Tom Faranda's Folly

Bush daughter on the book-promoting circuit

Jenna Bush. The book is based on her experience working with UNICEF.

I went to the Amazon website Amazon.com: Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope: Books: Jenna Bush,Mia Baxter  and saw the book had four reviews, with an average score of three out of five. One of the reviewers trashed it because, well, they hate Bush! the review began "In all my years as a reviewer..." and when you check the reviewer profile, it was their first review! the extent to which Bush-haters will go to get a cheap shot in, is amazing.

Amy Argetsinger - Jenna Bush, Author, Finds Eager Audience at Signing - washingtonpost.com

The two girls were among the 220 people who jumped through endless security hoops to hear the president's daughter read from her new nonfiction young-adult book at the Borders bookstore at Westfield Shoppingtown Annapolis. "Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope" is part biography of a young Latin American single mother living with AIDS and part inspirational call to action.

After a major publicity rollout by publisher HarperCollins -- including interviews this week in People magazine, The Washington Post and on ABC's "20/20" -- Bush's first bookstore appearance in a three-month, 25-city tour was an unusual test of the 25-year-old's star power. No doubt that in a normal book-signing session, she could have drawn a mob of the casually curious, but how many fans are fervid enough to show up at 9 a.m. for a 2 p.m. event?

Washington Post series on the big killer in Iraq - IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices)

This is the start of a Post study on the weapon that's caused two-thirds of the American deaths in Iraq - and thousands of Iraqi deaths. If you are interested - each article is several pages long when you print it out.

'The single most effective weapon against our deployed forces' - washingtonpost.com

Since that first fatal detonation of what is now known as an improvised explosive device, more than 81,000 IED attacks have occurred in Iraq, including 25,000 so far this year, according to U.S. military sources. The war has indeed metastasized into something "completely different," a conflict in which the roadside bomb in its many variants -- including "suicide, vehicle-borne" -- has become the signature weapon in Iraq and Afghanistan, as iconic as the machine gun in World War I or the laser-guided "smart bomb" in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

IEDs have caused nearly two-thirds of the 3,100 American combat deaths in Iraq, and an even higher proportion of battle wounds. This year alone, through mid-July, they have also resulted in an estimated 11,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and more than 600 deaths among Iraqi security forces. To the extent that the United States is not winning militarily in Iraq, the roadside bomb, which as of Sept. 22 had killed or wounded 21,200 Americans, is both a proximate cause and a metaphor for the miscalculation and improvisation that have characterized the war.

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Insurgents have deftly leveraged consumer electronics technology to build explosive devices that are simple, cheap and deadly: Almost anything that can flip a switch at a distance can detonate a bomb. In the past five years, bombmakers have developed six principal detonation triggers -- pressure plates, cellphones, command wire, low-power radio-controlled, high-power radio-controlled and passive infrared -- that have prompted dozens of U.S. technical antidotes, some successful and some not.

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"The IED is the enemy's artillery system. It's simply a way of putting chemical and kinetic energy on top of our soldiers and Marines, or underneath them," said Montgomery C. Meigs, a retired four-star Army general who since December 2005 has served as director of the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization, the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar effort to defeat the weapon. "What's different is the trajectory. Three 152mm rounds underneath a tank, which will blow a hole in it, are artillery rounds. But they didn't come through three-dimensional space in a parabolic trajectory. They came through a social trajectory and a social network in the community."

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And there is another mostly unspoken fear. With approximately 300 IED attacks occurring each month beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan -- a Pentagon document cites incidents in the Philippines, Russia, Colombia, Algeria and Somalia, among other places -- the question occupying many defense specialists is whether the roadside bomb inevitably will appear in the United States in significant numbers. "It's one thing to have bombs going off in Baghdad, but it will be quite another thing when guys with vests full of explosives start blowing themselves up in Washington," said the Navy analyst. "That has all sorts of repercussions, for the economy, for civil liberties."

And here's the second part in the series -

'The IED problem is getting out of control. We've got to stop the bleeding.' - washingtonpost.com

A triggerman with a radio transmitter could send a signal several hundred yards to a hidden bomb built with a receiver linked to an electrical firing circuit, which in turn detonated an attached artillery shell or a scavenged land mine.

Sartorial evidence for Global Warming?

Latest Read: The Great Siege

The "Great Siege", is the Siege of Malta in 1565, as the Turkish Ottoman Empire tried to expand further into the Mediterranean and up to Italy. The Ottomans had already conquered most of Eastern Europe.

The book, by a British historian named Ernle Bradford, is great! But unfortunately extremely difficult to get. It's not stocked on Amazon and second hand copies are difficult to get. I was lucky and got mine second hand off Amazon's website for 20 bucks plus shipping, back in April. It's a book I'd always had a wish to read, since seeing a review years ago.

The historical background to the siege, and an abbreviated discussion can be found here:Siege of Malta (1565) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The book uses all the contemporary accounts and puts them into a flowing narrative, that is really quite riveting. The main characters are the Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, (a fighting religous order who also maintained hospitals! Go figure.), Jean de Valette, the Turkish leader , Mustafa Pasha, and his Tripoli ally Turgot Reis.

The Turkish invaders really should have won the day as they had vastly more men. They were stymied by their own infighting, some bad tactical decisions (especially opening the siege by trying to capture the Fort of St. Elmo's), and by the heroic defense of the Christian defenders who travelled to Malta, and the Maltese fighters. The violence level is appalling. It was a bad idea to be captured, by either side!

It's a great, highly readable story, if you can get the book. I hope it gets re-issued soon.

Excellent reason to wear pajamas to bed

Global Warming Update 21A: From "Cool It"

This is an add-on to the prior posting -

Our Generational Mission  Bjorn Lomborg on Cool It on National Review Online

Why are we so singularly focused on climate change when there are many other areas where the need is also great and we could do so much more with our effort?

Al Gore gives us two reasons. First, it is a planetary emergency: “At stake is the survival of our civilization and the habitability of the Earth.” Yet this turns out to be far from the truth. As we saw above, this is not what the science is telling us for the temperature rise over the coming century. If anything, the science tells us that fewer people will die with moderately more heat. Of course, Gore has several other arguments, which we will also address below.

Gore’s second reason is probably more telling and closer to the truth. He tells us how global warming can give meaning to our lives.

The climate crisis also offers us the chance to experience what very few generations in history have had the privilege of knowing: a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence; the opportunity to rise. . . . When we rise, we will experience an epiphany as we discover that this crisis is not really about politics at all. It is a moral and spiritual challenge.

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... more important, should we go for the exhilaration of a generational mission just because it makes us feel good? Should it not actually be because we are doing the best our generation can do? And this, of course, brings us right back to asking whether there are greater opportunities for us to engage first.

Global Warming Update #21 - Why Won't Gore debate?

I've seen the ads mentioned in the article below. But the obvious reason is because he'd have to face reality, as shown here: Tom Faranda's Folly: Global Waming Update #20

TCS Daily - Gore Dodges Repeated Calls to Debate Global Warming

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who addressed the General Assembly on climate change September 24, is but the latest global warming skeptic to receive the cold shoulder from Gore. In ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times, Klaus has called on Gore to face him in a one-on-one debate on the proposition: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." Earlier in the year, similar challenges to Gore were issued by Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Lord Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. All calls on the former vice president to face his critics have fallen on deaf ears.

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Gore's refusal to take on the likes of Klaus, Avery and Lord Monckton is no isolated incident of the former vice president's lacking the courage of his convictions. In June, Professor Scott Armstrong of the University of Pennsylvania urged Gore to put his global warming money where his mouth is. Armstrong, one of the world's leading experts on forecasting, has studied the forecasts made by Gore and such organizations as the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) and found their methodology wanting.

