When I first heard that the city was flooding, I guess I didn't realize the magnitude of the situation. Will there even be a New Orleans? Someone pointed out to me that a port is needed in the area, and that's why New Orleans started. Makes sense, of course. One piece of advice- Better levees next time.

An update from Mike, past and future? resident of New Orleans.

Looks like American Airlines and Southwest both picked up some evacuees and such. Don't know if that was before or after the hurricane and/or flood, but good for them, either way. My earlier post on the subject, however, still stands.

These guys are starting a de-linking campaign against Instapundit because he refuses to demonize the ACLU. Good for him. I'm not a huge fan of the ACLU, as they seem to have become increasingly partisan towards the left, and sometimes seem to care more about theory than actuality, and also seem to support regulations that would help terrorists kill more Americans, but they also fight the good fight on some other issues. They are a necessary group, I just wish they had a different leadership. There's no way I'd de-link the Blogfather, especially since I don't have a list of links anyway.

Rumor has it that most gas stations here in the ATL are going to stop selling at 4 pm today, and will not sell more gas until after the weekend. I don't know if there's any truth to that (and I doubt it, different gas stations probably have different plans), but it doesn't matter to me, yet. I have about 3/4s of a tank, and I have to drive home, then to Target, then to the mall, then back home. Tomorrow I have to drive to work, then to class, then home, and I plan on taking MARTA to work Friday. In fact I plan on taking MARTA a whole lot now that gas costs so much. Lucky for me that I live across the street from a MARTA station, and I work on top of one.

The monring after pill is creating a lot of controversy. The main point of dissension seems to be whether to make it prescription or not, with the religious right and similar moralists wanting it prescription so 16 year old girls can't get their hands on it. I'm not sure where I fall on this. Making it simple for a 16 year old girl to get a morning after pill (or a bottle of them) makes me feel like there won't be any virgin females in college anymore, they'll all have fucked their way through high school without having to worry about the consequences. This will be reinforced by middle school and high school sex-ed classes which will teach the girls exactly how and when to take the pills, and leave them feeling like there are no bad consequences resulting from a lot of sex. Is that REALLY what we want?

Before people start blaming Katrina on George Bush and global wamring (oh wait, they've already starting blaming Bush), read this. The facts just don't support any theory that blames hurricanes on global warming. We've had less hurricanes than history records, not more, in the last few decades.

My roommate and the governor of Mississippi shared a very good point aboout the airlines and the hurricane. Here we have huge companies that almost all have benefited from government bailouts, federal bankruptcy protection laws, or helpful aviation regulations which constrict competition. Yet last Saturday, when they all had the chance to help evacuate more residents of New Orleans and Biloxi and other gulf coast cities, they decided to cancel all flights in and out of the area, and basically bailed on the American people. FEMA or someone should have stepped in. The airlines owe our country a great debt, and when it came time to pay up, they refused. Perhaps it's time to start refusing to help them get out of the financial messes they've gotten themselves in to.

Looks like New Orleans got a bit wet. A stunami on the other side of the world is one thing, but this.... Hard to put in to words. Mike and Corinne are safe in Austin, but Corinne's father stayed in New Orleans. He made it through the initial storm, but it looks like a pretty dangerous place to be, and growing more so. All I can do is pray for his, and everyone else's, safety.

Long term, I don't have any clue what the ramifications are for the city. Will there be a Mardi Gras in 2006?

Oh, and cousin Mike, if you're reading this, give me a call.

Just about every time a First Ammendment issue comes up in politics or society or whatever, you see a whole lot of misinterpretation. People don't seem to understand what the right to free speech means. The right to free speech means that you can say what you want on your own time, but it does not mean that you are immune to the consequences of what you said. The part where I say, "on your own time" is my way of saying that just because you ahve something to say doesn't mean I have to provide the venue for you to say it. People get upset and cry censorship when, for instance, a rabidly left-wing nutcase is not allowed on a radio network. He's not being censored, the network merely decided they didn't want that guy using their frequency to broadcast his rant. That doesn't stop him from going out to the nearest street corner to scream his anger to the world. The second part, that you are not immune to the consequences, is illustrated perfectly by the Dixie Chicks. They said some anti-Bush stuff during a concert, which they ahd every right to do. When several radio stations stopped playing their music, they cried censorship, "Don't we have the right to free speech?" Sure, and we have the right not to buy your albums or play your music if we disagree with you. That's not censorship. No one arrested them for what they said. If their rghts had truly been violated, not only would they have been arrested, but someone may have passed a law making it illegal to sell or purchase their music. None of that happened, so no right to free speech violation.

Perhaps you've heard a bit about a hurricane recently? Thankfully my cousin and his fiance managed to get to Austin before the bad weather hit. The Federal Reserve Bank of New Orleans, however, did not get to Austin (though it may be floating that way, for all I know). Anyways, I handle the data analysis for the New Orleans office in my department, and since New Orleans ain't gonna be functional for a bit, their check processing is going to be handled by Atlanta. Guess who handles the Atlanta data? Me. Guess who is going to have a hellish amount of work to do the next few days, or weeks? Me! Could be worse, though. I could be floating down the street in a canoe watching my life wash away.

Many of my liberal friends, who say they never have knee-jerk reactions to things because they always think things out, had immediate knee-jerk antagonism to the idea of the FairTax. It's merely a sort of flat-tax, which according to this, is gaining in popularity all over the world, and creating major economic growth wherever it has been instituted. I wouldn't expect one of my liberal friends to use logic, but if they look at the FairTax in a logical manner, and compare our current system with that of, say Estonia, they might discover that rejecting an idea merely because it came from conservatives is really stupid, and that the FairTax is a fantastic plan.

Did you know that in most countries that have a flat tax, the "rich" end up paying even more of a share of the total taxes? Yet the system is a lot more fair, because they are only paying once, and there are fewer loopholes.

So my sister, who's works of art I have displayed previously, signed up for some scholarship contest, and said she didn't have a chance because so many people were up for it. In typical Courtney fashion, she won, and will receive some money and a gallery showing.

