You know how Israel is evil because they set up checkpoints and restrict the movement of Palestinians in to Israel? Of course the Jews claim it's to protect themselves from suicide bombers, but that's not a good reason, the Palestinians have the god-given right to murder innocent people!!

Anyway, there was another suicide bombing the other day that killed an Israeli Defense Force soldier and two Palestinian cops. Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility, but are disappointed. The plan had been to blow the bomb at a children's Chanukah party, but those asshole Israelis set up a surprise checkpoint which kept the bomber from reaching his goal. I can't believe we let those guys protect themselves, they have no right!!!

Did you hear the latest horrible thing that Bush has done to the American people? The NSA puts cookies on your computer!!! And they mistakenly put some long-term cookies on people's computers until someone mentioned it and they realized their software was messed up and fixed it. The media is acting like Bush personally broke in to people's homes, opened up their computers and took their hard drives and replaced them with GOP bumper stickers. In fact what the NSA did with cookies was probably less invasive than the New York Times' cookie system. It seems somewhat hypocritical for the New York Times to whine that Bush is invading privacy by cookies to fight terrorism, but it's ok for a newspaper to do the same thing to collect consumer information. I'd have to say that while the consumer research might be vital for the survival of the New York Times (whose stock has plummeted over the past year), fighting terrorism is vital to the survival of American and should be given a bit more leeway on cookie use.

We're all well aware of the double standards much of the applies to the Middle East and Israel. What's ok for those "barbaric Arab countries" to do is evil if the Israelis do it. If Israel takes territory in a defensive war, they are evil imperialists. If someone threatens to destroy Israel, they do not really mean it, we just need to "understand."

All of this made me even more angry when I read this. To sum up, Condi Rice brokered a deal last month in which the Palestinians would man the Rafah crossing instead of Israeli soldiers, and the whole operation would be observed by E.U. officials. Well big surprise, the Palestinians started getting violent, so the E.U. people, despite calling Palestinians people who just want peace, fled to the Israeli army for protection.

Oh yeah. I should mention that the Palestinians causing the problems are on their police force!!!

The problem I have with environmentalists is not that they want to save the environment, but that many of them don't. Many fo them are simply full of hate at big business and the American way, and so they are simply anti- everything, whether or not their views are supported by science and common sense. The whole forest thing really gets me. Remember those gigantic forest fires that his California and Colorado just about every year? Those would just be run of the mill, healthy fires that are part of nature's cycle and allow new trees room to grow and get old trees and overgrown underbrush out of the way, but because environmentalists are so obstructive, fires in these areas have been put out for years before they got very big. This created way too much biological material in these forests so that now when fires come, not only do they ahve so much fuel that they grow too big to stop very quickly, but they burn MUCH hotter than a natural forest fire normally should. Instead of opening up pine cones and allowing seeds to spread like a natural fire is supposed to do, these fires in improperly maintained forests burn the pine cones to ashes, and no forest will regrow without human help.

Check out this article on how environmentalists are destroying small saw mills.

Check this out. If endless terrorist attacks have not convinced you that militant Islamism is a pox upon our planet that needs to be excised, perhaps the article will. In short, it says that terrorists have taken a French engineer hostage in Iraq and are threatening to kill him if the French do not withdraw their forces. France, you might remember, made a huge deal out of how they were not going to help the US in Iraq, and they have no troops there. Despite this appeasement of evil, they are being targeted anyway. Maybe now they will realize who the real enemy is (hint, it's not George Bush).

The other day I participated in an online debate on illegal immigration, and I got attacked, simply because I identified myself as having conservative leanings, as a heartless bastard who thinks the world would be better if all the poor people died. First off, I'm poor, so that would suck. And second.... Well there's a lot there to talk about.

This idea that conservatives are heartless bastards is belied by actual fact. The populations of states that voted for Bush over Kerry donate far more to charity than people in states that voted for Kerry. And the GOP is racist? How come Bush actually has several blacks in positions higher than any black person has ever been in our government's structure, whereas John Kerry, hope of the left wing, did not have a single black person in his inner circle of advisors. Oh, the GOP freed the slaves and fought the Jim Crow democrats during the civil rights movement.

I read some articles today that highlight the difference in worldview between the left and the right on helping people. One was on check cashing services, like those counters you see in some gas stations. Advocates for the poor hate these things, and constantly attack them as being predatory and hurting poor people. That's simply not true. Banks are easily available in even the worst neighborhoods, and few of even the poorest working people would have trouble keeping $100 in an account so that it stays free. No matter how many banks are in an area, and no matter how cheap they are, people are still going to use check cashing services because they are immediate, the fee is small (2% max by law) and they have longer hours. They also usually provide other services like mailboxes, Western Union, stuff like that. I'm going to change this from left versus right to knee-jerk reactors versus people who actually think.

Someone who has knee-jerk reactions to everything typically hates the idea of a third world sweatshop. Someone who thinks and bothers to find out the facts realizes that as bad as these conditions seem to an American, the working environment and steady pay is usually far higher than would otherwise be available to a third world unskilled worker. The knee-jerkers don't care, these people aren't getting health insurance, so let's close down these sweatshops and help to create mass unemployment!!! Woo hoo!!! It's almost more anti-Americanism than anything else. They find the third world quaint and charming, unlike the hustle and bustle of the U.S., and don't bother to feel any real empathy for the people who actually have to live with the conditions they think are so great. We're seeing this sort of dynamic all over the place. Check out Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree for more. I got it, you can borrow it.

The other story I read was about a former UGA football player. This guy's father worked for the school as a janitor and when his kid was like 6, he asked the head coach if he could loan him $20 to pay for his kid's little league football equipment. Vince Dooly was happy to oblige, and the small investment paid off great when the kid grew into a big kid and signed with UGA and went on the become a 3 time All American. Knee injuries killed his professional career, but he got a job and started a family. The real tragedy is that he was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 28. His sister was willing to donate marrow, but they had to wait until her pregnancy was completed first. Insurance was to pay for the operation, but he still needed a way to pay for transportation to Utah where the surgery was to be done. The UGA letterman's club heard about it and very quickly collected more than enough money to help their friend out. Unfortunately he died before the surgery happened, so the donated funds were put into a new "hardship" fund named after the dead guy, and dedicated to helping former UGA athletes who face similar financial difficulties. The story warmed my heart and brought tears to my eyes. I never get that sort of feeling when I read about someone getting unemployment checks or taking advantage of some other government funded service. Why? Because it's not really government funded, it's funded by you and me without us having a choice in the matter. Take away all that crap and I guarantee charitable contributions will go up. Few people mind helping those less fortunate if they can, but most everyone resents having money stolen from them to give to someone else. I can promise that as soon as my own life is in order and I can support myself better, I will give plenty to various charities.

