The Will

Researchers are warning that oral sex leads to a much higher risk of throat cancer, particularly in sexually promiscuous people. 

People who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex, a new study suggests.
The researchers believe this is because oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers. 

There is a vaccine, but it is not known how effective it may be in preventing orally transmitted HPV. Oral sex had previously been linked to mouth cancer.

Some things don’t impress me. Hereditary positions are pretty high up on that list. Clearly, there is something wrong with me, because I appear to be in the minority in that I could care less about the British royal family. If I must visit with a queen, I’d pick Freddie Mercury even though he’s dead.

When it happened yesterday morning in Greenbelt — when the queen strolled 100 yards from Goddard Space Flight Center‘s main building to one housing the auditorium — the Goddard employees and their family members lining the route seemed star-struck, their mouths hanging open in awe as she passed within feet.

I guess I better get practicing my gape mouthed, drooling with awe look in front of the mirror in case the queen decides to visit. Wait a minute! Her visit is over today isn’t it? Thank God. I have no ill will, but I’m not enraptured either. Your kind and my kind are from different planets, and that’s how I like it. Royalty free works for me.

I couldn’t bring myself to read the whole In Royalty’s Presence article, especially after this:

Sherry Warner was still quivering minutes afterward. "I told her, ‘Yes, I work here,’ that we actually build the electronics that go in satellites," Warner said. "Oh, yes, I’m excited! Wonderful! Wonderful!"

What journotripe. Quiver your way back to work, lady. This fawning and salivating over nothing is making me sick.

The University of California police have a document entitled Active Shooter Safety Tips available for download to students, and the rest of the world.

Some of the more interesting tips include not hiding in a bathroom during a rampage. I’m not sure what the logic behind that one is. Some of the tips make sense. Stay low and quiet. Don’t run down long hallways if you don’t know where the shooter is. The brochure even tells you that attacking the gunman is one of the options, but only after he actually starts shooting. Up till that point, they say, move slowly and cooperate.

Nothing about defending yourself with a gun, of course.

Here are my tips to students for defending against a crazy person with a gun or any other type of projectile based weapons system.

• Do not attend any institute of learning where public officials are the only legally armed force.
• If you must attend such a school, enroll on-line or attend a self-defense friendly school where security is taken seriously at all levels, and includes faculty and classroom drills.
• If you are given any instruction which does not promote your own welfare ignore it and follow your own judgment.
• Be aware of your surroundings at all times. Pay attention to the way people are acting and what they are doing.
• Don’t be paranoid. Chances are good that you’ll never encounter an active shooter unless you make a habit of attending a pistol range, which isn’t a bad idea.
• Check the air pressure in your tires before get in your car. A blowout is much more likely to kill you than a crazed gunman.
• Take responsibility for yourself. If a life threatening situation occurs, it will be up to YOU to stay alive. This is as true during an earthquake as it is during a physical attack by another human being. About half the time during such situations, officials only arrive after the threat has ended.

Hat tip: Bruce Schneier

From Ars Technica, we learn: 

The House of Representatives has amended the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 to include provisions to protect bloggers from being required to divulge their sources under certain situations in the same way as journalists. Instead of requiring journalists to be tied to a news organization, the bill now defines "journalism" to focus more on the function of the job: "the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public."

You would think our First Amendment would cover the "free flow of information." Ah well, I suppose those thieves in Washington need to keep themselves busy somehow.

Let’s assume the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 passes. Do you think it will protect me from the wrath of Hillary Clinton if she is elected? I doubt it. The only reason her people aren’t trying to destroy me right now is because I have a tiny little readership. If you write exposes, hit pieces or even just factual analysis about the lives, motives and true intent of politicians, bureaucrats or other government insiders you expose yourself to risk. The more power government has, the more true my previous sentence becomes.

This is how government works, in a nutshell:

1. Pass laws
2. Ignore laws
3. Pass more laws to fix the problems with laws already being ignored because they are impossible to enforce

It’s an play, with three acts, that never ends.

The Virginia Tech massacre may have spurred some state legislators to increase, rather than decrease the range of places where law abiding citizens are legally allowed to carry their concealed weapons. Tennessee is considering allowing concealed carry in state parks.

Tennesseans who have handgun permits could carry their weapons into state parks legally under a bill on the move in the legislature, and its chances of passing are greater in light of the Virginia Tech massacre, one of its sponsors said.

Interesting to note that the Tennessean found a woman who a) was firing a handgun in their photo, and b) thought guns shouldn’t be in state parks. I wonder how many interviews they had to conduct to get that answer. Their online poll says 77% of the voters think handguns should be allowed in Tennessee state parks.

South Carolina legislators are putting forth a measure to allow concealed carry on campuses.

Some South Carolina lawmakers believe allowing people to carry concealed weapons on school campuses could prevent massacres like last month’s slayings at Virginia Tech. Nearly 20 lawmakers have signed on to a measure that would allow concealed weapons on public school and college campuses. If signed in to law, South Carolina would join Utah as the only states that have laws allowing people to carry hidden weapons on campuses.

Perhaps there is still hope for common sense in our society. Maybe more people are realizing that restricting responsible, law abiding citizens from carrying weapons does nothing to reduce the levels of violence in our society while creating new victims for criminals. My concealed carry permit is valid in Tennessee and Georgia, so I’ll watch the developments with interest.

There is always time to reiterate that problems with violence are cultural. Vermont allows concealed carry with or without a permit. When is the last time you remember thinking, "Gosh, Vermont sure is pretty, but they have all that violence, so we’re not going there for vacation." People will use whatever tools are available, to carry out whatever schemes live inside their memebox (the human brain).

Hat tip: Alphecca 

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s election camp is irritated by comparisons between her political fortunes and those of recently defeated French socialist Ségolène Royal.

Unlike Royal, who emphasized her charm and femininity rather than her strength on foreign policy, Clinton has proven her national security bona fides, her advisers said. They argued that unlike Royal, Clinton does best among her own gender. An Ipsos exit poll on Sunday found that Royal lost the women’s vote by 4 percentage points, while 2008 polling in the United States has shown a gender gap in which Clinton performs stronger among women, particularly those younger than 60.

It would be somewhat hard for Hillary Clinton to emphasize charm or femininity. She is completely devoid of either quality. Maybe she should focus on her ability to make the hard decisions. When you hold people’s lives in your hands, as Presidents do, I’m sure it must be easier to make choices when you are not bound by a conscience or any code of ethics.

"Hillary Clinton offers a very different kind of choice than the French faced," said Mark Penn, Clinton’s chief strategist. "Hillary Clinton is well regarded as strong, smart and a leader. Her experience says she is ready to see the country through changes with a steady, substantive and sure hand."

Mark Penn is correct. Hillary Clinton does offer a very different kind of choice. You either love her because of what she promises to do for you, or you fear and loathe her, as I do, because you understand that Hillary could care less about you as an individual human being. Hillary Clinton exists for the sole purpose of satisfying the inner desires of Hillary Rodham Clinton, or whatever she calls herself these days.

If you’re on the fence here are some quotes to keep you thoughtful should her royal highness of the pantsuits be nominated. I will translate the real meanings.

• There cannot be true democracy unless women’s voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives. There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country. Translation: I cannot be in power unless women believe they are still disenfranchised in America. Therefore, I must convince them that they are.
• In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive, and he said 70 times 7. Well, I want you all to know that I’m keeping a chart. Translation: Jesus did all the forgiving, but I’m keeping enemy lists. Don’t get on one of them.
• I never thought I would end up being the Senator from New York. I never thought that the long haired, bearded guy I married in law school would end up being President. Translation: I’ve been thinking about how to get more power for years. My husband was destined to be President, and so am I. I’ll crush anyone who gets in the way.
• I don’t believe that people vote for President based on spouses. I don’t even think they vote much based on vice presidents or any other factor. I think they choose between the two people who are running. Translation: The two party, two candidate system of corruption we have now has one party and one candidate too many. I shouldn’t really have to run against anyone!
• The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they’re not. Translation: I’m going to have to work really hard to fool these suckers. I better go practice my black accent now.
• I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers We are the president. Translation: I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers We are the president.
• Let’s not leave an educational vacuum to be filled by religious extremists who go to families who have no other option and offer meals, housing and some form of education. If we are going to combat extremism then we must educate those very same children. Translation: Government will become your new God. I am government.
• We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society. Translation: Government will decide for you. Those who disagree will be silenced.

The Hillary sycophants are correct when they argue that Hillary Rodham Clinton is no Ségolène Royal. She’s much, much worse. If you enjoy being a myrmidon, I encourage you to vote for Hillary Clinton as your new supreme overlord.

It appears that Ron Paul will be included in the 2008 Republican Presidential candidate debate in South Carolina.

All 10 current candidates for the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nomination will be able to take part in a debate to be aired on Fox News on May 15, the cable channel said Wednesday.

This is hugely important news because Paul has been receiving a groundswell of grass roots support from Internet users around the United States.Paul won the initial debate between Republican candidates in California, according to several Internet polls.

Borderline Libertarian-Republican Rep. Ron Paul (TX) won last Thursday’s debate on MSNBC by a wide margin. Accross the boards, in every catagory (sic), online respondents said Paul stood out from the pack, won the debate, and polled as likable and favored.
A capitalnews poll declared Paul the winner by 70 percent, and yet, the mainstream press failed to report his victory in any fashion, declaring Romney the winner.

Various mainstream media organizations, including ABC, ignored the people’s choice.

For libertarians and other disenfranchised political minorities, Paul may offer the first ray of sunshine to appear through the stormy political landscape of American politics in the last few decades.

One Internet rumor I have not been able to verify as of yet is that Ron Paul received more than 12 million dollars in private donations following the initial debate. Stay tuned, I’ll be continuing to follow the story of "Dr. No." 

I think a lot of people feel this way. I also think this Presidential election cycle is the first where the Internet will tip the outcome in any given direction, possibly with a crushing amount of force. The media may not feel like talking about Ron Paul, but the actual end unit that creates everything we are, the people of the United States – well, they seem to have an interest in old Ron.

Everyone is saying Ron Paul won the Republican debate last week. This is largely because he didn’t come across as just another dumb old white guy, and was not seen raising his hand in rejection of evolution.
But, hopefully the attention will stick, and people will pay a little attention to what the guy has to say, which is backed up in a long career and by a consistent voting record.
Unfortunately, we will not hear much about his positions in the mainstream media. They consider the campaign to be quixotic. By this they mean crackpot.
This is because he favors such things as demolishing the IRS.
When was it the American people became so infatuated with essentially burning a third of their salary? Why do we think it so important the ignoramuses in Washington DC determine what is best to do with our hard earned money?

