Socialist Self Dissection

It is worth notice when the intellectual left decide to dissect themselves, and who better than a Jewish academic philosopher and linguist like Britain’s Shalom Lappin. Take for example: “substituting one shrill opinion for its opposite for the purpose of promoting an unchanging Manichean agenda is a mark neither of insight nor of serious judgement”, commenting on iconic progressive Noam Chomsky.

One big problem with being a Jewish liberal is that the focus of the radical left is so fervently anti-American in specific and anti-Western in general, it is leading the historical anti-capitalist movement to side with the enemies of Israel.

Anti-Semitism in the UK: In pursuing this route, the radical left has largely abandoned progressive working class politics in favour of a politics of culture and identity focussed on the anti-Western agenda of Islamism. Rather than supporting democrats, labour unionists, feminists, and anti-racists within the Muslim communities of Britain this part of the left has chosen to embrace Islamism as a potent form of anti-imperialism. In so doing they have produced a new socialism of fools. … Given the lack of credibility currently enjoyed by secular leftwing ideologies in most of the Islamic world, this appears to be a clear case of political opportunism driven by ideological bankruptcy.

Lappin is a devote insider within the theoretical circles of socialist thought, writing with perfect sincerity that the establishment of the American, Canadian and Australian nations are the fruit of ethnic cleansing the native populations. He does, however, present a remarkable analysis of how the Marxist commitment to empower the working class and elevate the lives of those who survive by their labor has been sidetracked by the globalization of financial capital and an irrational distain for free markets.

How Class Disappeared From Western Politics: With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the transformation of China into a super-animated, market-driven country, and the disintegration of secular third world nationalist movements in Africa and Asia, militant political Islam emerged as the most potent anti-Western ideology around. Faced with the choice of redefining their ideas in light of current realities or sustaining anti-imperialism as their focus, much of the radical left opted to embrace jihadism as the new incarnation of third world revolution, even while muttering formulaic misgivings over the religio-political project of the jihadists.

When the focus of the left shifted from the goal of improving the lives of ordinary people to simple opposition of western wealth and values, it blinded them to the reality they are providing support to an equally active global movement. A movement that promotes homophobia, the subordination of women, the justifiable killing of innocents and the unchallengeable authority of religion. The far left is so wrong that even the core left is concerned.

A Libertarian Prison Story

Rolf Lindgren is currently listed as the press secretary for the Libertarian Party of Dane County and his recent activities are recounted in an Isthmus article from last summer.

Recall Cieslewicz: Local Libertarian leader Rolf Lindgren says enough is enough. He wants the people of Madison to raise up as one to recall Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz as punishment for the city's decision to enact an indoor smoking ban. Lindgren launched an earlier campaign, which failed miserably, to recall Gov. Jim Doyle.

This week Lindgren drops an email to the libertarian website Hammer of Truth which the webmaster decides to cut and paste in unedited completeness, calling it “a must read merely for the satirical and literary value”.

Drug Prohibition: A Prison Story: On July 3, 1990, I was snared in what I soon learned was a new type of crime that hadn’t existed in all annals of human history from 3000 BC until our generation, the reverse-sting drug crime. … However, being an entrepreneurial person in a capitalist country who believes crimes have victims, I foolishly agreed to borrow money and meet Nick and his “friend” David Matthews. I went to the Fairfield Inn on the Madison east side with $10,750 in a Hardees cup.

Of the financial law offenders many were crooks and many were not. One conspired to import 6 garter snakes from Canada, one sold guns to Oliver North and one cut down a Christmas tree on federal land. … There were mayors, assemblymen, prosecutors, CIA agents, city council members, tax resistors, a Federal Reserve Board banker, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandson, Pablo Escobar’s cousin, Roger Clinton’s connection, an IRS agent turned drug dealer and Al Gore’s cousin (who was released on January 21, 1993, the day after Al Gore took office).

Absolutely no facts have been checked so believe the story to any degree you desire.

Amnesty Challenges

Today in history courtesy of the Center for Immigration Studies: Mar 28, 1951 - This act enables the exclusion or expulsion of aliens due to their membership or affiliation with a Communist organization. The United States is a government of the people with the unstated assumption that the people are willing citizens of the United States. Political and human rights are distinct topics and America is being challenged to define the difference.

Michelle Malkin has the usual excellent round up of the reactions to Immigration Reform in the Senate and to demonstrations in the streets. How 'Bout Media Guest Workers seizes an excellent point from Thomas Sowell.

Guests or Gate Crashers: How often have we heard that illegal immigrants "take jobs that Americans will not do"? What is missing in this argument is what is crucial in any economic argument: price. Americans will not take many jobs at their current pay levels -- and those pay levels will not rise so long as poverty-stricken immigrants are willing to take those jobs.

In the broadest of brushstrokes the number of illegal residents is a result of business interests exerting influence over legislation and enforcement of existing laws. The millions of individuals and families living outside the law, however, can no longer be ignored. We are not going to fill railcars with bodies so the political question to be answered is how to demand individual responsibility which is the price of human rights while also defining our national expectations about cultural assimilation and validating ways to achieve citizenship.

Amnesty is a word that will become the central point of any political solution and the following variations come from a Federal Bill Comparison PDF File developed by NumbersUSA.

A. EXIT AMNESTY: The lawbreaker is forgiven the crime and not assessed the penalty. The Exit Amnesty waives one or more of the penalties the law currently assesses for illegal immigration, including civil and criminal penalties and bars on legal re-entry. An Exit Amnesty would, however, require illegal aliens to leave the United States.

B. REWARD AMNESTY: The lawbreaker is actually rewarded for lawbreaking by being given the very thing he/she attempted to steal in the first place. In the case of illegal aliens, most are seeking a job in the United States. A Reward Amnesty would give illegal aliens the legal right to work, either temporarily or permanently.

C. INSTANT JACKPOT AMNESTY: The lawbreaker wins the jackpot - he/she is instantly rewarded for breaking our immigration laws by being given lawful permanent resident status and put on the path to U.S. citizenship. Instant Jackpot Amnesties generally are limited to illegal aliens of a certain national origin (e.g., the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act) or who are working in a particular occupation in the United States (e.g., the Special Agricultural Worker amnesty included in the Immigration Reform and Control Act).

D. MULTI-STEP CITIZENSHIP AMNESTY: The lawbreaker is first given a Reward Amnesty (usually through a legal work permit and temporary resident status or “cancellation of removal”). After a period of time and usually after other criteria (e.g., holding a job; paying taxes; working in a particular industry), the formerly illegal alien is given lawful permanent resident status and put on the path to U.S. citizenship.

E. BLANKET AMNESTY: This is basically the Instant Jackpot Amnesty but for the entire population of illegal aliens (minus a few exceptions, such as certain criminals), although it may be limited to illegal aliens who have lived in the United States for a certain period. The “general amnesty” included in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, for example, was a Blanket Amnesty for all illegal aliens who had lived in the United States since January 1, 1982.

F. DE FACTO AMNESTY: This does not immediately reward illegal aliens with legal status but holds out the promise that if they avoid arrest long enough they will be exempted from the penalties for illegal immigration and granted legal status. The now expired Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is a De-Facto Amnesty because it says that all illegal aliens in the country who have the right through jobs or relatives to apply for lawful permanent resident status may do so from within this country with the tacit assurance that they may remain in this country illegally until their name comes up to the top of the list for a green card sometime in the future.

Democrats will paint Republican attempts at organization and control of illegal residents as racist and oppressive measures aimed at harming the poor and peaceful. Progressives dream of millions of Latino voters sweeping them back into power with promises of protection, income and healthcare. This Statism is a great danger to freedom as we cherish the concept and all of us who oppose the socialists need to be clever in the humane re-establishment of workable citizenship laws within our borders.

Green for Governor

I am not emotionally committed to either Scott Walker or Mark Green as the Republican candidate against incumbent Democrat Jim Doyle, but with Walker dropping out of the race I completely support Mark Green. There are already over 40 blog posts up about Walkers decision to withdraw and avoid an expensive and potentially damaging primary fight.

The general consensus is that this is primarily a financial decision by Walker who has raised significantly less money than either Green or Doyle. The ability to make hard decisions based on financial reality is a good trait and one that is serving Walker well as the administrator of Milwaukee County, and that will continue to be an asset valued by the Republican Party going forward. All successful politicians are a balance between ambition and survival and with this action Walker has preserved a bright future within the party.

