A Saundi prince has just bought a good portion of FoxNews. I don't have verification or details, but it's kinda scary that militant Islam (and this guy was said to be fairly militant when I read about it) is getting a foothold in corporate America. One does have to wonder why he didn't try to buy part of CNN. Maybe because CNN already basically works for Islamists, whereas FoxNews tells the truth, which is exactly what the Islamists don't want. I doubt it, but either way I don't like this one bit.

Now this is cool! First you have a graph showing the national debt. It looks really bad for the current administration. Then you have a graph which shows the debt as a percentage of GNP. Now all of the sudden Bush looks pretty good. In laymen's terms, if I earn $30k/year, pay rent, struggle to get by, and I owe someone $20,000, I'm in some serious shit. But if I'm making $300k/year, then even $50k owed to someone isn't such a big deal. America now is the guy earning $300k, and America during the Clinton years was the guy earning $30k. Obviously I'm hyperbolizing, but the point is valid. As a percentage of GNP, the Bush administration's national debt is nothing compared to some previous administrations.

It's crazy that no matter how much the GOP screws up, the Dems can't take advantage. They have their heads so far up Cindy Sheehan's ass, that they can't see that a slight move to the right might turn off their far-left nutty supporters, but it will pick up a TON of people frustrated with the free spending ways of the GOP. And just because the far-left wackos are upset doesn't mean they won't get those votes anyway. It's not like the Daily Kos people are going to be so pissed off at a little moderation that they would suddenly decide to vote Republican. On the other ahnd, maybe it's about personnel. Sure, an upset conservative might consider voting for a Democrat, but none of them are worth anything. Nancy Pelosi? Please.....

I got poker on the brain today! I haven't played much because I was on a huge losing swing, and drained out my bankroll. I may play a little this weekend, or I may avoid it, but I do miss it! And Full Tilt is finally revamping their tournament schedule beginning tomorrow, so maybe they'll have some cheap ones at decent times for us working folks.

Cindy Sheehan is not anti-war. If she was truly anti-war, she wouldn't call the foreign bastards that flow into Iraq to kill Americans and Iraqis "freedom fighters." Once you do that, you are no longer anti-war, you're just for the other side. A true anti-war activist would denounce both sides and all violence, which is at least a respectfully consistent position. Sheehan has, by her own words, aligned herself with the people who are trying to kill our soldiers, and who killed her own son. Does that make her a traitor? Well speech is protected, but providing succor for the enemy of our state is not, so I'm not sure about this one. I know she won't ever be arrested as a traitor, so it doesn't matter. But it's funny how the media has latched on to her, but ignores the activist mothers of dead soldiers who favor the war. Could it be because the media is left-biased? Naw, couldn't be it, they deny it and we know the media would never lie to us. What evidence could there be for bias anyway? Just because over 70% of journalists describe themselves as Democrats, or over 80% of donations to political parties from major newspaper journalists went to the Democrats, they are biased? Yeah, I think so.

It looks like we may be headed for a split in the Republican parth along fiscal lines. It seems that half the party no longer cares about small government or controlling spending, they just want to lower taxes and raise the deficit. The other half of the party, witih John McCain as posterboy, seems to actually follow the concepts of conservatism, which include lower taxes AND lower spending. And just to remind you freaky liberal Bush-haters, classic conservatism has absolutely nothing to do with religion, except that religion and politics should remain seperate. Anyway, the GOP better figure something out, or the Dems... Oh wait, the Dems are so utterly incompetent and whiny these days that they aren't too much of a threat. The real threat may come from a third party created by the fiscally sound GOP members, the not-nuts libertarians, and centrist Democrats. With that sort of membership, I'd probably be voting for them.

TVguide.com has this little section called "The Watercooler" where their designated TV addicts discuss the big shows from the night before. At the end is a poll asking "What was the best show you watched last night?" Usually there's two or three that get more votes than everyone else, but in general it's pretty spread out. Not so for the Thursday morning poll. Lost got about 40% and Veronica Mars got almost 50% of the vote. I'd say it's pretty certain that those are by far the best shows on Wednesday night, and America seems to agree.

Woo hoo!! Being a blogger who mentions poker on occassion does pay off, because now I get to play in a free tourney.

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 9366891

I hope that worked right. Not so good at the html, even though it was just cut and paste. It's the World Online Poker Blogging Championship or something like that. ALl the big bloggers will be there (Iggy, Pauly, etc.) and I plan to win. The winner gets a $12k package to a major live tourney, and other prizes include some awesome monitors and XBox360s.

The $10,000 hammer is a well known description of how people think the government spends money. Why then are so many people so much more in favor of raising taxes instead of cutting spending? Walk around a downtown area for five minutes and you can see several examples of wasted money from the government. Cut the government's pocket book, not my own.

Last night could have been a tough night for me with Lost and Veronica Mars, the two best shows on TV, on against one another. Thankfully I have a dual tuner DVR, and with a cable splitter carrying a 3rd signal to my TV directly, I can watch one thing while recording two others. It almost makes Thursday night at 8 (The O.C., Smallville, Joey, and Alias) seem like no problem. Makes me seem like I watch too much TV, but besides those two hours, Wed. at 9 and Thurs. at 8, there's only a few other things I watch all week besides sports. And I'm a guy, so I can't be shamed for watching sports.

Columnist Walter Williams made a very good point in his column today. You know all those stranded motorists trying to escape from Houston last week? Many were abandoning their cars because they couldn't get gas. The National Guard was driving around fuel tankers trying to fill people up, the police tried distribute gas, too. All those people involved in giving out gas when they could have been helping more people evacuate, or perhaps prepared for later rescue missions or whatever. Why wasn't there enough gas in the gas stations? Simple, the local government instituted anti-price gouging measures. Because of this, and the extra cost getting gas to the area would create, not enough gas got to the area. Had gas stations been able to charge what supply and demand dictated, which in this case would probably have been at least $5 or $6, I can guarantee that gas companies would have RACED to get it there.

