sand and read some history. Ever heard of the Moors or the Saracens? Ever heard about the devestation and death that occured when Islam tried to take over Europe in the middle ages and very nearly suceeded? Spain and Portugal were Muslim states for many years, and the rest of Europe would have fallen as well, if they had not eventually been able to defeat the invaders. Islam is Islam is Islam. Not all Muslims, in fact only a small percentage, are bad people, but there are enough in the world openly talking of Jihad that if we don't pay attention to them and do something beyond a lot of empty rhetoric, that we will be living in Muslim states eventually, unless we're dead first. If some concrete is not done soon to nip this in the bud, it will become "Us Against Them," and that's going to cause a lot more death than any war in history. I know I prefer us, and Ted Kennedy and John Kerry seem to prefer them.

Just so you know, I don't think all Muslims are evil. But historically that religion has caused a lot of death. I don't think Christianity is evil, either, but between the Crusades, forced conversions, and witch hunts, there have a been a lot of dead people in the name of Jesus over the years. Don't forget a Catholicism that creates a perfect environment for pedophelia. In fact the celibacy requirement of Catholocism practically invites pedophelia. What would Jesus and Mohammed think of what their followers ahve doen in their names? Abraham? Buddha?

Oh yeah. Remember when Bush got on the air and apologized for the Abu Gharib atrocities? Well all the people that demanded he apologize should start holding their breath, waiting for someone who was responsible for the beheading of Nick Berg to apologize. Once all the breath-holders have died from lack of air, the rest of us can get on with defending our people against people who want us dead.

Just so you know, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy to Iraq, who supposedly will be taking over a lot of things over there for the Americans, has proudly bragged that he has never shaken the hand of an Israeli or a Jew.

The UN, one of the most racist and hypocritical organizations on Earth. It's high time for the UN to go the way of the League of Nations.

I read an article today about Jews who are not Zionists and want their Jewish Student groups to ignore Israel and focus on solely religious factors. Anyone who espouses such is ignorant of history.

The simple fact is that you cannot separate the two, not if you want there to be Jews around in a century. Look at the history of the Jews. Death, destruction, exile, all horrible events that the Jewish people are practically married to. No place where Jews live among others is safe, not even the United States. Jews were in Iraq and Iran for almost 4000 years, and none of them ever thought they'd have to leave. Now there are fewer than 1000 Jews living in those two countries, and the few that are left won't be around much longer. You never know when attitudes towards Jews might change. A simple stock market plunge could precipitate widespread anti-semitism, just the economic woes in the Weimer Republic helped lead to the genocidal policies of the Nazis. The loss of a war could cause incompetent leaders to shift blame to the Jews, and next thing you know there are huge pogroms, as happened in the USSR after the end of the Russo-Japanese war. A man could kill a priest and convince others that a Jew did it, causing riots, pillaging, and murder, as happened several times all over Europe throughout the middle ages. To ignore Zionism is to deny the future of the Jewish people, and only through the apathy of both religious and secular Jews could this happen.

Check this out, cool story about a Marine doing what Marines are supposed to do. Be badass GI Joes!

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2004/05/captain_brian_c.html#more

An academic in Japan who wrote an anonymous P2P program could end up in jail for up to three years. While I don't neccesarily think that downloading copyrighted material like music for free is a good thing, writing a tool that might allow people to do such is not at all a bad thing. You can kill someone with a hammer, so should we jail the people that make hammers? Of course not. The internet is too big, and too anonymous, for governments to continue to do this sort of thing. And there will only be more of it as the world becomes more internet-adept. Theere will be uses that no one has even thought of today, and along with those uses will come the possibility of what some might consider illegal activity. We cannot, however, deny the existence of such tools, even if they might have illegal uses. The worst thing governments can do is stifle any sort of innovation on the internet, because they could be stifling ideas that could change the human race as we know it. Some might say that's not a bad thing, they like the human race the way it is. I disagree, and feel humanity has a lot of growing and evolving to do, and we ought to embrace such growth. The last ten years, thanks to computers and the internet, have changed the world economy more in a 10 year span than any other invention in history has done in 50 years. With new advances like nanotechnology and bioengineering, you will see even more changes over the next 10 years. Don't stifle, encourage! See where these things lead us. Like gun bans, stifling new techonolgy and innovation will simply put the new tools in the hands of criminals, leaving law abiding citizens of overly-controlling governments in the lurch.

