Crosspatch Chronicle

Back to the new blog again

2006-07-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

Townhall cleaned up most of my complaints. I am back to blogging over there again.

Why I Am So Upset With The Major Dailies

2006-07-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

Note: Blogging seems to be broken over at Townhall, it flags this post as "inappropriate" and I have no idea why. I have sent them email, maybe they will fix it.

EUREKA! I have finally been able to put my finger on exactly what has me so upset about the leaks of intelligence information in many of our major daily newspapers. I was aware that the reporting upset me and I could think of a lot of reasons why I should be upset such as the fact that it could put me and my family at risk, but none of those reasons exactly hit the root of why I was so angry. It wasn't until I logged into my online banking today that it dawned on me what it was. I feel personally violated by these exposures in the paper.

I live in a republic and as such we have people elected and appointed to act as our agents in the conduct of the business required to run a nation. As a mature and hopefully well-adjusted person, I am aware that I am placing my trust in these people to act in my stead and that some of those matters must remain secret just as I keep secret the passwords to my banking and the bank keeps secret certain measures they take on my behalf in order to keep my account safe from unauthorized use. In the case of the government, I am placing my trust in them to find people who would harm my family or members of my community and disrupt their plans or bring them to justice. These measures must remain a secret if they are to succeed. I do not have any desire or need to know exactly what they are doing at any given moment. In fact, if I am aware of what they are doing, then I consider something to be severely broken.

The people performing these operations on my behalf operate within a set of rules and have people who oversee them to make sure they stay within those limits. If they are operating within the limits, have not abused the trust placed in them, and have been successful, then all is well and there is nothing to report. These people are by proxy an extension of me. They are protecting my security. When the New York Times or some other major newspaper exposes one of these programs simply because it was secret, it is akin to exposing my bank's security measures just because they are secret. I then feel that my security has been violated, I feel more vulnerable, and those two things cause me to become angry.

What these papers have done in these exposures is to, in effect, violate the security of all Americans. How would Mr. Lichtblau or Mr. Keller feel if I wrote a piece telling everyone about the security measures that their banks use? What if I published the procedures used to access accounts, which computers were used for what purpose, where they were located, what operating systems they used and how they were interconnected to each other? What if they had installed protective measures because of past cases of fraud, theft, or other misuse and I had information about the safeguards that the bank used. What if they asked me not to publish this information because it could cause them to lose the ability to spot fraud or misuse of the system if I exposed it? What if I then exposed it anyway because I thought Mr. Lichtblau or Mr. Keller should know because banking is very important and they should know everything that goes on.

Mr Keller and Mr Lichtblau might be a little worried that their bank was more vulnerable now to abuse. And they might be angry with me if their accounts had been the victim of extremely serious misuse in the past. America's "security account" was seriously abused on 9/11 and the UK's on 7/7 and now India's on 7/11. Keller and Lichtblau have not only violated the security of every American, they have violated the security of people across the globe. They have put the people of Spain, and Bali, and Australia, and India, and the UK, and Germany and France at greater risk of attack by people who want to blow us to tiny bits and have more than once and probably will again in the future.

For this, my anger is beyond political rhetoric. It has nothing to do with a right/left political battle of ideals. It is a matter of basic public safety. These newspapers are a very real threat to the security of civilized nations around the world and it simply must stop. That they attack my government (yes, when someone tampers with my security, I regard that as an attack) when they are engaged in a legal method of protecting me, they violate my personal security. They are a direct personal threat to me and that causes an instinctive response in return.

Mr. Keller, Mr. Lichtblau, publishers, editors, and journalists across this country, I ask you please in the name of basic common human decency to please stop exposing our security measures. In fact, I would go as far as to ask you to report anyone attempting to leak this information to you because those people are trying to hurt you too. They are a threat to you and your community. From one human being to another human being, please don't kill my kids.

Thank you.

New Blog

2006-07-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

I have started blogging over at Townhall. There are some minor technical nits over there (blogroll doesn't work right, can't figure out how to change/edit the skin) but I have been looking for a different place to blog for some time and Townhall seems like a fitting place. As you can tell by my infrequent updates, my blog isn't a major prioity in my life so it doesn't make sense for me to pay a hosting company.

The Next Media Barrage

2006-07-05T11:14:00.001-07:00

UPDATE AT THE END

I believe I have detected the pattern for the next media attack on the current administration. The angle is "despite turning over control to Iraqis and putting hundreds of checkpoints and patrols on the street, the violence continues unabated".

Well, that is just plain hogwash. Sure, the numbers are still high, but they are in fact much lower than they have been. June's civilian death rate was 2/3 of what May's numbers were and all of the reductions came after the imposition of "Together, forward". If you remove the one market bombing, the death rate for July is well below that of June. Since there were so many killed in that one bombing, it is left out of my own figures until about the 10th of the month for two reasons. First, with only 5 days in a month, 66 deaths in one day skews the numbers so any underlying pattern isn't visible. Secondly, the individuals that placed that bomb have been killed or captured in a raid, so we aren't likely to see any more of their work.

I use the numbers of civilian deaths reported in the news as my guide. It isn't 100% accurate, it is often overstated, sometimes the same casualties are reported twice but overall, since the same mistakes are made fairly evenly over the months, it still provides a general idea of civilian deaths. Morgue counts aren't used because those tend to include insurgents, civilians, police and others.

May civilian deaths: 970 ( more than 30 per day)
June civilian deaths: 738 ( less than 25 per day)
July rate without Baghdad market bombing: ( less than 13 per day)

Extrapolated for the month and the 66 deaths in the Baghdad added back in, we are looking at something close to 460 deaths for July at the current rate. It is early in the month and 4 days is too few from which to extrapolate the entire month, but the trend is clear and the trend is down regardless of what the news is going to attempt to feed us using their own casualty figures. Note that casualty figures for Iraqi military and police are also trending down albeit more slowly and that is to be expected as they take the lead in more areas and are more exposed to dangers.

According to AFP today some 20 insurgent groups are prepared to begin negotiations and have been in various forms of contact with the government. That bodes well for future reductions in casualty counts as well.

The strategy of the press now is to portray the Iraqi government as a failure, present an image of hopelessness of our cause there, it can't be won, things keep getting worse, blah, blah, blah. Problem with that is, so far there doesn't seem to be any real evidence of it.

Today's blog entry was going to be another one about how our media doesn't care if they get people killed in order to futher their agenda but I have been saying that for months already in previous postings and others are birddogging that issue. What is most most important is what appears to be an overall media strategy of constant hammering of the Bush administration.

They are apparently using a two-pronged strategy at this point. One angle is to portray all efforts in Iraq as either outright failure, or to attempt to mitigate any appearance of success. This is due to polling results that show the main reason for low approval ratings is the progress in Iraq. Therefore, it is important to them that they show little or no progress whenever possible. The second angle is to portray President Bush as constantly overstepping his authority as President. They rely on the public having a short memory to do this. Shortly after 9/11 the media presented many articles giving suggestions on what must be done to better protect Americans against terrorism. Independent panels such as the 9/11 Commission also proposed similar ideas. When these are put into practice, the media then attempts to portray them as an administration acting beyond its authority and out of control.

What it seems to boil down to is that the news media assumes the American public is stupid, can't think for itself, can't remember what was said yesterday, and only knows what they are told in today's paper. It is also obvious that they have decided to engage directly in the political process by actively supporting one political party against another. While that isn't unusual or even a bad thing when a single paper does it, it is a bad thing when companies which own dozens of media outlets do it. Sometimes an outlet is the only paper in town. It really is no wonder we have seen such a grown of online media. It is about the only way for people to get enough information to make an intelligent decision. Our hometown newspaper editors think we are stupid and are spoon-feeding us propaganda.

UPDATE:

I read with interest a Reuters story out today that says 1,595 bodies were processed by Baghdad morgues last month. The story attempts to correlate that number directly to violence. I say not so fast. Baghdad is a large city with nearly 6 million residents. Now consider what would happen in the US in a city that large with temperatures over 110 degrees and no electricity for air conditioning. Might we experiance an upsurge in deaths here? Here is what the story says in the first two paragraphs:

Jul 5, 2006 — BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad's central morgue received 1,595 bodies last month — the highest number since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine sparked a wave of sectarian killings, a morgue official said on Wednesday.

The figures show the level of violence in Iraq has increased even after the killing on June 7 of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air strike.

The second paragraph explicitly attempts to tie the 1595 bodies to increased violence when in fact, violence in the second half of the month was well below the first half of the month. The article goes on to state that 1375 bodies were processed in May and 1155 in April. Nationwide, reported civilian deaths from violence was up 180 from April to May but was significant was a shift in attacks to concentrate on Baghdad. So while Baghdad deaths probably did go up from April to May, that would have had nothing to do with Zarqawi's death as he wasn't killed until June.

This article is a lie. It is actually a classical piece of psyops. They give you a figure and attempt to have you believe it is a completely different figure. They give you the aggregate number of bodies processed at morgues but don't tell you how many were civilians, how many were police or Iraqi army, how many were insurgents, how many died from violence, how many died of illness or heat related complications, etc. They imply that the number of bodies brought to morgues in June were all related to violence. Did they take into account that in a city of 6 million people in heat over 100 degrees there might be more than a couple of hundred heat related deaths particularly among the old and sick? Apparently not. Here is what happened in Chicago in 1995 during the heatwave there:

Hundreds of victims never made it to a hospital. The most overcrowded place in the city was the Cook County Medical Examiners Office, where police transported hundreds of bodies for autopsies. The morgue typically receives about 17 bodies a day and has a total of 222 bays. By Saturday—just three days into the heat wave—its capacity was exceeded by hundreds, and the county had to bring in a fleet of refrigerated trucks to store the bodies. Police officers had to wait as long as three hours for a worker to receive the body. It was gruesome and incredible for this to be happening in the middle of a modern American city.

...

In 1995 there were no uniform standards for determining a "heat related death," so officials had to develop them. Edmund Donoghue, Cook County's chief medical examiner, used state-of-the-art criteria to report 465 heat-related deaths for the heat wave week and 521 heat deaths for the month of July.

So with Baghdad today at 109 and calling for temperatures over 110 by the end of this week, might one expect a rise in the number of people brought to morgues? I would.

The Markos Meltdown

2006-06-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

I have been watching the events surrounding a feud between The Daily Kos and The New Republic with some interests. Lee Siegal has posted some thoughts on the subject which spawned a few thoughts of my own that I thought I might jot down here.

While I would agree with Siegal to some extent, I believe he is painting with too broad a brush in his criticism of blogs and blogging. To use my particular case as an example, I am not a writer but I do have opinions and blogs provide me with a forum to express them, feeble as my attempts at it might be. Not being a wordsmith, what I build will not be as pretty nor as durable but it will convey the general idea.

Now I do agree that there is a certain herd mentality when it comes to certain blogs and bloggers. But I would also say that there are many who do read blogs that hold different views because that is how one learns. And there are those of us who would offer debate when we encounter differing opinions as it is how we plumb the ideas behind those opinions and behind our own opinions as well.

There is one thing that I will agree strongly with, though. There is a group which when encountering an opinion which differs from theirs, seems to take the difference of opinion as some kind of personal invalidation. They respond to a different opinion as if they have been personally attacked and often get defensive or worse, feel a need to launch a "counter-attack" when no attack on them was intended. I believe this is a result of one holding one's opinions too closely to their sense of self. In order to be healthy, one must be able to learn and allow their opinions to adapt and change as we evolve over the years. If we stand our personal identity on our opinions, we become rigid in our thinking and changing of opinion shakes the foundations of self identity and can cause emotional problems not the least of which is irrational behavior when confronted with alternative points of view. In that case, one must defend one's positions tooth and nail even in the face of clear information that our opinion might be wrong. We would become angry at the one who would show us our conclusions are incorrect and lash out at them. One would then either submit to the new information, accept its validity, and become lost as their former sense of self has been shattered and flail about seeking some new way to define their identity or they simply close their minds to the new information, gang together with others holding the same view, stick their collective fingers in their ears and throw rocks at anyone who dares threaten their conclusions. At this point their conclusions and opinions become religion. They are held in faith without any basis in logic.

The opinions at Kos are really religions beliefs rather than logical conclusions and the reaction you are witnessing from them is the same as that when someone's religion is attacked. I challenge you to go on any of the blogs in that circle and speak "heresy". Blasphemy will be punished swiftly with excommunication and you will be banned from the blog and your comments deleted. They are not interested in debate, they are not interested in defending or evolving or learning. They believe they have it right and anyone attacking their beliefs is attacking them personally and they respond as such. There is plenty of evidence of this behavior both on their website and on the blogs of others who would criticize them.

In fact, should one of them read this they might well feel a need to attack me and I have not even called their beliefs into question. They might want to ponder why that is. I suspect that by saying that they are operating on faith rather than logic they might believe I have somehow belittled their beliefs when all I have done is note the existance of the behavior and not passed judgment on it. I am willing to bet, though, that it caused a limbic reaction because their beliefs are a very tender spot to them, it is their very self identity and people are naturally protective of that. In other words, one would possibly get the same reaction from any other "fundamentalist" in any other belief system when their beliefs are commented on by an "outsider". I submit that the Kos Kids are "Fundamentalist Liberals" and react the same as a religious (or any other) fundamentalist does when their beliefs are argued with logic.

I am interested in seeing Markos answer one question. The question I would ask him is "What are you?". I would, if asked, say "Dad" or "an engineer". My identity doesn't reside on a foundation of political opinion so I can adapt a lot easier, accept criticism, engage in debate, leave a debate alone, modify my position, learn things. I suspect Markos' answer might be "A Liberal". And that would explain a lot of his behavior when his political views are challenged.

New York Times: ENOUGH!

2006-06-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

I have had most of the day to ponder the latest attack on American perpetrated by the New York Times and still I am having trouble putting an exact word to my feelings on the issue. ENOUGH, was as close as I could come. I find their behavior almost juvenile and at the same time patronizing and pompous. That an editor or journalist would pretend to weigh what value an intelligence gathering operation has against the enemy's need to know about it and decide that the enemy's knowledge is more important that preserving the secrecy of the program is extremely frustrating. They make no claims of wrongdoing. They expose no instances of someone making personal gain from the program. They present no evidence of mismanagement. They simply expose the program for the sake of exposing it. They themselves would use the exposure of this program to attempt to create a story to enrich themselves at the public expense. They are the criminals in this expose. Should it become evident that someone be killed in the future because of this disclosure, The New York Times will have blood directly on their hands.

Their behavior is like that of a playground bully who would hurt someone just because they know they can get away with it, and then does it again and again. And as is the case with the playground bully, I sincerely hope they receive a very hard smackdown.

I never elected The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times to executive office. I don't remember designating them the power to decide what is and what is not in the interests of the defense of this country. I don't recall them being delegated the authority to declassify information. But what upsets me most is that their article does nothing to protect the interests of Americans. Because it lacks any evidence of abuse or wrongdoing, the only service this article provides is to our enemies.

I would warn the investors of The New York Times that they might want to consider the safety of their investment. The business is obviously in the hands of people with questionable integrity, values, and possibly mental capacity. They would take actions that would endanger their community, their neighbors, their friends, and their families for what appears to be nothing. They would make it easier for an enemy to gather the financial resources needed to attack our country. What would such an attack do to your investment? What would such an attack do to your other investments? What about investment markets in general? The people at The New York Times have the potential to do great damage to the economic system in this country though their intelligence operations on behalf of groups that would want to do us damage.

If it were in my power to do so, I would order the New York Times razed to the ground. It is much more of a liability than it is an asset to this country. Until such time as the individuals at The New York Times can grow up and behave as responsible members of their community I would caution anyone from doing business of any sort with them. If they would expose themselves as individuals of such small integrity in their duty as responsible human beings to protect their own community, I can imagine they would care even less about anyone they are engaged in business with.

I am also very angry. The thought that just came to my mind is how proud I would be to serve my community as a witness to the execution for treason of certain employees of that organization.

ENOUGH

The Trouble With Numbers

2006-06-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

I am rather tired of hearing pundits repeating the line that the al Qaida terrorists represent only 10% of the total number of insurgents in Iraq as if that has some bearing on the violence there. It has nothing at all to do with numbers. It has to do with willingness to execute horrible acts that are in no way related to the number of people who would actually perpetrate such acts. For example, Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma. How many people and how much infrastructure does that require? Not very much. All one has to be willing to do is commit murder on a scale and with a brutality that others would have a problem doing. Same with terrorists in Iraq.

9/11 showed us that 20 people can kill thousands. The size of a group in no way corresponds to the level of violence that might emit from it. Nor does the level of violence reflect the level of support a group has. It simply means that they have the resources and the will to kill people. Building a car bomb is rather simple. It doesn't require a whole lot of people or infrastructure. And if two or three people can build one, the same two or three people can build a dozen of them. All they need is materials. It turns out that the materials are not that hard to come by. Every time someone is killed, there is a good chance a car has just become orphaned and available for use as a bomb platform. Heaven knows there is enough explosive stuff floating around there. Just go out into a field and dig, it seems. Building a hundred bombs could be done by a handful of people. You drive them out, park them, and an hour or a day or a week later you dial the number of the cell phone detonator and kaboom. Simple.

What is more important than the number of people involved in an organization is the number of acts that it is involved with. I believe (quite strongly) that al Qaida has been involved in a number of acts that is not in proportion with the number of their members. I also believe (again, quite strongly) that many of the acts were designed to precipitate additional acts by other groups and that these precipitated acts would not have happened without al Qaida being a catalyst. They might create a spectacular attack on a Shiite shrine and the next day attack some Sunnis in order to start open warfare between the groups. They light the fuse and then stand back to watch the fireworks resulting from it.

I firmly believe that the level of violence perpetrated by al Qaida in Iraq is not a linear relationship with the number of their members. So I am warning pundits, bloggers, talking heads of all stripe ... I am armed. I have a spring loaded dart gun that shoots darts with a suction cup on the end and if I EVER see anyone trying to minimize the impact of al Qaida in Iraq because of the number of people in that organization, I am going to let you have it. POW, right in the kisser or whatever I might hit that appears on my screen! Is that understood? Knock it off, it's silly.

HFM Caught Stealing

2006-06-10T16:22:00.000-07:00

HFM, the publisher of a new magazine called SHOCK and publisher of other magazines such as Car and Driver, Flying, Road and Track and several other titles has been caught stealing the art of blogger and photographer Michael Yon for the front cover of the inaugural issue of SHOCK.

The front cover carries a photograph of Maj. Mark Bieger carrying a wounded child in Iraq. This picture was apparently stolen electronically over the Internet and used as cover art. HFM has refused to recall the issue or compensate Mr. Yon for the artwork.

One would think that a media publisher would respect copyright law. Regardless of your stand on the events in Iraq, stealing of art for economic gain can not be tolerated. Please, click the button below to be taken to Mr. Yon's site where you will find several ways you can help.

Devotion

2006-06-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

There has been much published over the past several days concerning irregularities in some of the information from Haditha that prompted an investigation of actions of US troops there.

I have seen bloggers spending hours of their own time digging, fact checking, comparing, and publishing their findings for peer review and discussion. These are people that have jobs and other things in their lives that place demands on their time and energy but have answered what is apparently to them the call of an important mission, a call of duty.