There is NO such thing as price gouging. I've been going back and forth on this point, but the fact is, if I own a gas station I can charge $10 a gallon, and if you depserately need gas, you'll pay it. And no one else will. Soon enough the gas station will have to lower prices to get more business because the guy across the street is only charging $5, and more people will start to buy gas at my place. The free market and supply and demand make it so price gouging is a myth.

There was a letter in the AJC bashing Bush (how unusual) for not doing enough to conserve gasoline. The writer says that instead of building new refineries (which would lower the price of gas and prevent runs like we had after Katrina here in the south), Bush should be doing something about the fuel efficiency and availability of SUVs. The fact is, if Americans cared about conservation, they would stop buying SUVs, but they are still buying them in record numbers. Why should Bush make a law against something that American has said they want, time and time again? He cannot, and should not, legislate what we buy.

The next letter writer whines about the creation of Homeland Security and what a waste it was for Bush to create. He neglects to mention the fact that Bush didn't want it, but Congress made him. Then he whines about Bush wanting to use the military for disaster relief (I think that's a bad idea, too, but after all the whining about how everyone stuck in Katrina wasn't saved personally by Bush within the first five minutes, he had to come up with some ideas). But I don't think the "no military in domestic enforcement" thing is in the Constitution, despite the writer's claims.

So basically every letter bashing Bush was based on a misunderstanding of the truth and of how laws work and what laws are supposed to do. I guess they must get their information from the same people that told us there were 10,000 dead in New Orleans and that the Superdome was a rape factory.

I hear the words "biblical proportions" to describe the devestation in the wake of Katrina. This is a false leftover from religion, as no disaster in the Bible came close to matching this. How many people were on Earth when Noah had his flood? Not that many since it was only about nine generations since Adam and Eve. There's no way Sodom and Gommorah came close to affecting this many people. Biblical is just not big enough.

This is about a GA Representative from Macon trying to use some sort of old legislative immunity law to get out of a DUI. He claims he was at a comittee meeting and thus has immunity. Maybe it ought to be illegal to drink when you're working as a lawmaker.

Cindy Sheehan posted a note on Daily Kos, the far left multi-blog site, saying that the news was all about Hurricane Rita, and don't people understand that there are other, mor important things going on in the world. Such liberal compassion!

New Orleans' Chief of Police has now said that the rumors about all the bad things happening in New Orleans slowed down relief efforts and caused resources to be sent on wild goose chases after rumors of armed gangs and rape centers and such when they could have been helping to rescue people who just needed help getting out of the flood. Will the media face any accountability for the rumors they reported as facts? Will they apologize, or even admit any wrongdoing? I doubt it. They will continue to get compliments on their unprofessional work, sort of like Dan Rather did after the "fake, but accurate" memo scandal.

Why do people complain about the Bush tax cuts? Three reasons. One, many people complain about everything Bush does. Two, they think he's trying to favor the rich. Three, they think he's trying to reduce the amount of money the government takes in to choke off social programs. Well it's all BS. Check out. NIt's tough to argue with facts. Tax revenues were up 15% last year, BECAUSE of the tax cuts. Doesn't seem logical, does it? It's supply-side economics. Leave more money in the hands of the people who create wealth (employers), and they will use to to expand their businesses, hire more people, and sell more goods. All of that requires them to pay taxes on more different items, even if the percentage is less.

State tax revenues are up, too.

You know those horror stories about all the dead people piling up in the Superdome and the Convention Center? Hundreds dead, it was all the fault of the Federal Government, Bush hates black people, etc., etc., etc. Well the truth is quite different. After evacuating all the living people, they found10 total bodies in those two places. 10! We were told 10,000 dead in New Orleans, and the total is less than 1/10th of that.

Ever since Katrina hit, we've been hearing about what a great job the reporters did, and what a horrible job the Federal Government did. As the actual facts come out, it seems that reporters gave us a pack of mistruths, elevated hysteria, and caused much of the country to lose confidence in the government. Shepherd Smith standing on a bridge wringing his hands and crying about 10,000 dead and all the rapes and murders and other violent crimes is being presented as a masterpiece of journalism- BUT IT WAS ALMOST ALL LIES!!! He filled our minds with hyperbole that did not reflect reality.

This reinforces my point that, while FEMA may have screwed up in being a little slow, this resulted in very few deaths. The local governments' lack of any sort of productive response caused far more problems, and when you consider the implications of what is happening now (a quarter trillion dollars headed to the region, enough to give each family that lived there $400,000), the lies of the reporters hangs even more heavily. Think of all the tax money that will go to a disaster that was horrible, but not as horrible as Mr. Smith and his colleagues made it out to be.

I also hear that there are now lawsuits against insurance companies, in which the plaintiff claims that, despite the fact that most insurance policies say specifically that they do not protect in ANY way against flooding, they should be responsible anyway. Sorry, if you didn't buy flood insurance when you lived in a city that is under sea level, that's your own problem. And don't tell me people there were too poor to afford it. If you can't afford to live somewhere safely, move somewhere else. No one stopped any poor New Orleans residents from moving inland.

Bill Frist is getting slammed for a possible insider trading scenario, but I ahve my doubts. It's not that I have some particular trust in the guy, in fact I think Frist is most likely the kind of politician I can't stand, the kind that thinks of an elected position as a way to enrich himself instead of serving the public, but I don't think this was insider trading. The accusation is that he sold his stock in some health care company owned by his family two weeks before they released a report stating that the company suffered severe losses. That's all true. The problem is that for insider trading you have to be able to prove that he had some special information not available to the public. Maybe he did, but it's going to be hard to prove since the management of that company divested their own holdings recently, and that's very definitely public information. Common sense tells you that if the management of a company sells off all its stock in that company, it might be a good time to get out yourself.