Convinced that Gore and the IPCC are overstating how much temperatures will rise in the years to come, Armstrong has challenged Gore to the following wager: Each man bets $10,000 on how much temperatures will go up in the next ten years. The money will stay in escrow until 2017. The one whose forecast come closer to the actual change in temperature will be declared the winner and be allowed to donate the $20,000 plus accumulated interest to the charity of his choice. But despite being flush with cash from his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," and from lucrative speaking engagements around the world, Gore has not taken Armstrong up on the bet.

Gore's reluctance to go toe-to-toe with global warming skeptics may have something to do with the - from the standpoint of climate change alarmists - unfortunate outcome of a global warming debate in New York last March. In the debate, a team of global warming skeptics composed of MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, University of London emeritus professor of biogeology Philip Stott, and physician-turned novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton handily defeated a team of climate alarmists headed by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt. Before the start of the nearly two-hour debate, the audience of several thousand polled 57.3 percent to 29.9 percent in favor of the proposition that global warming is a "crisis." At the end of the debate, the numbers had changed dramatically, with 46.2 percent favoring the skeptical point of view and 42.2 percent siding with the alarmists.

UPDATE: Go here Tom Faranda's Folly: Global Warming Update 21A: From "Cool It"

Friday morning humor

From my humor contributor Ellen --

A young ventriloquist is touring the clubs. He's doing a show one night, and with his dummy on his knee he starts going through his routine. A few risque jokes and then on to the dumb blonde jokes.

Suddenly a willowy blonde woman in the 4th row leaps up and starts berating him:

"I've heard enough of your stupid blonde jokes.  What makes you think you can stereotype women that way?  What does the color of a person's hair have to do with her worth?  It's
guys like you who keep women like me from being respected at work and reaching our full potential as a person.  Because you and your kind continue to perpetuate discrimination against not only
blondes, but women in general..."

The embarrassed ventriloquist begins to apologize, and
the blonde yells, "You stay out of this mister!  I'm talking to the
little shit on your lap."

Is Blogging Dying? Well, Yes and No

This is interesting - and amusing. It's short, so read the whole thing, not just my excerpt!

The Death of Blogs | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

As weblogs proliferated earlier this decade, Andy Warhol's famous aphorism was modified to read, "In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people." Now it looks like Warhol was right after all: Thanks to widespread blog burnout, everyone will be famous to 15 people for 15 minutes.

Tech researcher Gartner Inc. reported earlier this year that 200 million people have given up blogging, more than twice as many as are active.

"A lot of people have been in and out of this thing," Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer told reporters. "Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it." Given the average lifespan of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs, Gartner says blogging has probably peaked.

Which isn't to say that blogging is dead. Quite the opposite. Blog aggregator Technorati estimates that 3 million new blogs are launched every month. The site's tongue-in-cheek slogan: "Zillions of photos, videos, blogs, and more. Some of them have to be good."

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The secret of some of the top God blogs is that they're team efforts. But many bloggers still feel like they have to have their own site to be "contributing to the conversation." The blogosphere, which was supposed to be a great democratizer, has made us all perennial candidates, demanding that we weigh in on every news item, no matter how mundane or overexposed. (The blog world risks becoming one giant midrash on The New York Times front page.)

More on Shiri Negari, the girl in the poster

On Monday  Tom Faranda's Folly: Ahmadinejad at Columbia I posted this picture, which I lifted off Michelle Malkin's website -

This has been shown on many websites and touched many people. A  reporter at the Washington Times contacted me via email with a request to post some links. Here they are - see especially the first one, which contains correspondence from some of Shiri's relations:

Michelle Malkin » Keeping the memory of Shiri Negari alive

This from Stacy McCain at The Washington Times:

...will try to link back if you'll link this thread. Please watch the video and read to the end:

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/culture/2007/09/haunting_beauty.html

This is  already linked TWICE at Michelle Malkin's Hot Air site:

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/09/25/quote-of-the-day-116/

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/09/25/new-vent-michelle-interviews-iranian-democracy-activist-banafsheh-zand-bonazzi/

Also linked by ISRAPUNDIT:

http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=5919

And ED DRISCOLL:

http://eddriscoll.com/archives/012020.php

And then this further email from Stacy:

Shiri Negari's father was originally from IRAN

A commenter yesterday said the Negari family was originally from 
Iran. I e-mailed Shiri's cousin Dvir, who replied:

     Shiri's dad was born in Iran -- he is part of a large Jewish 
family that immigrated from Iran to Israel (and also to the US) about 
40 years ago.

     Esther -- Shiri's mother, although with European roots, also 
knows to speak fluent Farsi. Esther travelled to Iran after marrying 
Shiri's dad to meet his family and this is where she learned the 
language.

     Before Khomeini's revolution, the relationships between Israel 
and Iran where normal and warm. Such visits were possible.

     Esther's father came from a Jewish family in Poland. Most of his 
family (9 out of 11 brothers) was murdered in concentration camps 
during the holocaust.

     Therefore, like many other young Israelis -- Shiri was a 
"mixture" of east and west, combining the Jewish heritage of 
immigrants coming from different parts of the world (which implies 
that the food is great and diverse -- Persian rice with European 
gefilte fish ... )

     So in fact, Shiri's story is the micro-story of the state of 
Israel. This is why in my view she is also the symbol of the 
tragedies that accompany our lives here.

Like everyone else, I get jaded by the constant news about Americans killed in action in Iraq, Iraqi civilians killed by terrorists or by American bombs, Israelis killed by terrorists, and on and on. It's important to stop and reflect on the real individuals who are losing their lives...

Halo 3 arrives in America - and in my house

For the uninitiated, Halo 3 is the Microsoft video game for XBox. It's the follow-up to the hugely successful Halo, and Halo 2 games.

It's a shoot-em-up; Humans vs. the invading Aliens. The game went on sale at midnight Tuesday, with one Brigid Faranda standing on line in Ossining to buy it!

How did we get to that state? Well, Joe was thirsting/aching/dying for the game, and convinced Brigid to pick it up for him (he had pre-paid for it, so it was reserved). And I stupidly went along with it. This DESPITE the fact that we have banned television-watching and video game playing on Mondays through Thursdays. But we made an exception for Monday night (actually Tuesday morning), so that when Brigid got back from getting the game (arriving home at 12:50), Joe was allowed to play for about 75 minutes. So he didn't get to bed until about 2:15 in the morning. How dumb am I for going along with this?

And because Joe played Monday night/Tuesday morning, fair is fair, we had to let Tim play a bit Tuesday night.

Things caught up with Joe this morning, as he got up lately and we had to race to the train station.

Here's the NY Times coverage of the Halo 3 rollout.

Halo 3 Arrives, Rewarding Gamers, and Microsoft - New York Times

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, is the richest man on earth. R. J. Bollard, a freshman at the University of Washington, said he would have 73 cents left in his bank account as of midnight. And that’s one reason Mr. Gates is likely to be the richest man on earth for quite a while.

Both were at a Best Buy store in Bellevue, Wash., on Monday night as the third installment of Halo, Microsoft’s hit video game series, went on sale at 12:01 a.m. yesterday. Just before that moment, Mr. Gates was hand-shaking his way down the line of customers. Among them was Mr. Bollard, 18, who said the 73 cents was all he would have left after buying the game.

Even before the doors opened, more than 1.7 million consumers had preordered the game, which is available in three versions priced from $60 to $130.

“I don’t know how I’m going to feed myself,” Mr. Bollard said.

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For the serious gamer at least, all was forgiven yesterday morning. More than 10,000 stores across the country, many of them converted into miniature carnivals Monday night for fans awaiting the game, opened their doors to long lines of Halo fans who started camping out as early as Sunday afternoon.

Microsoft said it would not announce sales figures until today, but the new game has been expected to be the most lucrative introduction of any entertainment product. The previous game in the series, Halo 2, set a record for first-day sales in the entertainment and media industries when it brought in more than $125 million in the United States in its first 24 hours.

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In Atlanta, an arc of young men lined a balcony at Lenox Square, the city’s biggest shopping mall, as they awaited the game’s debut at a GameStop store. Ari Velazquez and Dan Gibson, roommates at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said they had converted their apartment into a sort of high-tech video game cave, sealing windows with blankets and cardboard and stocking up on ramen noodles, chips and white-cheddar popcorn.

