I used to work for a mortgage company, so all this stuff I've been hearing lately about a housing bubble really strikes a chord with me. I saw loan after loan go out to people who really couldn't afford them. They'd get LIBOR ARMs, interest onlys, 100% financing with a massive balloon payment, all the tricks in the book. Default rates are going to be sky high over the next decade or so. What does that mean for me? Well for one thing, interest rates are going to rise. Banks are going to be facing so many foreclosures that they'll sell for dirt cheap, but make you pay for the savings with interest. Fine with me. I'd rather have a smaller principal and higher interest since I don't plan to buy a house until I know I can make at 125% of my monthly payments every month, which means I'll pay the whole thing down so fast the extra interest won't matter. And all these $700k and up homes that people are leveraging their futures to pay for will cost more like $350k. I'm thinking it's going to be a great time to be a first time home buyer in about 5 years, which should be just about right for me.

Senate Democrats have once again proven that they are nothing more than whiny brats who throw fits until they get their way. After last week's "compromise" on the judicial nominee filibusters, in which the Dems basically got what they wanted, you would think the spirit of compromise might carry over for at least a day, but alas, the GOP could not get the votes for cloture on the appointment of John Bolton as UN ambassador. Once again the Democrats refuse to allow an up or down vote for a position that requires a 50%+1 vote for approval. They are fudging the system to make votes that are supposed to be straight majority votes into 3/5s votes by using the filibuster. The UN ambassadorial position is one that has never before been an issue. I believe I read somewhere that Clinton's nominee was confirmed 97-3. One day the citizens of this country will wake up and realize that the Dems don't have the people's best interests in mind, the only thing they think about is how to increase their own power and control over the people.

I had a super-busy weekend! I'll start with the sad part, which is that Charlie the dog has kennel cough. He seemed to be doing much better as of yesterday, and I'm hoping for a full recovery in the next few days.

I don't remember what I did Friday night, but it wasn't very exciting. Saturday morning Smiley and I took Charlie up to Tanah and Alison Barchichat's new home in Marietta. They have a big fenced in back yard and a dog of their own, so Charlie had quite a good time. This was before we realized he's sick. Lunch was Quizo's, mmmm!!! Saturday night I met up with one of my pledge brothers from my frat boys days, Howard Lacheen, who got married later on in the weekend. Howard and I, along with a few other guys headed out to the Highlands for dinner and some drinking. Sunday morning my parents came by to meet Charlie. My Dad is even less of a dog person than I used to be, but he really seemed to try to get to know Charlie. My mom, on the other hand, took to Charlie immediately, and wishes she could dog-sit. Then my good friend from college and another pledge brother, Brian Shedrow, lately of Nashville, TN, came by to hang out for a while. Sunday evening was a surprise b-day party for my uncle, which was interesting, and the food was good. Monday morning was Howard's wedding. The ceremony was long and drawn out like all weddings, but the reception was pretty cool. No dancing, but I got to see a lot of friends from school, and the food was also good. Aron, another guy from the same frat, but a few years younger than the others I've mentioned came by for a visit. He had just gotten back from Italy where he visited his girlfriend, who happens to be the younger sister of yet another former frat brother, Jared, who was also a guest at the wedding. Aron told us all about the trip, and it sounds like he had a fantastic time. I'm very jealous! I did learn that all Italian men are skinny and have small muscles, and wear very tight shirts. They smoke and their names are either Fabio or Antonio. Aron, Smiley and I went out to Rib Etc. for dinner, where I had a half slab of pork ribs. Yummy!!!! Back to my place for a bit, and then Brian Kime and his gf Caroline stopped by. Brian is yet another old frat brother. We all then drove to the Highlands to meet a bunch of people, including Howard and his new bride, Brandi. Finally it was off to bed for me around 12:30 last night.

"Today, wanting someone else's money is called 'need,' wanting to keep your own money is called 'greed,' and 'compassion' is when politicians arrange the transfer."

I don't know who said that, but it fits today's world.

My god, what the hell is this world coming to? An Italian author is being put on trial in Italy for defaming Islam. She said, among other things, that Islamic terrorists have killed lots of people, and that their religion sows discord among humanity. It's become quite clear that we're not allowed to criticize people who hate us and want to kill us. I guess that's why Italy has no law against defaming the United States. We don't hate or want to kill anyone in particular.

There's a different take on the filibuster deal filtering through the blogosphere today. What it might end up meaning is that the Democrats will not be able to filibuster Bush's Supreme Court appointments. Yesterday they approved Owens and Brown for appelate courts or district courts or something, I forget which exactly. So let's say two Supreme Court justices retire or die before Bush's term is up. Then he can nominate Owens and Brown, and the Dems won't be able to filibuster. They already voted on these two, and are only supposed to filibuster under extreme circumstances, according to the wording of the deal. Well they already did not filibuster those two ladies post-compromise, so they won't be able to do it later. Little could happen between now and then to suddenly make it extreme circumstances when it wasn't yesterday.

Of course Dems seem to have short memories and will surely find an excuse, but they'll lose a lot of political capital if they do so.

Amnesty International has accused the United States of running a "gulag" in Guantanamo Bay. This is ridiculous, and an insult to all the people facing real oppression in the world today, and all the people that lost their lives in real gulags. I'm willing to concede that there may be some non-kosher goins on with the prisoners there, though there has been no real proof, just the word of former guests who have every reason to try to make the US look bad, and little reason to tell the truth. Heck, word on the street is that most Muslim terrorists are trained to lie about their captivity in these situations as it makes their captors look bad. Since Amnesty, along with several other NGOs, seems to have a vested interest in making the US look bad, it should come as no surprise that they would believe a rumor like this with no proof. Newsweek's bias caused them to go ahead and print a not-compeltely-sourced story like the Koran flushing thing, and they are the press, a part of society that's supposed to tell the truth. Amnesty's agenda has nothing to do with the truth. They aren't necessarily out to lie, either, but if they hear a rumor, they are under no professional standards to find out for sure if it's true before talking about it.

Anyway, back to my main point. The gulags were the Soviet version of concentration camps. People died by the millions in gulags. Guantanamo Bay has about 500 prisoners, and I have not heard of one single death, much less millions. And if the worst of the alleged torture consists of flushing Korans and making the prisoners walk around in their underwear, then Amnesty should be ashamed of themselves for their comparison. Such hyperbole helps no one, all it does is increase rancor against the United States. It's simply irresponsible, and eventually all but the hardcore left is going to start thinking of these NGOs like the boy who cried wolf.