While professional journalists should be doing the work that is being done by members of the general public in trying to get the story straight, we are already seeing results. Respected media giants such as Time are beginning to back off of some of their initial claims and distance themselves from initial sources.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am simply in awe. This spontaneous and most honest display of devotion by members of our community for our service members in seeing they get a fair shake is enough to make an old grouch misty.

Those troops are at risk every day defending us and it is wonderful to see such an outpouring of support when we have a chance to defend them in return. There are too many people out there doing whatever they can to list because I am afraid of leaving someone out and thereby diminishing their contribution, but they know who they are and honestly, it is events such as this that make me proud to be an American.

This is a real living example of the love and devotion America has for their armed forces members. If someone is going to make accusations that would bring dishonor on the institution of our military, they are going to need to run a gauntlet of ordinary Americans who are going to want to make darned sure they have done their homework first.

Unlike times not so far in the past, we now live in an America that really does support its troops, in both word and deed.

To those of you spending your own time and effort on this issue, I thank you with all my heart.

Iran: Brilliant US moves

2006-06-02T01:46:00.000-07:00

Originally posted in my RedState.com diary

This morning will dawn a little differently for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He will find the world has shifted in a way he probably didn't expect. He has before him today a united UN Security Council and a US offer of dialog. His attempt to drive a wedge between the US and Europe on the question of how to respond to Iran's unmonitored uranium enrichment has apparently failed as the US, Europe, and China have come together. They stand united in an agreement to offer Iran a path out of the corner they have painted themselves into.

One has to wonder if Ahmadinejad will feel betrayed by China and Russia for siding with the other permanent members of the Security Council. In any case, the ball is now on his side of the net and the world is watching his reaction. On a parallel track, Ahmadinejad's calls for dialog with the US in order to drive another wedge between the US President and the world opinion was also met in the affirmative, provided Iran meet its obligations to halt unmonitored enrichment. How could Bush appear unreasonable for asking only that Iran meet the obligations it had already agreed to in the past?

On one side we have a united security council and a calm Secretary of State. On the other side we have a president of Iran that has vowed several times that Iran will never stop their enrichment program. He has two balls in his court and, so far, appears to be facing an opposition that is calm, cool, collected, and not under fire in the court of public opinion. He now seems to have us right where we want him.

President Bush could not have hoped for a better outcome. The leverage at this point is clearly on our side. If Iran remains stubborn, it will appear that they, not us, are the ones being unreasonable in this situation. Already cracks are begining to form as comments trickle out from other Iranian politicians.

Internally, Iran is having economic problems and there is evidence of growing ethnic stife as the stresses of economic stagnation begin to heighten the sensativity of those lower on the economic ladder. At the same time, crackdowns by the government to force the population into an even more conservative proper "islamic" posture by imposing standards of dress even more restrictive than in the past are chafing an already irritated populace. Further irritations such as filtering outside internet access, monitoring SMS messages, and outlawing foreign travel are adding to the toll of misery faced by the people.

The one distraction that Ahmadinejad could rely on to turn people's attention away from the internal troubles has been the confrontation with the US. Attention on this issue is now focused on Iran and Ahmadinejad and not the US. We have shown restraint, we have worked with our allies, we have listened to their concerns and we have worked with them to create a unified front in the face of Iranian theatrics and the time has come for Iran to act and the world, including all of Iran, is watching.

Will he back down? Will he defy the UN? Either way it seems he is in a lose/lose situation and the fact that he even finds himself in this position to begin with must be costing him political capital at home. The Iranian people are more interested in better wages, more jobs, more import/export trade and making a better life for their children. They are not interested in testing the political will of foreign leaders for little gain and much potential loss. Will uranium enrichment clothe their kids, feed their family, give their father a job? To what extent does unmonitored uranium enrichment have the potential to improve their lives and to what extent does it have the potential to make things worse? These are the questions the Iranians themselves have been asking.

This morning might dawn on an Ahmadinejad who is realizing that he is quite possibly in serious foreign and domestic political trouble.

Very nice play, Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice!

2006-05-28T02:04:00.000-07:00

Thank you, American Heroes

2006-05-28T01:23:00.000-07:00

To all those that have given us everything they had to give, I thank you. There are those who are known, those who are unknown, and those known only to a select few. I thank you all. But this Memorial Day I would like to especially thank those whose graves will not be found in a national cemetery marked with a flag. There is nothing but a star to represent their sacrifice. We remember you and we thank you for your quiet service and devotion.

CBS News LIES - UPDATED

2006-05-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: After several hours with the incorrect information on their site, CBS finally decided to attribute the bribery investigation and allegedly corrupt Congressman to the correct party.

CBS news is reporting that the Louisiana Congressman caught on tape taking $100,000 and in whose freezer $90,000 of it was found is a Republican. He is a Democrat. The first two paragraphs of the article:

(CBS/AP) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller signaled they would resign this week rather than give in to Congress in a dispute over an FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson's Capitol Hill office, an administration official tells CBS News.

Top law enforcement officials at the Justice Department and the FBI indicated to their counterparts at the White House that they could not, and were unwilling to, return documents to the Louisiana Republican which were seized as part of a bribery investigation.

He isn't "the Louisiana Republican", he is "the Louisiana DEMOCRAT".

Liberal News Outlets in Trouble -- More Evidence

2006-05-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

I noticed a tiny little entry today on the UPI wire that I believe is evidence that the US News media is on its way to irrelevance due to the priority they place on their political agenda rather than reporting the news and giving a thoughtful analysis. Here is what it said:

Beginning June 6, Britain's The Times of London tabloid newspaper will begin publishing a northeastern U.S. edition.

The daily will be printed on New York Post presses, which is another holding of News Corp., and will target wealthy readers in the finance and media industries, or "the penthouse demographic," said Robert Thomson, editor of the Times.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch approved the plans for the U.S. edition, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Thomson said the offshoot was decided after it was realized several hundred copies were being flown to the U.S. northeast each day, along with the fact the Times' Web site receives three million unique U.S. hits each month.

Now imagine that. New York's "penthouse set" reading a foreign paper rather than the New York Times. What is it about The Times of London that might make it a desirable read? A lack of spin immediately comes to mind coupled with world class credibility. These are qualities the New York Times utterly lacks in the former and is losing in the latter.

Movers and shakers of the world, the people who engage in business decisions that impact billions of dollars, need an accurate picture of world events. They can not afford to base their business decisions on political spin and wishful thinking from political hacks posing as journalists publishing in a propaganda rag. They need accurate information and thoughtful analysis, not spin and clever syntax loaded with innuendo.

Like these "penthouse set" readers, I find I go more these days to the foreign press, albeit electronically. I find the coverage from outlets such as The Times of London and others to be refreshingly free of domestic US political spin and the analysis to be competent and insightful. As the major US papers become more interested in pushing their agenda than in reporting the news, more people are going to find themselves seeking alternatives. In today's electronic age competing papers are only keystrokes away. The notion that one could corner the information market by being the only paper in town is as obsolete as the dial telephone.

Circulation rates are falling among the old line major US papers. Papers such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times (hmm, why doesn't a Chicago paper immediately come to mind in that mix? I'll have to ponder that some.) are becoming less influential as the decision makers now dilute the influence of these papers with alternative news sources offering less spin and more objectivity. At the same time the number of people subscribing to hard copy Times of London and even domestic papers such as The Washington Times are increasing. It isn't limited to the print media either. People are turning away from the network news outlets and cable outlets such as CNN and MSNBC and turning to outlets such as Fox News. There was a time in the not so distant past when The Larry King Show was the number one cable news show. Larry King is now listed sixth in the latest ratings I have seen and all five higher rated shows are Fox News programs. Larry King is still number one at CNN but CNN is shedding viewers. Its influence is waning as the influence of alternative outlets grow. It is also interesting to note that Fox News happens to be owned by the same group that owns The Times of London. Interesting? You bet. Coincidence? I think not. News Corp is driven by profit, not ideology. They hire people having a broad spectrum of viewpoints, not all marching in lockstep to a particular political drum.

This shouldn't surprise anyone in a market based economy. If something is produced that is judged to be of inferior quality or utility, people will find alternative sources of supply that fill their needs. The news organizations need to ask themselves why they are in business. Being a political outlet is a perfectly valid model but it presents certain business challenges when you consider that in so doing you are probably alienating half the potential consumers of your product. You are likely to end up preaching to the choir. And if that choir has several outlets of the same propaganda from which to choose, you are only going to get a portion of that half of the potential consumer base. If you publish real news and analysis then you are a useful information source to people of every political stripe.

If one decides to take their product down the political propaganda route then one can expect the financial success of the enterprise to be a consideration secondary to getting the proper indoctrination to the readership. In fact, we are seeing this very issue with outlets such as Air America, who is rumored to be going out of business any day now and is shedding outlets, and The New York Times who has had their financial paper (bonds) downgraded two full grades this past week. So when I step back and look at the overall landscape I see The New York Times in financial trouble with declining circulation. I see The Times of London with circulation increasing in the US to the extent that they are going to publish here and that circulation apparently going mostly to the influential decision makers in the region of the new circulation. The conclusion I would come to is that The New York Times is not only losing its influence in the general population of the market they serve as evidenced by lower circulation numbers and financial trouble, it is also losing its influence among the powerful players in world economics. And the influential players in world economics are often very influential on the political process in this country.

ABC News LIES

2006-05-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

Earlier today ABC posted on their "The Blotter" blog site the following article that explicitly stated that the Speaker of the House of Representatives was under FBI investigation:

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress, ABC News has learned from high level official sources.

Federal officials say the information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbysists who are now cooperating with the government. Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government. The letter was written shortly after a fund-raiser for Hastert at a restaurant owned by Abramoff. Abramoff and his clients contributed more than $26,000 at the time.

The day Abramoff was indicted, Hastert denied any unlawful connection and said he would donate to charity any campaign contribution he had received from Abramoff and his clients.
A spokesman for Speaker Hastert told ABC News, "We are not aware of this. The Speaker has a long history and a well-documented record of opposing Indian Reservation shopping for casino gaming purposes."

This week, Hastert has been outspoken in his criticism of the FBI for its raid on the office of another congressman under investigation, Democrat William Jefferson of Louisiana.

"My opinion is that they took the wrong path, Hastert said of the FBI. "They need to back up, and we need to go from there."

Shortly after that, the Speaker's office demanded a retraction and the FBI stated that the Speaker was absolutely not being investigated. Soon after that ABC said they stood by the story and someone at ABC made an interesting comment. I read something to the effect that "the story was carefully written, perhaps it isn't being read carefully". I thought it was pretty clear in that the first sentence of the first paragraph said the speaker was being investigated so I went back and looked at the URL again. What I then found was a completely different story. Here is what I found that ABC was now "standing behind":

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.

The letter was written shortly after a fund-raiser for Hastert at a restaurant owned by Abramoff. Abramoff and his clients contributed more than $26,000 at the time.

The day Abramoff was indicted, Hastert denied any unlawful connection and said he would donate to charity any campaign contribution he had received from Abramoff and his clients.

A spokesman for Speaker Hastert told ABC News, "We are not aware of this. The Speaker has a long history and a well-documented record of opposing Indian Reservation shopping for casino gaming purposes.

"This week, Hastert has been outspoken in his criticism of the FBI for its raid on the office of another congressman under investigation, Democrat William Jefferson of Louisiana.

"My opinion is that they took the wrong path, Hastert said of the FBI. "They need to back up, and we need to go from there."

Notice how the first paragraph says only that the Speaker is "included" in the investigation. This certainly is a careful use of words and completely changes the meaning. The Speaker could be cooperating, assisting, mentioned in a document, almost anything. ABC went back and changed the story, all the while claiming to "stand behind" it. Also note that the FBI said very clearly that the Speaker is NOT under investigation.

ABC news and their "The Blotter" blog have no journalistic integrity. They will publish something that says one thing, then go back later and modify it to say something else later. What will the article say tomorrow? Will they delete it and try to claim they never published it in the first place? Who knows. What a bunch of Goobers!

Good News from the Long War

2006-05-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

It seems things are going very well in Afghanistan. Allied forces are pushing into areas we hadn't operated in before with good results. Over the past week or so, this increased pressure from NATO and Afghan forces have resulted in hundreds of Taliban dead and the capture of many others including some apparently high ranking figures. As perplexed as I am about our commercial media's portrayal of this as some sort of Taliban resurgence, the fact remains that what we are witnessing is our forces taking the initiative, moving into areas that had been avoided in the past and giving the resident Taliban a sound thrashing.

In Iraq, large weapons caches have been discovered, more "high value targets" have been detained and optimistic statements of security takeover by the government have been announced. One interesting even caught my eye today and that was the oil ministry again talking about getting foreign investments in infrastructure and development in place. It is nice to hear forward looking statements coming out of the various segments of the Iraqi government. Mohammad posting from Iraq on Iraq The Model blog mentions that the Iraqi party formerly known as SCIRI will now be known as SICI as they drop the word "Revolutionary" from their name. They have become "Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq" and Mohammed noted that he hopes it isn't long before the various groups begin to drop the word "Islamic" from their party names as they become more mainstream. Mohammed also reports that President al-Maliki has also called for "reactivating the Iraqi-Korean cooperation committee to give it a bigger role in Iraq's reconstruction".

The commercial media is still playing "Chicken Little" with frantic headlines such as "Armed groups propel Iraq toward chaos". They have been predicting "chaos" and "civil war" for months and Iraq still manages to move forward. I suppose that is par for the course for our "fake but accurate" media these days. It recalls an old George Carlin bit that went along the likes of "I call 'em like I see 'em and if I don't see 'em, I make 'em up!". Reporting the reality of the situation getting better or worse doesn't seem to be as important to them as getting people to believe they are getting better or worse. In this case worse. With the exception of the cities of Baghdad and Ramadi, everything I am hearing from Iraq from people actually there says things are getting better.

Word is that European countries are starting to keep an eye out for jihadis returning from Iraq as they abandon the lost cause there. That is also a good sign, in an unexpected kind of way. At least while they are in Western Europe they can be watched closely.

Yemen is starting to warily eye Somalia as they should. Somalia and the Palestinian territories are where al Qaida will be operating next. They have already started to stir up trouble in Gaza by planting bombs in order to foment trouble between Hamas and Fatah. Getting a war started between those two would be al Qaida's plan. I have to wonder, though, how much the Palestinians would take to outsiders coming in and killing Palestinians. That seems to be al Qaeda's method. They go into a country and start getting the people killing each other. In the end, it's the people they have come to "help" that end up paying the price and al Qaida never wins.

The Problem With Ethanol

2006-05-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

Many people have proposed that we use ethanol in our cars to replace a major product of oil use in this country. This solution has an emotional appeal on the surface but has some serious problems when one looks deeper into the issue. First of all there is this notion that the US Government can just waive a wand and people will suddenly be able to purchase ethanol based cars. Well, we have a market driven economy, not a centrally dictated economy. When and if it becomes cheaper to run cars on ethanol, we will. Car makers will produce the cars and other enterprising folks will produce the fuel.

Next comes the basic energy/cost issue. It would be currently more expensive to run cars on ethanol than it is on gasoline even with gas at $3.00 per gallon. A gallon of ethanol has less energy than a gallon of gas. In order to get the same energy production as 10 gallons of gas, you need 15 gallons of ethanol (alcohol). So a car burning ethanol will burn about 1.5 times as much fuel per mile driven as one burning gasoline. To go as far as $30 of gas would take you, you will need to spend over $40 for ethanol. Now there may come a time when gas is over $4.00 per gallon and ethanol will be cost effective. At that point there will be market incentive to produce ethanol vehicles and they will be produced.

Another problem is distribution. Gasoline can be transported via piplelines over long distances, ethanol can't, at least not without replacing our entire pipeline infrastructure. You see, ethanol absorbs water. This means that pipelines transporting ethanol are subject to corrosion. We would have to transport this ethanol by road or rail rather than by pipelines. This adds another inefficency in the distribution network.

Then there is the whole notion of having a fuel resource that is dependent on the weather. Have a major drought and your fuel supply goes away. If the fuel is produced from corn, in a drought year we will have to choose between food or fuel. If we are using sugar to produce our fuel, a hurricane can again demolish our production.

So what the ethanol supporters would want us to do is force auto makers to produce vehicles that use a more expensive fuel that might go away if we have bad weather. I have a better idea.

Lets go on a major nuclear electric program, convert our rail system completely to electric, drive electricity prices down to the point where commuter electric vehicles are much cheaper than gasoline vehicles, and go on a major high-speed electric passenger rail program of the scale of the Interstate Highway project. Even if OPEC shut the oil off to the US we would still be able to get to work, move freight, and visit grandma; even in a drought year.

Modern nuclear technology is much advanced from the 1950's and 1960's designs of currently operating plants. There is also technology that allows for the reprocessing of waste into new fuel and the transmutation of waste products into materials that decay in 300 years rather than tens of thousands of years. These technologies would allow us to convert depleted and natural uranium unto fuel without enrichment. We would not need to mine any uranium for over 100 years nor would we need to enrich any. These technologies are there, ready for us to use. Bill Clinton killed the Integral Fast Reactor project after a campaign waged by one John Kerry. This project would have allowed a fuel cycle whereby fuel would be recycled on site. The eventual waste being less than 10% of that created by current reactors and that waste needing to be impounded for only 300 years. Thanks Bill, thanks John.

There are better ways right at our fingertips. All we need is the will to put them into play.

Donate To Murtha's Opponent

2006-05-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

There isn't much those of us outside of Pennsylvania can do to remove John Murtha from office but one thing we CAN do is help his opponent. Send Diana Irey a donation, look on the right side of the web page for the "Contribute" link marked with the yellow star.

After what he did today, I can't imagine returning him to Congress. You don't comment on a UCMJ investigation in progess. Even if he is correct, he might have just caused some serious problems for any prosecution. Murtha needs to go.

Our Military Much Improved

2006-05-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

According to this report our military is in much better shape than it was 5 years ago.

I personally believe that Donald Rumsfeld is a genius. He is taking an engineering approach to building a modular military where different modules can be grouped together to configure a force that meets the threat du jour rather than the old model of having all our forces configured in large divisions to meet a cold war era threat. A couple of gems jump out of the report:

The Army is transforming from a structure of 48 brigades, none of which had stand-alone capability, to a force of 70 active and Reserve modular Brigade Combat Teams. "These more agile, lethal and more autonomous units can deploy and fight quickly with enough of their own firepower, armor, logistics and administrative assets to protect and sustain themselves over time," Rumsfeld said. This is leading to a significant increase in readily available combat power, he added.

Along with this one:

The Navy previously could deploy only three aircraft carrier strike groups at once, adding two more within 30 days. Today it can deploy six, and add another within 90 days.

And this one:

These changes all have come about, Rumsfeld said, while the U.S. military has been engaged actively in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and while deploying around the world to meet the asymmetric threat posed by terrorism.

I am suspecting that some of that criticism that Rummy has been getting has been due to his changing of the configuration of the military and rocking the boat when it comes to their careers. I can imagine that a guy with 20+ years in and thinks he has everything pretty much figured out might get a little pissed when someone comes in and changes all the rules in the space of only 5 years.

President Bush's Immigration Speech

2006-05-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Overall I thought the speech was superb. It covered all of my major points.

Catch and release -- no more
Barriers in rural areas -- done
Apply technology to border surveillance -- done
Beef up the Border Patrol -- done
In the meantime, put troops on the border in support roles to free up more Border Patrol for, well, patrolling the border.