“We expect that, like, no one’s going to go to class tomorrow, and the teachers are going to know,” said Mr. Gibson, 20.

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Joseph Hunter, 19, a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, said the series has “sort of become an obsession” and said entire dormitories at Morehouse face off against one another in Halo combat.

Regarding Halo 3, he said, “I knew that if I didn’t have it, my life would be over.”

Halo 3 is rated M for mature, which means the game is not intended for sale to unaccompanied consumers under 17. Most customers in line appeared to be in their 20s and 30s, but there were also children accompanied by parents or other guardians.

Outside a Circuit City store in Miami on Monday night, Patty-Jo Toor, a nurse from Orlando, accompanied her son, Neil, 16, and two friends, Phillip Allanson, 15, and Alex Ferguson, also 15. She said the group had set up an Xbox 360 in their hotel room so the children could play all night after buying the game.

The other people waiting in line in Ossining, thought Brigid was the World's Greatest Mom to go out and line up to get the game for her son. She arrived at 11:30, and their were thirty people ahead of her. Good thing she didn't go to a big mall, where she might have had to arrive hours (days) in advance...

2nd anniversary of my brother Paul's death

After a lifetime of illness, at the age of 47. He died suddenly and quickly. But with his medical history, it was not a surprise.

As my brother Jim said at the time "He lead a noble life."

For more about my brother, go here Tom Faranda's Folly: Paul Faranda, 1958-2005  and here Tom Faranda's Folly: Paul's Last Rites

And here is a picture of Paul when he was visiting us long ago (1980) when we lived in the Cayman islands. He's in the middle!

A commentary on the Columbia Dean's idea that Columbia would have invited Hitler for a debate

It's hypothetical of course, but an interesting exercise laid out in a Wall Street Journal op ed. God save us from effete elitist Ivory Tower ideologues who are smarter then the rest of us.

Columbia's Conceit OpinionJournal - Global View

An old rule of thumb in debate tournaments is that the first one to say "Hitler" loses. But say what you will about Mr. Coatsworth's comment, it is, at bottom, a philosophical claim: about the purposes of education; about the uses of dialogue; about the obligations of academia; about the boundaries (or absence of boundaries) of modern liberalism and about its conceits. So rather than dismiss the claim out of hand, let's address it in the same philosophical spirit in which it was offered.

...When Mr. Coatsworth postulated Hitler's visit, he specified the year 1939, just prior to Germany's invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II. This, then, is not yet the Hitler of Auschwitz, though it is the Hitler of Dachau, the Nuremberg Laws, Guernica and Kristallnacht. Mr. Coatsworth takes the optimistic view that "an appearance by Hitler at Columbia could have led him to appreciate what a great power the U.S. had already become," and thus, presumably, kept America from war.

Less clear is whether Mr. Coatsworth issued his invitation in the name of Columbia's current faculty or on behalf the faculty of the 1930s or '40s. We'll assume the answer is the current faculty, since it's unlikely that a committee led by Jacques Barzun, Mark van Doren, Lionel Trilling or other Columbia luminaries of the day would have had much use for "discussion" with the Führer ...

What, then, would be the purpose of such an invitation? Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, offered a clue in a statement issued last week: "Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas--to understand the world as it is and as it might be," he said. "Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through dialogue and reason."

That's an interesting thought, coming from a man who won't countenance an ROTC program on campus. But leave that aside. What's more important is the question of how Columbia defines the set of ideas it believes are worth "confronting," whether its confidence in "dialogue and reason" is well placed and, finally, whether confronting ideas is a sufficient condition for understanding the world.

There is also the question of just what ideas would be presented by Hitler at Mr. Coatsworth's hypothetical conference, and whether they would be an accurate reflection of his beliefs and intentions. ...

Let's assume, however, that Hitler had used the occasion of his speech not just to dissimulate but to really air his mind, to give vent not just to Germany's historical grievances but to his own apocalyptic ambitions. In "Terror and Liberalism" (2003), Columbia alumnus Paul Berman observes the way in which prewar French socialists--keenly aware and totally opposed to Hitler's platform--nonetheless took the view that Germany had to be accommodated and that the real threat to peace came from their own "warmongers and arms manufacturers." This notion, Mr. Berman writes, rested in turn on a philosophical belief that "even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."

So there is Adolf Hitler on our imagined stage, ranting about the soon-to-be-fulfilled destiny of the Aryan race. And his audience of outstanding Columbia men are mostly appalled, as they should be. But they are also engrossed, and curious, and if it occurs to some of them that the man should be arrested on the spot they don't say it. Nor do they ask, "How will we come to terms with his world?" Instead, they wonder how to make him see "reason," as reasonable people do.

In just a few years, some of these men will be rushing a beach at Normandy or caught in a firefight in the Ardennes. And the fact that their ideas were finer and better than Hitler's will have done nothing to keep them and millions of their countrymen from harm, and nothing to get them out of its way.

The Wall Street Journal jumps to the defense of the NY Times and leftist bloggers

Sort of. A great editorial.

Other People's Politics OpinionJournal - Featured Article

... it's always other people's influence that's a threat to democracy. DailyKos's misadventure was resolved with a Federal Election Commission ruling that allowed it (quite properly) to escape the rules it wants foisted on everybody else. And we certainly defend the Times's right to sign advertising contracts at whatever price it wants to charge--without the FEC combing through its books in search of rate discrepancies.

Unfortunately, the Times's passion for regulating everyone else's speech has now boomeranged, with politicians calling for an investigation into its favor to MoveOn. This is getting to be a bad Times habit: Recall its campaign for a special counsel to investigate media leaks that turned into a probe of its own sources and led to judicial rulings that limited press freedom.

House Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Tom Davis (R., Va.) wants hearings on whether the MoveOn discount represented a contribution in violation of campaign finance laws, and whether those laws are actually enforceable. Mr. Davis is indulging in some partisan opportunism here, and we wish instead that he was explaining that the problem is not that these organizations slipped through some campaign finance net. The problem is the net.

The DailyKos argues that it qualifies for the "commentary" exception under McCain-Feingold, while the Times would presumably qualify under the newspaper exception. Anyone who reads either one quickly figures out that they are both stalwart supporters of the Democratic Party and liberal causes. This is their right, but it's hard to see why their political speech deserves any more special legal protection than that of Big Labor or the NRA. As for the Times's ad discount, we also don't see why it shouldn't be as protected as the paper's inevitable endorsement next year of Hillary Clinton for President. Won't that be an "in-kind" political contribution worth at least a few thousand dollars?

Mark, the newest nephew, gets baptized

Mark Gabriel, my brother Phil and his wife Ann's fourth child (third son) was baptized this past Sunday.

Here are some photos of the clan.

Mark and Godmother Lisa

Tom, Jim and Philip

Grandma, and Phil, with the Godfather Jim and his wife Melissa sitting behind...

Ann and her Aunt Maria to her right

Brigid

Ann gets the Mother's blessing from Monsignor Hilary Franco.

Here's an effort to get all the cousins (except the oldest, Paul, who didn't make the ceremony) in one picture - despite about eight shots, this is the best I could do! It's tough with four children five years old, or less. From left to right, that's Mark on Jim's lap (Jim the godfather, not Jim my brother), Tim, Luke, Joe, Catherine, Gregory, and the big guy, Anthony, who is a senior in high school, and my brother Jim's second son.

Gregory is my Godson

An effort to get Godfathers with Godchildren. However Luke escaped and his Godfather Kevin was trying to chase him down. To my left is Mike Brophy, Catherine's Godfather.

Nintendo in the basement. Luke has the controller.

End of the  day for Mark, but those are Tim's hands, trying to get him to come out and play...

The GM strike: Bad news for the company and the workers

This is a very difficult situation.