Governor Jim Doyle "is the most vulnerable governor in the country of either party," according to RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman and he absolutely must be ousted. Congressman Green put in his time at the Federal level and early Democratic criticism attempts to imply his loyalties lie more with the National Party than the desires of the citizens of Wisconsin. I believe there is some merit to the charge as evidenced by the fact he refused to condemn the industry driven unjustifiable and unnecessary ethanol mandate, but on the whole this problem is minor at best. At the national level as at the local level, Republican Party policies in general are the best hope of maintaining our prosperous, safe and free society. Doyle must go so vote for Mark Green.

Spammer Indictment

IMHO, the only thing worse than spammers are residential telemarketers. Nice to see that some of the email con-men are being caught and ingeniously prosecuted under the more severe Federal mail fraud statutes.

SPAM: Nigerians Indicted: The interesting aspect of this case is that the indictment alleges conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, and bank fraud, but not email fraud under the CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. § 7704). This is likely because the punishment for the first three offenses is far greater than the punishment for sending an email message knowing that the recipient would be misled by the subject heading of the email about material facts represented in the message, as proscribed by section 7704. The punishment for email fraud is up to five years in prison and a fine, while wire and mail fraud carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison and bank fraud carries a punishment of up to 30 years in prison.

As we have seen before, prosecutors are required to charge individuals under the most “serious offense that is consistent with the nature of the defendant’s conduct, and that is likely to result in a sustainable conviction.”

By the way, if you believe the million dollar estate of a terminally ill foreigner is looking for Americans to help distribute the wealth to charity … you might be a Democratic voter.

Do Our Cosmic Neighbors Have Cows?

On a more ambitious evening I may try and analyze the relationship between navel gazing and star gazing. RedOrbit links to a picture from the Chilean Very Large Telescope ESO showing a brown dwarf hanging out in our corner of the cosmos.

The Suns New Exotic Neighbor: At a time when astronomers are peering into the most distant Universe, looking at objects as far as 13 billion light-years away, one may think that our close neighbourhood would be very well known. Not so. Astronomers still find new star-like objects in our immediate vicinity.

Astronomers have been avidly trying to peer back to the beginning of time which is the holy grail of universal inquiry, but they have also been working at the mundane tasks of actually trying to catalog our companions of the moment. There is a list maintained of The 100 Nearest Stars in mind numbing technical detail. In a nice touch they also keep a short list of those heavenly bodies that have been recently kicked off.

The Nearby Methane Rich Brown Dwarf of the article raises the question of whether cows exist in outer space. “Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering”. - Arthur C. Clarke

Instability In Iraq

Every now and then someone just nails a subject. I wish I had written the following article and I really wish the administration had someone who could explain reality with intellectual clarity, but this comes from a blogger on the Guerrilla News Network.

Instability In Iraq: When one listens to many anti-war arguments, one theme that often reappears over and over again is this claim that the US is creating instability in Iraq. Normally, I would respond by asking who cares? … But after some reflection I have realized what stability they are often referring too.

Before Saddam fell, Iraq was a very stable society. Everybody knew their place. Whatever violence did occur was planned violence organized by the state. Under perfect control. It could be turned on or off upon demand from Saddam, its dictator. …. Everyone lived in fear and no-one stood out. Most people who did not join the thugocracy, simply tried to live quiet lives minding their own business, praising Saddam, and staying below the radar screens of the security forces.

Democracy as it was suggested by the US lead process introduced many confusing new concepts that Iraqis are not familiar with. The notion that power would be passed to weak, passive people who mind their own business and just quietly go about their lives was a novel yet threatening idea. Women would be asked their opinion, meek and quiet people would have the same rights as the traditional thugs. And power would also be distributed by population size, as opposed to the traditional Sunni domination of the Shiites.

Things shall appear very unstable for a while as Iraqis must figure out for themselves what rights they can demand. Until these rights become engrained as normal rights and rights that people can demand without fear, there shall always be those who see intimidation and instability as a weapon of power.

I recommend reading the whole post but skip the sophomoric leftist attacks in the comments. The people who want to believe that the presence of police makes America a police state and that a disciplined military must mean fascism are beyond reasoning. It is hard to become unjustly incarcerated and extremely difficult to get yourself killed by our government. The people of Iraq are the ones who have lived under true oppression and you don’t just snap out of the mindsets that aided survival. Iraq is dangerous today because it was dangerous then and it takes time for populations to adapt to freedom.

PS: Thanks for the Letters in Bottles links Steve and Brad and for the record, celery and macaroni are the two items that should never go into a chili pot.

Ethanol Mandate Post-Mortem

The unjustifiable Wisconsin Ethanol Mandate is presumed dead after having been indefinitely postponed in the Senate, but stranger zombies have re-emerged to haunt the helpless masses. Ironically, action at the Federal level may be the key factor in keeping this mandate deceased and harmless while at the same time demonstrating there was no need for this statist anti-market approach in the first place.

EPA Revokes Mandate: (2/15/06) In a move to provide greater flexibility in producing clean-burning gasoline to protect and improve air quality, EPA is revoking the two percent oxygen content requirement for reformulated gasoline (RFG) nationwide. … The revocation takes effect nationwide on May 6 and in California 60 days after the regulation's publication in the Federal Register.

The EPA announcement uses language to imply some noble action to remove a Federal “burden” but the reality is this reversal and backtracking from 1990 Clean Air Act guidelines has more to do with big dollar liability than any sincere appreciation for free markets. It turns out that mandating gasoline have additives to replace the completely demonized lead formulations merely created new environmental problems.

MTBE in Fuels: MTBE has been used in U.S. gasoline at low levels since 1979 to replace lead as an octane enhancer (helps prevent the engine from "knocking"). Since 1992, MTBE has been used at higher concentrations in some gasoline to fulfill the oxygenate requirements set by Congress in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.

Oil Companies to Pay Clean Up Costs: (2/16/2005) LOS ANGELES - Under the terms of a settlement filed today in federal court, several oil companies will pay $1.5 million to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for costs it incurred while directing the investigation and cleanup of methyl tertiary butyl ether or MTBE, a gasoline additive, from a groundwater basin formerly used for drinking water by the City of Santa Monica.

So while at the State level Sergeant Schultz was working to give Wisconsin citizens one single government approved consumer choice, the oil industry and the Bush administration were figuring out how to keep MTBE from becoming the next Asbestos like permanent lawsuit industry for the trial lawyers. The simple solution is government will stop requiring MTBE and the industry will stop using it within hours of the May 6, 2006 sunrise.

Additive's Demise Pumps Up Fuel Prices: The federal Environmental Protection Agency, responding to more than a decade of concerns that MTBE is polluting water supplies and making motorists sick, recently announced that it would end its oxygenated fuel requirement on May 6. … Although not an outright ban on MTBE, the EPA's action, which follows federal legislation, effectively ends its use because refiners don't want any liability if they continue to use MTBE.

Of course any abrupt change in an essential market will have ripple effects and the ethanol industry is going to get the entire gasoline additive market by default. Absolutely 100% blue sky opportunities without the need for campaign cash to Governor Doyle for his signature.

Ethanol Industry Braces for Growing Pains: Energy analysts said it is unclear whether ethanol producers can manufacture and distribute enough supply once U.S. refiners phase out the use of a petrochemical called methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, which enables gasoline to burn more completely, and thus more cleanly, but carries some public health risks.

It’s the distribution factor that may cause everyone the big headaches because unlike gasoline, or leaded gasoline, or MTBE gasoline, ethanol blends can’t be shipped long distance through pipelines. Expect a lot more heavy truck traffic on the Interstates this summer.

Spring 2006

Spring! It’s not just the law of the land, it’s the law of physics.

People have been marking and celebrating the Vernal Equinox for thousands of years. The Great Sphinx which was constructed over 4500 years ago on the Giza Plateau in Egypt, faces due east on the Vernal Equinox. The monoliths located at Stonehenge, which are estimated to be over 3000 years old, mark the position of the rising sun on the Vernal Equinox. In Central America the Ancient Mayan Caracol Tower and Temples of the Sun and Moon also have alignments that coincide with the sun’s position on the Vernal Equinox.

