A fun anti-Moore article. It's so much fun to bash Moore, because unlike Bush, you can find easily verifiable evidence of Moore outright lying or stretching the truth in pretty much every movie he's made.

http://www.cwob.com/movies/oscars2003/bfc.html

"Mussolini stood on street corners and shouted that Italy's war with Turkey and its 1911 invasion of Libya were an imperial grab meant to distract the people from their hunger. He organized and led protests, some of them violent, and was jailed. That made him a martyr and, when he was released, a hero of the left. As a reward, Avanti, the newspaper of Italy's socialist party, named him editor. This was where he earned a national reputation, for his nasty editorials against the government. He was a socialist, not an anarchist, but he also showed contempt for democracy, believing that most people were too stupid to know what was in their own best interests and that they were anyway too ignorant to choose their own best leaders."

The man sounds like an average left-winger in today's America. We all know what happened once he got in to government. Just think, Michael Moore could be the next Mussolini!

Actually when you compare ideologies, quotes, speeches, etc., Bush comes off looking very good compared to the people that are considered the greatest leaders of the 20th Century.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005277

Check out the long analysis of the Roe Effect, the theory that abortions since Roe v Wade have adversely affected the Democratic Party's ability to get votes. Why? Because far more leftists have gotten abortions than right wingers, and most of those aborted fetuses would probably have grown up to vote the same way their parents would have. So the Democratic Party, according to the stats in this article, has denied itself something like 25 million voters.

Finally, there's proof that Bush lied! He said the sovereignty handover would take place June 30, but instead the the new Iraqi government got their due on June 28. Bush had to lie, if he hadn't then every attack made by insurgents and terrorists over the next few days would be reported by the media as being Bush's fault. They would say the attacks are in protest of the proposed sovereignty handover, and that if Bush hadn't illegal invaded Iraq, then all these people killed would still be alive. So Bush beat them to the punch and did it early, and blunted a weapon the press was sure to use. Good for you, Mr. President. Of course if the press in the United States would actually try to be fair and impartial, then he wouldn't have had to lie. What's ridiculous is that many members of the press corps are really ticked off about the whole thing. Fortunately the President has no obligation to tell the press anything.

What sucks about the press is that they have no checks and balances. They can say whatever they want, and are so insulated from any consequences of even purposely lying, that they can affect elections with lies and half-truths, and no one can do a thing about it. They ought to be free, but they also ought to have some serious consequences for misleading their readers. Heck, most of the time they refuse to even admit mistakes, even when the evidence is right there in black and white. Like the New York Times last week.... They say one day that the 9/11 Commission confirmed their own knowledge that there was no relationship between Iraq and Osama (which is not at all what the Commission said), and the next day they discuss evidence they have uncovered of meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Queda people. They don't bother to mention the inconsistency between saying one thing one day and the opposite the next day. That's because the press is left-biased, and, in their own minds, infallible.

A letter I sent to the AJC today:

Sorry folks, Bush never ever even implied that Saddam had anyting to do with 9/11. merely that he had a relationship with Al Queida, and they did not how how far that relationship extended. If the people of this country got the message that Saddam was involved in 9/11, it was because of the media misrepresenting his words, just as they have misrepresented the result of the 9/11 Comission as stating that there was no relationship, when, in fact, all they did was say there ws no relationship regarding attacks on American soil, a whole different ball of wax. You see, the media twists the Presidents words, and then they accuse hime of lying when the twist they added turns out to be untrue, but they cannot ever quote Bush on this issue, because the public would relaize that he never said what he is supposed to have said.

Anybody know what a space elevator is? It's basically a long, thick cable that stretches from the surface of a planet to an orbital height. Cargo carrying machines can climb up and down the cable, cutting vast costs from using a reaction engine to reach orbit. Once at the top of the cable, the orbital velocity is such that only a relatively small boost can free an object from the Earth's gravity well, allowing ships to head off towards asteroids, planets, moons, etc., at a pittance compared to how we might do it now. It all sounds like science-fiction, but thanks to the discovery and subsequent applications of buckyballs, science-fiction will once again prove itself as a prognosticator.

Buckyballs are a form of carbon, like graphite and diamond, only with many more atoms in the molecule. I beleive the first variety discovered had 64, though with experimentation scientists have been able to create buckytubes, and those are key to the space elevator. Until buckytubes were invented, there was no substance cheap enough and strong enough for the cable for a space elevator. According to the scientists at the head of a 3 year government funded study, the space elevator could be built using buckytubes in 10 years for $10 billion. That sounds like a lot, but compared to how much it cost to put a man on the moon, it's nothing, and yet a far greater achievement, as it opens up the solar system. This isn't just about science, it's about exploration, mining, tourism (think how many people would line up to pay $4000 for a few hours in zero G at the top of the elevator, I know I'd save for it), and so many things we haven't even thought of yet.

Between the X Prize and the possibility of a space elevator, it's an exciting time to follow the news of space. Since the moon landing there has been little near-space activity to get excited about. The space shuttles were nifty, but tragedy kept them from becoming really useful, and the ISS can't do much but sit there. Pictures from Hubble may have inspired a few children to become interested in astrophysics, but I bet far less kids recently have wanted to be astronauts than in the 70's. Although years will pass before we see if the X Prize or the elevator really lead to anything, the possibilities are as endless as the universe.