I was downtown today on my day off, returning $200 of textbooks that my professor said we didn't really need. The textbook industry is a HUGE scam and something ought to be done about it. Students are pretty much held hostage by professors that decide to write a new edition every year that has a different word or two and a different picture on the cover. Anyway, that's beside the point. The point is that a block of Broad Street was blocked off and a reggae band was playing, sponsored by Kiss 105.1. Lots of people were standing around grooving to the music, and between songs the inevitable "Freebird" was heard from the crowd. Only in the South....

I got up around noon, walked out to the living room, and noticed that Charlie was chewing a prescription bottle. I grabbed it away from him and realized that it was my roommate's bottle of codeine. Luckily Richard was sure there had only been two pills remaining, and they were both lying on the ground by the dog. I'd hate for Charlie to die of an opiate overdose.

The provision in the Iraqi constitution that is causing hissy fits on the left in their rush to condemn it, and thus Bush, basically says that no laws shall be passed that are antithetical to the laws of Islam. The funny thing is, the Afghanistan Constitution has a provision that says the same thing, yet the New York Times praised it as enlightened. Why was it enlightened then, and a step back now? Because the Afghanistan Constitution, good or bad, was hard to blame on Bush, but it's easier to blame this one on him, so they must make it seem horrible.

The left is also up in arms about how it's a step back for women's rights. I see little in there that is a step back, but the provision that 25% of the "council of deputies" (which is their version of parliament, as far as I can tell) must be women seems pretty progressive to me. No one but Michael Moore could have expected Iraq to be a perfectly free Democracy just like the U.S. in such a short time. It took our founding fathers 13 years from 1776 to get the Constitution finished and ratified. We've givent eh Iraqis a few months, and they've done a pretty good job so far, from what I can tell.

This is the ONLY proven case of election fraud that came out of the last election. Guess who was behind it? Democrats... Big surprise.

This article explains a perfect example of the disservice that the media is doing to our soldiers in Iraq. They are lying by omission, or by shading the truth, or by completely ignoring the truth, and they keep doing it, and it does harm not only our goals in Iraq, but our soldiers' morale.

Stright from Powerline:

"Peter DeCaprio writes:
As a long-time fan, I have to say that this post by John might be your best one yet. I am securities analyst for a large money management firm in Boston, trained to think critically about, and challenge, every data point that crosses my desk. Every time I've seen casualty figures, I've wondered about overall fatality rates in the military. Thanks to you guys, I wonder no more.

My cousin is an F-14 pilot, just back from his third tour in Iraq (in the last 14 months, he's been deployed for 12. He was shot down during his first tour, two weeks into Operation Iraqi Freedom, and spent three miserable hours in the desert half conscious, waiting for his rescue). Saw him last week at a wedding and I asked him how morale was, given the increased casualty rates. He said that being in a squadron deployed in theater has actually led to a decrease in casualties because everyone was operating with a much higher sense of urgency - it tended to sharpen concentration, was how he put it. The implication being that accidents happen in peacetime at a far greater rate than the public knows.

Kudos for your excellent insight."

This relates to another theme I've been reading about a bit, which is that the yearly casualty figures in Iraq are actually less than the peacetime death rate in our armed forces. Go to war, reduce death? I don't really think that (as in any war, plenty of innocent non-soldiers have died, but most were killed by
"insurgents," not U.S. forces), but it's hard to accuse Bush of sending people to their deaths when they are dying at the same, or even a lower rate, than they would be just practicing for war.

The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd are playing a concert on October 1. If anyone wants to donate money for the cause, please do!

Ignorant idiots all over America are stil whining about Bush's vacations. When you or I go on vacation, we lay on the beach, we turn off our cellphones, we forget ahout work and we relax. When Bush goes on "vacation," he works every single day. When you're President, you're never really on vacation, and even more so in wartime. He's doing his job, he's leading the country, he's having cabinet meetings, he's meeting with the press, he's making decisions, he's just not doing it in the White House. With the communications technology we have today, I don't know of a single thing he can't do in Crawford that he can do in the White House. Since he's mentioned in the news basically EVERY day as having done something or said something or responded to something or whatever, the people moaning about his vacation are obviously Bush-haters looking for any reason to criticize.

The French newpaper L'Equipe, which has been blasting Lance Armstrong ever since he first wont he Tour De France, has come out with new doping allegations. They've accused him with "proof" several times before, and none panned out. I'm sure this won't either. The story is that anonymous urine samples were taken in 1999 and given to a company that was working on a test for EPO, a substance banned since 1990, but unable to be tested for until recently. The testing company said some of the samples had EPO, but they didn't know who since they were anonymous. This "newspaper," which is more of a tabloid, claims they matched one of the anonymous samples that tested positive for EPO to Armstrong. The whole thing seems rather fishy, and seeing as Lance has been tested thousands of times since and has never tested positive for anything except a cortisone cream he used for saddle sores one year, I tend to doubt the reliability of this report.

People ask why I'm so willing to give Lance the benefit of the doubt, but don't give Barry Bonds the same courtesy. It's simple. Armstrong has taken, and passed, thousands of drug tests, and is under so much scrutiny by fans and the media, that it would be virtually impossible for him to have the time to properly administer performance enhancing drugs, whereas Bonds NEVER took a drug test, said he took some steroids without knowing what they werre, and now that Major League Baseball has instituted drug testing, Bonds has been out with a mysterious knee injury all season, thus relieving himself of the burden of taking a drug test.

I'm sure that like all the other times Armstrong has been accussed of doping, this will blow over. For one, he's retired so it doesn't matter. Two, most people will believe what they want to believe. The "proof" is pretty sketchy, so people that are inclined to think he's a cheater will do so, and those that think he's clean wil continue to believe in him. Put me solidly in camp #2.

Just so you know, I may be conservative, but I still think Pat Robertson is a douchebag, and his advice that we have Hugo Chavez assasinated is assinine. What a great way to improve diplomatic relations! I'm not saying Chavez is a good guy, he seems pretty bad to me, though not evil on the scale of Saddam, but not a great guy, not someone a girl wants to bring home for dinner, but that doesn't mean we should ahve him murdered.