Check out this article by Michael Crichton. It's long. I like the part about Chernobyl at the beginning. He says that the actual fact is that 56 people died directly as a result of the Chernobyl meltdown, and maybe another 2000 due to lingering radiation problems. The NYT and other papers were saying as many as 20,000 direct deaths and 3.5 million radiation deaths, and they were saying this as recently as this year. That means they are still spreading the same incorrect information 20 years later and will continue to do so. It doesn't matter what the truth is, the media has been saying Chernobyl was a huge international disaster with gargantuan deaths for all these years, and it'll be a cold day in hell before they admit to being wrong all these years. Besides, it's now popular knowledge that tens of thousands died because of Chernobyl, so who cares about the truth, it serves their agendas (both left-wing, and revenue-wise) to keep the same inaccurate story.

What really makes this story a laugh is a UN report from 2005 saying the worst Chernobyl related problems were psycological issues that developed due to a lack of correct information. In other words, the false reports continual put forth by the media caused depression and anxiety and far more related health problems than the meltdown itself. I feel we are seeing the same problem with the Katrina aftermath. All the lies spouted by the media about racism, neglect, rape, death counts, etc., have created this huge controversy on racial, political, and financial lines, yet a fair and accurate reporting of the truth would belie so much of the controversy... If only people would believe. The media has ingrained the horrible government response in to the minds of America so much that people are still believing the lies that support controversy and rejecting the truth.

I was just reading about how they dealt with what we now call post-traumatic stress syndrome, and used to be called combat fatigue, back in World War II. American soldiers suffering from combat fatigue would get some R&R. Russian soldiers would get shot. Coincidently, there were far less incidences of combat fatigue in the Russian army than the U.S. Just goes to show how motivated people can be with the right incentive. :)

Be sure to read through this fantastic recount of a journey to Libya. Libya was closed to Americans until recently, and is a great example of how living under and oppressive regime can totally suck. The difference between Libya and Iraq under Saddam, however, is that Quddafi doesn't kill nearly as many of his own people.

Arrgghhh!!! I played some great poker last night, good enough to be the chipleader when we got in to the money. Unfortunately I made two bad moves and lost most of my chips when I was dealt KTs UTG with the chipleader on the BB. I went all in, he calls with J7 and picks up two pair. Not much I can do about that. Too bad, I ended in 11th with about $50, and 1st paid $1k.

One of the more fashionable anti's- to hit the public consciousness in the last few years is anti-sprawl. One wise blogger said, "It beats the heck out of depending on a transportation union to get you to work."

That summarizes the problem with the opposite of sprawl, you have to depend on having good neighbors. With sprawl you can be much more self-dependent, and won't have to worry about strikes keeping you from riding the bus.

I just finished reading "A Feast for Crows," book 4 in George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy, A Song for Ice and Fire, and it was da bomb!!! That's a good thing, for you older people. Martin's narrative has to be one of the most complex ever written, spanning upwards of 3500 so far, and the series is only about halfway done. More characters died, more previously unambiguously bad people turn out to have a good side, and vice versa, and best of all is what happens to Cersei. And most importantly.... Winter is no longer coming....

It's here.


If you enjoy reading about medieval history, try these books out whether or not you can stomach fantasy. The fantasy elements are minimal, and you'll get far too attached to the characters and the story to care, anyway.

We've now seen the first story of abridged civil liberties due to the Patriot Act. Some media outlets were all over it, while some waited for confirmation. They were smarter. The story about the kid who checked out Mao's Little Red Book and then got a visit from the FBI was a hoax meant to burn the Patriot Act, and a lot of news outlets wanted to trash the Act so bad they didn't make sure the story was true. At least plenty weren't fooled.

In toher news, NBC announced that the retail holiday season was "ho-hum." Thos of us who bother to check facts might learn that "ho-hum" means super-awesome, since overall receipts were up 8.7% from last year according to Reuters, and Amazon said it was their best holiday ever.

If NBC and other old school media outlets want to keep the trust of the public. maybe they should stop doing things like calling one of the best holiday shopping seasons ever "ho-hum." Blatant dishonesty in pursuit of an agenda does not engender trust.

The AJC had a story today that smacks of journalist protectionism. The gist of the story is that the Administration and others have been using the story about how Osama stopped using his satelitte phone after reading in a newspaper that the U.S. was wiretapping satellite phones as a reason for the media to remain quiet on certain national security issues. This was obviously in response to the New York Times' frequent felonies in releasing classified secrets. It's not just the Plame affair, but the "secret torture" bases the CIA supposedly has, and the NSA wiretapping. All of these are classified secrets, and Bush and his supporters claim that whoever leaked the information caused more damage to national security by far than the Plame thing, and should be put in jail for felonious treason or something like that. Anyway, the AJC story said the satellite phone story wasn't true, and that Osama stopped using his phone because of cruise missles. They then offered not a single piece of evidence to back this assertion up, not even a quote from a blatantly partisan source, nothing at all. On the other hand, they had multiple quotes and sources in the same article saying the story was true, but all the journalist has to back up his story is that "It's not true."

Is that supposed to be good reporting?

I've always advocated finding cleaner sources of energy, but I've never supported extreme measure like Kyoto to fix global warming simply because the science isn't very exact at this point. It's sort of like human health, and how doctors change their views on what is good and what is bad every 10 years. The latest with global warming is that
planting trees might exacerbate global warming. I also found some articles quoting scientists who say that aerosol particles help block the sun's rays, and that if we eliminate aerosol waste, we will also exacerbate global warming.

Because of the proclivity for pro-Kyoto adherents to jump at any science that might help their cause, the world is stuck in a position where whatever we try to do will be really bad depending on who you talk to. There is no right answer yet, so for now I applaud Bush for inaction. Why make a move when the scientific opinions are so diverse and opposing that any sort of move could cause major problems. Smarter to sit still and wait until people come up with actual solutions instead of hearsay and rumor and what activists wish was true.

It seems just about everything we were told about Katrina by the media in the days following the storm was wrong. They spent the next two months patting themselves ont he back for a job well done, and now they are discovering jsut about everything they said was simply not true. The latest piece of news is that Katrina was a Cat 3 when it hit, not a Cat 4. And I read the other day that while 2/3 of New Orleans was black, only about half the dead bodies found were, meaning that proportional to their population, more white people died than black within the city. Add that to the fact that the surrounding states are majority white, and you realize that a lot more white people died than black. I wonder if Kanye West will respond to the charges that he doesn't care about white people? I also wonder if he'll apologize to Bush, since he attacked the man based on untruth and innuendo. Oh, and post-disaster surveys have shown that the vast majority of people who stayed in the city had had ways to get out and decided not to. So much for the theory that the white man left them to die.