Edit: I read more about the story. While I don't see how they are going to get him for insider trading, an ethics violation looks like a possibility. It seems that investments of this type by congressmen are supposed to be in blind trusts. This way the congressman does not know what he has invested in, and thus avoids conflicts of interest. Obviously Frist did know that he owned this stock, since he's the one that sold it. On the other hand, seeing as it's his family's company, it might have been nearly impossible for him not to know about it, blind trust or not.

Here's the story of a Jewish Army vet who finally got his Medal of Honor 50 years after the war he earned it during. The quick synopsis is that he was a concentration camp survivor who moved to the US and joined the army. He got sent to Korea where his actions got him reccomendations for several honors, including the Medal of Honor four times, the Distinguished Service Cross twice, and the Silver Star. The most impressive part of his story was that he was captured by the Chinese and lived as a POW, using the survival skills leftover from his concentration camp experience to help his comrades in arms get through the experience alive. Latent anti-Semitism seems to be the reason cited for his not receiving the awards he deserved. Many thanks to George Bush for recognizing this gross error, and fixing it.

A more comprehensive version of the story.

The Porkbusters campaign, which you can read about on Instapundit and several other blogs (just scroll down to you see a pig icon with a slash across it) is spreading. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be having much of an effect yet. I think it will eventually. Once D.C. realizes how many people are in favor of cutting unneeded projects to help pay for Katrina (and Rita, I presume), and that these people are enough in numbers to sway the next election, they will move. Until then, few politicians are going to do much more than ignore it. I have to hand it to Nancy Pelosi, as much as I hate to give her any kudos, as she has promised to cut a $70 million project for Katrina.

Edit: CNBC has jumped in the game, with their own Porkbusters segment, in which they try to get members of congress to justify their pork. I want to see the Alaska try to justify the $200 million bridge to nowhere that he's planning to name after himself. Right now he's saying it's important for transportation in his state, but it's a bridge that connects to an island of 50 people, which already has a ferry running every half hour. Or maybe that was the pther useless bridge up there, I think I might be getting those details confused.

Pics from my sister's trip to the Burning Man festival out west.

Harry Reid's staffers put out the question, "Why is the mobilization and organization for delaing with Rita so much than for Katrina?" The implication is, of course, that the Katrina response was racially motivated. Since there's a shit-ton of black people in Houston, I find it hard to believe this nonsense. Perhaps it's because authorities at the local, state, and federal levels saw the fuckups with Katrina and decided to do better this time. Reid's people must think we should let those bastards in Houston die, just to be fair to the people who died in New Orleans.

Hey Dad. Don't read my blog while you're at work! That's not productive.

I just got word that one of the New Orleans levees is overflowing again, due to Rita. I wonder how many people may die because they heeded Mayor Nagin's ridiculous call to come on home last week, despite the guy in charge of the relief and cleanup effort saying that's a bad idea. Nagin has screwed up again, big time. Bush's bad decisions have led to not a lot of long-term problems. He had an unqualified person running FEMA, which delayed relief efforts, but probably caused very few deaths. Nagin, on the other hand, has made bad decisions every chance he could, and his incontrovertably led to many deaths. Everyone that died in the Superdome, for instance, could have been evacuated on buses, but he decided not to try to evacuate people. And the Governor decided not let the Red Cross bring supplies to those people. And now Nagin has done it again. He's a perfect example of how leaders should NOT act in time of crisis.

Another hurricane is on its way, and once again the poor seem to be stuck with nop way to evacuate. The difference this time is that the roads are so clogged up that many of the non-poor couldn't really get out anyway. Whose responsibility is it, in time of evacuation, to get transportation for them people who can't get out for one reason or another? I think it's the local government. The question is, knwoing what we know now about our country's disaster handling ability, should it still be the city? Should it be FEMA? Or should individuals be responsible for themselves? These are the questions people will be asking, and the answers are important for our country not just in terms of disaster, but in larger themes of responsibility and nanny-stateism.

I just realized that, as of this week, I've now been at my current job longer than any other job I've ever had.

Back to more TV talk. Last year had to be one of the best years for good TV in recent history. You had the resurgence of good, and original, drama on network TV, with new shows like Lost, Veronica Mars, and House. You had a couple of returning innovative comedies that threw away the three camera restrictions of yesteryear, and made Scrubs and Arrested Development favorites of the critics and more discerning viewers, though the ratings never caught up with the hype. And finally you have the emergence of cable TV as valid creator of dramas and serials, with returning shows like Nip/Tuck, Monk, and The Shield, and all new shows like Battlestar Galactica (you may not believe me, but it truly is a great show, putting the last few Star Treks to shame), The 4400, and Rescue Me. I hope I didn't forget anything, but I'm sure most people would like any of the above if they gave them a try. Now if they'd just put one good show on Monday nights!

According to scientists at LSU, the New Orleans levees were high enough to withstand the surges from Katrina, and failed due to combination of faulty design and bad construction. So much for the "underfunded because of Bush" theory. It also reinforces Bush's statement that no one expected the levees to break. Scientists involved in this stuff didn't expect them to break on Monday once the storm had passed, but they broke anyway. Sometimes bad stuff happens. Blame FEMA for a slow response, but had the levees been built well, it wouldn't have matter. Had the mayor used his own evacuation plan, then there wouldn't have been that many people left to save. Since relatively few died anyway (compared to hysterical media peoples' numbers), I think we should thank our lucky stars that it wasn't worse, and try to plan better for the next time (which is Saturday morning when Rita hits).