Back to the discussion of treason from last week. Randi Rhodes, host of one of Air America's most head shows (three whole listeners) allegedly urged soliders called up to Iraq to desert. Is telling soldiers who have made a committment to our armed forces tantamount to treason? It's treason in spirit, but I don't think it is in law. It is, however, certainly unpatriotic. A lot of the left has that whole "I support the soldiers, not the war" crap going on. You can't do that since the soldiers are all volunteers and they made a choice to join the armed services. They support what they are doing, and telling them that they are doing wrong is not support, it is the exact opposite. It would be like sending your kid off the a basketball game he's playing in, and telling him "I support you, but I don't want you to win." But I digress....

And another thing. Mark Steyn pointed this out in his column today, but I thought I would paraphrase. Basically he complains about the tendency of many on the left to infantalize the soldiers, saying they are just kids, they don't know what they're getting in to, that sort of thing. Steyn points out the ridiculousness of this in comparison to the left's view that 16 year old girls are capable of making life and death decisions regarding abortion and such without the knowledge of their parents. That's hypocrisy! 16 year old girls can make adult decisions, but not 18 year old men trying to decide whether to join the Army?

Before I start spouting out my opinion, let me just give one caveat; I'm fairly ignorant on this subject, and may be basing my conclusions on some incorrect assumptions.

Anyway... The Vioxx lawsuit. Some woman's dead husband had been taking Vioxx for a while, and supposedly it caused a heart problem and he died and it's all Merck's fault, so the jury awarded the woman like $360 million. I don't care who you are, you're not worth that much money, and you're especially worth a lot less dead. My understanding is that millions of people use Vioxx to aleviate arthritis pain, and that they now think like 1 out every million or so may develop heart problems related to Vioxx. I wonder what the actual number is. Obviously at some point it does become a bad thing, but one out of a million I'm not going to blame Merck for. More people die in car accidents or by eating too much fast food, and their widows or widowers don't get hundreds of million of dollars. I think monetary awards in cases like this are ridiculous. It drives up insurance rates, and it makes it tougher for a company like Merck to make more or better drugs. If it's discovered they are truly at fault (and is a Jury valid to be making a medical decision like this?), I think a smaller award to the victim's family would be more proper. I don't know how much, I'd have to read more about the subject, and maybe go to law school and think about it a lot. I don't think precedent is valid here, because we've always given too much money in these sort of cases.

Check this out. Even Mexico requires photo I.D. to vote! I still can't figure out how requiring I.D. to vote is actually racist. I understand the reasons that opponents of this measure assert, but, like many arguments absed on racial lines, none of those reasons really passes muster when looked at with logic.

The New York Times is hilarious! Over at Instapundit, Glenn noticed that they have a news story in which they tout some pretty darn good economic indicators, including revised for the better job gains, but then in the editorials they have a piece which talks about how badly the economy is, and how Bush is ignoring problems with low job gains and such. It's almost like they are trying to lose credibility.

Eugene Volokh (future Supreme Court Justice, I hope) and Glenn Reynolds (the blogfather) were both talking about treason and the First Ammendment today. The question is "Where is the line?" Criticism is, of course, protected speech, but say a local Imam with radio show gets on the air and says that American troops in Iraq are legitimate targets. Is that treason? I think encouraging people to target American troops, no matter where they are, is treason. It's seems pretty plain to me. That's why I support Blair's new efforts to expel such agitators from Britain, and I'm hoping that Bush takes a hardline stance as well. I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of left wing professors saying such things, feeling they are protected by both the First Ammendment and the general anti-war feeling in this country, but encouraging people to target Americans goes WAY too far. I'm not saying any professors or anyone else in the US is actually saying anything like this, just that I wouldn't be surprised.

What about Cindy Sheehan? Does she have the right to protest? Of course. What's unfortunate about her is that the media is fawning all over her, and electing her the symbol of parents of soldiers. Who elected her? I'm willing to bet that the vast majority, 90% or more, of parents of soldiers killed in Iraq disagree with her anti-war stance vehemently. I wish the media would stop portraying her as mainstream when she's really a far left radical. I also don't get why she's so pissed at Bush. Her son volunteered for the military, and after a tour of duty, he RE-ENLISTED! Bush didn't force him to go to Iraq, he volunteered, knowing that death was a possibility. Heck, if anything his radical left-wing mother's anti-American attitude (I don't think anyone who criticizes the war is anti-American, but I do think Cindy Sheehan is...) probably pushed him in to the military. Kids are rebellious and if you grow up with a nutcase radical mothering you, then it's seems quite natural you would rebel by joining the group she seems to hate most, the military, tool of the "establishment."

The latest in the talk about the nomination of Roberts is that he once called abortion "a tragedy." Far lefties and other enemies of Bush are saying that he should be knocked down just for this. I can't figure out what their problem is, though. It's one thing to say a woman should have the right to choose, and I agree, but I think it's ALWAYS a tragedy that a fetus is aborted. There are plenty of good reasons for it to happen, but that doesn't make it a good thing. No one waits outside of an abortion clinic to cheer women who come out. The girl getting an aborting may be saving her fetus from becoming a baby and being brought in to a life of poverty, but it's still not a good thing. A neutral thing, at best. I don't see any problem with thinking every abortion is a tragedy, but still supporting a woman's right to choose. For someone to say the necessity of abortion is anything but a tragedy is basically to advocate murder. I'm not really saying this in the way I want to, I can't seem to get the right words which is unusual for me, but it's a complicated issue. I hope I got my point across.

As a history buff and a math freak, this story falls under the category of "Holy crap!" for me:

"And all this reminded me, somehow, of another story I saw four or five years ago about Archimedes. Remember him? He lived in Syracuse in the third century B.C. and discovered that if you step into a full bathtub, the water overflows the top (there's a little more to it than that).