UAW Says Strike Is About Job Security: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

UAW officials said the 73,000 UAW members who work at about 80 U.S. facilities for the nation's largest automaker didn't strike Monday over what many thought would trip up the talks: A plan to shift the retiree health care burden from the company to the union. They said they also didn't strike over wages.

They said union members walked out because they want GM to promise that future cars and trucks such as the replacement for the Chevrolet Cobalt small car or the still-on-the-drawing board Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric car will be built at U.S. plants, preserving union jobs.

The strike puts GM, which is restructuring so it can better compete with Asian automakers, in a bind as some of its new products begin to catch on with consumers. But it also means workers are taking a big risk -- giving up pay and slowing down GM in an uncertain economy.

"Job security is one of our primary concerns," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told reporters Monday afternoon after talks broke off and the strike began. "We're talking about investment and we're talking about job creation" and preserving benefits, he said.

Ahmadinejad at Columbia

How foolish of Columbia.

Giving the guy more credibility world-wide. Bollinger, the President of Columbia, said to his face "You exhibit all the signs of a pretty and cruel dictator." Wow. I bet that shook him up all right. An ivory tower elitist telling him off.

This picture, taken by Michelle Malkin and posted on her website, (go here for other pictures -Michelle Malkin » Mahmoudapalooza: The madman comes calling; Update: A Columbia/nutjob quid pro quo... ) says it all ---

The NY Times editorializes approvingly on animal-human hybrid embryos

Not a surprise. For the Times it's like, what's the big deal? The problem is, not enough women want to donate their eggs!

Of Animal Eggs and Human Embryos - New York Times

A respected team of stem cell researchers at Harvard spent nearly $100,000 over the course of a year advertising for egg donors. Hundreds of qualified women were interested enough to call but, after hearing what was entailed, not one was willing to donate eggs. Many were likely deterred by the time, effort and pain required — including daily hormone injections and minor surgery — to retrieve the eggs. And they were almost certainly discouraged by the meager compensation.

Although women can be paid thousands of dollars to donate eggs for fertility treatments, ethical guidelines and some state laws say they cannot be paid much for donating to research. These restrictions are meant to protect the women against exploitation, but they have created a dearth of egg donors for stem cell research.

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With few human eggs available, some privately financed stem cell scientists are studying animal eggs to see if they can work the same magic when injected with a human nucleus. That may send shivers of apprehension through people who imagine rogue scientists creating grotesque half-human, half-animal creatures in the laboratory. But a thorough examination of the process by British regulators should alleviate such fears.

Pathetic.

Explaining political discourse in the blogosphere

Do you get it? Quiz on Wednesday!

The housing bubble

this is very amusing - it's on Donald Luskin's website -

Housing Bubble Revisited  The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid

The New York Times admits giving moveon.org a discounted rate for it's slander ad against General Petraeus

It turns out the Times "made a mistake" in charging moveon $64,575, rather then it's standard rate of $142,083.

Here's the NYT's Pulbic Editor, Clark Hoyt, on the issue:

Betraying Its Own Best Interests - New York Times

...I think the ad violated The Times’s own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to.

On Monday, Sept. 10, the day that Gen. David H. Petraeus came before Congress to warn against a rapid withdrawal of troops, The Times carried a full-page ad attacking his truthfulness.

Under the provocative headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” the ad, purchased by the liberal activist group MoveOn.org, charged that the highly decorated Petraeus was “constantly at war with the facts” in giving upbeat assessments of progress and refusing to acknowledge that Iraq is “mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.”

“Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us,” MoveOn.org declared.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”

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For me, two values collided here: the right of free speech — even if it’s abusive speech — and a strong personal revulsion toward the name-calling and personal attacks that now pass for political dialogue, obscuring rather than illuminating important policy issues. For The Times, there is another value: the protection of its brand as a newspaper that sets a high standard for civility. Were I in Jespersen’s shoes, I’d have demanded changes to eliminate “Betray Us,” a particularly low blow when aimed at a soldier.

Another absurd embarrassment for the "Paper of Record." As numerous people have pointed out, they just should have accepted the moveon ad as an editorial.

By the way, the above article also mentions that in the past the Times turned down an ad from the National Right to Life Committee, because it showed pictures of aborted fetuses. The Times loves abortion, it just doesn't like pictures of the results.

NY Times on the nursing home business

This is the main, front page feature in the NY Times today. It's a long article which is sure to be controversial.

The gist of the article is that much of the nursing home industry is moving from publicly traded companies to large private equity firms (like Warburg Pincus). These firms, with interest in cutting costs and raising profits, are doing so while providing residents with lowered standards of care. In some cases, much lower.

This article is especially interesting to poeple who have relatives in nursing homes, or who may need custodial care in the future.

More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes - New York Times

The typical nursing home acquired by a large investment company before 2006 scored worse than national rates in 12 of 14 indicators that regulators use to track ailments of long-term residents. Those ailments include bedsores and easily preventable infections, as well as the need to be restrained. Before they were acquired by private investors, many of those homes scored at or above national averages in similar measurements.

In the past, residents’ families often responded to such declines in care by suing, and regulators levied heavy fines against nursing home chains where understaffing led to lapses in care.

But private investment companies have made it very difficult for plaintiffs to succeed in court and for regulators to levy chainwide fines by creating complex corporate structures that obscure who controls their nursing homes.

By contrast, publicly owned nursing home chains are essentially required to disclose who controls their facilities in securities filings and other regulatory documents.

The Byzantine structures established at homes owned by private investment firms also make it harder for regulators to know if one company is responsible for multiple centers. And the structures help managers bypass rules that require them to report when they, in effect, pay themselves from programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Investors in these homes say such structures are common in other businesses and have helped them revive an industry that was on the brink of widespread bankruptcy.

“Lawyers were convincing nursing home residents to sue over almost anything,” said Arnold M. Whitman, a principal with the fund that bought Habana in 2002, Formation Properties I.

Homes were closing because of ballooning litigation costs, he said. So investors like Mr. Whitman created corporate structures that insulated them from costly lawsuits, according to his company.

We should be recognized for supporting this industry when almost everyone else was running away,” Mr. Whitman said in an interview.

Some families of residents say those structures unjustly protect investors who profit while care declines.

Washington Post feature on Hillary Clinton's mother

88 year old Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham. An interesting article, even if it is superficial.

A Mother's Strength, a Candidate's Ambition - washingtonpost.com

When President Bush was asked once to name his favorite philosopher, he replied that it is Jesus Christ, a revealing response that would become an essential part of his biography. In a recent Democratic debate, Clinton offered a similarly telling insight. Asked for a defining moment in her life, one that put her on the path toward running for president, Clinton credited the women's movement and said her mother is her inspiration.

"More personally, I owe it to my mother, who never got a chance to go to college, who had a very difficult childhood, but who gave me a belief that I could do whatever I set my mind," Clinton said.

Still, 14 years after Hillary Clinton entered the White House with her husband and became known worldwide, the woman she identified as her most enduring influence 0remains a mystery. Clinton, who famously kept her own daughter, Chelsea, out of the public eye, is even more protective of her mother. No interviews with her or photographs -- and no interviews with Clinton on the subject.

What medical coverage are illegal immigrants entitled to?

Medicaid will pay for emergency medical services for people in the U.S. illegally. But what is the definition of "emergency?"

Here is an article in the NY Times, on the issue of whether people visiting or residing illegally should be covered under medicaid rules for chemotherapy.

U.S. Rule Limits Emergency Care for Immigrants - New York Times

Under a limited provision of Medicaid, the national health program for the poor, the federal government permits emergency coverage for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens. But the Bush administration has been more closely scrutinizing and increasingly denying state claims for federal payment for some emergency services, Medicaid experts said.

Last month, federal officials, concluding an audit that began in 2004 and was not challenged by the state until now, told New York State that they would no longer provide matching funds for chemotherapy under the emergency program. Yesterday, state officials sent a letter to the federal Medicaid agency protesting the change, saying that doctors, not the federal government, should determine when chemotherapy is needed.