I've been looking up training tips on dogs when I ran across a picture of a rottweiler and realized that Charlie is probably more rottweiler than anything else. Thankfully he doesn't seem vicious at all. This weekend should be the real test, as we're tkaing him to my friends' new home, which comes complete with a fenced in backyard. He'll get play off-leash and with another dog. If they don't get hurt, then I'm pretty happy.

Chalrie likes to put his mouth around my hand when I grab his paw. He doesn't bite, just uses enough pressure to make me realize he's there. I wonder what that's about? Also when I walk him he's constantly straining the leash. I hate having to pull on his neck so much, but he's either going too fast, or turning off to the side. Will he get the idea eventually and stick with me?

I'm just not sure what to say about the Lost finale, except that it was awesome, especially all the stuff with the numbers (did you notice the jersey numbers of the girls soccer team in the airport?), and "You've got some Arzt on you." Having a DVR is great because we can rewind and slow-mo things like the living smoke and the explosion of Arzt. They superimposed the explosion and amde him disappear just as it goes off. I did this while watching Final Destination 2 once. You think that movie is all about death killing people, but slow-mo reveals that it's about people turning in to puppets, and the puppets getting smashed or decapitated. I'm thinking this opens things up for a sequel where it's revealed that none of the people are dead, they've been kidnapped. They'll dig up graves and find puppets.

I'm disappointed Carrie won American Idol over BO, but it may be better for him in the long run. Now he can sign his own record deal. Heck, with his popularity he could probably become the new lead singer for Skynrd. They probably sell a lot more tickets than they currently do. I wonder if any of those guys were original members?

Yesterday may have been an even better day for poker than the day before. This time wasn't about skill, however, this was all luck. I just got the right cards at the right time. I started with a $10 tournament, which I bubbled in, then I decided to try som $0.25/0.50 NL holdem because I didn't have time to play a tournament again. 8 hands later the $20 I sat down with was $90. Later on I tried $1/$2, sat down with $80 and flopped a flush first hand. I doubled up and deicedd $150 in 7 hands meant it was time to quit for a while. Right before bed I tried a $50 single tbale tourney in which I finished 4th. 3rd would have netted me another $40. At any rate, now I almost have enough to take Kara out to dinner :)

Inspired by the pithy wisdom of a recently discovered fellow blogger, Kara, I decided to dispense some fashion advice for women. I'm no expert, but I can judge what looks good and what looks stupid. This isn't about what to wear to work or what makes you feel good to wear, this is all about what guys find attractive on women.

Get rid of those high heeled shoes with the long pointy toes. That went out with Santa's Elves. I imagine heels are hard enough to walk in already, why make it tougher by adding an extra couple of inches to the front? Not only is it not practical, but it just looks dumb.

No shawls, no panchos. I don't know who thought that dressing like 80 year old women would be a good thing for women's fashion, but that person is wrong! There's only one thing that shawls and panchos are good for, and that's turning an attractive woman into an unattractive women. Forget putting on a fake wedding ring to avoid being hit on in bars, just wear a shawl or pancho, no guy will talk to you unless they are really desperate or like OLD women.

Personally I don't like off the shoulder stuff. By that I mean shirts and dresses that hang over one shoulder and swoop down without going over the other shoulder. Maybe I just have a problem with assymetrical clothing, but I've never liked that look.

French-style pedicures look dumb. Just get yourself a solid shiny color, or even those decorations girls like to put on are cool, but not the French style (same for American style). On the other hand, I love french or american manicured nails. I even like long acrylic ones, but I don't like them when they are so long that they curl and look like claws. That's creepy looking, and it seems like it would be ahrd to accomplis anything with your hands with those on. It also seems like it might be really painful for your man.

I miss the tight black pants era. Back in 1998-2001 or so, just about every girl wore tight black pants to go out partying. I loved it! Bring 'em back, and don't forget the tight white pants, those work quite well, too.

Don't show off your midriff unless it's worthy of showing off. I see a girl with a beautiful face and I decide to go talk to her, but then I notice her midriff is showing rolls of fat hanging over her belt, I'm repulsed and I don't talk to her. I don't expect women to have perfect bodies, god knows I don't have a perfect body, but I'm also not going to walk around showing off my worst parts for all the world to see. Honestly, I really don't mind a girl having a little something extra, sometimes it's quite nice, but to go out of your way to show the world that you have rolls of fat hanging over your belly? That just seems stupid.

And for god's sake, don't try to look like Christina Aguilera in her super-trashy days. She was completely sexy, but then she started dressing like a whore, not just skimpy, but looking like a cross between a hobo, George Clinton, and a peacock, and it was not attractive in the least. Then again, the Paris fashion shows are considered the height of fashion and I rarely see anyone wearing clothing as ugly and unflattering as what I see in the coverage of those shows.

How's this for a line:

"Excuse me, miss. You are entirely too hot and it's not fair to the other women. I'm going to have to ask you to leave.... With me."

Cheesy, but I think it's original, and it's gotta be better than "I must be in heaven, because I see an angel." I've never actually used a line on a girl unless you count my favorite from back in my Barnes and Noble days. It was so easy back then, jsut walk up to a pretty girl that's looking for a book, and ask her if she's need help. Then make some reccomendations, chat some more, impress her with my knowledge of whatever subject she is interested in (one of the good parts of being well rounded intellectually), then ask her if she'd like to get some coffee so we can continue discussing the best temperature to bake a blue glaze in. Other times I would walk up and say, "Excuse me, I think you're beautiful and was wondering if I could buy you a drink later?"

Yesterday was a fantastic day! After I got off work I went home and signed up for a poker tournament, figuring that would waste time until Charlie came home from the roommate's office. $5 entry, 190 people, and nearly 4 hours later I'm $220 richer. Then I got to watch Bo Bice seal his victory on American Idol, though the finale performances were rather bland. Finally the finale of House, and then bed. Sure, no partying or going out and meeting people and such, but I won over $200! And got to play with the best dog ever.

One more great thing. It's been a week and a half without a cigarette!

Regarding the Mexican President's unwise, and very un-P.C. comment that his people illegally immigrate to the US to do jobs that "not even blacks want to do" is both true and untrue. Yes, as things are now I have no desire to be a ditch digger, or migrant worker or whatever jobs he was referring to. On the other hand, it's not the job itself that repulses me, it's the pay. If someone was willing to pay me $100k/year to clean septic tanks, I'm there. Ok, maybe not septic tanks because of the stench that would become a part of me, but just about any other job. I'd pick cotton for 100k, I'd do laundry, clean floors, whatever, and as soon as people start getting paid that sort of money, those jobs become respectable. Next thing you know everyone wants to grow up to clean laundry, and only losers or illegal immigrants become doctors or lawyers.