The above comes from someone who describes herself as "bi hasbian." While I have no idea what that means, I share her interest in Ron Paul’s politics. I might even vote for him despite his strong anti-war stance, because I feel that if he was elected, he would take a responsible approach to the humanitarian side of the situation in Iraq, which is what I care about most deeply when I say we cannot abandon the Iraqis by establishing a mandatory timetable for pulling out.

If, like me, you feel that this country is headed in the wrong direction, then Ron Paul really is worth a look. If, like me, you feel that growing government makes things worse, not better, then Ron Paul really is worth a look. If, like me, you feel that it is long past time we started revering freedom, instead of just paying it lip service, then Ron Paul really is worth a look. I’m optimistic about Ron Paul. As President, he would actually try to shrink the federal government, and I would give him almost fanatical support.

Please take a look at Ron Paul. If you like what you see, then spread the word.

UPDATE: Not to detract from the Ron Paul meme, but here’s an article on bi-hasbians.  

This guy is so full of himself I’m surprised he doesn’t have a ghost writer to do his column while he smokes cigars and criticizes the poor schmuck doing his work for him.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Fred Khumalo and I should feel very flattered indeed.
Every day there are 120000 new blog sites registered — a staggering 43 million a year. According to blog search engine Technorati, there are already 70 million blog sites registered worldwide. Admittedly the majority of the bloggers get bored rather quickly and don’t bother to update their sites, but that’s still 70 million people (higher than the population of the UK) who desperately want to be columnists.
It’s comforting to know that, should Fred or I decide to take a sabbatical, there’s no shortage of people available to hold the fort. The only snag is the quality, or lack of it.

David Bullard wants to name and shame offensive bloggers. Fine, whatever. Do it. But while you’re doing it, don’t insult the rest of the bloggers like me by making silly statements like the one below.

Many bloggers prefer to remain anonymous and with good reason. The content of their sites is so moronic that even their best friends would disown them if they knew they were the authors. As with most things in life, something that costs nothing is usually worth nothing and that puzzles me. Are there really 70 million bloggers out there hoping that their writing talents will be recognised, or is this just another example of modern narcissism?

I think Mr. Bullard feels threatened, and for good reason. Here’s a challenge for him: let his readers pick a column topic. I will write a column on the chosen topic. David Bullard will write a column on the topic. They will both be run side by side with voting buttons, on my blog, since you can’t do voting buttons in a print column. If my column wins, I get to take over Mr. Bullard’s job. If Bullard’s column wins, I’ll shut down this blog. Just because Bullard has an entire organization supporting his writing doesn’t mean he has a future audience. Perhaps he should focus on that instead of worrying about new media writers who may well have a bigger potential audience than Bullard does. Do you even know what a trackback is Mr. Bullard? Adapt or die, baby!
Hat tip: Instapundit (bigger audience than Bullard)
 

Most federal government employees do not think of their budgets as money taken from you and I for the common good. Most of them do not think much at all. And that is why I end up reading infuriating stories like this one:

“Several big lending agencies were gaming the system,” Mr. Oberg said in a recent interview at his home in Rockville, Md.
He notified the Education Department’s inspector general’s office. He also told his superiors but felt they were brushing him off. So in November 2003, he wrote a memorandum for general distribution throughout the department warning that lender manipulations could cost the government billions unless stopped, and he recommended that the secretary could end the abuse with a letter to lenders clarifying government rules.

You see, in the mind of a bureaucrat, protocols and procedures, and their interpretation, are more important than actually accomplishing something on behalf of constituents. Anyone who threatens the entrenched mentality of a career bureaucrat is immediately assaulted with rules, regulations and memorandums. Not every bureaucrat has the mentality of a feudal lord, but the percentage is high enough that at least fifty cents of every tax dollar are wasted. That number is my own guess, primarily based on observation during more than seven years of service in the federal government.

Here is a typical bureaucrat’s mentality:

“Plus, I didn’t understand the issues,” Mr. Whitehurst said recently. “In retrospect, it looks like he identified an important issue and came up with a reasonable solution. But it was Greek to me at the time — preferential interest rates on bonds? I didn’t know what he was doing, except that he wasn’t supposed to be doing it.”

He told Mr. Oberg to stop because he wanted him to be monitoring grants, not lending practices. Officials also rewrote Mr. Oberg’s job description, documents show, barring him from further research into the subsidies. Although Mr. Oberg was a civil servant, the Bush administration may have seen him as a holdover from the Clinton administration.

What’s the lesson here? When your money is funneled into a system that doesn’t value personal accountability and responsibility, you are not going to see a good return on your involuntary investment. At least that is what I learned.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
— Ronald Reagan

Chances are you haven’t heard of HR 1592 aka Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. It was passed by the U.S. House of representatives on May 3, 2007. There is a good chance it will also pass the Senate and be signed into law.

The "Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007" is a classic federal micromanagement program that will do nothing to reduce so-called hate crimes. What it will do is cost taxpayers money. It will also remove discretionary power from local communities and place it in the hands of federal authorities, continuing a piecemeal process that has been underway since the 1800’s in this nation.

As federal power grows, individual choice is inevitably diminished, all in the name of purported good intentions. Good intentions do not produce freedom though. Legislation like HR 1592 inevitably reduces freedom of choice by telling us how we must think, and setting mandatory guidelines for punishing thought crime. Instead of focusing the punishment where it should be focused – on physical harm perpetrated by one human against another, Congress is attempting to redirect the punishment to what is going on inside a citizen’s head.

When a legislative body wants to punish intent rather than the actual criminal act we are on a road to totalitarianism.

It is not government’s job to teach morality. It is not government’s job to regulate belief systems. Government has one basic job – collective security. That is all I want from my government. I do not want it to tell me how to think, how to live, what to believe, or who I should like or dislike.

Local government should deal with local security and crime issues. Federal government is and should be limited to dealing with external and interstate security matters. The problem with our federal government is that it has become a behemoth. That behemoth regularly ignores the limits placed on its own power. After all, the Constitution is just words on paper. It is the people with the guns and the intent that decide what the rules are and how they should be applied to you on a case by case basis.

I wonder which year I will write my first diatribe against federally mandated thought monitoring implants? Chances are I’ll be in incarcerated or dead long before that happens.

What others think

Irregular Times: Hate crimes legislation unnecessary and unconstitutional

Jack Lewis: Act now or prepare for jail

Michael Yon brings another excellent, if slow-loading dispatch from Iraq. I copied the photo in question to my server, but Michael Yon owns the copyright. I don’t think he’ll mind that I took a tiny load off of his server processing cycles, and his site is pretty slow with all the photos in one post.

Some people at home complain that we will lose more soldiers by putting more out with Iraqis. They probably are right. Heavily armed Iraqi police and soldiers have had hundreds of chances to kill me personally, and haven’t done so yet. They are not all our enemies.
Though we will almost certainly lose more soldiers by weaving them more tightly with Iraqi forces and people, this is a price we must be willing to face. I might feel guilty writing that we have to take these chances if I were not planning to stay out with them.

There are many compelling photos in Desires of the Human Heart, Part II. Yon reports on the humanitarian aspects of day to day soldiering. Yon gets the nuts and bolts of the war in a way a politician never will. You won’t find Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha hanging out with Iraqi Police or taking pictures of Iraqi kids. They’re too busy planning jihad and ensuring that Islamic fundamentalism remains a strong force against freedom in places like Iraq.

There is a side to this war that cannot be captured in any kind of statistics. The importance of personal relationships among the soldiers and their Iraqi counterparts cannot be captured in quick stories or numbers. A huge part of this war comes down to personal relationships and respect. It’s not about killing. That’s only a small part of it. It’s about building: building bonds that build societies. Giving Iraqi civilians a real alternative to those who create and then flee from civil havoc. Terrorists don’t pick up the trash on the way back from blowing up the electrical stations.

Do you think al-Qaeda would have stopped to help this man on the side of the road? No, because in their eyes, life is cheap, and death is a reward. Fools.

The image above speaks volumes about the values I hold high. To nurture life, to protect life, to value life. Nothing is greater.

I’m going to keep saying this until the surrender monkeys are all quiet – retreating from Iraq on a timetable is about as intelligent as cutting off your head because you have a pounding headache.

The current political climate in this country is a foul one. We have a poorly thought out and poorly managed war to win, but that isn’t how the conversation is being framed. Instead of debating what we could do better, we’re debating which day we should pack up our bags and leave. The conversation is wasted on sound bites declaring all the reasons why Americans should no longer be involved in Iraq.

Imagine a cook in the kitchen preparing a meal. Halfway through the process, the cook suddenly decides the meal isn’t turning out as expected, and so the meal is abandoned. Later, the kitchen goes up in flame. Who should the cook blame?

Maybe it’s just a case of too many chefs and not enough cooks.

Either way, a lot of Iraqis are dying, some Americans are dying and Congress is, as usual, arguing like a bunch of children.

If they put all the energy into cleaning up corruption that they put into flinging verbal feces, the war would cost us half of what it has been costing. Of course, since Congress is the source of most of the corruption to begin with, that might be a tough cake to bake.

Meanwhile, the showboating and empty rhetoric continue:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Thursday that Congress repeal the authority it gave President George W. Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq, injecting presidential politics into the congressional debate over financing the war.

Does Hillary Clinton care about American soldiers? Of course not. Does she care about helping Iraq become a peaceful, prosperous nation? Not one whit. What does Hillary Rodham Clinton care about? Her own power. She likes being in charge. It’s really that simple.

Mostly, Clinton appeared to be trying to claim a new leadership position among the Democratic presidential candidates against the war in Iraq.

I don’t care if I’m the last person in America who thinks we should stay in Iraq until the Iraqi government asks us to leave, I’m sticking to my guns. Our government made promises on our behalf, and we need to keep those promises. The anti-war crowd should have spoken more loudly before the war started.

But the bulk of the $65 million comes from Pearson’s strict interpretation of D.C.’s consumer protection law, which fines violators $1,500 per violation, per day. According to court papers, Pearson added up 12 violations over 1,200 days, and then multiplied that by three defendants.
Much of Pearson’s case rests on two signs that Custom Cleaners once had on its walls: "Satisfaction Guaranteed" and "Same Day Service."
Based on Pearson’s dissatisfaction and the delay in getting back the pants, he claims the signs amount to fraud.
Pearson has appointed himself to represent all customers affected by such signs, though D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz, who will hear the June 11 trial, has said that this is a case about one plaintiff, and one pair of pants. 