Maybe.

Unless the universe is going to shrink someday.

I'm starting to think that Arnold might turn out to be a hell of a good politician. I read that he set up a smoking tent outside the capitol building since smoking is prohibited inside all state buildings. And he had this to say when asked about his governing style, "Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women." He followed that up with, "Wait a minute, that's Conan," he said. "I stepped out of character here for a second."

Among several other innaccuracies, and a few outright lies in Bill Clinton's new autobiography comes this whopper. Bill says Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. There is a problem, however. Edmund Hillary didn't climb Everest until 7 years after Hillary Clinton was born, and Sir Hillary wasn't even a bit famous before he climbed the mountain; in fact he was a poor beekeeper. This is such a stupid lie to get caught in, because even if it were true, no one would give a damn, so why bother making it up? It's almost as if Bill wants everyone to distrust him, and he does his best to help.

I got a GMail account. Soon after someone tried to send a large file of pictures to my hotmail account, which rejected it for being too big, so I had the person send it to my Gmail account, and it came right through. Problems have arised, though. Gmail seems very slow, and a little confusing. I'm sure the confusion will disappear soon enough as I get used to format, but the slowness? I hope they fix that soon or I won't be using it much.

And don't forget to read this great lambasting of Michael Moore and his new piece of crap (I mean film).

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/

Mike Adams strikes again. Adams writes for Townhall.com, and is always very sarcastic, and very funny. This one, however, really makes you think. I'm not sure what it makes you think, but it definitely makes you think.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/ma20040614.shtml

Just saw two articles from 1999, one from the London paper, The Guardian, and the other from the CNN website. Both of them talk about how Saddam Hussein had offered amnesty and support for Osama bin Laden. Both of those news entities recently published a series of articles about how there was never a connection between Osama and Saddam. Both know better and could not advertise their bias more blatantly if they tried.

Damn, this kid is cool. Almost like a 60's hippie, except he's on the other side... in a way.

One wonders, in light of current events, if the hippies and protestors of the 60's were really left wing, or if they were simply anti-establishment. Now the establishment, at least in schools, is definitely left wing, so the anti-establishment people are, by definition, right wing, like the kid in this story.

http://hq.protestwarrior.com/?page=/featured/PHS/PHS.php

No one can be wrong all the time, except for George Bush, at least in the eyes of the media. The problem with one entity saying another entity is ALWAYS wrong, is that in order to be always wrong, one would ahve to be smart enough to know what's right and do the opposite. A typical moron will be wrong a lot, but they say even a broken clock is right twice a day. Isn't it funny, then, that the left can call Bush stupid and say everything he does is wrong? You simply cannot be stupid and always wrong, it's just not possible, and what this tells me is that the people who constantly attack Bush on every decision he makes are not necessarily against whatever Bush did, they're jsut against Bush. When you hate someone so much that you are willing to say something is wrong just to attack the person who did it, then you have some serious integrity problems. That's the left today. They'd rather say good is bad than admit that Bush might be right sometimes. Their moral compasses need some adjusting, and then maybe we can have some sensible debates between right and left, instead of crazed, illogical hatred from the left, and a disdain of the left from the right.

Much of the US media seems to be really desperate to smear Bush in any way possible, and they've created a comedy of errors along the way. First you had the imminent threat scandal, where Bush has supposedly said that Iraq posed an imminent threat, and the media hounded him after the invasion of Iraq took place, saying that evidence showed there was no imminent threat and thus Bush lied. The problem with this, however, is that Bush very specifically, in a State of the Union address, said that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat and must be stopped before they do. Of course the media attacked that response, sayign that he had made America belive that Iraq was an imminent threat by implying it, if not stating it. The problem there.... The media skewed Bush's words in the first place, and if anyone is to blame for polls showing that the public thought Bush said Iraq was an imminent threat, it's the media.

Now we have the newest Bush lied scandal, about the connections between Saddam and Al Queda and 9/11. Bush and his administration have long stated that there are connections between the terrorist group and Saddam's despotic government. The 9/11 Blame Game Commission's report said that there were no connections between Saddam and 9/11, but there were connections between Saddam and Al Queda. The media, of course, jumped on this, saying that the Comission proves that Bush lied and that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. The problem here is that Bush never said Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, just with Al Queda. If the public thought otherwise, it was because the media had twisted Bush's words to meet their own fantasies.

The media twists peoples' words, and then berates thos people for saying things they never said in the first place. And the New York Times wonders why people don't trust them anymore....

I got a call on my cell phone from the New York Times today. They were trying to get me to subscribe. Since I can read it online anytime, I have no desire to subscribe, but I did decide to tweak the guy a bit and see what he says. So I told him I didn't want to subscribe because of their blatant left-wing bias. He retorted that Clinton's new book got a really bad review. Apparantely that's all it takes to balance everything. So maybe if Bush writes a really bad book they'll start giving him accolades for everything else he does?