That last part is hyperbole for those of you who like to take things out of context and twist my words for rebuttals instead of actually having to use logic.

A recent quote from Howard Dean:
"This is the last opportunity the Democrats have to say anything about public policy" considering that "one party is pretty well in charge in Washington."

I don't have the complete text of what he said, but he was referring to getting liberal judges into Federal Courts. In other words, he knows that the people of the United States voted by and large for a Republican government. He doesn't care, he's going to use activist judges to work around that and get his agenda done. The thing is, our system is set up so that when one party dominates, they get to run things. It's not like the GOP is a large majority by accident, citizens voted for things to be this way, but Dean doesn't care about the way the vote turned out, he doesn't care what the Constitution says about judges (they are supposed to interpret, not create, law... the legislative branch is supposed to create laws), he doesn't care that his disdain for the rule of law will come back and bite him in the ass someday. All he cares about is his agenda, and the people be damned.

Looks like Bush's private accounts for social security aren't going to make it. Granted, it was never meant to fix SS, but it sure would have helped people in my generation have a little more choice and control over our retirements. Now we won't have that choice. I can't figure out why anyone had a problem with private SS acounts. They weren't going to be mandatory, people could have opted to stick with the government lockbox, the one the Dems say is a trust fund, but in reality is an empty box full of promises left over from people on both sides of the aisle stealing money for pork. The only thing I can think of is that people didn't want to realize in 40 years that their peers who opted to have a private account are secure, while those that were lazy and stuck with the status quo have little money for their retirement. I guess people just wanted protection against their own laziness. Anyway, it's too bad, because I would have liked to have had that money to invest on my own judgement.

The question now is whether the Democrats will allow any changes to their holy Social Security program which is poised to drag our economy in to the gutter, or if they will continue to be obstructionist because they care more about making Bush look bad than actually trying to solve problems. I applaud officials like Bush who look further in to the future than the next election. He knows that SS is going to become a very serious problem, so he's trying to do something about it now. The Dems don't seem to care if there's a problem with SS. They just want their votes, so they work with the AARP to scare old people into thinking Bush is going to take away their SS (which is a complete fabrication), and they get ready for the next election. The ones in office now know they won't be around in a couple of decades when the results of their dissembling come home to roost.

I saw the new Star Wars movie. Not bad, but not the original trilogy, either. I did get a little ticked off. I don't know if the Anakin statement, "You're either with me or against me," followed by Obiwan saying, "Only Sith think in absolutes" was really supposed to be a political statement of Lucas in reaction against Bush's similar statement, but it sure seems like it could have been. I don't have a problem with inserting political messages in movies (so long as it doesn't become bigger than the movie itself), but I do have a problem if the political message is inconsistent with the rest of the in-movie-universe. For almost 30 years now we've heard messages like "fear and anger lead to the dark side," and implications that once you start on the path to the dark side, you can't come back. Certainly the thought of learning some dark side force tricks would give Yoda conniptions. Those anti-dark side warnings sound pretty darn absolute to me, which means one of three things:
1. The Jedi are mistaken, and one should be able to play around with the dark side without becoming a glowing-eyed bastard of a Sith.
2. The Jedi truly believe in absolutes, and thus are Sith themselves.
3. Lucas sold out himself and his art to make a political point that goes against everything he had previously said.

I'm very disappointed with the GOP right now. They gave up on the filibuster issue and compromised with the Democrats, with a promise not to try to change the rules during this session. What's going to REALLY tick me off is that the next time the Democrats are in power, the Republicans will probably try to filibuster the Dems judicial nominees, and the country will have selective amnesia and suddenly decide filibusters are evil and obstructionist and they will change the rules. They have already shown they are hypocrites by using the filibuster for this situation in the first place (because they were all about rhe filibuster being anti-democracy back in 1994), so I have no doubt they will later change their minds again when the filibuster works against them.

The other aspect of this compromise is that it basically restricts the Constitutionally given power of the executive branch to appoint federal judges, and thus bypasses the system of checks and balances. The worst part is that it really only does this for Republican Presidents. Democratic Presidents will have the same amount of power to appoint judges as the Constitution grants them.

You know a good portion of the reason the GOP gained seats in the last election was reaction against Democrat obstructionism in the Senate, especially in regards to the judicial appointments. The GOP could ahve gone for the jugular and passed the rules change, but instead they have compromised, something the other side would not have done in the same situation. They've allowed the Dems to take credit for being willing to compromise, and they're allowing the Dems to pass judgement on who can and cannot be appointed. And the compromise allows the Dems to filibuster future nominess, also. This could be seen as a betrayal of not just George Bush by members of his own party, but of the people that elected the Republicans because they were sick of the obstructionism. Why won't the GOP do what their constituents put them in office for? That includes fiscal restraint, something I'd like to see more of.

Did you know that Judge Janice Rogers Brown, currently being smeared as right wing nutcase by the left wing who don't want her on a Federal bench, was elected to her position as a justice on the California State Supreme Court with 76% of the vote? That's in California, hardly a bastion of right-wing thought. What does this tell you? She IS NOT an extremist, and is fairl close to the center, mainstream view on most issues. But really that shouldn't even matter. Her politics are not supposed to come in to play, only her ability to interpret the law, and since she's a strict constructionist, that means her judgements will be based on exactly the way the law is written, without any political interpretation. Sounds like a good Judge to me. So why was she being filibustered? Because she's a minority female nominated by Bush, and the left can't allow Bush to look good with minorities because they fear losing the chance to use the race card to win elections.

According to the Humane Society, the new dog is a mix of a labroador and a spaniel in some manner. He's 35 lbs. and just about full size. We decided to name him Charlie (I was rooting for Hurley, after the guy on Lost). He drools a lot and is very friendly. He also likes to be in the drivers seat while in a car, which makes it tough to drive. So far he's great! Only peed inside once, and I think he had been trying to get someone to walk him beforehand, but we didn't get the hint.

The best part.... Charlie is great with the ladies, he runs up, and they kneel down and start baby talking to him, then I get to chat some. Seeing as I haven't met anyone in my new apartment complex yet, I've got my fingers crossed for better luck with my canine wingman. That said, if anyone knows any cute single ladies who are pretty smart and like nice guys who hate trying to pick up women in bars, you know where to find me.