In the 10th Century a monk copied Archimedes' manuscript onto parchment. 200 years later, another monk, looking for parchment, washed off the Greek and used the book for a new prayerbook. The msnuscript was discovered in a monastic library in Constantanople in 1906, and lost during WW1. It resurfaced in Paris in the '60s. Christies sold it at auction in 1998 to an anonymous bidder who loaned it to a university for study. With the help of computer technology, they have recovered these Archimedes writings:

Method of Mechanical Theorums
On Floating Bodies
On the Measurment of the Circle
On the Sphere and the Cylinder
On Spiral Lines, and
On the Equilibrium of Planes.

Archimedes was studying Infinity and was about discover Calculus when he was killed in the Second Punic War."

Man, if that's true, that just blows my mind! This fits in with the whole theory that the Greeks were the pinnacle of civilization until the Romans ruined them, but the best part of Greek scholarship survived the dark ages thanks to the Arabs until Europe pulled itself up in the Enlightenment. This illustrates just how direct Newton and Liebnez were as successors to Archimedes and the other Greeks. Can you imagine if Archimedes hadn't died and the world had the calculus two thousand years earlier? I don't know what the implications would be, but I think the world might be much more advanced than it is. We may have had the TV by the 1400's for all I know. Can you imagine what popular culture would be like if we had a library of old movies written and directed by Shakespeare for the big screen? Of course they'd be stored on little holographic devices or somesuch thing.

Yesterday I wrote about UN funds being used for Palestinians t-shirts bearng slogans like, "Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem." According to this, the UN's response is basically "Uh, well once they get the money they can do what they want with it." So they can use it to buy more shoulder-mouted rocket launchers with which to kill Israelis? Sounds to me like the UN is taking sides here, and that's unacceptable, especially seeing as the UN created Israel in the first place, and now they are giving money to destroy it?

Frequent readers of my blog will know that my posts usually fall under four categories; politics, my life, TV shows, and poker. File this one under TV shows. I've played up Veronica Mars as one of the all-time great TV shows, and I still feel that way. I want everyone to watch it, and now the guy who created one of my other favorite shows, Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, has ringed in his own endorsement of Veronica Mars:

"Joss Luvs Veronica.

This is my attempt at posting my own thread. My peeps and I just finished a crazed Veronica Marsathon, and I can no longer restrain myself. Best. Show. Ever. Seriously, I've never gotten more wrapped up in a show I wasn't making, and maybe even more than those. Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. Big emotion, I mean BIG, and charsimatic actors and I was just DYING from the mystery and the relationships and PAIN, this show knows from pain and no, I don't care, laugh all you want, I had to share this. These guys know what they're doing on a level that intimidates me. It's the Harry Potter of shows. There. I said it. People should do whatever they can to check out this first season so the second won't be a spoiler fest. I'm nutty.

I'm a little calmer now. Oh God, no I'm not! Wait. Wait. Okay. Some of you may already be all up on this, and some may disagree, but I'm urging peeps to check it out, 'cause there is great TV afoot, and who doesn't want that? Thank you for your time."

This was cut and pasted from a post he made on a Whedon fansite.

I know I'm a pretty argumentative person, and sometimes I just can't let it go. My roommate was suggesting that I work on that the other day, because there's a certain person that I constantly get in arguments over stupid things, and I get so frustrated. I did some soul-searching or whatever, and realized that the only thing that winning this sort of argument does is make the other person basically admit that they are being stupid, and why is that such a great thing for me? Why would I want all my friends to feel stupid? That makes me feel stupid, so I'm going to really work on being more easy-going and less argumentative. Just let it go, Ben, just let it go!

I sent out an email to a colleague at the San Francisco Fed today, asking her to change something, and explained why. She called me, didn't really get my point, but did say that my email came off as mean. I went out of my way to not be mean, but to be completely explanatory so that she would understand why I was asking her to do what I was asking her to do. Below is the email:

"John Doe, when you are faxing or pouching responses to us, would you please put the inquiring office on the front page of each individual response, instead of putting Atlanta on all of them? Every morning I end up with 10 different responses that say Atlanta on the front page, and only hours later when I get around to dealing with them do I realize that they are meant for a different office whose float is HANDLED by us in Atlanta, but it's not Atlanta float, you know? So then I have to walk around the office giving them out to the right people instead of letting the mail guy do it in the morning."

Is that mean? I thought throwing in please and thank you (which I did before my signature) would make it seem not mean. I sure didn't want to be mean. Anyway, after talking to her on the phone, she still didn't understand. We get a bunch of these responses every day, and all of them go to the office here in Atlanta. The thing is, most are not ABOUT the Atlanta office, so all she needs to do is put Atlanta on the envelope that she's sending them all in, and put the relevent office on the individual responses so that the person handling Atlanta float (me) doesn't get a whole bunch of crap he doesn't want. But she didn't get it. The best I could do was get her to put Atlanta and then "Attn: XXXX." Of course this only works well if you have memorized exactly who all handles which office, which no one has since it changes most every month. It's better than nothing, but I wish I could have broken through her mindset and gotten her to understand my point. Now I do mean to be mean, but she won't ever read this, so it's all good.

To no intelligent person's surprise, Palestinian groups have no intention of trying to be peaceful now that Israel has pulled out of Gaza.

The deal was supposed to be that Israel will give up some land in exchange for cessation of hostilities. Of course this goes against many years of history which prove that agressors like Hamas or Hitler will see any sign of retreat as a victory, not as a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" situation. One wonders if perhaps Sharon's plan all along was to let them in Gaza, let them start killing Israeli citizens again, and then bomb the entirety of Gaza back to the stone age while it's full of terrorists.

What would happen if we decided to pull out of Iraq? Besides the obvious, which is the GOP getting slammed at the next elections, and Iraq turning in to just as crappy a place to live as it was before, maybe crappier, the Islamic terrorists will consider it a vitory on their part and step up action. You think terrorism is bad now, just wait to see what it will be like if they get a taste of victory over the U.S. What will happen is that the appeasers will appease and appease for a while, and then whomever is elected the next President will end up forced to take much more agressive action against various middle east entities after lots of Americans are killed in HUGE attacks, ones that dwarf 9/11. It will be bad, and it will turn into a war of civilizations, the West against Islam.

