Virtual Sugar Rush

Demographics Drive Health Care Costs Up

2011-01-17T13:23:00.001-08:00

It is impossible to stop rising health care costs without cutting treatment. We can slow the growth of costs with competition and innovation, but the primary cost driver is and will remain the amount of medical treatment provided on a per capita basis.

People today see doctors more frequently than people did in prior generations, and they’re increasingly likely to get expensive, cutting edge tests and therapies that were not in existence a generation ago. Once they leave the doctor’s office, today’s patients are medicated with more drugs than ever before, and at much higher costs. And because they get all this expensive care, people live longer than ever before, reaching ages at which they require constant medication and treatment.

In a rapidly growing society, such as America after World War II, such increases in the amount of medical treatment provided may be sustainable since there are many healthy, young workers bringing down the average cost of insurance, be it public or private. In a stable or shrinking society, however, the rapid increase in treatment leads to rapid increases in the per capita cost of insurance. There simply are not enough healthy, young workers buying into group health insurance plans to offset the hordes of baby boomers on blood pressure medication, getting MRIs, having heart surgeries, or receiving diabetes treatment, etc. And so, each year the cost of a health plan goes up in proportion to the increased amount of care provided. Unless we cut back the amount of medical care, there is no way to stop the rise of health care costs. So what can be done?

In the 70s sci-fi movie “Logan’s Run,” a futuristic indoor city manages its population by putting everyone to death at age 30. That keeps the population from overgrowing the city, and would obviously prevent a lot of costs associated with an aging population. The idea of eliminating people at 30 is a bit naïve, though, since that leaves barely a decade of productive labor after two decades of expensive child rearing. Basing acceptable longevity on economic value, age 50 seems a more sound cutoff.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine we’ll ever reach a point where we’d implement such a horrifying policy. Rather, harsh economic realities will make the choice of life or death for us. Total life expectancy will decline as rationing leads to higher infant mortality, fewer preventive treatments, and deaths of people whose drug benefits are cut off, or who are too far down the waiting list for diagnostic tests, surgeries, etc. And eventually, enough older patients will die that the growth in medical costs will abate.

Other than death, only two things may stop the increasing per capita cost of medical care – a dramatic technological breakthrough, or lots of babies.

In terms of technology, it’s possible that science may find ever cheaper ways to provide the same or better treatments than we have today. Or perhaps we will discover cures for such maladies as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and other diseases that now require expensive treatment and drugs. Personally, I suspect that each technological breakthrough is likely to increase the cost of care, though. After all, once we eliminate each cause of death, we only push up life expectancy and force nature to find new ways to kill us – something nature seems very intent upon doing. New conditions become the leading cause of death, and we in turn search for new treatments and drugs to combat those. Until man becomes immortal, the cycle seems unlikely to end.

Making lots of babies, on the other hand, is a practical solution we can implement with a high degree of certainly for success – not to mention a good bit of fun. If each woman has an average of two children, that is not quite enough to maintain a stable population, owing to mortality prior to child bearing. To grow the population, and hence the number of young, healthy workers offsetting the expense of caring for older folks, women need to have an average of at least three children each. And really, four or five would be optimal. We’d still need to scale back certain entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, that need six or seven healthy workers for every beneficiary. But with a moderately growing population, at least we could continue to have such programs to care for the aged and infirm.

None of this is an argument to do nothing about the cost of health care. We can and should take measures to control the costs we can control so as to buy time before the day of medical treatment reckoning – the day we have to start cutting back on care because we have no other choice. We should allow a free market in health care, introducing competition into what has long been a closed, controlled system low on choice and high on expense. That means allowing insurance providers to create a multitude of competing plan options, and allowing them to sell these competing options across state lines. It also means requiring care providers to operate transparently, posting prices for treatments up front so as to allow consumers to shop around. And finally, it means opening up the medical professions to competition. Why should a person be required to complete medical school to set a broken bone or dress a wound? Military medics with months rather years of training have been doing these basic tasks effectively for centuries, freeing up doctors and nurses for more critical care. If we make doctors and clinics compete to be our care providers, we’re likely to receive better treatment and lower costs.

Still, each person’s health care costs, either directly paid to providers or to insurance companies, will continue to rise as long as fewer healthy workers are being asked to carry the load for more and more sickly ones who needs lots of care. Everything we do without addressing that essential fact is only tinkering around the edges of the issue.

California to Send Tax Revenue to Neighboring States, Create Black Market

2010-08-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

Beginning in February 2011, gun shops and sporting goods stores in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon are likely to see a boom in sales of handgun ammunition as California’s draconian AB 962 goes into effect. The law bans Internet ammo sales to Californians and, more importantly, requires merchants within California to track consumers who purchase handgun ammunition, maintaining fingerprints for each.

The law infringes upon the federal government’s Constitutional primacy regulating interstate commerce, making the sale of a legal good across state lines a crime. On that basis, it’s likely to be overturned eventually. In the meantime, though, the law will encourage many gun owners to buy ammunition in neighboring states. Weekend trips to Reno, Vegas, and other nearby towns will now include bulk ammunition purchases as visiting Californians stock up there to avoid intrusive government monitoring here. And the sales tax revenue that would have been collected by California cities will go to our neighbors instead.

There will still be ammunition sales in California, of course. Folks who keep firearms strictly for home protection and rarely actually shoot their guns will probably buy the odd box in-state. But serious shooters are already planning to stock up on ammo from out-of-state. And criminals, whom the law presumably was intended to deny easy access to ammunition, will stop buying from legitimate retailers (where sales tax is collected) and buy instead from street peddlers trafficking in stolen or illegally imported ammunition.

We’ve seen this tragic comedy before. Governments impose tougher restrictions on guns and ammo claiming they’ll prevent gun violence, but actually just making life harder on law abiding citizens. Unable to buy guns from legit stores, criminals buy them instead out of the trunks of cars or under tables in bars, completely off the books. Now handgun ammunition will also trade hands underground, creating yet another racket for gangs to fight and kill over.

This gets at the actual root cause of violent crime – not the availability of guns or ammunition, or even poverty, but the creation of incentives to commit crime. In our efforts to control the behavior of others, society has imposed various restrictions that have had perverse consequences. Alcohol prohibition in the 1920s was supposed to promote social order and public welfare. Instead, it created the mob and murderous black marketers like Al Capone. For generations since, society has prohibited recreational drug use and prostitution, and these two underground activities continue to fuel gang violence to this day. In poor Mexico, drug cultivators and smugglers serving the American black market now threaten the very existence of the Mexican state, murdering police officers, judges, politicians and rival gang members in ever more violent massacres. Across Asia and Eastern Europe, young girls are sold into slavery or are kidnapped by black market traffickers equally ruthless in their use of violence.

By now, it really ought to be clear that the best way to interrupt this cycle of violent crime is not to give black marketers yet another lucrative incentive to kill, but rather to stop trying to control other people in the first place.

Uncertainty in Afghanistan

2010-07-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

I’m no longer certain that we’re doing the right thing in Afghanistan. For the past nine years, I’ve supported an American-led nation-building project there on the premise that failed states were incubators of terrorists and other enemies of democracy. Now I’m not so sure.

After 9/11, President Bush did precisely the right thing in deposing the evil Taliban regime and chasing its al Qaeda allies out of the cities. That decisive action devastated the terrorist network and probably did much to keep us safe. The most important question now, however, is whether we can expect to go beyond that security success to establish a functioning civil society in the long-troubled land. And if we can, at what cost and to what end?

Certainly, well functioning, peaceful societies are preferable to illiberal, threatening regimes. And Afghanistan’s proximity to Pakistan, that nuclear-armed Islamic nation with its own Taliban and al Qaeda insurrectionists, makes the country more important to American security interests than other failed states. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that there’s much we can do to develop and reform Afghanistan under current military and economic circumstances. NATO has proven to be a hollow organization where Europe is not directly threatened – and as European dithering during the Balkan crises of the 1990s showed, the organization is weak even on its own soil. The project in Afghanistan, then, is an almost exclusively American effort.

Meanwhile, the strategically more important effort in Iraq necessarily consumes more American attention and resources. Iraq has superior existing infrastructure, fewer competing tribes to reconcile, greater potential wealth to fund development, and a well-establish secular tradition. The fact that Iraq is overwhelmingly Arab also makes it more important as a potential example of democracy for the people of Egypt, Syria and the Gulf States. Then there’s oil. Having that precious commodity makes Iraq important in the global economy in a way Afghanistan simply is not. Whether you’re a neo-con hoping to plant democracy in the heart of the Middle East, or a policy realist who just wants to manipulate the levers of power and wealth, Iraq is far and away more critical to your agenda – and to America’s.

So if we can’t leave Iraq to win the supposedly “good war” (according to President Obama) in Afghanistan, what do we do? Hamid Karzai and his corrupt friends and relatives stunt internal civil development, and we don’t have the troops or money to impose a large-scale solution from the outside. More and more, I’m beginning to think maybe the best we can do is to establish Taliban-free zones in the north and around Kabul. Such retrenchment would require fewer troops and less money, and would reduce combat losses. With well armed and organized forces occupying a smaller footprint in-country, we would still be able to execute lethal campaigns against Taliban and al Qaeda forces whenever they pop up.

At present, though, we seem to be pursuing the worst possible strategy – “surging” to a troop level that remains insufficient to actually succeed in a strategy that may be too ambitious. The result is more dead Americans for no clear benefit to our country. That truly is unsustainable.

Bravo Arizona!

2010-04-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

What's left to say that hasn't already been said? Arizona has done what it had to do to protect its citizens and enforce the rule of law. If the federal government did its job, the state wouldn't have needed to pass its new law. But the federal government not only has failed to do its job, it is openly hostile to the task of protecting Americans from the drug cartels and smugglers that have turned our border into a bloody no man's land, and it has looked the other way as our communities have been flooded with people who ignored our laws and disrespected our sovereignty, and who make it harder and harder for less educated, less skilled American workers to get a job.

In the 1970s and 80s, a poor, uneducated black, Hispanic, white or other American had some hope of making an honest living as a janitor, cook, construction worker, etc. Today, forget it. All the manual labor jobs go to illegals who work for less pay and will accept less safe working conditions. This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released these statistics: While national unemployment stands at about 9.7%, among blacks the rate is 16.5%. Why is the rate so much higher for blacks? Because a greater proportion of blacks lack college degrees or high school diplomas, and so are in direct competition for jobs with illegals. And why on Earth would a small, independent contractor go to all the trouble of hiring a black American for framing, roofing, landscaping, etc., when he could pick up a truck load of illegals in front of any Home Depot without filling out any bothersome government forms, handling payroll deductions, or getting any attitude that he might expect from an American worker? Americans, after all, expect to be treated a certain way. An illegal is just happy to be making dramatically more money than they could dream of making in his homeland. He'll do whatever you ask and smile. Great for the contractor. Not so great for the poor black American citizen who just lost another opportunity to join the labor force and pull himself and his family out of the ghetto.

Sadly, race and ethnicity are still powerful influences over many people, so a lot of Hispanic Americans are willing to look the other way, or even applaud, while millions of people from Latin America break our laws and literally steal jobs from poor Americans. All because those invaders look like we do, and share a common ancestral culture. To folks with that attitude, I say it's time to choose sides. What matters more, America or your race? America is in the balance. Either our laws mean something, or they don't. And if they don't, what good is a Bill of Rights, and other laws written to protect our liberties? If your race and ethnic background puts you above the law, the law is worthless. When you cling to your racial and ethnic pride and identity politics, you are indirectly assaulting the rights and freedoms of everyone else.

I hope many other states, counties and municipalities will have the courage the follow Arizona's lead and enforce our laws.

Settled Law from a Living Document?

2010-04-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

The left likes to say that whatever gains they’ve made pushing the "progressive" agenda over the years are now “settled law.” That is, things such as the unfettered right to abortion and the authority of the federal government to essentially ignore the 10^th Amendment are now set in stone, and anyone who disagrees should shut up since that’s all been settled already. Well sorry, in our democracy, the only settled law is the one the left so loves to subvert, challenge and distort at every opportunity by calling that law a “living document.”

By now it should be clear I mean the Constitution, which the left constantly attempts to bend to the leftist program. Forget that the amendment process provides a clear and specific way to actually alter the Constitution. To the left, the words and clauses already there are open to constant reinterpretation so that the Constitution means whatever they say it means “in the current context” or “in accordance with contemporary mores.”

Thirteen states so far have filed lawsuits against the federal government in response to the health care takeover Democrats have foisted upon the country. Apologists for big government retort now that the Commerce Clause empowers the federal government to do all contained in the health care bill and more, and that such empowerment has been settled once and for. No need belaboring the debate. Those of us who believe the Constitution sets strict limits on government power (as the Founders explicitly stated it does) ought to pipe down and accept that the “living document” has adapted to today’s realities – which includes the fact that unlimited federal power is now set in stone.

A living document that sets leftist ideas in stone. What a creation!

Best to San Diego

2010-02-26T12:51:00.001-08:00

Today's move by the Chargers to let RB Darren Sproles test the free agent market, after letting LaDanian Tomlinson go last week, could make San Diego a much more likely destination for Cal's super-speedster Jahvid Best. The Chargers pick later in the first round and could certainly use a dynamic playmaker like Best. Of course, San Diego may yet re-sign Sproles as a free agent once the market sets a reasonable price for his services. Still, it's intriguing to consider Best in the blue and gold of the Bolts.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4949186

Jahvid Best's Next Team

2010-02-23T14:40:00.000-08:00

I see Cal running back Jahvid Best as a complementary speed back in a two-back tandem with a power runner. Several teams have a need for such a back, and a handful just need any help they can get in the backfield.

Teams where Best would fit nicely with an established primary back:

Atlanta: Michael Turner has established himself as a fine NFL starter, but hasn’t ever really been expected to carry the load as the main man for a complete season. At 240-plus pounds, he’s a bruising runner who would set defenses up nicely for the lightning quick Best. And with Matt Ryan at QB, the Falcons could make use of Best’s solid pass catching skills to really keep defenses off balance. With Atlanta picking either 19th or 20th in the first round, Best would seem to be a great choice. However, the Falcons also need another wideout to free up Roddy White, as well as help on the O-line, while new blood is needed across the defense. As such, it’s hard to imagine the team taking Best in the first round.
Baltimore: If the Ravens part ways with Willis McGahee, Best would be an interesting addition to the running game. Having Ray Rice and Best in the game simultaneously would have defenders running every which way, and would create huge mismatches out of play action, on screen plays, and even running plays. Still, while Rice is a hard runner, he hasn’t been a weapon near the goal line. Adding Best would not help in that critical aspect of the offense, so this probably would not work out. Besides, Baltimore needs a legitimate No. 1 receiver to replace the aging Derrick Mason. That should be their top priority.
Buffalo: The simple fact that the Bills already have a former Cal running back in Marshawn Lynch is probably enough to guarantee that they will not select Best. But their high draft position might make it possible if Best lasts into the second round. Lynch and RB Fred Jackson are both strong runners, and neither has the burst, elusiveness and flat out speed that Best would bring. So it would be very exciting to see Best added to the mix. But the team would probably be better served taking a stud WR like Dez Bryant or an offensive tackle to fill the void left by Jason Peters’ free agent departure to Philadelphia before last season. And the defense remains mediocre at best. So while this would be an exciting combination to see, it’s not likely to happen.
Chicago: This definitely is not going to happen because the Bears don’t have the draft picks to get Best. But even if they did, the team has so many pressing needs (CB, DE, DT, WR) that they couldn’t afford the luxury of pairing Best with Matt Forte. But man would that be fun to see. Jay Cutler might even start checking down when deep coverage is heavy rather than throwing the ball up for grabs as he did in 2009. As a lifelong Bear fan who grew up watching Walter Payton for 13 seasons, I’d love to see the soft-spoken, hard-working Best wearing the navy and orange. And from articles I’ve read about Best’s uphill running regimen, which emulates Payton’s, it sounds like Best would appreciate the opportunity to follow in Sweetness’ footsteps. Different kind of runner to be sure, but similar heart and character. I wish the Bears could get Best, but they can’t.
Cincinnati: With the addition of Larry Johnson last season, the Bengals suddenly have a crowded backfield. But both Johnson and Cedric Benson are power runners. If I were in charge, one of the two would be traded to make room for Best. Indeed, the Cincinnati offense is close to being one of the really exciting ones in the league. Chad Johnson (after Darelle Revis shut him down twice in a row at the end of last season he should now be known as Johnson rather than Ochocinco since he said he’d change his name back if that happened) is still an elite receiver, but he won’t be for much longer. And the death of Chris Henry left a gaping hole opposite Johnson that the Bengals may choose to fill with the 21st overall pick. But Best would be a better option. He’d give them the lightning to the other RB’s thunder, and would be a legitimate receiving option for Carson Palmer, perhaps even pulling safeties up. Plus, after Bryant, the receiver class doesn’t really have anyone who looks like a sure-fire NFL starter. Since Cincinnati’s defense is already very good, the team can afford to focus on offense and take a shot on Best. It all hinges on what they do with Johnson and Benson between now and the draft.
Green Bay: Another spot that seems to make sense for Best is paired with Ryan Grant on the Packers’ roster. Green Bay picks 23rd, two spots behind Cincinnati, and already has excellent receivers, tight ends, and the best quarterback in the NFL, former Golden Bear Aaron Rodgers. The O-line was battered last season, but when Colledge and Clifton are both healthy, they do a fine job in pass protection. The possible monkey wrench in this scenario is the likely departure of Aaron Kampman in free agency. Kampman never fit into the 3-4 OLB role, and will probably be looking to sign his next big contract with a team that lets him cause havoc from his natural end spot. If so, the Pack may be looking to upgrade their linebacking or D-line corps.
Jacksonville: The Jags need help at several positions, most importantly QB, so they definitely won’t reach for Best with the 10th or 11th pick. And Best won’t be there by the time they pick again. It would be fun to watch Best working with the human bowling ball that is Maurice Jones-Drew. However, with the Jags’ glaring needs at QB and WR, not to mention every defensive position, Best again is a luxury the team cannot afford.
Pittsburgh: The only thing that makes me doubt the Steelers would take Best in the first round is their 18th overall slot. Best would be a fantastic complement to Rashard Mendenhall, and would be like a Heath Miller out of the backfield – a reliable outlet for Ben Roethlisberger when Hines Ward and Santonio Holmes are well covered. Pittsburgh can afford to take defensive players in later rounds since that squad is already pretty solid all the way around. But still, 18th seems higher than Best will go since there are likely to be some real beasts remaining available at tackle and guard, areas of somewhat greater need in light of Roethlisberger’s injuries the past couple years.
St. Louis: Needless to say, the Rams are not going to make Best the top overall pick in the draft. But the first pick of the second round? Maybe. In Round 1, the Rams have got to take Ndamukong Suh to set up a ferocious D-line to terrorize the NFC West for the next decade (Suh plus Chris Long, Leonard Little and that other Cornhusker DT Adam Carricker who should be back from injury). That will make their secondary better, and keep them in every game. That leaves the second round pick to use on offense. And Best would be a thrilling complement to the crushing style of Stephen Jackson. The only problem is that St. Louis desperately needs both a QB and a WR – most of all a receiver. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not totally sold on any of the receivers this year besides Bryant, but two or three fine QBs will be there at the top of the second round, and the Rams might just go for the best receiver they can get (Jordan Shipley is an exciting prospect who should still be on the board, and if Arrelious Benn falls this far, he might be too tempting to pass up). But WRs are notoriously difficult to project to the NFL level. If the Rams don’t go QB in Round 2, Best would be an excellent choice.