Hey Mother Nature, turn up the heat. It’s about time for a little global warming.

Drug Development Tragedy

The initial test of a new drug has gone horribly wrong in London sending all six paid volunteer men into intensive care with multiple organ failure. Monoclonal Antibodies stimulate the immune system and are increasingly used in Cancer Therapy and have promise to treat other auto-immune diseases. The drug from German biotech company TeGenero having passed animal testing was given to establish the human dose and response data.

Catastrophic Immune Response A catastrophic over-stimulation of the immune system may have caused the horrific reactions suffered by six men taking part in the first human clinical trial of an experimental drug. An investigation by New Scientist suggests the drug may have caused a super-immune response – sending white blood cells called T cells rampaging through the body destroying its own tissues.

TGN1412 is a monoclonal antibody but works slightly differently from other similar drugs. It is a “superagonist”, causing a far greater immune cell response. It also does not require a second, specific trigger to kick-start this response, as do other monoclonal antibodies affecting the same T cell receptor.

In other words, part of the human immune system is turned on when two independent switches are simultaneously flipped activivating a T cell to attack a specific target. The two key system, one from the target and one from the antibody, keeps the immune system specific to the target. The experimental drug TGN1412 was designed with the ability to flip both of the activation switches on a specific sub-set of regulator T cells that diminish the immune response. It didn’t work and the company has released a Statement re: TGN1412.

As with all medical tragedies, there are groups that are quick to point blame regardless of the fact that The Risks of Clinical Trials are always present.

Russian Roulette Do you see the man to the right? The one who looks like the evilest German scientist to ever stumble in blood-smeared scrubs out of a Nazi laboratory? Gaze carefully upon the ominous shadowing falling upon his cadaverous features, the inhuman leer. Yes, readers, you are looking upon the horrible visage of none other than Dr. Thomas Hanke, Chief Scientific Officer of TeGenero, whose drug TGN1412 had six men in trials tearing at their skin and screaming.

What this horrific incident shows is the extreme difficulty for human understanding to safely design ways to alter the complex physiology of human health and disease. I strongly suspect that the anti-business left have members that are the most vocal in insisting that someone find a cure for AIDS right now! Drug company bashing has become political sport but this tragedy should remind everyone that effective therapies, much less cures, are expensive to find and develop. Any winners that emerge must also cover the costs of the failures.

Voting to Bring the War Home

The Capital Times takes pride that Wisconsin is spending lots of tax dollars on symbolic votes that by definition have no legal basis to affect anything. By every analysis the anti-war referendum project is simply politics using public funds.

War bellwether: state leads way on anti-war referendums: Groups involved in Madison's anti-war effort include the South-Central Federation of Labor, Dane County Democrats, Four Lakes Green Party, International Socialist Organization, Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, the Madison Area Peace Coalition and Madison Ecumenical Center Board. Elected officials who have lent their name to the campaign include Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, State Reps. Spencer Black and Mark Pocan and State Sens. Mark Miller and Fred Risser.

Capital Times Editor John Nichols writing for The Nation titles his article about the anti-war referendum movement Bringing the War Home, which is exactly the danger this surrender and retreat strategy entails. There are large numbers of people in America who willfully refuse to believe that there is a significant danger to our society. The people and organizations listed above truly don’t believe that violence will follow retreating soldiers back to our shores. They do believe that if violence continues in the middle east it won’t harm us in Wisconsin.

According to the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice the wording on the Madison resolution is short and simple: “Should the United States bring all military personnel home from Iraq now?" The simplicity of the wording is an accurate reflection of the simplicity of thought behind the measure.

A Channel 15 news story about today’s Protest Rally attempts balance by quoting a troop supporter saying: “We got ourselves over there to help out the Iraqis.” The truth is we got ourselves over there to defend our country because Iraq, like Afghanistan, is an ideal battleground to defeat those individuals intent on harming us.

A New Al Gore Marketing Campaign

Three inches plus varying amounts of additional snowflakes descend on Madison today making this a routine mid-March weather event. The only regrettable aspect is that temperatures will remain seasonally below normal for the next several days. Once again a good time to remind everyone that Al Gore is a complete environmentalist wacko as evidenced by his latest global warming marketing campaign. The Heartland Institute posts a brilliant rebuttal to “The Loser” and his attempt to find funding and reasons to stay in the media.

Heartland Institute Statement on Gore Global Warming Campaign "Al Gore's call for the media to give free air time and donate huge financial sums to an alarmist global warming effort is a typical Al Gore campaign against scientific independence and a level scientific playing field. This is also typical of the propaganda campaigns and intimidation tactics advocated by global warming alarmists, attempting to 'shame' real scientists by subjecting them to public scorn.

"More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition calling into doubt global warming alarmism http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm. Significantly, many of the scientists are specialists in climatology.

"There is still much to learn about the Earth's climate system. Only partisans, blind alarmists, and scientists more interested in research dollars than dissemination of the truth believe 'the debate is over.' Indeed, to the extent the debate is over, it is because initial alarmist predictions have been completely debunked.

"The only current debate is over whether the moderate warming projected will marginally benefit or marginally harm mankind and the Earth's ecosystems. The early indications are this moderate warming will benefit life on Earth, just as past global warming periods have.

"If Al Gore were indeed more concerned about human welfare than environmental and political posturing, he would ask the media to donate money and air time to halting the current malaria holocaust, from which more than a million people will die this year. Even the New York Times has called for the return of DDT, which effectively combated malaria until activists such as Al Gore banned it due to faulty data and a public scare campaign not unlike his current global warming effort."

Limited supplies of Sore Loserman merchandise are still available.

Safety and Evil Water Towers

In theory, I completely support transport security as an essential requirement for a prosperous society, however, every encounter with the TSA reminds me that we pay a price in liberty for security and the balance should be continually evaluated. Wealthy libertarian John Gilmore raises an interesting question: Within America, do we still have the right to fly without being required to prove who we are?

"Papers, please!" This mantra of totalitarian societies has become familiar to Americans – not from movies, but from their own government. From police encounters to airport security, from political protests to public buses, your right to move around freely without "accounting for yourself" is increasingly challenged. … The 9th Circuit stated in its Gilmore Decision that when traveling by domestic commercial air, citizens had a choice: they could either show ID or submit to additional screening.

The point being that public safety in commercial travel may be adequately assured merely by demonstrating the absence of weapons and, therefore, the government has no legitimate need to establish and record individual identity. The loophole exploited by Al Qaeda on 9/11 was not weapons screenings so much as Hijacking Survival Guidelines calling for passive cooperation with individuals seizing an aircraft. The intention of suicide terrorism is virtually undetectable but it is also unworkable without weapons and docile hostages.

Determining intention is very difficult as illustrated by the two water towers in Plover, Wisconsin. One is good but then there is the Evil Watertower.

The Adventure of Travel

Four hours behind schedule the United flight descends slowly in the darkness over Chicago, and from the airline window I see a brightly lit large building surrounded by absolute blackness. My God I think, this must be a Wal-Mart that has killed off the adjacent small business, followed then by the realization that fatigue has sapped my reasoning to the point where I am susceptible to leftist delusions.

The exhausted gate attendants say the last flight to Madison may or may not leave at midnight, so Lola and I pay cash for Van Galder to bus us to the Dane County Regional Airport to retrieve the car. Three hours later we poke into a nearly deserted airport and discover our luggage has arrived a full 20 minutes before us. Shortly after 2 AM we reach home satiated with the adventure of travel.

Bay Day 1

John Adams and two companions arrive on horseback in Philadelphia, the largest city in British America with 30,000 inhabitants, on Thursday, February 8, 1776 after a two week ride through bitter winter cold from Braintree, Massachusetts. Departing from Minneapolis in a climate controlled airliner, Lola and I land in San Francisco four hours later in the heart of six million United States citizens living in the Bay Area. The changes over the 230 years between these two points in time are the American Miracle.

Vacation blogging … edited and updated later.

Guilt Envy Indignation and Equality

The interesting quick read of the day: The Stone Age Trinity, which consists of guilt, envy and indignation. Max Border presents the idea that the human mind is hardwired by the evolutionary pressures of surviving as small groups of hunter-gatherers. These three emotions in reaction to perceived inequalities within the group reinforced a relatively egalitarian social structure.