If we stay the course in Iraq, however, we will end up with a moderate amount of terrorists attacks in comparison, and a decent ally in Iraq (eventually). I don't know how to stop terrorism, but leaving Iraq before the job is done will do just the opposite. You'll see my prediction in miniature in what happens in Israel over the next few months following the Gaza pullout. The Palestinians are going to kill a LOT of Jews in the next six months, and hostilities are going to take a turn for the worse. The international community will take the anti-Semitic route, of course, and try to hamstring Israel from the ability to protect its people.

In a recent Pew survey, 46% of Mexicans polled said they would immediately move to the United States if they had the chance. Similar polls in other countries show the same thing. Funy how the wacky left, along with other groups around the world, calls the United States evil, imperialistic, and all that nonsense, but everyone still seems to want to move here and live here. People like my fellow blogger Scott decry economic mobility in the United States, basically saying there isn't much. If that's true, then why do so many people want to live here?

Remember how the U.N. likes to throw money at the Palestinians for no particular reason? Also remember how the Palestinians are supposed to calm down and be peaceful now that Israel has left Gaza? And remember how I said that's an obvious lie, and they won't stop until they've driven all the Jews in to the sea? Well t-shirts have been popping up in Palestine that say "First Gaza, soon Jerusalem!" and they have the U.N. logo on them, which means the Palestinians have no intention to seek peace, and the U.N. is a bunch of liars. They support "peace" with one hand, while giving the Palestinians money to support the destruction of Israel with the other hand. And they wonder why so many people distrust them.... We ought to kick the U.N. out of the U.S. for this and turn Turtle Bay into condos.

A compelling argument in favor of racial profiling when participating in anti-terror activities.

Today is one of the most important days in recent world history. Today is the day that Israel completes the Gaza pullout, whether the residents that are being evacuated like it or not. Today is the day that for the first time in history, a country that was attacked and accquired land in a defensive war was forced to give the land back to the agressors. Today is the day that Hamas can move in to Gaza and be one step closer to Jerusalsm. Today could be the first day in a long, slow suicide by Israel.

I hope that the Palestinians stick to what they say in English, and this leads to peace. I know, because I'm not a moron, that the Palestinians will instead stick to what they say in Arabic, and consider this a victory, and start Gaza based hostilities within a short period of time. When this happens, when the Palestinians use their new land to start killing Israelis in territory that is undisputed by anyone except Arab countries, I hope that Israel bombs the entire area back to the stone age, and they will do it with my blessing.

I've been thinking about a major change to my life that would be a huge risk. It involves incurring a lot more debt so that I can quit my job and finish my MBA much quicker. That means, on the plus side, that I could be earning more than twice what I am now (based on average starting salaries for MBA grads last year) by mid-2007. On the negative side, something bad could happen to ruin my earning potential, but still leave me with obscene amounts of credit card and student loan debt, and no way to pay it off.

I've never taken a real risk before as far as how I live my life. Some might say it was pretty risky to quit computer engineering to major in history, but that was a purely negative risk that I took simply because it was easier than engineering, and I was tired of math. This is a risk that has both positive and negative aspects. I'm basically gambling on myself and a lack of disasters. Despite the many setbacks I've had in life, I'd still put my money down on me over just about anyone else.

For those few people from my high school that read this blog, I figured I'd give an update on what as many people are now doing from my graduating class as I can remember.

North Springs High School Class of 1995

John Tillet- urologist, married with a pregnant wife
Louis Alterman- married with a kid
Kenneth Searles- married with a kis and lives on St. Thomas where he runs IT for a resort. His wife was best friends with Stephanie Jackson (RIP), so they named their first child Jackson.
Scott Steinberg- married, writing video game reviews
Keith Parkes- married with a kid, works for Turner
Ross Edwards- lives in Vegas and works in construction, married
Jeremy Goldman- couldn't make it because he had grad school orientation, heard some other stuff, but it's not my place to say here
Matt Houser- not there either, but I hear he's a lawyer and is married to a doctor (somehow that doesn't surprise me)
Chris Zimmerman- I forget what he's doing for a living, but he basically seemed like the same old Chris
Josh Tyrell- this guy was my best friend in 3rd grade, now he designs video games right here in ATL, and rooms with Rae Williams, who works at Mellow Mushroom but was not at the reunion
Ellen Sutherland- now in law school
Rob Sutherland (not in my grade, but you might be curious what a former Rhodes Scholar does with his life)- he owns a pottery shop or studio or something in Athens, GA
Scott Mirksy - Married, I thought he said he works for an insurance broker, but I'm not sure on that
Adriana Bello- didn't talk to her, but I did notice she was HOT!
Connor McCarthy- associate producer of a reality TV show on the style network or some such thing
Dan Steinberg- married, lives in Minnesota and seemed like the corporate schlub I expected he would become
Kenny Holzer- something in real estate, and he was not wearing bright neon athletic shorts
Justin McKnight- I forget what he does for a living, but he's also still in a band
Jesse Feldberg- coast guard
Meredith Steele- unfortunately I never got the chance to chat with her, but I believe she's a high-powered lawyer in New York City
James Stack- heard some rumor about him and Cate Chused, but without details, it's just gossip, so I won't spread it here... I didn't talk to James in high school, and I didn't at the reunion. He does look the same, though.

I talked to a few other people, but can't remember more details. I write another follow-up if I remember more.


That's all I can remember for now.

Some moral relativists (whcih actually means morons) like to say that suicide bombers are noble revolutionaries, and the evil people are the Americans and Israelis who try to stop the bombers from killing innocents. If this is true, and suicide bombing is such a great and noble method of warfare, would they be ahppier if Americans started doing it? Just walk right in to a terorist house in Iraq somehow, and blow yourself up. Would the apologists and relativists then start applauding our soldiers for their noble acts on behalf of what they believe in?

Another thing, why is it so great that Islamists are fighting for their religion and all, but so evil that Christians want to keep a Ten Commandements display in a courthouse where it has been for many years? They whine about how we're spending so much money on Iraq while there are people going hungry in the US, but then they protest against genetically modified wheat. And why is it so bad to spend money on Iraq, but two minutes later they are whining that we aren't sending enough money to poor Afircans?