Back before the New Deal, America was seen as the land of opportunity, where any man or woman with a dream and a willingness to work hard could get ahead. Now recent studies are showing that economic mobility is dying in this country. One wonders at the connection. Perhaps all of those social programs that started during the New Deal and have been added to so much over the years are the cause of this lack of mobility. Perhps if had not given people so many chances to claim victimhood and depend on the tax dollars of others, be it through welfare, after school programs for pregnant teens, etc. etc. etc., then we might still be seen as the land of opportunity that we were before the left wing decided to try to legislate economic equality. Perhaps free market capitalism would have done exactly what many economists predicted, had we not put so may restrictions on it. We might be living in a country where you grow up, you work your ass off, and you can succeed no matter where you started, but instead we seem to have a country where you are born, you begin to take handouts unless you are rich, and you get so used to those handouts that you never learn the value of really hard work. We'll never know for sure, but I think it's pretty obvious where I stand....

Here he is! Don't have a name yet, any suggestions?

dog.jpg

If Hillary Clinton is being honest in her move towards the center of the political spectrum, if she's going to stick with it, drop her former very far left socialistic ideals, and really be a centrist, then I could almost stomach her. She's got to be better than the unrepentent left wing of the Dems, people like Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy, who are so far out of tune with the average American that they might as well be aliens.

The word on the street is that my roommate found a dog and has brought it home. A 9 month old shepherd mix of some sort. She was being brought to the Humane Society from a foster home, literally coming in the door when Rochard spotted her and decided she was the one. I'm told she's undeniably cute and I will love her. We'll see!

Thanks to this, I've finally realized the difference between the left in the 60's and the left now, regarding domestic racial issues. Back then they seemed to agree with Martin Luther King Jr., and favored equality of opportunity, something we can all get behind. Now, however, it has become equality of outcome, which is a whole different animal. Even if a minority doesn't take advantage of their equal opputunities, we have to set up programs to make sure the outcome is equal.

In another of this columnist's articles on why he no longer feels in tune with what passes for the left-wing today in the US, he mentions how on any random day you can tune in to Air America and hear Al Franken or Rhandi Rhodes whining about how 60 votes were stolen in Ohio during the election, and then you can switch over to any number of conservative radio shows and hear talk about how the Sudan genocide is out of hand and we need to put pressure on the government to do something. Which of those two examples seems closer to what you think of as a progressive? I'm gonna pick the group that wants to help people escape opression and tyranny instead of the group that can't listen to its own advice and "Moveon."

Well I can't get he dog we had picked out. Despite the fact that this dog looks nothing like a chow-chow, which is a pretty distinctive looking breed, the Humane Society insists that it is, and the aprtment complex does not allow chow-chows because they are too aggressive. So this beatiful, playful puppy will continue to live in a cage :(

When will the media get a clue? Look, bias I can live with, but straight out lying I cannot. For decades the media has known that while lying is not a good thing for them, they could make some lies and never really get caught, because who was going to check the facts? And even if some reader did check the facts, how would they manage to get the word out to other readers? Well with blogs that's all changed, but the newspapers and magazines and TV news networks don't want to admit it. Powerline has an interesting spat going with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. It seems this paper had soem editorials way back in 1994 denouncing the filibuster as an enemy of democracy or some such thing. More recently, during the whole judicial nomination pissing match in DC, this same paper published an editorial pronouncing filibusters as essential to democracy and only a group seeking tyranny or some such rhetoric would dare to try to eliminate the filibuster. Powerline asked why it was bad when the Dems were in power, but now it's good. They even had pictures of the editorials, with the ability to enlarge them to be readable. The editor of the paper wrote in to say they were lying and the paper never said those things back in 1994. He didn't even bother to follow the links to the images of the editorials. Eventually he realzied he's wrong and promised an explanation, but none has been forthcoming, and their opposition to ending the filibuster, 180 degress from their 1994 stance, continues, as do the lies. Today they had an editorial in which they repeated the lie that Albert Gonzales said called Judge Priscilla Owens an activist judge. He did, but only if you cut out the context of everything else he said. The Star-Tribune is deliberately spreading this lie, thinking they won't get caught. They have gotten caught, but unfortunately it's still not easy to get the word out about this sort of stuff. ANyway, they are shooting themselves in the foot, because the public is losing confidence in the media. This isn't the fault of bloggers. I'd like nothing better than if my main complaint about the paper is that they talk about American Idol too much. Unfortunately there is something wrong when my main complaint is that the front page is filled with lies and contradictions.

I'm getting a dog! Well technically my roommate is, which will make it tough when we no longer live together, but for now the deal is he pays for everything, and all I have to do is share the love. We went to the Humane Society yesterday and picked out what was labeled a chow-chow mix, but looked a lot more like a shepherd dog of some sort. She black with white paws, 4 months old, rambunctious, but not vicious in any way, and didn't bark even once while we were with her. But she does love to play! I'm looking forward to taking her jogging. Her given name is cupcake, but I am not going to run around calling a dog cupcake, so we're changing that. Currently the split is between Audrey (my choice, of course), and Molly. Either one works for me.

This is all contingent on what the weight limit is in our complex. There are definitely dogs there that are bigger than 25 lbs, so I think we'll be ok.

According to this, the authors of our Constitution initially wanted to require a 2/3s vote of the Senate to REJECT a judicial nominee. Why? Because judges are supposed to be appointed by the Executive Branch. The dems have decided to go against this and make it so that judges are really appointed by them, with the President's appointment only a formality, as they will block any judges they don't like. Despite the fact that the Constitution does say 1/2 to approve, the Dems are using the filibuster, a concept not even once mentioned in the Constitution, to make it 3/5s to approve a judge. They have, in all reality, stolen a power of the Executive Branch and thrown off the system of checks and balances.

I didn't watch it, but I did read reviews of Britney Spears' new reality show with her husband. Which emans she's now Britney Federline, I guess. Anyway, the reviews reinforced my opinion of Britney. She got so popular so fast that she never had a chance to grow up with other people her age, and thus lost out on what many of us got in college and after: A sense of how cool one is. She thinks she's the ultiamte in hip and cool, thus when she uses a handheld cam to film her sticking a finger up her nose, she's so self-absorbed that she thinks she's being unbelievably funny and creative, while her viewers thinks she's being vapid and childish. Of course she also thinks that years of touring, having her every need taken care of, and being completely coddled and sheltered (except for sex, which she obviously has partaken in to a dangerous degree [just how many different VDs do you think that she has gotten?]), have given her the maturity she needs to start a family. In truth she probably has the maturity level of a 15 year old at best.

There is probably no better example of the danger of celebrity than a person like Britney Spears. She obviously has few morals, based on her excitement to discuss all her lovers, her two marriages by the age of 23 (is that thw right age?), and her desire to spend the rest of her life with a man who just had a kid with another star. Little girls look up to her, and want to be sluts also. While that may make the boys happy, it's not going to help the girls when they realize they'll never have the money Britney does, nor the lifestyle her income affords her.