He hit all the main points. I also support a guest worker program to legalize the illegals. We are going to need the Social Security tax as the boomers start to retire. We don't have enough youngsters in the pipeline to replace them. Immigrants will do the trick.

Immigration Isn't The Only Problem

2006-05-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

Scroll for updates.

I have just returned from a family event in a Western US state. During the course of my chats with various members of my extended family, I have come to realize that the issue facing us isn't completely about immigration when it comes to the illegal issue. Fully half the problem is with us, right here in America. Allow me to elaborate on a couple of conversations I had.

Family Member A is a college student at a university in a Western US city. He works in both summer and winter to provide himself with an income. In winter he is a snowmobile guide and in summer he works construction. Both jobs are "under the table" in that he gets paid cash, has nothing withheld, and gets no W2 or 1099. As far as the IRS and his employer is concerned, his labor doesn't officially exist. He pays no taxes on his income and his employer is not burdened with unemployment insurance premiums, workers compensation premiums, 1/2 of the social security tax and other withholding trouble.

Family Member B is a drywall contractor in another major Western US city. He owns his own business and employs several people. Most of his work comes from bids to developers who are building large developments. He provides benefits and does all the proper withholding. He is finding it nearly impossible to compete with other contractors employing "under the table" labor. Sure, some of those laborers might be illegals, but many aren't. These competitors will take anyone willing to work. The only reason my relative is still in business is because of his quality of work and it's reputation coupled with the fact that there are some high-end developments under construction that are willing to pay extra for "premium" labor.

Making the illegals legal isn't going to fix the problem as long as employers are willing to hire anyone and not withhold proper taxes and file required paperwork. Family member A is white as Wonder Bread His coworkers at his construction job are about 2/3 hispanics who speak little or no english and he suspects are here illegally. The other 1/3 are young folks like himself who found a summer job working "under the table". We must smash this culture of under the table employment if we are ever going to get a grip on the illegal immigration problem.

If employers right now decided to "legal up" in their employment paperwork, the illegal worker problem would become a much smaller issue. Business employers aren't the only ones doing it either. A good many regular individuals do too. Do you have someone who does some light housekeeping for you, watches your kids or cuts your grass? Have you ever provided a form 1099 for the money you paid them over the course of the year? If you pay them by cash or personal check, chances are good they aren't reporting the income on their taxes. Filing a form 1099 would notify the government of the money you have paid them. Check with the IRS, they can usually answer your question over the telephone.

It is a myth that illegals take jobs that other Americans won't do. They pretty much take what they can get and often work side by side with other Americans. Most often, illegals take "under the table" cash employment. If we could stop that practice, we could eliminate a lot of the incentive to come here in the first place. The practice of "under the table" employment is everywhere. Several years ago I knew of a single mother on welfare who worked "under the table" doing childcare for other working mothers. She also had a live-in boyfriend who paid most of the bills. Had those other women filed 1099 forms for the money they paid her, the state and federal government would have been aware of her true income and would have given her the opportunity to pay her share of taxes and probably reduced or eliminated her welfare payments because she was actually doing quite well for an unemployed single mom. In fact, I would venture to guess that a large number of American "unemployed" are actually working "under the table".

Look in the mirror, America. There's the problem.

UPDATE:

This ties in with another thing I have considered. A national sales tax would provide a means to tax the "under the table" economy. It wouldn't matter if you are pouring cement or running a meth lab, you are going to spend the proceeds of your undocumented income at some point. A national sales tax would tap that undocumented economy. Most areas already have a mechanism for collecting sales tax so we are talking a couple of percent increase and the state sends a cut to the feds. Simple. The cost of putting it into motion is minimal and I believe the resulting revenue would be beyond anyone's expectations. It is also a "progressive" tax because poor people spend a greater portion of their money on rent, utilities, and groceries which would be exempt. You could make it even more of a "progressive" rate tax by exempting home purchases up to the amount of the state median home price from sales tax. Rich people would most likely purchase homes much above the median why the lower income would buy homes closer to or below the median paying less or no sales tax.

Goss and the CIA

2006-05-08T00:25:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting a bit before making my comments on the Goss resignation issue. I am not going to speculate on the reasons, I am simply going to accept it as fact and look forward. The reason is that I don't have any information on why and I am hearing speculation all over the spectrum as to reasons why and none of it appears to come from anyone in a position to know. In short, as Goss himself said, "It's one of those mysteries".

What I do have a very strong opinion about is the comments from some people concerning a desire to keep the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) position civilian. Notwithstanding that there have been what, 6 past military directors, I have had some sympathy with the view that the DCI should be a civilian. All of that changed when the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) position was created as one of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. The traditional role of the DCI was set out in 1947 legislation. It described the position as follows (according to wikipedia):

The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947 with the signing of the National Security Act by President Harry S. Truman. The act also created a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) to serve as head of the United States intelligence community; act as the principal adviser to the President for intelligence matters related to the national security; and serve as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the National Security Act to provide for a Director of National Intelligence who would assume some of the roles formerly fulfilled by the DCI, with a separate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Now the functions that I feel should be executed by a civilian have been moved out of the CIA and is now the responsibility of the DNI. There has also been talk that even more functions of the CIA will be moved over to DNI such as the Directorate of Intelligence. The CIA is, according to many familiar with the intelligence community, in the process of being transformed into a clandestine service performing covert operations and HUMINT activities. In other words, collection and operations. The analysis and policy impacting output is moving to DNI which IS headed by a civilian.

So I am having a problem understanding the call for a civilian director. It makes sense if you have an "old" CIA but doesn't make much sense for a "new" CIA. It can be a military slot just as NSA, DIA and some other agencies are. Our elected officials can't be that dumb. Maybe they think we are? Maybe they are relying on a traditional understanding of the CIA in order to find some reason to come out against the president's choice.

I believe their goal is to simply come out against whatever choice President Bush proposes. This was an easy "handle" to grab onto but comes off in your hand once you dig into the issue. This is not the time to bicker over a CIA director. We need to get this issue closed up and get on with things. Dragging this out is not going to do anything to endear Congress to the American people.

Who do I think should be in charge there? Someone who has experience in intelligence but has no connection with CIA. The agency is going to undergo some serious surgery and someone with an attachment to the old structure is going to be less helpful.

The Trouble With The Media

2006-05-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

For the longest time there has been something that I haven't been able to figure out with the media. For most of my adult life, the media has been a fairly reliable reflection of the opinions and leanings of America. Sure, there would be the exception here and there. I would hear a story that I thought was "out there" or just an obvious job of political slant but those seemed to be the exception. For the most part the sentiment of the media reflected the sentiment of the people.

Then recently things took a major change in direction. Starting shortly after President Bush's election, nearly all of the media content seemed to take an extreme slant to the left. Looking closer, it wasn't' just the words of the reporters taking that slant, it was the words of the sources they were using in their stories. It seemed like nearly every source quoted was hammering on the administration or its policies. I got the impression going into the 2004 elections that Bush was toast. In fact, even the polling numbers the media was reporting showed Bush behind. But even that had me puzzled because the reporting of the media didn't seem to be anywhere near the polling numbers. While the press seemed 75 to 80 percent against Bush in their reporting, the polls numbers being reported had Kerry ahead by a few points. The reporting seemed to be more out of line with the sentiment of the people than at any time I could remember.

Then Bush won and the problem got WORSE. The press turned even more away from what appeared to be the sentiment of the population at large. At first I blamed the journalists and the media organizations thinking that it was obvious from their reporting that they had a political agenda to push onto the people. Lately, though, the more I dig into the issue, I am coming to the realization that our press has been hijacked. Major media outlets are being spoon fed sources and stories and events to report on. In fact, these events are being carefully orchestrated with the same group holding the strings. Today was one of those days. We had the Secretary of Defense being heckled at a press conference, Cindy Sheehan in Canada begging them to accept deserters, a column by Lt. Gen. William Odom and an interview with Lawrence Korb all on the same day. The fact is that all of these people are connected.

What has happened is that a relatively small cross section of the American political spectrum has been given access to the media that is greatly out of proportion with their numbers or their popularity. The effect is to make their political agenda seem much more popular than it really is. There is a public relations firm called Fenton Communications that is associated with a large number of political cells. Each of these cells is composed of a fairly small number of people, some of them are maybe a half dozen, sometimes a little more. Names such as Center for International Policy and Center for Economic and Policy Research and Fund for Peace and Institute for Policy Studies and Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and Iraq Policy Information Group and a bazillion others are all cut from the same cloth. You might recognize some names that have popped up in the news ... Dana Priest, reporter for the Washington Post. Her husband is associated with the Center for International Policy. That is where a woman named Mary McCarthy worked after she left the White House before returning to the CIA. A guy named Joe Wilson is the featured speaker for the Iraq Policy Information Group, a spinoff cell of the Center for International Policy. When these groups get too large or want to branch out into a different issue, they spin off a new cell.

What all these have in common is a PR firm called Fenton Communications. So does Cindy Sheehan and so does MoveOn.org. I found it interesting that just about all the people involved in Washington's latest news grabbing headlines are all connected to each other and have probably known each other for a long time. Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Dana Priest, Mary McCarthy, all are connected to organizations that themselves are interconnected. The common item to all of them is Fenton Communications.

In the course of my research, I discover that this isn't the first time a lot of this kind of stuff has happened. During the Reagan administration there was one freshman Senator Kerry who was holding hearings on our efforts to combat the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. There was a journalist involved named Martha Honey who seemed to be getting a lot of CIA leaked information. There was a group of CIA types called the VIPs who were seemingly on her side. Martha Honey is now with the Institute for Policy Studies.

What seems to be happening is that the PR agency, who claims to be "very selective" in who they take as clients (basically, you have to be anti-Republican) manages to get these people in front of journalists for interviews, get columns out, get events staged (like the Rumsfeld press conference today) and generally spoon feed the media with events, information, and message. Fenton Communications "owns" the anti-war and anti-Bush movements. They set the message, they set the information flow. They place it right into the journalists lap packaged exactly as they want it. The journalists are simply reporting what they see. They either don't know or don't care that what they see is being carefully managed.

One of the advantages of having so many groups working through one PR agency is that there is a certain economy of scale when it comes to information. They can make sure the various groups reinforce each other to an extent. Validate each other's messages, not work at cross purposes, incorporate each other's buzzwords when applicable. "Mother" Cindy Sheehan is "Peace Mom". They all "Speak Truth to Power".

The net result is that a very small group of people gets a very large percentage of the media coverage. What did getting fired mean to McCarthy? She was "days away" from retiring anyway. It isn't like her career is ruined. Joe Wilson is making more on the speaking circuit than he would ever make as a government employee and Valerie Plame is today looking at a book deal.

Our media has been hijacked. Fenton Communications apparently "owns" the Associated Press, the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post when it comes to getting their message out. The second stringers then pick up the stories from the lead outlets. Our journalism trade has gotten lazy. There are few real reporters left. The few that are left will gladly take information that is laid in their lap and everyone else repeats it.

The bottom line is that the political message from the main media no longer reflects the opinions of the American people as a whole. The opinion of the population is more divided. An accurate representation would result in more debate in the articles in our mainstream media. There would be more pro-Administration viewpoints, about evenly divided. The result of this drift away from the opinions of the people is a drift by the people away from the media. People are coming to the conclusion that the media doesn't reflect their opinions on their own. The media can only publish propaganda for so long and the people either buy it or they don't. Apparently we aren't buying it. This is pushing people into other forms of information exchange such as blogs and media outlets that haven't allowed themselves to be hijacked in this manner (Fox News might be an example of that). Those outlets are seeing an increase in popularity. It isn't that the people aren't interested, they just aren't interested in "artificial news".

It is high time that the commercial news media in this country spoke truth to power, and that power is the people who digest their content. If they aren't honest, they will find themselves abandoned because we have alternatives in this age, and it appears that we are using them.

Gasoline Price Primer

2006-05-04T02:24:00.000-07:00

Many don't understand why rising oil prices directly mean rising gasoline prices. Some think that even though the market price of oil is up, it doesn't cost the oil company any more to get it, they are producing it, not buying it on the market. To understand why rising market crude prices also mean oil companies have to charge more for gasoline, let's use an eBay example.

This is a from a post I made in a comment at Flopping Aces but I decided to copy in here in my own blog:

Let's say you have a well in your yard and a pump and you can get 10 barrels of oil a day out of it. It costs you 10 dollars to pump and deliver a barrel of oil. You put the oil on eBay to sell it. As people bid on the oil, the price goes up. People buy your oil for $15 dollars a barrel and you make $5 per transaction and life is good. Now some kids named China and India that have only been buying one or two barrels a day from you decide they need more. You are still only pumping 10 barrels a day. This means they must outbid other people for the oil. Now your oil auctions settle for $50 a barrel and you make $40 per transaction and life just got better.

Now lets say I decide to make gasoline out of one of my barrels and sell that instead of selling crude. The people that don’t know economics are going to say fine, it costs you $10 to pump the oil, you don’t need to raise the price of gas. Back to eBay …

Lets say you can produce bolts of fabric for $10 and are selling them on eBay and they are bringing $20 so you make $10 each. Now lets say your fabric becomes very popular and it is now selling for $70. You have also been using one bolt a day to make socks. You were selling raw fabric for $20 and you were making enough socks so you were getting $30 for the socks you could make out of that bolt of fabric. So after your wear and tear on equipment and your labor, you made what you thought was a fair profit on the gasoline, ehm, I mean socks.

Now your bolts of fabric are bringing $70. Are you going to sell a bolt’s worth of socks for $30? Are you going to spend all that labor and equipment cost to LOSE $40 a bolt compared to what you could just sell the crude for without refining it … I mean fabric for without sewing it?
No, of corse not. You are going to raise the price of your socks so that you make at least as much on the cloth from socks as you could selling the raw cloth … so the price of gasoline … I mean SOCKS goes up.

My Take on Mr. Bill Keller (NYT)

2006-05-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

There is something that so bothers me in what Mr. Keller said in his response to Opinion Journal that I just have to say it now. There is this myth that is going around that the press was somehow hard on Bill Clinton. While it may be fine to go around saying that, saying it doesn't make it true.

The press softballed Clinton. They reproduced items brought out by other investigations but you never saw any hard "bird dog" reporting against Clinton from the likes of The Washington Post or The New York Times. They were more likely to print information against Ken Starr or when someone came forward to present information that made Clinton appear to look bad, the major media seemed to aim their investigative guns at the person bringing the information forward. Some of the people that exposed Clinton's actions in Arkansas were publicly humiliated in the press. The media wasn't at all hard on Clinton. That is one myth that needs to go. The press did everything they could to make what Clinton did seem like "no big deal" and making the Republicans look like they were getting all upset about nothing. This is the same press that gets all bent out of shape about a perjury indictment of Scooter Libby, but told everyone that a perjury indictment against Bill Clinton was "just politics".

What about the White House requesting the personal information files from the FBI of possibly up to 900 people, many who had served in the Reagan and Bush administrations? The media played it like there was nothing to it, just a big Republican conspiracy to make a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah? What if Bush requested the FBI background investigation files of Democrats serving under Clinton? There would be no end to the wailing. How soon people forget.

There, that little bit has been bothering me for years. I'm glad I got it off my chest.

Mr. Keller, you are not being honest. Not to the people and maybe not even to yourself.

How many articles have been published in your paper on the scubject of "Scooter" Libby over the past month? What's the count of articles whose main subject is Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV)? What's the count of articles whose main subject is Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)?

The plain fact of the matter is that your publication and your industry don't treat both parties equally. I have no trouble with a paper having a political slant but I do have a problem with the entire industry having a specific political slant. To pen a reply such as this as your response is patronizing to the extreme.

I might even be able to let you off the hook with the thought that maybe you don't even realize you are doing it. You are probably so sensative to any negative information at all about Democrats that even the slightest criticism "feels" as strong to you as the way Republicans are treated in the paper. To me the issue isn't so much about patriotism as it is about a trade I once respected as being an important strength of this nation now being corrupt and not caring if they damage our country in their haste to influnce Americans in the next election cycle. Our media would cause other countries to stop sharing intelligence information with us for years to come so the Democrats might have a better chance in the next election.

It would help if you had some balance. Maybe the major media could actually hire some articulate conservatives rather than hiring a token conservative who makes all on the right look like raving dumbasses. How about this novel idea ... how about half of your staff writing from the conservative viewpoint? It might actually help increase your readership. Democrats can find dozens of papers that validate their view. Other than the Washington Times, the other 50% of the population have no place to go but the Internet. Why do you think Fox News has high ratings? They are the only TV outlet that doesn't go out of its way to make Republicans look bad, that's why. And last time I looked, there were about as many Republicans in this country as Democrats. So Democrats have dozens of stations to choose from, Republicans have one that doesn't have to include the obligatory jab in every news story.

You don't have to lean toward anyone, just don't lean against anyone either. Speak truth to the power that buys your product (or isn't these days, as the case may be). The damage these leaks have done goes far beyond domestic politics. Countries may now be reluctant to share intelligence with us about a terrorist group moving into our country because they worry about it leaking and causing their source of information on the group to go away ... leaving them blind to the threat. When it comes to us or them, a foreign government is always going to consider their own interests before ours. The ironic part is, that if such a thing should ever happen, rather than blaming themselves for it, the press would try to blame "the Bush administration".

How many have to die, Mr. Keller, before you guys shut your mouths when it comes to intelligence information in time of war? Evidently 3,000 in New York wasn't enough. There are channels that can be used if the intelligence community is doing something wrong. Did you consider taking the information before a few members of the Congressional oversight committees first? You could have done that and published that you had done that to put pressure on the committee to respond without publishing the actual information if it is really change that you want. But it isn't really change that you want, is it Mr. Keller? What you really want to do is damage the Republicans and you can only do that by putting information out to the public that makes the Republicans look bad. Giving the information to Congress and pushing for action might get the situation corrected, but that wouldn't really satisfy you, would it? Now what you have done is damaged our nation's ability to obtain information from other countries for many administrations to come, no matter who is president. Last time I looked, our nation was composed of Democrats too. If a Democrat is elected in 2008 are rogue officers expected to leak information damaging to that administration to the Washington Times and Fox News? We don't want to start down the road of playing politics with our intelligence community because the end result is that it makes them useless. But looking at the agenda of some of John Kerry's friends, for example, making our intelligence community useless seems to be what their long term goal is anyway so I suppose to them it isn't much harm.

But most of all, I would think you would resent your publication and your profession being used by a third party for their own purposes. Dana Priest of the Washington Post isn't the first to be used in such a manner. Martha Honey is now associtaed with the Institute for Policy Studies. She was part of a very similar "operation" during the Reagan administration. PR Agencies such as Fenton Communications are setting the media agenda. These are the people that are feeding the sources to your journalists and deciding what your reporter is going to hear and how they are going to hear it. These are the people that are actually deciding your agenda. All you are doing is spell checking their work. You are being used and either don't know or you don't care. People are wise to it these days and are abandoning your information stream in droves. Not long ago we didn't really have a choice of where our information came from. Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, all cut from the same cloth. But we do have a choice now, Mr. Keller. Welcome to the 21st Century.