Historians will look back on this as a bad disaster that could have been lessened had the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana done their jobs better. They will also note that the levees were inadequate even for the intensity of storm they were supposed to be able to deflect, and that George Bush had absolutely nothing to do with that, but that Mike Brown was still a bad person to be the head of FEMA, but FEMA did its job fairly well anyway. They might also mention how the sensational and untrue stories spread by the media, the mayor, and the police chief of New Orleans diverted badly needed FEMA resources to events that were not happening. For instance, several large groups of rescue folk and people who deal with dead bodies went to the convention center to collect the over 200 corpses that the media reported. They found 6, and two of those died for reasons unrelated to the storm. Just think how many people actually in need might have been saved by these people had they not been on a wild goose chase at the behest of the media. Remember how things were going down in those days. The media would state something, and if FEMA did not immediately drop everything and rush to the rescue, the media slammed them. FEMA had no choice but to go on these wild goose chases or face a huge P.R. hit (which they did anyway). The media has a tendency to assume a superior knowledge about things, and in this case that totally fucked up the experts' abilities to do their jobs correctly. Shame on all those reporters who wanted stories so bad they reported rumor and innuendo as fact. When will they apologize for all the people they put in danger for their pursuit of ratings?

An homage to the Onion:

Illegal immigrants destroying the hopes and dreams of Mexicans
AP Wire

Joe Hernandez is mad, and he's not going to take it anymore. His job as a manual laborer used to be considered the height of respectability in his country. "With all these Americans crossing the border and taking white collar jobs that Mexicans won't do, it's making wages rise across the board and making me seem less educated," Mr. Hernandez said, as he shoveled apile of manure into a wheelbarrow. "You see that picture over there?", he said, pointing at a picture of Intel CEO Andy Grove. "That bastard tried to come in here and build a factory and give us jobs that would afford us their fancy brick homes instead of traditional Mexican mud hovels. That's why we put that picture up, so we could throw crap at it." Joe spent the next 15 minutes teaching a group of interested elementary school dropouts how to pick up a piece of shit and hit the center of the target, Mr. Grove's nose. "These kids are our future, and the last thing we need is for them to get too far in to this school stuff. That may be good enough for Americans, but we support a lower standard here."

Illegal immigration in to Mexico has long been a sticking point in relations between the two countries. U.S. Consul Grady Smith says the problem is not ours, but the Mexican governments'. "As long as their businesses continue to hire white people at salaries Mexicans refuse to work for, white people will continue to sneak across the border and become CEO's. Those are jobs even black people won't take."

The illegal labor has been estimated to have raised the average wage in Mexico at least $2 an hour. Diego Garcia, head of Mexico's large shit-shoveling Union, popularly known as the stinkers, is pooping mad. "It's a bunch of bullshit when a man works his butt off moving this crap and these white people come in and tell us they are giving us raises. I didn't work this hard just to become like an American. We want justice!!"

Perhaps the most vehement anti-immigration activists are members of the extreme left wing political group, "Mexicans for Third World Glory." "We grew up in these slums, our parents grew up in these slums, and our grandparents built these slums on the backs of the slums that came before. These Americans keep trying to come in and steal our charming and destitute way of life, and we will not let them destroy our culture with their economic 'growth' and sensical means of production. It's against everything we stand for!" The group plans protest marches next week and is garning support to build a wall across the border. To that end they have been collecting enough discarded newspaper to make a paper-mache wall that will go about one third of the way. "We're almost halfway there. Paper mache is the strongest building material known to Mexicans. Surely it will be enough to stem the tide."

From the too good to be true department:

I can't find the link now, but will put it in when I do. Anyway, someone found an article from the New York Times in 1982 regarding Jimmy Carter wiretapping U.S. citizens without a warrant. The New York Times very clearly stated that Carter was within his rights to do so in order to protect Americans. Funny how it was just fine then for a Democrat, but evil now for a Republican.

Hypocrites.

The state of Massachusets. hotbed of pro-choice activism, has passed a law restricting the gift of free baby formula to new mothers leaving the hospital after giving birth. This is to encourage breast feeding. You'd think, with all their rhetoric about the right to choose that they would encourage choice, and not restrictions.

The toehr day New York City's Mayor Bloomberg said that the transit workers union "thuggishly turned their backs on the city." He is now being attacked as a racist for that comment by many people, including Al Sharpton.

The leadership among African-Americans has given their people such a low expectation of themselves that they now associate the word "thug" with their race, whereas the rest of associate that word with people who act like thugs. In this particular case the thuggery comes in for the way they are holding the city hostage and hurting other people's income for their own selfish reasons.

Interestingly, the NYC transit workers' strike is creating a class divide, but not on traditional splits. This time the people that are really being hurt by the strike are private sector working class folks, and the people striking are public sector working class types. Perhaps this new class warfare is one we should have seen coming, since government employee unions have far more members than normal unions now. Because of the enourmous number of people employed by governments at various levels in this country, when they go to vote in elections, they are to some extent voting on their own pay and such, since they know which candidates might support higher pay for public employees and which don't. A strange but unavoidable conflict of interest.

Blah, I'm tired of blogging about the wiretapping junk, but I still have more to say. I know I came off sounding like a complete right-wing robot, so I just wanted to say that while I find what is going so far to be within the bounds of acceptable behavior in wartime, especially with such a geographically diverse enemy, some of whom live here. But, and that's a big BUT, I do have a line, and just about anything more would be perilously close to being on the other side of that line. Bush has a funny way of doing that, getting close to that line on a number of issues and then pulling back. And the Medicare drug thing is definitely on the wrong side of the line, but for now there are more important issues, and a McCain presidency coming up in a few years. I'd actually prefer Lieberman, though I don't remember the details of any of their previous campaigns.

-I think we'd be naive to think that some part of our intelligence apparatus, the with or without Bush's knowledge, wouldn't continue to do something like the wiretapping no matter what.

Why is FDR lionized as a god to the left wing? He put in place the largest abridgement of civil liberties ever in our history when he interned Japanese citizens. The excuse is that he had to do what he had to do in wartime. Why won't they accept the same excuse from Bush for the NSA spying scandal? And why aren't they upset that Clinton and Carter both did the same thing, but not at war time? Isn't that even worse? What is the difference?

Oh yeah, Bush is a Republican, and the others weren't.

Hypocrites.

I was asked how I can condone wiretapping our won citizens without a warrant. I'm not a big fan of it, but we're in a war, in case you didn't notice, and the enemy wants to utterly destroy the American way of life. They've said so over and over. In a time of war the President has to take certain measures to protect his people. Altogether, however, this isn't that big a deal so long as it's restricted to terror investigations. It's certainly less of an abridgement of civil liberties then say the internment of our Japanese citizens in WWII, or the suspension of habeas corpus by Lincoln in the Civil War. Lincoln did a lot of things that even the right wing would bash Bush for, but he was a wartime President and did what needed to be done. History, obviously, has judged his decisions as correct and vital. Heck, even district judge wrote an opinion on a case in the early 70's saying that in certain cases the exingency and immediacy of a situation requires the President to search/seize without a warrant because he's the President and his duty to protect the American people requires it of him. I suspect, in 100 years, that historians will judge Bush based on his accomplishments in a historical sense, and not on individual episodes of mass anti-Bush hysteria. His legacy is not secured yet, but I think Iraq is going to turn out well and in a 100 years people won't understand why everyone seemed to hate Bush so much when he was in office.