I spent much of the weekend working my way through the very excellent "Atlas of Jewish Civilization." I actually got it for my Mom for Mother's Day, but she's in San Francisco visiting my sister for a week, so our Mother's Day celebration is delayed, and the book was sitting there yelling, "read me!" and I could not resist. I'm glad I didn't. I learned more about the history of the Jewish people in one weekend than I learned in the rest of my life. What scared me about the book was not the scale of the Holocaust, which the Jewish community makes darn sure that Jewish kids learn, but the fact that the Holocaust was not the first mass killing of Jews, not by a long shot. Throughout history there have been purges. Sometimes they are killed simply because some other nation wants their land. Sometimes Jews were killed because of religion (the Crusades, the Inquisition). Did you know that Christians were highly persecuted in the first few centuries after Jesus until a Roman Emperor was baptized, and almost immediately the newly approved Christians turned around and started killing Jews, the only group that had not discriminated against Christians before? The Russians, with the Pale of Settlement and the pogroms, did their share of killing Jews as well. When you have such a survey of Jewish history in front of you, it's hard not to wonder what the world would be like if people had just let Jews live in peace. I can say one thing, there would be a heck of a lot more of us around.

Another fact that surprised me was that until the mid-20th century, Jews and Muslim Arabs had had a great relationship, having never warred against one another. In fact Jewish communities in Iran and Iraq were the longest continuous Jewish communities in existence, having been around for about 3000 years. Now there are less than 100 Jews living in those countries.

Anyway, back to what scared me. I had always been led to believe that nothing like the Holocaust could ever happen again, and that it was only a strange mix of nationalism and Germanic history that allowed it to happen in the first place. Books like "Hitler's Willing Executioners" furthered my belief in such. Now I know that is so much BS, as events like the Holocaust have been happening to Jews throughout their history. The Holocaust was worse in total numbers than any other massacres, but in terms of percentage of Jews killed versus total Jews on Earth, it was nothing special. So next time someone tells me not to be paranoid about events I see as blatantly anti-Semetic, I will tell them to read something like "The Atlas of Jewish Civilization" and then come talk to me about being paranoid.

Don't let me make you think that book is all downers. The authors do a great job of illustrating all the great things that have comes from Judaism. In fact, when people say stuff like America was founded on Christian principles and laws, you remind them that those Christians principles and laws are really Jewish principles and laws that the Christian world adopted. Why? Because they make sense and are a far better way of running society than anything anyone else has come up with.

Aren't you glad that Bush was elected President in 2000? If he hadn't, then Gore would have "saved" our economy by raising taxes to create new employment and entitlement programs. The economy wouldn't be creating new jobs. Perhaps the government would, but soon enough the only thing keeping the country going would be the high taxes. Those taxes would strangle businesses and individuals, causing all non-government entities to dry up and die. The first step to a socialist economy. Look at history, all the way back to FDR. Everytime there is an economic downturn and a democrat is elected, next thing you know we have more socialized institutions than before. Thank god for Bush.

By the way, in case you don't share my enthusiasm for the current state of the economy, check out all the numbers. Incredible growth of productivity, GDP, and, most importantly, huge job growth. Something like 400,000 in the last two months. By the election this country is going to be kicking ass and taking names, and you can bet Bush will ride it all the way to 2008, as he deserves.

Is it possible that the Catholic Church is slowly destroying itself? First there was the huge molestation scandal, for which the Church did not do enough to solve the problem. They seem to feel that if they ignore it, it will go away. And now they are denying communion (whatever the heck that is) to people who are pro-choice, and one Cardinal even went so far as to imply that he would like to deny communion to anyone who votes for officials that are pro-choice. The way they are going, soon the only people they will allow in their cult (all religions are cults, check out a list of "You might be joining a cult if..." and you'll see that all the signs can also be applied to religions, and most to fraternities as well) are hard right Republicans who don't mind child molestation. Not a demographic any networks are going after, I can assure you. Otherwise sitcoms would be a lot more disgusting.