Besides the teams where Best would be a good complementary back, several teams just need whatever help they can get at running back. Suddenly, that group includes San Diego – my personal choice for Best since it would keep him on the West Coast and put him in cool threads that he’d look really, really fast wearing. Other teams that just need a RB include Cleveland, Detroit, New England and Tampa Bay. Only the Chargers or Patriots have first round picks that seem to make any sense in taking Best (28th and 22nd respectively). If Cleveland, Detroit or Tampa were to get him, it would be in the second round. And all seem to make as much sense as any other selections these needy teams might make. If Best went to Cleveland, he could run behind former teammate Alex Mack. In Detroit, he could play with Zach Follett once more (and fill the role once played by the elusive Barry Sanders).

Of course, team needs and individual player fit aren’t the only things that will determine where Jahvid Best may end up. Some teams believe in always taking the best available athlete regardless of immediate need, so he could end up going somewhere you’d never expect. And considering Al Davis’ fixation on raw speed and habit of having too many potential starting running backs on the roster, it wouldn’t be shocking to see Best in the silver and black. In fact, while it makes almost no sense at all, it would be awesome to have the kid stay right here in the Bay.

If I were betting (and I’m definitely not since I’m way too cheap), I’d say Best ends up in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Cleveland or Detroit.

High-Speed Rail to Nowhere

2009-10-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

This morning's San Francisco Examiner reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is submitting a bid for $4.5 billion in federal porkulus funds to get California's high-speed rail project moving forward. Although voters had already approved the sale of $10 billion in bonds for that purpose, the state's terrible credit rating and drowning debt have made it impossible to sell the bonds, and the rail project is languishing. Apparently there just aren't many folks dumb enough to bet on California's government straightening itself out any time soon.

So now the governor is begging Washington for the down payment on a system that is projected (by the California High-Speed Rail Authority) to cost up to $35 billion when all is said and done. Unfortunately, there are two major problems with even this official state forecast. First, the ultimate cost is likely to mushroom as all public project costs do when bureaucrats' rosy predictions run into reality. And second, today's estimates assume the project will actually ever get done. As in, completed. Operational. Functional.

The Bay Area suffered a catastrophic earthquake in 1989 in which sections of the Bay Bridge's eastern span between Oakland and Yerba Buena Island collapsed. Twenty years later, a replacement span still is not complete. Even worse, state engineers actually knew 30 years before the '89 quake that the Bridge's eastern span was vulnerable in the event of a major temblor. In other words, it's been 50 years -- half a CENTURY -- since California first identified a critical, life or death issue with a massive economic impact on the state, and yet the project to replace the troubled span still is not complete.

And back to the cost overrun issue, the Bay Bridge project is a cautionary tale. In less than a year in 2005, the project costs skyrocketed from the state's $300 million estimate to about $6.5 billion.

What chance does the state have of actually finishing a high-speed rail system across the entire state, and doing it for its current cost estimate of $35 billion?

No chance.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/01/EDGN1C0UD41.DTL&type=printable

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%E2%80%93_Oakland_Bay_Bridge

Afghan Endgame?

2009-09-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

George Will certainly stirred up a lot of anger among my fellow righties with his column yesterday saying that the U.S. ought to withdraw the bulk of troops from Afghanistan and transition to a more remote engagement relying on drones, special forces strikes, and such rather than pursuing the troop-intensive strategy of counter-insurgency General Stan McChrystal has laid out.

Counter-insurgency is necessarily nation-building, as it relies on establishing not only security, but also civil relations and functioning institutions. Will has been consistent, unlike many on the right, in opposing such endeavors on traditionally conservative, politically realistic grounds. He made similar arguments about our involvement in Iraq.

As a neocon, I must disagree with Will and that near-isolationist impulse, as well as with pure political realism generally. Having little engagement and even less influence in places like Afghanistan is what created such a headache for the United States in the first place. Make no mistake, there always have been and always will be those who want to kill on a mass scale. The U.S. is not to blame for its suffering the 9/11 attacks because of our inattention to that region. But there can be little doubt that our inattention did at least allow Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies to increase their operational capability, enhance their training and grow bolder and more confident in their agenda.

As so many of us said after 9/11, never again.

Americans cannot allow the festering sores on the other side of the globe to become wounds in our own national body. We cannot rely on technology, no matter how impressive, to keep us safe from cells of enemies who hide in caves and blend in with civilian populations. Drones and satellites and cruise missiles cannot help us weed out the bad guys from the innocent civilians across Afghanistan. And if we do not continue to root out and kill those bad guys, they will grow more powerful once again.

We cannot allow that.

George Will is a brilliant, thoughtful conservative. But he's wrong on this issue. America must not only remain in Afghanistan, we must win our counter-insurgency and embrace the nation-building so many of us on the right still bemoan. Like it or not, we live in a world of intervention now. Either we intervene on our own security behalf, or the terrorists will intervene in our lives in the most horrific of ways.

Media Spreads Untruisms about GM

2009-07-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

One of the dumbest things I've heard or read from reporters talking about GM over the past several months is that, at some point, the company just started making cars no one wanted to buy.

Ridiculous. Until last year, GM sold more cars worldwide each year than any other manufacturer. Then Toyota passed them by. Now exactly who on Earth was buying all those GM cars year after year, even during the 1980s and 90s when the company was supposedly completely ignoring consumers? How can any company sell more of something than every other company on Earth when “no one” wants their products?

Obviously, plenty of consumers did want what GM was selling. More, in fact, than for any other auto maker, including Toyota and all the supposedly more consumer-oriented companies.

What did GM in was not that no one wanted their cars, but rather that their cost structure and distribution network could not support merely being No. 1. They were based, rather, upon the shortsighted assumption that GM would continue to utterly dominate the auto market. UAW workers and retirees enjoyed pay and benefits that made them not merely middle class, but outright affluent.

My grandfather retired from GM after 30 years with a 90 percent pension and generous lifetime benefits I can only dream of. Now my high school dropout grandpa stays home every day and collects more than I do working full-time in a professional position, having graduated from one of the finest universities in the world. I'm glad he's comfortable. But even he complained for years about how the union was strangling the company, how lazy workers were untouchable, and were paid just as much as truly dedicated employees.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost.

I admit that I've been rather uninspired by most of GM's designs over the past couple decades. But then, Honda, Subaru and Mazda haven't done much to pique my interest either. Most auto makers, it seems, started churning out dull, lifeless, cars over the past 20 years intended to be acceptable to the widest possible market segment rather than actually turning anyone on. Of that, GM was as guilty as anyone. But it's absurd to say no one wanted their cars when more people were buying them than were buying any other make.

This reminds me of the the famous quote from media film critic Pauline Kael in 1972 about Nixon's election: “I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him.”

Lefty elitists in the media today are just as oblivious talking about lowly American auto makers. Since no one they know would deign to buy an American product, they think no one would.

Neocons Were Right

2009-06-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

The people of Iran are demonstrating to the world that America's neocons were right all along -- by planting democracy in the heart of the Middle East, we have emboldened the people of the region to fight their despotic rulers. First in Lebanon, and now in Iran, the people increasingly look at Iraq, and recall the images of purple fingers raised proudly to show they have voted, and these people are saying to themselves, "Why not here? Why not us?"

Freedom is a universal human desire. Even in the face of bloodshed.

Hope for Iran

2009-06-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

Who isn't moved by the images trickling out of Iran, and filled with hope that this may finally be the end of that country's vile regime? If the people of Iran can topple the theocracy, it would encourage peace in the region. If the uprising fails, the regime may be encouraged to clamp down even more, and to become more belligerent in its international dealings, seeking to use hatred of (or even war against) Israel to unify its people and distract them from domestic affairs.

Say a prayer for the people of Iran.

Sotomayor Just Another Latin Bigot

2009-05-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Like many Americans, I'm deeply offended by the assertion of Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, that race and gender are central to the quality of one's jurisprudence. And as an American of Mexican ancestry, I am embarrassed that yet another member of "La Raza" has demonstrated such narrow-minded ethnic chauvinism. Of course, this most cynical of administrations will downplay Sotomayor's bigotry as empathy and compassion for underrepresented, historically oppressed people. Nonsense.

I'm sad to say that a lot of leading Hispanics seem to be stuck in some bygone era when it comes to issues of race and gender. Their mestizo race gives some Hispanics an inflated sense of pride and uniqueness, and encourages a powerful feeling of "us" versus all the various "thems" of this multi-ethnic society. Predictably, ethnic demagogues exploit this sentiment to devastating effect, undermining assimilation, subverting effective education, and encouraging caustic identity politics.

As a centrist Democrat in college, I constantly had to defend myself against attacks from other members of Hermanos Unidos when I'd stand up for America's right to defend itself against terrorism, or took exception to another member's hate-filled celebration of the death of Ronald Reagan. Rejecting arguments that the U.S. was responsible for the perpetual dysfunction of Latin American governments, I was accused of "white washing." At every turn, my fellow Hispanics took me to task for defending "gringos" and showing too little respect for La Raza.

Hermanos Unidos quickly lost its initial appeal.

Ethnic identity is a tricky thing. On the one hand, it gives us so much to savor, and provides a space for us to exist as members of a whole instead of as atomized individuals in an impersonal society. On the other hand, too much emphasis on identity leads to exactly the kind of intolerance and arrogance Sotomayor has demonstrated -- a dismissive insolence that belittles or even writes off other people altogether. Hardly commendable examples of the empathy and compassion Obama claims to expect from his nominee.

Court Upholds Marriage Definition Amendment

2009-05-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

The California Supreme Court today upheld the right of Californians to amend our constitution, affirming Prop. 8, which changed the constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.

The anti-8 folks have long mischaracterized the issue as being one of civil rights, with gays somehow being unfairly singled out for persecution and prevented from getting married. This has been an intellectually incorrect (and sometimes intentionally dishonest) assertion.

All Californians already have an equal right to marry anyone they choose of the opposite sex. Heterosexuals do not have any additional right that gays are denied. Heteros, too, are denied the right to marry members of the same sex. The difference is not one of rights, but of feelings about those rights. Heterosexuals don't want to marry members of the same sex, while some gays do.

This is no different from our society's restriction on the right to marry multiple people. Proponents of polygamy may say that society has unfairly denied them the right to marry whomever they love (and they may be correct), but the rest of us can honestly reply that their right to marry multiple partners is no more restricted than it is for the rest of us. We also cannot marry multiple people. As with the issue of gay marriage, the difference is in how we feel about this limitation that is applied equally to all of us. The rights themselves, or lack thereof, are exactly the same.

Union Killing Jobs

2009-05-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Examiner carried an article this morning about the budget problems for two of the Bay Area's largest mass transit agencies, BART and Muni. Not surprisingly, the agencies are burdened with bloated union contracts that make their unskilled workers very highly paid even while shielding those workers from too much actual work.

Two union rules are especially dumb. One restricts the number of BART's track maintenance workers who can be brought in on weekends to no more than 50 percent. Because the lines are so busy during the week, though, and trains run from 4 a.m. until 1 a.m., that leaves only three hours each weekday for actual track maintenance and many hours of idle time. The weekends, with less traffic and shorter operating hours, are a more suitable time to perform maintenance, so BART pays dearly to hire additional workers at overtime rates to come in and do it.

The other really dumb union rule involves forced regression from paperless pay stubs to old fashioned paper ones. The union actually filed a grievance when BART tried to implement a paperless system that would have saved two cents per employee pay stub, not to mention reducing paper and ink waste and preserving carbon-dioxide ingesting trees. The union's stubborn pig-headedness in this case isn't costing the agency much money -- just $64 per pay period based on BART's 3,200-employee workforce. But it is adding a silly cost, and it's out of step with contemporary technology and environmental mores in the Bay Area.

But that's what unions do these days -- add costs without adding value and subvert innovation and efficiency. In this time of local budget cuts, job losses and global recession, it's hard to feel much sympathy for unionized workers who seem intent on killing the goose laying all the golden eggs.

Doing Less With Less

2009-04-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

You've got to admire Contra Costa County District Attorney Robert Kochly for his courage to speak truth to foolish politicians on the county's board of supervisors. Reacting to a $1.9 million cut to his department's budget, the DA naturally ordered that police departments stop sending minor cases to his office for prosecution. The budget cut has forced the DA to lay off prosecutors from a department that was already understaffed. Tough times for everyone, I guess.

For Kochly, it was a matter of simple math. There simply is no way to prosecute every petty crime, drug transaction and traffic violation with a reduced staff. At least not without seriously compromising the DA's ability to properly prosecute serious felons such as murderers and rapists.

Some supes, though, appear never to have considered what a budget cut would entail. Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Susan Bonilla complained that, "Our expectation was that our elected district attorney would step up in his role, rather than say, 'Don't submit these crimes.' " As if Kochly and his remaining prosecutors could somehow make up the 25 percent staffing shortfall if only they'd get more creative, or work harder. Unfortunately, there is no creative way around the harsh realities of the 24-hour day and human prosecutors' need for daily sleep.

As I mentioned here before, in this time of budget shortfalls, it is time to expect less from our government.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/28/MN4O179N8L.DTL&tsp=1

Bullet Train Aimed at Heart of California

2009-04-07T11:16:00.001-07:00

California’s high-speed train project excites the heck out of me. I’ve wanted to ride such a train for years, and love the idea of making the trip between the Bay Area and Los Angeles in less than half the time it normally takes to drive.

Still, I can’t help but believe the project will prove to be a massive waste of taxpayer money. Thrilling as it would be to ride at speeds greater than 200 miles per hour, those thrills will come at the expense of education, public safety, water projects, and other essential needs.

For years now, California has gone deeper and deeper in debt, relying increasingly on the sale of interest-bearing bonds to pay for every public need and special interest pet project. The bullet train, in fact, got on track thanks to voters approving just shy of $10 billion of new bonds. Those funds have so far been unavailable, however, as the state budget crisis led the Pooled Money Investment Board to freeze infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, the state has yet to sell even one dollar of bonds for the project, and the State Treasurer has had to secure a $29 million short-term loan just to keep the design engineers and consultants on the job.

Despite the legislature’s recent $42 billion tax hike, California will still fall an additional $8 billion deeper in debt this year, increasing pressure to cut non-essential programs like the sexy, but superfluous bullet train. And if the politicians press on with the project while laying off public employees, cutting school funding, limiting police overtime, releasing criminal inmates ahead of schedule, and taking myriad other money saving measures, they will demonstrate their utter disregard for the public welfare.

There’s no denying the bullet train’s appeal. I’ve spent plenty of time on the state’s bullet train website (http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/) watching the animated videos, perusing photos of proposed stations across the state, and marveling at the short travel times between those stations. If the project goes ahead as planned, cities like Fresno, Bakersfield and Modesto will boast gorgeous new facilities that will certainly enhance the urban appeal of those Central Valley towns.

But who will actually use those facilities?

Even with several stops in the South Bay and Central Valley, a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles is expected to take only about two-and-a-half hours and cost less than $60. By comparison, a car would take roughly six hours and cost only slightly less (assuming 20 miles per gallon and current fuel costs of about $3.15 per gallon). Sounds good so far. But how many people making this trip would not need a car once they arrived at their destination? And how many would make this trip alone?

Factor in the cost of a car rental in LA or San Francisco, and a bullet train trip quickly becomes a much more expensive option than driving -- and that’s assuming one travels alone. What about couples and families? When you drive, the cost of the trip does not increase at all when you add a second, third, or fourth passenger. On the train, however, the cost doubles with the second passenger, or triples with three, etc. A family of four, for example, could drive from San Francisco to LA for about $60 worth of gas (My family could make it for less than $40 thanks to our efficient Scion xB's excellent fuel mileage). Taking the train would cost that family $240 and leave them in Southern California without a car, which as anyone familiar with that region knows, means leaving them stranded. Relying on city buses and taxis to visit Disneyland, Universal Studies, the beaches, and other destinations will quickly add many hours of wait and travel time to the family’s itinerary, not to mention increased costs and misery. In reality, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would consider such a combination of public transportation as a realistic option. In other words, count families out as potential bullet train passengers from the very beginning.

That leaves individuals traveling alone, probably mostly business travelers. As it is, most of these folks probably fly between the Bay Area and LA and spend a bit more than the projected cost of a bullet train ticket. But they get there in less than an hour, and even assuming longer check-in times, still would make the round-trip at least an hour-and-a-half faster than on a bullet train. For people making that round-trip in a single day, that is a decisive advantage for air travel. And individuals planning to spend more than a day at their destination will almost certainly demand the convenience of a car while there. Driving their own vehicle would make a lot of sense for these folks, since it’s cheap and provides maximum mobility. The combination of bullet train and car rental just will not be very appealing.

So who is left to ride the train?

I can see it now. Gleaming, empty trains pulling into cavernous new stations while children are crammed into overcrowded classrooms, crime escalates, and California digs itself deeper into a fiscal mess which it seems to have no stomach for cleaning up.

Government Nationalizes General Motors

2009-03-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration's announcement Sunday that it had sacked much of GM's board of directors and forced the resignation of CEO Rick Wagoner sends chills down my spine. Here we see the first clear evidence that this regime intends to directly control private companies as a condition of taxpayer aid. Indeed, the worst fears of all who identified Obama's agenda as uncompromisingly socialist have been proven true.