Judge Roy Pearson should have his citizenship revoked. He should be dropped off on any uninhabited coastal island and only if he can make his way back to civilization unassisted should he be allowed to begin the process of gaining citizenship again. Assuming he somehow manages to regain citizenship, he should be barred for life from holding any government job. What an asshat. People with Roy Pearson’s mentality are a net negative on all the rest of us. I would go so far as to call his ilk parasitic. Parasites, like diseases, should be wiped out. If I were a preacher, I would tell people there is a special place in hell for people like Roy Pearson.

According to Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, a legal defense fund has been established. You can contribute through the Chung family’s lawyer, Chris Manning.

Chris Manning
Manning & Sossamon PLLC
1532 Sixteenth Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
202) 387-2228
202) 387-2229 (Fax)
cmanning@manning-sossamon.com
http://www.manning-sossamon.com

You can read more about this case here.

This is the hidden secret they won’t tell. It’s the proven way to make you a happy winner. 

Don’t play in the first place. If you do "win" it won’t make your life any better. Don’t just take my word for it. Still dubious? Read this story:

"Winning the lottery isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be," says Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey lottery not just once, but twice (1985, 1986), to the tune of $5.4 million. Today the money is all gone and Adams lives in a trailer.

Winning the lottery is a nice little daydream, but the truth of the matter is that most people who want to win the lottery, the ones who actually count on winning for their nest egg, those people are stupid. If they aren’t stupid, then they’ve given up trying.

The bottom line is that successful people make their own money, and they spend a lifetime gaining the skills to a) gather resources and then b) use those resources to gather more resources.

If you don’t spend any time working on your resource gathering skills, then winning the lottery will only make you confused and sad. Someone hands you a big pile of resources and you have no idea what to do with them. Before long, they’re all gone because you don’t have any resource management skills.

So there you have it – you win the lottery by not playing. Work on your resource gathering and management skills instead. 

Something tells me that M. Levy, the Health Academy Dean, may need a tutor. Luckily, my children do not attend L.S. 51 Markham Middle School, in Staten Island. Thank God!

Two things make me think this letter might be fake. A) Even in a public school, such poor copy editing is still unacceptable right? B) The letter isn’t printed on letterhead. Don’t schools still use letterhead?

I called the phone number and it just rang and range and rang. I guess the school is too busy teaching a makeup spelling class to answer the phone.

UPDATE: Further research reveals this is a real letter!

A dean at a Staten Island middle school was so fed up with the food fights at lunch that he hastily sent home a letter riddled with meaty errors that most of his students wouldn’t make.
Intermediate School 51 Dean Michael Levy explained to parents that the "caferteria" had garbage "an all tables."
This behavior, he wrote, was "unexcecpable," and all eighth-graders in IS 51’s health academy could lose out on senior "activates" like the prom and class trip.
In addition to at least 16 spelling or grammatical mistakes, the letter – first reported in the Staten Island Advance – was never approved by Principal Emma Della Rocca.
"I would never have anticipated that … Mr. Levy would actually write something that would have not been readable," Della Rocca said.
She’s investigating both the letter and the food fight that started it all. Though the letter told parents that all eighth-graders in the health academy – one of three theme-based academies in the school – would be punished for Monday’s food fight, Della Rocca said only kids found responsible will be disciplined.  

That guy is so fired. Or he should be. And parents, if your kids go to I.S. 51 Markham Middle School, you should be aware it only got a 4 out of 10 rating from GreatSchools.net.

These guys managed to mention the name Britney Spears 17 times in four paragraphs. Count for yourself:

In typical Britney Spears fashion, the same time that she’s supposed to be making headlines about her comeback, spurned by a series of brief shows at House of Blues venues around California, photos of the "Toxic" singer with some important articles of clothing missing are grabbing headlines. But are they really BritBrit? Topless photos that are allegedly of Britney Spears hit the web this week and this is more than just your usual photoshop material, as major sources are claiming that Britney Spears posed for the photos. This is a different kind of comeback for Britney Spears. Well, at least not one that we were expecting this early.

Us Weekly claimed that the photos, which show a woman covering her nipples with bright red flowers in a garden and wearing sunglasses and a hat are definitely Britney Spears and that the singer posed for the photos at a friend’s house last month.

In other Britney Spears news, her comeback has also been marred by the cops. The tour bus that Britney Spears was using for her mini-tour this week was stopped by police on its way down to the House of Blues on Tuesday. Apparently, around 3pm, police halted the vehicle containing Britney Spears after receiving several 911 calls. If we say Britney Spears, we might call 911 too. The driver alleged that he was trying to evade paparazzi and the police let him off with a warning.

Britney Spears continued her mini-tour that started Tuesday night with another show last night at California’s House of Blues in Anaheim. Britney’s not even singing, of course, and opened her show with a lip-synced performance of "…Baby One More Time." She even dragged one ‘lucky’ male fan on stage for a lap dance during a performance of "Breathe On Me." Once again, Britney Spears didn’t actually sing and didn’t do any new material, doing those two songs before "I’m a Slave 4 U" and "Toxic." Fans are actually paying up to $500 for tickets to these four lip-synced songs by Britney Spears, according to showbiz news service Bang!

The show at The House of Blues was billed as a show by The M+Ms, a band that doesn’t actually exist, and, after rumors surfaced that it might be Britney Spears, fans popped up tickets for Tuesday night, last night, and tonight in different cities. The M+Ms played Tuesday night in San Diego and it was really Britney Spears and played again at the California House of Blues in Anaheim last night, so it’s safe to say that shows at the Los Angeles House of Blues tonight, and finally the Las Vegas House of Blues in Mandalay Bay on Sunday night are actually Britney Spears shows.

The last live performance by Britney Spears happened on her Onyx Hotel Tour in June 2004. After that show she was married to Kevin Federline, gave birth to two kids, entered rehab, shaved her head, and made countless tabloid headlines. Apparently, she also never forgot how to lip-sync.

I wonder how much revenue is generated when you link the terms Britney Spears, topless and shaved all in one short article that manages to link back to your own archive pages 17 times? Actress Archives may be making some cash off their repetitive savvy, but I’m not going to buy anything from them. Just in case you were wondering, I wasn’t out Googling for "Britney Spears topless." For some reason Google News had the "story" as one of their headlines. The whole cult of celebrity thing doesn’t do much for me. I try to ignore people who idolize pop stars as a general rule of thumb.

This is two days old now, but I’ve been hearing the soundtrack on the radio, and I had to watch for myself.

First impression – these people didn’t have it that bad. The police were somewhat restrained compared to what I’ve seen at other times in other places. Try demonstrating somewhere like Pakistan or Bangladesh if you want to know what it’s like to get "roughed up." On the other hand, I’m not quite sure what prompted the police to move in to begin with. I realize the few minutes of video don’t show the entire context but I cannot imagine how using a baton on a person holding a camera benefits a free and open society. Unless the press were actively encouraging some sort of disturbance, I think the police were out of line there for sure.

Here’s another perspective:

The honeybees are mysteriously dying because we haven’t paid them enough attention and given them the respect and micromanagement they deserve. At least that is what I think this article is trying to say. Oh yes, all the standard end of the world doomsday catchphrases are in there too. After all, they have to sell ad space.

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.
Honeybees don’t just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

Just imagine the horror.

Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature’s "workhorse — and we took it for granted."
"We’ve hung our own future on a thread," Wilson, author of the book "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth," told The Associated Press on Monday.

Took existence for granted, and now we’re all just dangling over the precipice. Let’s all hope no one adds insult to injury by adding a dangling participle to this mess.

But seriously folks, there does appear to be a silver lining. Bees like radiation.

A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.

If bees like radiation then it logically follows that we should irradiate all our food. We must keep the bees alive so they pollinate things which we can irradiate and feed to the 254 pound seven-year-old.

Do you have anything potentially embarrassing on your hard drive? Use this handy guide to ensure those pictures of you and whoever don’t fall into the wrong hands. The guide is also handy if you are plotting against the government, etc. I’d recommend that you have a college degree. Lots of big words.

If you are too lazy to follow a college level guide for erasing your hard drive using various complex techniques, but you still don’t want the government to find out you’re plotting to overthrow them when you sell your crappy old computer on eBay, there are alternatives for people like you.

Try this handy school children’s guide for building your own simple electromagnet.

Guide that covers how to destroy your hard drive data. College level writing.

The New York Times wonders if traditional book reviewers are kaput.

The Los Angeles Times recently merged its once stand-alone book review into a new section combining the review with the paper’s Sunday opinion pages, effectively cutting the number of pages devoted to books to 10 from 12. Last year The San Francisco Chronicle’s book review went from six pages to four. All across the country, newspapers are cutting book sections or running more reprints of reviews from wire services or larger papers.To some authors and critics, these moves amount to yet one more nail in the coffin of literary culture. But some publishers and literary bloggers — not surprisingly — see it as an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books.

I think the latter is correct. We are in a transitional period. Actually, transition is the only sure thing. Society is always in transition, whether we acknowledge it or not. Readers today have, if anything, too many choices. I don’t have a hard time finding a good book, I have a hard time imagining how I will find time for ALL the good books. It’s my hope that by 2020, I’ll have several thousand book reviews racked up on this blog. I’m my own publishing empire.

Niche markets catering to discriminating audiences are the future of reviewing. My thoughts on a variety of products, from books to guns, are my most enduringly perused posts.

Those who have made a living in the past as old media book reviewers must learn the age old rule of adapt or die. 

After the civil war, Northerners roamed the South taking advantage of the new federal control of Southern states. They were referred to as carpetbaggers.

Now that the Civil War is in the distant past (relative to our collective memory), we have a new type of carpetbagger roaming the land. I refer to them as politicians, and if I had to guess, I would say about 90% are dishonest and have sociopathic tendencies.

Which brings us to this story:

Californians elected San Francisco’s former Mayor Dianne Feinstein to the Senate in 1992. She was overwhelmingly re-elected in November 2006. She is well liked by both liberals and conservatives. She supports abortion rights and gun control laws. She politicked this year for renewal of the Patriot Act and sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban American flag burning. She is currently calling for President Bush to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, but she strongly supported the invasions, occupations and "reconstructions" of both Iraq and Afghanistan. She sits on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and she is a consistent hawk on matters military.
And she is wealthy. In 2005, Roll Call calculated Feinstein’s wealth, including Blum’s assets, at $40 million, up 25 percent from the year before. That made her the ninth wealthiest member of Congress. Feinstein’s latest Public Financial Disclosure Report shows that in 2005 her family earned income of between $500,000 and $5 million from capital gains on URS and Perini stock combined. From CB Richard Ellis, Blum earned between $1.3 million to $4 million. (The report allows for disclosure of dollar amounts within ranges, which accounts for the wide variance.)
A talented financier and deal-broker, Blum, 70, presides over a global investment empire through a labyrinth of private equity partnerships. His flagship entity is a merchant banking firm, Blum Capital Partners, L.P., of which he is the chairman and general partner. Through this bank, Blum bought a controlling share of Perini in 1997, when it was nearly broke. He named his close associate, the attorney Michael R. Klein, to represent his interest on the board of directors. Blum declined to comment for this story. Perini CEO Robert Band deferred to Klein for comment.