The problem for Marx and all the collectivist derivatives of his thinking is that small group egalitarian systems break down fairly quickly and predictably once a group reaches about 150 individual members.

Now, folks who've encountered Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point may recall the "Magic Number 150." This number seems to be a kind of cut-off point for the simpler forms of human organization. Gladwell reminds us that communal societies -- like those our ancestors lived in, or in any human group for that matter -- tend to break down at about 150. Such is perhaps due to our limited brain capacity to know any more people that intimately, but it's also due to the breakdown of reciprocal relationships like those discussed above.

So much of the political process these days relies on provoking the ancient trinity of emotions from our small group ancestry, regardless of whether or not such feelings offer any appropriate solutions to maintaining peace and prosperity in a population of billions.

Posters and a T-shirt Army

Dr. Sanity turns her formidable analytical skills upon Hugo Chavez, postulating that the Venezuelan strongman is demonstrating the classical signs of Castration Anxiety. El Commandante aims to have two million people trained to march in synchronized groups which will undoubtedly lead to lengthy parades to show off the brand new Russian, Brazilian and Spanish military equipment.

Chavez Prepares His People's Army to Confront US: In the grimy, litter-strewn capital Caracas his face beams out from posters whipping up national pride and warning the gringos: "Watch out, Latin America is coming." … "Chavez is the people" reads the slogan under another Che Guevara-like image. Willing "Chavistas" (supporters of the president) are queuing up to enlist in the new reserve force. … Many work for the state and some have met informally for months, marching without weapons around car parks and sports grounds, their group leaders calling themselves sergeants and colonels and wearing T-shirts saying "Combatant of the Revolution".

I know this is the tropics, but perhaps someone should remind Hugo that May Day is the traditional date to order the subjects into the streets for review.

Rummy on Truman

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s speech at the Truman Memorial Library on Thursday is now posted on the Department of Defense website. I recommend starting with the third paragraph and reading the entire text. As usual, Rumsfeld reminds us that the Bush administration is making decisions based on the information of the moment weighed against the historical understanding of our involvement with the world.

Rummy on Truman: But President Truman’s final words to the nation, as President, in 1953, I think ought to offer some comfort to those with questions about the struggle we face today. He said in part:

“Some of you may ask: when and how will the Cold War end?” This is 1953. He said: “when and how will the Cold War end? I think I can answer that simply; the Communist world has great resources and it looks strong, but there is a fatal flaw in their society. Theirs is … a system of slavery. There is no freedom in it, no consent. . . . I have a deep and abiding faith in the destiny of free men. With patience and courage, we shall some day move on into a new era."

And we did. But it wasn’t in that year. Or ten years. Or twenty years later. Or thirty years later. It was forty year later. He was right.

I have always been an admirer of President Truman because his life is testament to the wisdom of American values. He was a common man who achieved great power, used it wisely, and then freely returned to being a common man. In fact, a comparison between the post-Presidential behavior of Truman and Carter demonstrates how completely the Democratic Party has become consumed by petulant and petty opportunists. Hat Tip to Elephants in Academia for the link.

The Defense of Marriage Amendment

The Wisconsin Legislature decides the people of Wisconsin need to actively save marriage and will present the following constitutional amendment for citizens to accept or reject.

"Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state."

I will not vote for this measure because the motivation is purely political self interest, rather than a serious attempt to resolve inequalities within the law. Tampering with the constitution should be the last resort of politicians and this is a spineless admission our elected officials want to avoid doing the hard work of seeking acceptable compromise between groups with differing values.

Any truly satisfactory political solution needs to be based on understanding the difference between abnormal and unnatural. Homosexuality is abnormal sexuality because everything we know about the nature of life reveals that sexual behavior is for the purpose of reproduction. Homosexual orientation, while abnormal is not unnatural in that it clearly arises within a subset of the population. The political issue is how we as a society will decide to apply values of right and wrong to our naturally occurring minority populations.

Marriage is an approved union between a man and a woman and the homosexual rights movement is wrong to attempt the redefinition of this historical word. It is important to understand that marriage is a social construction conferred and supported by organizations. The emotional bonds between individuals exist independently of institutional guidelines and while granted rights and expectations can influence feelings it is ultimately mutual agreement that keeps two individuals together.

Marriage should remain marriage, but if we are a society based on the idea that individual rights are the source of just governance, then there needs to be legitimate alternatives to marriage. Achieving valid recognition of the rights of non-married couples will require rewriting existing laws but that is preferable to partisan gamesmanship with our constitution.

The Fraud of Academic Expertise

Michael Strong writing for TCS Daily makes the case that academic expertise, outside of the hard sciences, is a fraud being sold to a public conditioned to trust professors of higher learning.

Put Your Money Where Your Theory Is: The credibility of academia is based on the notion that professors are "experts in their field" who have achieved their position by means of a track record of exemplary scholarship. In the hard sciences, where "exemplary scholarship" is based on scientific work that is consistent with empirical research, this credibility is based on a solid foundation. Outside the hard sciences, the foundation for the credibility is more tenuous.

But without a responsibility to compare their conclusions with empirical realities, academic disciplines float off into the ozone. … Academics outside the natural sciences play shenanigans and their stock just keeps floating in thin air. … For the past hundred years we have assumed that the university "brand name" that gave us science and technology could also supply high quality thought, decisions, and judgment regarding politics and society. We were wrong. What to do now?

The Author heads up an organization named the Flow Project and he is most defiantly not a conservative in the current use of the term. What he has realized, however, is that leftist socialism has corrupted classic liberalism and needs to be purged from the educational culture.

Taking the Left Out of Liberal: We liberals should sharply distinguish “liberal” from “Leftist.” The latter characterized by anger, hatred, bullying, intransigence, and intellectual dishonesty. These spiritual diseases, legacies of the French Revolution and its Terror, began to infect liberalism in the early 20th century. This ugly spirit has contaminated much of academic life outside the hard sciences, economics, and business schools. As a consequence, many of the ideas and attitudes in the humanities and social sciences are profoundly, tragically misguided.

Conservatives who have been paying attention these last six years should understand the ivory towers need a thorough housecleaning. I suggest starting with the budget.

Unionism Adaptations

The American labor union movement announces an major agreement that removes some of the barriers to the blending of private and public sector unions.

AFL-CIO and NEA Solidarity A historic agreement provides new ways for the 2.8 million members of the National Education Association (NEA) and the more than 9 million members of AFL-CIO unions to work together to strengthen and unify the union movement and meet the needs of working families. The new AFL-CIO/NEA Solidarity Partnership agreement, approved by the AFL-CIO Executive Council Feb. 27, 2006, allows local affiliates of the NEA to affiliate with the national AFL-CIO and join the AFL-CIO at the local and state levels.

The AFL-CIO terms this is a historic moment and it may be in the same quiet way that the tide quietly stops rising and begins to flow in a different direction. The Education Intelligence Communiqué comments on the minutia of the agreements and on the larger picture of the changing nature of union control and influence in America. The big picture starts with the 2001 Bureau of Labor Statistics annual report.

“the percentage of American workers belonging to unions fell to 13.5 percent, its lowest share since World War II. Not only did the percentage decline, but the absolute number of union members fell by 200,000, even while the economy boomed.”

While the decline in overall union membership is widely recognized, the grip of unionism on the government is underappreciated.

The most unionized sector of the entire U.S. economy (at 43.2 percent) is local government -- a category that includes police officers, firefighters, and, of course, public school employees. Though the released BLS data do not separate these occupations, a reasonable estimate of the percentage of local public school employees who belong to unions is somewhere in the 70-80 percent range.

Unions exist for one purpose which is to protect the income of the members. Unions are faltering in the free exchange private sector economy and thriving in the demand tax public sector.

Should present trends continue, we will see in our lifetimes the total number of public sector union members overtake the total number of private sector union members. We may also see a labor force in which public school employees are the only growth sector in union membership. The implications of such a trend are enormous. First, we will have a private sector almost devoid of unions, being regulated by a large plurality of unionized government employees, whose unions’ membership growth will be directly tied to the size of government itself.

If the conservative movement is sincere in the desire for reducing the size and economic burden of government, then it must move to restrict the spreading influence of unionized public employment. The AFL-CIO is offering itself to the Teachers Unions because they realize those tax funded unions are the best chance for preserving the private sector labor union movement.