Federal health officials declined to discuss chemotherapy or the New York claims. But Dennis Smith, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement, “Longstanding interpretations by the agency have been that emergency Medicaid benefits are to cover emergencies.”

The federal statute that defines an emergency under Medicaid makes it clear that routine care for illegal immigrants and nonresidents, including foreign students and visitors, is not covered. But the only procedures it specifically excludes from reimbursement are organ transplants, leaving to the states the task of further defining an emergency. States and courts have grappled with the question for years, yielding no clear definition.

Serenity

... sort of.

This courtesy of my brother Phil. Less than a minute long - you have to watch it 'til the end.

Serenity

Noonan on Greenspan: "Now he tells us"

There's a great column in the Wall Street Journal this morning by one of my favorite writers, Peggy Noonan.

By the way, if you're a Bush-hater the last paragraph is a pip - but you'll have to hit the link, I'm not excerpting it!

Now He tells Us OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

But he never quite cleared it up, not at the time. He does it now, with the book, and after the advance. As a writer I am in passionate support of large advances, but $8.5 million to tell the American people what he should have told them when his views might have had an impact?

In the book he seems to brag about how artfully and deliberately obscure his public statements were, all those orotund stylings marked by barely penetrable syntax, passive voice and oblique phraseology. Somehow they seem less amusing in retrospect. Maybe their very obscurity allowed partisans to twist his words into whatever shape they wanted. And maybe that was sort of OK with him.

>>>>>>>>>

Long ago in a book called "What I Saw at the Revolution," I wrote that I was dismayed by White House memoirs whose underlying message was, "If only they'd listened to me, the fools!" I didn't want to do that, and in my case I couldn't. Sometimes if they'd listened to me they'd have been wrong indeed. Mr. Greenspan is an "If only they'd listened to me" man. He should have added, "And they might have if I'd been clear."

The book she mentions above - Present at the Revolution was Noonan's first book, about her experiences as a speechwriter in the Reagan White House (she wrote several of his memorable speeches). It's a great book.

Parents-Teachers night at Fordham Prep

They don't actually call it that, but that's what it was last night, as we got to meet Joe's teachers.

Very impressive night.

His honors English teacher (who is also his Mentor) has been at the Prep for 20 years. Ditto for his honors Biology teacher, who made the point to all of us parents that honors Biology is not the biology we would remember from our high school days. She had been in research, and started teaching at Fordham Prep after two of her sons graduated from the Prep. The honors Global Studies teacher has been there for 19 years, and Joe's advanced honors Math teach is the chairwoman of the department.

The Latin teacher is now a part-timer, four days a week, doing Latin and German. The Religion teacher (extremely popular, very amusing guy), who is teaching the Old Testament was one of these teachers who clearly had a vast command of the subject and who I'm usre is fascinanting to listen to in class.

Most of the teachers were older then me, which at least means, well, they're old. In other words, they been around, know the ropes.

As has been the case at all the Fordham Prep events, there was a strong emphasis on Joe's planning and time management.

On the Cross Country front, Joe was supposed to run in an event at Bear Mountain today, but yesterday afternoon he had an appointment with a podiatrist, who did some work on his right big toe. It has been troubling him for a couple of months. As a result he can't run until Sunday, so he'll go to Bear Mountain to support the team and maybe help the coach.

Is Honduras a Blue State?

This was sent to me by my brother Jim, who's in Honduras right now.

The incredible Clinton Political Machine!

The inevitable

t-shirt

Ken Burns new documentary

The man who did the fine documentaries on the Civil War and Baseball.

Ken Burns Returns to War OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts

Mr. Burns is one of the most well-known and influential documentary makers in American film history. "The Civil War," his 11-hour epic released in 1990, remains the most viewed documentary in PBS history. An estimated 39 million people tuned in to watch at least one of its episodes. For more than a quarter-century, Mr. Burns has made more than a dozen other films. His first, 1981's hourlong "Brooklyn Bridge," helped cement his reputation within PBS as a filmmaker who can make history accessible to a broad viewing public. In the years that followed, he made films on a wide variety of topics, including the Statue of Liberty--which focused on personal stories of immigration and assimilation--and the American-born art form of jazz. Throughout his career, he had the goal of telling the story of the U.S. and its people. "I've been making the same film" over and over, he told me.

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Mr. Burns spent the next decade creating films but resisting pressure to make a World War II documentary. In the summer before the devastating terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, however, something came across the transom that changed his mind. The Veterans Administration estimated that 1,000 World War II veterans were dying every day. "I'm in the memory business," he said while visiting the Journal. "When a [veteran] dies without his story being told, that's like a library burning down." Earlier this month, Mr. Burns phoned me from Mobile, Ala., and told me another reason he decided to make "The War." He feels a "huge pang of regret" for not asking his own father, who died in October 2001, more about what the war generation had gone through. "Dad, damn it, come back and tell me more," he said.

Dick Cheney responds to Greenspan's book

Having posted twice about Allan Greenspan's new book (here, Tom Faranda's Folly: Greenspan's new book - critical of Bush's abandonment of small government principles and here,  Tom Faranda's Folly: More on Greenspan and his book it's only fair to let Vice-president Cheney (also known as Darth Vader Tom Faranda's Folly: Darth Cheney) respond.

The Real Bush Record OpinionJournal - Extra

The combined effects of recession and national emergency could have been devastating for America's economy. Yet President Bush's tax cuts--following through on a promise he had made to the voters--resulted in a shallower recession, a faster recovery, and a platform for growth that remains sturdy to this day. The fact is that in a time of unprecedented challenge, the United States has experienced nearly six years of uninterrupted economic growth and added more than eight million new jobs since August 2003--more than all other major industrialized nations combined.

The economic growth encouraged by the president's tax cuts is now producing sharply increased federal tax receipts--up by nearly 15% in fiscal year 2005 alone, nearly 12% in fiscal year 2006, and projected to rise nearly 7% in the fiscal year that will end this month. That is the highest growth in tax receipts in consecutive years since 1981. As a result, tax revenue as a percentage of our economy is now above the 40-year historical average. Under the circumstances, it's pretty hard for anyone to argue that the American people are under-taxed. Even at a lower rate of taxation, the hard work and productivity of Americans is generating more tax dollars than ever before.

On the spending side of the ledger, I can't dispute Alan's general notion that the federal government is too big and spends too much money--we've agreed on that point since we both worked in the Ford administration more than 30 years ago. President Bush feels the same way, and that's why he has steadily reduced the annual rate of growth in non-security discretionary spending. In contrast, the last budget enacted during the Clinton/Gore administration increased that category of spending by a staggering 15%. President Bush has pressed hard to keep that spending under control--and this year's increase will actually be lower than the rate of inflation for the third year in a row.

Paul Krugman has started a blog on the NY Times website

Krugman, who I mentioned here Tom Faranda's Folly: NY Times goes back to all-free internet access - "Times Select" subscription program ends for his uncanny ability to be wrong about everything, started blogging a couple of days ago.

Wow, is he boring. I thought I was bad.  Take a look.

Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

Here's another of my postings pointing out Krugman's dismal record.

Tom Faranda's Folly: Who is America's most inaccurate pundit?

He's so disingenuous he's spawned a whole internet cottage industry, The Krugman Truth Squad.

the krugman truth squad - Google Search

Darth Cheney

Hillary calls Cheney "Darth Vader". Haven't people been calling him that for years? How about something original? Picture off Drudge Report

Darth Cheney - Ben Smith's Blog - Politico.com

NY Times goes back to all-free internet access - "Times Select" subscription program ends

The Times has eliminated the subscription fee for access to some of it's online material (including what they referred to as their "crown jewels" - their op ed writers), which they've had in place for the past two years.

The New York Times - Opinion

This makes it much easier to post links to their articles, knowing the article will still be available after one week.