Check this out! Oil shale, the final frontier? We've known about shale forever, but it's always been too expensive to get the oil out of it, much easier just to buy it from the middle east. Now that prices are up, suddenly shale becomes much more economical. With new methods and technologies, that economical price point gets lower. With current high prices, oil companies will have more incentive to get oil from shale, which means they may come up with even better methods than the one mentioned in the article I linked to. The best part? Estimates are that we can pull 1 TRILLION barrels of oil just out of the Colorado deposits, which DWARFS the amount estimated in the entire Arabian penninsula, and who knows how much more might be other parts of the US? Makes you wonder why we bother with the middle east? I'd be willing to pay $2.50/gallon on a permanent basis if it meant we got to cut out all the ass-kissing we have to do to the Arabs. The political and economic implications are enormous. If we stopped buying Saudi oil, the region would lose much of its income, and oil money is the main reason that many middle east countries seem to be 100 years behind us. Take away that money and they'll have to adapt to the 21st century, or be left behind even further. And if you take away that money, the despots that rule so much of the area won't have the sort of power they have now.

Oil shale rocks!!!

I heard a story about a Fed employee today who was transferred to Miami from New Orleans due to Katrina. Once in Miami, she was soon transferred again due to that hurricane that passed over southern Florida last week. Guess where? She arrived in Houston on Monday, just in time for Rita.

For those of you not watching Lost, START!! Last night's season premiere was mind-blowing in a way not seen on TV since Twin Peaks (or perhaps the season finales of Lost and Veronica Mars last year). At any rate, it's completely, totally awesome! If you're afraid of being completely confused since you missed the first season, don't worry too much. I've watched every single episode and I'm completely confused and loving every second of it.

I'm curious to see how Veronica Mars does in the ratings up against Lost. I hope they ahven't killed off an equally good show by putting it against more popular competition. The two shows should be drawing from the same audience, not splitting that audience in two. Thank god for DVRs!

Back when John Roberts was supposed to replace O'Connor, the word on Daily Kos, one of the most popular of the far left blogs, was that it should have been a woman to replace a woman. Now that he's replacing Rheinquist instead, another man who he shares a professional history with, just being like the person he is replacing nho longer matters, now they are making up other reasons to attack. The fact is, they won't be happy unless Bush nominates a liberal, and that's just not going to happen. Also it's funny how Robert's avoiding answering questions that point to specific opinions on specific cases offends them, yet they don't seem to mind that Ginsburg did the same thing.

When I reffered to NASA in an ealier post, I was only thinking with half a head. Going back to the moon right now is kind of useless even for longe range goals of humanity. Spend our space money on a space elevator. Then we'll be able to get to the moon for a fraction of the cost today, and maybe get somewhere useful like Mars much more quickly and cheaply.

New evidence shows a strong likelihood of significant climate change on Mars. If only Bush had signed Kyoto....

See, climates CAN change without pollution, unless Bush has somehow gotten his big business friends in to the habit of sending pollutants to other planets.

Word on the street is that while people in Slidell and surrounding areas bitch and moan about FEMA and the Red Cross and the lack of help, they all cheer Wal-Mart. Not only is the Wal-Mart there open and operating, but they have generators on sale for $304, they have trucks bringing in supplies all the time, and they even helpe out the community by giving away boots and chain saws and other items necessary for rescue efforts.

This is another victory for the free market and the concept of supply and demand. People needed stuff and were willing to pay for it, so Wal-Mart was willing to put in the extra effort to fill that demand with supplies, knowing that the extra cost of transportation throuogh the horrible conditions in the area would be offset by the higher price people would be willing to pay for things they need. FEMA and the Red Cross have no such incentive, and thus are filled with inefficient bureaucracies. Profit oriented organizations tend to cut the fat, government supported organizations tend to hire as many people as possible in order to become a jobs program.

Instapundit made an interesting point today: Nearly all media reports on Iraq ar e negative about our progress there, and nearly all troop and officer reports that usually end up on blogs, ignored by the media, are positive. It makes you wonder who knows more, the people who are actually over there dealing with terrorists and normal Iraqis, or the people who are in the U.S. and whose only real knowledge is garnered from correspondents who frequently admit to not leaving their hotels?

What about the estate tax? Bush wanted to repeal it, as it's a tax on death, and immediately following Katrina, his opponents were saying "All this death, and you want to cut taxes?" Well, makes sense to me. If my mother was killed during the hurricane, it doesn't make sense that I ahve to pay the government out of my inheritance. Anyone who has a relative that dies for any reason has a lot to deal with, emotionally and financially, and they ahve to pay the government on top of that? That's not compassionate, but it is Marxist-style taxation.

Some stuff I read inspired me to talk about illegal immigration and one of the prevailing myths about it that so inspires people to defend these lawbreakers. They like to say that these illegals take jobs that Americans don't want. That's not true at all. They take PAY that Americans don't want. Few Americans want to clean floors for minimum wage, but if you were paying twice minimum wage, you'd have a lot more people willing to do the job. Same with just about any job that illegal immigrants are becoming known for. Get rid of the illegals and the employers will have to raise wages or they won't find anyone willing to do the work. In other words, illegels are taking money from Americans. And not just in that manner. Remember, there are plenty of taxpayer funded programs that serve illegal immigrants, so that is a second way that illegal immigrants steal your money.