Wagoner may or may not have deserved his fate. In any case, though, the national government has no business inserting itself into the daily operations of a private company. To do so stinks of authoritarian despotism. The government had no business lavishing GM with public funds to begin with, but has even less justification in its belief that Obama's team of political hacks actually knows better how to run an automobile manufacturing company than the private citizens they have sent packing. The record of state business enterprises around the world and throughout time has been one of static inefficiency, and argues against this foolhardy scheme.

Of course, General Motors and other companies taking taxpayer money invited this upon themselves. Instant government cash infusions allow these companies to forestall the most difficult decisions, including closing plants and divisions, and laying off workers. But like a poweful narcotic, the cash also keeps these corporate junkies dependent upon and submissive to their government pushers.

With Obama and his henchmen now making personnel decisions at global corporations, how much longer will it be until they dispose of pretense and declare the whole world their exclusive domain?

AIG Bought Democrats; Dodd & Obama Should Pay

2009-03-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

And now we understand just how cozy the relations are between the criminals at AIG and their Democrat Party co-conspirators, including Barack Obama and Chris Dodd. Fox News provided the attached information about the Connecticut company's political contributions in 2008, and to no one's surprise, Connecticut's ultra-partisan Democrat Senator Chris Dodd tops the list, followed by Obama. Sure, John McCain is on the list, along with a few other Republicans. But the numbers are way, way out of balance. No one but the top two ultra-libs attained the six-figure contributions AIG threw at Obama and Dodd. No one even got close.

And now we know, too, that Chris Dodd is the one who inserted a sweetheart amendment into AIG's bailout bill last month to ensure that the company's execs would get their unwarranted, multi-million-dollar bonuses with taxpayer funds.

How much more evidence do the people need before they realize what a catastrophic mistake they've made voting this criminal party into control of our federal government?

Senator Charles Grassley suggested yesterday that the execs should either resign or commit suicide. The president and Chris Dodd should both take the same advice. Like so many of Obama's appointees, including our new Treasury Secretary, these Democrats are blatant criminals.

This is the filthiest, most corrupt administration any living American has ever seen.

Disgusting!

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/dodd-cracks-aig---time/

Obama Hands Victory to Russia, Iran

2009-03-03T10:18:00.001-08:00

Barack Obama’s on-the-job leadership training isn’t going so well. And now the more seasoned, wily Russian leadership of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin are going to make us all pay for Obama’s inexperience and naïveté.

As he has done with other sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, Obama has reached out to the Russian autocrats with an offer of cooperation on European missile defense in exchange for reciprocal Russian help containing Iranian nukes.

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=289173

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.783c3aae6eb418393fc6f8c443ef6765.aa1&show_article=1

Obama has set the starting point for negotiations at the center, the point where a fair resolution would be found. But anyone familiar with Russian negotiating tactics knows that the starting point is never the finishing point, and that the Russians will settle for nothing less than one-sided concessions in their favor. By starting in the middle, Obama has guaranteed that no fair outcome may result. Either the entire exercise will lead to acrimonious failure, or the U.S. will capitulate on missile defense in Eastern Europe in exchange for nothing substantive on the issue of Iranian nuclear development. Either way, it’s a major foreign policy defeat for this administration, the country, and humanity.

And that’s just going in.

What will happen a couple years down the road when Tehran has its nukes, Moscow is more firmly allied with the Islamic Republic, and Israel feels rightly threatened, and so launches strikes in Iran? Is the Obama administration ready to confront the real potential for war against Iran and Russia? Is this novice-in-chief prepared to stand up to a theocracy and a dictatorship with military force? And if he is, what of our allies in Eastern Europe who have made their beds next to ours? What will Obama do as Russian rockets destroy Warsaw and Kiev?

Thanks to this president’s weakness dealing with our enemies, and his total lack of loyalty to our friends, humanity now stands closer to world war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Most of us just don’t know it yet.

AP & Dems: Republicans to Blame for CA Budget Impasse

2009-02-17T13:09:00.001-08:00

Democrats control the California Senate and constantly use their majority to push for higher and higher spending. But as the state approaches a total fiscal meltdown, they and their media pals are pointing their fingers at Republicans for not abandoning our principles and swallowing their reckless wishes.

Senate Democrat leader Darrell Stenberg complained to the AP that the state needs, “One member. One more member to put the interest of the state ahead of ideology and ahead of any parochial concern.”

So that’s what Republican opposition to toxic tax hikes is – a parochial concern. Democrats simply cannot imagine how raising people’s taxes during the most severe recession since the Great Depression could possibly put further downward pressure on the economy. Makes sense, right? The government needs more money to carry out its bloated nanny state program, so raise taxes. Who cares if that digs us even deeper into or prolongs bad economic times?

The press is doing its part on behalf of government waste and liberal largesse. The AP went out of its way to point out that it’s California Republicans who are to blame for the budget impasse…

“However, it was falling one Republican vote short in the Senate, a situation that had not changed throughout a weekend marked by long hours and uncertainty over the state's future.”

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96DF7V80&show_article=1

Couldn’t possibly be that the Democrats should drop their dangerous tax increase, or even muster one more of their own Senators to vote for the budget.

You can imagine now what we’ll be hearing over the next couple years while the left controls nearly every level of government in this country. We on the right will continue to get the blame for every possible problem, and will be expected to capitulate on every issue, or risk being characterized as parochial ideologues. That’s the liberal mentality. To them, Republicans have no legitimate views or concerns. We’re all just a bunch of idiots who irrationally refuse to acknowledge their moral and intellectual superiority.

What are Republicans For?

2009-02-13T19:57:00.001-08:00

Today, one of my thoughtful, moderate co-workers lamented that the Republican Party had become too socially intolerant, and too focused on culture war conservatism focused on the mores of the Deep South. As a result, he said, the party was no more than a regional party that could not provide a viable alternative to the Democrats. Echoing a familiar refrain, he asserted that the GOP could be understood now for what they are against, and lacks any positive agenda or ideas.

Naturally, I disagree completely. I do not believe that any political party could be defined as a “party of no,” or of having no program or policy goal they support other than that of opposing the programs and goals of others. Every party has its own values that lead logically to actionable policy positions. Even libertarians and anarchists could enumerate any number of general concepts and specific ideas they support.

Polemics and partisans will always be tempted to cast their opponents as, well, obstinately opposing all the great ideas, policies and programs that they themselves support. “Why,” they ask, “can’t they come up with something to be ‘for’ rather than just being ‘against’ everything we suggest?”

But this works both ways. Where some on the left call Pro-lifers anti-choice, we on the right could just as easily call Pro-choicers anti-life. Where they call supporters of school vouchers anti-public education, we could call them anti-parental choice. Pick an issue. You can characterize either position in the positive or the negative.

When George W. Bush spent all of his “political capital” following his 2004 re-election on the ill-fated GOP Social Security reform effort, Democrats picked and poked, criticized and complained, but they did not suggest any alternatives to the plan. Instead, they used this notorious Third Rail issue to batter their Republican rivals, and enjoyed sweeping success in the 2006 mid-term elections. Certainly, this was not the only issue that helped Democrats, but it was the most important.

Indeed, throughout the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, the Democrats made opposition to all things supported by the president the cornerstone of their electoral strategy. John Kerry ran his entire 2004 presidential campaign on a platform of anti-Bush discontent. And when he wasn’t parroting David Axelrod’s taglines on change and hope, Barack Obama ran a similarly anti-Bush campaign in 2008. What specific policies did Obama put forth? Not many. His candidacy was all about change away from everything Bush ever did, and hope that things would get better after said change.

The presidential candidates were certainly not the only Democrats we could identify more for their opposition to Bush and his policies than for their own ideas. In 2003, the U.S. acted unilaterally in Iraq, and when that operation became unpopular many months later, a great number of Democrats suddenly regretted that action had failed to make proper accommodations of our “traditional allies” like France and Germany. Of course, when the U.S. refused to act unilaterally in dealing with North Korea, and instead insisted on the six-party framework including Russia, China, Japan and South Korea as well as the U.S. and North Korea, Democrats complained that Bush was being stubborn in refusing to charge ahead without the foot-dragging regimes in Moscow and Beijing. They made similar complaints when the U.S. failed to act unilaterally in Darfur.

So what is it Democrats? Are you for unilateralism or multilateralism? For interventionism or for respecting sovereignty? Answer: None of the above. Democrats were simply against whatever the administration did, much as Republicans were against whatever the Clinton administration did when it intervened (unilaterally) in Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Haiti.

Certainly there are plenty of ideas and policies the Democrats are for. But from 2001 to 2008, those took a backseat to everything and everyone they were against – pre-emptive military strikes, faith-based initiatives, the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, anyone who could be called a neo-con, the warrantless surveillance program, the war in Iraq, CAFTA, drilling in ANWR, Gitmo…

But what about the GOP? What are we for?

My co-worker feels we are merely against gay rights, against evolutionary science, against anyone who looks or believes differently from the lily white values of the last century. Of course, I happen to think there is something to be said for some of those old fashioned values, but it’s simply not accurate to say the GOP today is stuck in some bygone era or intolerance, or that we are no more than a party of opposition to Democrat positivism.

Naturally, there are those who would disagree with me, and those who call themselves Republicans who do not share the beliefs outlined below, but here’s my own take on what we Republicans are for…

First and foremost, Republicans are for America. We love our country and our countrymen. We cherish the values of liberty and tolerance, and we shape every other idea and policy position with this love of America foremost in our minds. As such, we oppose those ideas and policies that tend to harm America’s interests, or which subordinate American sovereignty to foreign or international bodies. When American judges, for example, refer to laws in other countries in writing their own rulings, we naturally protest this abandonment of domestic law and the resulting erosion of American sovereignty. And when bodies such as the United Nations try to impose international tribunals that would subject our people to capricious or politically motivated persecution, we refuse to go along with the will of the international community. You can say we are simply against internationalism, but we would say we are for our own country and our own people first, last and always.

Following from this love of America is Republicans’ support of the Constitution, the whole Constitution, and nothing but what is actually in the Constitution. Whereas many on the left push for speech codes to stifle debate on college campuses, a “Fairness Doctrine” to undercut the airing of conservative opinions on the radio, and hate crime laws to regulate thought, we Republicans insist on positive protection of free thought and speech. We are for punishing crimes according to the severity of those crimes and not according to the ideas that motivated them. We are for allowing students on college campuses to disagree with their professors, and to resist academic-politico orthodoxy without being expelled, castigated, or shouted down.

We are for the establishment and the free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. As long as Congress does not establish a state religion, we believe Americans’ right to worship freely as they choose cannot be limited. While some on the left wage a war against any religious display or activity in any public space, we recognize that their actions have no Constitutional basis, and in fact are an aggressive infringement upon the rights of those who wish to freely exercise their faith.

We are for Second Amendment and its guarantee that no governmental body may infringe upon the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. And arms are arms, not merely specifically authorized and enumerated types of rifles or pistols found to be acceptable to some particular lobby. We are for the right of Americans to own any type of arms they may acquire, without government regulation for any reason. The Constitution does not give the government any such regulatory power, and our acquiescence to such regulation does violence to the Constitution and to Americans’ rights.

We are for the strict limitation of government power, and emphasize the Tenth Amendment’s stipulation that all powers not specifically delegated to the national government are reserved for the states and the people. As such, many federal laws and regulations are unconstitutional in that they rely on national power that simply does not exist, but which is the province of the people and local and state bodies we elect to represent us in crafting laws. We see the proponents of unconstitutional national regulation as opponents of the Constitution, and of the rights of the states, and of the people.

We are for the protection of private property, the encouragement of private enterprise, the empowerment of the individual. We are for equal opportunity rather than equal outcomes regardless of effort, skill or other merit. We are for privacy, and see the so-called penumbras upon which mandatory nationwide acceptance of abortion as an issue of privacy as being dishonest and violent towards the Constitution. We are for the protection of human life, and believe that it is sacred. If it were not, there would be no basis for protecting humans other than the arbitrary whim of our rulers or of the mob.

We are for safety and order in our communities, and justice for those who disturb this safety. We are for the security of our people and our way of life, and support a strong defense to guarantee that security. We are for economic competitiveness that builds our national strength, and which is the basis for a sound defense and all of our other endeavors.

We are for families, which are the basis of healthy communities and a healthy country. Where the left continually assaults the family, seeking to replace it with new bureaucracies, Republicans seek to protect the family both in terms of specific policies and in safeguarding the definitions of terms to prevent the dilution of their meaning and erosion of family bonds.

We are for educational accountability, and see resistance to things like standardized testing as evidence that teachers unions and the education establishment are more concerned with their own economic and political interests than they are with the education of our children. We are for school choice to allow poor families to send their children to schools in safe communities with good teachers and resources rather than trapping their children in underperforming institutions that turn out generation after generation of illiterates.

We are for sound environmental policy that is rooted in conservation and stewardship of our land rather than being driven by the religious zeal of scare mongers relying on junk science as evidence of manmade global warming. Just as man did not cause the last (or any) ice age, or the rapid warming that melted the ice to carve out the Grand Canyon, Great Lakes, and other natural wonders, so now man is powerless to prevent global climate change that has stronger correlations to sun spot activity, volcanism, reversals in the Earth’s magnetic field, meteor strikes and other natural phenomena than to the emission of carbon dioxide or other alleged greenhouse gases over the past century or so.

We are for protecting our borders, choosing who and how many to admit into our country from foreign lands, and preserving American jobs, American rights and American privileges for Americans, including those we choose to welcome into our ranks by due legal process. We are for assimilation into the great melting pot of American society since it is by this process that varied peoples may come to live in harmony and succeed, rather than toxic multiculturalism that emphasizes separatism, grievance-nurturing victimhood and identity politics.

Of course, there are those in our party who are inspired more by intolerance or by some petty interest than they are by these values. And there are those on the other side who share many of these values, and who reject our claim upon them as being uniquely Republican. Meanwhile, one could certainly disagree with any or all of these ideas, and perhaps they will be right in so doing. That does not change the reality that we Republicans do stand for a great many things, as do Democrats. They stand for a variety of post-modernist policies that elevate group rights at the expense of the individual, and which encourage the ever-accelerating consolidation of power in the central government so as to protect society at large from allegedly unenlightened state and local bodies. And we stand for the rights of the “unenlightened” to remain that way if they so choose rather than conforming to the Leviathan’s tyranny of unbridled state power.

Bailout Big Oil?

2009-01-29T10:38:00.000-08:00

A year ago, liberals were incensed that "greedy" oil companies were collecting so-called windfall profits. That is, more profit than liberals pronounced to be appropriate. At the height of their profitability, oil companies were earning 8-9 percent profit margins -- or about a third of the profit margins of many high-tech and computer related companies such as Google. Of course, there was no outcry that government should seize the "windfall" profits of Google and similar firms in Big Tech. CNN Money posted a fair-minded commentary about the overreaction to oil company profits here:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/29/markets/thebuzz/

Now it's 2009, and my how things have changed. Crude oil prices have dropped through the floor, and gasoline prices have naturally followed that decline. The alleged windfall profits of 2007 and 2008 have evaporated, and Big Oil is trimming its workforce like so many other industries. Today, Royal Dutch Shell reported its first quarterly loss in 10 years. Hear that liberals? A "greedy" oil giant is losing money.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFukDsc4_55I

So where are the liberal calls for government intervention now? If they thought it was government's role to set prices and manage profitability for an entire sector of the economy when that sector was enjoying good profits, why not let that work the other way, too? While they're busy bailing out banks, auto makers, and the rest, liberals should take a moment to remember the blue collar employees of oil companies. They're getting pink slips. Jobs are on the line. Isn't it time for the government to intervene and give some stimulus to oil companies?

Of course, government bureaucrats are notoriously bad businessmen, as evidenced by the poor performance of state enterprises around the globe and throughout the decades. That performance deteriorates further when it's influenced by social activists, populists, and other political actors of all stripes. But there's no convincing liberals. For them, there is no victory that should not be tempered, no pain that cannot be alleviated, and no problem that cannot be solved by government, and preferably with a massive wealth transfer from their political and class enemies.

Alas, "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem," as the greatest president of the 20th Century reminded us in his first inaugural address in 1981.

Just as calls for windfall profits taxes were foolish and counterproductive (and hypocritical) a year ago, a bailout or other assistance to oil companies and other non-defense sectors now would be equally misguided. Bailout madness has gone too far already. Who can imagine what harm we have now done to our children's and grandchildren's future prosperity now that we have decided to borrow against it to purchase corporate jets, remodel executive restrooms, subsidize social programs, and fund political activist groups with the Democrats' dishonestly named stimulus bill?

Thanks to Barack Hussein Obama and his Democrat henchmen, future generations of Americans are likely to be enslaved dependents of the state.

The Era of Statistics

2009-01-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

Living in the Bay Area, I’ve become immune to absurd accusations and hate speech regarding George W. Bush. What else would we expect from people so assured of their moral and intellectual superiority, and who share a near total ignorance of history? What’s more interesting to me is how the language of social activism and resistance have infiltrated urban centers throughout Western Civilization, and by extension online communities such as Facebook, MySpace and even my favorite cyber-haunt, flickr.

Lo and behold, George W. Bush is not the only target of the venom. He’s merely the most popular. And reading through all the rants about this fascist or that war criminal, this corporate conspiracy and that Jewish plot, it strikes me that we may now be entering the Era of Statistics, a time when nearly any crime imaginable will be dismissed by the antipathetic masses who demonstrate the truth of Josef Stalin’s observation that, “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

Central to this assertion is the idea that at some point, people cannot (or do not) discern between varying levels of violence, or gradations of evil. What is the difference to a remote observer, after all, if a war claims 100,000 or 200,000 victims? Or if a tyrant imprisons 5,000 or 25,000 political rivals?

A second assumption in Stalin’s statement is that sheer volume of violence imparts a certain bureaucratic, academic quality to that violence. If one man slays his neighbor, it is a horrible tragedy sure to alarm the community. If the state, on the other hand, executes thousands of its enemies or undesirables, the act takes on an air of formality and routine.

The most troubling thing about the current trend of accusing all opponents of evil intentions is that the underlying weakness in human reasoning, or mental laziness and confusion, is amplified by semantic sloppiness and even outright deceit. When the mass of people become accustomed to terms like fascist, war criminal, murderer, terrorist, etc., being applied to such a wide array of politicians and military members, a mental process of conflation begins. Many are simply no longer able to discern between an actual war criminal who orders mass killings of civilians, and a political leader, bureaucrat or legislator who orders or plays a part in a war or other event that leads to collateral suffering. We see this all the time in posters in which George W. Bush is shown with a “Hitler mustache.” For an alarmingly large group of people, there is little or no difference between an American president who led his country in war and a would-be master of the human race who pursued the extermination of millions of men, women and children. They’re both war criminals. Both should have been executed.