What those soldiers did by abusing those prisoners was bad, very bad. A year or so ago, when a Lt. West was in trouble for threatening a detainee with a gun in order to get information to save his troops lives... That was good. Not that he was in trouble, but that he broke the rules a bit to save lives. The abuse on the prisoners at Abu Gharib, however, was obviously wrong. They weren't trying to get information from these people, they were merely abusing them. Turns out two of the guys charged with doing it were former prison guards. Maybe if the drug war was ended, there would be less prisoners to abuse, and thus less creeps like these guys getting a chance to live out their dominant fantasies with men unable to protect themselves.

Unfortunately this sort of behavior crops up all over the world, in every society. Only in America, however, do we not try to hide tour dark underside, we show it to the world and tell them we're sorry and we don't want it to happen again. Do you really imagine that, say, the French, with all their colonial holdings in Africa, haven't had similar incidents? Or the Russians? We know without a doubt that msot of the Arab countries in the middle east commit far worse horrors on prisoners and political dissidents. The pictures that are all over every news medium in the world are only shocking because everyone else hides their pictures. We show them. That's the difference between the US and the rest of the world. They hide their shame and allow it to continue. We reveal ours and do our best to stop such behavior.

I feel bamboozled. Michael MOore, a well known liar, told another one, and I got caught up in it, hook, line, and sinker. Check out my earlier post. Turns outs that Moore knew over a year ago that Disney wouldn't be distributing his film, he only waited until now to mention it in order to maximize press coverage. What a jerk! Remember what a freaking liar this guy is the next time a movie of his comes out. And don't see it. Maybe, if enough Americans decide not to help a liar be succesful, we can get this guy put out of business permanently.

Do you know why he called his previous movie, "Bowling For Columbine?" According to him the Columbine murderers were in a bowling class earlier on the day they had their massacre. That is a total lie, too, but Moore just doesn't care about the truth, only his agenda, which is always based on lies, spin, and half-truths. Besides, how many high schools have oyun heard of that have bowling alleys?

http://www.reason.com/0404/cr.gg.fools.shtml

AWESOME article!

So Disney doesn't want to distrubute Michael Moore's new film. Good for them. Not for the fact that they are keeping his lies from being published under the Disney name, but simply for the fact that, as much as Michael Moore has the right to free speech, Disney, as a private company, has the right not to pay to have that speech distributed. This isn't censorship. Michael Moore has every right to shop the movie to someone who will distribute it, and, considering the kind of money it will make, he will probably find a taker fairly easily. It would be as if you wanted to call someone and tell them they are a jerk. That's fine, but I don't have to let you use my cell phone to do it. That's not censorship, that's me saying, "If you want to say something I don't like, you can do it with your own equipment, you have no right to use mine unless I decide to let you." The left, however, is up in arms, calling it a violation of the 1st Amendment and such. More BS.

I just read that Al Franken, alleged comedian (I never once laughed at his Stuart Smalley skit, I always thought it was really dumb), current failing radio host, and sometimes author, is thinking about running for the US Senate in Minnesota. He's gone to Hillary for advice on running for a state you've never lived in. My advice is, "Don't." I think that ought to be even more taboo than a foreign-born citizen becoming President. You can live in the US from the time you are 1 minute old, and not be able to run for President, but you can run for Senate in a state you've never even lived in? That's just wrong. I thought it was crap when Hillary did it, and it'll be crap if Franken does it. How morally-wrong is it to look at map and find a state where an incumbent might be vulberable, or where the incumbent is retiring, and go there and for that spot? I think it's wrong, you can hardly say you are representing the interests of your constituents when all you know about them is that they once elected a guy who is now old and retiring. There really ought to be a law against this sort of thing. Let's say that you must ahve spent at least half the previous ten years living in a particular state in order to become a Senator from that state. Of course that would never pass because then current Senators would have to spend less time in DC and on various trips, and more time living with their constituents.

In some ways this relates to my entry on the Second Amendment and to this article:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/pj20040503.shtml

Think about it. Even if everyone you know (and another 50 million Americans) is against a particular bill that would benefit incumbent Senators, it wouldn't matter. You could write letters, make phone calls, and walk in picket lines, but if those Senators want to raise their pay or exempt themselves from certain taxes, and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. The government's public face may change every four years, but most of what they do is completely isolated from any form of democracy. I'll grant you that a true one man=one vote democracy is impossible to acheive at the scale of the United States, but even so the actual input of 99.9999% of the American public doesn't make a difference. Some states ahve referendums that can be put on ballots if a certain number of signatures is acquired, but how many people do you know that have the time or money to collect those signatures? George Bush, for instance, could suddenly decide he wants to reinstate the draft. He gets Republican Senators and Reps in line, and wham!, we have a draft again, desptie the fact that those 99.999% of Americans would be against it.