Why Mommy is a Moonbat

Madison resident Jeremy Zilber has been an internet joke since self-publishing Why Mommy is a Democrat last November. Last week he provides a Progress Update on his adventures in childhood indoctrination.

Its primary goal is to encourage Democratic parents to discuss their political beliefs with their children in an open, honest, and positive way. It also serves to remind adult Democrats what it means to be a Democrat, i.e., what our party truly stands for. Finally, the book is a fundraising tool, with at least 5% of the profits going to Democratic candidates and party organizations.

Am I hoping to sell more copies by getting bloggers to discuss it? Obviously I am. But I'm also trying to promote our party, which is something we should all be working together to accomplish.

Zilber promotes his book as a way to help children understand core Democratic values which he defines as “fairness, tolerance, peace, and concern for the well-being of others”. He may not realize it but he actually nails the essential core value of the current Democratic Party, which is without a doubt fundraising. Raising money by dinners, social events, pledge drives, mass mailings, auctions and raffles are all considered noble endeavors. Non-profit profits are the lifeblood of the progressive movement and I always find it ironic when their activists complain about low sales.

All types of blatant child oriented propaganda are easy targets for satire so start here for the links to the links.

Victory In California

The fastest car doesn’t win a NASCAR race. The first car to the finish line wins the points, the trophy and the check. Speed is only one aspect of racing and the reason crowds are bigger on race day than for qualifying is because of the competition between teams of machine makers and drivers. Sometimes the winner is the fastest car but usually the winner comes from the best overall team effort.

mattkenseth.com: Matt Kenseth led 40 laps today at California Speedway to capture his first victory of the 2006 season, and the first Nextel Cup points victory in a Ford Fusion. Kenseth started 31st but quickly moved up through the field. No other California winner has come from so deep in the field.

Qualifying for the 31st starting position for today’s Auto Club 500, Matt immediately drives past the majority of the field and after a two tire stop on lap 90, Kenseth’s team earns the lead of the race. Looking exactly like the Killer Bees of a couple years ago, the over the wall crew for the 17 team consistently turn out phenomenally quick pit stops that keep the car at the front of the field the rest of the afternoon.

The Associated Press story incorrectly refers to this win as a gift because two of the fastest cars in this long race blew their engines in the last 100 miles. Matt’s 11th Career Cup Victory was absolutely not a gift because neither Greg Biffle nor Tony Stewart yielded anything to anyone. Matt won because his engine was both fast and dependable, and because his pit crew turned out 4 tire stops in the 13 second range and because the driver drove the optimal lines around the 2 mile track.

The message the 17 team was delivering at the circus show that is the Daytona 500 was largely missed when one of the clowns went dangerously crazy. The message that Matt and his crew are ready for their second Cup Championship was definitely delivered today.

Lasagna with Wisconsin Cheese

Lola has invited 30 people for Lasagna lunch tomorrow. In light of this fact, it seems like a great time to point out the conventional wisdom about healthy low fat diets is crumbling in the face of the facts. Millions of dollars worth of purchased research data simply do not support the "eat right for health" message of the public health community. Tech Central Daily has the roundup of what massive amounts of actual data really demonstrate.

Eating Some Crow on Fat: After all, these studies found that significant increases in fruit, vegetables and grains, along with reductions in fat, did not change CVD and cancer outcomes. Eating a diet consistent with national guidelines is eating a low-fat diet -- the same diet that eight years of study and almost half a billion bucks found did not work.

Somehow humans survived and multiplied before government bureaucrats and grant funded academics became convinced they were wiser than the general population about what to eat. Lasagna with lots of Wisconsin cheese and sausage is simply not a health problem.

Al Askari: The Challenge to Fight

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, student of Ayatollah Khomeini, is preparing for the coming of the hidden one, the expected one, the promised one, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who God has hidden away since the day he vanished from the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra. The same shrine bombed by terrorists on February 22, 2006, at 6:55 a.m. local time. Most all Iranians and well over half of all Iraqi believe in the messianic true heir of the prophet Muhammad. This is the historic challenge to the Shia Muslims to fight.

An article from The American Thinker about a month ago outlines the background necessary to understand the significance of the assault on the golden dome.

Ahmadinejad Awaits the Hidden Iman At the end of his speech at the United Nations in the fall of 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made an invocation to Allah to bring about the speedy reappearance of the Hidden Imam. … The IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran) is, in actuality, an eschatological construct based on a messianic figure known as the Hidden Imam. With the ongoing pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and the war against the United States, all in the name of the Hidden Imam, it suddenly seems more important to know something about this whole concept.

Now unlike the Sunni caliph, the Shi’a Imam inherited from Muhammad not just his civil rule over the umma but also his prerogative of interpreting the Quran, his infallibility, and his sinlessness (that connotation of impeccability seems far lost today). The eleventh Imam, al-Hassan al-Askari, died in 874. He was succeeded by the twelfth Imam, the youthful Muhammad, who “disappeared” in 274/878 in the cave of the great mosque at Samarra without leaving progeny.

He is now known as the “expected one,” (al-Muntazar), the “promised one” (al-Mahdi”), or the “hidden one,” (al-Mustatir). The theology of the Hidden Imam is that Allah realized at last that the rightful successor to Muhammad was not going to be accepted by Islam at large so he had to be taken into hiding and kept there until he would re-appear to purify the umma and take the world for Islam.

A thousand years in the future, historians may look back and outline how in this narrow window of time, oil wealth and western technology aligned in a way that ignited the centuries of social and religious tensions within the Muslim Middle East.

Take Iran Seriously A Shiite scholar writes that among the many warning signs for the coming of the Mahdi, “a color will appear in the sky and spread to its horizons; a fire will appear for a long time in the east remaining in the air for three or seven days; the Arabs will throw off the reins and take possession of their land, throwing out the foreign authority…”

It is also possible that history will show that wise leadership and the desire for peaceful lives in the populace will absorb the insult and back away from the violence. Bill Roggio lists the Signs the Civil War Has Started.

Mad Cows and Market Controls

I admit I have only a very limited understanding of Mad Cow disease. The group of diseases termed transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) is believed by most researchers to be acquired by eating a misfolded cell surface glycoprotein termed a prion. Most researchers believe this “infectious protein” is sufficient to cause disease, however, there are skeptics and I am not completely convinced a deformed variant of a normal cell structure explains the entire story.

What is clear is that Mad Cow Disease scares almost everyone in both government and the agriculture industry. The Wisconsin State Journal expresses concern about this potential problem and calls for increasingly stringent government standards.

Improve Safeguards Against Mad Cow Since 1997, the centerpiece of the government's policies to defend against mad cow disease has been regulation of what goes into cattle feed. Because mad cow disease is believed to be spread by eating infected material, the regulation focuses on banning cattle remains from cattle feed. However, the Jan. 23 confirmation of a Canadian case of mad cow disease in a 6- year-old cow, born after the current U.S. and Canadian cattle feed policies went into effect, demonstrated the importance of tightening the standards.

The Editorial Board must have had a sudden flash back to the government mandated mass slaughter of British herds several years ago, and trembled at the thought of those deep pits and merciless bulldozers across the Wisconsin landscape. I wonder if the editors considered that it was the environmentalist movement that may have triggered those tragic events by altering industry practices.

Prion Proteins and Acquired Dementia By far the largest epidemic of human transmission of prion disease has its roots in the industrialization of livestock production. High protein feed supplements produced from the bone and offal of sheep, pigs, chickens, and cattle have been in widespread use since the 1950s. Collectively called meat and bone meal (MBM), the supplements were first rendered (heated) and extracted with hydrocarbon solvents to recover the valuable animal fats. Although not understood at the time, these steps probably helped to denature any prions in the rendered MBM and eliminated its ability to transmit disease. The initiation of this epidemic, widely known as the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis or mad cow disease, came when environmental groups in Britain successfully pressured the feed industry to abandon hydrocarbon solvent processing of MBM in the early 1980s.

I’m not saying that government should not have guidelines to regulate free markets, but it is important to keep in mind that even policies of "good intention" can distort markets into unintended consequences.