Turns out that whole "Able Danger" condemnation of the 9/11 Comission and their alleged dismissal of proof that intelligence regarding hijackers had been ignored might have been a sham by someone trying to sell a book. Doesn't really change much, as I'm still convinced that Jaime Gorelick's intelligence wall caused a lot of problems and she should not have been on the panel because of it.

I had my 10 year high school reunion this weekend. I was nervous going in, debating on whether I wanted to show or not, but I remembered one of my regrets from high school was not participating in enough stuff, so I decided not to make the same mistake. I'm glad, because I had a lot of fun and reconnecting with some old friends that I've wanted to get in touch with for while.

Props to Ross Edwards and Mitch Frohman, and whomever else was involved int he planning and organizing of the affair. And props to everyone who showed up. I wish that Jeremy Goldman, Kevin Jude, Warren Jacobson, Jacob Wallace, Quentin Colburn, Frank Tsen, Kevin Lee, Scott Brown, Jesse Kates, Deborah Tam, Chris Becker, Steve D. Kim, Matt Houser, and several others had been there, but I did get to see Keith Parkes (and lovely wife), Scott Steinberg (and lovely wife), Chris Zimmerman, Kenneth Searles (and lovely wife), Ross Edwards, Andrew Long, Jen Blanchard, Justin McKnight, Scott Mirsky, Adrian Sasine, Adriana Bello (who probably turned out to be hotter in comparison to her high school years than any of the other women there), John Tillet Kenny Holzer, Andy Cavanaugh, Molly Bennet, Ellen Sutherland, Dan Steinberg, and many others. I didn't get to talk to or even greet many of the people listed above, but I was only there for about three hours. Despite having a great time, I'm not on the edge of my seat waiting for the 25 year deal.

A new 9/11 story is beginning to hit the blogosphere. Those who follow these sort of things will remember that a big criticism of the 9/11 Commission was the inclusion of Jaime Gorelick, as she was the person who instituted the "wall" of intelligence between domestic and foreign affairs, causing, for instance information received by the CIA to not be shared with the FBI even if it would help the FBI on a case. Well it seems that a military intelligence group called "Able Danger" (no, I don't know exactly what they are) had accquired information on Mohammed Atta which may have led to his capture and the possible stoppage of the 9/11 hijackings. This intelligence, however, was not shared with the FBI due to Gorelick's intelligence wall.

It seems the 9/11 Commission was aware of this intelligence, but decided agaisnt mentioning it in their report, despite the inclusion of any bit of information that might in any way reflect at all badly on the Bush administration. There are two obvious reasons for this. One, they were acting in a partisan manner, attempting to blame Bush. Two, and most relevent, Gorelick knew that it was her fault that this valuable and potentially life saving information was not vien to the people who could have done something with it, and she wanted to save her own skin.

This story could very well blow up int he next month. It's pretty big when you think about the implications. A woman who conservatives said should not be on the panel because she's too partisan, and was responsible for some of the problems the panel was investigating, is suddenly found to be responsible for even more problems which contributed to our allowing the hijackings to happen, and she somehow managed to leave out any mention of this gigantic issue from the report. If this is all true, she defrauded the American people to save her own butt, and you can bet the liberals will go to bat for her because they want any blame to be put on Bush, whether he deserves it or not, nor do they want the intelligence wall she created and they favor to crumble. It should crumble, and I still don't understand the reasoning behind it in the first place.

This just in: It seems that the intelligence that Gorelick's "wall" kept from being revealed to domestic counter-terrorism intelligence groups also shows that Atta spent much of 1999 in Iraq, thus illustrating yet another Iraq/Al Queda connection which the left doesn't want publicized because it would out another hole in the "there was no connection" meme. I think we can now start calling people liars when they say there was no connection, since they call Bush a liar for using intelligence that most everyone in the world agreed with when he said Iraq had WMDs. Th left doesn't like turnabout, they don't consider it fair play, but when they get caught hiding evidence to support their untrue agenda, they deserve it.

The other day I betrayed someone's confidence. I was told something, and asked not to spread it, but it just slipped out in a conversation. I've felt very guilty ever since. I doubt it's a big deal, and the person that told me this thing in the first place will probably never find out, but it's eating me up inside anyway. I think I've learned my lesson, though. I need to keep my mouth shut.

I just my grades back from my first semester of grad school. I should say grade since I only took one class. At any rate it was a B, which is what I was hoping for. Next time I won't screw up the mid-term and force myself to get near a 100 on the final just to do ok, I will do awesome on the midterm and ace the final, and get A's.

Below is an excerpt from . I'm curious what people think. I agree that such cultures are superior, but does that mean we ahve a moral obligation to make sure other cultures develop into fair and just ones, or should we leave them alone to oppress and kill their won people?

"Yes – that is exactly what I am saying. Societies that eschew slavery, mass execution, stoning, rape as a criminal penalty, beheading and impalement are – to be blunt – culturally superior to those that do not. It was the West's moral obligation to see that overwhelming economic and military power did not fall into the hands of culturally immature societies, but lack of conviction, moral weakness and intellectual dishonesty caused us to drop the ball."

Neal Boortz and John Linder just came out with a book on the FairTax, and it's going to debut at #1 on the NYT bestseller list. Congratulations to them, and to the American people, who may get to reap the benefits of a far better tax system than the one that currently yokes our economy. Go pick up a copy for yourself and see what it's all about. That makes more sense than criticizing it without even finding out the facts, as my liberal friends are wont to do.

No matter the venue or the subject matter, there will always be apologists ready to make excuses for those who have sinned in the eyes of the rest of us. Today my topic is steroid use in baseball, and the idiots that defend it. A lot of the excuses run along the lines of, "Steroids only became benned by baseball a few years ago." Of course that neglects the fact that steroids were illegal in the eyes of the law for far longer. Baseball doesn't explicitly condemn murder, either, but I don't think it takes a genius baseball player to know that murdering someone might not be good for their career.