The hijacking of the Democratic Party by fringe elements like Moveon.org (begun as a push to get people to move on from the Clinton sex scandals, moveon.org no longer follows their own advice and has been unable to move on from the "Bush lied, people died" meme, which is a lie itself) has already begun to bear fruit- for the Republican Party. Howard Dean, the screaming governor from Vermont, was made chairman of the DNC as a sop to the far left elements of the party. Big mistake. Contributions to the DNC's political fund are far below what they expected, and even further below what the Republicans have collected during the same period. Not only that, but Dean's inability to restrain his fiery rhetoric has turned off a lot potential donors and voters. Last week, for instance, he said that Tom DeLay should head back to Texas and serve a jail term for his crimes. He seems to have forgotten that first a person has to be accused of crime, then tried for that crime, and then found guilty, before serving a jail sentence. It's yet another example of how the far left cares little for law if it gets in the way of their agenda. You want the Supreme Court stuffed with activist judges? Let Dean and Moveon.org do the nominating, and then watch their toadies in the Senate hypocritically run their own "nuclear option" to get over the GOP's sure-to-be-used filibusters.

Of course all that is hypothetical prognostication, but the idea that Dean is bad for the Democratic Party is all truth. I'm sure Karl Rove thansk god every morning that Dean is still chairman of the DNC.

In this LA Times article, the US is condemned for not firing General Boykin after he unfavorably compared Islam to Christianity, and offended Muslim sensibilities. I'm not sure what the problem is. It's simple to compare Islam unfavorably to Christianity. Islam's ideals include killing or enslaving the infidel whenever possible. Christianity's ideals include forgiveness and tolerance. Add to that the fact that many Islamic religious and political leaders make the opposite comparison all the time and no one seems to care.

Why are we so tolerant of people who state again and again in public speeches that they want to kill us or rule over us?

Why do the networks do this to me? I just saw the TV schedule for next fall, and Thursday night at 8 will have several of my favorites. Smallville, The O.C.,m and Alias, as well as Joey which I follow a bit (but it kinda blows, so I could drop it). Anyway, even with a dual tuner DVR, I'm gonna have to download one of the shows each week. Not that I would ever do such a thing, because that's illegal.

A must read article which eloquently states one of the problems I have had difficulty articulating correctly. The problem? That our one-sided tolerance of Islam and the foibles of its people could lead to cultural suicide for the western world. We are doing all the toleratiing, while the level of contempt that Muslims, and most especially the extremist ones that are likely to take up arms against western interests, have for Christianity, Judaism, and the west in general only rises. We let them get away with more and more in the name of tolerance and understanding, while they find more and more "problems" that the west is supposedly causing them, and find more and more reasons to justify demanding tolerance for their evils. It's sort of like a child who nags and nags to get what he wants, and every time you fold, the child becomes more likely to nag in the future. If someone is doing something bad, you have to teach them a lesson, not say, "Oh, I understand, just don't do it again." It doesn't work like that with dogs, it doesn't work like that with children, and it certainly doesn't work like that with Muslims. Otherwise, after all the concessions Israel has given the Palestinians, and all the money the US government has given them, their leaders would not still use anti-semitic and anti-Aemerican hate rhetoric to stir up their flock. Instead all the concessions with no requirement of reform are only serving to reinforce the immoral methods with which they work (suicide bombings, honor killings, etc.).

Go to crimelibrary.com and look up Jack Henry Abbot. You'll find the heartwarming tale of a convicted murderer who convinced Norman Mailer to push for his release. Mailer did so, Abbot was released, wrote a bestseller, and then stabbed a man to death on the street due to an arguement over whether or not he should be allowed to use an employee-only restaurant. You'll read about how Susan Sarandon, who has never met a murderer she didn't like, named her son after Mr. Abbot.

If there's any one person who could be the poster child for the Holywood elite liberal groupthink who use nursery school logic to justify letting murderers out of jail to murder again, it's Susan Sarandon. That woman has been on the wrong side of so many issues that you'd think she would have figured out that she's wrong by now, but she justs keeps coming back and doing more ridiculous things, defending more evil people, and making herself more and more of a laughingstock to those of us who not stuck in a self-righteous haze of indignation over every "injustice" in the world.

Funny how in all her sympathy for a two-time (or more) murdered, Sarandon seemed to care not a bit about the injustice inherent in the murder of a young man whose only crime was trying to do his job.

I think the apocolypse is coming. I read today, in a column that I was unable to verify, that certain elements of the eladership of the new Iraqi government are reaching out to Israel. All it took was Democracy, and suddenly they seemed to realzie that their interests lie with other free democracies, not with the virtual theocracies or dictators that run most other Arab and/or Muslim countries. This alone makes the Iraqi war worth the price of admission. Solve the Israel/Palestine conflict by making the Palestinians aware that they actually have to commit to peace and democracy, and much of the world's problems go away. And George Bush rightfully hero in history texts for doing what was right, despite the opposition.

Why is it that whenever a mainstream media outlet runs a story that later turns out to be untrue, it's always a story that is damaging to the Republican Party? Why don't we ever see a story that attacks someone on the left and later turns out to untrue? What about a story that makes Bush look really good, and turns out to be untrue? These media outlets get all kinds of stories to vet. Could it be that anything that attacks the left or is favorable to the right is fully sourced so they don't make a mistake, but they are so ready to fry Bush in any way possible that they print anti-right stories without proper verification? Could it be that there is some sort of bias against the right in the media? You be the judge.

I'm tired of hearing about Abu Gharib. I'm really tired of people indicting the entire army for what was probably just a few bad seeds. And I'm really really tired of those same people who blame the entire army for the actions of a few bad seeds being hypocrites and not blaming the entire world Muslim community for a few terrorists. Look, either you admit that individuals can do bad things without the rest of a group being involved, or you start spitting on every Muslim you see for 9/11. That, of course, is ridiculous, so get over this Abu Gharib thing. They've punished the perps, what more do you want?

You know, it's interesting to think that the same kind of person who would make the Piss Christ would never in a million years do the same to a Koran for fear of having a death sentence placed upon themself by priests of Islam, #2 in adherents worldwide. The religion of peace? Then why is everyone so scared of insulting Islam, but have no such reservations about making fun of Christians or Jews?