The press hsa been patting itself on the back recently for their coverage of Katrina. Dan Rather piped in tlaking about how they "spoke truth to those in power." Is reporting 10,000 dead when far less are dead the truth? How about reporting things like that the Bataan Naval ship was sitting useless off the coast when it was in fact involved both in rescue and medical operations? How about the continuous reports about that guy whose grandma was calling for days asking for help, but it turns out the times given were wrong and she died the day after the hurricane instead of a week later? A lot of people were excited about the emotion journalists were showing, saying how it's a return to real journalism. Well that emotion led almost all the on-site journalists to spread rumors and mistruths. That's good journalism? The talk about how there was going to be a gas shortage (even though the gas companies said it was just temporary) caused a mini-panic here in Atlanta. Was that telling the truth to power? I admit I was sucked in at first, thinking Anderson Cooper and the others were doing great jobs, but as the weeks have passed, I realize how much of whatb they were telling us and showing us was filtered through their own biases and ignorance, and little reflected the absolute truth.

Here's the transcript from part of a press conference with the mayor of New Orleans and General Honore, the one that came in to the area and took over, and has done a great job by all accounts so far. Notice how the General is trying to explain how people can get evacuated fromt he city before the next storm, Rita, hits land, and he keeps getting ignored so people can ask about the last storm. No freakin' wonder no one was prepared. Our society is set up so that the media can get a message to people far faster than the government, so the government tried to use that to tell people how to save themselves, and all the media cares about is trying to blame someoen for the past instead of helping for the future. Anyway, I love Honore's "stuck on stupid" phrase. My boss here at work overuses that phrase, but it definitely has its uses, and telling off an idiot reporter who refuses to acknowledge your warnings to evacuate is one of them.

There's a lot of talk about cutting pork to pay for gulf reconstruction, and many items on the list of potential cuts should definitely go, like the infamous bridge to nowhere in Alaska that will cost many millions of dollars. Senators and representatives are, of course, resisting cutting anything in THEIR state. One unfortunate suggestion for cuts is NASA recently announced Moon initiative. I'm not going to deny that rebulding the gulf is perhaps more important, but at this point the exploration of space is still very much a governmental activity, and reconstructing towns and cities in an area prone to hurricanes where people should have insurance for such seems out of the bounds of the Constitution. It's really just more nanny-state-ism. Lose a job? Get money from the government. Lose your house to a hurricane in a hurricane prone area, get money from the government. Where does it end?

Of course the goal of people who want to give out money to anyone who needs it, whether they deserve it or not, is two fold. Some do it for power, to add to the control that a segment of society has over another segment, which makes you wonder about all those people who bemoan rich folks for making millions on the backs of the poor. Those rich folks aren't controlling the poor, the poor choose to work for them, it's a relationship with mutual benefits. When a poor person receives food stamps, there is also a mutual benefit. The poor person gets cheaper food, and the politicians who signed the law to give out those food stamps gains a vote in a future election. Once you start getting handouts, how likely are you to vote out the person who gave the handouts to you? Not very. That doesn't mean you won't work hard to get off the dole, mind you. I'd rather the rich people gain the benefits of having poor people working for them, because then the rich people can hire more people to work for them, and soon, with some good money management, those poor people won't be poor anymore. The politician, though, isn't going to do anything to life that poor person out of poverty, they will just continue to give them money or food or whatever so that they will keep getting that vote. In this way they exert far more power and control over our hypothetical poor person than a rich employer does. The rich add to choice, the politicians restrict choice. The second reason people want to give out money is because they think it will actually help the poor. Their goal, in the end, is that there is no hunger, no struggle to survive, and society is all one big happy family where no one is greedy, and no one needs or wants more than the next guy. That way lies stagnation. That's why I'm so in favor of the space program, and of getting not just the government involved, but private enterprise. Once we start colonizing space and get past the point of no return, I think the chances of stagnation in the human race are going to be virtually zero. As long as we remain on this planet, the threat of never getting off will always be there.

Somebody came up with the idea of paying panhandling bums to hold advertising signs, and a lot of people are offended. "You're exploiting them," and that sort of thing. What the hell? They are being paid to do something, it's called a job. Is my employer exploiting me by making me do somethin in return for my paycheck? I guess so, I better call a lawyer and sue! Apparantely the only good bum is one on the dole. I just don't get the negative reaction to someone paying someone else for something. Some people are just dumb.

FYI, I don't consider paying bums to fight as a valid business concern. It's not illegal to pay someone to hold a sign, but it is illegal to stage fights without a license and all that sort of thing. Plus you are taking people who are desperate for money, and asking them to put their lives at risk. That is exploitation, though I'm going to need to do some more thinking to put the exact difference in to words.

Boortz had an interesting point on his blog today. As you should know, the powers of government as bestowed by the people. If the government sufficiently agitates the people, the people can legally remove it. Without the peoples' consent, there is no power in government. Police are a part of the government, and thus get their powers to police from us. A localily could conceivably not have police.

Boortz was talking about that guy that saw a carjacking last week in Atlanta, followed the car until it crashed, and then shot and killed the carjacker when he ran from the vehicle with the owner in the passenger seat, dead from the wreck. Some people called the shooter a vigilante who broke the law by taking it in to his own hands. According to Boortz, the law IS in our hands, and when the police aren't fulfilling what the people have hired them to do, then the people have to do it, or else it doesn't get done. Now the guy that was killed won't rape again, or carjack, and he won't waste taxpayer dollars rotting in jail. I happen to agree. A citizen patrolling an area armed with the intent of vigilanteeism is not a good thing, but a citizen aware of his surroundings and willing to fight crime if he/she happens to see it can only be a good thing for society. The cops can't be there all the time, there simply aren't that many and I don't think anyone wants the big brother associations with too large of a police force, so when they aren't around, we have a responsibility to help safeguard our society if we can.