The story is old by Internet standards, but it just goes to show that it really doesn’t matter whether Democrats or Republicans hold sway in Congress. You can pick your ice cream flavor, but if you eat too much, you are still going to get fat, suffer health issues, and eventually die.

Americans today are fat, suffering health issues, and politically, we are dying under the two party system. It’s well past time for something new.

I am disgusted by the growth of the federal government in the last century. I am tired of the homogenous, simplistic rhetoric full of promises that are almost never delivered. My bowels clench when I read yet another story involving a member of our Congress taking advantage of his or her power. It’s enough to make me want to revolt.

I have a variety of different metrics that I use to track visitors to this blog. The Pentagon stops by fairly often.I wonder what they think of what I have to say. It’s probably just the janitor on his lunch break or something. I like to fantasize that he reads my blog in between his philosophy novels.

God forbid a highly placed official had time for my opinions. I’m sure they are too busy writing new and improved policies that will ensure appropriate control mechanisms are in place when we pack up and leave Iraq with our tail between our legs. I wonder what the janitor at the Pentagon will think when the civil war there goes from low-intensity to full blown. He’ll probably have been fired by then for reading my blog.

Did you know the cells in your heart take hours to expire after you have been declared clinically dead? I didn’t. 

But if the cells are still alive, why can’t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that "astounding" discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn’s Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine’s newest frontiers: treating the dead.

Guess what else? The only reason you cannot be revived after five hours of no breathing is because resuming the oxygen supply to your heart after that long a period is what actually kills you. Fascinating.

With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. When someone collapses on the street of cardiac arrest, if he’s lucky he will receive immediate CPR, maintaining circulation until he can be revived in the hospital. But the rest will have gone 10 or 15 minutes or more without a heartbeat by the time they reach the emergency department. And then what happens? "We give them oxygen," Becker says. "We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it’s taking up more oxygen." Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion.

Imagine all the possibilities. I wonder how many people will get to enjoy Grandpa or Grandma an extra decade or two because of this discovery? It all depends how quickly the meme spreads. Pass it along.

I have known for some time now that what I think I know is often more important in determining how I will react in any given situation that what is actually true. Reality is what you perceive it to be. If 100 million human beings believe that I am the anti-Christ, then I have a real problem. If one billion Muslims believe that America’s goal is to weaken Islam while spreading Christianity, we have a serious issue that must be addressed.

That seems to be the case: 

From a low of 73 percent in Indonesia to a high of 92 percent in Egypt the Muslims believe that America’s goal is "to weaken and divide the Islamic world." Fairly assuming that these four countries’ populations represent worldwide Muslim views in Islamic countries, in other words, about 80 percent of the 1.4 billion Muslims or about a billion souls see America as hostile or an enemy to Islam.

Between 61 percent and 67 percent of the polled Muslims also thought that America’s goal was to spread Christianity in the Middle East. Given that Islam teaches that Muslim converts to other religions must be executed, this purported American objective is probably not well received.

If you are a Muslim, and you believe these things – that the U.S. is full of proselytizing Christians who are hostile to Islam, then you are only partially correct. Yes, a percentage of Americans probably fit that description. I am not one of them. I do not want to convert you to my belief system, although it would make me feel good if you voluntarily adopted some of my worldview as your own. I do not want to force you to live by my moral code, unless you are hurting or killing those around you in other than self-defense.

I am not alone in my lack of desire to force you to do anything particular in regards to your culture, religion or life in general. There are millions of Americans who believe as I do, that we have no right to dictate to other nations and peoples, except in self-defense. The problem with us Americans is that we have a hard time agreeing on what self-defense means. We have a hard time agreeing on what anything means. The wonderful thing about us Americans is that we get to decide for ourselves what to believe. This concept is known as free will. Some Americans believe free will is more important than religion.

Most Americans have little to no desire to force their religious viewpoints on anyone else. Anyone who tells you that such Americans are anything but a vocal minority is a liar. Most Americans also do not take kindly to being attacked by religious or other types of zealots.

Here are some scenarios in which Americans who share my mindset will defend ourselves:

• When someone or some group tries to force a religion on us
• When someone or some group tries to force a lifestyle on us
• When someone or some group tries to steal from us
• When someone or some group declares war on us

On September 11, 2001 and many times before that, people who claimed to represent Allah declared war on the West with various heinous acts. It is natural that after many attacks on the Western world committed in the name of Allah that the Western world has become concerned with the mindset of a typical Muslim.

The United States is, at least conceptually, and often also practically, a place where Jew, Christian, Muslim and even atheist can live side by side without forcing themselves one upon the other. If that is intolerable to you, then you are intolerable to me and those who think as I do. I want to live in a world that allows all rational and non-aggressive people to choose their own pathways in life, and I am willing to fight for such a world.

My general rule of thumb in life is keep your religious viewpoints to yourself unless I ask you. Following this rule is like keeping a machine well oiled – it makes things run more smoothly. 

Sometimes, I come across a decision so stupid I’m momentarily rendered speechless. Today was one of those days.

Wired has published an article claiming:

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Are you kidding me? I hope so. We live in a society where information flow is critical. The Pentagon and the Executive Branch are losing the hearts and minds battle. There is no doubt about that. The uncensored voices of our military personnel via blogs have been one of the few sources of positive, thoughtful information from the ground.

Why? Why would officials effectively choke off the thin trickle of spin free information coming from the war zones? An OPSEC review prior to publishing anything, per the new regulation supposedly now in place, will effectively kill any desire by our troops to publish what’s happening in their daily lives.

The unfathomable arrogance and stupidity of military bureaucrats overwhelms me. A micromanaged war is a war lost. Perhaps Harry Reid was right after all.

President Bush made good on his veto promise today.

US President George W Bush has vetoed a Congressional bill that would have linked war funding to a timetable for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Speaking in Washington after signing the veto, Mr Bush said setting a deadline for withdrawal would be "setting a date for failure" in Iraq.
He said the funding was needed to give time for the new strategy of a surge of reinforcements in Baghdad to succeed.
Mr Bush said he would seek a compromise with Congressional leaders.
It is only the second time since taking office that Mr Bush has used the presidential veto.

 I am in agreement with the veto, because despite all the mismanagement and poor decision making that has gone on relating to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, we simply cannot abandon the elected government. We don’t put timetables on our own wars here at home.

Is there a timetable on the War on Drugs? When did Congress threaten to withdraw funding for that due to unhappiness with progress? How about the War on Poverty? Haven’t heard anything about withdrawing the funding there, and disbanding all the federal agencies prosecuting that particular "battle." Why should the War on Terror be any different?

Frankly, as I have said before, I don’t think any of the three wars I just mentioned is winnable. You cannot win a battle against a concept. You have to focus on actual human enemies to win battles.

We’re doing that in Iraq. I don’t care if we have to wipe out every Islamic fanatic in the world. As tragic and painful as the facts may be, the facts are that Iraq and Afghanistan are drawing misguided jihadists from around the world to those nations. No one argues that Afghanistan was a source of jihad prior to our invasion. Iraq may have been a secular dictatorship under Saddam’s rule, but it had started two wars in the region and it killed its own citizens in great numbers.

One could argue that the U.S. increased the regional instability by invading, and I wouldn’t disagree. I would however say that the challenge now is to stabilize Iraq at any cost. We cannot accomplish anything by leaving prematurely, as I have argued before. American lives will be lost in Iraq, or they will be lost elsewhere.

I would rather choose the place and time of battle. I am not content to wait for the next mass attack on American soil, or in a major European city.

Not one of the withdrawal proponents has explained how a timetable will work to the advantage of the United States in battling worldwide Islamic fundamentalism.

When I go to Google and see that an article about the detritus of a drug-addicted deceased bimbo named Anna Nicole Smith is number one in popularity today, while a story about unfolding events in our four-year war in Iraq ranks number 11, I am sad.

I am also determined that democracy is a horrible form of government. Give me a minarchist representative republic or give me death.

I’m nearly done with my bachelor’s in information technology. It is time to start pondering the choices for a master’s degree. I’m considering two choices right now, and I know this blog attracts highly educated readers. So vote, and then tell me why you picked as you did in the comments section. What are the pros and cons of either degree? Which will have a higher income potential? Which degree would lead to a higher overall lifetime of self-satisfaction?

Other pertinent factors: the Master of Information Systems is offered by the University of Phoenix, and the Master of Arts in International Diplomacy program is offered by Norwich University.

Victims are easy to find these days.  

Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, "it’s been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men."
Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post site is among the most prominent of blogs founded by women, said anonymity online has allowed "a lot of those dark prejudices towards women to surface." Her site takes a "zero tolerance" policy toward abusive and excessively foul language, and employs moderators "24/7" to filter the comments, she said.
Sierra, whose recent case has attracted international attention, has suspended blogging. Other women have censored themselves, turned to private forums or closed comments on blogs. Many use gender-neutral pseudonyms. Some just gut it out. But the effect of repeated harassment, bloggers and experts interviewed said, is to make women reluctant to participate online — undercutting the promise of the Internet as an egalitarian forum.
Robert Scoble, a technology blogger who took a week off in solidarity with Sierra, said women have told him that harassment is a "disincentive" to participate online. That, he said, will affect their job prospects in the male-dominated tech industry. "If women aren’t willing to show up for networking events, either offline or online, then they’re never going to be included in the industry," he said.

When the going gets tough, you give up. That appears to be Sierra’s message.

"I have cancelled all speaking engagements.
I am afraid to leave my yard.
I will never feel the same. I will never be the same."

How about having a spine? I get frustrated with the type of journalism that fosters the sort of whiny, defeatist mentality we hear more and more often in public dialog. Since when did quitting become so vogue? Only you can decide how to approach the challenges that life throws at you. Giving up is certainly one of your options, but please don’t whine about it too.

We all have demons to wrestle, and I don’t have time to help with yours unless you have some sort of plan. Quitting doesn’t count as a plan.

Moving beyond my gripes about whining and quitting, I do not believe for a second that "sexual threats" on the Internet are any different or prevelant when compared to real life. The game is power, and if the Internet is less civil than real life the only reason is because of the illusion of anonymity. The false idea that on the Internet someone cannot reach out and slap you on the mouth for your invective motivates the bullies, the cowards and the self-loathing to spew their bile more frequently.

They are easy to block, or punish, if you are willing to develop the savvy.

Having an opinion on the Internet implies a willingness to hold up your shields when the spears get thrown. If you don’t have the strength, then don’t get into the game. 