Also from Boortz, who got it from the Washington Times, the percentage of each Presidents' appellate court nominees that got confirmed by Congress.
Harry Truman 100%
Dwight Eisenhower 92.3%
John Kennedy 77.3%
Lyndon Johnson 96.2%
Richard Nixon 87%
Gerald Ford 81.8%
Jimmy Carter 100%
Ronald Reagan 95%
G.H.W. Bush 95.7%
Bill Clinton 86.4%
George Bush 53.1%

Kind of puts the lie to the idea that the GOP has done this crap to Democrat Party Presidents. Bush has done what he can to be a uniter. The Democratic Party has done all the dividing, and continues to obstruct anything Bush tries to do. If it weren't for the media having their back, the Democrats would be the laughing-stock of the country right now.

A bit more about social security. As we're all aware, part of the problem is that instead of the surpluses of rpevious years being held on to for the future, the extra money was spent and replaced with IOUs. If the board of a public company did that with their employee pension fund, they'd all be in jail. Too bad the government doesn't have to follow the law. I'd like to find all the people involved in deciding to spend that money and send them to jai. And I'll bet you bottom dollar that it's primarily been Democrats taking that money and screwing up our future.

Neal Boortz put together this list of standard mainstream media guidelines that is pretty damn funny... And, while I doubt they conciously follow these rules, most mainstream media outlets act they they are following this list.

1. The Bush Administration didn't rely on faulty intelligence in its move to depose Saddam Hussein; instead, Bush "lied."
2. Any story from an anonymous source critical of a Republican president, no matter how thinly based or weakly corroborated, must be initially believed as true and may be reported as such if deadlines are close.
3. Any story from an anonymous source critical of a Democratic president must be initially believed as untrue and should only be published out of a fear that some other news organization is going to publish it before you do.
4. Torture of Muslims is a widespread and accepted part of the U.S. military culture.
5. Virtually all of the detainees being held in Guantanamo are innocent and should be immediately released, perhaps with reparations payments for their incarceration.
6. Every action involving the U.S. military under other than a Democratic commander in chief will, within no less than 21 days, become a "quagmire."
7. There is no legitimate reason for the application of U.S. military force overseas under a Republican president until after the nuclear tipped missiles are actually launched.
8. There is no reason not to apply U.S. military force overseas under a Democratic president.
9. Anti-war activists are prone to tell the truth. Military officials are prone to lie.
10. Reporters never lie, unless they work for The Washington Times or the Fox News Channel.
11. America is great because of its government, so long as that government is controlled by Democrats.
12. If the United States government is controlled by Republicans, America is not great.
13. Freedom has nothing to do with America's greatness, no matter who is in control of our government.

According to journalist Mark Steyn, Canada has not yet sent the money they pledged to tsunami victims. Remember all the criticism Bush and the US got for not sending enough money and for Bush being at his ranch instead of collecting money to send? Well we sent more than anyone, and our initial emergency operations were far more efficient than the UN has been since, with many goods still in ports waiting for the proper paperwork to be filled out. Anyway, back to Canada. Their Prime Minister flew out to tsunami-hit areas, cried, and pledged help to the tune of $425 million. According to Steyn, they've actually sent a total of $40,000 US. Where's the criticism? Only in the non-mainstream media because the mainstream media refuses to decry anyone who is not related to Bush in some way. Now will they ever admit that the US and Bush did far more for tsunami-plagued areas than any other country and the UN itself.

Even if the Newsweek story on Korans in the toilet turns out to be true, who cares? A bunch of westerners have haed their heads cut off by Muslims on video. Did we start riots and kill 15 of our own people? No. And if they had also flushed Bibles down the toilet, we still wouldn't have had riots and killed 15 of our own people. This is yet another illustration of a civilized culture where people have freedom, and a barbaric culture where something someone else did can get you killed, a culture that encourages it's children to kill themselves in attempt to kill others, a culture where innocents ahve their heads chopped off, a culture which will use any excuse at all to start killing. I'll give you a hint, the first is western culture, the second is Muslim/Arab culture. Are they all evil extremists? Hell no. But the connection between the message of their religion, and what many are actually doing cannot be discounted.

Those UN guys sure love to waste money. The link is to a story about renovations on the UN's NYC HQs. They want a loan from the United States for $1.2 billion to renovate. Donald Trump and many other NYC real estate experts said that's ridiculous and it should not cost more than $500 million, and probably not even that high to renovate the UN building. Trump went so far as to say the only way that number got there is through fraud or incompetence. Considering the UN's track record, I bet it's some of both. Anyway, this some of my money being spent here, and I don't like it a bit. I think the UN should deal with working in their current building as is. It's only like 30 years old, so what's the big problem? They just want to steal US money.

Newsweek published this story in which they accuse US forces as desecrating the Quran to upset prisoners in Guantanamo. They must not have put much effort into vetting this rumor, because now they are backing off, apologizing for any mistakes they made in printing the story. This is only after several anti-American riots and some deaths occured in Afghanistan and other Muslim areas. I'd have to say it's almost treasonous to print unproven stuff like this that is so incendiary while in the middle of the war. Whose side is Newsweek on? I would have no problem with them printing this story if they had some sort of verification, but with them backing off the story, they are implicitly admitting that they did not. If not treasonous, it's certainly highly irresponsible, and now people are dead as a direct effect, and many of our allies in the Muslim world have probably lost trust in us.

For shame, Newsweek, whose side are you on? If there was a similar story about Muslim's desecrating Bibles, you can be darn sure they verify it, because they would not want to insult Muslims. Our own press seems to have no problem embarrassing us, however.

In a report on the filibuster affair, CBS's Gloria Berger quoted Ken Starr as saying, "This is a radical, radical departure from our history and from our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government." The way the report was set up, it is implied that he is talking about the Republicans efforts to end the filibusters. That's certainly what CBS wanted you to think. Funny thing is, Starr says that's not at all what he was tlaking about when he said this. He was, in fact, talking about the Democrats efforts to use the filibuster and not allow a Constitution mandated up or down vote. More specifically, he was tlaking about how Republicans have confirmed justices who were ACLU lawyers without filibustering, despite the fact that the candidate's views were completely antithetical to them. Starr feels the Dems are completely in the wrong, and CBS chose to take his words out of context and reverse his meaning to fit their liberal desires. In other words, CBS has once again proven that they are left-wing bias. Every night you can find multitudes of examples of left-wing bias on CBS News, and none of right-wing bias. Those who still don't feel they are biased after the memogate scandal and now this are sticking their heads in the sand. If I were Starr, I'd be tempted to sue for defamation. Their portrayal of him as siding with the liberals is an insult.