Victory!! The Fulton County Board of Education has reevaluated their plan to take land from the Jewish group that was going to build the Weber school on property they have owned for years (FYI, I'm pretty sure this is the old Lucent campus at Roswell and Abernathy). Apparantely they thought they were in negotiations with a willing seller, which begs the question, why did the letter they sent basically say if you don't sell, we're going to take it? Is that something you say to a willing seller? I don't think so. This smacks of the Board tryng to screw over the Jews, thinking no one would care, and then having to retreat when they discovered that people do actually care, and that property rights are important to all of us, not just those of us who are Jewish.

A lot of people are pointing to the Katrina thing as an example of how racist we are, or how our poor are too poor, or how we just don't care about our countrymen. Well the latest death toll is 579, far less than the number that died in France during a heat wave a couple of years ago because it was summer and everyone young was on vacation. I don't remember that starting a firestorm about racism or lack of caring. I think this just shows how caring Americans are. We care enough to debate issues like this, whereas Europe just pushes htem under a rug and hopes no one calls them on it. That said, there was nothing having anything to do with racism in the Katrina response. The only people talking about race are reporters trying to drum up ratings, and race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who only make money if they can convince people that racism was involved.

I was just reading about St. Rita's, the New Orleans nursing home that ws not evacuated, and where 34 senior citizens died while waiting in vain for help. The owners were offered buses to help evacuate their charges, and they declined. The people left there must have had the worst day of their lives that Monday, the day the city flooded and they died. I can't imagine what they went through, I keep trying, but have to give up before I cry.

I understand the desire to throw money at Katrina victims to help them restart their lives, but I'm not sure it's a great idea, simply because it begs the question, where do you draw the line? A neighborhood near where my parents live was decimated several years ago, with many families having to completely rebuild their homes. Thankfully they had insurance to pay for the rebuild, not the federal government. What about the people who ahd homes destroyed by Hurricane Ivan? Did they all get what looks like might be as much as the yearly income for the median income family? I don't think so. So why Katrina? What makes it so different from any other time that something bad happens to someone? I don't know. I do know that people are supposed to buy insurance for just this sort of thing, which means that Bush has just bailed out the insurance industry. I didn't know the government was in the insurance business.

Regarding the eminent domain issue I mentioned earlier with Fulton County trying to take land from a proposed Jewish school, they've started a petition here. Please take a minute to help out Atlanta's Jewish community. You can also read more about the school here.

Here's an example of the mistruths and plain old lies that the media was using to recast the hurricane aftermath as a Bush-bashing game. Some dude got on the news with Tim Russer of Meet the Press, and started whining about how another guy's mom was in a nursing home and she kept calling her son for help. The timeline he told was that she called Monday until she finally died on Friday the week after, without receiving any help. Well now that it's a few weeks later, the truth has come out. She started calling on the Friday BEFORE the hurricane, and died three days later on Monday, which means her son ignored her calls for help at a point in time in which he easily could have gone and picked her up. Yet somehow this is all Bush's fault.

The further away from the hurricane we get, the more we realize that the local government really flubbed this one, and the Federal response was pretty decent in comparison to other disasters. It's also apparent that the only thing Bush did wrong was to have an inexperienced person in charge of FEMA, but since FEMA did a pretty good job by most accounts, even that turned out to no be a big deal. I spent some time earlier listing a few things that were done wrong by the local officials, so I won't repeat here.

This REALLY ticks me off!!! A Jewish group bought land, prepared to build a school there, had a groundbreaking, and then got a letter from Fulton County saying they want to build a school there and if the Jews won't sell, they are taking it with eminent domain. I'm gonna try to follow this one closely, maybe even get involved.

Of course this is slightly more palatable than many recent eminent domain cases since an elementary school is a public use by anyone's definitions, but the Jewish group is also wanting to build a school, they've been planning it for years and the county decides to wait until just before the school is supposed to be built to pull the rug out. I don't like it. It smacks of two things. One is laziness in that there are plenty of areas that could be bought and turned in to schools, but here you have an area that someone has already prepared for you to build on, isn't that just great? And two, they're just Jews who cares? Do you think this would be happening if a bunch of black families in Atlanta had bought land to build a school on? No way, not in this town.

I'm not sure if this is technically in Sandy Springs, but I think it is. I wonder how the city fits in. Can they tell the county to fuck off and leave the Jews alone?

Look, I've already stated that the FEMA response, though on par with previous disasters, is probably not good enough considering the resources our country can call on. That means we need to rework the system, it does not mean FEMA officials are culpable, they did what they were supposed to do. In the future, what you are supposed to do needs to be more.

The local officials, on the other hand, did exactly what they are not supposed to do. The mayor delayed a call for evacuation while he checked on the liability issues with his lawyers, and he did not utilize the evacuation plan his city has on record, leaving his poor and elderly to sink or swim on their own. The governor did not federalize the National Guard soon enough, thus lessening the available manpower. She and the mayor decided not to let the Red Cross in to drop off supplies at the Superdome, because I guess they felt those poor people didn't deserve help. AMTRAK offered to stuff it's last train out with as many people as possible, but the Mayor refused the help. As I mentioned earlier, millions and millions of dollars that were given to the state for disaster preparedness were stolen or squandered on programs that helped no one in this disaster. And lots of doctors that volunteered to help people sat on their hands because they weren't licensed to practice in Louisiana and the Governor waited like a week before signing a waiver for them. I'm not sure I agree with that as a bad thing, though, because I'm sure part of her though process was, "How can I know if these people are legit?" and I think that's a valid concern. Oh, and don't forget that the Sierra Club succesfully sued to stop the strengthening of the levees in 19996 because of the environmental impact. Scott over at "The Truth by Scott" was making fun of people for blaming environmentalists when it's obviously all Bush's fault, but the facts dispute Scott's claims.

You'll never believe this one! It seems that several state of Louisiana officials were awaiting trial for some missing funds. This is something like $60 million that FEMA was giving the state for distater preparedness.