This is yet another incident of anti-Bush mass hysteria. Once again, with the exception of Jose Padilla, no one has ever been able to cite an actual examples of an American citizen's civil liberties being denied by the Bush administration.

The New York Times must have decided that Bush's little NSA spy thing is not really illegal, because they are doing their damndest to come up with every excuse why it's bad. They admit that the program was supposed to be limited to those suspected of involvement with terrorists that are making international calls. They follow that up with, (paraphrase) "but in some cases, a call was mistaken as international but the person on the other end was really in the U.S." Shouldn't it be even more urgent if the person on the other end of the line, who we think is a terrorist, has moved tot he United States?

Anyway, no one has been able to convince that wiretapping suspected terrorists who make frequent calls to countries known to contain large numbers of terrorists is UNREASONABLE search. And the FISA system for getting warrants takes too long for many situations. Ever read a Tom Clancy book, or perhaps had deep discussions with a drug dealer about how his business works? People who talk about illegal stuff on phones tend to change those phones out every few days so that if a warrant is placed on them, the phone that has been authorized to be tapped will no longer be in use. This is sort of like the intelligence "wall," it sounds great in theory until 3,000 people are dead because the people that are supposed to protect us couldn't do their jobs for fear of hurting the rights of mass murderers.

Might I add that the executive's duties and powers are enumerated in the Constitution, and the judicial system cannot abridge these duties and powers, and Congress can only do such with an Amendment. Whatever FISA might say is pretty much meaningless as long as the President is following the Constitution, which again says no unreasonable search and seizures, and wiretapping suspected terrorists making calls to suspected terrorists in other countries is eminently reasonable. That said, the first time I hear that this program was misused (like when Clinton used wiretaps to spy on Americans who worked for foreign companies, which doesn't quite have the same importance as preventing mass murders, and has been conveniently ignored by the left-biased media), then go ahead and fry Bush with my full support.

And more. Isn't it just a bit hypocritical that the people who were calling for heads to roll with the minor and unimportant Plame leak seem to have no such problem with leaks now? The difference.... While the Plame leak may or may not have been illegal, critics were able to use the act of the leak to hurt the Bush administration. The NSA leak, on the other hand, contains information that might hurt Bush, as opposed to the act of leaking hurting him. So this time leaking is ok, it all just depends on what might be spun to make Bush look bad.

I'm wondering if the transit workers strike in NYC, combined with the problems unions are causing for Delta, Ford, and GM, will create a general backlash against organized labor in this country. I know that the NYC transit workers are getting pretty much universally slammed, for the illegality of the strike, for the students who cannot get home for the holidays, for the people who can't get to work, for the parents that cannot get their kids to daycare, etc., etc., etc. These people are already making pretty good money for driving in circles, and the benefits packages I have seen seem generous. I hope Bloomberg fires them all.


Edit:
I did some more reading on the subject. I think maybe union might have a slight point on the salary thing, as the city has been holding up their contract forever since they aren't supposed to be able to strike. On the other hand, one of their major demands is to not raise the retirement age, which is currently somewhere in the 50's. That's ridiculous. Everyone is living longer, and is more active in "old age" than ever before. It's not fair or realistic to expect to only have to work half your life and live comfortably, especially when it will be done on the backs of the next generation, and they won't get the same security.

Intergenerational war on the horizon, perhaps?

I got in argument with someone on a forum who basically said that anyone who espouses any sort of a conservative view is a moron and not worth debating. Which I guess means the only people you should debate are the ones you agree with, but that makes for a pretty boring debate. Anyway, here's where our major difference is.

I think that lowering taxes will help everyone in society, rich or poor. The rich by giving them more incentive to make to expand their businesses because they can keep more of the money they earn. It's natural that someone will work harder for profits if they get 80% than if they only get 50%. And good for the poor because all that expansion the rich are doing requires labor, and that means more jobs for poor people to work in and, with smart money management, perhaps they will no longer be poor. A leftist, on the other hand, thinks that lower taxes means you are directly taking money from poor people to give it to the rich, and that anyone who wants lower taxes is a selfish greedy bastard and couldn't possibly have any good intentions. I'm open for debate. Show me proof that supply-side economics is wrong, and I will be willing to change my mind if I'm convinced. The average leftist, online at any rate, refuses to hear anything that might shatter their beliefs. I saw a discussion about the dueling Wal-Mart documentaries, and one guy said he only wanted to see the anti-WalMart one, that the balanced one had to be full of lies because there is nothing but evil at Wal-Mart. That is the sort of attitude that pervades the far left, and the far left drives the Democratic Party, seeing as Howard Dean is about as far left as it gets most of the time, with all his conspiracy theories and telling the world that we don't have a chance to succeed in Iraq.

Whether or not it's decided that Bush's NSA wiretapping program is legal, Clinton did the same thing, but not to fight terrorism. He did it for industrial espionage purposes against European countries. The Echelon project was transformed by Clinton into a project which, among other things, spied on American citizens working for European companies. Ths is not nearly as good a reason for spying on American citizens than the one Bush has given, which is to prevent terrorists from creating terror. Here's the sort of situation in which the current administration would tap someone's communications. Let's say there's some guy who spent a year in Suadi Arabi, now lives in California, has suspected ties to terror groups, and makes frequent phone calls to a number in Saudi Arabia suspected to be owned by terrorists. The Democrats would say that it's totally illegal to listen to that man's calls, but a realist would say that it would be criminally negligent not to try to figure out what the guy's deal is. You if they don't listen in and investigate further and that man is alter involved in murdering Americans, Bush would get fried for having suspicions and not acting on them. With the Democrats there is nothing Bush can possibly do that could be right. On the other hand, if Clinton did the exact same thing, it was ok for him.

From Howard Dean regarding the vote on drilling in ANWR (which I believe has now passed):

But Mr. Reid was furious.
"We've become like the House of Commons. Whoever has the most votes wins. It hasn't worked that way in 216 years," he said.

Errr.... Call me crazy, but aren't we a democracy? And isn't that the sort of government in which the people with the most votes win? And haven't we been that way for 216 years? If Dean wants to be taken seriously as a leader, he should at least know what form of government we have, don't you think?