As I said, Bush is far from the only public figure who suffers from this logical trick. A few days ago, I was amused and then increasingly alarmed when I read some comments on flickr about a British MP of the Labour Party, one John Prescott. A bio is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prescott

A young British lady had commented kindly on a photo of my daughter. As I always do when someone takes the time to leave a note, I then perused that user’s flickr photostream and profile. Sometimes I find things that inspire me to block a user, such as when their profile or photos lead me to suspect they’re pedophiles or are otherwise creepy. But this lady had a pleasant collection of family photos and seems nice enough. What caught my attention, though, was a rather jolly photo of John Prescott that she’d snapped on the train. In it, the retired MP is smiling warmly and looking straight into the camera. In the caption, the woman patted herself on the back for being “polite enough to … keep the flash off so as not to startle his poor, war criminal eyes.” The list of tags used to describe the photo included “repulsive, toad-like” and “war criminal.” A link to the photo is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timeandhour/2093858962/

Now I’m no expert on British politics, but I am quite confident John Prescott is no war criminal. And it’s really terrifying that so many otherwise rational people do not see this obvious reality. For them, politicians and others who did not directly oppose wars and other military operations with which they disagree are in the same category as the worst of history’s most merciless despots and henchmen. There is no difference between supporting military intervention in Iraq on the one hand, and designing, administering or enthusiastically operating a death camp on the other.

This semantic blind spot cannot but dilute the power of terms like war criminal, and cannot but soften the impact of the deeds of actual war criminals. If John Prescott is a war criminal, then Radovan Karadzic must not be such a bad guy. If Britain’s Labour Party is tainted by an evil intention to commit genocide, then the Nazis and Bosnia’s ultra-nationalist Serbian Democratic Party are in quite mainstream company.

What if this means that extremist ideologies and parties are legitimized by mere semantics? We’ve already seen xenophobes and ethnic nationalists gain electoral clout in France and the Netherlands, as well as other countries around the world. And if we in the West can no longer differentiate between mass murder and collateral death in war, and can no longer distinguish between the programs of mainstream political parties and extremists, then who will be the conscience of humanity? Who recognize true evil when it appears? Who will realize that a million deaths are not merely a statistic, but a million tragedies? And who will stand up against a real threat to mankind?

California Budget Solution

2009-01-12T18:21:00.000-08:00

While I think the governor's proposal to force state workers to work two fewer days per month and give up the associated pay is reasonable, the powerful public employee unions may make that option impossible.

What to do?

A simple solution, and probably the only one that is likely to work, is to just stop delivering all of the services public agencies provide. Close state offices one or two additional days per week even while continuing to pay the employees. Ban overtime for all public employees -- even cops and fire fighters. Cut the school year by a month. Shut public clinics and move staff to the remaining locations. Halt public works projects. Everything.

It's distasteful to continue paying state workers even while they sit at home, and while our communities struggle with the challenges of reduced public safety resources, poorer education, limited health options, etc. But if the unions will not budge to help California remain afloat, we have little choice but to accept the reduced services. And when union contracts expire, the state should negotiate clauses allowing more flexibility in the face of economic emergencies.

In the meantime, shutter offices. Turn off electricity. Cancel landscaping and custodial contracts, etc. And for those sites remaining open, ban air conditioning and heaters, and instead allow casual dress to include shorts and T-shirts or sweatshirts and jeans.

It's too bad public employees, much like their UAW brethren, refuse to chip in keep their employers afloat. As a consequence, we'll all just have to learn to make do with less.

The Obama Circus Begins

2008-12-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

No one should be surprised that Barack Obama's political patron, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has been arrested for corruption. Graft, blackmail, bribery and so forth are the grease that keep the Chicago Machine's gears turning, and what put the Illinois senator in position to run for the Oval Office to begin with.

Get ready folks, this is just the beginning. Obama is filthy, and so is nearly everyone around him. Unless he can gut the DOJ, his administration is in for a lot of indictments in the days ahead.

Of course, I'm waiting for someone to hold Obama accountable for his Indonesian citizenship. There's strong evidence that Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States, and that his taking office is unconstitutional. Our government is literally being infiltrated by people who hate America, and they are led by Obama himself.

God save us from these usurpers, communists and Jihadi sympathizers.

Bail 'Em Out... And Hang 'Em

2008-09-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

The proposed bailout of banks and the reckless gamblers who run them may be a necessary evil, but even if it must proceed in order to stave off an economic catastrophe, that doesn't mean the villains who are culpable should get off scot free.

If honest Americans must pay their debts, and many see their savings and investments wiped out, or lose their jobs in the mounting economic crisis, then these barons of finance and their political enablers should feel our pain, too. Bail out the institutions so as to keep the economy afloat, but punish the perpetrators. A good old fashioned hanging would do nicely -- say the entire executive boards of all the banks in question, as well as politicians who encouraged them to make risky loans to unqualified borrowers in the quest to keep the housing value bubble expanding. And if that doesn't get us to 1,000 condemned, take in a few loan brokers, title company execs and real estate agents. Then confiscate their property to liquidate as much of the bad debt as possible.

And do it all on TV. Let the people see justice in action as those suits dangle from the gallows. And let the people know that, at very least, those guilty did not go unpunished.

I'm half joking. Just half.

Choice of Palin Brilliant!

2008-08-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate is fantastic. Not only does Palin bring solid conservative credentials to shore up the base, she also has developed a reputation as a reformer willing to buck the party in order to rein in pork barrel spending. Palin has more experience as a chief executive than Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John McCain combined. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that she is very easy on the eyes.

For the first time in my life, I’m actually hot for a politician!

Ironically, the Obama campaign has chosen to use Palin’s selection as a weapon with which to commit suicide, immediately criticizing her lack of experience, being a first-term governor and former mayor of a Podunk town. This just opens the door for the GOP to point out that while Palin may not have as much experience in foreign affairs as Joe Biden, she has far more experience at actually leading than any of the men in this fight, most of all the one who heads the Democratic ticket. If Palin is not qualified to be vice president, then obviously Obama is not qualified to be president.

The Democrats’ reaction is also rather hypocritical considering the fact that their last successful presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, was also a governor lacking foreign policy experience. I don’t seem to recall them being too worried about that issue back then. And so, of course, the GOP will be able to deflect criticism with the simple observation that if being governor of Arkansas was enough qualification to be president, then being governor of Alaska is certainly enough qualification to be the president’s understudy.

Note to disaffected Hillary supporters: Remember how Obama and his lieutenants treated you during the campaign, and watch how they come after Palin. And then ask yourself who really deserves your vote. I’m sure it is McCain-Palin.

The Second Cold War

2008-08-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

As Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated that his country is willing to restart the Cold War against the West, barely anyone in the media seems to have noticed. The BBC, Le Monde, Telegraph, Haaretz, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Deutsche Welle were all silent on the issue, despite coverage of Russia's recognition of the two “breakaway republics” that Russia has ripped away from its tiny neighbor.

Meanwhile, the U.S. media has been almost equally quiet. The New York Times, Washington Post and other MSM sources are so busy fawning over the Democrats assembled in Denver to coronate Barack Obama as commander-in-chief that they don't even have coverage of Georgia or Russia on the top half of their webpages. And all mentions of the issue refer to Russia's recognition of its clients as independent states.

Cold War? What Cold War?

Only Fox saw fit to highlight what is certainly the most important developing story of the 21st Century, the rise of a belligerent Russia spoiling for a fight with the rest of the world. This is more important than the Muslim terrorists who (rightfully) have taken so much of our attention over the past several years. Russia on the march poses a far deadlier threat to the West and to its own neighbors than Al Qaeda or any other organization. For Russia actually controls vast stores of oil and gas, and has the military infrastructure to wage war on a massive scale – not to mention its arsenal of nuclear weapons, which it could share with our enemies.

http://www.foxnews.com/

Useful idiots on the Left will certainly keep their heads buried in the sand for as long as possible – some for the next several decades, if the last Cold War is any indication. They will blame America for instigating the crisis, or at very least make excuses for Russia's bad behavior by drawing a moral equivalence with our actions in Iraq. Indeed, that has already begun. Anyone paying attention, though, must know that the honeymoon between East and West is over. We are entering a terrible new phase of international relations – one that resembles much of the 20th Century, in which powers armed with world-ending bombs stare at one another through the sights of their guns.

How will we reconcile ourselves to this new reality? Who will lead us in this new Cold War? Barack Obama? Now that is a truly terrifying prospect.

Russia's Shame

2008-08-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

America should do everything in its power to halt Russia's invasion of Georgia. This is our Cuban Missile Crisis. We cannot afford to blink.

President Bush ought to cut short his visit to China and immediately give a national address stating that America guarantees the sovereignty of Georgia, and that we expect Russian troops to leave Gerogian soil within 48 hours. Simultaneously, the president should order Air Force units into Georgia to flip CAP missions over our beleagured ally's territory, and deploy a small force of light infantry into Tblisi.

This could mean war with Russia. If so, it would be at Russia's choice. As JFK did with Khruschev, Bush should let Putin know that his actions risk war with America. And if Putin wants this war, it is best we fight it now rather than waiting for Russia's oil wealth to provide it an even greater arsenal with which to attack us.

Russia, and to a lesser extent China, sees democracy and the West as threatening to its existence as an authoritarian police-state. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time that this Russian regime is hardly different in its attitudes from the old Soviets who ran the Kremlin during the Cold War. They respect only power, and abide only by force or its credible threat.

Mere Americans Not Good Enough for Obama

2008-07-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

Obviously, America is not quite a big enough stage for Barack Obama, and mere Americans are not as important a constituency as the senator's fellow "citizens of the world" who showed up at his German campaign rally.

Obama's foreign supporters showed their approval of the annointed president-select's criticism of failed American policies and ideals by applauding when he announced, "I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions." Obama went on to talk about why he loves America, but those follow-up lines did not get the applause that his criticism of America received.

Europeans love to hear Americans criticize America while on European soil, but I suspect that mere Americans watching back here at home are not quite so fond of it. And unfortunately for Senator Obama, it will be mere Americans who get to vote in November -- not his adoring foreign supporters.

Obama: I Would Ignore Iraqi Pleas

2008-07-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

This morning on Fareed Zakaria's GPS show on CNN, Barack Hussein Obama incredibly admitted that he would pull American troops completely out of Iraq EVEN IF the Iraqi government asked America to stay. Shockingly, the normally sharp Zakaria did not follow up to nail the senator down on the point.

The transcript from the show is not yet posted on CNN's website, but the exchange essentially went like this:

Zakaria: You've said that you think it's a mistake to keep a permanent American presence in Iraq. If the Iraqi government asked the U.S. to keep bases there, would you still pull the troops out?
Obama: Uh, screw the Iraqi people. It would, uh, be a strategic error for, uh, us to keep permanent bases in Iraq. Uh, it would, uh, undermine our, uh, diplomatic efforts with, uh, Iran and the rest of, uh, the, uh, uh, region. Having American troops, uh, in the region would, uh, REDUCE our, uh, diplomatic leverage.

Obviously, I'm paraphrasing rather liberally. But the main points are dead on. Obama isn't just inexperienced and naive. The guy is dangerously stupid.

Obama to Mullahs: Let's Do Lunch

2008-07-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

Today’s responses of John McCain and Barack Obama to Iran’s long-range missile test highlight the fundamental differences in how the two men perceive Iran and diplomacy in general.

McCain, the idealist, wants to build a missile shield to protect our allies and our own bases in the Middle East. Obama, the political realist, wants to sip tea with the mullahs and make a deal. In this, the freshman senator shares the outlook of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon – that America can deal with its sworn enemies to reach a common end. Whereas Nixon cozied up to Mao, Obama would make nice with Achmedinijad. MSNBC has their take here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25600798/

A more detailed look at the two candidates’ worldviews is offered by Gregory Scoblete at Real Clear Politics:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/mccains_univeralism_vs_obamas.html

Ultimately, the Democrat is displaying the leftist tendency to believe any foe can be placated if only America will reach out its hand to them. To the left, America forced Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro into the arms of the Soviets, brought 9/11 upon itself with imperialistic foreign policies, and maintains a self-defeating unilateralism that precludes diplomatic cooperation and peace.

The Republican, on the other hand, sees the problem as one of Iranian radicalism and hate mongering, and sees direct cooperation with those who advocate genocide as antithetical to decency, let alone acceptable behavior for the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy.

Once again, the idealism of the right sees good and evil in men, while the left sees only interests and real politick. How sad for the fools who have been duped my Obama’s sophisticated marketing campaign of hope and change. If only they could see it is nothing more than pretty packaging around the same weak-kneed liberal relativism that pays homage to dictators and always blames America first.

Dealing (or Not) with Russia

2008-07-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

The leftist political magazine The Nation ran an article June 30 taking both John McCain and Barack Obama to task for not addressing what it (quite correctly in my view) identified as the most pressing foreign policy issue facing the next president – how to deal with Russia. To set the record straight, though, I must note that while the magazine was correct in its criticism of Obama, the GOP candidate has spoken at length about Russia and how his administration would deal with it. The Nation's half-true article is here:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080714/cohen

Portraying McCain more honestly is the also liberal Salon.com, which (three weeks before the article in The Nation) reported on the Republican's “tough stance toward Russia.” That article is here:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/09/mccain/index.html

NPR (do I even need to identify them as leftist?), meanwhile, did a piece in early June about Senator McCain's “War on Russia.” Aqui:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91868322&ft=1&f=1004

Over the past year, McCain has made headlines around the world when he suggested (for about the hundredth time) that, due to ongoing curtailment of democracy and civil liberties in Russia, that country should be kicked out of the G8 and replaced by India. Various articles here, here and here:

http://www.nysun.com/national/mccain-backs-tougher-line-against-russia/73750/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_should_replace_Russia_in_G8/articleshow/2905310.cms
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1536962020071015

Long before John McCain was even his party's nominee for president, he was already paying close attention to political developments in the former Soviet Union. In fact, way back in 2003 John McCain told Jim Lehrer of PBS that,

“I think the United States should not include Russia in the G-8 meetings. I think we should warn American businesses of the risks of investment there. I would instruct OPEC and other institutions not to lend money to Russia at this time and start talking about our expectations that Russia would make a transition to a free and open society.” Ici:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec03/mccain_11-06_a.html

Obama, on the other hand, seems barely aware there is such a place as Russia. Professor Stephen Blank of the US Army War College, quoted on the Center for Defense Information website, summed up Obama's Russia strategy best:

“Obama's ... tired approach leaves out dealing with Russia as an international energy and economic actor and has nothing to say about issues of regional security in Eurasia which are of utmost interest to Russia, America, and many other states.”

Do an Internet search for Obama's speeches or interviews on Russia and you will come up empty-handed. The junior senator simply has never addressed the issue. His website merely lists a single bullet point regarding his hope to “work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert...” That tiny blurb, inadequate though it is, contains a mountain of obscene dishonesty, since the missiles BHO refers to are not on a “hair trigger alert,” but require multiple keys to be inserted and turned, and launch codes to be double-verified and entered. There is no “hair trigger” that might be inadvertantly pressed. Interestingly, Obama's hair-trigger reference is also employed by The Nation in its article on dealing with Russia. Apparently, obsession with hair triggers is a universal leftist affliction.

More than likely, BHO's bullet point is just hot air. If, however, he actually wants to add additional steps in the launch sequence beyond what the military's missile officers have practiced for the past several decades, then Obama is emphasizing his utter lack of military familiarity and unpreparedness to be commander-in-chief. Still, I doubt he has actually thought any of that through to the point of operational changes, but rather is merely parroting the same tired Democrat platitudes left over from the 1970s. In either case, this first-term senator with no military background and no civilian experience dealing with the military almost is screaming out, “I have no idea what I'm talking about.”

Not much of a basis for hope.

BHO and McCain Both Soft on Illegals

2008-07-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Though I support John McCain and agree with him on most issues, one subject on which the honorable senator from Arizona is wrong is the subject of immigration.

Like Barack Hussein Obama, Senator McCain voted for the border fence. That's a good first step in controlling the border, but only a small, partial step. Indeed, the fence protects only a fraction of the border, and should be extended across the entire boundary with Mexico.

Also like Obama, McCain has voted for President Bush's guest worker program, which would help to combat the reliance on illegal labor by allowing employers to hire workers with no intention of immigrating permanently. I can live with this, too.

But a third common position with Obama is too much. McCain and Obama co-sponsored the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2007, which was intended to give illegals huge advantages over American citizens when it comes to paying for college. You see, American citizens who leave their home state to attend college elsewhere pay out-of-state tuition that is exponentially higher than what in-state students pay. In California, that can mean paying five or six times as much. But under the bad DREAM Act, students who enter a state illegally and who are not merely out-of-state students, but out-of-country students, would get to pay in-state tuition heavily subsidized by taxpayers in those states. So while an American citizen from New York would have to pay handsomly to attend UCLA, an illegal alien who sneaks into the state would get instant in-state status and have his tuition paid largely by California's taxpayers (which generally does not include other illegals, contrary to liberal fantasies).

This raises the question as to why any American citizen should have to pay out-of-state tuition when those who cheat the system at every step are catered to so shamelessly. Perhaps those out-of-state students should claim to be here illegally, provide no evidence of residence, and demand special illegal alien preferences.

That is where we are headed unless the GOP can bring McCain into line on this issue.

Illegal Immigrants Don't Deserve Preferential Treatment

2008-07-07T12:11:00.001-07:00

If liberals get their way, it will be easier for an illegal immigrant to obtain a California drivers license than it will be for an American-born citizen who’s obeyed the law all along. Why? Citizens must present birth certificates and other identification, as well as proof of residence in the form of a utility bill or other official mail, before they are issued a license. Illegals, of course, rarely have birth certificates, and usually do not have any other identification or proof of residence.

By issuing an official state identification card or license to illegals, we would be granting them a measure of official legitimacy, and we will be doing so in an unfair, discriminatory way that advantages them for their illegality.

How on Earth could anyone think it’s fair for trespassers to have easier requirements for obtaining IDs and licenses than citizens?

No Foreclosure Bailout!