Nichols Opposes Port Sale to Arab Company

There is a great deal of commotion today about a proposal to sell the management rights of several US seaports to a United Arab Emirates based company called Dubai Port World. Most of the concern centers on the potential that Islamic terrorists could use this as an entry way into the United States. The debate may have the potential to force some major Democratic politicians to acknowledge that there is a real threat to America that originates in the Muslim world.

The local blog reaction is split in that Kevin says this type of ownership arrangement should not be considered a major threat to security due to oversight provisions of US law enforcement. Jib, however, says he knows an idea is bad when Jimmy Carter supports it. In a similar way, I know it is an idea is good when John Nichols opposes it.

Palestine Chronicle: The problem with the Bush administration's support for a move by a United Arab Emirates-based firm to take over operation of six major American ports is not that the corporation in question is Arab owned. The problem is that it that Dubai Ports World is a corporation. … There are two fundamental facts about corporations that put this controversy about who runs the ports in perspective.

First: Like most American firms, most Arab-owned firms are committed to making money, and the vast majority of them are not about to compromise their potential profits by throwing in with terrorists.

Second: Like most American firms, Arab-owned firms are more concerned about satisfying shareholders than anything else. As such, they are poor stewards of ports and other vital pieces of the national infrastructure that still require the constant investment of public funds, as well as responsible oversite by authorities that can see more than a bottom line, in order to maintain public safety -- not to mention the public good of modern, efficient transportation services.

-John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times.

Once again Nichols is quick to remind all of us that the danger in the world is not terrorism. The danger is capitalism and the profit motive.

Bush Talks Alternative Energy

Al Gore could be giving the same talk, word for word, as George Bush gave at Johnson Controls in Milwaukee. The President ticks off the complete list of alternative energy technologies with the message that America needs to develop them as quickly as possible. He paints pictures of hybrid cars with next generation batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, so city dwellers will not need gasoline to get to work. His description of the wonders of ethanol may have been written by a Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation lobbyist.

Props go out to nuclear, solar, wind and water and even coal gets consideration if we can only find a way to clean up the dirty stuff. Admittedly, Al Gore would not have included the throw away lines about keeping taxes low, and he would have probably thanked Congresswoman Gwen Moore for her extra special contributions to the Milwaukee vote totals. Behind the feel good, technology will save the American lifestyle pep talk, however, there is a distinct undertone of unease about the energy threat to our way of life.

Advanced Energy Initiative: I want to talk to you about the fact that I think we're in an important moment in history, and that we have a chance to transform the way we power our economy and how we lead our lives.

If everything is just hunky-dory there is no reason to embrace the chance to change with such zeal. The Bush administration is not filled with save the planet nature nuts, so you have to think that there are real concerns about supply coming from the oil industry.

Offensive Religious Left Words

The American religious left appear to have an ecumenical heart, wanting all religious individuals united in a type of self contented happy faith, regardless of any actual religious beliefs. California Yankee points out an example of this “don’t worry be happy spirituality” wrapped in anti-American liberal guilt. Cartoons aside, if you want to read something really offensive, click the letter link and read the whole thing.

American Churches Give Propaganda Victory to the Evil Doers In a statement that will surely encourage our enemies, a coalition of U.S. churches has denounced the war in Iraq and claims that the U.S. is "raining down terror" and entering into imperial projects that seek to dominate and control for the sake of our own national interests. … The churches' propaganda statement was disguised as a letter from the US Conference for the World Council of Churches to the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

This apology to the world from the US Office of the World Council of Churches comes even as Iranian Clerics are establishing the religious opinions necessary to justify the use of nuclear weapons by an Islamic government.

Iranian Cleric Okays Use of Nuclear Weapons! Based on their interpretation of Islamic law, Iranian hardline religious leaders have licensed the use of nuclear weapon. For the very first time, Mohsen Gharavian, a student of Qom’s fundamentalist cleric Mesbah Yazdi has spoken about the necessity of using nuclear weapons as a means to retaliate and announced that based on religious law, everything depends on our purpose.

His words are the first official comments coming from the supporters and circle of radical cleric Mesbah Yazdi. No other cleric has had the heart to claim that Islamic principles allow the use of nuclear weapons. Still, it seems that government radical circles have embarked on fresh efforts to prepare the grounds to turn Iran's controversial nuclear program issue into a religious issue.

As much as western liberals want to believe that Islam is simply another branch of middle eastern monotheism, a hard look at what a Muslim should believe should scare even western liberals. A good way to zero in on true beliefs is to understand how a Muslim defines western misconceptions of the faith.

Ten Misconceptions About Islam: Islam is the name of a way of life which the Creator wants us to follow. We avoid the word religion because in many non-Islamic societies, there is a separation of "religion and state." This separation is not recognized at all in Islam: the Creator is very much concerned with all that we do, including the political, social, economic, and other aspects of our society. Hence, Islam is a complete way of life.

The root word of Islam is "al-silm" which means "submission" or "surrender." It is understood to mean "submission to Allah." In spite of whatever noble intention has caused many a Muslim to claim that Islam is derived primarily from peace, this is not true.

I completely believe that a great many of the world’s Muslims are ordinary people seeking peaceful lives with family and friends, however, I also believe it when Muslims point out that submission to religious authority is the bedrock principal of the faith. So when revered clerics call for disproportionate outrage and plan in advance the legitimate uses of mass murder, it is time to stop pretending that ecumenical overviews of our similarities make any difference given our differences.

Zero Degrees and Getting Colder

Right now in Madison, Wisconsin it is zero degrees Fahrenheit and getting colder. TCS Daily has several recent articles discussing global warming theory worth a complete reading. The first story alludes to what I consider the primary flaw of computer modeling which is treating the planet like a closed system. In other words, computer modeling ignores the second law of thermodynamics. Earth does not exist in a closed system.

The Climate Forest for the Trees: Some background information is in order here. Climate scientists look at the earth-atmosphere system as an integrated system that is generally thought of as being "closed"; that is not gaining or losing mass to outer space even if there is energy exchange between our planet and outer space.

The second addresses the problem of assuming that recent events differ from past events in unusual ways. Climate change advocates excel at attributing human causation to changes that are perfectly consistent with long term patterns of variability on Earth.

Ice Storm: So what we have here are two stories making a lot of headlines -- Greenland is melting and hurricanes are strengthening. Both things are true. And, again, looking at real data it is apparent that at this time they are both part of a natural cycle that has been going on for thousands of years.

The third article takes aim at the myth of consensus within the scientific community. True science is skeptical of everything and the duty of proof is upon those making claims to provide full disclosure of methods and data so that others can consistently and independently reproduce the same results. This is especially important when essential assumptions are dependent upon theoretical assemblages of proxy data and derivative calculations.

The End is Not Nigh?: This debate entered a new phase when Steve McIntyre, one of the foremost hockey-stick critics, who had long been ignored, if not ostracized, by the global warming community, was officially invited by the National Research Council of The National Academies of the United States to participate in a special committee. This committee was requested to summarize the current scientific information on the temperature record over the past two millennia, describe the proxy records that have been used to reconstruct pre-instrumental climatic conditions, assess the methods employed to combine multiple proxy data over large spatial scales, evaluate the overall accuracy and precision of such reconstructions, and explain how central the debate over the paleoclimate temperature record is to the state of scientific knowledge on global climate change. It was exactly the mandate which Steve McIntyre had been advocating all along.

The climate change movement is an attempt to use bad science to attain personal financial gain, political power and a social agenda that will cripple our economy and increase the dependence of individuals on the government. It is good to see portions of the scientific community confronting the misuse of science by political interests.

It’s Warmer In Florida

Settling in for a sub-zero Friday night, I’m surfing through the channels and notice legendary World of Outlaws Champion Steve Kinser’s IROC car is sliding on its roof down a long stretch of Daytona International Speedway. The race is halted as the tube steel frame is sawed open allowing Kinser to climb out and walk to the ambulance. After the extended clean up, Matt Kenseth leads the surviving half of the field to the restart. A few laps later after a couple full speed contacts he emerges the winner.

Kenseth Wins Wild IROC Race: Two-time defending Busch Series champion Martin Truex Jr., a Nextel Cup rookie this season made the first move. … "The last lap was definitely exciting," said Kenseth, the 2004 IROC champion who scored his third career win in the series. "Martin knew his only chance to win was to get down in front of me. He just hung a left to try to get to the bottom, which is the same thing I would have done. And neither one of us lifted."