Eminent domain also relates to this issue. Out of all the people you know, how many would think it's a good thing that Wal-Mart convinced a local government to buy uncooperative peoples' homes (at the government's price, not the fair market value), sell them to Wal-Mart, and have a Wal-Mart built, all because they get more tax money from Wal-Mart then from 10 poor homeowners. No one I know would think this is fair, but it's happening all over the country and there's very little we, as individuals, can do about it. Sure, you could start an organization, but unless someone who is already in power, or has tons of iinfluence, is willing to work with you, you'll never get anything done.

If you're Jewish, you should read this. Then ask a non-Jewish friend what they think.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0504/prego_murder.php3

I stole this from a comment on another blog, but I'm not sure which, or whom. At any rate, it's a fantastic idea and could solve a lot of problems Americans have with taxes and April 15. Require all members of Congress to do their own taxes without the benefit of accountants and programs like TaxCut. You can guarantee things will be simplified for the next year.

With the onset of the UN/Iraq Oil for Food scandle, the historical significance of the war in Iraq may be changing a bit. Perhaps, in 50 years, historians will look back at this as the U.S. putting an end to corruption in international organizations, and maybe leading to a new UN type organization that people can actually trust, and that can act in an effective manner, something for which the UN is not well known for. In fact, but for a few programs like UNICEF, very little the UN has ever attempted has been successful in any meangingful way. Look at Kosovo and Rwanda, where UN officials and "peacekeepers" stood back and watched as hundreds of thousands were murdered. Look at Iraq where they fled as soon as someone disturbed their peace. Heck, look at the formation of Israel. That was fine, the problem was what they did with the Palestinians. Because the UN refused to see the problems that could result from millions of refugees fleeing into lands that did not want them, now we have the powder keg we call the Middle East.

One of the scariest parts of all this, to me, is that few major newspapers in the US are mentioning this scandal. We're talking upwards of 10 billion dollars that should have gone to feeding Iraqis, and instead went into Saddam's personal coffers, and in to the bank accounts of UN officials and officials from governments all over the world, highlighted by France and Russia, the two most voiciferous countries in anti-war talk before Bush decided to ignore them and go on in and take out Saddam. We're talking a scandal that dwarfs Enron and Worldcom, yet it gets ignored. Reporters keep saying there is no liberal bias in the media, yet when the corruption scandal to end all corruption scandals comes out, they barely mention it. Why? One has to think that it's because Enron and Worldcom are "big business" and attacks on them filter over to the Republican Party that the left always likes to associate with big business, whereas the UN is the holy idol of the left and the Democratic Party, and the media doesn't want the politicians they favor to take any hits.

http://www.freep.com/news/locway/shot29_20040429.htm

I don't own a gun, and may never own one. Although I have been to a shooting range a couple of times, guns make me a bit nervous. I suppose if there was one on hand, and I needed to use for it self-defense, I would. I know, basically, how they work, how to turn a safety on and off, and how to pull a trigger, but I just don't have a desire to own one. I do, however, fully support the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, the one that talks about militias and the right to bear arms. The wording of the amendment is a little sketchy, and I can't tell if they mean that we ahve the right to form a militia if we want, or if it just means that we ahve the right to bear arms in case we need to form a militia. I'm going to have to pull out my copy of "The Federalist Papers" and do a bit of research. If you're interested in the Constitution, that's the place to start. The guys who wrote most of it talking about why they wrote what they wrote. Forget how politicians or the Supreme Court interpret things, the Federalist Papers tell it the way it was meant to be.

At any rate, I consider the 2nd amendment to be the "if all else goes wrong/in case of emergency" clause. Basically if the government goes nuts, this way we can rise up with all of our guns and take them down. I don't know of any other government that has in it's founding documents a proper manner in which to coup d'etat (sic?) and continue to use the same governing structure. Of course I hope it never comes to such a thing, and I don't see any reason why anyone other than extreme right and left wackos would think we need to overthrow the government, but I'm glad I have the right to bear arms just in case.