I'll spell check it later ... myself. :)

The Amnesty Dilemma

2006-05-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

The issue of amnesty for people in this country illegally is not as easy to solve as simply giving them amnesty and a path to citizenship. In fact, doing these things might actually hurt the people who are here illegally now. Many people are "thinking" with their emotions and not using their brains. Let's think this through:

If I have a business and I hire illegal labor at low rates, what happens when that laborer becomes legal? I must now withhold social security tax as well as pay 1/2 of that worker's social security tax out of my own pocket. I must withhold federal and state income taxes, I must pay workers comp. and state unemployment premiums and finally, I must pay my worker the minimum wage. Any economic benefit of hiring the illegal has now evaporated and it is just as expensive to employ them as any other worker.

If the laborer is a day laborer, they must now file quarterly income tax as a self-employed person. They must pay both halves of their social security tax, fund their own medical insurance, plus pay all federal, state, and local taxes on their income and property. The effect of this is that they will need to raise their labor rate to compete. Again, the advantage of being an "illegal" and working for less money has just evaporated.

But the worst part is what comes next. By failing to secure the border, millions of new illegals cross and begin to work "under the table" forcing the newly legal workers out of their jobs and into the unemployment line. All amnesty has accomplished at that point is to create a new crop of illegals and increased unemployment among the formerly illegal workers who decided to "legal up".

This exposes the true goal of what the illegals really want. What they want is to be free from worry about deportation and they want access to all the benefits that come to people here legally but I do not believe they are wanting to accept all the responsibilities that come with those rights. Once they pay their share of taxes and employers must cover them with benefits, their economic advantage is gone. I really don't think that is what they want.

Until the border can be secured to prevent waves of new illegal immigration coming here to undercut the wages of the newly legal, amnesty has no chance.

We need a wall. Not a Berlin Wall with only a couple of checkpoints, but a border control wall with lots of manned checkpoints with multiple lanes so that legal immigration, trade, and tourism can flourish unimpeded. Closing off remote desert border access does nothing to adversely impact legal trade. The only people crossing in those locations are illegal migrants or people moving illegal cargo. Such a wall would stop both. Until such a wall is in place, there is no point to giving anyone amnesty as their gains will be short lived as their jobs are, in turn, taken away by a newer crop of illegal migrants.

More good news from Iraq

2006-04-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

Today we have reports that 7 Iraqi insurgent groups are close to reaching a deal with the Iraqi government and the Multinational Forces to lay down their arms and participate in the political process. I have also noted that the daily rate of violence in Iraq is much reduced over the past week relative to the preceding three weeks of the month. It seems Iraq's "slide to civil war" as the press likes to call it has not only managed to stop but reverse itself in only a couple of weeks.

I watched with almost a chuckle as the major media trotted out one person after another who offered the "civil war" scenario. Nevermind that April's casualty rate, though high, was still below that of the last two weeks of March. It was as if the media so dearly wanted there to be civil war that they had to find as many sources as possible to try to validate and reinforce that conclusion. If anyone who is anyone wanted to get some print space in the papers in April, all they had to do was discuss "civil war" in Iraq. Suddenly that talk is nowhere to be seen. As if it never happened.

There was an article published today on Strategy Page that while true, seems to miss a more general point. Each of the items presented in the essay by Harold C. Hutchison are true but there are some overall sweeping issues that I think are more important. In order to understand them, you have to understand a little background first.

Al Qaida wants to radicalize Muslims to bring about the supremacy of a Salafist form of Islam and create a Caliphate. The idea is to provide resources to bring about the overthrow of existing governments and have those nations join a pan-Islamic Caliphate ruled by someone they (al Qaida) approve of. The way they have managed to try this is to inject themselves into countries that are already in a struggle and have a weak central government. Somalia was a good example of this. In Somalia, al Qaida aligned forces eventually resulted in a UN retreat but they have not been victorious in winning the government of that country. The struggle continues there today with the sharia based forces fighting traditional warlords for control of the country. In fact al Qaida has not managed a single victory anywhere on the planet. They have won some battles, but they have not won a single one of the wars they have chosen to fight.

After Somalia came Afghanistan. Afghan forces had succeeded in pushing out the Russians but now there was significant infighting between various warlords and strongmen for control. The central government was weak and Afghanistan was practically in a state of perpetual civil war. Enter al Qaida and the Taliban. The country had all of al Qaida's criteria ... it was a Muslim country, it had a weak central government, it was in chaos. al Qaida had an ally in the religiously extreme "Taliban" who had considerable experience fighting the Russians. It was gambled that the people would be sufficiently tired of the constant fighting that they would accept a religious based government as a compromise. Who could argue with Islam? It wasn't a political philosophy and it promised to restore order and give them some peace from the fighting. The Taliban began to push the other warlords out and made considerable progress. Note that this process was still not complete when 9/11 came around. There were still considerable parts of Afghanistan that were not under Taliban control. Osama made a huge mistake in the timing of 9/11 by not waiting for complete Taliban control of Afghanistan, the consolidation of that control, and the implementation of a Caliphate. Had those steps been completed, al Qaida would have had a success under their belts and an operating Caliphate for groups in other countries to strive to join. Instead, Allied forces working with those fighting the Taliban smashed the regime in a few short weeks. Al Qaida has nothing but a second defeat (after the failure to win Somalia) to toss on it's growing heap of defeats.

Now the US moves on Iraq. After smashing the regime of Saddam Hussein, the country falls into the pattern perfect for al Qaida meddling. There is a weak central government, the country is fractured, the infrastructure is crippled and the place is lousy with infidels. al Qaida just couldn't help but stick its nose into the fight and they did. Again with only grand promises to offer and not a single success to hold up as a model, they begin a brutal campaign of intimidation of the local population under the guise of fighting foreign invaders. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq had not suffered years of civil war and strife between factions. They had a national history and a national identity that was stronger than the more tribal identities in Afghanistan. Iraq has its divisions, to be sure, but there is a stronger Iraqi identity than there was any national identity in Afghanistan. In order to foster the chaos required to gain acceptance as a provider of peace and control, al Qaida in Iraq set out on a cultural arson campaign designed to inflame public opinions of various sectarian groups. Al Qaida would attack Shiites to inflame them against the Sunnis and they would attack Sunnis who didn't agree with al Qaida's vision. Al Qaida seemed to be fighting to the last Saudi college student in its suicide bombing campaign. But there was a major problem. The Iraqis themselves weren't buying into it.

As al Zarqawi killed more and more Iraqis, the people began to pull away from him. Resentment grew of his thugs intimidating the townspeople in villages they controlled. Then there was the military problem. Al Qaida in Iraq was unable to field any kind of effective force against the Allied forces in Iraq. Their window of opportunity began to close as the new Iraqi army, it it's second incarnation began to gain control. Now, increasingly, al Qaida found itself in battles against Iraqis. Again, it seems that al Qaida in Iraq is killing more Iraqis than foreigners. Then comes Fallujah. Zarqawi suffers a crushing defeat and runs away. Not long after that come operations in western Iraq. Again, a string of defeat after defeat. All the while they are unable to disrupt the timetable of Iraq's march to a permanent government. When a united Iraqi population marched to the polls in the last election, the signal was clear that al Qaida had been defeated. The rest was just a matter of time. Defeat number three.

Where to now? Palestine. The financial troubles of Hamas appears to be placing the Palestinian territories in the state that al Qaida needs to begin to meddle. There is a weak central government and factions within the governed area in a struggle for control. The conditions are being set for another al Qaida interference operation in the Palestinian authority. Al Qaida now simply needs to spark civil war so it can come "riding to the rescue" in its mind ... but in reality "riding to defeat" if the past is any indication of the future.

Al Qaida does not have a single overall success to point to. They can point to a large tally of dead, but that is about it. Osama's biggest blunder was in pulling the trigger on 9/11 at least a year too soon. Had he allowed the Taliban to gain total control, had he established his Caliphate, had he allowed his fighters to rest, re-train, be re-equipped, he might have stood a chance in Somalia. Having a real entity to fight and die for is motivating. People tire of fighting for empty promises. Without a 9/11 operation there would have probably been no Iraq operation or at least less urgency about it. Al Qaida would have had time to consolidate both physically and ideologically. The error was in failing to anticipate that the US would intervene in Afghanistan so quickly after 9/11 and eliminate the Taliban while creating a government in Afghanistan that is surprisingly united.

Not only has the US won, but al Qaida is in tatters. It's promises broken, its dreams unrealized. They have failed utterly and completely. And THAT is the message our media should be spreading.

Iran's judgment Day plan

2006-04-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

I happened to notice a thread on Little Green Footballs on the subject of an Iranian plan they call judgment Day in case of attack by the US. The article quoted by LGF is from Asharq Alawsat's website. Let's take this apart a little, shall we?

First of all there is something at the end that bears talking about.

According to the source, in case the US military attacks continue, more
than 50 Shehab-3 missiles will be targeted against Israel and the al Quads
Brigades will give the go-ahead for more than 50 terrorists cells in Canada, the
US and Europe to attack civil and industrial targets in these countries.

What about the last stage in the plan?

Here, the Iranian source hesitated before saying with worry; this
stage might represent the beginning of a world war, given that extremists will
seek to maximize civilian casualties by exploding germ and chemical bombs as
well as dirty nuclear bombs across western and Arab cities.

These last two paragraphs should give pause to countries in Europe and across the Arab region. If this is Iran's true plan, they have just threatened Europe and the Arabs with the use of chemical and biological weapons. If anything, this comment has probably given cause for Europe and other Arab countries to support us in efforts to assist Iranians in changing their government. These statements haven't won Iran any friends in the global arena. This admission, if this information is really coming from someone who knows what they are talking about, admits to possession of chemical and biological weapons and a willingness to use them on their neighbors.

But I have reasons to doubt that this source really has access to any strategic Iranian plans. The items mentioned as a response do not appear to be part of an overall strategic plan. They appear to be an assemblage of tactics that are based on situations and capabilities that are disjointed in their usefulness. While some of these tactics could be undertaken now, some will need to wait until a point in the future. And when those other future capabilities are ready, the window of opportunity on some earlier ones will have closed so these "responses" can't be read as a timeline of events in how Iran would respond.

Lets start at the top:

1- A missile strike directly targeting the US bases in the Persian Gulf and
Iraq , as soon as nuclear installations are hit.

So here we are talking about attacks on Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Iraq. While there are currently a large number of personnel in Iraq, the numbers will begin dropping soon. An attack by Iran, depending on when it occurs, could be seen as more of an attack on Iraq than on the US. The other countries I mention would probably take any such attack by Iran as an attack on their own country and respond accordingly. These countries have some significant capabilities, particularly in their air forces. Iran would be subject to counter-attack from the air forces of a half-dozen different countries.

2- Suicide operations in a number of Arab and Muslim countries against US
embassies and missions and US military bases and economic and oil installations
related to US and British companies. The campaign might also target the economic
and military installations of countries allied with the United States .

Again Iran is threatening their Arab neighbors with attacks on their soil. Has Iran consulted with those neighbors? Somehow I don't think so. Jordan would probably not be pleased, neither would Saudi Arabia be interested in seeing Iran (again) undertake terrorist attacks on US targets on Saudi soil. If this is truly the strategic plan of Iran, then their Arab neighbors have just been placed on notice to watch any activity by Iranians and Iranian allied groups all the more closely.

3- Launch attacks by the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi
fighters loyal to Iran against US and British forces in Iraq , from border
regions in central and southern Iraq .

This item is fleeting. It supposes that there will be a large number of US and British forces in Iraq when this scenario plays out. This would mean Iran expects this scenario to come about in the next 2 years or less. Also, this will be seen by Iraq as a direct attack on them from Iran.

4- Hezbollah to launch hundreds of rockets against military and economic targets
in Israel .

This statement, if true, should provide additional incentive for the government of Lebanon to begin disarming Hezbollah. I do not believe Lebanon wants to get involved in any scenario where Iran fights to the last Lebanese. In other words, all number 4 accomplishes is getting a lot of Lebanese killed and probably gets their country invaded by Israel. This is Iran saying that Lebanon is simply a pawn on their chess board. While that might be true to some extent, I don't believe that situation is likely to continue much longer as Lebanon has already made noises that they intend to throw off the outside influences as much and as quickly as possible. They have already begin to intercept weapons shipments to Hezbollah and there are calls for the disarming of Hezbollah that are increasing in both frequency and volume.

According to the source, in case the US military attacks continue, more
than 50 Shehab-3 missiles will be targeted against Israel and the al Quads
Brigades will give the go-ahead for more than 50 terrorists cells in Canada, the
US and Europe to attack civil and industrial targets in these countries.

This part seals it for me that the person that is the source of this article is not a general officer nor does this person have any military training. The source is political. Notice how the "more than 50" number appears twice. For some reason it rings of a "rectal extraction" and not a real number. I also don't have any reason to believe Iran has 50 Shehab-3 missiles deployed in fireable condition. The Shehab-3 is a modified Scud. It's performance and accuracy is suspect. It is liquid fueled. This launch threat depends on the rocket fuel still exsiting after initial attacks and follow-on attacks from not only US forces but practically every air force in Europe and much of the Arab world if Iran has made good on the earlier threats and launched attacks there. Also, this item carries an admission of "more than 50 terrorist cells". Thank you very much, we shall now go about discovering and neutralizing them. And even if some still exist when such a scenario plays out, giving a cell the "green light" is one thing. Its ability to then acquire its weapons and coordinate an attack is something else. If they already have their weapons secreted away, they are subject to discovery ... starting right about now (again, thanks for tipping us off) if they don't have them already, they are going to need to get them somehow. A Iranian going around looking for a load of ammonium nitrate in the middle of a war with Iran is likely to be noticed.

Overall, I think the article is horsecrap. I believe it is bluster from some middle-level diplomatic or government source. If this really is the strategic plan of Iran, it has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese and relies on a lot of wishful thinking.

The larger question is "why is Iran talking like this?". I have my suspicions. First of all, someone would be quite stupid to lay out their actual plans. I believe the reason for Iran's bluster recently is that they want to keep a large US presence in the Persian Gulf region for political purposes. They want to rattle the saber enough to keep US troops from leaving Iraq figuring that every additional month that US troops are in Iraq in large numbers weakens the US politically and economically. The US leaving Iraq would telegraph a significant victory and Iran would rather not see that come to pass. I believe that is also the reason behind this statement:

The source also said that the military training camps of the Guards were
opened for the fighters of the Mehdi army in Iran to receive the necessary
training. Iran had also increased its financial assistance to Moqtada al Sadr to
more than 20 million dollars.

I believe the real reason for all this talk is to cause the strategic planners in the US from withdrawing from Iraq and pin down a large number of troops there that can not rest, be re-equipped, and re-trained for an attack on Iran. It is in Iran's interest to keep as many US forces as possible pinned down in Iraq for as long as possible and at the same time cause friction between us and those countries providing us with bases in the region. In other words, this "leak" is propaganda. It has a purpose and that purpose is to sow the seeds of uncertainty in the minds of our planners and our allies in the region. I believe it has backfired. If anything it will cause other countries in the region to see Iran as the threat and cause them to work more closely with us in getting a change in government in Iran.

The source was probably right about one thing. When Iran deploys the final piece to it's "response" there probably would be a "world war" but it would most likely be the world against Iran.

We almost got Zarqawi, again.

2006-04-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

9 days before Zarqawi released his first videotape in months, the US Special Operations unit TF-145 nearly nabbed him. This article at the Armed Forces Journal is a must read. You learn that we have been close to capturing him several times. Once, thanks to intelligence provided by an Arab American member of the task force, we nearly got him in an ambush. He was only saved by being a few minutes late to the kill zone and again by a hardware glitch on a UAV.

What I find most heartening is this information:

But a key difference between this campaign and previous ones has been that Delta, which runs TF 145, has the authority to launch missions immediately based on raw intelligence. In the past, he said, Delta had never been able to do that; instead, it would have had to bring intelligence material back to the rear and have it analyzed before striking again.
Now, the source said, "People have bought off on Delta's methodology". TF 145 describes this fusion of operations and intelligence as "the unblinking eye,"said a Special Forces lieutenant colonel.
TF 145's success has been Zarqawi's loss, a special ops source said. His senior lieutenants used to be foreigners, but not anymore; TF 145 and its predecessors killed or captured them alldoesn'tHe doesn't have a foreigner working for him anymore " most of them are Iraqis. We've either captured or killed all of his foreign influence."
The foreign terrorists still coming into Iraq from Syria, he said, "are suicide bombers only, "Muslims on Spring Break." They come in through Syria, get a week of training, "Here, this is an RPG, come down and strap a bomb on them."

So we are now able to go after a target and if anything develops during the course of that operation pointing to a follow-on target, we can move immediately. That must be causing some serious heartburn for Zarqawi and his band of merry men.

But the article also points out some problems. We know about al Qaeda people in other countries that we can not reach for political reasons. We can not operate in Pakistan for political reasons. Since we can not run operations directly against Osama, we run them against the people we can reach and right now, that is Zarqawi. I wish the members of TF-145 godspeed and good hunting.

Oil prices, again

2006-04-28T02:07:00.000-07:00

It is very important that people understand that oil companies do not set oil prices. Imagine you have an oil well. Let's say it costs you $10 to get a barrel of oil to market. You take that oil to market and people bid on it. If the highest bidder is $20, you make $10 on each barrel. If a new buyer (say, China) comes into the market and starts buying a lot of oil, that barrel might now bring $50. You now make $40 on that same barrel. Your profits increase because the cost to bring that oil to market is about the same. It is the same hole in the ground being pumped by the same pump with the oil going over the same pipeline. Costs didn't increase but the value of the product did.

What does all that mean? It simply means that this is a great time to be in the oil production business. Increased oil prices mean that you can now afford to pump oil that costs $30 to bring to market. Higher prices result in a greater supply. Oil companies are currently drilling in the Gulf of Mexico at a furious rate. This huge profit from increased oil prices mean that companies can sink more wells.

People who blame oil companies for the price of oil don't understand how markets work. A farmer does not set the price of wheat but when the price of wheat goes up, he makes more money. This allows him to plant more wheat, which increases the supply. If the price of wheat were to triple, farmers would do very well and the price of bread would go up. Should we then go after farmers and accuse them of fixing the price of bread or "price gouging"? The farmer doesn't set the price. The price is what he gets at the market. The same goes for oil. It is traded on commodity exchanges. Whatever price oil brings is what the company gets. It is like a big eBay auction. If everyone wanted Cabbage Patch dolls and people on eBay bid up the prices so that Cabbage Patch dolls brought $200 each, would it be fair to pass an extra tax on sellers of the dolls just because people are willing to pay more for them? Is it the seller's fault that the buyers will pay more?

Whenever government gets involved in markets, it ends badly. They end up creating artificial conditions that do not reflect supply or demand and cause problems for either the producer or the buyer. Introducing market inefficiency hurts the end user in the long run. If you tax the oil producer, you extract funds that could go to exploration or increased production and do nothing to reduce prices. If you cap prices, you force people to sell the oil in a different uncapped market. The major oil companies are HUGE. For Exxon, US consumption represents about 10 percent of their global business. Fuel prices are hitting highs globally, not just in the US. Capping prices here simply means that people wont sell their products here resulting in shortages. Again, it causes a market inefficiency.