I stole this analogy, so don't go calling me a genius (or do, but not for this). Anyway, it's the Roadrunner theory of American politics. Bush is like the roadrunner, and the Democrats are like Wile E. Coyote. The Coyote tries strategy after strategy to crush the roadrunner, but his methods always backfire. The roadrunner is pretty much invulnerable to the coyote because the coyote's ideas are always bad ones doomed to failure from the start. The Democrats try and try again, with Kerry, with memogate scandal, Howard Dean, that crazy women that camped in Crawford, tax cuts for the rich, Bush hates black people, etc., and they all fail to have an impact on his popularity. Only other events have had any impact, but nothing the Democrats have said or done has dented his armor. Maybe the Democrats should take a step back and reanalyze their relationship with Acme Products. Perhaps if they try getting their ideas from a different box, maybe one that is full of optimnism instead of pessimism and derision.

This is straight off Powerline:

----------------------------------
If allowed to expire, the information-sharing provisions critical to breaking down the pre-9/11 “wall” between our law enforcement and intelligence personnel will be lost. This will have dire consequences.
Patrick Fitzgerald, a longtime United States Attorney and current special prosecutor, testified to his experience of how the “wall” worked in practice:

I was on a prosecution team in New York that began a criminal investigation of Usama Bin Laden in early 1996. The team ... had access to a number of sources. We could talk to citizens. We could talk to local police officers. We could talk to other U.S. Government agencies. We could talk to foreign police officers. Even foreign intelligence personnel. And foreign citizens.... We could even talk to al Qaeda members—and we did. .... But there was one group of people we were not permitted to talk to. Who? The FBI agents across the street from us in lower Manhattan assigned to a parallel intelligence investigation of Usama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. We could not learn what information they had gathered. That was “the wall.”

The “wall” had deadly consequences. The 9/11 Commission Report contained an example that none of us should ever forget. According to the unanimous bipartisan report of that Commission, the “wall” thwarted the investigation of Khalid al-Midhdar and Nawaf alHazmi, two of the hijackers who flew an airplane into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In June 2001, FBI agents investigating the U.S.S. Cole bombing met with the CIA. Even though the CIA knew that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were connected to the Cole bombing and had been in the United States, the CIA refused to give the FBI this information because of the “wall.” Even after the FBI learned from the CIA of al-Mihdhar’s and al-Hazmi’s presence in the United States and the FBI launched an effort to try to locate them, FBI Headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators in New York to participate. A New York FBI agent working on the case expressed his frustration with these restrictions in the following e-mail: “Whatever has happened to this - someday someone will die - and wall or not - the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain ‘problems.’”


That's the wall (sometimes referred to as the "Jamie Gorelick wall") that the Democrats want to re-erect.
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Isn't it funny how the woman who created this wall that possibly led to thousands of American deaths, is actually on the 9/11 Commission? Doens't that seem like a conflict of interests? I don't know about the rest of the Patriot Act, but the wall needs to come down. If the CIA can help the FBI on a criminal case, or the FBI can help the CIA on a terror investigation, it's suicide to deny them the ability to do so. And criminally negligent. Instead of suing the administration, people who had relatives die on 9/11 opught to be suing Gorelick.

Since it's that present-buying time of the year, and sicne I saw someone else do it and was inspired, I thought I'd mention some good books to buy for people. Let me warn you, though. These books are for people who really like to read, not someone who has never read a book longer than Harry Potter.

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand- It's tough to explain. It's a political philosophy hiding inside a fantastic story. Or maybe it's a story hiding behind a philosophy. Liberals hate, religious fanatics probably hate, but libertarians and objectivists love it.

The Lord of the Rings- Simply the best fantasy literature ever written, and certainly one of the few fantasies that completely deserves to be called literature. The movies were great, but still couldn't tough the books.

A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin- A fantasy with so little magic, and so much violence and intrigue that it reads more like a thriller than a sword and sorcery novel. No one is sacred, and Martin kills off heros and villains alike when the storyline calls for it.

Harrington on Hold'em Vol. 1- If you know someone that enjoys poker and seems to want to improve, you can't do better than this book.

The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil- Ok, I haven't actually read this one, but I want to soon. The premise is fantastic. The Vingean Singularity is the idea that technology is advancing at such a rate that there is a point beyond which it is nearly impossible to predict what life will be like. This will be when the slope exponential curve of technological advancement is going nearly straight up. Kurzweil attempts to predict past that point.

The Watchmen, Absolute Edition, Moore and Gibbons- Possibly the best, but certianly the most revered, comic books series of all time, The Watchmen is collected in this beautiful edition. Moore took various superhero archetypes, mostly of the DC variety, changed their names and identities, and wrote a damn fine tale of murder, redemption, and villainy.

Maus I and II, Spiegelman- Won a Pulitzer, and, along with Watchmen, is probably the only comic that is considered literature by "intellectuals" who give it a chance. It's about the Holocaust, but Spiegelman manages to present it as if we (Jewish people) haven't been bombarded with Holocaust imagery our whole lives by using mice instead of people. Somehow it brings the humanity back instead of it being just another tragic tale of someone getting gassed.

FairTax, Boortz and Linder- I forget the exact title, but it's got a blue cover and is about the FairTax Plan. Buy one for me, too. :)

THat's it for now, more later if I think of more.

Worried at the good news constantly coming out of Iraq, and especially worried that in the end Bush may have been right, let wingers everywhere are beginning to hedge their bets and find ways to spin the truth so as to give Bush and the neoconservatives absolutely no credit. While cruising the far left websites of note, I noticed several entries saying things like, "If Iraq turns out to be a peaceful Democracy, it won't be through any great planning and calculation of Bush's, it will be through sheer luck, like a crackhead winning the Powerball."

Translation: It looks like we may have been dead fucking wrong, but will fight to death for our right to not admit it.

The spiritual leader of Iran, the guy who makes their President jump, bragged the other day about how Iran would win in a nuclear war with Israel because Israel would be completely destroyed due to its small size, whereas only parts of Iran would be destroyed. The European Union's brave response was to threaten to exclude Iran from the World Cup next year.

This is scary, real scary. They are no longer even trying hide behind statements the media feeds the world, like "they just want it for the power production" or "they just want to be even with Israel." It's hard for the media to keep lying for Iran when Iranian leaders come straight out and say they want to destroy Israel. If the western world doesn't get up off their ass and not just threaten military intervention, but back it up, then the whole world is going to have a very serious problem soon. Putting a bunch of nuclear missles under the auspicies of a fanatic Muslim who talks about genocide over breakfast is not a good thing.

I've now realized why two weeks notice has become the custom in western business when leaving a job. Once you actually tell them you're quitting, you no longer have any ability to motivate yourself to work. I told them like two weeks ago, and I have three more to go, and every minute is excruciatingly boring. We had a meeting today so that everyone could be bitched at for doing something wrong, and the whole time I was thinking, "By the next time they review any of this to make sure it was done right, I'll be long gone. Why should I care, and why should I bother learning to do it right?" Of course, as usual, I was doing it right and almost every other person in the department was doing it wrong. This was something that is taught within the first few weeks of working here, so some people have been doing this task wrong for almost two years. Idiots. But then I already knew at least 1/4th of the people in my department are complete morons.