Never forget! Any time you see a politician or a "concerned" parent talking about how we ought to tkae guns from the public and that sort of jazz, they are talking about taking the the last resort we have in case of a tyrannical government. They're also taking away your very best chance at self-defense. Furthermore they are talking about taking deadly weapons out of the hands of good, law-abiding citizens so that the only ones who have the guns are the criminals. Do you really want that sort of demographic to have such an advantage over you if they decide to rob you, or rape you, or whatever?

Not that I'm a big fan of English colonialism, but I just read that people in South Africa want to tear down a statue of Queen Victoria and replace it with something representing the "African struggle.' It goes without saying that this will ignore the struggle of any Africans that aren't black-skinned. Replace one racist symbol with another. Eventually, in the world's eagerness to erase any symbols of white history infavor of "oppressed minorities" we will forget that white people ever had anything to contribute to civilization. I just hope, in one hundred years, that we haven't forgotten about the struggle to create democracy, the struggle to explore the world, the struggle to create technology that has allowed billions to watch TV, to talk to people on other continents, to protect their foodstuffs from pests, the struggle to understand concepts like gravity and nuclear bonding, and the struggle to send humans into space. Compared to all this, the struggle of other peoples to equal white Europeans and their descendants pales in comparison. Every race, color, and creed has contributed to the world as we know it today. I challenge you to keep your eyes peeled as you go through your daily routine today, and acknowledge to yourself the fact that most every bit of technology you use, every societal norm that you take for granted, came from white people. Those contributions should be lauded equally to contributions of other races, yet somehow I'm made to feel like I should be ashamed that I hold the inventor of the motion picture in higher esteem than the guy who found a million uses for the peanut, none of which I use except when eating PB&J.

A few other things invented by my White European oppressors:
Rock and roll
Transistor radio
Almost every part of the computer I'm using
Pizza
Hamburgers
Coca-cola
Flourescent lights
Rockets that can reach space
The communications satellite (actually invetned by Arthur C. Clarke, a science-fiction author, and years later implemented)
The stock market

Ever since the Great Depression the average American's overall tax burden has gone up. We began social security, we expanded or created welfare programs, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and a whole list of other entitlements. These obviously were meant to end hunger and unemployment in the United States, otherwise the only possible purpose could be political. Politicians raise taxes and start new programs in order to foment a feeling of dependency on them, so that as many people as possible will feel they have to keep voting for whomever or they'll lose their tax-funded lifeline. Of course any politician is going to deny this. If the poltical reason is not true then we examine the ending hunger and unemployment theory. If this is true then it makes politicians look stupid. Welfare programs have done what for the country? The change int eh percentage of poor and/or uneployed in this country can be explained much more easily and simply by talking about changing employment structures and new industries in the United States. Did welfare get the people off the farms? No, new businesses did. Did welfare reduce the unemployment rate to near an all-time low in the 90's and have us almost matching that now in the 2000's? No, the tech boom did the former, and Bush's tax cuts combined with the cyclical nature of economics is causing the latter. This is, of course, ignoring certain exceptions like the Great Depression, which really only went away with World War II, not with Roosevelt's alphabet programs, which many economic historians now feel exacerbated the problems of the era. So for 60 years or so primarily the left has pushed welfare and employment related programs that haven't worked, yet to them the solution is to make more, not scale back and try other things. Either left-wing politicians are power-hungry control freaks, or they are so stupid that after 60 years they still haven't learned a simple lesson.

Just as people who have actually tried real socialism, and not quasi-hippie-commune crap on a small scale in some smelly house in San Francisco, have realized, those that can contribute the most work their asses off to support the people who either can't suport themselves, or feel happier allowing others to do the work for them. Suddenly instead of having an economic divide you end up with an effort divide and the whole thing falls into either chaos as justified resentment boils up, or the effort steers toward tyranny, as one person or a group of people take power ostensibly because only they know best and know how to keep the evil principle of "From each according their ability, to each according to their need" going, with "and most of it to thise in charge" added to the end.

Socialism in almost every form simply does not work, as proven time and time again. And big government leads to big brother. Historically, anyway. To the politicians and political groupees that favor such nonsense, history does not matter or they wouldn't be supporting such things.