The best thing we can do is let the market decide. As prices rise, car makers will make more efficient vehicles and people will buy them causing a change in the amount of oil demanded. Makers might also start making alternative fuel vehicles if oil prices rise enough to make those alternatives competitive. Making alternative fuel vehicles will cause a change in the nature of demand. Both of these things will cause the demand/supply ratio to change and act to moderate oil prices. On the supply side, higher prices means more exploration, more drilling, more oil brought to market and again, these things will act to moderate prices.

Nobody likes to pay more at the pump. But please, lets not act on our emotions. Lets think and use our brains and reason our way through this.

Iraq, the war is over.

2006-04-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

The war in Iraq is for all practical purposes overwith and it is time people realized this fact. While I do understand there are still service members fighting and dying, from a strategic standpoint the war is over and we won. There is no longer any single dominant entity engaged in any large scale fighting. What we see these days are smaller actions by a number of individual political factions. Mostly these factions are fighting among themselves or trying to make political points with the population.

Today was a very important day. The prime minister under the previous Iraqi government, Mr. al-Jaafari, has decided to place his nomination for the position in the new government back into the hands of the alliance of parties that initially nominated him. It was a thin nomination at the time, too. al-Jaafari won by only a single vote. Since that time both the Sunnis and the Kurds have refused to vote for his confirmation while al-Jaafari has stubbornly refused to back down from the nomination resulting in deadlock. Today we finally have a glimmer of hope that this deadlock will be broken. The parliament will meet again on Saturday. It is my belief that we are seeing the beginning of peace in Iraq.

I was very dismayed today by the results of some polls. The results show the degree to which the people of this country are misinformed. It is understandable as our news media has failed our nation but increasingly so are the bloggers. Firstly there is this preoccupation with Bush's approval numbers. Odd because Bush isn't running for office. His numbers really don't mean anything. Even more amazing is the reason. People claim it is because of Rumsfeld. If Rumsfeld were replaced right this instant, it wouldn't make even a tiny bit of difference in how quickly the political process in Iraq moves forward. Well, it might, but that would be a bad thing if it did. Rumsfeld is allowing Iraq to come to it's own solution. We absolutely HAVE to do it that way. If we impose a solution upon them it will fall apart the moment we leave. If we are to expect a lasting government in Iraq, it has to be formed their own way through their own decisions and their own actions. Replacing Rumsfeld might have made a difference two or three years ago but we are practically finished with the job at this point. We are simply maintaining security while the Iraqis form their government. Their army is taking over more of the responsibility each week that passes. The time is long past for making any changes in the military strategy in Iraq. It won't make any difference. We have already won the military battle. The current battle is political.

Here is what I expect to play out over the next few months:

al-Jaafari will be replaced as nominee for PM. A new nominee might or might not have the support of al-Sadr with his Mahdi Army. If it doesn't have al-Sadr's support but does gain enough support for confirmation, there will be a bit more fighting as al-Sadr gets his revenge for loss of status in the alliance. The best of all worlds is a candidate that has the support of all factions of the Shiite alliance and the Sunnis and Kurds can support. My take is that this is a 40% chance of happening. I would give a 60% chance of al-Sadr being shoved out of the alliance and some additional infighting until he accepts his new position in the Shiite pecking order. He has been seen as a troublemaker by many other Shiites for quite some time and is also seen by many as an Iranian proxy.

Once a government is installed there will likely be one final security push to disarm militias and then our troops will start coming home in large numbers. The mix of troops will change from mainly combat troops to mainly logistics and training forces. Eventually these will be drawn down too, but that will take a year or so as the Iraqi infrastructure is rebuilt.

My guess is that by the time the mid-term elections come around this fall, our troops will be much lower in strength than they are now. The only thing delaying this has been the deadlock surrounding al-Jaafari. This situation went much longer than it should have. I think they are going to get it sorted out over the next week or two.

We have won, it is now up to the Iraqis themselves. It took us years to do in our own country what it is taking only months to do in Iraq. Let's not push them too quickly. We can't if their government is going to last. We even had our own insurgents when we were trying to get settled on our Constitution. Look up Shay's Rebellion. Some of the original 13 states didn't like the Constitution either. Rhode Island didn't ratify the Constitution until Washington had already been president for a year!

Anyway, it's just a shame how opinion in this country is based on such a lack of understanding of the situation in Iraq. We should be feeling GOOD, it's almost over!

The Blogosphere

2006-04-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

I am growing somewhat disenchanted with many of the blogs I read this days. I can't read the ones on the left because the mindless drivel and lockstep chants of the most moronic mantras are a useless waste of bandwidth. I am also starting to have more problems with the narrow minded islamophobic bigotry of many of the blogs on the right. Some are simply reduced to posting any negative story they can find about Muslims. Here and there I find what I consider to be good blogs with thoughtful discussion and analysis. Too much of what I am finding is just pollution. I guess it was bound to happen once something becomes popular. Same thing seems to have happened to the internet in general.

Lots of weeds out there these days.

One of the problems this causes is that people don't think. Instead they react. Many of the sites and the articles on them seem to be more of an emotional response rather than thought out. I don't need to name any names as these blogs are very common on both left and right. Logic be damned, we have our agenda to promote! We will create a reality that fits our agenda and anyone that doesn't see it must be wrong. You may disagree, just don't tell us so or we will feel obligated to attack you for daring to imply that we aren't correct!

Sheesh.

Thoughts on McCain

2006-03-25T19:34:00.000-08:00

The Arizona Senator is probably in as powerful position as he could be. He occupies a unique position in that he holds a lot of Republican support because, well, because he is a Republican and he gets considerable popular support from Democrats and Independents because he isn't afraid of taking pot-shots at the party establishment. The trouble is that if he were elected President, he would be the party establishment. He would no longer be able to snipe at the administration or party leadership who he would need in order to get anything done. At this point his support on the left side of the aisle is likely to fade. Add to this fading support from the left the fact that his support on the right lacks a lot of depth, and you see a situation where McCain actually has more political power as long as he isn't in the White House.

In order for McCain to build a sturdy base of support that can weather his entering the position he has so often criticized, he would need to build support in the Republican base. I believe that any large effort aimed at wooing the more conservative elements would further alienate him from the more liberal elements that have represented a good portion of his popularity. He would find himself no longer the media darling he is now. I believe his popular support would erode very quickly upon taking office as President.

I believe that Rudy Giuliani has a better shot of maintaining his political support after an election and would also draw a large number of cross-over votes from moderate Democrats. Recent polls show him beating Hillary in head to head polls but it is still early. Neither candidate is actively campaigning and neither has managed to put their foot in their mouth so far, though Hillary might have recently come close with her Jesus comments.

My basic gut instinct is that I can't take a McCain run for President seriously. He will be 70 years old this August while Rudy will be 62 in May. Rudy has a track record of being a popular executive who was cool and effective in a crisis. McCain in public office is untested in both that position and condition but overall, I believe it will be a melting away of his pre-election support that would make him ineffective. His approval ratings in his first time might rival Bush's second term numbers if he is unable to keep the moderate Democrats in the fold. That might be hard to do when he is no longer sniping at fellow Republicans and targets the opposition Democrats instead.

Al Qaeda and Israel

2006-03-24T15:54:00.000-08:00

Lately there has been a flurry of news reports speculating about an increased Al Qaeda focus on Israel. If this is the case then, in my opinion, it indicates that Al Qaeda is growing ever more desperate to gain support of the Muslim masses. As it has managed to rack up failure after failure in other areas and the broad rally of support they hoped for never materialized, they are forced to fall back on the one issue that they think all Muslims can agree on. By shifting their remaining resources to Israel, they possibly hope to finally gain some support but even that seems to be backfiring. Hamas has dismissed Al Qaeda's overtures of support in a very vocal and public way. Neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan have recently undertaken operations against Al Qaeda cells. Al Qaeda's methods in Iraq continue to disgust Muslims and in even the tribal regions of Pakistan, many tribal leaders are unconvinced and are taking a "wait and see" approach in the latest government initiatives to root out terrorists rather than giving their full support to extremist elements.

So I see the latest reports of Al Qaeda aiming their operations at Israel as an indication of our success. They are apparently leaving Iraq in droves, the Sunni population in Iraq is turning against them, they are losing their support in the tribal regions of Pakistan, Muslims all over the world are turning their backs on them and refusing to join their brand of jihad. Using the Palestine - Israel conflict as a means to gain legitimacy has to be near to a last ditch effort to. As even the more militant groups in the conflict reject Al Qaeda's offers of support, one can only imagine that whatever leadership is left must be laying awake at night wondering what went wrong.

I believe this summer we will see the undoing of a great amount, if not the bulk of what remains of their networks and skilled operators. I would equate the installation of the final elected government of Iraq with the end of the battle of Guadalcanal in the Pacific in 1943. It will mark the definitive turning point and be the second concrete failure of Al Qaeda and their associated fanatics. Rather than have masses of Muslims running to them and overturning existing governments in order to build a sharia-based caliphate, they will be seen as on the run again, scrambling for support, and sticking their noses into other people's battles.

Hey, Osama ... you are failing ... globally.

The Ports Mess

2006-03-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

Here we have yet another case of the media creating a tempest by playing on people's emotions rather than presenting real data and providing real analysis. The Dubai ports deal was a non-issue that was used to whip up all kinds of emotional knee-jerk reactions from politicians and the public. Lets look at some facts.

What we are talking about here is a company operating a shipping terminal. A terminal loads and unloads ships. The people doing the loading and unloading are American longshoremen no matter who owns the terminal. Dubai isn't going to ship a colony of Arabs here in order to unload ships. Secondly, like an airline operating a passenger terminal, the operator of the shipping terminal is not responsible for port security or customs. In fact, our greatest worry shouldn't be here where the ships are unloaded, but at the port where the cargo is loaded. Who runs the terminal here has no bearing on what was loaded at the originating port.

In many news stories, it was presented as if the government approved transfer of ports to Dubai under some sort of secrecy. In fact, the US didn't "transfer" control of anything to anyone. A British terminal operator was bought by a UAE terminal operator. The same people would still show up to work every day at the US port to actually unload the ships. These would be Americans that live right here and work at the port for the terminal operator.

Having an American company operate the terminals here in the US does nothing to improve security where the cargo is loaded nor does it in any way improve security of the containers while they are in transit. If security were the real issue, we would be more worried about port operators in other countries than here where the cargo is unloaded.

The US is practically out of the global shipping business. There are practically no US flagged cargo ships left compared to what we had in the 1950's and 1960's. The US Merchant Marine is barely even a skeleton of it's former self. Very few ships are US flagged and crewed so having the cargo in foreign "hands" when it is loaded and while it is in transit is a much greater security threat that who unloads the container at the end of the line.

Nobody complains that China runs Long Beach harbor or that other foreign companies run other harbors. Again, they are terminal operators, not owners of the ports. The port operations are generally the responsibility of various oganizations called the Port Authority for the jurisdictions involved. Customs and Border Patrol are responsible for the goods and people that come through the ports no matter what company operates the terminal just as they are at airports no matter which airline runs a particular terminal.

In general, the media stories presented the issue as if the US Government was handing over 6 US ports to an Arab country. This is deliberate mis-information and designed to provoke an emotional response from the people which then causes a response by politicians that plays on those emotions rather than actually thinking through what is actually happening.

Here is what *I* think will happen: Some US port operator will begin to operate the ports. They will lose money or the port will lose traffic and some foreign operator will then buy the operations from them just as the British company did before. The simple fact is our port operations are being bought by foreign companies all the time. Placing the operations of the terminal into the hands of a US company doesn't mean it will be profitable. If the US company can not operate the port at rates that are competitive with other ports, the traffic will move to the lower cost ports. Take Long Beach. It handles a lot of cargo that is loaded in China by a Chinese company, sails on a Chinese ship, and is unloaded here by a Chinese company. This keeps the costs down. If the Chinese company is forced out and a US company took over, you might see cargo arrive in Mexico instead of Long Beach if the US company couldn't compete in price.

What we are really talking about here is economics. Once again the media has managed to distort the issue and make it into something that it isn't. Personally, I don't care who runs the port terminals. In fact, if it were in my power, I would mandate that at least two different companies operate in each port but we probably don't currently have the facilities to do that. Long Beach, the largest port on the US West coast is operated by the government of China. Bill Clinton signed and executive order transferring operations to China in January 1998 and we had no media blitz. I wonder why.

All this latest tempest in a teapot has done is reinforce with me the fact that 50% of the US population is below the median intelligence level (by definition, in fact). Having a crane operated by a foreign company that moves a container from a ship to a rail car is a lot less of a security threat to me than who crews the ship and who loaded the containers at the other end.

Impeach Bush?

2006-02-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

I read an article today on the web today saying that calls for an impeachment of President Bush are becoming more "mainstream" in the liberal press. It would never happen. Here is one important fact that everyone seems to overlook ... even with the media pretty much aligned 100% against him, they have been unable to sway the group that self-identifies as Republican. Bush's current low numbers are a result of poor showing among people identifying as independent. Even so, Bush's numbers have rarely gone below 40%.

Democratic Congressional leadership has even lower popularity numbers than Bush so there isn't likely to be any groundswell of support except from Democrats themselves. You need a majority of the House to impeach and a 2/3 majority in the Senate to convict. Neither scenario is likely to ever happen in Bush's term. The Republicans hold a solid majority in the House that is not under any serious threat in 2006. In order to impeach Bush, he would need to find himself with an alienated Republican party and that hasn't happened. Unlike Nixon who lost his support across the board, Bush has very strong support among Republicans. The last time I looked it was nearing 80% approval within his party. As it would require his own party to prepare charges in the House, no amount of "calls" from the press or protestor are going to make it happen. No articles of impeachment would ever see the light of day outside of a committee room table.

If you are using your energy and resources arguing for impeachment, do yourself a favor and focus your efforts on something that actually stands a chance of happening. I am sure there are dozens of worthy causes that would love to have your energy and passion.

A different kind of reward

2006-01-27T15:29:00.000-08:00

It's been nearly a month since I last posted. In addition to the normal hectic holiday stuff, my little boy had a severe arm fracture from a bicycle accident with his sister while playing outside. He is doing well now and things are getting back to normal.

I was thinking recently about why our offers of $5 million or $25 million reward for certain terrorists has not met with much success. This led me to consider an alternative. What if rather than paying $5 million to an individual, we built $5 million worth of improvements in a tipster's village or province? Imagine: schools, clinics, road improvements, better access to water, better roads, almost anything. A $25 million reward would build schools, clinics, hospitals, maybe even a college. This would cause people to think not about how such a reward could help themselves personally, but how such a reward could help their entire community. They could remain completely anonymous as a $25 million dollar cash reward would cause them to stand out and make it obvious they were the ones. The building of new schools, a new road, a water treatment plant would improve the life of the entire community and not bring attention to the individual. It also does something else. It causes people to think about what the terrorists are actually doing for them. Has Osama build them a clinic? Has Osama improved the education of their children? Offering the reward in this way would more completely expose the terrorists for what they really are.

So take this as an open suggestion to the US Government to offer an alternative in the way these rewards are paid. Rather than cash, offer improvements worth the same amount as an alternative with the improvements going to benefit the village and region of the informants. You might get more tribal elders on board that way. If turning in Osama will bring several schools, a few clinics, a hospital or two and maybe a college or clean water, or better roads, or electricity or other infrastructure improvements that increase quality of life and commerce, maybe people won't be so reluctant to be seen as individually selfish and "selling out" to the US for personal gain. I suspect that is the reason it hasn't been successful. A person doing such a thing would be seen as turning against their cultural values for personal benefit if they received $25 million in cash. While a person might be more willing to see a clinic and schools built in their village. Offer a reward that has the potential to improve the life of the entire region and I suspect we will see some progress.

Lies, Distortion, Deception By The Press

2006-01-06T13:06:00.000-08:00

To listen to much of the reporting surrounding the "domestic spying" row you would be lead to believe that the NSA is tapping into the communications of domestic citizens and eavesdropping on conversations across the country. Without saying it directly, the press reports create the impression that the government has a vast illegal intelligence operation underway inside the USA. In my opinion, this reporting borders on criminal.

Here is the reality as I understand it: NSA is tasked with (among other things) monitoring communications outside of the USA. In some instances a conversation is intercepted OVERSEAS where one of the parties to the communications is inside the US. So imagine a listening post someplace in Europe or Asia that intercepts a telephone conversation between someone in Pakistan and someone in the US. That person in Pakistan is known to be an al Qaeda operative. A very strict pre-911 interpretation of the law would say that NSA would only be allowed to "listen" to one side of the conversation. They would only be allowed to collect what the foreign citizen said. They would be required to contact the FBI and have the other side of the conversation collected by a different agency. Now for an intelligence analyst trying to make sense out of the conversation, you are asking them to coordinate between multiple agencies, get the data together, HOPE that the other agency can actually "catch" the data while the conversation is taking place, and that it can all be put back together into a conversation that the analyst can listen to ... or you simply record both sides while it is happening.

I have absolutely no problem with US overseas intelligence collecting communications between known or suspected terror operators in the US and known or suspected terror operators overseas. If NSA intercepts a satellite phone call from someone in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border area and someone in New York City, I would be angrier if they DIDN'T intercept it.

Look at it in this light: What if another incident happens and it turns out that the individuals involved had been in communications with people overseas, we had been monitoring their conversations but were forced to stop. The press would have a field day with "Government Knew of Terrorist in NYC" stories even though they might not have had any concrete information yet to arrest them before monitoring stopped.

The press is in the process of a deliberate distortion campaign designed to portray this eavesdropping as something that it isn't. It is designed to stir up emotions and get people upset at the administration to further the political agenda of the publishers. This impression that the NSA is at your telephone office listening to conversations between Americans inside the US without really saying so is what they are trying to create. If they were responsible, they would write about intercepting communications in FOREIGN countries with people inside the borders of the US. If you listen to the stories, you will notice that while they have reported the story that it is foreign communications being intercepted, it was reported once or twice and the remainder of the reporting has been about "domestic intercepts" which gives the impression that they are intercepting communications where both ends are inside the US. THAT would be against the law for NSA to do and I have seen absolutely no evidence that such a thing is happening.

Check out this article for another perspective and a recent case of intercepts foiling a terrorist operation: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/5/101649.shtml

Another defeat for al Qaeda!

2005-12-15T19:46:00.000-08:00

Yet another defeat has been handed to al Qaeda to add to the growing list. Today Iraqis went to the polls in droves. Al Qaeda tried as hard as they could for going on three years to prevent this day from coming, and they failed.

Al Qaeda is failing across the globe. They are failing to attract significant numbers of the Muslim population to join their gruesome mission. Public opinion in the Muslim world is turning against them. Their networks are being ripped up, their financiers uncovered, their funds frozen or taken away. At an increasing rate the leadership is being found and brought to justice or killed. There are signs that they are beginning to turn on each other as more governments infiltrate their ranks and distrust among them begins to spread.

They can not succeed. They have twisted the word of God and used it for the devil's work. They kill without concern for who absorbs the impact of their deeds. They kill children, they kill innocent civilians, they kill anyone and anything that happens to exist near them, they are nothing more than agents of death and destruction. They kill other Muslims that don't agree with them, they will kill anyone of any religion that accepts the rule of secular law. They create their own courts with proceedings that mock their religion and meet out punishments that are appalling by any civilized standard. They behave like animals.