Something I've read in several political screeds recently is that this is the most religious election in our history. In a way it is, because religion is being more often, but really it's not. It's the most non-religious election in history. Good or bad, up until now it was pretty much guaranteed that both major party candidates would be good, god-fearing Christians of one denomination or another. They still are in this election, but so many of Kerry's supporters are so anti-religion as to make it an issue. In future elections, candidates representing the left wing will basically have to apologize for their religion, and make excuses for it. Kerry hasn't had to do so yet, but he has had to seperate himself from Catholicism somewhat in order to avoid the abortion debate. At any rate, until now religion was usually not an issue (excepting a few elections, like JFK and his Catholicism), and all of the sudden Bush is being pilloried for being religious. The "intellectual" left (the quotes are because I find few of the enlightened philosphers of the left, like Chomsky, as all that intelligent. Sure, the guy can kick my ass in linguistics, but he has less formal education in history and politics than I do, yet is cited as a leading thinker) is slowly moving towards making atheism the default standard, and religious people as mentally disturbed. While not a big fan of religious fundamentalists, the idea of censuring someone because of their belief in god is downright scary.

With thanks to James Taranto, of OpinionJournal's Best of the Web Today, it seems that Kerry lied. He said that more black people are in jail than in college today, but according to available statistics, this is far from true. About 2.5 million blacks were in college in 2002, the most recent year available, and about 1 million in jail. Granted, Kerry probably didn't lie, he probably was just incorrect, but Bush was probably just incorrect about WMD, and is constantly called a liar for it.

The first privately funded space vehicle launched into space and safely landed back on Earth this morning. This could, some day, be seen as being as important as the Moon Landing to the future of humanity in space. If the government continues to allow private groups to launch their own space vehicles, eventually corporations will start mining asteroids, putting humans at work in space, and leading the way to a real colonization. It's not happening if we leave it to governments to do the job. Like most innovations it has to come from those with a profit motive, or it's going to take forever.

I really can't stress enough the importance of this. NASA, as basically the only entity in the US that was going in to space, consider many ideas for vehicles, and in the end, decides upon one version to try out. They can't afford to actually build different vehicles to see which one works best. Events like the X-Prize, however, give incentive to private entities to build their own vehicles and send them in to space. Even if none of them work, the ideas tried out will be either successes or failures, giving a lot more real feedback on vehicles than we've gotten from NASA in the last 30 years.

Things are looking pretty good for Bush and the right wing this week. Iraq is actually going well, and even the media hasn't been able to spin much abd stuff over the weekend, because there wasn't anything bad to spin. Putin, the Russian dude, stated to the media that he warned Bush, post-9/11, that Saddam was planning some attacks on American soil, which, if he can get some more evidence to back it up, pretty much serves as a 100% justification for war. If Russian intelligence, who had a far better knowledge of Iraq than US intel, says that Saddam was planning attacks on the US, then either we believe them and stop bashing Bush, or the left can say the Russians ar e lying and stop all this crap about how other countries need to like us. If you won't believe them, then you obviously don't care if they like you that much. Anyway, if it's true, than all I can say is, "Go Bush, thanks for possibly saving my life."

I just started a Wish List on Amazon.com. If anyone out that wants to get me a book, you're more than welcome to.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/ma20040618.shtml

I love the article linked to above, be sure to read it.

I just read something very scary to me. A French government official involved with the E.U. said that he doesn't approve of the targeting of innocents by terrorists, then goes on to say that many terrorists should be called revolutionaries, and then says that he's not sure that anyone in a democracy is innocent. I suppose he's saying that in a democracy everyone gets a vote, so everyone is responsible for everything, and thus no one is an innocent civilian. That's scary. By his attitude, Islamic terrorists are justified in killing everyone that lives in democracy, but it would be evil to kill non-military or government people in a dictatorship or a socialist republic or a monarchy. Now that's some screwed up thinking. I hope the rest of the world doesn't agree, or we're going to have some hard times in the future here in America.

The citizens of French Polynesia have elected a new leader from their independence party. France, the same country whose leaders have spent much of the last two years calling the United States imperialist, has stated that they will not allow French Polynesia to become independent. France, imperialist hypocrites. I don't understand why anyone even listens to them anymore. Rememeber, these are the same people that worship Jerry Lewis and Michael Moore.

Envionmental groups usually want higher taxes on fossil fuels and the like, as higher prices mean less will be bought, and thus less expelled as waste into the atmosphere. BushGreenWatch, a group that does their best to trash Bush, has previously criticized the President for not raising taxes on gas, and now are criticizng him for supporting a bill that "will not lower energy prices." More of the left's damned if you do, damned if you don't, attitude towards Bush. Once again a left wing group has shown that they care a lot more about their hatred of Bush than they do about what they are supposed to stand for, which in this case is the environment.