Gotta love those Dems, they can't even get their stories straight. In this case, Nancy Pelosi and Bob Graham were both at some meeting with other Senators so that Dick Cheney could tell them about some anti-terror measures they were putting under the purview of the NSA. This is all directly related to the big media story about how the administration told the NSA to spy on Americans. Anyway, in recounting the media, Graham is now saying say Cheney offered only a very unspecific mention of some new technology the NSA was going to use, whereas Pelosi says he was very specific about what the NSA was going to do, and that she expressed strong reservations. Both stories cannot be true, so one or both of these Senators is shading the truth to hurt the administration. How unusual.

And jsut so you know, this new NSA stuff is probably not illegal. All the Constitution says is that we are protected against unreasonable search and seizure, but wiretapping people whom we have suspicion of helping terrorists or being terrorists themselves is not unreasonable at all. In fact it would unreasonable to say that the NSA cannot investigate these people. All this has done, liek the Patriot Act, is allow the government to use the same tools for investigating suspected terrorists as criminals. We wiretap mobsters and no one seems to have a problem. Why then is it such a bad thing to wiretap someone who has expressed interest in blowing up the White House or killing Americans in some other way? The media doesn't want people to realize that this isn't some huge new invasion of privacy, it's just extending criminal investigation tools to terror investigations.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that Bush decided to do things the old way, and wait for warrants to filter throught the court before wiretapping a suspected terrorist. And let's say that in the interim, this terrorists blows up a building and kills a bunch of Americans. When the story gets out that we suspected he was bad, but the administration didn't do anything because they didn't have a warrant yet, the left will be up in arms bashing Bush for letting Americans die and not letting our intelligence services do their jobs. The man can't win, so instead of doing what he needs to do to improve poll numbers, he does what he thinks is right.

Most of the media is also neglecting to mention that the leak that allowed the NSA wiretaps to come to light is highly illegal, and far more likely to damage our national security than the Plame leak. When is the media going to start calling for the arrest of all the CIA officials (or whomever) that leaked this secret and classified information? The CIA has been leaking like a sieve, and every leak seems calculated to hurt the administration, and every leak has been highly illegal and done with the full cooperation of the media. The Plame leak, on the other hand, was jumped all over as a sign that the administration can't keep a secret. WHat a bunch of freaking hypocrites.

I got A's in two of my three courses this semester, and I'm not sure yet about the other one. I got my project grade and final back, both A's, but that leaves me with an average of 86.4 since I really messed up the mid-term. Since I've been essentially perfect since then, even in weekly in-class participation points, IU'm hoping he'll give me an A. Just gotta wait for the grades to show up online.

More good poker and bad poker to report. I played a $50 MTT, busted a pro to get my buy-in back, and finsihed 6th for $550. If I'd just folded a few times instead of going for 1st, I could have moved up another few hundred, probably, but I always go for first. I withdrew just under half what I won, and then donked off half the rest playing bad poker yesterday.

Part of tournament poker is knowing that you'll lose more often than you'll win, but if you play well, your wins will more than offset the losses. Part of playing well is getting your chips in when the odds are on your side. If you only play when you are 51% to win, you'll win over time, though you won't get far in plenty of tourneys. I was playing a deepstack tourney on Pokerstars today. They slow down the structure so that a full game takes like 10 hours. AFter 4.5 I was kicking ass in 10th place and already in the money. I call a raise with QT, flop comes KJx, I bet, he calls. Turn is an ace, giving me the nut straight, I bet, he raises all-in, I call, he flips a QT. The river, however, was a 9 of diamonds, giving the other guy a stright flush. He took 99.5% of my chips and that was it.

Remember the Plame case, where we werre told that any leak of classified information, no matter how insignificant, is a major problem for our national security? Well the New York Times just published an article on the NSA full of classified information gotten from leakers, and not only that, but the White House specifically asked them not to print the story as it had information that could hurt Americans. The NYT, bastion of Bush-haters everywhere, decided to be hypocrites and print it anyway. Why is it ok for the New York Times to give away importnant national secrets, but if an administration official allegedly told a reporter some minor secret information, then he should be thrown in jail even before his guilt is established? And that is the exact attitude they seemed to imply in their many articles on that mess. The answer is that you need to look at which actions can hurt Bush. In this case, it hurts Bush to reveal this information, whereas with the Plame thing, the leaked information helped Bush.

I'm not saying Bush is god or anything, but it would be nice if the New York Times and our intelligence community didn't act against him every chance they get, no matter the consequences. These Bush-hating entities definitely follow the "ends justify the means."

Today was denim day at the Fed. I think it's a sad testament to my unhappiness here that the combination of being able to wear jeans and the cafeteria serving nachos made this the best day I've had at work in months.

The denim thing wasn't done very well, however. My department manager sent out an email late yesterday, and a lot of people did not see it. If there had been something bad that we needed to know, they would have called a meeting to make sure we all knew, but they seem to care so little about us that making sure we all knew about something good was not much of a priority. Several people in my department are very unhappy that the one day they can wear jeans after working here for two years, their managers neglected to tell them about it. And I totally understand their anger.

I walked in this morning and the first 20 people or so that I saw in the building were not wearing jeans, leaving me VERY paranoid that I had gotten the wrong day. Later I found out that two of those people I had seen walking in without jeans were actually wearing black jeans.

The poker boom of the past few years has been a lot of fun to watch, and must be mind-blowing to old school card players who are used to being looked at as the low rung of society. I was just reading a little article from Greg Raymoer about how he spent his Thanksgiving. Raymer, just so you know, woon about $5 million or so by finishing first in the main event of the World Series of Poker in 2004, making him world champion for a year. Unlike the previous champion, Chris Moneymaker, Raymer has proven he is no fluke by competing successfully in several major tournaments since.

Anyway, Raymer was asked to be a celebrity in a Pro/Am golf tourney, and gladly accepted. Tiger Woods saw him and, before Raymer said a word, Tiger says, "I know who you are, and I'm not going to play poker with you." Then they talked about blackjack and Raymer, as he did with all the other golf pros, offered to trade poker lessons for golf lessons. He chatted with John Elway, who was brushed aside by a fan wanting Raymer's autograph. Fred Couples and Paul Azinger also knew exactly who he was and expressed interest in his trade. Pretty amazing how far poker fame has come in such a short time.

As an aside, I bought Barry Greenstein's book on poker, Ace on the River, the other day. I got it probably more because it's jsut a beautiful, well crafted book than for the actual content, though I'm sure that will be first class. Barry said he wanted to do the book his way, and no major publishers were interested in his demands, so he got it self-published by a smaller player, and it's just simply amazing.