I don't think you can continue to blame Bush or FEMA for anything, seeing as the state had stolen more than enough funds to have a good evacuation and relief plan set up for their less well off citizens. I'd like to see how some of my readers respond to this, especially Smiley and Scorcho. Are Bush and FEMA still liable when they tried to get things fixed and the corrupt politicians in Louisiana decided to steal the money instead of use it for emergency preparedness? Is that Bush's fault?

I got my window fixed on Friday, at which point I noticed that more damage had been done by the thief than I had thought. In order to get the stereo out, he/she broke the plastic bezel on the dash that surrounds the stereo and A/C controls. All of this will cost a lot to fix, but I have a large deductible on my insurance which I cannot afford right now, so it's off to a salvage yard to find what I need. Maybe I'll even get the mirror that's been broken off for so long.

I wish I was better at poker. Some 19 year old won a half mil in the main event of the World Championship of Online Poker yesterday. I'd just buy a new car.

Over on another blog someone was pointing out that if only Bush had spent more money on the levees, then everything would be ok. A reader pointed out that Bush spent more than Clinton had on Army Corps projects in the area (I don't actually know if that's true, it doesn't matter for this point), and the blogger responded that comparisons to Clinton are irrelevent. How exactly is that irrelevent? I mean if you are going to find someone to blame, you can't just single out one random person who did nothing different than anyone else, and say it's their fault. The logic people sometimes use to attack Bush is ridiculous.

Some jerk broke in to my car overnight. They smashed the driver's side window, which I had just gotten fixed after two years of not being able to roll it down more than halfway. What was the purpose of this malicious act? To steal my car stereo, which is broken. Hope they choke on it.

Check this out. Does a much better job at debunking the "we need bigger government after Katrina" crowd than I did.

I keep seeing people say that Katrina sounded the death knell for the concept of small government and privitization and all that, which is pretty crazy when you consider what happened. I've not seen one person say the repsonse by private companies caused any problems. On the other hand I've see many people, on all sides of the political spectrum, pronounce that government failed the people at all levels. Is this not a call for the death of big government? They failed us in every way, according to those people, so maybe we should try a free market solution next. Actually I think the best way to handle disasters is, one, have individuals aware of dangers and how to react, and two, have a well-trained and coordinated government response. It's one of the few areas that I think the government should be highly involved in, but Katrina in now way hurt the superiority of a small government system. The Amry Corps of Engineers.... Government. FEMA, Government. The Mayor that decided not to follow his city's evacuation plan, government. The governor who decided not to let the Red Cross take supplies to the Superdome, government. George Bush, who is blamed for everything from having the wrong guy in charge of FEM to personally carrying the hurricane to the gulf and throwing it at the black people of New Orleans, government. Government failed in every way (I disagree, but I'm playing devil's advocate here), so where exactly does this improve the argument for big government? Please explain this to me, left wingers!

So the Palestinians have taken over Gaza, and it's gone quite well, if you count mass looting, rioting, and violence as good things. I don't think they are, but it's all quite par for these people. First off, the American Jewish community collected $14 million to buy the greenhouses that the settlers had built in Gaza and hand them over to the Palestinians tp provide for both food and lots of jobs. The Palestinians decided to loot and, in some cases, destroy, these greenhouses. Then they burned down or destroyed in some other manner many of the synagogues that were left behind, yet no one seems to have a problem with it. When many Arabs abandoned Jerusalem, the Jews did not take that as license to destroy the Dome of the Rock, but then the Israeli Jews weren't raised to be hateful savages. And, finally, a bunch of Hamas operatives blew a big hole in the wall at the Egyptian border, presumably to smuggle weapons, an action which Abbas is specifically supposed to prevent, yet did nothing in the least to stop it.

I just read some interesting stuff from someone who lives in Japan. He said that in Japan the populace understands that the government, national or local, may not be able to get to them and help them if there's a major disaster (earthquake, TYPHOON, etc.) and that they all know escape routes, they all have safety equipment stored, they have supplies ready just in case. Japan, the collectivist, welfare-state of the left wings's dreams. In Japan they know that the individual has to be able to save his or herself, possible for days, before help can arrive. It's pitifully sad that a city under constant danger from flooding like New Orleans couldn't have prepared it's citizens better. Also, I remember that the news was saying that other countries were mocking us for the hurricane aftermath. Perhaps they weren't mocking FEMA's response, but instead the idiocy and unpreparedness of the local government, and most of all of individuals who sat there dying while waiting for George Bush to fly in save them all. After all, it seems most other countries living under the constant threat of disaster have made sure their citizens understand that they need to know how to help themselves.

To me much of it goes back to the biggest problem of entitlements, which is that individual responsibility falls by the wayside as more and more people get used to the government taking care of their needs. I think one of my very first entries on this blog regarded hyphenated Americans, and how the only hyphen I want by my name is individual-American. I stand by that today, but many of the people in the Superdome, as well as the media covering, don't.

I don't remember if I've mentioned it before, but watch Going Tribal on Discovery. I think the season ended, but I'm sure they'll show replays. It's about an English dude who goes to live with various primitive tribes for a month at a time. I've learned a lot about cultures that simple won't be around in another 10, 20, 50 years or so.

This article theorizes that the job losses of the early 00's were not so much a result of the tech bubble bursting, but a fallout from Enron. During the Enron scandal a whole bunch of other companies cleaned up their acts and restated earnings, which, of course, usually meant lower earnings. At this point they realized their boom years were a myth of fancy bookkeeping, and had to lay off a lot of the people they had hired. If only Clinton had put in tougher accounting standards! Oh wait, it can't be Clinton's fault. It has to be Bush's somehow. Must be global warming! Anyway, I don't really think it's Clinton's fault at all, but is funny how many people give him credit for the late 90's boom when it was most likely a lucky (or perhaps unlucky) convergence of new technology (the internet) and a whole lot of cheating.