The International Race of Champions is an annual four race event where 12 drivers are selected from various types of motor racing and placed into identically prepared cars. The IROC Rules attempt to produce pure driver vs. driver racing, or as Cristy Corle explains: “No spotters and crew, just mirrors and skill required.”

Any win in competitive motor sports is a difficult accomplishment and I am taking this as a very good sign that the 2003 Cup Champ is ready to be competitive. The edge of control skirmishing earns comments on the Matt Kenseth message boards.

That was, w/out question, the craziest IROC race I have EVER seen! Glad to see all involved are OK, especially Kinser, what a ride he took. Matt being unusually agressive out there, it was great! I honestly thought they were going to wreck each other and one of the other 4 remaining cars would end up winning!

Topping off the evening Mark Martin wins the NASCAR Truck series race. All in all a pretty awesome day of work at the track for those Roush Racing boys.

Conspiracy Theory Nominees

I have two candidates for the best Bush Derangement Syndrome Conspiracy Theory of the Day. This is a cut and paste exercise because I don’t want the links.

The first contestant spins a lengthy story line, pulling in multiple bits of evidence to prove that NATO intelligence, under the direction of the Bush administration, had the Danish Mohammed Cartoons published. The administration’s goal is to manipulate the European public into supporting a war against Iran. The kicker is the bold assertion that the Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran were burned by CIA funded mercenaries.

http://www.rense.com/general69/moh.htm: The NATO intelligence provocation appearing in the guise of the scurrilous Mohammed cartoons published by the reactionary newspaper Jyllands Posten of Denmark, and then by a series of other European publications, has already done much to mobilize the armies, bases, and treasuries of Europe in support of the lunatic plan to the Bush-neocon clique for a nuclear sneak attack and punitive expedition against Iran over the coming weeks or months.

The evidence strongly suggests that the cartoon provocation was presented to Atlanticist oligarchs at the meeting of the Bilderberger group held from May 5 to May 8, 2005 at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in Rottach-Egern, on the shores of the Tegernsee lake in the south German federal state of Bavaria. … The first publication of the cartoons in Denmark followed in September 2005.

Danish embassies have been burned in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. There are indications that some of these violent riots were not spontaneous, but were the work of mercenary rent-a-mobs stoked and steered by CIA, MI-6 and Mossad.

The challenger offers up the theory that the Bush Administration is moving to oust Cheney and appoint Condoleeza Rice as Vice President. The reason for this late roster adjustment is to insure the Bush goal of having Hillary Clinton elected president. Apparently the Bush family desires a Clinton in the White House and wants Condoleeza to be nominated because she will lose when Republicans refuse to vote for a black woman.

http://www.total411.info/2006/02/cheney-out-condi-in.html: A White House source has confirmed to this website that office gossip has Cheney possibly being eased out of the Vice-Presidency in the wake of "Cheney-shot-a-guy-in-the-face-and-heart-gate." His replacement? Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

It should be noted that "Condi '08" memorabilia has been pushed hard the last two years at the annual CPAC gathering of alleged "conservatives." A Cheney-out-Condi-in rumor was reported last year in WorldNetDaily as emanating from Capitol Hill sources. In light of the recent CBS News report that Cheney is in "meltdown" over Birdshot-gate, it might be time to give the Condi rumor another look.

If Rice was named Vice-President, it is more than possible that Republican primary voters, with their Pavlovian monarchal nominationg tendencies, not to mention fixed electronic voting machines, could very well nominate Rice in '08.

It is also worth pointing out that the onbly way likely Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton could win a Presidential race would be if her opponent were a black woman. The ascension of Rice to the Vice-Presidency would be the perfect way for the Bush Crime Family to set up their longtime cronies, the Clintons, for a return trip to the White House.

The left claims creativity as one of their valued characteristics so I am willing to give credit where credit is due.

Matthew Simmons Concerns

Matthew R. Simmons started an Investment Banking firm in 1974 with a specific focus on the oil service industry. This was the period of time when the first oil shock rippled through the global economy. Simmons & Company International has survived and adapted to the boom of bust cycle of the energy business so when Simmons expresses concerns about the near term ability to produce oil and natural gas, I pay attention. These are the concerns of a businessman and not the fear mongering of power seekers looking for opportunities to advance a social agenda.

I believe I first became aware of Simmons from a C-SPAN program about a year ago. He spoke of reviewing pages of boring and obscure technical literature about the Saudi oil fields, and coming to the conclusion the production processes being utilized were those consistent with flushing residue from increasingly empty chambers. The company website has a similar slide presentation about The Coming Saudi Oil Shock.

Last week Simmons gave a Harvard Energy Lecture addressing the overall energy outlook for the world. The 20th century was a miracle century for human life, but as every good business person understands, past performance does not guarantee future results. A hard truth about oil and gas production is that a steady flow can be maintained by adjustments in pressure, but sooner or later wells run dry. Rational adults deal with the facts of life and plan accordingly. Part of this planning must deal with how to preserve individual liberty when a free populace turns to government for economic protection.

The Cult of Government Responds

The cult of government just continues to grow, and members apparently develop psychological coping mechanisms that absolutely prevent them from understanding that forced taking is at best a necessary evil. Like all cults, the belief that their work is good gets morphed into absolutes about their work being a superior form of good. Good old UW-Madison officially releases a “study” predicting dire consequences from spending restraint.

Analysis Critical of Proposed Constitutional Revenue Limits: MADISON - Proposed limits on the amount of revenue Wisconsin governments can collect would reduce public services, hamstring the state's future economic growth, and diminish local control, according to an analysis by a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist.

"If the costs of providing public services continue to grow faster than the inflation and population growth rates, the impact of the amendment would be to continuously reduce the level and quality of public services," says Andrew Reschovsky, professor of public affairs and applied economics. ... For a copy of the analysis, visit:

http://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/calendar-news/2006/reschovskyanalysis.pdf

The essence of the professor’s argument seems to be that government services are the most essential contributors to the well being of both society and the economy. There is the subtle arrogance of elitism in thinking that government activity is more important than either private sector activity or the right of individuals to make their own decisions. The condescension shows up in the way household spending is compared to public service expenses.

While this limit may at first glance appear reasonable, it is important to remember that by design the CPI is based on a “market basket” of goods and services purchased by the typical household. Governments however, purchase a very different basket of goods and services. A substantial share of their budgets goes to pay for the services of highly-skilled labor, for example, police officers, teachers, and doctors. A significant portion of the budget of families goes towards the purchase of food, clothing, and various consumer durables.

Left to pursue their own desires, families will spend their money on food, shelter and play things, whereas the government needs to pay for important “skilled” individuals. I fully understand the need for police, but I also understand that the private sector has some good teachers and doctors. I might even go as far as saying that private education and private medicine is generally better than the results achieved by the tax paid providers.

A problem with advocates for the status quo big government system is exactly this belief that services need to be provided by direct employees rather than by contracted private labor. Madison has great water and parks departments, but there is no reason private plumbing firms and private landscaping companies could not bid for the labor now being done by direct employees. These types of reasonable approaches to government reform will never win the approval of those people invested in the existing power and payroll structures.

Federal Land Sale Proposed

Former Madison Mayor and devout Democrat Paul Soglin has his hackles raised over a Bush Administration Plan to sell off some public land.

Public Land Sale Proposed: The Bush administration Friday laid out plans to sell off more than $1 billion in public land during the next decade, including 85,000 acres of National Forest property in California.

Hizzoner reflexively considers any diminishment of government owned land ownership to be an environmental disaster for the country. This type of response is what logically follows from the belief that communal ownership through the government is better for environment, because private ownership is always subject to the temptation of exploiting the resources for profit. I’m convinced that true believer environmentalist Democrats secretly still desire the elimination of private land ownership.

According the DNR nearly 70 percent of the forest land in Wisconsin is privately owned, and outside of Madison I doubt most state residents worry the environment is collapsing. Admittedly most of Wisconsin’s forests were demolished to build Soglin’s lovingly remembered hometown Chicago, but nature is resilient and Wisconsin is again healthy and beautiful.