2008-03-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

MSNBC posted an article today parroting the Democrat presidential candidates' oft repeated accusation that the White House (and GOP candidate John McCain) isn't doing anything about the wave of home foreclosures that have spiked over the past year or two.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23883833/

That raises the question of what ought to be done, for which there is no pleasant, voter-friendly answer. The fact is, the country's taxpayers should not have to bail out the reckless borrowers, predatory lenders or real estate speculators who created this problem. How is it fair that a single father and renter like me, struggling to get by with three kids in a tiny apartment of less than 400 square feet until recently, should have to take on the burden of bailing out people who lived far above their means, purchasing homes with jumbo loans or refinancing existing homes to purchase cars, boats and take expensive vacations?

Screw them!

The Democrat B.S. about these poor souls being taken advantage of is sickening. Everyone with at least a fifth grade education should have been able to understand that a loan in which you pay ZERO of the principle is a bad deal. Not to mention those negative amortization loans in which the principle actually grows while you pay only a portion of the interest each month. Do you really need a degree in economics to realize that is a recipe for foreclosure?

Oh, but the mean old Republicans ought to be doing something about all the poor souls who, on incomes of $25,000 to $35,000, moved into homes with asking prices of $700,000 to $1 million. Those poor victims had no way of knowing such expensive homes were beyond their reach. Presumably, they did not know anyone who had ever bought a home before. Of course, that's hard to believe since about 70 percent of Americans own their homes (about half of blacks and Hispanics own their homes).

Give me a break.

There are certainly some folks who've been caught in an unlucky economic cycle, having lost jobs or suffering some medical crisis. But the lion's share of people whose homes are now being foreclosed were just plain bad credit risks to begin with -- people who have established histories of paying debts late or not paying at all. Some, like my ex-wife, were vitcims of their consumer impulse. Suddenly cheap and easy credit against their homes financed luxury automobiles and fancy vacations that gave them a sense of living the good life.

I used to resent the fact that my ex was living so luxuriously while her daughter and I skrimped and struggled with no financial support as I worked my way through college. Now that house values have fallen and the economy is taking its toll on her small business, suddenly the tables are turned. She's had to give up the BMW, Mercedes Benz and Chevy Tahoe that used to be parked in front of her house. Recently, she's made the switch to a Toyota Corolla, and she's worried about losing the house now that income from her business is not covering expenses, let alone the house payment.

I hope she and her husband can find a way to avoid foreclosure. She is my daughter's mother, after all. But I'm not ready to start handing over my own money to bail her out, or any of her neighbors who lived above their means.

The government should not underwrite bad debt and encourage people to stop paying their bills. That would be reckless, but most of all, patently unfair to the rest of us.

Spitzer the John - Not So Bad

2008-03-10T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Paper of Record reports today that New York's crusading governor, Eliot Spitzer, has been implicated in a federal wiretap investingation of a high-rollers' prostitution ring. Spitzer, his wife standing at his side, gave a press conference in which he admitted betraying his family's trust. The New York Times article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/nyregion/10cnd-spitzer.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I certainly don't mind seeing this partisan fall hard, since he has abused his office to carry out dirty tricks against his Republican rivals. The fact that Spitzer has prosecuted prostitutes, pimps and johns in his prior job as Attorney General only makes him that much more deserving of the shame on him now.

However, it's about time we started having a more honest discussion of sex, including sexual services and other sex business. Spitzer's opponents will beat him over the head with this issue, and deservedly so. The man is a lying hypocrite. But when you get down to it, the fact that he "allegedly" paid a woman to have sex with him really isn't anyone's business but his and that woman's.

People pay each other all the time to perform a variety of services, many of which are downright miserable. Do you think there is any such thing as consensual, non-compensated garbage exchanges between society and the men who drive by early in the morning to pick up our trash? Would anyone really be willing to work in cubicles day after day without being offered money to do it? And even fun things like professional sports and entertainment involve pay for service. Heck, athletes and actors even have unions! So why shouldn't a person be allowed to perform sex work for fees? And why shouldn't consumers be able to purchase the services they want in a free market?

I realize many people have religious reasons to oppose prostitution. But that isn't enough to ban it from society altogether. If, over time, Muslims become the majority in the country, we should not prohibit unrelated men and women from speaking to one another in public, ban public exposure of female arms and legs, etc. No, religious prohibitions about sexuality and gender have no place in the wider secular society. If individuals choose to not follow Islamic edicts, or choose not to follow Christian bans on prostitution, that should be tolerated. And if some folks do want to live by those religious ideas, fine. Live and let live.

There really is no valid reason for a rational, secular society to ban prostitution. Feminist extremists will raise issues of objectification of women and bad pimps, but those are all foolish. If prostitution were legal, it could be regulated to remove the parasitic pimps, improve conditions for sex workers, promote public health, etc. Sex workers in many countries actually have unions to represent them, and if American prostitues had such bargaining power, their lot could not but be improved.

As for objectification, that's none of our business. People come in an unfathomable variety of sexual flavors. Some like not only to be objectified, but also humiliated or bound and gagged. Some people go to swingers parties and trade off partners or watch others. It may not be your taste, but what right do you have to tell other grown men and women they cannot engage in these activities because you don't think it's right for them to be objectified, humiliated, peed on, etc.? If that's your thing, fine. If you only do those things because it pays well and you're willing to trade your services for a fee, fine. I only come to my cubicle each day because they pay me. The day that stops, I won't show up anymore. Yes, I'm an insurance whore. I may like you and even have pleasant conversation with you, but pay me or don't waste my time.

Spitzer deserves to go down hard because he's a lying sack of hypocritical excrement, and he's used his offices to hurt his rivals. But as for Spitzer's use of sexual services, the law should not even be involved. If his wife approves, who cares? If she doesn't approve, he's a jerk and she should leave him. It's not the public's business.

Follow the Money on Climate Change

2007-10-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

I have no idea who’s right about climate change. I’ve heard very convincing arguments for and against popular theories about global warming, melting ice caps, etc., and realize that there is a consensus in the scientific community with only a few holdouts challenging the various points relating to climate change.

But that isn’t particularly convincing in and of itself. Experts are wrong all the time, and it often seems that the more people who agree, the more likely it is they’re all wrong. Not good enough to disprove their theories, but enough to justify taking everything with a grain of salt.

This much is certain, however. Like every other major policy issue, climate change and the potential legislation and regulation we would enact to address it, will make some people winners and others losers – whether it’s real or not. Setting aside the cataclysmic effects of rising sea levels, altered weather patterns, crop failures, disease, etc., there are also going to be major financial repercussions from climate change, including plenty of folks getting very rich off of it. That has already begun.

If climate change is real, companies will bid on projects to mitigate its effects, provide new housing and other infrastructure for displaced populations, and do countless other tasks I am not creative enough to envision. If it’s not real, companies will continue to make money producing the goods and services we think we need to address the “problem” up and until we actually figure out it’s not really a problem. Toyota has been cleaning up (forgive the pun) on its Prius, and solar panel manufacturers have received so many new orders in the past few years that the price of silicon is skyrocketing. Certainly such success stories are related to the scarcity of energy supplies at least as much as they are to desire to slow global warming, but they do illustrate how so-called clean technologies and business models create new opportunities to make money.

Universities and government agencies are in the money, too. Top research schools and the graduate students who pay tuition to them collect sizeable grants to study the effects of climate change. Government agencies and intergovernmental bodies get budget increases when their work is seen as critical, and at the moment little seems as important as dealing with the potentially catastrophic consequences of global warming. And all of this makes sense. Who would lavish scarce research funding on a university or agency looking into the status quo? You can bet that a grant proposal seeking to money to affirm that everything is OK probably isn’t going to be met with the same kind of urgency as one that proposes to deal with a huge problem threatening the livelihood of millions. Potential death and suffering are understandably more salient. In fact, my former next-door neighbor in University Village at UC Berkeley told me quite frankly that many of the grant proposals coming out of his department (either chemistry or chemical engineering, I can’t recall) were flimsy at best, but that climate change was such a hot seller that any research addressing it had a better chance of getting funded. This fellow went on to earn his PhD a few months after our conversation, so I suspect he knows a little something about what he was saying.

Considering the money at stake, it’s no wonder there's been such widespread scientific consensus, and it’s no wonder that some firms are finding ways to cash in. It’s tempting to think that Big Oil could simply fund some positive “research” to combat the climate change consensus, but they’ve been big gainers themselves in all of this. The number one supplier of solar panels has become BP Solar, a subsidiary of British Petroleum. Oil companies and coal producers must realize that even if we all want to buy clean energy from wind farms, nuclear plants, etc., the world’s appetite for energy is so immense that only their mainline “dirty” energy products can realistically meet the demand over the near term. In other words, they’re going to get theirs. They will get paid. No worry for them.

So what if climate change is all just part of a cynical hoax put on by universities looking to get paid and companies looking to cash in? Personally, I think it makes sense to err on the side of caution. Assume the doomsayers are right, and clean up our act as much as we can. What’s the harm, after all, in mandating lower automobile emissions and higher fuel efficiency? Climate change or no, I don’t have any affinity for noxious fumes, and I wouldn’t mind driving further on a tank of gas. More trees would be nice, and who would argue with better insulated buildings, less landfill dumping (thanks to material recycling), improved traffic (associated with better planning and mass transit), etc.? Those all seem like pretty cool things to me.

Al Gore’s Prize

2007-10-16T14:34:00.001-07:00

I’ve got mixed feelings about Al Gore receiving the Nobel Prize. I actually don’t have particularly strong feelings about the former vice president. I liked his movie and even voted for him in 2000. Of course, while he had always been stiff and dull in years past, he spent a few years acting a little nuts after the controversies surrounding the 2000 election. But I don’t believe he’s evil like the Clintons or John Kerry. Heck, against the right (or wrong, I guess) Republican, I could even see myself voting for him again.

What annoys me, though, is that this award is going to justify many nutjobs on the left in their misguided ideas. Not just about climate change. I’m sympathetic on that one. But being nutjobs, lefties are bound to project the prize’s glory over their entire dogmatic view of the world. The Nobel’s prestige will be seen as lending credibility to their whole statist, nanny state agenda.

What’s more, the prize itself has lost value as truly evil people and nutjobs have received it recently – think Yasir Arafat. More and more, the prize is becoming a tool of the left. But it still carries such name recognition that most people have no idea of the prize’s diminishing objective validity.

If someone’s going to get such a highly recognizable prize, though, it might as well be someone who is at worst wrong, but probably right about the environmental dangers we face.

This all gives me an idea for a possible election slogan:

Al Gore – not the worst choice.

Time to Pull Out... of Korea

2007-08-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

MSNBC is carrying an Associated Press article today noting that South Koreans are increasingly turning their anger over the Taliban’s kidnapping and murder of Korean missionaries against the U.S. The article notes that, “South Koreans are increasingly questioning what they have received from the U.S. in exchange for sending soldiers to support the U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Americans, though, might well question what we have received from South Korea in exchange for stationing tens of thousands of American troops in their country to protect it from the communist DPRK, and doing so for several generations. A large number of Koreans resent that very American presence, of course, and would welcome an American withdrawal.

It’s time to give those people what they want.

The Cold War logic of checking the advance of communism no longer makes sense. Communism is not on the march – although communist parties do still oppress people in several countries. South Korea, though, is not central to America’s interests. It is not a bulwark against communism. It is not even a particularly reliable ally of the United States. So why do Americans still serve on the peninsula?

From a military perspective, having troops on the peninsula makes no real difference. The 35,000 or so American troops amount to little more than a speedbump in the face of an all-out attack by the DPRK and/or China. Our air units can strike East Asian targets from permanent bases in Japan and Guam, as well as air fields in friendly countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, and if the poop really hits the fan, Taiwan – not to mention carriers and even the U.S. mainland. Additional ground forces, meanwhile, would have to be deployed into East Asia in any case. And if a potential war involved only the DPRK and ROK America would have no real interest in participating. Sure, we’d prefer the free south defeat the authoritarian north, but if Seoul and some other South Korean cities were pummeled, that would not directly threaten American security.

Any war involving a major economic player like South Korea would send shockwaves through markets, but such macroeconomic concerns cannot be considered on par with direct security threats. If they were, America would have to commit to going to war with anyone who attacked any major economic power. Are Americans prepared for our armed forces to become enforcers for stock markets and banks? I certainly hope not.

There is really only one good reason the U.S. might like to keep troops in Korea, and that is a geopolitical one – to remind China that we’re in their backyard, and we’re carrying guns. Gratifying as that thought is, though, it doesn’t carry any more weight than having several hundred ICBMs aimed at Chinese cities, and the ability to deploy troops on the Chinese mainland at will, which we have thanks to a huge naval and air advantage over the PRC.

Now that we’re in a real fight that actually does directly threaten American security – the fight against militant Islamism – the troops we’re keeping in South Korea to make geopolitical statements would be far better utilized in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to kill our enemies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070802/ap_on_re_as/skorea_angry_at_washington

Korean Response to Virginia Tech Killings

2007-04-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

A couple thoughts on the killings at Virginia Tech... Having been married to a Korean woman for 12 years, I am naturally more aware than most of news relating to Korea and Koreans. So when it was reported this morning that the killer was a South Korean national, I started searching the Korean news sites to see how they were covering the story.

It seems the news hasn't spread as far as South Korea yet, and to be fair, it is the middle of the night there as I type this note. But typical is the coverage I found on the Chosun Ilbo's website, which reported that one of the victims is a Korean, grazed in the hand. The article, under the headline "Korean Hurt in Virginia College Massacre," goes on to quote a student from the Korean Student Association as saying it is unlikely the gunman was Korean since "it's so hard" for Koreans to get guns in the U.S. The article is online here:

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200704/200704170012.html

Of course, the site will no doubt be edited once the Chosun Ilbo's editors wake up in the morning and learn the latest. But the article and the quote from the KSA member reflect a strand of defensiveness for which Koreans are known. This isn't meant as a slight. It just seems to be ingrained in the Korean consciousness, this sense of being under siege and having to present a collective defense at the hint of any threat.

As for the difficulty getting guns, well, it's not difficult at all. And whatever gun control measures the reactionary left tries to ram down our throats, it never will be difficult for the killers bent on inflicting the kind of carnage we witnessed yesterday.

Baby Bumblers

2007-01-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

If you've ever seen those Ameritrade commercials trying to hawk investment accounts to Baby Boomers you're familiar with the stirring imagery of astronauts taking steps on the moon's surface, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressing throngs on the National Mall, and so on. The commercial is ironic, though, in that what it really conveys quite subversively (or perhaps just ignorantly) is the misguided pride and arrogance of that massive generation. For not a single image in the commercial actually shows a great Baby Boomer. Instead, all of the great leaders and heroes are members of that Greatest Generation of Americans who preceded the Boomers. Dr. King? He was no Boomer. JFK? Think again -- a WWII vet. Heck, the first Boomer president was Bill Clinton, and he is comicly representative of the Boomer stereotype -- self-indulgent, slick, self-absorbed, over-sexed. But the commercial winks and nods and tells Boomers, "You've really made a difference," even while showing people who really have done great things, but are not Boomers.

To be fair, some Boomers have done important things. Al Gore, for example, invented the Internet. Oh wait, that was a bunch of officers at the Department of Defense. Some of them might have been Boomers, though. And Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and all those guys in Silicon Valley in the 80s were Boomers. Then there was, uh... oh forget it. It's just too hard thinking of any more Boomer achievements.

Wikipedia has a list of great Boomers. It's a short list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomer

Ballooning Entitlements... No Problem!

2007-01-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

Newsweek has an important piece on how Baby Boomers are robbing their children and grandchildren by refusing to deal with the looming crisis associated with their huge cohort's retirements, which will be financed by the tiny generations that have followed:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16562633/site/newsweek/

No surprise that the "Me" generation, so famous for its self-obsession and indulgence, is mortgaging our future. But I have a tidy solution for the problem -- one that will require no benefit cuts, no age or income threshold increases, and best of all, no new taxes.

I say we borrow the idea that inspired the 70s sci-fi movie "Logan's Run." That is, we send Baby Boomers to a real-life "carousel." Or, to dispense with the theatrics, just line them up and shoot them. Mow 'em down. Eliminate the problem at the source.

Look, political consensus building is hard. Convincing such a huge constituency to make concessions to such small (and non-voting) ones as Gen Xers and so on is hopeless. So we can either accept that proceeding generations will be locked into slavery paying for Boomers' comfy early retirements, or we can kill the bastards. Admit it. You're not really that crazy about your parents anyway, right?

OK, I admit I'm going for shock value. But our parents don't have to know this. If we at least start to make some noise about how much easier it would be to kill them than to support them, maybe that will stir them to action. God knows nothing else has worked.

Election Reactions

2006-11-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I'm not particularly bothered by what looks to be a big Democratic victory in taking control on the House of Representatives, some governorships, and maybe even the Senate. Plenty of us on the right have been very dissatisfied with the wasteful spending the GOP had gotten used to after more than a decade in control, and plenty were frustrated that the Bush administration did not prosecute a more vigorous campaign in Iraq, but instead clings stubbornly to its policy of half-hearted engagement there. Our party has been behaving as political organizations always do when they've had power too long -- trying to consolidate electoral gains through redistricting, pork and patronage. Maybe giving the scoundrels the boot will make room for true believers like Newt Gingrich and others who went to Washington to actually implement conservative ideas.

I do worry about the prospect of Nancy Pelosi dragging the country through a partisan show trial in the form of an impeachment proceeding against President Bush. When the GOP did that during Clinton's second term, it did real damage to American power and prestige in the world, reducing our ability even to deal appropriately with such building threats as al Qaeda. It also poisoned the political environment across our country. I'm afraid the Democrats may now relish their opportunity for revenge too much to place the country's welfare above petty partisanship. And be sure, an impeachment would do serious harm to our ability to act on the world stage. Two years of contentious score settling would be very counterproductive, indeed.

The election all Americans should be alarmed over is that which returned the Murderer of Managua to power in Nicaragua. With roughly 38 percent of the vote, former Sandinista dictator Daniel Ortega beat the field of opponents who split the pro-democracy vote (Whereas most countries would require a run-off election if no candidate secures an absolute majority of votes, Nicaraguan law requires only a plurality of at least 35 percent to win outright). Some will quibble over my characterization of this as a contest between the supporters of democracy and of tryanny, but make no mistake, Ortega, with much material and moral support from Venezuela's populist Bolivarian leader Hugo Chavez, represents a return to government death squads, property confiscations and subversion of democratic movements and organizations.

This development, along with the earlier victories of Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, surging nationalism in Russia, and remaining communist dictatorships in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos (all strongly anti-American) expose the fiction that the Cold War is over. Though their programs have been discredited and their adherents are fewer, communists still maintain their grip on power in important places, and in opposition to any world order that allows for personal liberty. These communists' marriages of convenience to such regimes as Iran's means that the forces of freedom now face totalitarian enemies who make common cause against us because they cannot tolerate our freedom.