Pat Buchanan is certainly not my favorite political figure, far from it in fact, but he did write this very thought-provoking piece on WWII and whether it was really worth it. It relates to what I wrote yesterday regarding the Yalta conference, and if giving eastern Europe to the USSR was avoidable or not. Buchanan feels that WWII was simply not worth it. Britain declared war to help out Poland, while France and Belgium were only atatcked after that. Poland, the country the war supposedly started to protect, ended up opressed by the USSR for eyars afterwards, so, in the end, little was accomplished. Of course this all misses the point that if Britain had not declared war, Hitler would probably still have continued to take over western Europe. Oh yeah... And I seem to remember something about a whole bunch of Jews, gypsys, and gays being murdered. I would guess a whole lot more would have been if not for Britain, and eventually the US, entering the conflict.

I didn't read this entire column, just the beginning. It's an opinion piece, and all I wanted to know is that Oregon is looking in to a Vehicle Mileage Tax, where you would be taxed based on the number of miles you drive, as recorded by a GPS unit. There are so many problems with this that it's hard to believe they are even considering it. Hmmm... Lack of privacy, for one. I find it ironic that many of the same people in Oregon that were up in arms about the Patriot Act and requiring ID for voting are in favor of something like this, which so much more invasive. I don't think the government needs to know where I am anytime I use my car. I also think it's an attack on my liberty to charge me everytime I travel. The right to travel freely within our borders is a very valuable one, and this would take away that right. Suddenly you'll only be able to travel if youu are willing to pay for the priviledge. Of course soon enough they'll have a progressive VMT where poor people get paid to drive while rich people have to pay triple the normal rate. Makes sense to me....

Due to Bush's recent trip to Russia and the Baltic republics, there's been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about Yalta, and whether or not we betrayed eastern Europe by basically handing the keys to the kingdom to Stalin. While it did lead to years of oppression and a whole lot of death, I don't think we had much of a choice. I forget if it was FDR or Truman at Yalta (was Yalta before or after Potsdam, which was definitely Truman, and the conference during which he found out we had achieved the bomb), but with the size of the Red Army, and the fatigue of our own, plus the fact that our army and navy were spread all over the planet finishing up the war, I just don't think it was feasible to stand up to Stalin. He would have laughed in our face, and tkaen what he wanted, and no one could have stopped him. It was an unfortunate situation for eastern Europe, but thankfully most of it is free now.

Why do all these fix-the-world types never look at the logical conclusions to their ideas for world peace, or better living, or name-today's-cause? The New York Times, for instance, is whining that Wal-Mart does not pay their employees enough. Well what if they started paying everyone $2/hr more? They'd have to do one or more of the following: Raise prices on their goods, thus lowering sales, and have less money to pay these higher wages. Lower their dividend payments, or sell more stock, which would devalue the stock which is alreayd out there, much of which is held by various pension plans, thus screwing over millions of teachers, cops, etc. who are depending on Wal-Mart stock in their plans for retirement. Fire a quarter or so of their employees so that the other 3/4s can get that raise, and the quarter that is fired can live in poverty. The fact is, Wal-Mart pays their employees based on the value of their work, not their needs. If a Wal-Mart employee is living on minimum wage, good for them. If they are doing it while raising a family, well that's gotta be hard to do. Perhaps they should have gotten a better job. But they couldn't because they didn't go to college? Why not? Had kids at 17. Is that my fault, or Wal-Mart's fault? Why should Wal-Mart have to pay $8/hr to someone who does $5/hr worth of work? No reason in the world. Another thing... If you raise the wages $2/hr, the price of the good goes up, and that employee won't be able to purchase a single bit more with their new money than they did before... Unless they go shop at a competitor who still pays by value and not by 'need.' But hey, while unemployment would go up a lot, and there would be a lot more people who can't even make minimum wage, those other people would have $2/hr more to be taxed on.

The Kyoto Accords... Sounds great, sign on and reduce bad gas. But what does that reduction mean? A lot of manufacturing and power plants in the US would have to close or be upgraded. Upgrades cost a lot of money, meaning those companies would have layoffs, or hire less new people, or perhaps with the upgrade they would get a new computer system that runs the plant automatically, making them able to get rid of all but a couple of their employees. Obviously a lot of people would lose their jobs from the plants that have to close. Goods will cost more because the price of making them will go up. Suddenly goods from China will cost half as much as American made goods. More companies will outsource to find the best place to make their goods cheap. More jobs are lost. The closed power plants would cause energy prices to go up. Many refineries would have to close, and we already have a shortage of refineries, one of the reasons gas is so costly right now. So gas would go up even more. That would add even more to the cost of good manufactured here because it would cost so much to transport them. Shipping would be even more consolidated, meaning a lot of truck drivers will lose their jobs. But hey, at least the air is cleaner, and less industrialized countries will have booming economies.

There are so many plans out there to make the world a better place, but most of them I see, especially from the left, use little foresight, and would cause far more damage than help. Next time you have a bright idea for world peace, think it through before you start picketing.

Last night I saw the first season finale for Veronica Mars. It may be on UPN, but it's better than every other show on TV today, with the possible exception of Lost. The characters, the acting, the storylines, all top-notch, and last night's finale kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire hour. I loved it, I can't wait for season 2 and more of it! Give it try, I think they are rerunning whole thing during the summer, and it's worth it!

Hillary Rosen, former lawyer and attack dog for the RIAA, and the woman who brought us the first few rounds of suits against downloaders, wrote this piece about her IPOD and how cruel and anti-consumer it is that you can't play music downloaded from other places because of Apple's DRM. DUH!!! And if it weren't for you, Ms. Rosen, Apple might not feel like it had the right to do so, but since you popularized the idea of a creator continuing to control their content even after someone purchased it, you have only yourself to blame for this problem. This really makes me want to cuss a lot, but this is a family blog....

Do you ever get the feeling, especially after reading something like this, that the Israel-Palestine problem could be solved immediately if we could just get rid of Hamas, the PLO, and anyone else that was ever associated with Arafat? My feeling is that 80% or more Palestinians just want to go on with their lives peacefully, in teh same manner which they did before the Second Intifada began. Get rid of the bitter and angry leadership, and everyone suddenly becomes a lot happier. And there are very few Israelis that would be upset if peace suddenly broke out. Most would celebrate their peaceful Palestinian neighbors. There is only one reason why so many Palestinians hate Israel, and vice-versa, and that reason is the legacy of Arafat.