What does it mean to support someone? Let's say I support my friend in his endeavor to make the Olympic team. That means, first off, that I think he's capable of succeeding, and I tell him so. I help him out when I can, and continue sending him my support in the form of encouragement and help push him to his goal. If I told him that he should try his best, but I don't think he can make it, that is not supporting him. If anything, that is undercutting him, and just not very nice.

That's why it ticks me off so much when someone like Senator Murtha spends 20 minutes on TV explaining why our troops in Iraq don't have a chance in hell of succeeding in their mission, but he supports them. No, that's a straight out lie!!! You can't tell someone they are going to fail, and then say you support them, it doesn't work that way.

The following is a direct cut and paste from Powerline. I know they are defintiely partisan, but this is merely the script of an Iraqi talking:

"Haider Ajina has kept us posted on events in Iraq by translating articles of interest from the free press in Iraq. Today he writes with a report from his family in Iraq regarding the election:

I just hung up with my dad in Nejaf. He said it went phenomenally well. He spoke to my Grandmother & my uncles aunties etc. in Baghdad and they all voted. Even my cousin who did not vote in January voted. They are all grateful and full of hope. He said Iraqis are very impressed and honored to be given such coverage all over the world. Iraqi TV is talking about all the world watching them and rooting for them. It was very impressive and very moving he says. The world seems to be behind us and with us. Iraqis had no clue of the magnitude of the international support.

Aljazerah is being condemned by even the Sunnis for lambasting Alsistany (senior Shiite reference). Arab Sunni & Shiite unity is emerging from this elections. Iraqis see Alzerqawi's days numbered in Iraq. He will end soon very soon my father said. It appears that Alsader the jr. is maturing and joining the rest of modernity in Iraq.

The picture looks so good it is hard to believe my ears as my father is telling me all this. Iraqi media is very upset and angry at Ramsey Clark who they feel is giving the enemy fuel for their fire. As well as the Scottish MP George Galloway is doing tremendous damage to the democratic movement in Iraq. The Iraqi media accuses them both of taking "Oil for loyalty" money as they call it.

A great thank you again to this great country of ours from the Ajinas in Iraq & the U.S.A for freedom, self rule and a bright future."

If what people who are actually in Iraq are saying is more accurate than what reporters in New York are saying, then the future is looking pretty good.

David Barrett was a Clinton-era special investigative counsel (like Ken Starr or that Fitzpatrick guy) hired to look in to the possible illegal doings of Henry Cisneros, Clinton's HUD secretary. Turns out that not only was Cisneros guilty, but the investigation turned up possible obstruction from the IRS, as well as insinuations of illegal activity from the highest levels (yes, I mean Bill and Hillary). The report was finally completed in 2004, but unlike every other special counsel report, a judge decided not to release it. After lots of urging from people who wanted to know what's up, parts of the report were released. But last week House Democrats somehow managed to sneak language in to an unrelated bill that will disallow the release of the part of the report that might actually contain proof, or at least serious allegations, of wrong-doing in the Clinton White House. If this was about the GOP, you can be damned sure that every major news outlet would be all over it demanding that every last word be released. Yet somehow few are mentioning it now, since it might prove what many on the right have been saying all along, Bill and Hillary are bigger liars and bigger crooks than George Bush could ever be.

Do I believe it? Maybe, because it's mighty suspicious that so many Dems are so hardcore about keeping this report a secret. What are they trying to hide? I guess we'll find out if their hypocrisy ever comes home to roost.

Those wacky Democrats are at it again! Now they are calling for a slow withdrawal of troops from Iraq over the next several years, instead of an immediate withdrawal once they realized that was a political no-go. Conveniently enough, their new idea dovetails nicely with what the Administration has planned to do (and said they are going to do) since the very beginning, which is to slowly phase out US troops as the Iraqi forces become more proficient and the elected government gets a good hold on the reins of power. Look for the troops to start coming home within a year or so, and look for the Democrats to try to take credit for putting pressure on Bush to do so, despite the fact that Bush would be doing exactly what he said he would do from the very beginning. When Iraq settles down as a peaceful democracy, the Democrats here will do everything they can to take credit, even respinning all their negative comments from the last several years as constructive criticism.

I didn't do with my winning what I had said I was gonna do, which is only play lower buy-in games. Instead I blew off almsot all of it inside a week. So I borrowed another $20 from Smiley and used it to win 1st in a tourney for $450. This time it's all small steak from here on out!

One theme I often return to here on Daily Dose is that of the state of the educational system here in the U.S. K-12 is pitiful, and this worries me for two reasons. One is that I enjoyed my public schooling, and hope my kids will get the same chance, though if schools contineu to fail, any children I may have might end up in private school. Two is that this country will fall apart when these kids are adults if we don't do something about it.

Something I rail against is the teacher's unions, and their seemingly endless resistance to change. You get tenure way too quick, and then want security more than well educated students. Anytime someone makesw a suggestion regarding accountability, you poo-poo it. Any change is bad, because we're teachers and know best. This has caused billions of dollars that could have been used to improve things to instead be used to keep things the way they are, and that way is just plain shitty. I've been cussing a lot on here lately, does that bother people?

I was happy to hear that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which intially gave most of its educational funds to small public schools, has switched gears, probably due to frustration and lack of results, and now gives a lot of money to charter programs and other experiments in education. There has to be a better way.

Or maybe not. Maybe the schools are all fine, and we need to change the attitudes of students and their parents. Or maybe there are problems in both areas. But we need to do something, and the National Educator's Association's strategy of being militantly against any changes at all are never going to help.

Abortion and parental rights are obviously pretty touchy subjects in our society, and people tend to have opinions that aren't going to be swayed no matter what. I'm one of the few that constantly meanders back and forth, and looks for compromise and nuance and such. I just saw a column which brought up a great point and a suggestion that is sure to ruffle a lot of feathers. It all revolves around the father.

The way things are now, a man has no say in his child's future until that child is born. A woman can abort, she can put a baby up for adoption, she can do a lot of things, and the man has no say in any of it. How about this then? Give men (ones who are not married to the mother) the right to terminate their relationship with the child in the first trimester. It would be sort of like an abortion, but for the man's side. That way if an unwanted pregancy occurs, the man can wash his hands of it if the woman decides not to raise the child. After all, sex includes two people, why is it that the woman gets all the choices after that? This would put some balance back in things.

Of course it still doesn't resolve the issue of a woman who doesn't like the father and doesn't tell him that he got her pregnant until the kid is 5 and she wants child support. That ain't fair either. If you decide to leave the father out of the child's life completely, you shouldn't have the right to drag him back in just because you got some money troubles. You made the choice to leave him out, you should have to stick with it. And the same point applies to men who decide to terminate their relationship in the first trimester. They can't then decide to get back in the kid's life years later.