Where do they go from here? Defeated in Afghanistan, defeated in Iraq, crumbling in Saudi Arabia, dying every day in Pakistan, crushed in the Philippines, tracked down in Indonesia they are fewer in number and weaker every day that passes. What else should they expect?

A mission we have been working toward in Iraq is now accomplished. Over the next few months ballots will be counted, committees will form, offices will be appointed, and a new government will begin taking it's first steps into the future. Each month that passes produces a stronger army and a larger police force. The population tracks down and turns in the terrorists in their midst. A people begin to take back their country first from the chains of tyranny and then from the fog of chaos. A bright new future dawns with the sun today in Iraq and soon our sons, daughters, neighbors and coworkers can begin their journey home having handed the evil bastards of bin Laden yet another humiliating defeat.

And let me also add an open letter from an American Muslim to al Qaeda and a column entitled Blowback May Bite Al Qaeda .

Hey, Osama! You seem to have a hole in your doctrine. I am seeing a trail of lost hearts and minds behind you.

I don't drink the kool-aid

2005-12-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

One problem I have in life is not conforming in lock-step with the political left or the right. While I generally consider myself more than a little right of center, I will take issue with people when they attempt to take things out of context or make something appear what it isn't. I see this done all the time on both sides in order to appear to create additional validation of their viewpoints. I saw it this morning when the first blog I visited had a thread concerning a speech by the former Malaysian president to an Islamic peace conference. His speech was "spun" in the blog as another example of Muslim extremism. I believe this is an improper understanding of the context of the speech. He wasn't defending or validating Syria or Iran. He was criticizing what he sees as a US policy of threatening military force as the largest threat to peace in the region. In other words, the speech should be taken in the "peacenik" context in which it was intended, not as a Muslim extremist defending Iran or Syria.

He was being critical of US policy in the region. I can understand why that might concern him. There is either combat or speculation of future combat with regards to three countries in the region today. Iraq where combat is currently underway as well as Iran and Syria where there has been speculation of future combat. All three of these instances involve the US. So in that context we could appear, as the former president says, a major threat to peace and one reason smaller countries feel a need to arm themselves, behave defensively toward us, and possibly even seek nukes.

I got to thinking about this and have been trying to get to the root of it. What exactly causes us to feel a need to take military action to solve problems of this sort? I believe the answer has something to do with speed. We as a country are unprepared to build programs that might take 10 or 20 or 50 years to bear fruit. We aren't prepared to work for regime change in Iran in ways that might take 25 years to succeed. Our approach seems to be either full engagement or nothing, we ignore you. Cuba is an example. We could have gotten rid of Castro long ago if we had been working slowly, quietly, in the background, undercover. Instead we took a policy of complete disengagement. It hasn't worked.

The reason we seem unable to embark on programs that take 10 years or more might be the nature of our politics. Our government can't commit to anything that long because there is no guarantee who will be in power 5 years from now, let alone 20 years. And part of our politics is for one party to always criticize and destroy whatever the other party wants to do so if such a program were started by one party, it would be dismantled or so changed by the other party as to need to start over again. In other words, we use military force because the effect is immediate. We can't "afford" to take a 10 year approach to regime change in Iran or Syria because we can't guarantee the programs will ever run beyond the current administration or congress. This is just another symptom of what makes us appear to be unreliable to people in other countries. You just never know what the US is going to do after the next election. But whatever we decide to do, we are going to be determined to do it with guns blazing if required, or at least the threat of guns blazing, or maybe not taking the option of guns blazing off the table, or something like that.

The problem with our form of government is that it was designed when the average lifespan was much shorter. 8 years was a much more significant slice of time in the world in the 1700's than it is today.

An alternative would be to increase by 50% all political terms in this country. President would be 6 years, Senate 9 years, House 3 years. This would give a party a chance to hold power for 12 years rather than 8. The President would still face the possibility of Congress changing under him. He would still be limited to two terms, but it would make it more likely that we could embark on projects that might take longer to bear fruit.

The reason we are so impatient in the world and appear so arrogant and bullying is because a President only has 4 years (they might get 8, but doesn't know that going in to the first term) to make their mark on the world. If a President runs on a platform of democratizing the Middle East, for example, he has 4 years to do that. Any method short of military intervention isn't likely to provide results in that short a timespan. You aren't going to change another country's government in one election cycle through political means, it takes a generation ... or two. If a President begins a policy that is more peaceful but likely to take longer than his term, the next administration is likely to either kill it, or reconfigure it into something completely different.

So until we get some long term vision in our politics, I am afraid we are going to be doomed to running around the planet telling people to straighten up now or risk being bombed. That isn't likely to instill a lot of trust in us from small, weak countries and we will see them continuing to strive for "the bomb" so they have some way of holding us at bay.

I don't buy the Islamophobia

2005-12-14T23:50:00.000-08:00

Osama bin Laden had a goal to create an army of 12,000 hardcore radical Islamic militants to serve as a cadre in a larger struggle for global jihad. He failed. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in his direct confrontation of US forces in Iraq had called for Muslims from all over the globe to come join him in his struggle to defeat democracy. He failed.

Imagine for a moment. bin Laden had a modest goal. 12,000 core troops. Out of an estimated one billion Muslims, he needed only 1/100 of 1% of them and he couldn't muster even that. Zarqawi managed even less. There is no great rush of Muslims to jihad against democracy. Muslims like people everywhere want to have a say in their future. I know people can pick pieces of Koranic scripture and "prove" that Muslims are inherently evil, I just don't buy it.

It doesn't take a lot of people to pull off a suicide bombing. 9/11 was done with less than 50 people including planning and logistics support. The actions of less than 50 people do not reflect the values of the community they come from. To draw that conclusion would be to say that all white people in the US supported the KKK. There are estimated to be 5 to 8 million Muslims living in the United States. There has not been a single act of terrorism committed against the United States by an American Muslim since 9/11 that I am aware of. If there has been, it has been a very isolated incident. If Islam were such a radical murderous religion, I would think we would have had many serious incidents by now. As Timothy McVeigh demonstrated, all it takes is two or three people to create serious havoc. Nothing of the sort has happened. Why?

What we are witnessing are acts by a very small number of, quite frankly, idiots. They are fanatics. The KKK doesn't represent white people, though they would tell you that they do. al Qaeda doesn't represent Islam though they would tell you that they do.

There are a BILLION Muslims in this world. I see some arrests ... 5 people here. 10 people there. Maybe a roundup of 20 or 30 sometimes. But out of millions of people in a country, rounding up a dozen or two does NOT constitute a statistically significant portion of the population. We round up groups of organized crime members in numbers like that. Does that mean everyone from New Jersey is an organized crime member? Does that mean that every citizen of France traffics in child pornography? Does that mean that all people in California are members of a drug ring? No.

I have known Muslims in my life. I served with a Muslim in the military. I interact with Muslims on a daily basis at work and in general commerce in my community. My mechanic is Muslim. I have never heard a mean word leave their mouth. They have always treated me fairly and with respect.

Americans that believe that Islam is by nature a murderous religion and needs to be destroyed have taken the bait of the fanatics hook, like, and sinker. They have bought in to the notion that the fanatics represent Islam. These people that would even kill other Muslims whose traditions they disagree with have managed to convince some non-Muslims that their interpretation of Islam is correct. That is part of the game and they have been led by the nose right into it. The fanatics NEED for non-Muslims to have fear and to lash out in order to use that to gain more recruits. They can use the words of hate, the statements of people who would want Islam destroyed, to recruit more Muslims to their perverted cause. They can say that Americans want to destroy Islam so Muslims must come and join jihad.

Until I see more than a very, very tiny portion of the Muslim population buying that drivel, I am not going to buy it.

If one were to read the Bible and take it literally, they would be commanded to destroy the sons of Ammon. Those words were of a different time and are preserved only to serve as an example today and to give hope in times of extreme hardship. They are not designed to be taken literally in the current context. The same is true with the Koran. Much of what is says that would seem brutal was concerning a particular circumstance in the past and wasn't expected to be an ongoing command through history. It was preserved to serve as example. To be taken in an abstract not a literal sense. Yes, the Koran is the word of God to the Muslims, but those were words pertaining to a specific circumstance at a particular time.

Taken out of context, I can probably find scripture to justify anything I might want to do. Murders have been committed more than once based on someone's twisted interpretation of scripture. We are talking about such a tiny number of people. Please, don't allow it to go to your head. I am very disappointed in what I have been reading on many blogs these days. Yes, in this day a small number of people can cause a great number of casualties but the fact remains, it is a small number of people. Let us try to keep our perspective.

And good luck to the Iraqi people in their voting today. I wish you good health and prosperity and that you deserve it!

An idea for the Arabs

2005-12-13T15:53:00.000-08:00

An idea came to be while composing a post on another blog concerning the stipends paid by the Palestinian Authority to the families of suicide bombers that take part in operations against Israel and after a little refinement, I post it here and hereby give the idea to the world as a suggestion to improve the situation in the Middle East.

Imagine a Palestinian family with five children. Say two are boys and three are girls. The father and older brother are unemployed. The family is in poverty. The youngest boy has no hope for his future. He looks at his father and older brother and in his minds eye sees what he will become. He loves his family and dreams of somehow improving their situation but it seems he has no doors open to him. Then one day when he is particularly depressed about their condition, he make a decision. He will go to one of the radical groups and volunteer to be a suicide bomber so that their family will receive a monthly stipend and improve their condition. The stipend is more than he could hope to bring in from legitimate activity. So he finds a group engaged in this activity. He follows their instructions, poses for pictures, says the things he is taught to say on a video and goes about his grim task.

It doesn't have to be that way. I believe I have a better idea. An idea that could produce hope, improve the lot of the Palestinians and allow others to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

First of all, within the Islamic world in general and in the Arab world in particular there are a good number of quality universities. What if these countries (and maybe other countries around the world that desired to participate too) got together and created a program. This program would provide a stipend to families that have NEVER had a suicide bomber in their family and provide a college education at no cost to one child in that family. Should a family member participate in a terrorist operation while enrolled in the program, their participation stops.

In other words, hope is provided. The family's situation is improved and hope for the future of a child is brightened. The family has incentive to take a constructive road rather than a destructive one. It also allows countries in the region to participate in building a better Palestinian nation. They also become a part of a constructive solution. It allows the ember of hope to grow in the hearts of both the recipient and the giver.

It would not prevent people from participating in such operations if that is where their heart truly takes them, but it eliminates the ones undertaking such operations for economic reasons out of love for their family that is exploited by those who would never engage in such operations themselves. If one did, however, engage in such operations while their family was enrolled in the program, the stipend from the program would be ended and the promise of education would be withdrawn. More people would have a stake in a constructive and peaceful future than in a destructive path.

Why Murtha? Why now?

2005-12-11T00:57:00.000-08:00

I sat pondering for a long time why Rep. Murtha of Pennsylvania would come out so strongly against our mission in Iraq. Some things didn't make a lot of sense. It took a while but the pieces have started to come together.

The bells first started going off when I started seeing more stories like this one from the Investor's Business Daily:

Ashdown and his nonpartisan watchdog group criticized Murtha for using the $417 billion fiscal 2005 Pentagon spending bill to give business to his lobbyist brother. The Los Angeles Times in June reported that Murtha funneled nearly $21 million to 10 or more corporate clients of KSA Consulting, where Robert "Kit" Murtha is a senior partner. Carmen Scialabba, a Murtha congressional aide for 27 years, is also a high-ranking official at KSA.

In one case, a small Arkansas manufacturer of military vehicles who was a KSA client was awarded $1.7 million Â triple its total sales for 2004. One defense contractor based in Murtha's home state of Pennsylvania even told the Times he hired KSA on the recommendation of a top Murtha aide.

The newspaper Roll Call reported that there might be a House ethics committee investigation of Murtha's apparent improprieties. But is that possible now that Murtha has become the media's "hawk with a conscience?" Come to think of it, could Murtha have been thinking about a possible ethics investigation when he decided to throw himself into the public limelight last week?

So Murtha has been under scrutiny since before June (assuming that people were looking into the situation before the LA Times reported on it in June) for funneling defense money to his brother's consulting firm and customers. There is also some talk about Pelosi herself might have had a crucial hand in getting some of this money spread around. So then the question becomes "How do I effectively block an investigation without making it look like I am blocking an investigation". The answer is to wait until the administration was getting hammered by ethics problems (Plame Game, DeLay's issues, etc) and then come out as a flaming critic of the administration's policy. The idea is to not only disagree, but to propose a dramatic reversal. Immediate withdrawal would do it. That shines a VERY bright spotlight on Murtha and gives him a certain amount of Teflon. Should there be an ethics investigation launched now, it would appear to be retaliation.

The reason you wait until the President's approval numbers are low is because coming out so forcefully for such a cowardly policy change risks boosting the President's approval numbers (as actually happened). So you wait until the numbers are low so any boost is minimized. Had Murtha waited until after the Iraqi elections and if those elections go well, he would look foolish. As it was, he let loose with this smokescreen just as US forces were embarking on the most critical mission yet: sweeping the towns in western al Anbar province. This would result in higher allied casualties. What better time to announce such a thing than just as US casualties would be expected to spike because of combat operations in the core of the militant areas? Had he waited till after the elections he also risked coming out with his withdrawal demand just as we would be announcing troop draw-downs anyway. In other words, if he waited until after the Christmas recess, he could have looked very stupid making the speech he made in November.

So here we have it. Timed to create maximum criticism, draw maximum attention, propose a plan that not even the Democrats would support (and didn't in a House vote) in order to make any ethics investigation of him and his brother look like political revenge. Brilliant. And one more reason to add to the pile why I really don't care much for post politicians in general and Democrats in particular.

2005-12-10T15:17:00.000-08:00

So much has happened lately and I have spent more time writing on other blogs than my own. Probably because I find the discourse there stimulating.

I realized last night that creating a Federal Iraq was a stroke of brilliance. After the central government elections next week, things will turn to the regional governments that actually hold most of the power concerning daily life. The Shiites are going to lose a significant piece of their control in the central legislature and the Sunnis will take their rightful place as all indications show lively support for the election process.

There had been some worry on my part that the Shiite majority would dominate the Kurd and Sunni regions until I read an article somewhere (sorry, don't remember exactly where) pointing out that it is the regional governments that will actually hold power and named several people who had decided not to stand in elections to the central government because they considered their job of having participated in the writing of a constitution complete and were now going to where the real power is, in the regional government.

The Kurds have been busy building a quite peaceful community relative to the rest of Iraq. They now have two airlines (really charters of other planes that they put their names on, but it's a start and they are proud of it) and business people are arriving from all around the world. Factories and homes are being built. The economy is growing.

The Sunni areas actually stand to gain the most. They have been afraid of Shiite domination and a significant influence from Iran. The Federal system should help to control any undue Shiite influence over the rest of Iraq and serve to protect the Sunnis and Kurds from Iranian meddling. The "rejectionists" that have been the core of the militants stand to gain considerably in this round of voting. For every seat they take in the legislature, a Shiite seat is vacated. Also, the coming of a more peaceful community live will allow reconstruction to begin on a much larger scale. The Sunni areas have not had the degree of reconstruction and rebuilding of infrastructure that the other areas have had due to security issues. As these issues dissipate, dramatic improvements can take place and the economy of the Sunni region will blossom as it has in the other areas.

There is the potential for a sweeping change to occur in Iraq over the next few weeks. I am optimistic that this will take place and things will move toward peace and prosperity for all Iraqis. We have already seen a start of this taking shape as elections draw near. Iraqis are turning in terrorists, providing tips on weapons caches, and taking their security in their own hands to a degree we have not seen in the past. In many cases we see Iraqi civilians turning in these criminals to Iraqi forces and they are then detained, tried, and convicted by Iraqi courts. This is as it should be and a great indication of progress.

It never stops

2005-11-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

Well, they are at it again. Good news comes out and everyone seems to need to find a way to spin it as something negative. It seems every silver cloud has to have a dark lining. Went to my usual news sites today and they were all pretty much the same. President gives a speech and all I read are the critics and rebuts, nobody had anything good to say about what was said.

Great economic news too. The US GNP managed to grow despite Katrina/Rita. We are actually in some pretty good times. Economy is pretty solid, energy costs are coming down, situation in Iraq is stabilizing ... you would never know it to read the news though. Oh, and Bush's approval numbers are up too, not a peep on that either. I guess if it isn't negative, there's no sense in reporting it.

I am sick today with a headcold. Cold medicine has my head a little drifty and I don't feel like typing much. Later.

I am not alone!

2005-11-27T14:49:00.000-08:00

Holy Toledo! I have discovered other blogs! I know that's kinda funny, but it is refreshing and intensely validating to find that others have come to the same conclusions that I have through their own independent analysis of what they see is going on.

I had stumbled across a couple of blogs in the past and I would post comments on them sometimes. I then visited Austin Bay's blog because of something that was crossposted to it from another blog someplace (might have been TMV, not sure) and I noticed his listing of other blogs. So I was curious and had a little time and checked some of them out ... WOW!

Now don't get me wrong, I am not in particular lockstep with any of the parties, in fact I find this a very frustrating part of my own political reality. No party is lined up on the issues the way I am but I find the Democrats to be the most dangerous of the two major parties. It is more likely the Republicans will come to tolerate my opinions than the Democrats will grow a spine.

I am going to lay out a little of my own political philosophy here just so people have a better idea of who I am. I don't believe social policy should be dictated by Washington DC. I believe community values are better decided by the communities and things that fit California might not fit Oklahoma. States should be free to enact laws that reflect the values of their residents. People are then free to vote with their feet if they don't like it. If a state adopts legislation that a large number of people find repulsive or silly, they aren't likely to move there. I am not likely to move to Kansas in light of the recent "intelligent" design ruling by their school board. At least not until the voters have a shot at that board. If they people uphold it, I know I won't be going to Kansas. Heck, I will go out of my way to avoid driving through it so I don't donate any sales or fuel tax to their silly government. If they find that over time they are having trouble attracting bright people, they might want to consider why.

Overall, that is one of the strengths of our country. A state is able to experiment a little. If something is a disaster, it only screws up one state and they can learn from the experience. If it works well, it can be copied by other states and the benefit is spread around. Dictating policy from Washington means that if something is a disaster, it screws up the entire country. No thanks. Hey, if a state wants to make a constitutional change to accept gay marriage, go for it. Then all the people who want that have a place to go and be happy and they can stop bugging other people in other places who don't want that. I have a problem with people who want to dictate their personal values on everyone across the entire country.

I am pro choice. I feel that the gay marriage issue has no place in national politics and should be decided at the state level. I would like to see a national sales tax replace our current income tax system. I believe that the Republican party's pandering to the fundamentalist far right is costing them more votes than it is gaining them. I believe that the Democrats are, for the most part, the used car salesmen of politics. They hold one principle near and dear to their hearts ... election to office at all cost. Where they stand on an issue depends on the polls. They have no backbone and will not take an unpopular stance when it is right. If you want to see how dysfunctional this country would be with Democrats running it, imagine a family where the parents face election every two years.