Global Warming: The Debate. The dude interviewed in this article has plenty of credentials, including being on the very first scientists to stuy the possiblity of global warming. According to him, computer models are predicting global warming as a result of human-caused gas buildup and such, but the actual data about real temperatures on Earth dispute the computer models. In real life, global warming does not exist, it only exists in the microchips of the computers they run the models on. Since there are so many things we don't know about weather and climate, the models are suspect from the start. They don't know things like at what point a cloud becomes visible, at what point does a cloud collect enough moisture to start dropping water in the form of rain, that sort of thing. Without knowing how it all works, any computer models are just a bunch of speculative bunk, and since the actual facts on the ground don't support the notion of global warming, I'm gonna worry about more pressing matters.

Did you know that the oceans have risen about 8" a century for the last thousand years? So the next time someone quotes you a statistic showing that water levels have risen 2" in the last quarter century, ask them if that means we can blame all our problems on whoever lived 1000 years ago when water started to rise at that rate. Then ask them what the hell any of it has to do with greenhouse emissions. There is no proven connection. Global wamring seems to be more a warning from the luddites than a real problem.

There's been a lot of tlak about health care benmefits in large corporations last year. GM is having problems because the health care costs of their employees make their cars much more expensive than they should be, and make it tough to compete against Japanese manufacturers. This all started when GM, like a lot of other companies that are facing the same issue, negotiated fantastic compensation for their employees during a time of little or no competition. Now that Japan is a huge seller of cars in the US, thos health care benefits are strangling US companies. It's their own fault for not having the foresight to think that someone else might decide to build cars, also. They coudl renegotiate, but they would look like jerks. So now people are saying we need National Health Care to compete with Japan. That's ridiculous. The same amount of money will get spent, it's just that now our tax dollars will pay for it, not the coporate revenues. Either way it will stifle our ability to compete. What we need to do is not create a national health care system, but refurbish the entire health care industry. The problems stem from insurance more than anything else. A non-health care example to make my point is when my roommate's windshield was broken. A repair guy came out to put a new piece of glass in, and he even stated aloud to my roommate that the bill would be a lot cheaper if he wasn't using insurance. To think doctors and hospitals don't raise their rates when they know insurance will pay for it is just plain naive. If we can somehow stop that practice, suddenly health care becomes much cheaper, maybe even so cheap that we won't need company-paid health benefits. It's not like company health care is a law or anything. It started at some point after WWII as a recruiting incentive for some large companies. It's only in the last 20 or 30 years that people started thinking of it as a right, instead of a priveledge. At any rate, a national health care system is the LAST thing we need. One need only to examine Canada's problems to realize such.

From Jack Kemp's latest column:

"The evidence indicates that this is precisely what happened when President Bush convinced Congress to cut the tax rate on dividends and capital gains and to allow small businesses to recover their capital investments quicker by writing them off in a shorter period of time.
Revenues continue to pour into the U.S. Treasury so fast the Congressional Budget Office projects that if the tax cuts are left in place permanently, the budget will be balanced within a few years, and revenues as a share of Gross Domestic Product will remain pretty much where they have stayed since the end of World War II, right about 18.5 percent of GDP."

The deficit does worry me, but this also makes sense. Lower taxes, and people will invest more, expand their businesses, hire more people, and, eventually, pay more taxes. The rate would be lower, but since the taxpayers have a lot more money, the total will be higher. We've tried the tax 'em to death theory, and it contributed mightily to the recession we had in 2000 or so, along with the tech bubble bursting. Raising taxes also made a mess of Jimmy Carter's economy, and it kept getting worse until Reagan stepped in and lowered taxes. For now I'd like to continue trying the low tax thing, see how it turns out. It certainly makes more sense than Paul Krugman, the New York Times economist, who feels that raising the tax rate will net us that exact amoutn of extra money. A little common sense tells you that raising taxes will lower revenue for most businesses, which means less taxes being paid.

Of course we could come up with a simpler, more efficient means of taxation... Oh wait, they already have that idea, it's called the FairTax, and left-wingers everywhere decry it because it would take away their chance to fleece the rich and control the poor. It would be fair and make sense, and that would really suck.

Sometimes I just love military men! The new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was asked in a press conference if our military still has the specilized forces to explore and clear out caves and tunnels as we did during WWII and Vietnam. He answered something along the lines of, "Our specialized way of clearing out caves and tunnels is to park a 500 lb. bomb at the entrance."

If I'm not mistaken, today is Yom HaShoah, which is a relatively new Jewish holiday creted to memorialize the Holocaust and it's victims. In response to this, I found several interesting Holocaust survivor stories online, but I want to relate just one here, one that I found especially interesting because it points to the future, and is not just sadness regarding the past.

Anyway, two fatehrs meet at their daughters' school in New York and discover that their fathers came from the same small town in Europe somewhere. With the key word being "small," they realized that their fathers must have been on the same train to the death camps. One father related how his father had always talked about prying a board off the side of the train, helping a younger boy through it, and then jumping out himself. The other father at the school was immediately struck dumb. His father was the little boy that was helped through the hole. Now their granddaughters play together in freedom.

I read another story long ago about a man who got in a taxi in Israel and started talking to the taxi driver about a guy he had just interviewed, and mentioned some pretty specific details of the man's life and Holocaust experience. The taxi driver heard some detail that caused him to go pale. Turns out he knws the other side of the story because a recent passenger had been telling him about his brother that he had not seen since they were shipped off to the death camps, and the details of the two stories matched much too closely to be coincidence. Thanks to this random meeting of a reporter and a taxi driver, two brothers, one living in Israel, the other in the United States, who had not seen each other in 50+ years were reunited.

Maybe I'm just a sap, but that kind of stuff always makes me teary-eyed.

I read today that overall our planet's skies are clearer and cleaner than they were a decade ago. This is resulting in more sunshine hitting the ground, which is exacerbating global warming. And here I thought the point of the Kyoto Accords was to reduce harmful emissions in to the atmosphere in order to avoid global warming. Looks like now they are saying that cleaning up will make global warming worse. Logically this makes supporters of Kyoto into people who favor global warming. That makes George Bush very anti-global-warming, so all the left-wing nutjobs that hate him because he didn't sign on to the accords can now start to love him, right?

This opinion piece deals with the filibustering of Judge Janice Rogers Brown. The knock against her has been that she is hardcore right-wing. No one has presented any evidence of such, just rhetoric about how anti-minority she is. No real cases of her being so, though. The article I linked to has some actual examples of decisions she has made, some of which are completely opposite of what you would expect from an extreme right-winger. Turns out she is being filibustered for one reason, and one reason only: Bush nominated her.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called President Bush a "loser." Almost every day you hear Democrats whining about several things. One is that Bush is a divider, not a uniter... Is calling him a loser a uniting move? Another is that the Republicans have taken respect out of partisanship. Is calling Bush a loser a respectful manner of doing your job? I don't think so. Almost all the nasty rhetoric