These are the developments that should concern us all. I just hope the Democrats will be bigger after 12 years out of power than the GOP was after half a century in opposition. We really do have vital concerns to address together as a nation.

Crow Is Better With Salt

2006-11-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

I was wrong. Despite all my fears, Cal did not fall in the college football rankings during their week off. They were helped by some key losses by other ranked teams, of course. But hearing Kirk Herbstreit say the Golden Bears are the second best one-loss team in the country (behind only the Tennessee Vols who beat Cal in Week 1) makes me think that maybe we'll get a fair shake this year. We'll see. In any case, it's nice to not see my alma mater penalized for not finally getting its week off.

Kerry's True Lies

2006-10-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

John Kerry insulted American troops when he told a group of California college students that they'd better continue their education or end up "stuck in Iraq." In this, Kerry betrayed a liberal bias I've heard MANY times from my own lefty pals around Berkeley -- that the military is predatory in luring poor, uneducated kids, especially blacks, into deadly jobs in combat units.

According to the conventional liberal worldview, no intelligent, civilized person would freely choose to serve in the armed forces. As such, the thinking goes, social and economic inequalities force some people into service that others can avoid thanks to their greater opportunities. Rich kids' parents send them off to college, which opens doors to more lucrative careers that do not involve carrying an M-16 into a Third World desert, jungle or village. The thing is, there is more truth to this logic than anyone wants to admit. It is human nature to avoid danger, and military service involves risk to one's life and limbs. True, many people who have other options still choose military service thanks to patriotism and a taste for adventure. And the fact is, the armed forces are overwhelmingly populated by people from the middle class, especially white suburbanites.

Still, there are disproportionate numbers of blacks in the military, and many openly admit they chose military careers because doing so gave them better prospects than they would have had otherwise. I myself, though always loving my country and yearning for adventure, signed up for the Air Force while still in high school because I thought college was out of reach, and I wanted more out of life than what my high school diploma was likely to provide. I've said many times that if anyone had taken an interest in my academic performance in high school, I'd have gone straight to college.

So there is plenty of truth to the idea that getting an education and moving up the economic ladder really does provide alternatives to military service. What is so insulting about Kerry's comments and liberal views of military service, however, is the condescending attitude about our troops' intelligence. Kerry and so many lefties are proud of their pointy heads packed with trivia, and they are confident of their superiority to the poor dolts on whose behalf they claim to impose their Nanny State controls and regulations. To them, we’re all too stupid to make rational choices for ourselves, so we need them to do all the hard thinking for us. Never mind that military service actually is a rational choice for a great many who are empowered to lift themselves up thanks to the career opportunities, training and college tuition assistance provided by the military. Forget about the G.I. Bill and veterans home loan programs that have enabled literally millions of Americans to advance socially and economically. Patriotism? That’s for suckers. At least that’s what liberals believe. That attitude makes the underlying truth of their premise utterly repellent.

Expect Cal to Fall (Unfairly) During Week Off

2006-10-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Few teams in college football’s Top 25 are regarded with such cynicism as the University of California. Several, in fact, are clearly overrated. The real tragedy, though, is that five one-loss teams currently ranked behind California will be playing this Saturday while the Golden Bears finally enjoy a well deserved off week. Unfortunately, Cal’s inactivity will almost certainly be punished. I expect at least three teams to leapfrog Cal in the rankings in the next week.

No. 13 Arkansas has an easy home game against Louisiana-Monroe. Aside from the big win against Auburn, Arkansas hasn’t been tested – or rather, they haven’t passed any test. Other wins have come against such schools as Southeast Missouri State, Utah State, Vandy and Ole Miss, none of whom are serious challengers. To be fair, the Razorbacks did beat a decent Alabama team, but were blown out by 36 against USC. Arkansas has a solid team that still has too many second- and third-tier opponents on their schedule to make them deserving of the move up they’ll enjoy this week. Later, though, with games against Tennessee and LSU, the Backs will likely fall.

No. 17 Wisconsin has been tested even less than Arkansas. Somehow the NCAA gods spared them match-ups with Ohio State or any strong school outside the Big 10. Their only test so far was a two touchdown loss to Michigan. Wins have been against non-powers Bowling Green, Western Illinois, San Diego State, and a few down Big 10 squads. Saturday, the Badgers should have their way against a lowly Illinois team and move up in the polls – quite undeservedly so.

No. 18 Boston College should trounce Buffalo this weekend. That school has managed only one win all year despite playing in the anemic Mid-American Conference. BC’s schedule looked like a pretty tough one at the beginning of the year, what with games against perennial powers like Clemson, Florida State, Miami and Virginia Tech. The latter three, however, have been unmasked as mediocre teams this year. Still, BC has been solid. A win over Buffalo will move them ahead of California, which isn’t fair by itself. But of all the teams poised to pass the Bears, BC is the most deserving of an uptick.

No. 22 Texas A&M should be able to handle 4-4 Baylor this Saturday, and A&M’s resulting 8-1 record might be enough to move the Aggies ahead of Cal in the rankings. Wins over The Citadel, Lafayette, Army and Louisiana Tech have padded the Aggies’ record, but don’t count on writers and coaches remembering that as they contemplate the traditional football school’s position relative to the newly strong Golden Bears. While Texas A&M could move ahead of Cal this week, their remaining games against OU, Nebraska and Texas should move A&M back down the chart by season’s end.

No. 23 Missouri has been a surprise winner this year, thanks in large part to an absurdly easy schedule against such teams as Murray State, New Mexico, Colorado and Ohio (not to be confused with the Buckeyes of Ohio State). Missouri lost its most serious test against the aforementioned Aggies two weeks ago. This week, they should be beaten by Oklahoma and kept from passing Cal. If the Tigers do manage an upset, though, they just might deserve a major move north in the rankings.

No. 24 Wake Forest should have a cake walk against the pathetic North Carolina Tarheels this Saturday, and just might move ahead of Cal as a result. Wake lost its toughest game against Clemson and beat nobodies such as Liberty, Duke, Syracuse, and Connecticut. If this were a basketball tourney, that record might be impressive. In college football, however, it would be an embarrassment not to win those games. It’s not hard to imagine the voters losing sight of this reality to move Wake Forest ahead of Cal, although I think that’s still not very likely thanks to the tendency of voters to track their picks.

Meanwhile, several highly touted teams are living off of their reputations this year. Take Notre Dame, for instance. I’ve always pulled for the Irish, but there’s no denying that this year’s squad is overrated. Not only did it take last minute heroics to beat a UCLA team weakened by the loss of its star quarterback, Ben Olson, but the Irish have also been lackluster against Georgia Tech, Michigan State and a feeble Stanford team that hasn’t managed a single win in eight games. Notre Dame's big test against Michigan was a humiliating 26-point loss. Meanwhile, the rest of Notre Dame’s schedule is set up to virtually guarantee victories – the Irish play all three military academies and North Carolina before finally playing USC to close out the season. Not a very intimidating schedule, but it will probably be enough to keep them ranked way higher than they deserve.

West Virginia and Louisville are unbeaten teams that between them have not played a single currently ranked opponent. They meet this week, so one will finally take a loss, but is likely to remain overrated since the loss will come at the hands of a still undefeated team. And this week’s face-off is the last real challenge for either team, so they are both likely to finish the season with gaudy stats inflated by weak opposition. The computers that tabulate one third of the BCS rankings at least recognize this. The fourth ranked Mountaineers are only 14th according to the computers, while No. 8 Louisville slipped a spot to No. 9 according to the computers. Since the issue of computer rankings has come up, it’s interesting to look at how the teams stack up when things like strength of schedule are taken into account:

1. Michigan (tie)
1. USC (tie)
3. Ohio State
4. Florida
5. California

Conspicuously missing from the Top 5 are West Virginia and Texas. Of course, NCAA football games are played on the field, so it makes sense to temper the rankings with human input. The computer results simply illustrate that teams like the Mountaineers and Longhorns have gotten a lot of wins the easy way – by scheduling patsies. Texas, of course, played Ohio State, but lost decisively. It picked up big wins against Sam Houston, Rice and North Texas – not exactly a murders’ row of college football teams. Their win against Nebraska last week counts for a lot, though. Unlike West Virginia, at least Texas has been tested, and passed at least once.

Still, you can count on Cal losing ground in the human rankings while they finally get their week off. The Pac-10 never gets any respect.

Chicago Bears Reveal Weakness

2006-10-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

Thank God for the Chicago Bears' defense and Devin Hester, because the team's offense and head coach are pathetic.

If you take away the 13 QB scrambles that count as rushes, the Bears have actually handed the ball off 171 times this year (28.5 carries per game). They passed 195 times (32.5 passes per game) -- more than 53 percent of all plays. And these numbers don't even come close to reflecting the true nature of our offense (pass first). A lot of our handoffs are coming in the second half when we've already built big leads and just want to kill the clock. Those carries are padding the total number of rushes and depressing the yards per carry since defenses recognize the clock-killing strategy, then respond.

Last night, the Bears handed it to a running back 13 times. Grossman flung it up for grabs 37 times. It was obvious all night that strategy wasn't working, but did Lovie Smith adjust? Of course not. He completely abandoned the run because his team is fundamentally a passing team, not a rushing team.

The Bears' pass-happy offense tries to imitate the "Greatest Show on Turf" that apparently seduced Lovie Smith when he was the defensive coordinator in St. Louis. The only problem is that we don't have the seasoned QB, not to mention money WRs like Holt and Bruce, to make that kind of all-or-nothing offense work consistently. We'll hit spots where Grossman plays like pre-season Rex, as he did against Minnesota and Arizona, and the Bears will be vulnerable.

Luckily, we face the Niners and Dolphins in our next two games, so there's margin for error. But we'll DEFINITELY lose to the Giants, Jets, and Patriots if pre-season Rex shows up again, or if Lovie Smith continues to insist on only running the ball if we have a comfortable lead. The guy should be a defensive coordinator. It's obvious the players like him, but he's turning the Bears into a one-dimensional, predictable offensive team that lives or dies on Grossman's streaky arm.

Hey Blair, Fire General Dannatt

2006-10-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

Britain’s top general, Sir Richard Dannatt, should be unceremoniously fired for his recent calls for the British troop evacuation from Iraq. While he has every right to his own opinion on the matter, and that opinion may even be proven correct over time (although I doubt it), as a military officer sworn to obey the commands of his civilian superiors, he must not be allowed to undermine the civilian government. At the end of that path lies tyranny and military dictatorship, which democracies have sought to prevent by strict prohibitions on political activity or speech by uniformed officers.

President Harry Truman was right to fire the great Douglas MacArthur when the general publicly opposed the president’s policies in Korea. Blair should take a page from Truman’s book and fire Dannatt now. Such a move will be widely criticized, just as it was when the unpopular Truman fired the wildly popular MacArthur. But democracies cannot allow military officers engage in political discourse. Even if a civilian government chooses to send its troops into a certain bloodbath in which huge numbers will die, such as the Allied amphibious landings at Normandy in 1944, generals cannot then second guess the decision in the press and expect to continue wearing their uniforms.

Mr. Dannatt (to Hell with noble titles like “Sir) is guilty of insubordination. Blair, already on his way out of government, should make sure the general leaves his official post as well. There is no place in a democracy for politicking military officers.

China Will Not Help

2006-10-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

Is anyone really surprised that the People’s Republic of China today stymied the free world’s effort to levy UN sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? Some in the media, of course, have been wildly speculating that China had finally had enough of its troublesome client’s bluster and brinkmanship. Since North Korea set off what it claims was an atomic bomb test Monday, the press has fallen all over itself to minimize the power of the explosion, and talking up the idea that China would now be more willing to cooperate with the United States and Japan to resolve the nuclear crisis.

Wishful thinking.

Instead, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao indicated that his country would not support sanctions. He relayed China’s position that the world should “express clearly to North Korea that ... the international community is opposed to this nuclear test,” as if Kim Jong Il’s confrontational regime had not previously been aware of such opposition. In fact, this is just the same old Chinese passive aggressive subversion of freedom that we should have come to recognize by now. Sure, the People’s Republic couches its language in the terminology of diplomacy, but the practical result of its unceasing support of the DPRK has been to sustain a murderous regime, menace South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, tie up American military assets, and prolong the crisis for as long as possible. This serves China’s strategic interests while it allows them to appear to the Third World as a non-interfering power that offers the best guarantee against Western bullying thanks to its Security Council veto. After all, as long as China sits on the Council, no two-bit tyrant need worry about the world body taking any serious action against him – assuming he has something to offer the Chinese, say oil, or in the case of North Korea, a well armed buffer against a liberal democracy.

Some people, particularly on the left, seem unaware that China and North Korea have been the very closest of allies for more than 50 years. China sent its own soldiers to fight and die on Korean soil when the UN forces threatened to wipe out the communist regime in 1950 and 1951. While the DPRK’s on-again-off –again intimacy with the Russians sometimes antagonized China, never has the People’s Republic cut off its Korean client. Too strong are the ties of blood shed together, not to mention lock-step political loyalty.

China will NEVER get tough on North Korea as long as its interests lie in preserving Kim’s regime. Only when the Chinese see that the rest of the world, particularly the United States, will no longer trade with China, and will prepare for war with China itself, will the Chinese even consider changing tactics. Until then, we are deluding ourselves if we believe they are partners in trying to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15232009/

How to Handle Nuclear North Korea

2006-10-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

As gratifying as it would be to simply bomb the DPRK into oblivion, we should:

1. Notify China that unless it can coerce the North to return to the Six Party Talks and reach a good faith deal to dismantle its nuke program the U.S. will consider the DPRK as an imminent threat to American security, and

2. Explain to China that we would then see no choice but to help Japan and Taiwan develop appopriate strategic weapons systems to counter the DPRK menace and

3. Demonstrate to China by our deployment of the Navy's 7th Fleet off the coast of Taiwan, as well as additional Naval and Air Force assets in Japan, that we are preparing for an all-out military confrontation with the DPRK as well as the physical defense of Taiwan, and

4. Urge China to continue its economic development with Most Favored Nation trading status with the United States, and

5. Encourage our South Korean allies to mobilize additional military reserves while making a very public spectacle of increased American operations exercises on the peninsula and

6. Send Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld to Tokyo to announce on TV that the U.S. will spare no expense and will not shrink from any sacrifice to defend Japan "and the other free peoples of East Asia" from communist aggression and

7. Immediately pass an emergency spending bill to purchase additional munitions and spare parts, particularly very heavy "bunker buster" bombs, and then finally, in a few weeks,

8. Notify North Korea that they have 24 hours to comply with UN resolutions or face the end of the Kim regime.

9. If these measures fail to achieve an enforceable agreement, we should commence the aforementioned bombing of the DPRK into oblivion, and if necessary, Red China as well.

Page Scandal Absurd

2006-10-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

The media's recent obsession with former Rep. Mark Foley's sexually suggestive e-mails and instant messages to Congressional pages (all male teens) and their speculation about how the scandal may tilt the November elections, and possibly even cost House Speaker Dennis Hastert his leadership post, reveal appalling cynicism and hypocrisy. To hear some tell it, Foley is no better than a child molester. Give me a break. It appears Foley never actually acted out any of his fantasies. And while many relish the chance to refer to the pages as children, that is misleading. The pages are young, of course -- about the age at which the majority of Americans actually become sexually active. That's not to endorse teen sex or adult flirtations with teens, but Foley's electronic flirtations were not quite the acts of sexual perversion some now make them out to be.

One wonders what kinds of kinky things former President Bill Clinton might have said to the various women he bedded while married, how he might have used his position as governor of Arkansas or president to pressure subordinates into actual fornication. I expect he, like everyone else hot with sexual desire, said some pretty edgy stuff as hands, mouths and genitalia went to work. Who cares? Lots of Republicans made political hay of it. I've always thought it was a circus. And Dems who always agreed with me are now falling all over themselves to make Foley out to be some sort of pedophile. Worse, the idea that Hastert should lose his post because he never outted Foley is raw opportunism. I suspect we've all been privy to people's foibles, but tried to address them without making show trials out of them. Likely Hastert believed attention from the leadership would be enough to convince Foley to stop his flirtations. In any case, the left and their media henchmen now expect us to punish Hastert and the entire GOP for not having publicly crucified the gay flirt from Florida. Hypocrites!

Lieberman Loss Proves Dems Are Crazy

2006-08-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

Ned Lamont's defeat of the very liberal Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary this week just proves what former Democrats have been saying for the past several years: The party has fallen under the control of its most radical elements so that it no longer represents mainstream American values or attitudes. The new Dems represent only Hollywood, trial lawyers, and unreformed socialists. They push for radical social upheavals while working ever more assiduosly to punish law-abiding citizens and limit our civil liberties.

Joe Lieberman is a perfect example of the old-style liberals who once populated the party. He was a true champion of civil rights for 40 years. He was socially and economically liberal, supporting abortion rights, expansive welfare programs, environmental regulation, and just about every other program or issue put forth by those well intentioned people who called themselves "progressives." While some former Democrats (me, for example) came to view many of these liberal ideas as completely wrong and misguided, old-style liberals like Joe Lieberman continued to command our respect and goodwill because it was never in doubt that his efforts and ideas were rooted in his own deep convictions about moral and public right. In other words, we could disagree without demonizing Lieberman or having him demonize us. He is civil. He is honest. He is exactly the kind of politician BOTH parties could very much use many more of. Not because he's a moderate. He's not. He's a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. But he's reasonable. He's rational. He's everything Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and others now running the Dem Party are not.

Time was when liberals actually had spines and were willing to stand up to threats. It's hard to imagine a liberal Dem of today standing up to Hitler or Stalin. They refuse even to stand up to the terrorists who now work to exterminate us. What a shame that liberals do not have any will to fight for their survival, but have plenty of energy to work at defeating a good man like Joe Lieberman. All in all, I'd say things are looking very good for the GOP's November prospects, but very bad for the country. It's not a good thing to have only one party represent mainstream America. We'd be better off if the Dems could come back to their senses and give voters a real choice.

Give War a Chance

2006-08-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

Indignant calls for Israel to cease its military operations against Hizbollah ring false in their self-righteousness and purported compassion for innocents. In fact, the Israeli operations are defensive, and are significantly delayed responses to ongoing Hizbollah terror activities, including the intentional firing of rockets into cities with no military targets. Of course, Israel responsibly warns its citizens, moves them out of harm's way as much as possible, dispatches them to bomb shelters, etc., thus depriving the terrorists of the blood spoils they so desire -- and preventing the kinds of images of human suffering one sees in Muslim communities from Lebanon to the PA areas (many of them staged, of course) where the terrorists operate in close proximity to civilians, even using them for cover.