More from Ben Stein. He's got a point. Sure, there was a lot of devestation, but as we get further away from the event, and see how few dead there are compared to estimates, and we see the huge amount of relief and help that former residents of the area are getting from various entities from the federal government to state governments that are taking these people to non-profits, and the HUGE amount of $'s donated by private citizens, we see that the media horror from the first few days and anger at Bush was severely overblown. Some have speculated that the actions of members of the media in the aftermath showed that they are turning a cornor to being better journalists, but I disagree. I will not deny that some of the reporting was downright heroic, but the message that was being sent to the American peple did not reflect the truth. Infusing your reports with so much emotion that the real truth is filtered through your own anger does not good journalism make, even if all the anger is aimed against a politician you dislike.

I keep reading that the number of people under the pverty line is rising. First that begs the question, what is poverty? If you're only making $14k/year, but manage to eat enough to be fat, and still wear $100 Nikes and own a TV, you're not poor by any historical standards. Sure, you may feel poor when you see the guy down the street that actually graduated high school driving a Mercedes, but it's not his fault that you're poor.

I'd like to see a comparison of groups within the poor. I'll bet that if you graduated high school, don't have a baby until you are married, and don't get married until you are out of your teens, you probably aren't poor by anyone's definition. I'd be willing to bet that 9 out of 10 people, maybe even more, that fall below this arbitrary poverty line did at least one of those things I listed. I think the government ought to give out information packets to kids in middle school that say that if you do any of those things, you will not receive a single dime of government assistance EVER. Then the only people on the dole will be the people who actually deserve some help, and those that refused to help themselves can look back on that information packet with regret. I don't think anyone's tax money should go towards helping people who chose to screw up their lives. It's pretty easy to graduate high school, not to get pregnant, and not to get married. Too bad so many people think it's a good idea to do things that will destory their future.

Andruw Jones is kicking some ass for the Braves this year. He finally seems to have reached the offensive potential everyone thought he had from the day he hit two home runs in his first two World Series at-bats way back in 1996. He's got 49 home runs, which is a Braves record and leads the majors, and he's near the major league high in RBI. If he could somehow reach 60 this year, I would consider him the only legit 60 home run man since Maris. There's just too much suspicion of steroid use among Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire, and I've never heard anyone exhibit even the slightest suspicion of Jones being on the juice.

I feel like the people who are under the cloud of steroids ought to be allowed in the Hall of Fame, I just hope the voters consider the suspicion as a factor in their voting. If a marginal Hall of Fame candidate also has probably taken steroids, then don't let him in. Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire will probably get in regardless, but maybe Palmiero won't.

Sometimes I want to find Kos of Dailykos, and punch him. Last week he was making a huge deal out of Bush saying that no one expected the levees to break. I thought it was a silly statement, too, until Bush clarified it by saying that he meant the day after hurricane, before the levees broke, everyone had breathed a sigh of relief that they had dodged a bullet, but then levees broke, in a completely unanticipated manner. EVERYONE I heard talking about the levees before the storm was certianly relieved when they still held after the storm. Bush was right, no one expected them to break on a one day delay. Authorities had geared up to save everyone in towns that were wiped out, the delayed flooding came as a complete surprise, and caused everyone to have to redeploy, which of course caused extra delay in relief. Kos, of course, then shows newspaper headlines from the NEXT day, Tuesday, taking about the devestation, and asked who the heck thought we dodged a bullet. Kos is an asshole.

My earlier entry about my family and the subsequent comment from a cousin led to wonder about a future in politics. Not that I'm really thinking about it, but if I was, would this blog kill my chances? I'm thinking of it as similar to what's happening to John Roberts. The dude is not a bad guy, but if the left wing can find enough thigns he was written, eventually they will find one thing that they can use to completely trash him in the press. It may not even be something he actually believes, or maybe it's just something he wrote in a hurry without really thinking about, but they will fry him with it anyway. That's why they are doing what they can to get every last thing he ever did in office released. That way they can set their attack dogs sniffing through it all to find something, anything that could be damning. I think I've written enough on this blog to offend 99% of the country at one point or another. I suppose I could have Mike purge my archives (which, BTW, are messed up, need to figure out what's going on with that), but there's always the Internet Wayback Machine. Or asking some of my frat brothers to tell stories about me :)

Just read another condemning story about Palestinians. A bunch of Palestinian teenagers decided it would be fun to throw rocks at an Israeli tank. Then they started climbing ont he tank and really trying to get at, and presumably kill, the people in the tank. The people in the tank managed to drive them off, but killed one kid in the process. So the Palestinians decided to shoot shoulder-fired rockets at an Israeli town, and then the worldwide press takes this as an example of the cycle of violence. There's no cycle there, there's just Palestinians trying to kill Jews, and Jews protecting themselves, but Jews, in this day and age, are not allowed to protect themselves. Much of the world seems to think the only good Jews are the ones that roll over and surrender.

Here's a sick one. One of the major single events that led the the second intifada was the murder of a boy by the Israeli army. Turns out the whole thing was staged by the Palestinians to create worldwide anger at supposed Israeli atrocities. A lie, a big fat lie, which has led to the deaths of thousands of Jews, and even more Palestinians. These sick, demented people seem to care more about killing Jews than safeguarding their own people. The fact that they are encouraged to become suicide bombers shows just how little regard for life they have. And yet the entire world is rushing to send millions and billions of dollars to them so they can create their own state. You want the perfect incubator for terrorism? You've never seen anything like what "Palestine" will turn in to.

When did refugee become a dirty word? All of the sudden people seem to have decided that it's racist, because of New Orleans. I'm not su