I've always known that there are Senators that don't show up for every vote and have a long record of ebing absent when the Senate is in session, but John Kerry takes the cake. He's only been around for 14 of the last 112 votes in the Senate. Sure, he's campaigning, but so is Bush 43, and he somehow manages to also do the job the country is paying him to do. Why can't Kerry? The governor of Mass., the state Kerry represents in the Senate, has asked that Kerry either step down, or do his job. I'm sure the governor will be ignored, but he does have a point. And there is precedent for Presidential candidates giving up their previous elected positions in order to campaign, but man of the people Kerry still wants his $175k (or is it higher) paycheck. Or maybe he knows he can't win the election, so he's hedging his bets and making sure he still has a job when he loses. The Senate ought to pass a rule that a Senator has to show up for at least 75% of Senate sessions or be removed from office. I get paid a lot less than they do, and I can't miss a single day of work 9except for scheduled vacation time, obviously) or I'd get in some serious trouble. Why is it that Senators can ignore their jobs and still get paid and hailed as servents of the people? Kerry serves only on person, himself.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/lc20040616.shtml

Here's Clinton being involved with people who are very bad, yet such a story is ignored by the press. You can bet your bottom dollar that if someone said that Bush was chummy with someone who is involved with organized crime, there'd be calls for impeachment, but Clinton, being Clinton, gets a free pass. Actually this is one of many free passes he's gotten. The press should either shout this news of Clinton being involved with crime figures from the top of every mountain, or they ought to stop bashing Bush for being friends with oilmen and such.

Thanks to Victor Davis Hansen for this idea.

If some group or country came to the US and said, "We demand in tribut ehte lives of at least 30 of your people every year, or we will kill a lot more," we'd laugh at them and tellthem to go stick it where the sun don't shine. Why then do we allow all the radical Islamic fascists to do this to us? Think about it. Ever since the formation of groups like Hezbolah, Americans have been murdered by Islamic terrorist groups pretty much every year for something like 25 years, and we've just let them keep doing it. It's high time we tell them to stop. And if they don't, we stop them. Here's the deal. Make a huge announcement in the press, call it the Second Bush Doctrine, and say, "Every time American citizens are killed by Muslim terrorists, we WILL kill an equal number of Muslims, terrorists or not." I know it's not particularly realistic in the world we live in, but wouldn't it be nice if we could stop taking the high road and just take care of business?

Where does the responsibility of the press to the American people end? Or begin, for that matter. We have a worldwide economy which is highly dependent on the peoples' faith in its stability and health. Right now we have a strong and growing economy, according to every economic indicator and study available. New jobs are up, new unemployment claims are down, large employers talk of mass hirings in the near future, and even the federal deficit is lower than had been predicted. You'd never know this watching the evening news or reading most major newspapers. The press is supposed to tell the truth, but they seem to be doing their best to ignore any good economic news, spin what they cannot ignore, and basically give the impression that the economy is in the dumps. For that reason 40% of Americans, according to polls, think that the economy is doing very badly, and the facts show that that is simply not true. Without consumer confidence the economy can never realize the potential of recent gains. The press could do the right thing, the truthful thing, and report the good news and help their country get in shape, or they can continue to try to hide the truth from the American people and possibly damage the economy thus giving credence to the view of the majority of journalists; that Bush is destroying the eocnomy and Kerry must be elected. Should this happen, those of us who understand the truth will never trust the media again, and that's a shame.

http://www.mediatenor.com/US-Election_040611.htm

Big surprise. Big media, after lambasting Bush for the economy for the first few months of the year, has been ignoring economy-related news in the most recent few months. I wonder why? It couldn't be that left-wing bias in the media, because we all know that doesn't exist. It can't exist because the New York Times says it's a myth, and we all know that everything the New York Times prints must be true (see Jayson Blair).

Anyway, the economy is kicking some ass, so journalists ignore it, as they want Bush out and spreading the good news that his policies are working would be bad for Kerry's chances. Just shows how media cares less about the actual state of the country than they do about their own agendas.

www.ablechild.org

Good for whomever started this website. Perhaps it's a step towards ending forced drugging of children.

I had jury duty yesterday. It was medical malpractice suit, and I got off by telling the attorneys, honestly, that I would be fair and impartial regarding guilt or innocence, but would refuse to award more than a few hundred thousand dollars, no matter the circumstances. I further explained how suits like this have driven up my health insurance bill, and the targeting of doctors for every teeny mistake is destroying the health care industry and that it has to stop somewhere, and it's going to be right here, with me. So they did not pick me. Darn!

Did you knwo that medical insurance only started to be offered by employers around WWII or so. I forget if it was before or after the war, but regardless, employers began to offer it as an incentive to prospective employees. It's only become a "right" and a normal thing in the last few decades as the left made it into an issue. They say it's a right, so conservatives look bad if they don't support a "right," even though it's not a right. Why should this not be a right? Simple. In order for health insurance, and thus health care, to be a right, you have to take away rights from doctors and medical care practitioners. Suddenly they have no choice in their patients. What happens if people stop becoming doctors because the risk of someone suing them and destroying their lives a small mistake is not worth the rewards from being a doctor. Then you have less doctors, and more people clamoring for their "right" to medical care, and doctors have even less free will regarding their lives. They become merely a tool of their insurers, with bits of their lives taken away from them for the punlic benefit. I think that's a horrible way to treat any group, and thus I reject in full any sort of socialized medical plan for the United States.