It's so easy for Europeans, particularly on the left, to criticize those who live under constant assault. Those critics are not fighting for their own survival as the Israelis are. And arrogant with the airs of post-modern pacifism and "engagement," these critics act as though they believe terrorists can be reasoned with, negotiated with in good faith, and somehow accomodated. Nonsense! They would be surprised to learn there are still many people in the world (most people, in fact) who have not yet joined their post-modern enlightenment, and who are all too willing to eliminate exotic others, including liberals, Europeans, secularists, etc. And more often than not, these people, who still live in a Hobbesian world of might making right, must be defeated before they can be successfully engaged. Muslim regimes like those in the PA, Syria, and Iran will not bargain in good faith when they perceive their opponent to be in a weak position. Indeed, they see the mere willingness of their opponents to engage diplomatically as a sign of weakness, a sign they should press further ahead with their aggression.

The only rational response to such attitudes is one that disabuses the barbarians of their delusions of invincibility and power. As Germany and Japan had to be unambiguously beaten in war, so the evil regimes of today must be thoroughly dismantled for their societies to change. There must be no negotiation with Hamas, Hizbollah, or any other terror group -- only relentless pursuit and destruction. And there can be no honest diplomatic engagement with these groups' sponsors until those sponsors see they have no alternative.

Israel must sustain its operations against Hizbollah until there is no more functional Hizbollah. If Syria or Iran enters the fight, the United States should respond with a full-scale air assault and ground invasion to assist our Israeli allies and crush the tyrannical regimes once and for all. We need not rebuild these countries or install friendly regimes. We need only destroy their productive capacity as we did Japan, Germany and North Korea. Let the people suffer, as those in the aforementioned countries did, so that they will learn that their xenophobic race and religious hatred earned them nothing but devastation. Let them know they have been beaten. In a world where innocent Americans, Israelis, Europeans, African Christians and others are constantly murdered by barbarians, it is preferable to make the enemy bleed than to encourage him to ever greater acts of aggression by showing a spineless desperation to talk.

Mel Deserves A Break

2006-07-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

The things Mel Gibson is alleged to have said about Jews during his arrest for drunk driving are terrible, repulsive, utterly disgusting examples of anti-Semitism. In light of the feelings Jews already had about the actor in response to his film, "The Passion of the Christ," this latest episode only confirms to them that Gibson has some true anti-Semitic feelings. As someone who is sensitive to the suffering of Jews, and aware of the ceaseless efforts to demonize them in so many quarters, my defense of Gibson might seem strange, but I think the man deserves a break.

I don't think there's any question that Gibson's true feelings came to the fore when he was intoxicated. He was hysterical, complaining, swearing. One suspects he'd just had some run-in with someone, perhaps a Jew. While it's absurd that anti-Semites are so often blaming a Jewish cabal for all the world's ills, it is true that Hollywood has a very high proportion of Jews in positions of authority. So it's no stretch to imagine that the actor may have had his share of conflicts with Jews. And it seems well established that his father was an anti-Semite. Those attitudes probably did rub off on the son. But that doesn't mean Mel Gibson is a hate monger. For a parallel, I look at my own youth. I grew up in a black neighborhood with white grandparents who truly loved many of our black neighbors. Several of those neighbors are considered members of the family to this day. Yet I also remember times, particularly moments of anger, when my grandmother let loose with "nigger." I recall plenty of racist jokes being told, and lamentations that I was dating black girls. Those sentiments bothered me, but I always knew they were not rooted in hatred. Rather, they were the residue of social training and ignorance. My grandfather never actually used any derogatory terms for anyone, as far as I can remember. But my grandmother had a mouth like a sailor. She was full of piss and vinegar, but she was not full of hate.

Most people are pretty complicated. We can hold opposing ideas in our minds, feel things we know are irrational, want what we know to be wrong. If we were single-dimensional, we'd never feel shame, remorse or regret. It seems logical that Mel Gibson does have some anti-Semitic feelings, but that he also recognizes those feelings to be wrong, to be wicked. He is no worse than the rest of us who may keep our tongues in check, but have within us the capacity for evil as well as good.

At least Gibson's apology was on the mark. So often when a celebrity, athlete or politician says something offensive, they qualify their apologies: "I'm sorry IF my words offended," or "I'm sorry my words were taken out of context." In other words, they don't actually acknowledge totally that they were wrong -- just that some people might have interpreted their words as such. In Gibson's case, the actor was very contrite, and called his words "despicable," which indeed they were. If the man were a Kennedy, he'd just deny the incident. If he were a Democrat member of Congress from Georgia, he'd blame the police for their unprofessionalism. But Gibson seems to be a stand-up guy, though no one can dispute that his underlying anti-Semitism is something he needs to deal with and defeat if he expects to be re-accepted in Hollywood.

Truth, Justice and All That Stuff

2006-07-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

The latest Superman movie says more than it probably intends about the current global climate of anti-Americanism, and it does so not by what is actually says as by what it refuses to say. Anyone who's seen the older Superman movies, television series or comic books knows all the standard lines about the Man of Steel leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, being faster than a speeding bullet, etc. The newest movie makes very clever use of the "It's a bird. It's a plane... It's Superman!" phrase.

What is strange, though, is the movie's treatment of Superman's mission statement -- truth, justice and the American way. In one scene, Daily Plant editor Perry White wonders aloud if Superman still stands for "truth, justice and all that stuff." All that stuff! It was a pretty obvious slap at American patriotism, and a significant departure from the spirit of the Superman comics upon which the movie is supposed to be based. One imagines the producers sitting around complaining that inclusion of "the American Way" would only turn off international viewers. As I watched the movie yesterday, I figured the edit was a bow to the increasingly knee-jerk anti-American international audience. But if it were as simple as that, why not just refer to truth and justice, and leave out the sarcastic "all that stuff"? On deeper consideration, it's pretty evident that the filmmakers wanted to cut that mission statement down to size, to highlight the comic book nature of American patriotism so reflected in this comic book superhero. And a little web surfing proved this analysis correct. It turns out the screenwriters admit that they wanted to expand the character to be an international hero here to serve all mankind. Certainly, the service of all men is a noble calling. But apparently the writers never stopped to consider the implications of Superman's defense of the American Way. It gets back to the eternal American belief -- so central to America's unique patriotism -- that the American Way is to serve all mankind. It is ingrained in our national identity that we have a special calling to share our way of life and our way of government will all mankind. Superman got this. His movie's writers don't, or they reject the universalist aspect of American patriotism in the first place. Either way, the seemingly minor change of phrasing is a slap in the face to America.

Lebanon Guilty?

2006-07-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Middle East Media Research Institute, which directly translates Arabic broadcasts and print reports, posted the transcript of Hizollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's July 21 interview on Al Jazeera, in which the terror chief claims to have informed top Lebanese government officials of his organization's intent to kidnap Israelis for use as bartering chips to win the release of jailed Hizbollah members. If Nasrallah's claim is true, it means Lebanon's government was aware of terrorist plots which they took no action to prevent. Neither did the Lebanese government share this valuable intelligence with Israel or others who might have acted to prevent Hizbollah's incursion into Israel and its killing of several Israeli soldiers in that attack. Ultimately then, the Lebanese government is an accomplice in Hizbollah's attacks on Israel, and it deserves to be destroyed as any enemy. As such, Israel would be justified in expanding its air strikes to eliminate Lebanese military forces and government facilities, as well as targetting Lebanese officials who give aid and comfort to Hizbollah.

Of course, it could be that Nasrallah has some axe to grind with the Lebanese government and simply hopes to coax Israel into directing some of its military power away from his own besieged fighters. He might presume that the destruction of Lebanon's secular government would create a vacuum his organization could fill, thus leading to the coutry's "Talibanization." However, this could be prevented by a concerted allied interdiction of transportation routes into Lebanon from Syria, thus cutting off the flow of arms and munitions to radical groups such as Hizbollah and giving Lebanon's moderate Muslims, Christians and others the breathing room to establish a stronger government and armed forces that do not need to bow to the will of terrorists like Nasrallah.

http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1200

Israel, Our Hearts Are With You

2006-07-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

As Iran and Syria push their proxies to murder Israelis, and Palestinians show ever more vividly that they hate Jews more than they love life or freedom, who of good faith and honest mind does not stand with Israel? Mortimer Zuckerman's editorial in the current issue of U.S. News & World Report lays out cogently how Israel has made concession after concession, even pulling out of the Gaza unilaterally, only to embolden the savage spirit of its enemies. Living in Berkeley, as I do, one sees stickers and placards supporting the Palestinians and/or chastising Israel even more regularly than American flags. Will my liberal friends and neighbors now come to their senses and reject the illusion-driven indignation they have directed at Jews? At times like these, all of us who prize liberty and the right of all peoples to exist should make clear that we will always stand firm -- that JFK's vow that we would pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty was no empty promise.

But for now, Israel fights evil alone. To victory Israel!

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/060716/24edit.htm

Dems Call for Iraq Surrender

2006-06-22T17:29:00.000-07:00

Republicans can stop spending our campaign funds, close down our election operations and spend the summer at home. Democrats are GIVING us the election this year. In a pair of Senate bills today, Dems called for America to admit defeat in Iraq and cede the field to al Qaeda and their friends. Of course, both measures failed. But does anyone doubt that Dems will now be known for having only one alternative Iraq strategy to the president's, and that is giving up and coming home? So far, every time they speak on Iraq they parrot one of two messages: the president has no plan, or we ought to pull out. Hillary Clinton is especially lame, criticizing the administration's lack of a good Iraq strategy then, in the next breath, saying the most radical of today's proposal's (John Kerry's, naturally) is not much of a strategy either. Does the "New York" senator have any ideas of her own? Of course not. She's trying to navigate that perilous course on the left known as "moderation." Taking any specific position would only lose her votes in the 2008 election. Best to be vague and negative while your less pragmatic comrades bury themselves. Still not a very good strategy for actually winning. And why should the Dems get back control of any portion of government? They're in service to our enemies!

Of Course There's A Backlash

2006-06-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

MSNBC.com reports today that there seems to have been an increase in racial tensions recently as Congress has debated immigration reform and border security. Duh! When lefty radicals play the race card, righty radicals are only too happy to play along. And the great majority of us who are not inspired by hate or racism (as the left constantly accuses us) are greatly antagonized by the displays of ingratitude and even Latino racism that the left shoved in our faces this past May Day.

There are plenty of images available online showing virulent anti-Americanism and anti-caucasian slurs on display at the nationwide rallies. I myself have often endured accusations of "white washing" and being a traitor to la raza. Ask black Republicans how often they must endure the Uncle Tom label. The fact is, the American left, led by such elites as my alma mater's ethnic studies founder Ron Takaki, has spent the better part of four decades intentionally Balkanizing American society, stoking minority fears and reinforcing a sense of collective victimhood and helplessness. The cynical goal of these race baiters is to enlarge the electoral base of the Democrats and other parties of the left, which ceaselessly pander to minority communities even while they ignore those communities' needs. Make no mistake, the left wants minorities to remain poor and helpless -- permanently. And they want the American people to hate one another. Only with such instability and insecurity can their Nanny State ideology have any appeal to rational people.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13151417/

Behead Those Who Insult Christianity

2006-05-21T00:20:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be something if Christians, offended by the libels of Dale Brown's "DaVinci Code," rioted across the world, calling for the blood of the blasphemers who published the book, produced the film, or were otherwise involved with the project. The yarn is certainly far more insulting than the Danish cartoons that so inflamed the Muslim world. What is really objectionable, though, is the reaction of our "free" press to these two events. Editors and producers scared to incur the wrath of rampaging Muslims kept the cartoons off their pages, hiding behind a pretense of sensitivity to "the world situation." But they have no problem showing all kinds of images from the DaVinci Code, giving it "two thumbs up" on their syndicated television shows, and telling us that anyone who is offended just can't appreciate an obvious work of fiction. Well, it's always just a fun story until someone screams, "Off with their heads!" -- and means it.

Day of (Pointless) Action

2006-05-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

A day has passed since a coalition of illegal immigrants, Mexican nationalists, Latino racists, leftist America haters and well intentioned liberals massed in several American cities to demand the U.S. renounce the rule of law. The impact of those spectacles, predictably, was negligible. Some folks lost a day of pay and the greedy fat cats who've replaced their American workers with illegals ended up getting stung when those illegals walked off the job. But other than being offended by outrageous displays of anti-gringo hate and ingratitude, most Americans barely noticed. There simply was no measurable effect. All the lefties really accomplished yesterday was to anger mainstream Americans and demonstrate that their movement can do very little except organize protests. If they wanted to flex the economic muscle of illegal labor, they failed.

Americans Would Too Do the Work!

2006-05-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

Do illegal immigrants really perform work no Americans are willing to do? Consider some of the jobs Americans do every day:

Americans go down into deadly mines, breathing coal dust that steals years from their lives. Americans climb down manholes and trudge through sewers carrying human excrement, rotted food and a noxious mix of chemicals. They collect garbage and clean up toxic waste. They face possible death and dismemberment serving in dangerous jobs like commercial fishing, timber cutting, and military service. Americans do back breaking labor on construction sites and in steel mills. They drive long haul trucks far from family and friends. Americans perform menial tasks, such as rustling shopping carts and flipping hamburgers. A black American near my apartment kneels down at people’s feet to shine their shoes.

The fact is Americans work their asses off in positions high and low, prestigious and humble. It’s a colossal insult to our people to say we think ourselves above any task needing to be done. And it’s just as insulting to say there are immigrants low enough to do that labor that is beneath us. It is patronizing and ultimately racist.

Of course, increasingly, illegal immigrants are taking over many of the lowest paid professions noted here, but not because Americans won’t do the work. Illegals are taking over because they’ll do the work for unfair wages. They’ll tolerate more abusive bosses and won’t make a fuss over safety codes and working conditions. Why should a business hire a black, white or other American who will then demand fair wages, safe conditions, and other legal labor and business practices, when they can instead hire vulnerable illegal immigrants at a fraction of the cost? Americans have been replaced in janitorial positions, factories and on farms not because they refuse to do the work, but because they refuse to work for the near slave wages and in the sweat shop conditions that illegals gratefully accept.

A perverse aspect of the illegal immigration debate is that it pits economic progressives against social progressives. People who care deeply about the plight of workers and who want to preserve living wages and good conditions are opposed by other people who care deeply about a vulnerable underclass of people who just want a better life. It really is a shame that some demonize illegal immigrants and paint them as wanton criminals. In desperation for a better life, would we all not cross a border and pursue it? However, the fact remains that by tolerating illegal immigration we are depressing wages for the entire society, keeping many poor children in poverty, and creating a large (and growing) underclass of informal workerbots who toil hopelessly for ever shrinking wages.

As I’ve written before, America needs immigrants – maybe even more than the 11 million or so who are estimated to be here illegally. But we need them to go through the legal process of immigration. That would provide additional security for our borders, and it would ensure that no one works in a Vietnam-style sweat shop or toils for less than the minimum wage. That might mean a more expensive head of lettuce, but it’s worth the cost to preserve the middle class that is being destroyed by what is essentially unrestricted laissez faire capitalism in the labor market.

Lefties Losing It Again for May Day

2006-04-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

As usual, the lefties organizing this May Day's "Day of Action," intended to show the country what it would be like to go "A Day Without a Mexican," are hysterical. They're whipping themselves into a frenzy in anticipation of yet another pointless tantrum aiming to show the rest of us just how self-righteously bothered they are. And also as usual, they've completely deluded themselves with the grandeur of their cause and power.

These progressi-fascists just do not understand who their real enemies are. Employers who hire immigrants, especially illegals, know very well how much they depend on the cheap labor those immigrants provide. They're the last ones supporting tougher measures against illegals. In this regard, organizers who think they're going to show employers a thing or two are really just preaching to the converted.

Meanwhile, what those who truly are anti-immigrant want is not a day without a Mexican, but everyday without any Mexicans, or El Salvadorans, Chinese, Indians, and other immigrants. Having immigrants out of work for a day will not bother them in the least. Indeed, they cheer the absence of immigrants and wish the general strike would go on much longer than a day.

In reality, the only people who will feel the sting are those poor immigrants already living at the margins who are misled into joining the strike. They'll miss a day of pay. The rest of us may have to wait an extra day to have our offices vacuumed and our bathrooms cleaned. We may even be forced to buy fast food from a black, white or Asian working on May 1. But our daily routines will hardly be affected otherwise.

Fortunately, most Latinos recognize this absurd stunt as the residue of disaffection among the many Che worshippers infesting our communities. We see the defeatism, the nihilism in their worldview and we prefer the contentment that comes with not imprisoning ourselves in their constant state of defensiveness.

America Needs Legal Immigrants

2006-04-10T19:36:00.000-07:00

America needs immigrants not just to do dirty, low wage labor, but to remain competitive in all sectors of the global economy, including high technology. For some time, we have relied on foreign-born researchers, doctors, engineers, and other highly educated, highly valuable workers to meet the needs of American business. Even if more native born Americans took interest in these careers, it would still be a significant challenge to produce the number of highly skilled workers our economy needs to stay ahead of our international rivals. Historically, America’s productive potential has been restrained by a dearth of labor – with notable exceptions such as during the Great Depression.

Besides filling jobs, immigrants are also needed to supply the next generation of Americans. For a number of reasons, including abortion, later marriage and conception, and the growing acceptability of homosexual relationships, natives simply do not procreate at a rate sufficient to maintain our population. More than an issue of maintaining our numerical standing, this is important because of its implications for such programs as Social Security and Medicare. Without replenishing the ranks of the working, we will have an imbalanced population structure in which we have more retirees taking out of the system than we have workers pumping wealth into it.

Of course, opponents of illegal immigration have valid complaints. First, it is unfair that people who have disregarded our sovereignty and crossed illegally into the United States enjoy the benefits of living and working here while others who go through the legal procedures often must wait for years.

Also, because illegal immigrants must avoid detection or risk deportation, they regularly accept pitifully low wages and poor working conditions, thereby depressing wages and benefits for all workers, but especially low skill, uneducated Americans, and most of all blacks. Without a ready pool of illegal aliens willing to work for very little, employers would be forced to offer legitimate wages to poor blacks and others. The current situation, though, benefits illegals and their families back home while depriving our own poor of the opportunity to begin their climb out of poverty.