I am registered Libertarian but would consider registering Republican if they would stop the pandering to the far right, get the abortion issue out of national politics, get the gay marriage issue out of national politics. Allow states to decide for themselves and I will simply avoid the kooky states if I don't want my family living there. I end up voting Republican anyway most of the time since the Libertarians tend to run nuts for office and the Democrats run weasels

UPDATE: Lest someone get the wrong idea, I am not anti-christian. I grew up Episcopal, the old style, what would probably be called Anglican Catholic but back then it was the same Church of England chapel that people had worshiped in since the 1700's. Two of my kids have attended religious schools at some point in their lives and the youngest is currently attending a Methodist school. I have no problem with religion as long as it stays out of science. Intelligent Design is theology, not science and does not belong in science classes. Monotheism might be my individual belief, but I feel no need to shove that belief down the throats of kids in a science class.

Immediate Withdrawal! Oh, wait, uhm ...

2005-11-21T22:59:00.000-08:00

Maybe not *immediate* immediate withdrawal. Maybe a delayed immediate withdrawal phased in over several months. Yeah, that's the ticket! The Democratic leadership tickles me sometimes. They remind me of a cartoon character who jumps off a cliff and then whose legs get moving really fast and they are able to scramble back to the edge in thin air.

Oh, and I ran across this today. If it wasn't so serious it would be as funny as an old Charlie Chaplin movie. I still think all of this is a sign of serious desperation on the part of the Democrats. The party has no money, they have no platform other than "We're against whatever the Republicans are for" and overall, their party isn't making any hay over Bush's numbers dropping. They are hammering Bush but the polls I have seen still show the Democrats lagging the Republicans in general. Their strategy of bashing a politician that isn't running for office (Bush) seems odd to me. What do they hope to gain by shooting a lame duck? The only time you do that is when you have nothing else to shoot at. They're flailing. And it's almost funny.

The most difficult days

2005-11-19T14:38:00.000-08:00

These are the most difficult days of the entire Iraq campaign. Al Zarqawi will be pulling out every stop he has in order to prevent the final elections in December leading to a democratic Iraq. Allied and Iraqi forces are undertaking their most aggressive actions so far in Al Anbar province, directly confronting the core of the insurgency in order to weaken the insurgents and provide better security so that Iraqi Sunnis may vote with less fear of effective intimidation.

In the next three weeks we are probably going to see the highest Iraqi casualties, the highest US casualties and the highest allied casualties of the entire war as we begin to smash the center of the insurgent areas. Ramadi is going to play a central role and it is going to be interesting to see how events play out in that city as Steel Curtain works it's way eastward.

Yesterday near Mosul there was an attack on a house apparently being used by insurgents. They seem to have put up a ferocious fight. Three of those inside blew themselves up to avoid being taken alive. Whoever those people were in the building, they certainly didn't want to be captured by allied forces. They are yet to be identified but from all appearances, it was a high value target.

Zarqawi is at it again with bombing of mosques and funeral processions. Yet again he is killing Iraqi civilians and not aiming his minions at "the occupier". This is being seen by the people in the Muslim world as a sign of weakness and desperation. It is to me like the finale of a fireworks show where all the remaining bombs are let loose. Once Iraqis go to the polls and the government is installed with a Sunni investment, Al Zarqawi is going to have a difficult time aligning with anyone except the Saddamists.

So here were are facing about the most difficult month of the entire war. I wish the Iraqi people courage and strength in this trying time even as their allies make noises of abandoning them in their moment of greatest need. Good luck and may God bless you all.

Links

2005-11-13T13:16:00.000-08:00

I will keep this post updated with interesting news stories as I find them. Once it scrolls too far down I intend to create a new one.

Iraqi Vice President: 'We are in a state of war; we cannot set a timetable for the departure of the foreign forces'

Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat- Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi has ruled out setting a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq, saying, "Iraq is in a state of war. The withdrawal of these forces would provide an opportunity for the elements that are committing the killing to return to power".

Unfamiliar questions in the Arab air

As al-Qaeda scores own-goals in its backyard, many Arabs, including some Iraqis, are beginning to rethink their position on violence in the name of resistance

Saudis pledge $1 billion for Iraq aid

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said he is less worried that U.S. policies in Iraq will bring on a civil war ... "My fears are much more eased," Prince Saud al-Faisal said.

Apologizing for Iraqi forces all in a day's work for U.S. Marines

The man and his sister and mother all said they welcomed the Marines into their city, yet they criticized the local forces. It's just the Iraqi army. They come in here and they think they can do whatever they want because they wear a uniform,Kadem said.

From the foreign press

2005-11-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

I found a CNN interview posted in the foreign press today that I thought I would share. Here is a link from the Times of Oman. For some reason I don't find it in the domestic US press.

As I expected and posted the other day, Jordan is now going to go after Al Zarqawi in Iraq directly. A short quote from the interview:

We are going to crack down and take the fight to Zarqawi, the king said in an interview with CNN television. We have been very successful in taking down his operations in the past ... (when) he used Jordanians. Now he has changed tactics, he is using foreigners. That means that our security services have to change tactics too.

And so it begins. Jordan will now be in Iraq hunting down Al Zarqawi's network and I believe they will get whatever assistance we can offer them. I doubt there are going to be very many "leaks" from the Jordanians to the press concerning that operation. Al Zarqawi's people are probably going to hope they are captured by the US rather than Jordan. After a few hours in Jordanian custody, they might be begging to be turned over to the US and sent to Guantanimo Bay. To the Jordanians, I say "Good Hunting".

A Scary Scenario

2005-11-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

Want to know what the scariest scenario I have considered for the end of the Iraq insurgency is? How about this: Iraq's army establishes control and is able to restore order. US troops leave. Iran and Syria then invade and divide Iraq in half. Iran gets the Southern portion up to about Baghdad, Syria gets the Western and Northern portions. In other words, Syria gets the Northern oil fields, and Iran gets the Southern fields and there isn't a whole lot the US can do about it short of a major war.

Scary, isn't it. So, we not only need to wait until Iraq has the internal security situation under control, we need to stay on for a while as a defense force until Iraq is able to defend itself against misadventures by it's neighbors.

Thank you, Vets

2005-11-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

Today is your day. Of all the holidays, this is the one you earned. It is ironic that many companies don't consider that when making out their work schedules.

I grew up in the 60's and 70's. The WWII veterans were many and they never really talked much. It seemed to me that everyone sacrificed so much during the war that there was no sense talking about it. I was fascinated by World War II when I was a kid. I watched every movie I could and read all the books in the school library on the subject but I was never able to get anyone that was actually there to talk much about it. I also noted an unspoken bond between the veterans. I lived in a rural town and just about everyone had lost a relative or a neighbor. My step mother lost her big brother on Iwo Jima. She never spoke about him either. Only once did she bring it up and that was when I was working in Washington DC and she had come to visit to see a doctor there. We drove past the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington and she broke down crying. He love for her brother was as strong as it had ever been and she missed him bitterly.

I never seved in a war. When I turned 18, I enlisted. I was a "cold warrior". I seved two long tours overseas and got out after seven years. The military had some good schools back then and the training and experiance I got were enough to launch a career that has lasted over twenty years since I got out. I can't begin to understand the mind of a combat veteran, but I can understand a little more about the special bond between them. If I am filling a position in my group today, given a choice I will take a veteran over a non-veteran every time.

I wanted to take a moment before the day is done to thank all those who suffered the cold of Valley Forge, Trenton, Bastogne, Chosin and Afghanistan and the heat of Cuba, Guadalcanal, Vietnam, and Iraq. Those who lost their friends, those who defeated tyrants, those who freed nations, those who spent long months far away from home, and those who are today, right now, doing their duty for their country. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. It isn't much, but it's the most I can offer. May God bless you, wherever you are.

What People Think

2005-11-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

I have seen a lot of news stories recently that are basically nothing more than commentaries on polls of what people believe. I wonder why that is news. I mean, why it is front page news. If you tell people incorrect information, or give them correct information that later changes but neglect to inform them of the change, and then poll them on what they believe to be true, you are likely to find they believe what they were last told. What is news about that?

Example. I would bet that if I polled Americans right now, they would believe that the US Army is having trouble meeting recruitment goals. That is because the last news that appeared on the subject was about the Army having trouble meeting their goals early in the summer and no additional information has appeared on the front pages or lead news in the A/V media since then. People tend to have a little inertia. If they are told something, they tend to believe that is true until they are told differently. This is how *not* telling someone something can impact public opinion and be tantamount to telling them incorrect information.

The truth is the Army has met or exceeded it's recruiting goals for the past five months. It is true that it did fall short for the overall year, but people were never told the reason for that. Congress mandated an increase in the overall size of our forces. This meant that in order to comply with that mandated increase, recruiting goals had to be increased above and beyond the expected numbers. As a result, recruiting "fell short". Now, once you have absorbed the initial increase, it is easier to maintain the force at a given size because those troops leave at different times depending on their term of enlistment.

You can find that information if you dig around, but you won't find it in the headline news like you did when the Army was having trouble recruiting. I have yet to see a headline on page one that says "Army meeting recruiting goals for fifth consecutive month." so people operate on the information they last obtained which is obsolete and has not been corrected with the same distribution the original information had.

Another example might be the main road to Baghdad airport. People polled might think that is a very dangerous, maybe even the *most* dangerous road in Iraq. But it isn't anymore. That perception is based on obsolete information. What is happening these days is that the American public has a whole series of misconceptions based on obsolete information that has never been corrected. The major news outlets are very quick to put out bad news, or news that shows the current administration or war situation in a bad light but never bother to update the negatives when the situation changes. So you end up with a population that has a very distorted opinion of what is going on. People who *do* dig through the stories and find the little blurbs that aren't placed on page one have a very different view. Sometimes the information can only be found in the international media and are never picked up by the major US outlets.

Another example would be a belief that casualty rates in Iraq are growing when in fact they are going in the opposite direction. You won't find a story that says "Iraqi casualties down by double-digit percentage for second straight month!" except maybe in Iraq. But you will find all kinds of stories about the 2000th US casualty. In fact, I watched a network TV series where they had an episode all queued up to run when that milestone was reached (Boston Legal).

The polls are then used as some kind of validation of the situation. Gee, if the majority of people believe something to be so, it must be so, right? Nobody in the major media ever comes out and says "The reason people are misinformed is because of a barrage of reports three months ago that were never corrected when the situation changed." because it doesn't fall within the political agenda of the media outlet to do that. Yes, political agenda. The more I watch what is going on, the clearer it becomes that most of the media outlets share a common political agenda. They are using their special role to nudge popular opinion in a certain direction. They aren't reporting, they are leading, or misleading as the case may be. No surprise here. If you read Ben Franklin's autobiography, you find that he did the very same thing. It is as old as our country. That's fine as long as you understand it for what it is and take things with a grain of salt and do your part by digging and keeping up with things. But be careful about expressing an opinion if it is based on information that is more than a couple of months old, because it might no longer be true.

Jordan's Turn

2005-11-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

Al Zarqawi should be looking a little more over his shoulder these days. It isn't like Jordan has been all that fond of him anyway, but now things are a little different. Jordan now has a reason to track him down and bring him to justice. The intelligence services of Jordan are well known for efficiency. In the past week Al Zarqawi has managed quite a number of setbacks. He has turned the population of Morocco against him. He has managed to start fights with other insurgents within Iraq. He has lost a major base of operations on the Syrian border. And now he has managed to give a powerful government bordering Iraq reason to track him down.

I believe we will soon see the main Al Qaida spokesmen breaking off any association with Al Zarqawi. Not only is Zarqawi a loose cannon, he is causing an effect within the Muslim community that is the opposite of that which is desired. Rather than being a rallying point, he has become an outcast. His actions are seen as horrible by those whose hearts and minds he would wish to win. He is losing public support across the board. At some point, I would expect Al Qaida to cut their losses, though they (Al Qaida) aren't exactly world renowned for their intellectual prowess.

If Zarqawi is still in Iraq, his days are numbered. If he is in Syria, he will be allowed to exist there for as long as he benefits the regime in some way and when it becomes to the benefit of the regime to betray him, they will.

Hey, Zarqawi, look out behind you!

UPDATE: This article is interesting. A pollster who operates in the Middle East has come to the conclusion that the Amman bombings may cause a "sea change" in Arab public opinion toward Al Qaida. It's nice to see others coming to the same conclusion though this has been in the works for some time. After a period of cooling towards Al Qaida, it is now politically fashionable to be outright anti-Al Qaida in the region. Goody!

Windfall Profits

2005-11-09T21:27:00.000-08:00

The current popular idea to charge oil companies with a "windfall profits" tax is nonsense. Oil companies do not set the price of oil and finished products, the commodity markets do. Imagine if I had a barrel of oil and I placed it on EBay for bid. Now imagine several buyers bid the price of that barrel of oil up. That is what happens in the commodity markets. Now imagine things have been going along pretty much the same for several years and suddenly two people that have been regular bidders for your product suddenly start to need much more of it. They are buying more and more barrels of oil and are willing to outbid other people for it. The price rises higher. That is what is happening in the international oil markets with China and India as they ramp their economies up. Now, imagine something happens in the news. Say a hurricane is headed directly at a major oil producing region and could potentially disrupt supply. Some buyers might become concerned and decide to speculate. They will buy up oil they don't need in order to sell it later when they think the price will be higher. The impact of that is to drive prices up very quickly. Prices could possibly begin to go up before the storm even arrives as the speculators enter the market.

Now imagine the people in your town are now mad at you because you are making so much money on EBay selling your oil. They now show up on your lawn one night with torches and demand some of your money (windfall profits tax). What do you do? Chances are, you might leave town. That is going to suck for the town because they were getting some money from you in taxes, now they are going to get nothing. And to top it off, they are *still* going to pay the same amount for their oil.

And the same thing goes for finished products too. You can go to a broker right now and buy 100,000 gallons of gasoline on the commodity market and take delivery of it if you have someplace to store it. The price you pay is going to depend on how many others are also bidding on that gasoline and how much they are willing to pay. It is an auction that goes on every day. The oil company doesn't set the price of gasoline. The people bidding for it on the commodities exchanges do. They can bid the price up very quickly if they get "spooked" by bad news. If a forecast comes in that cold weather is expected, heating oil contracts will start to rise before the temperature starts to fall as speculators enter the market. The price rises very quickly.

Another thing that one must understand is the domestic consumption is only around 10% of a global oil company's business. Of all the profit that the oil companies are reporting, 90% of it is money from other countries that they are pulling in to the US. If we hammer them with a windfall profits tax, they might just move out of the country. There are plenty of countries that would love to have a major US oil company move there. If it is cheaper for the company to operate someplace else, they will. And to top it off, people in the US will still be paying just as much for their oil and gas. I say leave the situation alone. Increased profits will likely result in increased production which will result in lower prices but it takes time for the increased investment to work through to the gas pump. It can take a decade to get a refinery from drawing board to full production. It can take many years to open a new oil field or build a new pipeline.

It is also in the interest of the oil company to keep prices low. Every time the price of gasoline rises, it makes alternative energy sources more competitive and results in a decrease in the amount demanded. If people switch to more fuel efficient cars and homes, it can result in a fundamental change in demand itself with consumption dropping so that even if prices dropped back to where they were, profits would be lower than they were because consumers have become more efficient in their use of energy. So overall, it is in the best interest for the oil company to sell as much oil as it can at the lowest price that it can. It just so happens that the two go hand in hand. For every additional barrel they place up for sale, the price drops a little because there is more supply. It is easier to get. People don't need to bid the price up so high.

Windfall Profits Tax feels good and appeals in an emotional sense, but it is short-sighted and could end up costing the country a lot more money than it saves. It is a bad idea.

I have been waiting for this.

2005-11-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

An article in the San Jose Mercury (registration required) documents that cracks are forming between the local Sunni insurgents and the Al Qaida religious fighters of Al Zarqawi. Things have degraded into open warfare in the streets. The latest source of friction seems to be money. It seems some insurgent groups have been charging local businesses "protection" money. Al Qaida is demanding that the money be handed over to them. The locals are refusing. It seems they want their towns back. This is starting to seem less like an insurgency and more like rival gangs fighting over turf. Al Zarqawi isn't making many friends with his foreigners in leadership positions calling shots that are killing a lot of Iraqis. A few sentences from the article:

Kamil Ahmed, a 40-year-old resident with long-standing ties to local insurgent groups, said the break started in the summer, when al-Qaida in Iraq started killing police who showed up for work, breaking an insurgent agreement to let the officers do their jobs.
The split intensified when the group assassinated several sheiks, in mosques, for criticizing its actions. Insurgent groups also went against al-Qaida in Iraq and urged citizens to vote in the constitutional referendum in October and in the upcoming December national elections. Al-Qaida in Iraq had characterized voting as cooperating with the Americans.

Ahmed said the final straw was about money. He said businesses and even some government offices around Ramadi had been paying local insurgents protection money, as much as $70,000 a month. Al-Qaida in Iraq demanded the money.

So it isn't going to be much longer, I don't think. You have the US Marines and Iraqi army cutting off the supply of new foreign cannon fodder at the border and local Sunni groups picking off the Al Qaida cells from within in addition to the regular attrition from various coalition operations. Zarqawi's operations should begin to fall apart fairly quickly. I am giving it until the end of the month.

Kansas and Intelligent Design

2005-11-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

If you live in Kansas, leave. If you don't live there, don't move there. Let's vote with our feet.

I generally think the Democrats are idiots. I think there are plenty of Republican idiots too. There are two issues that I think would advance the Republicans if they would simply change their stance. Firstly, "Intelligent Design" has no place in science and they should come out and say so. It isn't science. Secondly, they need to come off their anti-abortion stance. I don't believe the Republican support "base" is so important that they need to maintain the stance on this issue. What are the religious wackos going to do? Run to the Democrats? Not bloody likely. You might hear a lot of whining about it and a lot of bluster and threats, but when all is said and done, I think the "base" will stay right where it is. I believe such moves would stand to increase Republican support more than it would decrease it.

California Propositions

2005-11-08T19:59:00.000-08:00

I got to thinking about one of the propositions on the ballot today and what it really means. I have a seven year old daughter. We have a wonderful relationship. It she were under the age of consent, I could imagine her seeking an abortion without wanting me to know. She might be afraid it would disappoint me that she were pregnant. I would probably counsel her to obtain an abortion but today's proposition would take that away from me as a father. I might never find out. What if she got pregnant again? The state is just going to take care of it, right? And if she gets pregnant again? What about three more times? Is the state going to thing ME unfit as a parent when I never knew she was pregnant to begin with? And there are two people involved. Someone needs to let that other parent know to give their kid some tools to prevent that kind of thing. I don't care if she wants an abortion and I am not worried about giving "permission" for one, I probably would anyway. What I want to know is that she was pregnant so that steps can be taken to see that it doesn't happen again. Under current law, she could get pregnant 10 times and I would never know.

Diminishing Insurgency

2005-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

All signs are pointing to a significant diminishing of the Iraqi insurgency. After the first week of this month, the casualty rate is the lowest it has been since February for Iraqi security forces and the lowest since May for civilian casualties. The toll is waning with each passing month as Iraqi forces gain control of more of the country. There are signs that Al Zarqawi is also getting desperate. He has today announced the start of an "offensive" that would "shake the ground beneath the feet" of Iraq. So far it has turned out to be bluster just as the warning of a "Great Ramadan Offensive" turned out to be. There was a drive-by shooting of a lawyer involved in the Saddam trial today. Was that the "offensive"? We see things like that every day in LA, California. Car bombs and drive-by shootings are more fitting the tactics of New Jersey gangsters than any kind of military force.