It also opens access to op ed columnist Tom Friedman, the only member of the "crown jewels" department who I think writes anything worth reading. Ohhh, and also Paul Krugman, who's opinions are good for comic relief and as a contrary indicator for business and economic trends.

Here's yesterday's NYT article announcing the change -

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York Times

Looks like the "perp" in the Florida story is a jerk

If you are interested, Michelle Malkin has lots of stuff, including an eyewitness account from a student self-styled "conservative Republican" who says Kerry handled the incident well.

When you watch the second video, Tom Faranda's Folly: Free speech in Florida? Student gets roughed up by police at Kerry event you realize a lot of the kid's stuff is showboating. At least I thought so.

Michelle Malkin

Here's part of the student's email to Malkin -

Senator Kerry was trying to answer his question to the audience, mostly the one about faulty voter machines. I am a die hard conservative Republican but I do respect Senator Kerry for trying to soothe the situation as best he could and trying not to escalate the situation. He DID intervene by letting the student at least present his question. I never received an opportunity to ask my question, but when Senator Kerry ended the show after the Meyer incident, he did come off stage to shake hands and give autographs. At that point, I was able to ask him my question, shake his hand, and get a autograph at the same time. Now why couldn’t Andrew Meyer do that?

I don’t know if this is relevant or not, but Andrew Meyer is a former sports writer for the school newspaper The Alligator. In his columns, he has been known to make ridiculous statements in order to gain attention for himself. Was today a publicity stunt?

Free speech in Florida? Student gets roughed up by police at Kerry event

I am pretty sure the Senator will speak out against what happened.

Student Arrested, Tasered at Kerry Event - AOL News

I voted "no" on the first question, and "it's too soon to say" (since I couldn't see what was gonig on uneder the pile-up) to the second.

UPDATE: Here's more video.

LiveLeak.com - Kerry Taser Incident....raw footage of after he was tasered and led away

The kid shouldn't have been arrested ("Inciting a riot"?); but he shouldn't have resisted either. Go quietly now and sue later.

This from Gainesville Televsion website:

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A University of Florida student was Tasered and arrested after trying to ask U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., about the 2004 election and other subjects during a campus forum.

Videos of the incident posted on several Web sites show officers pulling Andrew Meyer, 21, away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President George W. Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.

"He apparently asked several questions -- he went on for quite awhile -- then he was asked to stop," university spokesman Steve Orlando said. "He had used his allotted time. His microphone was cut off, then he became upset."

As two officers take Meyer by the arms, Kerry is heard to say, "That's alright, let me answer his question." Audience members applaud, and Meyer struggles to escape for several seconds as up to four officers try to remove him from the room.

Meyer screams for help and asks "What did I do?" as he tries to break away from officers. He is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting. Meyer says he will walk out if the officers let him go.

As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student's "very important question," Meyer struggles on the ground and yells at the officers to release him, crying out, "Don't Tase me, bro," just before he is Tasered. He is then led from the room, screaming, "What did I do?"

Another UPDATE:Tom Faranda's Folly: Looks like the "perp" in the Florida story is a jerk

More on Greenspan and his book

I posted this a few days ago. Tom Faranda's Folly: Greenspan's new book - critical of Bush's abandonment of small government principles

Here is another column by Bob Woodward - another Greenspan interview -

Greenspan: Ouster Of Hussein Crucial For Oil Security - washingtonpost.com

As for Iraq, Greenspan said that at the time of the invasion, he believed, like Bush, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction "because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something." While he was "reasonably sure he did not have an atomic weapon," he added, "my view was that if we do nothing, eventually he would gain control of a weapon."

His main support for Hussein's ouster, though, was economically motivated. "If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands," Greenspan said, "our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first gulf war. And the second gulf war is an extension of the first. My view is that Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day" passing through.

Greenspan said disruption of even 3 to 4 million barrels a day could translate into oil prices as high as $120 a barrel -- far above even the recent highs of $80 set last week -- and the loss of anything more would mean "chaos" to the global economy.

Given that, "I'm saying taking Saddam out was essential," he said. But he added that he was not implying that the war was an oil grab.

"No, no, no," he said. Getting rid of Hussein achieved the purpose of "making certain that the existing system [of oil markets] continues to work, frankly, until we find other [energy supplies], which ultimately we will."

Interview with the author of "The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can be Done About It

The author is former director of development research at the World Bank and advisor to the British government's Commission on Africa. A really interesting interview.

TCS Daily - The Bottom Billion No More?

Schulz: As bad as things are for the bottom billion, you believe it's possible that the statistics we have to describe what is happening may in fact underestimate the decline that has happened with the world's worst off nations. So how bad is it?

Collier: How bad is bad? Everything has to be seen relative to where the rest of the world is, since information has now globalized. If we were all still living in the 14th century then the present conditions in the bottom billion would be OK, but we are not. Both practical living conditions and more important psychological matters such as the lack of hope in these societies are unacceptable and potentially explosive.

If you have an interest in the topic of Third World development, here are two more excellent books -

Tom Faranda's Folly: Latest read - "The Elusive Quest for Growth"

Tom Faranda's Folly: Latest read: The Shackled Continent

Excommunicated in Canada

It's very difficult to get yourself excommunicated from the Catholic Church, but here's a group that managed it!

Excommunicated « Charlotte was Both

In a judgment delivered to the group on Monday, and announced yesterday, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the ordinations of six priests in the Army of Mary this past June were illegitimate, because they were performed by a priest rather than a bishop. As a result, at least one recent marriage, performed by one of these new priests, is now regarded by the Vatican as null.

Further, the ruling says that anyone who participates in the Army of Mary, which has centres in Quebec City and Lac-Etchemin, Que., is in schism with the Catholic Church, and therefore automatically excommunicated.

The group has been in conflict with the Vatican for at least 20 years - its members claim to be fully Catholic, but with extra beliefs - and so it received the ruling with equanimity, calling it the “will of God.”

Interesting commentary on my new Congressman, John Hall

One of Hall's potential rivals had a piece published in the American Thinker, about Hall's non-jumping to the defense of General Petraeus, who it appears is one of his constituents. I've met the author, Kieran Michael Lalor, and he is a top-notch guy. However there will be plenty of competition from other Republicans, who want to run against Hall.

The District is traditionally Republican, but Hall is very well funded by backers from the entertainment industry and gay rights groups (see the wikipedia entry, linked below).

American Thinker: General Petraeus' Congressman

Much has been said about the mendacious, full-page advertisement MoveOn.org ran in the New York Times this week referring to Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us." Democrats in Congress orchestrated the piece, and most have refused to condemn this baseless attack on a man who has devoted more than three decades to defending the people of the United States. 

Incredibly, even Petraeus' own Congressman refused to defend him. Let's be clear: General Petraeus was born and raised in Cornwall, New York and he is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  Both Petraeus' hometown and alma mater fall within New York's 19^th Congressional District in the Hudson River Valley.  The district is represented by Rep. John Hall, an anti-war Democrat who has been in office for nine months.

One might wonder what kind of Congressman could sit back and watch in silence as his own District's favorite son is slandered by the cretins at MoveOn. But let's not be surprised by John Hall anymore.

Some background:  Before eking out a victory in the historically conservative 19^th District in 2006, John Hall was a singer with the 1970's band Orleans. By the early 1980's, he was establishing himself as a reliable leftwing shill, making an anti-Nuke propaganda film with a repugnant gaggle of leftists and celebrities, including Jane Fonda herself.  In 1991, he was a county legislator and voted to defeat a resolution declaring support for our troops during Operation Desert Storm.  But Hall didn't stop there. By the late 1990's, he'd sailed his yacht to Cuba (an act that contravenes U.S. law, which Hall still hasn't explained).  He enjoyed his trip to the dictatorship so much he wrote a song about it . 

After years of leftist antics, Hall must have been proud when the New York Times patted him on the back in 2006, calling him a "veteran liberal activist

Here is the Wikipedia entry about Hall, who seems to feel that elimination of many anti-drug laws would be a good thing.