Do I think steroid users should be let in the Hall of Fame? Yes, but only because there are plenty of cheaters already in the Hall. Whitey Ford, known as one of the all-time greatest pitchers, admitted to doctoring the ball many times on his way to immortality. Sterioid use should definitely be taken in to account when voting. Rafael Palmiero has numbers that look Hall-worthy, but if we assume that steroids added 15% over his career to the most important stats, and we take away that 15%, he no longer looks like a Hall of Fame player. Take 15% from Barry Bonds, and you still have a sure-fire Hall of Famer, but what you no longer have is a man with a chance to break the career home run record (as an aside, I hope and pray he does not break that record, or even surpass Babe Ruth. He doesn't deserve because he's a cheater, and I'm also pissed at the racist comments he made about wanting to pass the Babe, but not Aaron).

Mark McGwire I'm just not sure about. I can't help but imagine he was taking steroids when he broke the single season home run record, but the guy was hitting near 50 homers a year since his rookie year. Was he always on steroids? If so, then I don't think you let him in, but if he only started in his latter years, then maybe so. '98 was as eelectrifying a season as there ever has been in baseball, and it's too bad that years later we discover the whole thing was fake. I think you have to also assume Sammy Sosa was on the juice at the time.

There are a few things I'm sure about. Roger Clemens never took steroids, neither did Greg Maddux or John Smoltz. I doubt any of the current Braves roster was ever on the juice (maybe Chipper at one point, but not now), and I think Jeff Franceour is the real deal.

Zero Tolerance run amok. It's not just for school anymore.

I got a haircut yesterday. I think it's a bit too short, which kinda sucks since my high school reunion is this weekend. 10 years!! I was looking over the evite and noticed that few of my friends from high school are going to be there. A lot live out of town and can't make it, but there will be a few. I'm looking forward to seeing Keith Parkes at the least, and hopefully a few more will show up. The only two people I ever talk to anymore, Kevin and Warren, will not be in attendance.

Historical revisionism is a big trend these days, with most examples being left-wing writers changing history to make the United States evil whenever possible. With the 60th anniversery of the nuke attacks on Japan, a lot of people are trying to change history to make the nukes unnecessary and evil. Don't let that happen! The nueks we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were definitely devestating, and defintiely saved more lives than they destroyed. Just before, the U.S. had invaded Okinawa with several hundred thousand casualties together for the two opponents in just a couple of days fighting. The nukes killed about twoo hundred thousand altogether and ended the war almost immediately. Can you imagine how many millions of troops and civilians would have died had we been forced to invade the main islands of Japan? I even saw one writer excuse Japanese slave labor during the war, saying it was necessary due to the lack of able bodies in the country. When is slavery EVER justifiable? It's a sick attitude, and one that seems all to similar to some of the left-wings' protests against the current war. You know the attitude I'm talking about, the one that excuses suicide bombing civilians as a noble act, especially when it kills Jews.

I hope that a nuclear bomb is never again dropped on anyone, but it certainly saved a lot of lives 60 years ago.

I just read a nifty little letter to Powerline from a military guy who is stationed in Djobouti, a small country in the horn of Africa. Despite the UN having given them tons of money, the country is still destitute, because throwing money at poor countries doesn't help anyone. This guy, working for the US military, visited an orphanage and realized that most of the girls there don't have shoes. He's also an assistant scoutmaster back home, so he sent back to his scout troop asking them to collect shoes. They managed to send over 100 pairs of shoes for these girls, which is far more than they ever got from either the UN, or the ACLU (which is currently in the midst of a vendetta against the Boy Scouts. I may not the the Boy Scouts anti-gay and anti-athiest stance, but to see them as anything other than an organization for good, with motives much more pure than many "charitable" organizations, is nuts). Then he asked the girls what else they wanted, and their answer was not food, or candy, but to learn english! That's english, the language of the evil Americans. Why? Because, whatever groups like the ACLU or moveon.org or whomever continue to say, the rest of the world realizes that we are the most free and most giving country on Earth, and there's nowhere else in the world where so many people have so many opportunities to better themselves. Some of my liberal friends would deny this, but the facts speak for themselves. Anyone can come here and succeed. If you aren't Arab, you typically can't do well in an Arab country, if you aren't Japanese, you can't do well in Japan, if you aren't French, it's tought to do well in France, and it's tough to do well in South America no matter who you are, but if you come to the US, you can be any color you want with any background you want (besides criminal), and hard work can get you to the top. Obviously there are other factors involved, and just working hard won't necessarily get you up the ladder, but it's far more likely to than in any other country.

What a jerk! I'll bet people would know some heroes from Iraq if the media ever reported on anything besides how many people died that day. This guy's paper, the New York Times, is about the worst of the lot in that respect. This is about the first time they've mentioned that an American in Iraq could possibly be considered heroic, except in cliched, "We support the troops, but don't support the cause" hypocrisies.

I noticed something the other day. Much of the left is all about sending lots of money to Africa and to the Palestinians, and to whatever other group claims victimhood. Great, wonderful for them. But then when we go and try to do somethign concrete, like fix Iraq, they say "How can you spend all that money on Iraq when we have so many people going hungry right here in the U.S.?" So which is it? Should we spend all our money on our poor and hungry, or should we spend some trying to help the rest of the world?

Cut and pasted from Boortz, tlaking about his book signing:

"By the way ... a Marine came through the line, just four days back from Iraq. I asked him what we could be doing over there that we're not doing. His answer was immediate: "Keep the media out." He told us that what he sees on television here bears no real resemblance to what is actually going on over there. Interesting."

Now I don't agree with keeping the media out, but getting the full story would be nice. It seems like 90% of returnees from the military in Iraq say stuff like this guy, and the other 10% are hardcore Bush-haters who seemed to have gone over there to find evidence to support an agenda, like the guy that used his vet status to try to win an election in Ohio, running on the "I Hate Bush" ticket. He lost.

When will the Democrats get it? The reason they don't have the Presidency or control of the house or senate is because the majority of the country is not on their side. They are not mainstream, as they continue to maintain. If they were mainstream, then Kerry would be in the Oval Office, not Bush.