Evidence is also building of a loss of support in the Muslim communities in the Middle East for Al Qaida in Iraq. Demonstrators took to the streets in Morocco to protest the "trial" of two members of that country's diplomatic mission to Iraq. Fatwas were issued damning Al Qaida and it's members to hell if they carried out the threatened executions. Opinion columns in the regional media show little tolerance for Al Zarqawi and his thugs. Influential Sunnis are joining the political process and are talking about bringing peace to the Sunni regions of Iraq. Not today or tomorrow, but as word gets out and as their political engine gets rolling.

The end is near for Al Qaida in Iraq. Expect a "full court press" in the media. Expect to hear things like this from the Seattle Times "Widespread Iraq violence leaves swath of casualties". You will never know from reading the papers that the violence is decreasing every week. You will never learn that the casualty rages are down by double-digit percentages each month. You are going to be lead to believe that the violence is raging uncontrolled leaving a "swath" of casualties all over the countryside. This is irresponsible journalism. If newspapers want to know why their subscriptions are decreasing, maybe they should begin by looking at the accuracy of what they report and they can begin that process by looking at the accuracy of their headlines. Yes, while in a very strict technical sense it might be accurate if you can define "swath" and "widespread" but the overall picture these repeated headlines paint is inaccurate. People who actually dig into the story and look at the numbers know better. This causes a loss of respect for the media outlets when it becomes obvious that the stories are disingenuous. It causes the reader to become more cynical of the stories. That readership should decline under such circumstances is not surprising.

It is almost funny ...

2005-11-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

The LA Times has to almost apologize that there is good news in Iraq. The story linked to is about how sales are up this year for the end of Ramadan Eid al-Fitr. It seems they must pepper their story of good news with as much bad news as they can find. It sort of reads like "things are getting better, but ..." like there always has to be that "but" in there. Don't imagine they could look themselves in the mirror if they published a story with unqualified good news. Wish they took the same approach with bad news.

It's been a while

2005-11-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

I have been sitting and watching events and not saying a whole lot about what has been going on. Part of my reason has been a feeling that I might "jinx" things by saying something. But I believe I have finally had enough so I am going to burn some bits here.

So the numbers are in for October. I am confused by media reports of "expanding" or "increasing" insurgency in Iraq when I am seeing exactly the opposite. During the month of January when Iraq last had a constitutional referendum there were 127 coalition deaths. In October there were 99. While one might not on the surface think that this is a considerable difference (down roughly 22%), one must look at what going on at the time. At the time of the 127 deaths, there were practically no coalition troops in western Iraq. About a week prior to the latest election, we changed from a tactic of "raid and run" in the western towns to "raid and stay". During the last elections there were boots on the ground in the most restive areas of Al Anbar province. Also, the month of October showed a decrease in the numbers if Iraq casualties, both security forces and civilians. There was no "Great Ramadan Offensive". Osama bin Laden didn't arrive in Iraq to lead the insurgents. All the bluster from the insurgents has proved out to be just that, bluster.

Rather than increasing in their deadly activities, the numbers are showing a decreased ability to inflict casualties. There is also some evidence that the tactics of the insurgents are causing a loss of support in the Muslim world. They are increasingly being seen as the homicidal maniacs that they are. The only place that the insurgency seems to be increasing is in the headlines of wire service news articles. It is no wonder that polls are showing decreased support; the people are being deliberately misinformed. It is hard to find good news but you can if you dig around. Often it is in the foreign press.

But the good thing is, nobody in Iraq except Al Qaida is reading the US headlines and that might actually be a good thing. It might cause the insurgents to begin to believe their own bluster or to believe that everyone here does. This might cause them to overlook the indicators of their demise which are appearing daily. The daily number of attacks are down. The number of casualties from the attacks are down. They have been increasingly unable to intimidate people into stopping the political process (many more Sunnis participated this time than last time). Coalition forces are now camped inside the towns they held only a couple of months ago. Their leadership seems to be getting picked off daily. Private citizens are coming forward to report insurgent locations and caches. The last attempted spectacular attack (they have been able to pull off two spectacular attacks per month until now) floundered when attempts to breech the security of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad failed and they were only able to kill some innocent passers-by.

What is also very important is that during the January elections, coalition forces were busy in places like Tikrit and Mosul. These areas have now been turned over to Iraqi forces. This frees up US forces to concentrate more force on Al Anbar. At the same time this is taking place, Iraq has issued a recall of the old Iraqi army junior officers. All who were serving up to the rank of Major are being asked to return. It is too early to tell how that is working out, but it could serve to deflate any non-Al Qaida insurgency even more. It is a very important move, though, because once those guys get into uniform again, our forces aren't "occupiers" anymore to them, we become trainers and logisticians. We become their supply system until their own supply system is up and running. There is more to building an army than just putting troops into uniform and handing them a rifle. You have to feed them, clothe them, provide clean socks and underwear. For an army to operate completely on its own, it needs a logistics system to keep that army fed, clothed, and supplied.

So, the bottom line? If you read the mainstream media, you are being lied to. You are being intentionally misinformed. Why this is so popular these days, I have no idea. The truth is that from today forward, things are going to start going very badly for Al Qaida in Iraq. Let's hope they keep drinking the Kool-Aid, reading our media, and don't notice. They might just "expand" themselves right into oblivion.

What's wrong with those guys?

2005-06-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

I am starting to get why mainstream media is losing it's following. Because it produces drivel. Not only is it drivel, it is often weeks behind the curve. It got on my nerves a little this morning. I was doing some personal research to see how Operation Thunder was doing. From all the hard data I could find, it seems to be going quite well. Deaths of Iraqi army and police since the start of the operation are down 50% on a daily basis. Deaths by US forces are down even more. Hundreds have been rounded up, tons of ammunition and explosives have been destroyed, insurgent leadership and financiers have been caught. There have been no major setbacks. No mass vaporization of Iraqi forces in the face of resistance as happened a year ago. And what does the press report?

"Modest gains". Excuse me? 50% isn't modest in my opinion. Sunni clerics are calling for an end to the mayhem. Who gets the press today? That crazy al Sadr guy that used to go running around terrorizing neighborhoods with his private militia. Today's articles are still using phrases like "increasing violence" when that isn't the truth. It appears as if someone wants to create a certain outcome. As if it is important that there be increasing violence so they report it as such in the hopes of making people believe it is so. If a situation isn't what you want it to be, at least you can make it appear to be that way and influence the voters that way.

It is just silly and actually quite patronizing. Violence isn't increasing, it is dramatically decreased over the past 8 days. An increase in violence is reported immediately. A decrease is ignored. Why? Why aren't the news outlets praising the Iraqi army and giving it a reinforcement of confidence it could really use? So far this month 6 US soldiers have died in or of wounds sustained in Iraq. One of those 6 was, sadly, wounded in February and lost his battle with them yesterday. So we have 5 killed in actions this month. This is much better than last month yet all I hear is the statistics from May being repeated over and over and over.

June is a critical month of Iraq. If the media wants to help get our troops home, maybe they could offer some encouragement and hope to the Iraqis. It doesn't have to be doom and gloom all the time. In fact, it causes me to stop listening to them when I know the truth to be different. They lose their credibility.

Iraq stands up

2005-05-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

So it appears that Iraq is going to undertake a large security operation starting in a few days time. While I wonder why they announced it so early, I must say that I am very happy to see Iraqi police and army beginning to take steps to handle their own security. This is a major step. It is like someone finally waking up after a very long coma and trying to find their feet after not having used them for so long.

There is also some major symbolic significance to it all. Iraq's current interior and defense ministers are no longer appointees of a government of American appointees. They are appointed by a government that was proudly voted in by Iraqis themselves. Yes, it is only an interim government, a continental congress of sorts, but it is their government and they seem to have been proud of electing it. The primary job of this interim government is to draw a constitution and hold new elections for a permanent government. A second job is to begin to put an Iraqi face on the security situation.

Now that these organs are headed by people chosen by an elected government, a major psychological hurdle has been crossed. Previously, attacks on the army and police were seen as attacks on a government appointed by the occupation. This is no longer the case. Attacks on the police force and army are now attacks on a government that the Iraqis themselves installed. An attack on the police is in a way an attack on each Iraqi that participated. Continued attacks on these institutions of government stand a greater chance of alienating the insurgency than it does gaining support for it. That is a significant change. A sea change, if you will.

Now that the Iraqi forces have announced that they are going to take the initiative in Baghdad, I believe we are seeing the beginning of the end for the insurgency. June is going to be a crucial turning point. Godspeed to the Iraqi people.

Is he or isn't he?

2005-05-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi might be wounded, or he might not be. He has a problem, that's for sure. A while back, an intercepted message apparently from Osama was urging him to turn his efforts against the US homeland. A message intercepted, oh, about a year ago had al-Zarqawi saying that if the elections happened in Iraq, the days of the insurgency were numbered and their only hope was to incite civil war between the Shiite and Sunni factions. More recently an intercept apparently from some insurgent group to al-Zarqawi complained of low moral, waning support for the insurgency and criticism for running away from Fallujah.

This gives Abu Musab a problem. How can he leave a lost cause to obey Osama and turn his efforts directly against the US? How can he do this without looking like he has run away ... again. If he leaves the country, he becomes a loser. He must leave the country but he must not leave the country. Simple. He "dies" in Iraq, he becomes a hero, takes a new identity and carries his destruction to the US.

I thought it was interesting that a doctor in Ramadi that claims to have treated al-Zarqawi and was told to keep quiet, went directly to the media with the story. If that man is still alive and still practicing at that hospital, I would suspect his story.

Anyway, my guess? It is the beginning of the end of the Iraqi insurgency.

Saddam's Underpants

2005-05-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Well, now we know. Briefs. But still, I didn't really *want* to know. The news comes out in tabloids owned by the same company that owns Fox News. Why did they publish the photos and not go with the much bigger story of exposing who is peddling the pictures?

Nuclear option?

2005-05-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

I want to know just who the hell coined the phrase "nuclear option" when describing the idea that Senate rules could be changed to eliminate filibusters for judicial appointments. It isn't like it has been of vital importance in our history. In fact, it has never been used before. No party has ever filibustered appointments that have made it out of committee. That the Democrats are threatening to use that tool disappoints me. They are trying to make an issue that according to The Constitution takes only a majority vote into an issue that requires a super-majority.

That leads me to ask who the hell started with the rhetoric that eliminating Senate filibuster for judicial appointees was a constitutional issue. Nowhere is the concept of the filibuster mentioned in The Constitution. Filibuster exists only in the Senate rules of procedure. In fact, it was sanctified not by the Senators themselves, but by a Vice President who took it upon himself to make the rule by decree when the corrupt U.S. Grant administration began to lose it's congressional majority. Once the Republican Party lost the Senate, the Vice President used his position as President of the Senate to sanctify the filibuster. This allowed the minority party to obstruct the majority Democrats but again, it has never been used ever in history to block a judicial appointment.

I favor complete elimination of the Senate filibuster rule, not just for appointments but for everything. When the people of this country elect a majority party to Congress, they expect that party's agenda to be passed, for better or for worse. The filibuster, for all practical purposes, can be used for anything coming before the Senate and can eliminate the concept of a simple majority vote and turn everything into a super-majority. It is the existence of the filibuster, not the elimination of it, that goes against The Constitution.

The "nuclear option" term is clearly designed to intentionally inflame people and possibly scare them. The idea that the filibuster rule is some kind of constitutional check or balance is a fabrication. So here we have cases of both hype and flat out lying by the opposition party.

There is an even more important issue here. That is the power of third parties. By removing the filibuster, politicians belonging to small parties with few seats have more power because their one or two seats might be enough to swing a majority vote in a lot more cases than they would be able to influence a super-majority. At least with the nearly evenly divided congress we have seen over the past couple of decades.

US labor unions. An important time.

2005-05-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Today's issue is sort of cool for a couple of reasons. It came up in the past couple of days on a BBS I participate in and then today the issue showed up in the news. There were two issues that I found interesting on the other BBS (which will remain nameless because it has nothing to do with any political issues, though such issues do come up in conversation there at times) that came out of a conversation intially talking about political corruption.

It seems that some hold an opinion that the US and it's politcal leaders are very corrupt. That might be but my feeling is that we are much less corrupt than most of the rest of the world. I know that isn't a popular position among the extreme "America is responsible for all the ills of the world" crowd but I have simply not found evidence of the systemic corruption such as one might find most of Central and South America, most of Asia, most of Africa, and a good portion of Europe. Bribery of officials is an accepted way of life for the majority of the people living on this planet. Not only is it tolerated, it is expected. But that is beside the point.

A comment about labor unions got into the conversation and one of the participants replied that unions weren't the cause for corruption. Not "the" cause but I believe they certainly have been "a" cause. This has been shown over and over with the infiltration of organized labor by organized crime. We would not have wasted the resources to create an enforce labor racketeering laws if this weren't the case. So if you accept that unions are at various times under various levels of control of criminal elements, have a look at the activities of organized labor. One thing that stands out is the millions of dollars they contribute each year to political activities. What makes it stand out even more is that well over 90% of those contributions are to one particular party. These unions represent people of all political parties. Their members span the entire spectrum of political thought. Why would the unions take the money that has been paid to them by their members and spend nearly every penny of it on only one particular party? Wouldn't the other party (parties, really) be more likely to listen to the unions if the unions weren't so busy being publically critical and funding the opposition? It seems they would get further by being an important asset to all parties, not just one.

Then I read the news this morning. It seems there is some discontent in the rank and file. In some cases this discontent rises to the heads of the local unions and sub-organizations of the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO is in the process of its own election campaign. It seems they are tired of being the "ATM of the Democratic Party" in some cases and are calling for change. They want a leadership that is more reflective of the interests of the membership. As if that will happen. Excuse me for my skepticism but unions tend to be rather, uhm, thuggish in their behavior. I have seen it happen with my own two eyes. I have seen someone question the policies of the leadership and being taken aside and having the importance of being a "team player" explained to them. No explicit threats were leveled but the idea that one might have a better go of things if they went along was clearly communicated. In other words, the unions are often intimidating to their membership. The union power tends to flow from the top down rather than from the bottom up. Some unions want to chage this. I agree with them and think that making those kinds of changes might go a long way toward reversing the shrinkage of union membership and improving the lot of the working people in this country.

Of the top ten contributors to political campaigns since 1990, seven are labor unions. The biggest two, and both in the top three contributors, are the American Federation of State, County, and Municpal Employees; and The National Education Association. In the 2004 election cycle, those two unions gave 98% and 93% of their contributions, respectively, to one party. I don't believe that 98% of municipal employees and 93% of teachers are, nationally, members of that party. In other words, I don't believe the unions are reflecting the political leanings of the membership. I believe they are instead reflecting the political leanings of the leadership. In other words, there is a disconnect between the membership and the leadership. It must be difficult to attract new members when your union leadership does and says things that alienate the party that 50% of your prospective new members belong to. At a time when you need to make changes and reach out, to be engaging in practices that alienate 50% of prospective members right off the bat seems counter productive.

Well, some are shouting for change. I find this reporting from the Washington Times to be interesting (albeit the Times as a fairly blatent mouthpiece for the right)

"Several labor unions, such as the hotel workers, the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, have sent signals they want to pursue a more bipartisan approach on some issues. Some, such as the carpenters union which left the AFL-CIO four years ago, are giving more campaign money to Republican candidates -- more than 40 percent to House Republicans in the post-2004 election cycle thus far. ""

What I found really interesting is this comment from the Teamsters:

"The core of our belief is that the election last year was lost because we did not have enough union members in the country, said Mike Mathis, political director at the Teamsters union. If the union work force in Ohio were 26 percent instead of 17 percent, given the percentage of union members who voted for John Kerry, then Kerry would have won Ohio and be president now"

Think for a moment about what this statement is saying. Are the Teamsters saying they can "fix" elections and deliver votes? Seems that way to me. It implies that if a truck driver joined the union, his vote would change from Republican to Democrat. It reinforces the idea that the labor unions are nothing more than peripheral organizations for one political party. But there is a major flaw in Mr. Mathis' logic. He assumes that if those people joined the union they would vote in the same proportion as the existing union members. I don't think that would be true. I think they have lost those members *because* the union is so one sided. They consistantly have their head in the sand and are saying "we can convert Repulicans into Democrats" rather than saying "we can appeal to both Republican and Democrats and increas our membership".

Following that line of thought from the Teamsters, you would be expecting them to push for state laws requiring union membership or laws requiring union labor for state projects so the union can control the jobs. That is the crux of the issue. The unions are no longer fighting for the worker, they are fighting for a political machine and people know that. Rather than an employer threatening a loss of a job if you don't accept their compensation offer, the union is threatening a loss of a job if you don't toe the party line. What if they got those laws in place and the union didn't "deliver" the votes? They would crack down on the membership, that's what. They would find people openly questioning the Democrats or praising the Republicans and give them "a hard time". That is the only way the union could ever make good on the statements it is making. They must have some way of ensuring they can "deliver". The unions are corrupt. The unions are a political organization. Let's hope they get their shit together.

Welcome to my world

2005-05-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

Hi and welcome to my blog.

I have had one or two over the past several years but I have decided to start from scratch. Sometimes I have things to say about stuff and it is difficult for me to fine a good venue for saying them. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that I tend to hold positions on some issues that are with the left and some (possibly most, currently) that are with the right. Most places tend to be populated with people that lean one way or the other so if I want to blast Bush on his bull-headed opposition to stem cell research, I piss off the ones on the right. If I want to blast labor unions and their lockstep support for the Democratic party, I piss off the left. I find a venue here that allows me to piss off anyone I damned well please for no reason other than because it is my opinion and if it pisses you off, oh well. My intention isn't to piss anyone off but to express my opinions, hopefully engage in discussion about them, learn from other viewpoints, offer my own, and maybe grow in the process.

I will probably keep personal issues to a minimum. I envision this to be an analysis of the world around us, an expression of an initial take on these issue, and then perhaps some reflection, discussion, and refinement. I could quite possibly do a complete 180-degree turn on an issue. I have in the past. Mainly it is due to gathering more info and abandoning an old position as incorrect. I generally don't hold positions closely in an emotional sense. I don't see a disagreement as invalidating or a personal attack. If someone disagrees with my position on an issue my first reaction is to want to know why. What information does that person have that caused them to reach a differing conclusion? If we exchange information and I dismiss their conclusion as incorrect, I am doing just that, dismissing a conclusion, not dismissing them.

So this blog will get political at times, scientific at times, and generally reflect the things in the world that interest me. One thing I have little tolerance for is a "shooting the messenger" mentality. I often see it in the US media these days. When someone expresses an opposing conclusion, too often the reaction is to attack the person and not delve into an analysis of the information that led to that conclusion. This results in an alienating and emotionally charged discussion that devolves into people being mean to each other while they get off the track of the original issue. I don't like that kind of stuff. It isn't productive.

Most of all, it is my blog. I get to choose what goes here. I might use foul language at times. It is a habit I use more in writing than in face to face communications. It is generally used more to set tone than to be lazy. So if the use of such language shocks you, don't read. It is, after all, my fucking blog. There, that should send most of the religious wacko right into the bathroom to wash their eyes out. I also don't have a lot of respect for certain buzzwords but I suppose it depends on how they are used. If you start spouting some well worn and threadbare party taglines, you are likely to be met with a yawn. I don't want to hear what someone else has to say or what the party has to say, I want to hear what YOU have to say.