I read in an article in the Technique, Georgia Tech's school newspaper, that fewer than 5% of sexual assaults are reported. I don't see how this is poosible. How can anyone possibly know how many assaults are unreported? I can only imagine this is a stat thought up by one of those radical feminist groups that seem to think that all men are opressors and all women are victims, whether or not they have really been victimized. If anyone has a plausible explanation of how such a statistic was compiled, please write me at benskott@hotmail.com

I want to know.

The new Pew poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly distrust news organizations now. After the release of the report, CNN bragged that they were the most trusted news network in the country, and that is true. What they don't mention is that only about 30% of people surveyed trust what they see on CNN. That's good compared to the other networks, but pitiful compared to the numbers even just a few years ago.

Some have said that business interests have ruined news. Other rebut that that's obviously not true, because business interests would try to improve trust to bring in and keep viewers. I think they're both true to an extent. Business interests focus on short term gains, and the best way to gain viewers is to sensationalize events. That will bring in tons of viewers, but those viewers aren't going to be regular viewers. Short-term thinking has helped erode viewership, but that still doesn't explain the trust issue. I could watch CNN every day for sensational stories, but that doesn't mean I trust them. Trust has been eroded by the constant partisanship and lack of any semblence of objectivity. When you can switch from CNN to FoxNews and see coverage of the same event, but it seems like they are telling two compleltely different, opposite stories, then an intelligent viewer would realize that the truth is somewhere in between, and that neither network is being truthful, both are spinning.

Someone asked me today at work if they could ask me a stupid question. As stupid questions that a person can answer for themselves are a pet peeve of mine, I said, "No," and turned away. He asked anyway.

They were showing the funeral of Ronald Reagan on the big screen in one of the conference rooms here at the Atlanta Fed. I never would have known had I not gone out of my way to find a comfy chair to read the newspaper in, but I'm glad I did get to some of it, and I'm happy that the Fed showed it, even though it wasn't really advertised.

I got in a bit of a tiff with someone about health insurance at lunch today. I decided to end the debate before it got nasty, since I have to work with this person. She was talking about how she couldn't afford health insurance until she had children. I said, "Why didn't you get a better job?" to which she responded that she tried and couldn't and that happens to lots of people for various reasons like "not having a bachelor's degree," which I think was her reason. I wanted to say, "Well why didn't you get one?" but I'm sure her answer would be either A) she couldn't afford it or B) she couldn't because she had to take care of her kids. I'm sure a regular reader of mine will already know what I would have answered to that. A) There are ample scholarships and government grants out there for anyone who is sufficiently motivated to go to college, you just have to do some extra work filling out lots of applications. B) Why did you have kids if you couldn't afford to take care of them? Now that I think about it, it has to be A, because once she had kids, she could afford to have health insurance because having children gets you a break. I thought they got rid of all government handouts that encourage people who are poor to have children?

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0604/medicine.men.html

I just want to start this off by saying, "HA HA."

So Canada's vaunted socialist health care system sucks. Big surprise. You ahve to wait months for non-emergency surgery, and many ahve died while on the wait list for heart surgery. Sure, poor people get cold medicine for free, but if they have heart problems, they're fucked. The wealthy can afford to cross the border to the US where they can egt quality medical care, but if you're a poor person in Canada and require medical care a bit more sophisticated than "take two and call me in the morning," you're pretty much out of luck. Funny how a system that was created to protect the poor has instead killed off several poor people. I know someone that moved here from Canada because, beyond the ridiculous socialist medical system, the roads are falling apart, taxes are strangling families, and there's little sense of optimism as far as moving up in life, bettering yourself, whatever. Socialism promises the lazy that it's ok to continue being lazy because the taxes on hard workers will save them, and at the same time discourages the hard workers from working hard, because all hard work does is add to their tax burden, and it certainly doesn't allow you better access to government programs, so what's the point of working hard when you'll be in the same boat as a slacker?. Pure capitalism, on the other hand, gives incentives to hard workers to work hard, and tells lazy people they are s.o.l. What we have in the United States is a mixture of the two, where hard workers can move up, even though their taxes will be increased some, and lazy people will get enough handouts to get by for a while, but not forever. Personally I prefer pure capitalism. Yes, it becomes a matter of social Darwinism, but so what? People are entitled to equal rights, sure, and that's something I would fight for. But all people are not created equal. That's a fact, pure and simple. If they were created equal, then why does Kobe Bryant, younger than I am, make millions for playing basketball, while I write this blog? If people were equal then I'd be able to play Kobe to a standstill in one-on-one. And if people are not equal, then some must be better than others. And what is so wrong with expecting the better people to succeed more than the others? Better or not, by the way, is in no way related to race or religion or anything like that. It's based on what individuals are. Alan Greenspan is smarter than a lot of people, Kobe is a better basketball player, and Jennifer Anniston is more attractive. 90% of Americans will agree with that statement, and also agree with the statement that all people are created equal. The problem is that one statement denies the other, and you can't have both be true. The "All people are created equal," thing is a lie that has given rise to many of the worst tradgedies in human history, communism, Stalinism, and the millions of dead people that resulted are a direct effect of "all people are created equal."

Please don't mistake me. I'm not calling for everyone that scores below a certain number on an IQ test to be killed, I'm simply saying we ought to remove some of the safety nets we have that force some to pick up the slack of others. It's not black and white, it's all gray, which is why a really smart man who is a total jerk and exerts totalitarian power over others is not better than a mentally-deficient homeless person. The one guys jerkiness can easily negate any "betterness" that his intelligence grants him, if you were going to do an accounting.