John Hall (New York) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And here is Hall's own Congressional website.

John Hall Represents New York's 19th District

Sign recently spotted

           98% of Lawyers

Make the rest of them look bad.

Greenspan's new book - critical of Bush's abandonment of small government principles

The article in the Washington Post is written by Bob Woodward.

Greenspan Is Critical Of Bush in Memoir - washingtonpost.com

Saturday, September 15, 2007; Page A01

Alan Greenspan, who served as Federal Reserve chairman for 18 years and was the leading Republican economist for the past three decades, levels unusually harsh criticism at President Bush and the Republican Party in his new book, arguing that Bush abandoned the central conservative principle of fiscal restraint.

While condemning Democrats, too, for rampant federal spending, he offers Bill Clinton an exemption. The former president emerges as the political hero of "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan's 531-page memoir, which is being published Monday.

Greenspan, who had an eight-year alliance with Clinton and Democratic Treasury secretaries in the 1990s, praises Clinton's mind and his tough anti-deficit policies, calling the former president's 1993 economic plan "an act of political courage."

But he expresses deep disappointment with Bush. "My biggest frustration remained the president's unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending," Greenspan writes. "Not exercising the veto power became a hallmark of the Bush presidency. . . . To my mind, Bush's collaborate-don't-confront approach was a major mistake."

Greenspan accuses the Republicans who presided over the party's majority in the House until last year of being too eager to tolerate excessive federal spending in exchange for political opportunity. The Republicans, he says, deserved to lose control of the Senate and House in last year's elections. "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," Greenspan writes. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither."

He singles out J. Dennis Hastert, the Illinois Republican who was House speaker until January, and Tom DeLay, the Texan who was majority leader until he resigned after being indicted for violating campaign finance laws in his home state.

"House Speaker Hastert and House majority leader Tom DeLay seemed readily inclined to loosen the federal purse strings any time it might help add a few more seats to the Republican majority," he writes.

He adds three pages later: "I don't think the Democrats won. It was the Republicans who lost. The Democrats came to power in the Congress because they were the only party left standing."

Cancer outcomes in the U.S.A vs. the U.K. - and other countries

There was a good op ed in the WSJ yesterday, but unfortunately it is in the subscriber-only section of the online edition. the link is below, along with excerpts, and anyone wanting the complete article can email me, and I will forward it.

Cancer Killers Cancer Killers - WSJ.com

The evidence shows that universal health coverage does not improve survival rates for cancer patients. Despite the large number of uninsured, cancer patients in the U.S. are most likely to be screened regularly, have the fastest access to treatment once they are diagnosed with the disease, and can get new, effective drugs long before they're available in most other countries.

Last month, the largest ever international survey of cancer survival rates showed that in the U.S., women have a 63% chance of living at least five years after diagnosis, and men have a 66% chance -- the highest survival rates in the world. These figures reflect the care available to all Americans, not just those with private health coverage. In Great Britain, which has had a government-run universal health-care system for half a century, the figures were 53% for women and 45% for men, near the bottom of the 23 countries surveyed.

A 2006 study in the journal Respiratory Medicine showed that lung cancer patients in the U.S. have the best chance of surviving five years -- about 16%. Patients in Austria and France fare almost as well, and patients in the United Kingdom do much worse with only 5% living five years. A report released in May from the Commonwealth Fund showed that women in the U.S. are more likely to get a PAP test every two years than women in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K., where health insurance is guaranteed by the government. In the U.S. 85% of women ages 25-64 have regular PAP smears, compared with 58% in the U.K.

The same is true for mammograms. In the U.S., 84% of women ages 50-64 get them regularly, a higher percentage than in Australia, Canada or New Zealand, and far higher than the 63% of women in the U.K. The high rate of screening in the U.S. reflects access as well as educational efforts by the American Cancer Society and others.

Early diagnosis is important, but survival also depends on getting effective treatment quickly. In the spring of 2007, 58-year-old Valerie Thorpe from Kent, England, went through the anguish of being diagnosed with cancer, and then was told she would have to wait four months before beginning radiation therapy. Her plight was reported in the newspaper because she appealed to her representative in Parliament. But her problem is not unusual. A study by the Royal College of Radiologists, published this June, showed that such waits are typical, and 13% of patients who need radiation never get it due to shortages of equipment and staff.

Long waits for treatment are "common devices used to restrict access to care in countries with universal health insurance," according to a report in Health Affairs (July/August 2007). The British National Health Service has set a target for reducing waits. The goal is that patients will not have to wait more than 18 weeks between the time their general practitioner refers them to a specialist and they actually begin treatment.

Access to new, better drugs also explains differences in survival rates. In May, a report in the Annals of Oncology by two Swedish scientists found that cancer patients have the most access to 67 new drugs in France, the U.S., Switzerland and Austria. For example, erlotinib, a new lung cancer therapy, was 10 times more likely to be prescribed for a patient in the U.S. than in Europe. One of the report's authors, Dr. Nils Wilking from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, explained that nearly half the improvement in survival rates in the U.S. in the 1990s was due to "the introduction of new oncology drugs," and he urged other countries to make new drugs available faster.

What if moveon.org existed 65 years ago?

Michelle Malkin » No, let’s NOT “move on”

General Eisenhower is a man constantly at war with the facts. He believes Nazi Germany is a direct threat to the United States. It was Japan that attacked us, not Nazi Germany.

More importantly, General Eisenhower will not admit what everybody knows: America is in an unwinnable war on two fronts that are thousands of miles away. Even if America could win, we could have to keep thousands of troops in Europe for decades.

General Eisenhower has become General Lies and Power for not retreating and sending our troops home.

Paid for by the 'Twas Time To Move On Political Society

What If MoveOn.org Existed 65 Years Ago? | Redstate

Global Waming Update #20

Here follows a common sense interview/book review, from the Wall Street Journal.

John Tierney, the NY Times writer, also sat down with author Bjorn Lomborg recently and made one of the points mentioned in this column - the sea level is expected to rise one foot in the next century. That's the same rise that's occurred in the last century.

Chill Out OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts

Standing in the practical middle is Bjorn Lomborg, the free-thinking Dane who, in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001), challenged the belief that the environment is going to pieces. Mr. Lomborg is now back with "Cool It," a book brimming with useful facts and common sense.

Mr. Lomborg--"liberal, vegetarian, a former member of Greenpeace," as he describes himself--is hard to fit into any pigeonhole. He believes that global warming is happening, that man has caused it, and that national governments need to act. Yet he also believes that Al Gore is bordering on hysteria, that some global-warming science has been distorted and hyped, and that the Kyoto Protocol and other carbon-reduction schemes are a terrible waste of money. The world needs to think more rationally, he says, about how to tackle this challenge.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

The picture is the same for other "disasters." Yes, sea levels will rise--probably about a foot over this century. But they have already risen a foot since 1860, and the world has coped. Yes, more people will die from heat; but significantly more people will not die from cold. Yes, glaciers will melt, but they'd be melting to some degree in any event, and in the meantime this melting provides extra water for some of the world's poorest people. (The Himalayan glaciers on the Tibetan plateau--the biggest ice mass outside the Antarctic and Greenland--are the source of rivers that reach 40% of the world's population.)

Such a nuanced look at the good and bad of global warming gives Mr. Lomborg a chance to pursue his bigger theme: Anti-warming policies (like those of the Kyoto Protocol) that require energy taxes or other checks on economic dynamism are inefficient and even harmful. They serve as short-term ways of dealing with what is a complex and long-term problem. They cost a lot now and yet do little to reduce global temperatures in 100 years' time.

Better, says Mr. Lomborg, for today's world to manage the effects of global warming and devote its resources to problems it can fix, thus putting the entire globe in a better position to solve the underlying problem in the future. An example? While we've had fewer floods in the 20th century, the floods we do have get more attention because of the huge economic losses that now accompany them. The losses have nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with the ever-growing numbers of people who migrate to flood-prone areas.