What about the idea of a man forcing a woman to finish the pregnancy? What if a man REALLY nwats that child, and the woman wants an abortion. The way things are now, the man can go fuck himself for all the law cares, but the opposite is not true. If a woman wants to carry the child and the man doesn't, the woman gets to, and not only that, but she can stick the man with child support. This is sexual discrimination, plain and simple. Is it fair that a woman would have to carry a baby for 9 months? Not really, but it's also not fair that a woman has 100% of the decisions regarding unborn children.

This story, in short. Tom Coburn, the Senator that supports the Porkbusters campaign more than any other, even going so far as to put the logo on his web page, is a baby-birthin' doctor in his civilian life. During his long tenure in the House, he delivered about 65 babies a year, earning just enough income from that job to pay his malpractice insurance and licensing fees. He claims that he will leave service in the Senate after just two terms, and wants to keep doctoring on this very part-time basis so that he'll be able to jump back in full-time when his 12 years as a Senator are up. Well the Seante has a rule that you can't have an outside job that has fiduciary complications. In others words, you cannot have a job you get a paycheck for, so long as you serve as a Senator. It kind of makes sense, you were elected to be a Senator, and that's your job. But Coburn isn't exactly neglected his duties, and several of the Senators that voted against a bill that would have allowed him to continue birthing babies are major hypocrites.

How? Let me explain using our least favorite nutty California liberal (ok, 2nd least favorite, Nancy Pelosi takes the cake on that one), the Honorable Mrs. Boxer. Mrs. Boxer does not have a job outside of the Senate, but that has not stopped her, or many other Senators, from writing and publishing books for income while in office. It's not a paycheck for a regular job, so they can get away with it, but they don't seem to see the hypocrisy in denying Coburn the chance to do a job that is not enriching his bank account, but instead is helping people. Apparantely writing (in most cases hiring a ghost writer) lame books for easy cash when you're supposed to be helping make laws is ok, but having a part-time job that actually benefits people is VERY VERY BAD!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet, so if I have, you can skip this. Anyway, looks like I'm gonna be moving. Mid-January or so, Smiley and I are packing up and moving in to a house with our friend Kayla. It's in Sandy Springs, specifically near Riverside and 285. It's pretty cheap, there's a big fenced in yard for Charlie to play with, and there's a lot more room for people.

More and more, it seems that when it comes to Iraq, Bush was right, you were wrong nyah nyah nyah. According to this article from the AP, Iraqi Sunni insurgents are telling the foreign anti-Americans like Zarqawi to stay away from the elections. They are even going so far as to say that they will protect polling places from foreign terrorists. Why? Because they see that the Americans have been nothing but honest and up-front every step of the way, and that it is in the best interests of their country to allow these elections to succeed. Hopefully this will lead to a peaceful, democratic Iraq. They may not be our best friends, but all we ask is that they stop being a rougue state, and I imagine our leaders hope they don't turn to militant Islam either.

My plan for the weekend was to spend most of it working on a take home final that is due Thursday. Obviously that meant I spent most of the weekend playing poker or watching TV. In a fit of nostalgia, I downloaded the entirety of V: The Minseries, and V: The Final Battle. They were huge things for me when I was a kid, and I was very excited to see these two great works again. Turns out the epic cast of thousands that I remembered was maybe a total of 30 people, and the story wasn't quite that good. It wasn't bad, though. Without all the commercials, the total runing time was about 7.5 hours, which surprised me. That means the total running time on TV was only about 10 hours. I guess the fist series was two two-hour parts, and the second was 3 two-hour parts.

I hope it won't spoil things if I tell you the humans win. And if aliens ever do appear over our planet, and supposedly in friendship declare that our scientific community is conspiring against them, don't trust the aliens over our men and women of science, or Marc Singer will come and get you!

I also watched most of season 2 of Arrested Development. Hilarious show!! I can see why it's being cancelled though. A lot of the humor was either too subtle or too intelligent for much of the viewing public to get.

And I saw that this kid whose poker career I've follwing, zeejustin (zeejustin.com) won about $130k in an online poker tourney yesterday. Kinda makes my $650 look small.

Played a little poker last night. Smiley staked me in a $10 MTT last night on Full Tilt, and I finished 2nd for $652. Not too bad, but I should have had the $1010 for 1st. When we got to head's up, it was about even. I turned up the agression, reraised a lot, and even re-reraised and had juat under a 3-1 lead after a few minutes. Then we got all-in where I had 6's and he had 2's, and he picked up trips on the river. Then I was down, he won a couple more to put me down like 5-1, and I was forced to push with a less than spectacular hand, and the game was over.

I'm withdrawing some of that, and using the rest to play. I'm going to exercise some discipline this time, which means mostly $10 SNGs and token SNGs until I get up to $1000. Then maybe some $20s and $50s and MTTs. I want to keep better track, too. And learn how to use Poker Tracker right.

I wrote the below passage to the AJC this morning. Perhaps it's a bit callous, but I also beleive every word.

"If a man is on a plane and says he has a bomb and refuses to stop moving, or put the "bomb" down, then he should be neutralized. I don't care if he's mentally ill, a real terrorist, a celebrity, or a 12 year old. He should be shot and killed just in case he was telling the truth. The bipolar man that died the other day was really murdered by his wife who did not make sure he was on his meds while traveling in public, not by any air marshall. She neglected the safety of her husband and every passenger on the plane. The only victims are the people who had to wait for their plane to edpart while officials cleaned up this irresponsible woman's mess."

I mentioned to someone I know that I like to play online poker, and would quit my job in a second if I was good enough to make regular money playing poker. This person basically looked at me with horror, and said gambling is bad and I would end up in a gutter and all that. I decided it wasn't worth debating and just said, "Whatever."

What if I had instead said that I was going to take other people's money and gamble on it in a situation where I have far less control over the outcome than when I play poker? This person would have been even more horrified. Funny thing, though.... I was describing a mutual fund manager.

Let me start off by saying that I'm not a fan of Anne Coulter. I agree with her on a lot of things, disagree on others, but I don't like her abrasive, provocative style. She likes to make non-racist points in such as to seem racist just so she can make fun of people who object. In other words, she's kind of a bitch.

The way the media covers her, however, is almost always unfair to her. She gave a speech at UCONN the other day and was shouted down by people in the crowd, and eventually gave up on the speech and did a Q&A session. The AP interviewed a couple of people about it. One of the interviews was written in this way: 'Jane Doe, head of the [insert campus left-wing organization], refused to attend the speech, saying, "It was full of hate speech."' How would the interviewee know that if she didn't go? Wouldn't it make more sense to interview someone who did go? The author of the story also refers to Coulter's hate speech several times, but neglects to provide any examples. Coulter is quoted at one point, and the AP follows the quote with, "...reversing statements she had