EDIT: It's about 6 hours after I wrote the above, and I would like to retract a lot of it on further thought. I'm leaving it up simply because I feel it would be dishonest not to. It's not that I disagree with my 6 hours earlier self, but that I think the section on social darwinism needs to be thought out a lot better so I don't come across as an asshole, because I'm not.

Whoa! This is a bit crazy. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, speaking at the G-8 Summit, criticized the American Democratic Party for hypocrisy. He says the invasion of Iraq that the Democrats are protesting as illegal and unilateral and all that jazz, is no different in those respects than what Clinton did when he bombed the Serbs a few years ago. Clinton, of course, is a Democrat, and was the pride of the party, so he would never get criticized. And notice how Republicans supported the President back then, depsite it being "illegal and unilateral," and ordered by Democrat, as opposed to now when a Republican is in charge and the left attacks, attacks, attacks. Once again one side has shown some integrity and the other has shown what fools they are.

Two kids at a high school are being denied their diplomas for wearing their National Guard uniforms under their robes. The school is, among other things, requiring them to complete a certain number of hours of community service. Someone ought to point out that National Guard service is community service, and more laudable than anything else they could do. Yes, they get paid, but not a whole lot.

Thanks to www.zerointelligence.net for the info.

Interesting work on the concept of "writer's block." What I really enjoyed in this essay is the specific stories of various authors. I knew that J.D. Salinger was still alive, but had not realized that he still writes, just never publishes. I wonder what will happen when he dies? Will we get as many new Salinger books as we now get Tupac albums? Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird in her 30's, and hasn't published a book since. I remember a quote from her where someone asked a question about whether she would write more and she said, "I said everything I have to say." In the article I link to below, Harper Lee said she was working on another book. So I suppose there's a contradiction there. I wonder which is right?

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040614fa_fact

Facist:
1) often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

2) a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Straight from the dictionary, the definition of fascism. Sounds like the left-wing today. Not based on nation or race, but on ideology. The left these days seems to feel that everyone that disagress with them is evil, and they elevate the importance of agreement over the value of individual thought. They are proponents of "severe economic and social regimentation," in that they want really high taxes, they want the government's hands in every penny that moves from one place to another, they go to protests with signs like "Kill the warmongers" (that would be surpression of opposition), they want everyone to tolerate everyone else, as long as they all agree that the right wing is evil. The social regimentation is an entire essay by itself, but just to throw a few self-explanatory items that way: affirmative action, school busing, intolerance of religion (except Muslims), etc.

Look, not many people on the right really liked Clinton, and they did try to impeach him for lying under oath about what is really a minor issue, but they never said things like, "He's committed crimes against humanity and should have been executed years ago, he's evil, he hates black people, he let millions die of AIDS b/c he doesn't like gays, etc." All of those are things that have been posted on leftist websites about Reagan in the last few days, and that stuff can't hold a candle to the kind of crap they say about Bush. I don't think closed-minded, unhinged, intolerant, and fascist are inappropriate comments to make about the left today. But notice how I never said they were evil or needed to be shot or anything like that.

"He used to talk about the letter he received from a man who said, ''You can go and live in Turkey, but you can't become Turkish. You can go and live in Japan, but you can't become Japanese. You can go to live in Germany or France, but you can't become German or French.'' But the man said that anyone from any corner of the world could come to America and become an American."

Arnold on Reagan. What a great way of describing America's place in the world. And it's true. Despite all the race-baiting, and the supposed anti-Muslim angst in the country, if you come here from anywhere and are willing to accept our laws (and in some places that pander to illegal immigrants, you don't even have to respect our laws), you can be as American as anyone. I work with a number of people who were born elsewhere and don't even speak very good English, but they are trying to learn, and I don't think of them as foreigners at all, merely as Americans in training.

A letter I wrote to Jay Bookman of the AJC editorial page regarding his editorial published 6/10/2004:

Have you ever read the Geneva Accords? If you had, you'd know that the prisoners in Abu Gharib have no place in them. Does that excuse torture? Not at all, but stop deceiving people by floating this Geneva Accords junk. Geneva very specifically says it is for uniformed prisoners from a legitimate army, none of which is in any way true in the Iraq situation. And that memo.... My god man, the White House gets thousands of memos a day on various items, many of which sound absolutely crazy, but their job is to plan for any circumstances. Heck, if there had never been a 9/11, but someone got to read that daily brief about hijacking airplanes to fly them in to buildings, you'd think the White House was nuts. They aren't, they're just a lot more open-minded about the possibility of bad people doing bad things than you are.

I coined a new word this morning. "Splot," being an approximate term for the amount of toothpaste you put on your tooth brush. Usage: Hey man, can I borrow a splot of toothpaste, I'm all out, but I'm getting some later.

Be sure to tell all of your friends and family about this, so we can spread the use of splot all around the English-speaking world!