I’ve read Alas, Babylon several times over the years. It is always worth picking up again. Pat Frank writes with a distinct style that accurately captures life in 1950’s Florida.

His work starkly highlights how different our racial attitudes, sexual mores and cultural taboos have become since those days. The writing is entertaining, compelling and full of rich characters.

Perhaps most importantly, Frank was one of the first to chronicle a threat that is still with us, the threat of nuclear conflict. In Alas, Babylon, the threat is between superpowers. The bombs of that era pale in comparison to the bombs that exist today which only serves to make the imagined reality of life after nuclear war more sobering for a reader in the year 2007.

Frank knew what he was writing about because his real name was Harry Hart, and Harry Hart was a journalist, government consultant and ultimately a talented writer. I highly recommend spending an evening or two with survivors of Fort Repose, Florida. Alas, Babylon is one of those rare novels that completely transport me out of the room I’m in and into the author’s imagination.

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Guy Sorman believes that China is not destined to be the next world superpower. He makes the case in an article entitled The Empire of Lies.

I pieced together the very ordinary reasons that had provoked the uprising from bits of information divulged by the children rather than the adults. The village had a dilapidated school, without heating, chalk, or teacher. In principle, schooling is compulsory and free, but the Party secretary, the village kingpin, made parents pay for the heating and chalk. Then a teacher came from the city. He held that his government wages weren’t commensurate with his status and demanded extra money from the parents. Half of the parents, members of the most prosperous clan, agreed to pay; the other half, belonging to the poorer clan, refused. A skirmish erupted between the two clans, and the teacher fled. The Party secretary tried to intervene and was lynched, the Party office plundered. Then the police roared in with batons and guns. The school has reopened, the teacher replaced with a villager who knows how to read and write but “nothing more than that,” he admits.
The government puts the number of what it calls these “illegal” or “mass” incidents—and they’re occurring in the industrial suburbs, too—at 60,000 a year, doubtless underreporting them. Some experts think that the true figure is upward of 150,000 a year, and increasing.
The uprisings are really mutinies, sporadic and unpremeditated. They express peasant families’ despair over the bleak future that awaits them and their children. Emigration from the countryside might be a way out, but it’s not easy to find a permanent job in the city. All kinds of permits are necessary, and the only way to get them is to bribe bureaucrats. The lot of the peasant migrant—and China now has 200 million of them—is to move from work site to work site, earning a pittance when payment is forthcoming at all. The migrants usually don’t receive permission to bring their families with them, and even if they could, obtaining accommodation and schooling for their children would be virtually impossible. The fate of Chinese citizens often depends on where they come from. Someone born in Shanghai is an aristocrat, with the right to housing and schooling in Shanghai. Someone born in a village, however, can only go to the village school, at least until a university admits him—a rare feat for a peasant. An American scholar, Feiling Wang, had come to China to study this system of discrimination, which few in the West know about, but the government expelled him.

India anyone? 

Or it might as well be. A Democrat is actually running for President on the Fair Tax platform!

The name Mike Gravel doesn’t mean a thing to me, but it is nice to see a Democrat support the Fair Tax. You find the most unexpected things on the Internet.

One of the things I often find myself regretting are all those bookmarks I have lost over the years. I’ll recall some bit of information and want to clarify the hazy details. Because I work from multiple computers in multiple locations, I’m usually not at the computer where the site I have in mind is bookmarked. Or the memory is four years old, and the bookmark has been lost due to a hard drive crash, or some other electronic catastrophe. I end up wasting minutes or sometimes even hours searching the Internet for my lost memory.

No longer. I’ve recently begun using Foxmarks. The company tagline is "the bookmark synchronizer" but if I were in charge of marketing, I’d make the tagline "the life preserver for all your links." Foxmarks is one of those tools you probably won’t realize the value of until you’ve had it a few months or years.

It not only saves links you might want to refer to at some point in the nebulous future, it automatically synchronizes them between browsers you regularly use. What a wonderful tool! Naturally, the product doesn’t work in Internet Explorer, so if you haven’t switched to Firefox yet, you now have another compelling reason to do so.

One has to wonder how many of the recent shootings we’ve seen on the news were inspired by the Virginia Tech madman.

Janet Coleman said she saw "a young man with a sawed-off shotgun" in the parking lot being chased by police.
"I could just see a blunt-sized gun bigger than, like a regular .44," she said, adding that she gained her expertise in weapons from watching "a lot of crime TV."
Inside, clothing store manager Lissa Young said "several rounds of gunfire" were followed by two customers who ran into the store and said shots had been fired.
She said she immediately locked the doors and ordered the customers to the back of the store, where they waited until police gave them the all-clear.

I also wonder how we get a story where "a young man with a sawed-off shotgun" is described as having a gun bigger than a regular .44. A shotgun and a .44 pistol are not remotely similar. Is this just poor reporting or is the woman "expert" just ill informed?

Either way, it sounds like police stopped this incident fairly effectively.

Time for another round of breathless punditry by people who know nothing about weapons or psychology telling us how we should fix all the broken pieces of our society, and the broken minds of our youths.

Why don’t we hear more stories like this:

She says that she will teach her child about the dangers of life; it indeed can be a violent world. She is a perfect example. But she’ll also teach that showing a little respect and kindness could be just what it takes to disarm an angry soul.

No calls for banning guns.

Just a common sense plea – teach your kids to treat others the way they themselves would wish to be treated.

We don’t learn much about this group’s intentions from the article, just that they have been raided:

Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia. Six alleged members of the Free Militia also were arrested by federal authorities and are being held without bond. Investigators said the DeKalb County-based group had not made any specific threats or devised any plots, but was targeted for swift dismantling because of its heavy firepower. The militia, which called itself the Naval Militia at one point, had enough armament to outfit a small army.

It would be nice if the article told us just a little more. I’d like to know why these people thought they needed 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition. I have about 1,000 rounds of ammunition at my house, but I’m not being arrested. Clearly, having hand grenades and a rocket launcher would put me in a different category in the eyes of the law.

Of course, intent is really what matters here. These people must have had some sort of intent. I wonder what it was. What did the Alabama Free Militia intend?

We know from many publicized statements what groups like al-Qaeda intend. The Alabama Free Militia has a lawyer, and he says the raids are "much ado about nothing."

Scott Boudreaux said that the cache of ammunition that was confiscated — 2,500 rounds — was not that large, and the scores of homemade hand grenades that agents seized could be made with powder from fireworks and components readily available in military surplus stores. Even prosecutors say the group had no intended target and was simply stockpiling munitions, said Boudreaux, who plans to meet this weekend with his client, Raymond Kirk Dillard, 46, of Collinsville, a supposed major in the paramilitary group.

The group apparently used fireworks to make their grenades. I guess that’s a good reason to hold them without bond. We don’t want our citizens stockpiling fireworks without intent, after all.

Sounds like these guys had a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook in their possession and maybe some dreams of glory.

Plenty of fruits and nuts to go around folks. We harvest them all the time for your pleasure. 

Dan Simpson shares his plan on how to disarm Americans. Make a note, gun owners. Dan Simpson, of Toledo, Ohio, has a plan on just how government should suspend the Second Amendment completely, instead of just partially, which is the condition we live under now. Also throw out the Fourth Amendment. Here is the plan:

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

Hunters would be able to deposit their hunting weapons in a centrally located arsenal, heavily guarded, from which they would be able to withdraw them each hunting season upon presentation of a valid hunting license. The weapons would be required to be redeposited at the end of the season on pain of arrest. When hunters submit a request for their weapons, federal, state, and local checks would be made to establish that they had not been convicted of a violent crime since the last time they withdrew their weapons. In the process, arsenal staff would take at least a quick look at each hunter to try to affirm that he was not obviously unhinged. It would have to be the case that the term "hunting weapon" did not include anti-tank ordnance, assault weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, or other weapons of war. All antique or interesting non-hunting weapons would be required to be delivered to a local or regional museum, also to be under strict 24-hour-a-day guard. There they would be on display, if the owner desired, as part of an interesting exhibit of antique American weapons, as family heirlooms from proud wars past or as part of collections. Gun dealers could continue their work, selling hunting and antique firearms. They would be required to maintain very tight inventories. Any gun sold would be delivered immediately by the dealer to the nearest arsenal or the museum, not to the buyer. The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

I’m sure all violence will just melt away once this fabulous plan is enacted.

In actuality, such a plan would mark the beginning of the second American revolution. Good luck with your fantasy of random cordon and search of American neighborhoods. You’d just providing more material for nutbags like Alex Jones at infowars. Good job, moron.

Dan Simpson is delusional and dangerous. He is the classic bureaucrat, naively believing that government is better at solving problems than individuals. Personal responsibility need not be one of your worries in the world of a man like Simpson. Others will do all the thinking for you. Men like Dan Simpson will make all the important decisions for you. They are sailing the ship, and you are just along for the ride, unless they decide you’re ballast and throw you overboard when the weather gets bad.

Hat tip: Q&O 

I’ve said numerous times in the past that we need more troops to achieve victory in Iraq. A few others have loudly and vocally agreed with me, despite the fact that they probably don’t know I exist. Here is another voice I believe we should all consider:

Having spent a decade preparing to fight the wrong war, America’s generals then miscalculated both the means and ways necessary to succeed in Iraq. The most fundamental military miscalculation in Iraq has been the failure to commit sufficient forces to provide security to Iraq’s population. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) estimated in its 1998 war plan that 380,000 troops would be necessary for an invasion of Iraq. Using operations in Bosnia and Kosovo as a model for predicting troop requirements, one Army study estimated a need for 470,000 troops. Alone among America’s generals, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki publicly stated that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. Prior to the war, President Bush promised to give field commanders everything necessary for victory. Privately, many senior general officers both active and retired expressed serious misgivings about the insufficiency of forces for Iraq. These leaders would later express their concerns in tell-all books such as "Fiasco" and "Cobra II." However, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq with less than half the strength required to win, these leaders did not make their objections public.

One reason some of the generals probably didn’t make their voices public is that they were unwilling to crush their own careers. Look at our political climate in the U.S. People are fired for the most banal of mistakes, let alone openly expressing an opinion that goes against the status quo. President Bush is a stubborn man, a decisive man. This can be good or bad, depending whose council he heeds.

Iraq is America’s Valmy. America’s generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand. They spent the years following the 1991 Gulf War mastering a system of war without thinking deeply about the ever changing nature of war. They marched into Iraq having assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past. Those few who saw clearly our vulnerability to insurgent tactics said and did little to prepare for these dangers. As at Valmy, this one debacle, however humiliating, will not in itself signal national disaster. The hour is late, but not too late to prepare for the challenges of the Long War. We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise civilian policymakers on the preparations needed for our security. The power and the responsibility to identify such generals lie with the U.S. Congress. If Congress does not act, our Jena awaits us.