Finally, illegal immigration does pose a real threat to our security. If we cannot control our borders or track who comes into the country and what they bring with them, we greatly increase the risk of more terror attacks. There have been reports in the past few years of radical Muslims going to Latin America and learning Spanish. During my service in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991, I saw many Arabs who looked Latino. Imagine the ease with which terrorists could operate in America if we fail to seal our borders.

As for the immigration reform initiatives being discussed now, we should immediately implement strict border security provisions. We should increase the quotas of legal immigrants we allow into the United States, and we should streamline the process to make it work efficiently and quickly for those who play by the rules.

Meanwhile, we should offer illegal aliens already here a one-time opportunity to register with the federal government and apply for residency. Those with children born in the United States should be allowed to remain as long as they violated no other laws. Those without American-born children should be required to return to their home countries and await the opportunity to immigrate legally.

America needs to keep its doors open to immigrants, but we also have a right to expect immigrants to enter through those doors, and not climb through back windows like thieves in the night.

Comparing America’s and Europe’s Experiences With Immigration

2006-04-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

It has been popular recently for opponents of President Bush’s proposed guest worker program to point with dismay at Europe, where guest workers have remained largely separate, even alienated from their host societies, and to lecture that such a policy would be a disaster for the

United States

. This assertion, though, overlooks the true substantive differences between conditions in Europe and North America, as well as between the people flooding into these two vastly different places. Rather than disparate policies, it is different cultures that have made our experiences with immigration so different.

There are important cultural differences between Europe and North America. The former, locked in a mindset of elder superiority and comfort with the “natural order of things,” resists change far more stubbornly than the upstart west of the Atlantic. America, despite its own fits of nativism and identity politics, nevertheless has over its entire history been a destination for those bold or wary people looking for a new beginning, and has benefited from the resulting mixture of ideas and people. What most immigrants find, despite well publicized angst, is a society that, for the most part, is curious about them, their food, their lives, and which welcomes them and their children as American citizens.

Only in the past few years have European countries begun to grant citizenship to those native-born children of immigrants, and this policy change certainly does not reflect the assumptions of the people. No matter what French law, for example, might say about what it means to be French, a Jean or a Marcel or a Monique with an equally French surname and white skin knows intuitively that a Sayeed is not truly French, and never will be. In America, where Spanish names are becoming much more familiar, once foreign sounding names from other languages are now as American as pizza or Chinese takeout. This culturally paradigmatic difference between Europeans and Americans, manifested in totally different concepts of citizenship, results in vastly different environments for the immigrants who turn up on our shores. Thus, it is little surprise that the two continents would have such different experiences with immigration.

So far, this is all pretty much conventional wisdom. Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington raised quite a storm when his 2004 analysis (“Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity”) of cultural differences between mostly white, Protestant America and mostly brown, Catholic Latin America concluded that contemporary immigration threatened to divide and undermine our national unity and strength. Making, as he did, cultural arguments to demonstrate the peril of immigration, Huntington inflamed the political correctness regulators throughout the country and, I think, overstated the case. But he was on to something. Cultural differences are often very difficult to reconcile, so different values, beliefs, and especially assumptions about daily living, do intensify centrifugal forces within society, pushing people away from one another in various ways. Logically, the greater the differences, the greater will be the pressure pulling society apart. Huntington, however, overestimated the differences between Latinos and Anglos. Despite denominational differences, both groups share belief in Jesus Christ and nearly identical Bibles. Both groups trace their cultural traditions to Europe and, despite different colonial experiences, largely see that continent in an organically paternal light. That is, North Americans and Latin Americans see their cultures and societies as being essentially linked to Europe, even descended from it.

The cultural attitudes of Europe’s immigrants, however, are exponentially more estranged from those of their hosts. The colonial experiences of those countries sending Muslim immigrants to Europe today were, for the most part, much less violent and cruel than the experiences of Latin American countries. In the Americas, Spain built the most ruthless colonial system the world has known. In Muslim lands, meanwhile, colonialism was a rather recent and mild phenomenon. Most of the Middle East, for example, was only colonized by Europeans for a brief period of 30 to 60 years following the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I. Even then, these colonies were administered by the increasingly liberal British and, to a somewhat lesser degree of liberality, the French. Yet despite a milder, largely beneficial experience with colonialism, these Muslim lands today supply Europe with an immigrant population overflowing with resentment, even rage against Europe, and everything for which it stands.

Those Muslims who talk or write about such things as colonialism do not see themselves or their ancestral societies as being essentially “of” Europe. Rather, they were only “under” Europe, and express great eagerness now to turn the tables. Where from comes such hostility? Is it not a result of failed policies, or economic inequality? Perhaps it is to some extent. Certainly there are those Muslims in Europe who have assimilated and, even while preserving their Muslim faith and affection for their heritage, have become orderly citizens due in some part to their economic success, or some useful policy. But the great mass of Muslims in Europe does not even express an interest in assimilating, integrating, or becoming Europeans. They really are spoiling for a “Clash of Civilizations,” as Huntington described in his 1996 book of that title.

Why this is so has less to do with economics or policies than the incompatibility of fundamentalist Islam with liberty, let alone liberal democracy. This is not to say Muslims can never be liberals, or that democracy cannot work in Muslim lands. For the religiously democratic like me, democracy is a salve to all wounds. But the fundamentalists who read every surah of the Koran as civil law, and pile on top the shariah, simply will not become liberals, nor even tolerate true liberty in their midst. And unfortunately for Europe, large numbers of fundamentalists have emigrated from countries where they once made Muslim tyrants nervous. Americans anxious about 11 million undocumented Latino immigrants should consider how much different our experience with immigration would be if instead there were 11 million completely legal Algerians, Moroccans, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, and various other Muslims flooding into the U.S. Even within our own less hostile environment, these immigrants would likely be much more difficult to integrate than Latinos.

Of course, a number of Muslims have successfully integrated into American society – a small number. Indeed, America has only a fraction of the number of Muslims that Europe has within its borders. And for the most part, they are very different from their coreligionists elsewhere. For one thing, they tend to be from the ranks of the most educated, well-to-do groups in their old countries, most comfortable moving about a globalized world with an increasingly universal culture. These are not fundamentalists with exclusionary images of distinctive self, but typically American celebratory images of distinctive self. That is, they are proud to be Muslim, but being Muslim does not place them psychically outside the rest of society. This is in stark contrast to the separatist, fundamentalist Muslims who predominate in Europe. This also offers a glimmer of hope for Europe, though. It suggests that a culture, even one poisoned with zealous hate, can moderate with exposure to others. That does seem to entail economic and political components, of course. But nowhere have we seen money or policies lead to calls for holy war. To stir that sort of passion, antagonisms are much rawer and closer to the heart. They challenge identity, shaped as it is within a cultural context that, in this case, is highly intolerant of others. Europe’s problems with its immigrants may have something to do with bad policy choices such as relying on guest workers rather than encouraging permanent citizenship and integration. But all policy issues pale beside the cultural challenges I have outlined here. Whatever immigration policy we Americans choose, we are not likely to turn into Europe, nor suffer the same turmoil associated with immigration.

In some future post: Why America Needs More Immigrants

The Media's Selective Credulity

2006-04-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

The media has long suffered from the mental impairment known as selective credulity. Whatever jibes with a reporter's personal views on a given topic is automatically believed and reported as fact. Take, for instance, MSNBC's story today relating that Scooter Libby has told prosecutors that he believed the president had authorized him to leak secrets. Rather than reporting this rather straightforward story as what it actually is -- one criminal defendant's representation of events -- the reporter editorialized that, "the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq."

Of course, the disclosure means nothing of the sort. The disclosure merely means Libby claims to have had authorization from the president. And that may turn out to be true. But merely claiming something does not make it so, nor does it mean that any other assumptions that flow through a reporter's mind are true. Again, it could be true. I'd even go so far as to say I believe the reporter's conclusion probably is true. But it's not the media's job to jump to such conclusions and report them as facts. After all, it's possible that Libby is lying now to save his skin. Perhaps he's angry that the White House has not tried harder to shield him from prosecution. Maybe he's actually mistaken. I'm too jaded to believe it, but it certainly is within the realm of reason to assert that maybe one person interprets a conversation or series of events differently from another person, or that something relayed by an intermediary (Cheney, allegedly) gets "lost in translation." Then there are other possibilities regarding the White House's actions. Maybe the president did "put Libby in play as a secret provider of information" as MSNBC reports, intentionally subverting his own policy of keeping secrets. Or perhaps the president never knew the issues at hand were ever classified. Funny how reporters -- and the left more broadly -- love to ridicule President Bush as a simple minded dunce, then act as if he must be some evil genius intimately knowledgeable about every detail of WMD intelligence, clandestine operations, etc. The left simply cannot let loose of its belief that Bush is a liar who gave the green light to divulge sensitive information, doing irreparable harm to the nation's security, for petty political gain. They may even be right about certain elements of that view.

Still, no matter what reporters believe in this (or any) case, they should refrain from editorializing and presenting the resulting polemics as objective truth. It wouldn't even require much effort -- just a little attribution, which they should have learned in Journalism 101. That is, rather than reporting that the sky is falling they should report that, "According to Chicken Little, the sky is falling," or "Critics of God say these developments indicate the sky is falling." But that would leave the door open for some truth other than the reporter's own perception of it. We couldn't have that, now could we?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12187153/

Reproductive Rights for Men

2006-03-15T06:52:00.000-08:00

Finally, the reproductive rights absurdity reaches a natural waypoint. Men are now challenging their parental responsibilities, even denouncing them outright. That's not really new. Some men have been deadbeats probably ever since the dawn of man. But now they're seeking the legitimacy of the law to support their abandonment.

Salon.com and a few other sites are reporting that the National Center for Men has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Matt Dubay, a Michigan man whose ex-girlfriend is having his baby against his will. Dubay says the woman assured him she was infertile, and now he wants nothing to do with the child -- or the monthly support payments he would have to make for the next 18 years. If you believe the silliness about reproductive rights -- that people should be able to decide for themselves whether or not they will become parents even after they have already conceived a child, either allowing the birth or aborting it -- then you must concede that it is a violation of men's rights to force them to become fathers when they would choose not to.

Some will say that reproductive rights have nothing to do with men, that a woman's body is hers alone, and thus the choice is hers alone. But if that's the case, why should a man be forced to fund her choice, and continue to fund it for two decades, if that choice is to have a child? If we accept the notion that men have no say in the abortion issue, that the woman has sole authority in each reproductive choice, then we must also acknowledge the fact that we have totally disenfranchised fathers. How could we expect men to father children, or support them financially, when they never had any choice in the matter?

Of course, the entire reproductive choice debate overlooks the fact that, even without abortion, men and women already have the right to choose whether or not to become parents. They can choose to engage in the act that causes reproduction, or they can choose not to. If they want to have their cake and eat it too, they can fool around and use condoms, spermacides and other contraceptives. It's risky, assuming you are actually trying to avoid becoming a parent. But it's more fun than abstinance. But these choices are not enough for the radicals who preach for women's right to kill their babies. No, women and women alone should be able to make life and death decisions that compensate for their earlier bad decisions. Got a little drunk and let Seth and Billy let loose inside you at the party? No biggie, choose to exercise your reproductive right to scrape that baby out. Had a little fun on the side and don't want the hubby to find out? There's a clinic that can make it like it never happened. Wanna keep the baby, but don't want to have to pay the whole ticket? Choose to have a man pay you for the next 18 years. It's your body, after all, and it's your right to cut part of it out or to get paid not to. You really have come a long way, baby.

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/03/13/roe_for_men/index_np.html

Perverted Love: Sex is a Sideshow

2006-03-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11786790/site/newsweek/

The current issue of Newsweek reports on the efforts to legalize polygamy, or the marriage of multiple people, generally several women with one man. These efforts illustrate that what opponents of gay marriage have been saying all along is correct, namely that defining marriage as any arrangement besides the union of one man and one woman threatens the institution of marriage by encouraging all forms of so-called alternative families.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering whether a man whose marriage license application for a spare wife was rejected has suffered undue government intervention in his private conduct. According to the polygamists, laws banning harems are the same as anti-sodomy laws and other such restrictions on private liaisons.

Understandably, some (probably most) gay marriage agitators are wary of the connection made between these two causes. After all, it exposes the truth. A spokeswoman for one gay rights group was quoted as saying the link between tolerance of gay marriage and other alternative forms of marriage is specious. Predictably, she offers no basis whatsoever for that conclusion and the Newsweek journalist reports on no rationale as to why gay marriage should be legitimate while polygamy is not. Quite simply, gay marriage activists don’t want the public to think about polygamy, or worse, the infinite potential alternatives to one man with one woman. Newsweek, meanwhile, deserves credit for reporting on the issue that gay marriage advocates openly admit (in the article) they’d rather not see covered.

Like it or not, gay marriage does open the door to the legitimization and legalization of many other alternative living arrangements. Can anyone seriously doubt that it will be only a matter of time before a group of men demand their right to marry multiple other men, or that some people will choose to marry close relatives in incestuous unions? Assuming the people are all consenting adults, what would be the basis for denying them such rights? According to the gay marriage promoters, the only good solution is intolerance. That’s right, the gay marriage lobby claims their cause is a just defense of human dignity and liberty, while polygamy (and presumably other alternative lifestyles) are illegitimate. Why they are illegitimate is never explained, but if you scrutinize the arguments of gay rights activists their real feelings are pretty clear – being gay is OK, but those other lifestyles are weird. In fact, gay opposition to polygamy, incest, and other even more controversial relationships is hardly different from religious fundamentalists’ view of gays. Ironically, the polygamists turn this moral intolerance back on their gay rivals in the marriage wars. They think gays are weird, indeed, sinful perverts.

Honest reflection would reveal us all as at least a little weird, particularly in regards to our sexual proclivities. Straight people, too. The debate over alternative marriages, though, transcends sex. At least, it should. I suspect that for a great portion of all the warring factions sex is the central issue. Religious conservatives imagine a woman writhing around with another woman and are revolted. Gays, meanwhile, imagine some man being serviced by a harem of young women and judge them all perverts. But sex is a sideshow in this debate. The real issue is and always has been whether or not marriage should continue to exist. More on this later…

Ports Flap a Shame

2006-03-07T22:19:00.000-08:00

It's sad to see so many Americans, including so-called progressives and conservatives, challenging the deal to allow a U.A.E.-based company to manage several American ports on no grounds except the company's Arab roots. While it makes sense to profile air passengers and flight school students, it's no more than xenophobia to extend such racial profiling where it makes no difference. It has been well established that the U.S. Coast Guard and not the Arab company will be responsible for port security. What's more, this very Arab company already manages many ports around the world that ship cargo into our ports today. As such, it is already in a position to do whatever harm opponents of the deal imagine they might intend. There are real and deep problems in the Arab world today, and across the Muslim faith more broadly. Our attempts to wall ourselves off, however, do nothing to alleviate these problems, nor do they enhance our own security. The Umma, troubled as it is, must be engaged and ultimately liberated politically and empowered economically if peace is to prevail in our world. Our military operations are critical to our security, but have always represented only part of the answer to terrorism. Perhaps more critical is the engagement so many now seek to avoid -- at the peril of us all.

Demonstrate FOR Denmark!

2006-02-21T22:42:00.000-08:00

Come out and show your support and appreciation of Denmark Saturday, Feb. 25 at noon. Anyone who likes Denmark and values free speech should show up outside the Danish Consulate in San Francisco, which is downtown at 1 California Street. The consulate is in Suite 330, but we'll just hang out on the street. And although the consulate will probably be closed, hey, it's a symbolic thing. I'll call them to let them know we'll be there. Come out and bring red and white!

Islam and You: Obey or Die

2006-02-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

The ongoing violence, demonstrations, burning of Danish flags and attacks on Danish embassies following the publication of cartoons caricaturing Muhammed should raise alarms in Europe and the West. What we are witnessing from the Umma is its very nature -- a self-possessed, collectivist consciousness at ever rising levels of sensitivity to perceived insult. The important thing for us to apprehend, though, is how the Umma responds. It is not merely with critical editorials, peaceful marches, or the other pluralistic methods we take for granted, but with calls for the execution of Islamic justice, particularly death for blaspheming cartoonists. Simply put, vast numbers of Muslims expect their laws and customs to be applied universally throughout the world. It does not matter if one lives in a far-off land not within the Muslim community of nations. Sharia should be applied with ruthless vigor. This is not to say all Muslims agree, but the outlook is a cornerstone of militant Islamic ideology as expressed by al Qaeda and its ilk. Still, cosmopolitan Europeans and American liberals fail to understand -- or at least acknowledge -- the global aspirations of the radical Muslims who seek now to impose their narrow worldview and laws upon us all. We may not want a clash of civilizations, but the Umma certainly does.

In Memory of My Uncle Michael Agelson... I'll Miss You

2005-05-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

My uncle, Michael Agelson, died yesterday, May 16, 2005. He would have been 52 if he lived until Friday, the day he was supposed to witness my graduation from UC Berkeley. He was one of the most understanding people I've known, my most precious relative to whom I could confide anything. Although he quit smoking more than a decade ago, he got lung cancer that went undetected until it had spread so far that he was in his final weeks. He overcame so much in his life -- a troubled youth and the difficulties of being gay in the less tolerant 1970s, alcoholism, abusive relationships, the death of his partner to brain cancer 15 years ago. He found the strength to beat his inner demons and make a new life with his loving partner of the past 10 years, Tim Ryan. Finally, he had found true happiness and personal success. And he inspired me and all those who knew him. We'll miss him terribly. Here, Mom, Monica and Uncle Mike pretend to play instruments during happy times, before we knew about the lung cancer (Christmas 2003).
VSR Photo

2005-04-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

Yours Truly at an orphanage in Baidoa, Somalia, in December of 1992. I was escorting Los Angeles and San Diego news media to cover the military relief efforts ongoing as part of Operation Restore Hope. I remember being filled with pride and optimism then, believing America was using our wealth and power to make a real impact on the lives of these suffering people. President Clinton's cowardly retreat from Somalia replaced those hopeful feelings with shame and regret. Thanks to our playboy-in-chief, we gave these children (and other Somalis) hope only to let them down in the end. This is the Clinton Legacy.
VSR Photo

Ivory Tower of Academia?

2005-04-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

Here is UCB's Sather Tower, more commonly referred to as the Campanile, which is Italian for "big tower with a clock on it." Photoshop helped me save my badly backlit snapshot.
VSR Photo