Just read a very interesting article on positive versus negative rights. Negative rights seem to be basically libertarian ideals, like the right to be left alone, whereas positive rights are more liberal, like the right to an education, the right to a job, etc. I don't agree that we should ahve such positive rights. We should have the right to an opportunity for an education, but if I do everything I can to avoid that education, but still expect it to be given to me, then I have forfeited my right. And I don't think anyone has the right to a job, because that means that someone else has lost their right to hire or not hire employees at their own discretion. In order to have positive rights, you have to take away other rights. Think about it further on your own, and you will see that there are few positive rights that won't take away from others. And, not surprisingly, the positive rights almost always favor the poor, and restrict the rights of the owners.

History is the story of how the actions of powerful, hard-working people affected the rest of humanity. Everything good in this world, everything you use on a daily basis, came from a provider, a hard-worker, and in many cases, a rich person. Do you think your TV is the result of years of education and then research and experimentation of a lazy bum on welfare? Do you think the recent resurgence of our economy and the lowering of the unemployment rate is because a bunch of lazy folk got off their butts and did some work? No, it came from, at least partially, tax cuts which allowed business owners to expand and then to hire new employees. At their own volition. Had the positive right to a job been enforced during the recession, right now you'd have a lot more bankrupt business owners unable to pay the people they were required to hire, and probably laying off many folk they already employed, as well as the enforced hires. Those business owners would probably then be sued for taking away the right to a job.

No one has the right to a job, or to an education. Those are priviledges that should be earned through hard work and perseverance.


More thoughts from a few hours later:
The other big problem with positive rights is that they eventually become enforced. In other words, if you say everyone has the right to a job, eventually you're going to have people being forced to work against their will. At one point someone decided the government should provide education for everyone who wants it up to a certain age or grade level. That evolved into forcing everyone to go to school up to a certain age level. Now that particular example is not a horrible thing. I think everyone should have to go to school to a certain level, or forfeit their right to vote. Unfortunately there are other "positive rights" that should by no means ever become requirements, but probably would, given enough time for activists to try to make everyone do what they want.

Can you believe it? Staffers at the Democratic National Committee offices refused to lower their flags to half-mast in honor of Ronald Reagan until they absolutely had to. This is despicable. Is it hate, or simply envy that Reagan was able to do what no Democrat could; defeat the Soviet Union? I know if Jimmy Carter died, the Republicans would lower their flags to half-mast immediately, but I suppose some people have integrity. At any rate, up until this point I was giving the Dems some leeway, thinking it's just typical partisanship, but their actions yesterday, and many of the quotes from party leaders that I have read strike me as beyond reasonable. Some say men think with their penises. The Democrats seem to think with their hate.

I just read a horrible story about a kid on ritalin. His father took him off the medication after he noticed significant weight loss, trouble sleeping, and a loss of apetite. Once clean, the child's health improved, but his behavior problems in school returned. Instead of just dealing with a hyper kid the way hyper kids were dealt with in school when I was a child, the school demanded the parent put the kid back on his medication, or they were going to report him to the Department of Child Welfare or whatever it's called in that state for child neglect and abuse. So the father notices a medication is causing very unfavorable side effects in his child and takes him off the medication, and the school system considers that abuse? Whoever is making these decisions ought to reported for child abuse, not the father. You can read more on this at www.zerointelligence.net, my favorite site for "Zero Tolerance" Retardedness.

It's the 60th anniversery of D-Day, so I figure I ought to relate some thoughts. D-Day, of course, was the turning point of World War II, one of the most important wars in human history. On D-Day, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy and created a staging area for more forays into the mainland of Europe. A lot of people died that day, yet without these brave sacrifices, the world might look like a very different place right now.

World War II may some day be known as the last "just" war. Not because it was the last "just" war, but because the advent of 24 hour news has created an atmosphere where there is no such thing as agreement on any issue, much less one as large as whether a war is just or not. WWII had moral absolutes that few would challenge. Iraq has simnilar moral absolutes, yet has been undermined from day one. In history books every war (in which the US is involved) after WWII will have question marks by it, but WWII is pretty much cemented in people's minds that no one questions it anymore. I find that to be a good thing, seeing as the idea that it was an unjust war means that you really have a hankering to kill Jews, and I don't want to die.

So Ronald Reagan is dead. What does that mean? Not much, really, except that after big events people always say, "It'll be many years before the history books tell us what to think about such and such." Well now that Reagan is dead, the history books will being to crystalize their thoughts on the 80's. Growing up I always laughed when one of my conservative friends would say something like, "Reagan was the greatest President ever!" Back then I was a liberal by reflex. I was told by teachers and textbooks and newspapers that being liberal was good, and being conservative was evil and selfish. Now I know that's not true at all, and being liberal often means being a hypocrite, or at the least inconsistent from issue to issue. And now I know that Ronald Reagan, while not the greatest President ever, has to at least be considered the greatest President since Theodore Roosevelt. If the left is going to blame Bush for 9/11 because it happened on his term, then Reagan gets credit for the fall of the Soviet Empire, the unmasking of communism, those horrible Flock of Seagulls haircuts, and the release of those hostages from Iran. No other President has such a good list of accomplishments on his resume. Thank you, Ronald, for being the right man for the U.S. May you rest in peace.