Perhaps we’ll listen to Lt. Col. Yingling. I’m dubious, but he is a man I would follow into battle.

Some people have a will to live and some a will to die. The stronger of the two will usually win when they come into conflict. In the case of the Virginia Tech massacre, the students who died were in a state of conflict with an armed lunatic. His will was much more powerful than theirs.

And the Washington Post carried a story citing students who had been in the classrooms that were attacked. “I quickly dove under a desk,” Clay Violand, a Virginia Tech junior, told the Post. “That was the desk I chose to die under.”
Violand listened as the gunman began “methodically and calmly” shooting people. “It sounded rhythmic-like. He took his time between each shot and kept up the pace, moving from person to person.” After every shot, Violand said he thought to himself, “Okay, the next one is me.” But shot after shot, and he felt nothing. He played dead.
“The room was silent except for the haunting sound of moans, some quiet crying, and someone muttering: ‘It’s OK. It’s going to be OK. They will be here soon,’ ” he recalled. “The gunman circled again and seemed to be unloading a second round into the wounded. Violand thought he heard the gunman reload three times.”

Marc Danzinger thinks doctrine is to blame for the slaughter.

Similarly, the discussions around the responses of the students seem to imply those of us who are suggesting the students could have done other things that may have changed the outcome are blaming the students.
No, we’re not. We’re blaming the doctrine the victims were trained to operate under, and arguing that we — all of us — should rethink it and start implementing other ones, just as airline passengers and police officers have.
We need to be teaching people a new doctrine, one that neither leads them into fantasies that they are more capable than they really are, nor into believing that they are helpless and must lay down waiting to be killed while muttering “It’s OK. It’s going to be OK. They will be here soon.”
 

I am going to pound this into peoples’ heads, because few others seem willing. One guy, two guns. Reloads three times. Not one student attacks during the reloading. Come on. You pick up something heavy, and you smash him in the face with it. If just 10% of the students being murdered had that kind of will, that kind of determination, then the number of victims would have been much lower. Yes, I’m insensitive. Get over it. If being insensitive causes even one person to stand up for his or her own existence during a moment of crisis it will be worth it.

There are two survival choices in situations of life and death conflict, fight or flight. We need to teach our citizens both options so that they are not paralyzed and helpless in times of unexpected crisis. 

Michael Yon has a new post up. It will take a while to load, but well worth waiting for. Full of photos and the usual compelling writing style.

From the Vatican to Paris to Baghdad, we cross the heart and seek refuge in hope. I came across these photos in a Christian college in Baghdad. Faces of Iraq we never see.

Yon continues to be one of the few independent pro-troops voices. He tells the story of Iraq from a rarely seen perspective.

I am glad scientists are working on non-lethal ways to disable enemies. It’s nice to have extra tools in the old war toolbox.

However, this article really concerns me. Really read the headline. Now read it again.

The US Army hopes, within a few years, to deploy a plasma shield – a machine that generates a protective screen of dazzling mid-air explosions – to stun and disorient an enemy.

What sort of strategery are those people over at New Tech Scientist pursuing in their copy editing? Someone dropped the ball.

One thing is for sure, I’ll be stunned and disorientated if the bureaucrats get this technology to the battlefield in my lifetime. A really useful invention would be a machine that cut through the red tape for you, so you could actually accomplish a reasonable amount of progress on a project.

I complain about customer service because I know how important good customer service is to establishing and keeping long-term relationships in business. The rule of thumb is that a happy customer will tell one person about his or her experience while an angry customer will tell ten people about his or her experience.

MSN recently published an article with in-depth :

Last month, we asked readers to tell us about their worst customer service experiences, and more than 3,000 responded within 24 hours of our request. Now, with the help of pollster Zogby International, we are introducing MSN Money’s Customer Service Hall of Shame, a ranking of the companies whose service is most often rated "poor" by consumers.

The bad news is that I just formed new business relationships with two of the lowest rated companies for customer service, Sprint and Bank of America. I guess I should re-examine the relationships.

Read the article and then check out all the links. There are lots of useful pathways. In particular, check out the 25 best companies for customer service.

This just speaks for itself. I’m quite sure many of you have lived through similar experiences. I make a good living helping people avoid having to make calls like this one.

The secret is that every major technology manufacturer sucks equally when it comes to tech support. Hewlett Packard sucks. IBM sucks. Dell sucks. They all suck, unless you are willing to pay $5,000 for your next laptop or desktop.

Hat tip: The Consumerist

From recent news, which you may have missed:

Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed 32 people and then himself yesterday, left a long and "disturbing" note in his dorm room at Virginia Tech, say law enforcement sources.

As we all know, society in the United States puts little emphasis on qualities such as common sense. We are more concerned with living lives free of disturbances and filled with unhealthy foods and self-indulgence.  And so we come to today’s headline story, which is:

An 18-year-old high school student faces disorderly conduct charges for writing an essay that authorities described as violent and disturbing.
Allen Lee, a senior at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested near his northern Illinois home after penning the in-class writing assignment Monday. The assignment had been to use poetic conventions to express ideas and emotions.

The moral of this story is that doing your homework may get you into trouble with the law. Also, kids, never ever be honest with authorities about anything. They will always overreact.

I’d love to interview the kid and post his essay here.

Ten to one odds say that other than writing something "disturbing" he is emotionally healthy, hangs out with people, has no stalking cases, hasn’t been admitted to a mental institution, and is otherwise fairly normal, unlike Cho, who was classically disturbed and actually dangerous.

I eagerly await a time when intelligent thought and discretion rather than emotionalism and overreaction prevail in the land of the dumb and the home of the reactionary.

Hat tip: Q&O 

You can check on what your state is doing to comply with, or reject the national citizen control and monitoring mechanism known as Real ID.

Here is a handy map to keep you up to date on the status of your pending mandatory federal ID.

This is what my home state of Georgia had to say in legislation rebelling against Real ID:

The Governor of the State of Georgia, or his or her designee, is authorized to delay compliance with certain provisions of the federal Real ID Act, H.R. 1268, P.L. 109-13, enacted by Congress in 2005, until it is expressly guaranteed by the Department of Homeland Security, through adequately defined safeguards, that implementation of the Real ID Act will not compromise the economic privacy or biological sanctity of any citizen or resident of the State of Georgia. This Code section shall not be interpreted as limiting the Governor´s discretion or authority to delay compliance with certain provisions of the Real ID Act for any other reason."

There are a lot of states that don’t plan to comply by the deadline, or at all. It should prove interesting when the fedgov stops letting you fly without your federally approved identification. More knee jerkism and useless bureaucracy, in my opinion. Politicians are good at finding ways to waste time and money though.

Thanks, Sensenbrenner, you schmuck.

Why aren’t there any timetables on the War on Poverty or the War on Drugs?

The Democrat-led House last night narrowly passed a $124 billion war-funding bill with a timetable to pull out troops from Iraq, voting hours after top U.S. military commanders made a personal appeal to congressional leaders not to meddle in war strategy.

That’s a nice roundabout way of losing the war. Just put a timetable on it.

"This briefing reinforced our view that solution in Iraq is a political solution," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, adding that an imminent U.S. troop withdrawal would pressure Iraqis to mend their country. "Our belief that we must hold the Iraqis accountable for achieving real progress and establish a timetable for responsible deployment of American forces was also reinforced," the Maryland Democrat said. "General Petraeus specifically indicated that he is relating to the Iraqis that expectation of the American public."

Just for a moment, let’s pretend that I am willing to abandon all the promises the American government has made to Iraq on behalf of the American people. Let’s imagine I accept that wars can be fought on timetables.

Here is my list of demands:

• It is my view that the War on Drugs can only be won by treatment programs and education. We must hold the government accountable for achieving real progress and establish a timetable for disbanding the Office of National Drug Control Policy, since it has been completely ineffective for its 20 year reign of terror over addicted Americans and their families. We’ve given the drug czar his chance. This war is lost.
• It is my view that the War on Poverty is hopeless. We need an immediate timetable to dismantle the hugely wasteful Department of Housing and Urban Development. Instead of giving uneducated, lazy Americans prime urban real estate without conditions, I propose that we create two national work camps, one in Nevada and one in Texas. Any homeless American who would like a one way ticket to one of these camps will be given a bus ride at taxpayer expense. Everyone in the camps will be assigned a job. During free time, educational opportunities will be available. The camps will have basic facilities providing shelter from the elements and basic nutrition and health care. Recreational activities will be limited to those which are educational.
• The timetable for dismantling these two wars against the taxpayers of America is two years from today.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

They receive very little attention.

Students wrested a gun away from a University of Southern California student who had been asked to leave an off-campus party after threatening a young woman, police said Tuesday.
Zao Xing Yang, 19, was arrested early Sunday and is being held without bail, Chief William Bratton said at a news conference.
Some students at the party, held at a student’s home, overheard Yang making intimidating statements to the woman and threatening her with violence about 3 a.m. Sunday, Bratton said.
Yang began arguing with the host, who noticed Yang was holding a gun, he said.
"Several students wrestled the gun away from Yang and held him until campus security and then LAPD officers arrived," Bratton said.

Oh sure, this story could have turned out very differently. It didn’t because the students in this story were willing to use physical force in their own defense. This story will be almost completely ignored.

Virginia Tech and the University of Southern California. Common elements: angry male Asian student + firearm. Two very different endings. You decide why.

I’m sure there were people making predictions along these lines. I know I have been. Ban anything that makes you uncomfortable. Go ahead. Just don’t blame me when you wonder how your society became a bunch of naked savages bashing each other in the head with rocks.

In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Yale’s Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions.

If you were to ask Betty Trachtenburg what she hopes to achieve who knows what her answer would be. Something about stopping violence I suppose. Her answer isn’t important. The fact that she is a woman in a position to influence young people is. Pseudo logic is not an acceptable mechanism for decision making.

What is the thought process at work here? There is no rational way to draw the inference that banning stage weapons will somehow lead to a reduction in violence off the stage. Maybe she just like the clacking noise that wooden swords make when they come together with force.

I do know that banning depictions of violence has about as much chance of making violence disappear as our War on Drugs has had of making people stop abusing their own bodies by getting high. And that may just be the problem with Ms. Trachtenburg. Perhaps she is high on something.

Update: The stage weapons ban has already been rescinded.