An article from the New York Times with actual FACTS about how great the economy is going now. I'm sure people like my friend Dave, or the CBS news team will come up with an anecdote about a poor person who can't find a job, and use that as proof that the economy sucks, but for those of us who live in a fact based world, the economy is really kicking ass, and a lot of it has to do with Bush and Greenspan's conservative economic policies. You only need to look at the Jimmy Carter years to see what raising taxes on a slow economy would have done. Lower taxes, achieve growth.

According to this, the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister said violence against Israel will not end until Jerusalem is in Arab hands. I wish people would stop saying the guy is lying and start believing him so that something can be done about it. The P.A. is worthless in a search for peace, unless you are willing to have Israel driven in to the sea for peace. Of course it won't stop there. The Islamists will see that success and then start demanding more and more, and before you know it, we will have appeased them into allowing sharia law to run our lives.

Police are randomly searching bags in the New York subway system. This is stupid. Until a non-Muslim non-Arab bombs something in the name of Allah, they ought to concentrate on searching the bags of people in the demographic that is most likely to be a terrorist. Racial profiling, yes, but it has worked for the Israelis, and until others start bombing, why waste time searching someone unlikely to be a terrorist while randomly allowing some Arab dude with a backpack to go through without a search?

Anyway, the ACLU is suing over this policy. I'm just wondering what happens if their suit succeeds, and the searches stop, and then a week later an Arab man bombs a subway. Is the ACLU going to apologize, or show any remorse for the dead? Probably not, they are way too self-righteous to admit to any wrong.

Did you knwo that Ruth Bader Ginsberg had a long and close association with the ACLU, a very activist, and most often liberal, organization before she got ont eh Supreme Court? How come a mostly partisan group who often is active in some pretty extreme things was ok, but John Robert's membership in the Federalist Society, which doesn't bring suits or really affect anything, only organizes debates and talks about the law, is so bad? The ACLU is far more active than the Federalist Society will ever be. Could it be because Roberts is conservative, but Ginsberg is liberal? Imagine that, a double-standard on the left, how unusual!

Yet another reason to support the FairTax plan. Did you know that if you own a landline phone, you pay a hidden 3% tax that was created to fund the Spanish-American War, which occurred in 1898? Politicians have kept it on the books for all this time because they want to keep stealing more of our money, and this one is so hidden that no one complains. Someone did create a bill to abolish it in 2000, but it was vetoed by Bill Clinton, who apparantely still wants to fight Spain.

The FairTax plan would eliminate secretive methods of stealing our money, and according to a Presidential commission of tax experts, it is the only tax plan that would relieve the poor of paying taxes. How? Because they get a refund of all taxes paid on the necessities of life.

I had my worst day since my rush started yesterday. I really barely played since I had to study, but I sat down at a $100+9 SNG and had double the starting chips fairly early. Then I watched like 6 shortstacks in a row go all-in against a better hand and win out, while I was card dead. Instead of what should have been 3 or 4 people left in at the break, there were 7. My lack of decent cards caused me to bleed away until I became a shortstack with 5 people left 15 minutes into the 2nd hour. By this time the blinds are like half my stack so I had to start pushing everytime I played a hand. Soon enough I pushed with an AJ and someone called with AQ and that was all she wrote. I feel like I played well enough to at least place, but all those suckouts kept it from getting short-handed, which is where I feel like I can outplay most anyone. Then I tilted, lost a $50 and $20 on a ring game, and decided it wasn't my night, so I quit to study.

Total loss for the day- $174, about what I won the day before. I won a bit right before bed, or it would be bigger.

I just read a story about a girl who parked in a shopping center lot, and walked to the adjacent bank to use the ATM before returning to the shopping center to go to a pet store. When she returned to the lot after just a minute or two, a tow truck was already loading up her car to tow it away. This was despite the fact that it was early in the day and the lot had a total of four cars in it. After pleading with the tow truck driver, he allowed her to call her father and have him come with $200 cash, or he was taking the car. The father got there and blocked the tow truck with his car. The two driver called another truck to come tow the father's car. The father called the sheriff and two deputies came. While waiting, the owner of the pet shop came out and said he did not want the girl's car towed. The driver didn't care. They said they couldn't do anything since it was a private lot, but they'd be glad to testify in favor of the girl in court, and said she'd probably win $800, quadruple damages, for this predatory behavior. At this point the tow truck driver angrily dropped the car and took off.

The father made some calls to find out the actual law in this situation. Turns out in this jurisdiction that tow truck drivers are required by law to accept credit cards, and cannot charge more than a police lot, which was $130 in that county, and the owner of the lot must request the tow, it cannot happen in a vacuum (of course it would be hard to fit both a car and a tow truck in a vacuum). I wonder what the laws are here in Georgia? I understand that a lot of tow truck companies and tire boot companies like to patrol Peachtree looking for prey.

The other day in Israel there was a protest against the Gaza pullout. Some nice Palestinians decided to fire shoulder-mounted rockets in to the crowd, but messed up. One of the rockets exploded in the midst of the agressors, killing a young Palestinian boy. They managed to blame the Israelis for it, instead of their own bloodthirsty hatred.

These are the people that deserve a state of their own? All their leaders and role models do is kill and hate. The average Palestinian probably just wants to live a normal life, go to school, get married, have kids, go to work, etc. Until they manage to expel the hatred from their people, they will never live normal lives.

I try to read Jewish World Review as often as I can. Typically I read the news columns, usually conservative leaning, pro-Israel stuff is found on there, but sometimes I read columns on religion and other topics. Every once in a while they have a nifty story, and I thought I'd share this one.

The former head of Air America, the liberal radio network, is being accused of stealing a lot of money from some charities. The details are somewhat annoying to follow, but it looks like the guy took some loans that he had little intention of paying back. The scandal has not been mentioned in the majority of mainstream media outlets, but can you imagine the firestorm if this had been the guy that produces Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O'Reilly, or some other conservative commentator. These charities typically serve black inner city children. You'd expect Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to be all over it. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, oh how you abound on the left. Apparantely it's ok to lie, cheat, and steal as long as you do it for a good cause like a liberal radio network.

A report on Bush's physical fitness was released yesterday, showing that he's in great shape. The