Mr. Lomborg cites studies showing that by implementing Kyoto--at a cost of trillions of dollars--we might be able to achieve a 3% reduction in fluvial and coastal flooding damages. If we instead adopted smart flood policies--e.g., an end to public subsidies that encourage people to settle in flood plains, a shrewder use of levees--we could achieve a 91% reduction in damages at a fraction of the Kyoto cost.

Good column in yesterday's WS Journal about the Petraeus hearings

Daniel Henninger, the columnist suggests the Democrats "change the subject", and they should. The whole op ed is worthwhile reading, and the last part of the column I've excerpted below.

The Remains of that Day OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

There is one campaignable question begging for an answer: Was the Iraq war worth it? It's a legitimate question. Democrats, notably Hillary Clinton, have said Iraq distracted us from the global war on terror. Nothing would be more useful for our politics than that these presidential candidates should debate what they would do to contain Islamic terrorism.

This would push us beyond the insular Bush versus Pelosi smackdown evident yet again this week. Germany, Britain and indeed Japan are all struggling to shape a security and legal framework to stop these relentless bombers. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resigned Wednesday in part over anti-terror policy. In Germany, which foiled an Islamic-led bomb plot last week (as did the Brits in July), Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has set off a debate, mirroring ours, over the structure of his nation's anti-terror laws. France's President Nicolas Sarkozy wants 1,000 surveillance cameras in Paris.

The American public watched this week as candidates Clinton, Biden, Obama and Dodd denounced Iraq as a failure. OK, got it. But before January 2009 arrives, I'd rather know what each will--or won't--do to fight the war on terror. Sen. Clinton was quite right to remind us that Tuesday was September 11. The emotions recede. The implications do not.

Should the profit be taken out of healthcare, and the government have total control?

Here is a column written by John Stossel. It is in the subscriber-only section of the online Journal, but I've decided to give ABC some, uhhh, free publicity by posting it ahead of their special tomorrow.

Mr. Stossel is co-anchor of "20/20." ABC News will air his TV special on health care at 10 p.m. EST Friday.

Sick Sob Stories - WSJ.com

Sick Sob Stories

By JOHN STOSSEL
September 13, 2007; Page A16

In Michael Moore's movie "Sicko," a widow named Julie Pierce tells a tearful story: Her husband died of kidney cancer after their health-insurance company denied payment for a bone-marrow transplant that might have saved his life. Ms. Pierce's rage is palpable as she repeats the word her insurers used in response to her husband's request. "They denied it," she sneers. "Said it was 'experimental.'"

Viewers of the documentary are meant to understand that "experimental" is health-insurance code for "expensive," and that Ms. Pierce's husband was left to die for the sake of profit. According to Mr. Moore's movie, "Any payment for a claim is referred to as a medical loss," and when a claim is denied, "it's a savings to the company."

But Mr. Moore is so busy following the money that he doesn't take the time to follow the science. Treating cancer patients with bone-marrow transplants has a dubious history.

Twenty years ago, many oncologists believed that bone-marrow transplants, along with high doses of chemotherapy, might offer a cure for breast cancer. Insurance companies refused to pay, calling the treatment experimental and unproven. Breast-cancer sufferers went to court: In one case, a jury awarded $77 million to the family of a woman who was denied payment for the treatment. Wives and mothers told heart-rending stories in newspapers and on TV. Politicians quickly moved to guarantee the treatment to all breast-cancer patients. Ten state legislatures mandated that every insurance policy cover bone-marrow transplantation for breast-cancer patients. Amid the media circus and political self-congratulation, the question of whether bone-marrow transplants are medically effective faded into the background.

The sad truth is that the treatment isn't effective. When researchers released the results of their clinical trials to the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 1999, they showed that the treatment offered no benefit. Worse, it often killed women faster than their cancer, and caused them unnecessary pain. At a time when their health was at its greatest risk, more than 30,000 women were exposed to an invasive, harmful and ultimately useless treatment that the National Institutes of Health no longer recommends. But only one state legislature has repealed its law requiring insurance companies to pay for the treatment. Some doctors believe bone-marrow transplants might help kidney cancer patients, and the NIH is conducting clinical trials to find out. Until the treatment has been shown to do more good than harm, insurers are reluctant to pay for it.

Mr. Moore claims that because private insurance companies are driven by profit, they will always deny care to deserving patients. For this reason, he argues, profit-making health-insurance companies should be abolished, our health- care dollars turned over to the government, and the U.S. should institute a health-care system like the ones in Canada, Britain or France. But does Mr. Moore think, even for a second, that any of the government systems he touts in his movie would have provided a bone-marrow transplant to Ms. Pierce's husband? Fat chance.

When government is in charge of health care, the result is not that everyone gets access to experimental treatments, but that people get less of the care that is absolutely necessary. At any given time, just under a million Canadians are on waiting lists to receive care, and one in eight British patients must wait more than a year for hospital treatment. Canadian Karen Jepp, who gave birth to quadruplets last month, had to fly to Montana for the delivery: neonatal units in her own country had no room.

Rationing in Britain is so severe that one hospital recently tried saving money by not changing bed-sheets between patients. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over, British papers report. The wait for an appointment with a dentist is so long that people are using pliers to pull out their own rotting teeth.

Patients in countries with government-run health care can't get timely access to many basic medical treatments, never mind experimental treatments. That's why, if you suffer from cancer, you're better off in the U.S., which is home to the newest treatments and where patients have access to the best diagnostic equipment. People diagnosed with cancer in America have a better chance of living a full life than people in countries with socialized systems. Among women diagnosed with breast cancer, only one-quarter die in the U.S., compared to one-third in France and nearly half in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Moore thinks that profit is the enemy and government is the answer. The opposite is true. Profit is what has created the amazing scientific innovations that the U.S. offers to the world. If government takes over, innovation slows, health care is rationed, and spending is controlled by politicians more influenced by the sob story of the moment than by medical science.

Led Zeppelin to do Tribute Concert

In London, November 26th. The Band that put "Heavy" in "Metal".

Vocalist Robert Plante will be 60 next August.

Guitarist Jimmy Page survived his (former) heroin addiction and will be 64 in January.

Led Zeppelin to Return for a Tribute Concert - New York Times

Led Zeppelin, which has sold well over 100 million albums in the United States alone, broke up in 1980 after Mr. Bonham’s death, but fans have become accustomed to periodic reunions and semi-reunions. First there was Live Aid in 1985, with Phil Collins and Tony Thompson of Chic on drums. In 1988 the three surviving members recruited Jason Bonham to play at a 40th-anniversary show for Atlantic. Six years later Mr. Page and Mr. Plant played an “MTV Unplugged” session that turned into a tour and an album that included reworked Led Zeppelin songs.

And while the concert will benefit an educational charity in Mr. Ertegun’s name, it also coincides with the release of two major Zeppelin reissues: “Mothership,” a two-disc hits set due Nov. 13, and an expanded version of “The Song Remains the Same,” the soundtrack to the band’s 1976 concert movie, to be released Nov. 20.

Here are some links for Led Zeppelin:

Robert Plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Home – RobertPlant.com – The official site for Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation

Led-Zeppelin.com - main menu   (This home page looks very cool!)

Led Zeppelin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   (Very extensive article)

Jimmy Page - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NY Times gave big discount to Moveon.org for their ad attacking Petraeus

Normal rate $181,000. Moveon rate $65,000

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php...

Citing the shared liberal bent of the group and the Times, one Republican aide on Capitol Hill speculated that it was the "family discount."

"I'm surprised they had to pay anything at all for the ad," the GOP staffer said. "They could have just asked the editorial page to run it and it wouldn't have cost them a cent."

Or you could call it "All in the Family".

My meeting with the Cuban Tobacco Mogul

Here he is: Senor Demia'n Guzman Gagnone. I met with him at a secret picnic on Sunday. He is a friend of Raoul Castro. Gagnone, a man of mystery. His contribution to the Clinton campaign will be returned.