Luckily, officials at Yale were able to replace the ban with an alternative form of illogical stupidity – a mandatory announcement that stage weapons will be used during a play. Is Dean Trachtenburg apologetic over her inability to use reason in her decision making? Hardly:

"I think people should start thinking about other people rather than trying to feel sorry for themselves and thinking that the administration is trying to thwart their creativity," Trachtenberg said. "They’re not using their own intelligence. … We have to think of the people who might be affected by seeing real-life weapons."

As long as we allow the mentally retarded to be school administrators, our educational facilities will breed more mentally retarded people. Some people are calling for more rules related to who should be allowed to possess a firearm. Why not re-examine who we allow to educate our young people at the same time?

Hat tip: Bruce Schneier. 

PBS gets a few things right, and most things left. They have decided not to air a documentary made by Muslims about Muslims, because it is just too biased.

Islamists are working to build "parallel societies" with the aim of imposing strict Islamic law in parts of the West, according to a documentary the Public Broadcasting System has chosen not to air.
"Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center" highlights the work of moderate Muslims who oppose the Islamist agenda and are willing to speak out. PBS officials decided against airing the film, which PBS’s Robert MacNeil told the Diane Rehm Show earlier this month was "one-sided" and "alarmist."

We taxpayers paid $600,000 for the film to be made, and I would like to see it.

We should be encouraging moderate Muslims, not calling them alarmists. Groups like CAIR get lots of air time, and so should this documentary.  Click here for more information, including an interesting video link in the upper right corner.

REVIEWER’S NOTE: This review contains reveals plot twists, although I doubt that will take away any reader’s enjoyment of the novel.

America’s Last Days has a highly interesting premise that I find wholly plausible. In times of increasingly bitter partisanship in Washington, the only thing that keeps us from being embroiled in a second civil war is the fact that we’re soft. If the power ever does go out, all bets are off. That’s what kept me engrossed in this book. It really could happen. All it would take is a dedicated core group of motivated, intelligent insiders.

Author Douglas MacKinnon loses points for uninspiring character development and dialog. His characters feel like they might be based on real people, but they speak in ways I cannot imagine real people speaking.

Lots of people will hate America’s Last Days or love it based on their own political viewpoints. That makes it likely that more than half of this book’s reviews will be highly biased and based not on readability but on personal enjoyment. There is certainly nothing wrong with that.

Readers who classify themselves as progressives or left leaning will probably not feel good about this novel. Readers who classify themselves as classical liberals or right leaning or libertarian will probably enjoy the book immensely.

One of the most contentious events in the novel will be the nuclear detonation near the end. Could such an event happen? Absolutely. In fact, I think such an event is quite likely in the next 50 years. Whether the device will be triggered by homegrown groups is not certain, but there are plenty of separatist movements inside this country, and there always have been homegrown separatists hiding among us. None of them has been as competent as the 1776 Command or the country would already have split asunder.

There are many useful historical tidbits scattered throughout the book that you may not have picked up in school. These relate primarily to the Civil War.

I can heartily recommend America’s Last Days, both as an entertaining read, and a thought provoking statement about one potential future the United States is facing. An apropos novel about uncertain times written in uncertain times.

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I wonder what percentage of the nation’s schools teach this sort of philosophy:

One common theme that has run through the supportive messages deals with the teaching of passivity in our government schools. These listeners’ memories of their government school days mirror my own. If you were attacked by a bully on the playground, and you retaliated, the school officials would try to figure out who was the aggressor and who was merely acting in self defense. If the aggressor could be clearly identified he (or she) would be disciplined, while the person acting in self defense would not.
Today things are much different. Several listeners and Nuze readers told me that in today’s government school environment both the aggressor and the person acting in self defense. One upset father called the show yesterday to tell me that his son had received specific instructions from his teachers that if another student assaults him is is to do absolutely nothing. He is to get away from that student and report the incident to his teacher. If he so much as lands one blow in self defense he will be punished just the same as the bully who started it.
Are we really teaching our children that the use of violence to protect one’s self from an assault is not only undesirable, but punishable?

Boortz seems to be on the same mental page as I am on this issue. The loss of 32 human beings is certainly a tragedy, but the loss of the will to exist by our society is an even bigger one. We still do not have all the details of the Virginia Tech massacre, but we do have preliminary indications that none of the victims resisted in any way, other than to try and blockade doors.

Societally speaking, the values and memes we instill in our children from birth will follow them throughout a lifetime. If all they know how to do when danger appears is run, then they only have half the options that we should be teaching them.

Not surprising at all. The reasons given are though.

I’m looking for a pen pal who lives in Tasmania. Granted, most of the conversations will be electronic, so perhaps pen pal isn’t the correct terminology anymore, but you get the idea. I am particularly interested in learning everything I can about Hobart and Launceston.

I want to find out first hand about what life is like on the island. In return, I’ll be happy to share any knowledge I may have that you find interesting, practical or entertaining.

If you are interested, please drop me an e-mail.

So you’re a blogger huh? Maybe even a semi-popular blogger who gets a lot of random e-mail queries from the public.

You may be interested in MyCyberTwin, a tool that lets you “clone yourself” on your blog. Visitors can then ask your clone questions and get responses that reflect what you might really say. The service is a free beta for now, but you should read the fine print carefully before you sign up. Imagine the marketing value of all that data you’ll have to give away to create a realistic virtual copy of your personality online.

Here is an in-depth article:

“We wanted to build software clones of humans that learn about you and effectively function on your behalf,” says Liesl Capper, cofounder and CEO of RelevanceNow. “The problem with creating a chat AI is that it’s very laborious, trying to think of variations on what people will say and then creating responses. Building one has always been a labor of love that takes months, if not years. What we have built is the ability for people to make a cybertwin really quickly.”

One small step in the quest for AI.

I imagine the logical conclusion to projects like MyCyberTwin being a full personality clone; an idea which amounts to virtual immortality. How long will it be before we have methods to either upload or realistically simulate a human personality? I predict between two and three decades.

For the deep thinkers with time on your hands, I’ve included a fascinating list of AI projects, including human-machine interfaces, a critical component of the personality clone concept.

People like Harry Reid disgust me. If enough of us have the same mentality he does, America might as well surrender now. Yesterday, Reid officially gave up. I’m sure that was a morale booster for each and every one of our men and women working a checkpoint somewhere in downtown Baghdad.

"This war is lost," he said. "[The troop] surge is not accomplishing anything."
And in the dark recesses of some damp cave, Osama bin Laden broke into a wide grin – even as Tehran’s mullahs swapped high-fives.
Can’t you just hear them: Hang tough, guys, it’s only a matter of time here in Iraq – and then it’s back to the Big Apple.
Meanwhile, Reid himself won’t call for an immediate pull-out.

What a coward. Thanks for nothing, Harry.

If you throw away the lives of all my brothers in arms who fought in Iraq, I will hold it against you, and I will take action to ensure you and your ilk are defeated by any means possible. If you break America’s promise to Iraq by fleeing before stability is achieved, I will remember, and you will pay. America needs to cleanse itself of men and women in authority who claim to speak for everyone but do not seem to stand for anything.

Did you know that the Iraqi government is now in control of four of eighteen provinces? Of course not. The media doesn’t talk about stuff like that, because it doesn’t sell copy, or create controversy.

Progress may be slow, but there is progress. That is sometimes hard to admit in the midst of Iraq’s pain and suffering, but the pain and suffering is not being promoted by the Coalition. Sometimes we lose sight of the difference between good intentions poorly executed and evil intentions well executed.

Mark Steyn explains more eloquently than I ever could why being passive is bad:

We do our children a disservice to raise them to entrust all to officialdom’s security blanket. Geraldo-like “protection” is a delusion: when something goes awry — whether on a September morning flight out of Logan or on a peaceful college campus — the state won’t be there to protect you. You’ll be the fellow on the scene who has to make the decision.

Please take the time to read the whole article. It’s good food for thought.

Update: It looks like Virginia Tech authorities knew that Cho Sueng-Hui was mentally unstable. He had been committed. Female students had filed complaints about his behavior. I find it surprising that he still passed a background check. How is it you can be committed to a mental health facility and still show up “clean” to purchase a weapon?

As I expected, the debate continues to rage over what happened Monday at Virginia Tech.

Over the next few weeks, we will all form some opinion about the tragedy. An event as horrific as the mass murder that took place has to touch even the most jaded among us in some way, by reminding us that we are all mortal, and that death can lash out at anyone, anywhere in the most unexpected of ways.

What saddens me most about the firestorm of opinions being thrown around now is that many people will prefer to frame this debate in terms of limiting human freedom by limiting access to guns. I think we should be focused on mental health instead.

Cho Sueng-hui clearly needed mental help. He needed professional intervention because his brain health was damaged. For two years, no authority did anything to provide that help.

Ms Roy, a former chairwoman of Virginia Tech’s English Department, said that Cho’s creative writing professor came to her about his writings in late 2005.

Ms Roy said that she was so disturbed by what she found that she decided to take him out of the classroom for one-to-one tutoring. She also spoke to university authorities “repeatedly” about the student.

Sometimes, we focus our fears in all the wrong areas. I wonder how this story would have turned out differently if Virginia Tech had heeded warnings, and sent Sueng-hui to a mental health professional for evaluation.

Now we have to sort out the flotsam and jetsam he left behind. We have to debate the evil of guns all over again. And we have to bury 32 human beings, saying goodbye to them forever. The civil lawsuits resulting from this event are going to bear watching.

Ultimately, I wonder who society will blame. Will it be the evil gun manufacturers and sellers? Will it be the officials who shrugged at clear and apparently urgent warnings that Cho might have mental health issues? Or will it be Cho Sueng-hui, the human being who allowed evil to take over and rule his existence? Where the blame is laid to rest will portend a great many things for the long-term survivability of the nation known as the United States of America.

UPDATE III: A year or so ago, the Virginia Assembly considered and shot down (no pun intended) a bill that would have allowed concealed carry on college campuses.

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn’t get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill’s defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”

So much for feeling safe now. That’s the problem with “feelings” – they don’t do anything to solve life’s real problems. For that, we need logic. All the “feelings” in the world won’t bring back a single one of yesterday’s dead.

UPDATE II: President Bush weighs in with unhelpful rhetoric, “Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community,” he added. Just take the word schools and insert home, or church, or grocery market. If we were approaching this problem rationally, the President would be calling for legislation to back up the second amendment. He would be encouraging citizens to arm themselves and to take defensive weapons courses. The only that that can stop a madman with a gun is a rational man with a faster gun. But we’re too focused on nappy headed hos to talk about that, aren’t we?
UPDATE: As is usual in these situations, the numbers of killed and injured are being reported differently. Now I’m seeing 31 dead and 28 injured.

As a society, we do quite a bit to discourage our citizens from carrying guns. Maybe I should rephrase that. As a society, we do a lot to discourage our law abiding citizens from carrying guns. Short of incarceration, there really isn’t anything we can do discourage criminals, because they don’t follow the laws we make.