Equally troubling to the Democrat in him is the idea that Bush may have stumbled upon a way to bring down the national debt without raising taxes. It has always puzzled me why the discussion about federal revenue never seems to consider selling assets. I suppose that road leads to smaller government which politicians of all stripes find abhorrent.

A New Approach in Antibiotics

A small Colorado Biotech Company named Ceragenix may have a found a novel new method to treat infectious disease, including the possibility of actually killing the HIV virus. The technology is based on building small positively charged molecules on a steroid frame that mimic the interactions of normal endogenous antibacterial peptides.

Cationic Steroids These compounds are aminosteroids that bear a positive charge and are termed "Cationic Steroid Antibiotics" or CSAs. … The compounds are polyfunctional and have activity not just against bacteria, but are also active against certain fungi (Candida), viruses (orthopox family) and many cancers as all these cells share in common the presence of negatively-charged phospholipids on the cell membrane surfaces. The CSAs are electrostatically attracted to these membranes and induce apoptosis by rapid depolarization of the cell membranes. Unlike most antibiotics, which are bacteriastatic, the CSAs are bacteriacidal.

Animals evolved in a world of microbes and over time developed physiological systems to identify and destroy infectious agents. Many small peptides with antibiotic properties have been identified but therapy with small amino acid chains and larger proteins is difficult. All amino acid strings are susceptible to enzyme breakdown in the body. In addition, large scale commercial preparation of pharmaceutically pure proteins is a difficult process. Very early pre-clinical laboratory work, however, shows that chemically constructed cationic steroids can produce the same antibiotic lethality as these natural peptides.

These small electrically charged molecules work by interacting with cell membranes in a way which shuts down their functional integrity resulting in cell death. What may be of tremendous potential is that laboratory work demonstrates that at least of one these designer steroids kills the HIV virus in cell cultures, because HIV is a type of virus dependent upon a surrounding membrane.

Viral Membrane: The membrane is an approximately spherical layer that surrounds the inner core. It is made of the same type of substances (lipids) as cell membranes. The "matrix protein", p17, lines the inner surface of the membrane. On the surface of the membrane are many "spikes" made of envelope protein (env). These spikes are important because they are used to latch on to potential host cells - without them the virus particle would normally just float around and not do very much at all.

This type of laboratory work occurs years in advance of a molecule approved for human use. Still the concept has potential to address one of the fundamental problems with treating infectious disease, which is how to kill infectious organisms while they are dormant and not actively multiplying. It has been HIV’s ability to hide away dormant that forces the infected into continual therapy.

Finally it should be emphasized that the medical triumph over infectious disease is a very recent development and one we should not take for granted, for it may not last long. Nature has far more experience at adapting to change than we can even imagine.

In Praise of Antibiotics: Even in the early part of the twentieth century, therapy for infectious diseases was based essentially on patient isolation and chicken soup. … True antimicrobial therapy became available only in the 1930s with the discovery of the sulfonamides by Gerhardt Domagk. … Surprisingly, no infectious disease has been eliminated by the use of antibiotics, even though vaccines against viruses such as those causing smallpox, polio, and measles have proved very successful. Many of the bacteria that caused human suffering pre-1950 are still making people sick, and we have come to the woeful realization that the use of antibiotics has even contributed to the recent phenomenon of emerging infections.

The fact that all the agents of disease still lurk in the world should keep us humble.

Hat Tip to The World According to Nick

Ethanol Mandate Madness

Our elected State Officials are very close to imposing an Ethanol Mandate on all gasoline sold in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau has links to resources about this issue. There is still some time to consider the wisdom government interference with normal free market activity.

Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation: ETHANOL needs to be a renewable fuel choice in Wisconsin. Assembly Bill B15 and Senate Bill 15 would provide a choice for ethanol fuel in Wisconsin by requiring fuel with 87 octane rating to contain at least 10 percent ethanol. Contact your legislators today and ask them to co-sponsor AB15 and SB15.

If ethanol “needs to be a renewable fuel choice” as the Farm Bureau claims, then I have no problem with allowing consumers a choice. It is Orwellian doublespeak, however, to then say you want to achieve choice “by requiring fuel with 87 octane rating to contain at least 10 percent ethanol”. An ethanol mandate is the exact opposite of consumer choice.

Mandatory means you are not free to behave differently from the government command. Mandatory means actions of the private sector must conform to government plans and control over the economy. Obedience is compulsory and obligatory in order to avoid punishment. Any Republican claiming to believe in individual liberty, economic opportunity and the superior results from regulated free markets, who votes for this mandate is a hypocrite of the first order.

Ethanol production is an established industry and a number of Wisconsin Ethanol Plants are operational. The industry does not require a government guaranteed market. The sales pitch for taking away market freedom and consumer choice is entirely built upon the valid fears of reliable oil supplies and fantasy notions that mineral hydrocarbon energy sources are undesirable relative to organic hydrocarbon energy sources.

Winners and Losers of Ethanol Mandates This study was sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, although the views expressed herein are strictly those of the authors. In virtually no instance is there evidence that ethanol will improve US energy security, regardless of the theory or challenge being considered. Even the largest ethanol mandate considered here (8 billion gallons by 2012) displaces an insignificant volume of imported crude oil.

Even if every single environmental benefit claimed for ethanol is true, the volume of transportation fuel consumed in American far exceeds even the hypothetical production capacity of the industry. There are persistent disagreements about how much petrochemical material is required to produce a fixed unit of ethanol, but is clear that ethanol from crop production depends on oil based fertilizers, plus gas or diesel powered farm and transport equipment.

A California Assessment done back in 1999 discusses the fact that ethanol can not be transported by pipelines like the current oil and natural gas system. This means industrial ethanol production must be moved by trains, trucks or boats. The additional fuel cost for ethanol transport, plus the increased traffic and road load required to ship ethanol is not discussed much by the mandate proponents, but the industry website confirms the transport facts.

Transportation of Ethanol Most ethanol, about 75%, is transported by rail. Trucks are used to transport small quantities of ethanol shorter distances, and barges ship larger quantities longer distances. Rail is an efficient, reliable way to transport ethanol from the Corn Belt to its markets, often on the East or West Coast. From the time ethanol is produced, it can be at its market within a few days' or a week's time.

I also find it amusing that the environmentalist movement with their irrational hatred of carbon dioxide are granting a pass on these types of mandates.

Badger State Ethanol CO2 Production: Each year, Badger State Ethanol is capable of supplying over 140,000 tons of raw carbon dioxide gas via pipeline to a CO2 processing facility located adjacent to our ethanol plant.

Ethanol will not insure an adequate transportation fuel supply. Ethanol will not replace American foreign oil purchases. Ethanol will not save the planet, even if we assume the planet needs saving. If Senate Bill 15 passes and Governor Doyle signs away consumer choice and ends a competitive free market in Wisconsin, it will simply be big money politics as usual. Perhaps it’s time to buy some ADM.

What Madison Considers Brave

Peace activists put their lives at risk in Madison. How very brave.

Artist Takes Down Lake Peace Symbol: The peace symbol created out of 53 evergreen trees on Lake Mendota was dismantled last weekend by artist Tom Barry and friends. "We risked life and limbs to take the trees off the lake," Barry said Wednesday.

He said it is important to teach children that peaceful discussion, rather than anger and aggression, should be utilized to solve conflict. "If we teach that to kids, down the road they'll be less susceptible to going to war," he said.

Symbolism and peaceful discussion are important when adults are dealing with children, but “play nice or time out” is not an effective deterrent for ambitious adults seeking power over other people. I am getting really weary of the childish understanding of the world exhibited by the anti-war crowd.

Republican Spending Spree Continues

Before the divide became red and blue there was a lot of talk that there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats at the Federal Level.

Did Anyone Actually Read Bush's Budget? Education spending is through the roof: Even if Bush does convince Congress to trim back on education spending in 2007, the Department of Education's budget will be 80% bigger than when Bush took office. In the eight years Bill Clinton was in the White House, education spending climbed just 17%.

Bush's 2007 budget is an extremely modest attempt to rein in what has been one of the most prolific spending sprees in modern American history. Under Bush, overall federal spending has climbed 20%. And that's after adjusting for inflation. (By comparison, spending climbed 12.7% in real terms during the Clinton years.)

Kind of makes you wonder if Hillary Clinton will be elected by running as the proven fiscal conservative candidate in 2008.