Ok, I just had to throw this one in. A letter by Mark Twain, who is probably still the greatest ever American writer, and certainly was one of the best in the world for his time.

http://transplantedtexan.blogspot.com/2004/06/twains-american-shame.html

Look at all the worst atrocities committed around the world in the last few years. You have the Palestinian suicide bombers, the Al Queada bombers (9/11, Bali, etc.), you have the Arab Muslims in the Sudan comitting genocide against the black Muslims in the country, you have Saddam killing the Kurds and possibly millions of Shi-ites, the Muslims Chechnyans bombing their government.... Who are the antagonists in every single example? Muslims. Is there a problem with that religion? I think it's obvious that there is. Make your own decision. If you disagree, try to find one example of a massive atrocity comitted in the last few years by a non-Muslim group. And Abu Gharib doesn't count because it can't hold a candle to the list above in scale and "evil-ness."

My goodness, can our city and state's transportation officials get any more stupid and pigheaded? We already have just about the worst traffic of any city in the country, so you'd think the DOT would get the idea that if they just do opposite of what they think they should do, it will all work out. Anyway, the incident is the restriping of the northbound 85 merge to 400. It was two lanes, traffic flowed smoothly, and everyone was happy. Well the DOT decided a few days ago to restripe it into one lane. According to DOT officials, it was always one lane but the striping was deceptive and people improperly made two lanes. Well we can't have that! Who cares that only having one lane is causing huge backups and as much as doubling the time of some peoples' commutes? It's supposed to be one lane, and even if that screws everything up, we're doing it the way we want to. Captain Herb, the traffic copter guy for WSB, says he has taken calls from more upset citizens on this issue than any other single issue in his 15 years of covering traffic, including the Cobb-Fulton fiasco about getting over the Chattahoochee from Cobb a few years back. The DOT offical also said he has been inundated with upset people, but he "doesn't plan to give in." Fine, fire the bastard! In 10 years having two lanes has not caused problems, but in 5 minutes one lane has caused huge problems. If the DOT isn't willing to do the right thing, get someone else in there who will.

Sometimes Ben Shapiro annoys me. I imagine that in real life I would want to slap him. But he does write an interesting column. Here's his latest, more dirt to dump on the coffin that is my opinion of the UN.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/bs20040602.shtml

One often hears how the rank of WWII veterans are slowly being thinned by death. I'm sure, back in the day, that it was a big deal when the last Civil War veteran died. Well how about this?

"Alberta Martin was 21 when she married 81-year-old former confederate soldier William Jasper Martin in the 1920s.

"The marriage of convenience ended almost five years later when Martin died, but his young bride lived long enough to earn the symbolically important title of last widow of a Civil War veteran.

"Dixie is in mourning after Mrs Martin died yesterday - fittingly on Memorial Day - after suffering a heart attack on May 7. She was 97."

How crazy is that? I suppose there may be some others out there that talked to Civil War vets when they were young, but there can't be all that many. Anyway, the Civil War ended in 1865, and the ripples from that war still affect our lives on daily basis. As far as world history goes, the American Civil War is one of the most important wars ever fought. That war was America's coming of age, and the US has since gone on to dominate the world in culture, politics, science, military power, and individual freedom. Had the war gone the other way, I believe the world would be a very different place, and probably for the worse.

From Andrew Sullivan (andrewsullivan.com)
"JUST A QUESTION: If someone had said in February 2003, that by June 2004, Saddam Hussein would have been removed from power and captured; that a diverse new government, including Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, would be installed; that elections would be scheduled for January 2005; and that the liberation of a devastated country of 25 million in which everyone owns an AK-47 had been accomplished with an army of around 140,000 with a total casualty rate (including accidents and friendly fire) of around 800; that no oil fields had been set aflame; no WMDs had been used; no mass refugee crises had emerged; and no civil war had broken out... well, I think you would come to the conclusion that the war had been an extraordinary success. And you'd be right. Yes, there are enormous challenges; and yes, so much more could have been achieved without incompetence, infighting and occasional inhumanity. But it's worth acknowledging that, with a little perspective, our current gloom is over-blown. Stocks in Iraq have been way over-sold. I even regret some minor sells myself. Now watch the media do all it can to accentuate the negative."

Makes sense. What would have been seen as an incredible, undeniable success a year ago has been twisted into defeat by the media. It's like the economy. When Bush cut taxes, the doom and gloom crowd talked about how the deficit was going to explose, that it wouldn't help employment, blah blah blah. Well employment is up, the deficit is big but shrinking, and growth is sky high. But gas prices are over $2.00, so the economy is a wasteland, according to much of the media, anyway.

A pizza delivery guy was fired from Pizza Hut after shooting to death a man who pulled a gun on him during delivery. Pizza Hut workers are not supposed to be carrying firearms. Apparantely Pizza Hut considers a delivery guy defending himself as bad press and a delivery guy who is shot (or forced to wear a bomb around his neck) is good press. The last words of the dead guy were, "I just wanted some pizza." I think we've uncovered a serious problem in America. There are many people out there who feel it's best to steal pizza at gunpoint instead of working the 3 hours of minimum wage work that it would take to earn enough to buy a pizza legally.