Our societal ignorance on this matter is sometimes ironic, and perhaps haunting. In 2005, this story was published about Virginia Tech and guns.

University officials confirmed that, earlier this semester, campus police approached a student found to be carrying a concealed handgun to class. The unnamed student was not charged with any crimes because he holds a state-issued permit allowing him to carry a concealed gun. But the student could face disciplinary action from the university for violating its policy prohibiting “unauthorized possession, storage or control” of firearms on campus.

Virginia Tech’s completely useless gun ban, which only promotes ignorance and fear, did not help today, when a mentally unbalanced person or people killed 22 and injured at least 21 at the school.

I wonder what would have happened if the student with the concealed carry permit had been there to shoot back at the murderers. Don’t worry, you’ll probably never be face to face with a crazed gunmen. It probably won’t happen to you. If it ever does, I hope the cops get there before your body has chilled to room temperature.

OK, I gotta get back to my pistol range now. You guys go ahead and get back to complaining about how evil guns are and what a tragedy today’s incident is. In the mean time, take a moment to re-read this quote:

Police say there were two separate shooting incidents – at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a student dormitory, and Norris Hall, an engineering building.

The incidents were about two hours apart. Police say they believe there was one gunman and that he is dead.

This is what happens when you encourage a society to become weak and fearful to the point that most of its members have no idea how to react to danger or life threatening situations. As we continue to become more and more specialized, we become more and more dependent on each other to survive. When you ban guns for law abiding citizens and rely on a small specialized class of people to protect everyone else, then don’t be surprised when they can only protect some of us some of the time.

The worst school shooting in US history won’t be the last school shooting in US history, or the deadliest. It was completely avoidable, and it happened for sociological reasons. Maybe we’re all on the path to an enlightened society where no one ever hurts anyone else, but I’ll keep my guns for now, thanks.

This story is near and dear to my heart, because I worked in the building in question. Proximity is relativity. There is no perfect security apparatus.

“I don’t think (the explosion) could have possibly happened were it not for the involvement of some … bodyguards of politicians who are in parliament, who are already co-opted by the insurgents,” said Allawi, who visited The Chronicle Thursday and is speaking at noon today at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

“It shows you how difficult it is to secure an area or a state or a central government if parts of the central government don’t really feel much loyalty to the overall plan for the central government,” he said.

The building in question used to be guarded by Gurkhas. This sort of thing wouldn’t have happened under their watch. The bombing goes directly back to the Sunni/Shia rift, which goes back 1,200 years or more, and which will not be solved anytime soon.

While this particular bombing was clearly an inside job, it speaks volumes about the Arab mentality towards government, as compared to a Western one. As a general rule of thumb, anyone raised in the Middle East will be an ineffective bureaucrat, at least in my experience. The whole attitude towards work and following a strict set of guidelines or rules is very different.

I remember one incident in which our Peruvian guards drew their weapons on Iraqi IPs (police) who were trying to let their friends and relatives into one of the government ministries without searching them. It took weapons being pointed and taken off of safe before the IPs grudgingly adhered to the “everyone gets searched, no exceptions” policy. This type of paternalistic and consanguine approach to life dictate some of Iraq’s major challenges. Cousins and brothers have historically gotten a pass in Iraqi society. Special favors get handed out like candy to relatives and friends. It’s tradition. And it is a hugely counterproductive millstone around the neck of a nation trying to rediscover itself without committing suicide.

Am I the only one who thinks that Don Imus is getting the shaft? Yes, those three words he said were insensitive and unpalatable. Calling a group of young women “nappy headed hoes” doesn’t show a lot of taste.

On the other hand, since when did America become a nation of emotionally fragile weaklings? The whole media circus surrounding this non-news story makes me feel physically enraged. Al Sharpton, please shut your dirty mouth. You’re one of the most arrogant and ignorant fools I’ve ever encountered, and you’re a hypocrite to boot. The double standards are just plain wrong. I think the wrong person is getting fired.

And none of the candidates ever led a vitriolic campaign to vilify the young white woman raped and viciously beaten in the Central Park “wilding” case in 1989 — a campaign in which demonstrators chanted her name in public when most of the media refused to print it and accused her boyfriend of being the real assailant. But Sharpton did.

Read some other tidbits about Al Sharpton’s black hole of a life here. If ever a sexual encounter has been counter productive, it was when Al Sharpton’s mother and father created their little race baiter.

The media frenzy around this concocted story is sickening. The press conferences in which whiny, tearful people ramble on and on about how hurt they are by Don Imus is disgusting. If being called a “nappy headed ho” is your biggest challenge in life, count your blessings and shut your lip flaps, because you have an easy, easy life.

What the hell is wrong with you people? The man said something tasteless. Move on with your lives. America is increasingly becoming the land of the retarded. Emotionally, mentally, and politically retarded human beings are dangerous to themselves and those around them. When a radio DJ’s insensitivity is the leading headline while most of us ignore a war the will possibly determine the world’s dominant culture in this century, I worry for future generations.

There are a lot of people complaining about the recently released British sailors making money from their ordeal. I may be unpopular for saying this, but I have no problem with them being paid for their stories. After all, they risked life and limb.

No one complains about We Were Soldiers Once…And Young: Ia Drang–The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam. I’m sure authors Moore and Galloway have profited quite a bit from the the telling of that tale. How about My War: Killing Time in Iraq, by Colby Buzzell? No one complaining about that story being told. There are a thousand other examples. The only difference here is the amounts of money being offered and the speed with which the orchestration of the former captives’ tale telling has been organized.

I am somewhat disappointed with how few of those British sailors seemed to have more actively resisted. A few of them seem to have had the intestinal fortitude; I’m not sure why the others seem to have been so mentally weak. I can understand a man or woman breaking down under physical torture. Anyone would, eventually. We all have our breaking point. What disappoints me is how low the breaking point for most of these people seems to have been.

I suppose I’ll learn more as they tell their stories.

Muqtada al-Sadr is long overdue for his date with the next world, assuming there is one.

You can only put out so much effort to negotiate. Then you eliminate. It’s time for the latter option. Past time. Diplomacy will not work with this guy. Kill him and be done with it. He is and has been encouraging Iraqis to fight the Coalition and kill U.S. troops for four years. Why do we keep wasting time talking with a barbarian?

Prudence dictates that we don’t just blurt out whatever comes to mind, especially on the Internet. According to careerbuilder.com, 51% of employers have decided not to hire a potential candidate based on what they found on Internet search engines.

Here are some of the reasons why people didn’t get hired:

1. 31% lied about their qualifications
2. 25% had poor communication skills
3. 24% were linked to criminal behavior
4. 19% bad-mouthed a previous employer or co-worker
5. 19% posted information about drinking or using drugs
6. 15% shared confidential information from previous employers
7. 12% lied about an absence from work
8. 11% posted provocative or inappropriate photographs
9. 8% used unprofessional screen names

If you Google my name, Trevor Snyder, you’ll come up with this blog, and my photography and writing site, as well as several links to another Trevor Snyder who is a scientist. What you won’t come up with is anything I’ll regret saying or doing. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t put anything you are not willing to take responsibility for on the Internet, where it will live on long after you have stopped thinking about it.

Information can be used as a weapon, but if you are the one who posted it about yourself, then guess who is to blame when a potential employer doesn’t call you back? The flip side of that coin is this: why would you want to work for a company where you’ll never really fit in?

UPDATE II: According to the police report (posted in the interest of the public), Christian probably drives a gray Honda. Remember that he will not have a firearm with him, although he will be able to attack you with his stunning wit, assuming you can get him out of the car somehow.

UPDATE: Christian Trejbal, insouciant reporter of the year, is still up to his stick-poking activities. His latest editorial is about how he refuses to yield the right of way to drivers with stickers and/or license plates that have messages he disagrees with. I challenged him to a boxing match in the comments section of his online column, and I am 95% sure that comment will never be published. Let us hope that Christian never decides to fail to yield to me in the left lane. That would be a memorable event for both of us, I am quite sure.

It appears the first address I posted was his work location, but if you want to find or contact this smarmy reporter, here are some pointers:

Christian Trejbal lives at 2502 Fairway Dr., Roanoke VA, 24015

Christian Trejbal’s contact information:
Christian R Trejbal
675 School Ln
Christiansburg, VA 24073.
christian.trejbal@roanoke.com
ctrejbal@bendbulletin.com
541-617-7837
540-381-1645

ORIGINAL POST: Ah, those goofy philosophy nerds turned small-time journalists. Gotta love ’em. They do so enjoy poking people in the eyes with their lovingly sharpened sticks.

Enter Christian Trejbal, jerk-off editorialist for The Roanoke Times. Trejbal writes:

Today is the start of Sunshine Week, the annual week in which we reflect on the importance of open government and public records. To mark the occasion, I want to take you on an excursion into freedom of information land. We’re going to find out who in the New River Valley has a concealed handgun permit.
I can hear the shocked indignation of gun-toters already: It’s nobody’s business but mine if I want to pack heat.
Au contraire. Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone’s business.

Trejbal somehow convinced his publication it was a good idea to publish the names and home addresses of every concealed carry permit holder in the state of Virginia.Nice going. The comments on his editorial web site are overwhelmingly negative.

Of course, Christian Trejbal does not have a concealed carry permit, so he would probably make a better victim than those he chose to single out. His home address is public record too, and here it is:

CHRISTIAN J TREJBAL
675 SCHOOL LN
CHRISTIANSBURG, VA 24073

If you would like to visit Christian some time, to discuss the social issues of the day or whatnot, here is a convenient Google Map to his house.

It will be interesting to see what sort of civil liability suits might come out of Mr. Trejbal’s ill advised and arrogant notions about social responsibility at the expense of people’s right to privacy.

California is a very beautiful state, but I’d think twice before I moved there, for lots of reasons. This story just reinforces my feelings:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A south Sacramento man who told police he was defending his property was arrested early Wednesday after shooting a teenager who was allegedly trying to steal his car, authorities said. Police said 42-year-old Sou Saechin told them he accidentally shot the teen at about 3 a.m. on Rock Creek Way.
But officials said Saechin went too far in trying to protect his red Honda.
"What we try to stress to people is that deadly force, the use of a firearm, is never justified under any circumstances to protect property," said Sgt. Matt Young of the Sacramento Police Department.

Would I shoot someone for trying to steal my car? You bet. I’m pretty sure a jury in my home county would refuse to convict me of anything. Laws that prohibit property owners from defending themselves and their property just encourage criminals.

I guess in California, if someone is robbing you, you are just supposed to politely let them take whatever they want. Then, you call the police, wait patiently for them to arrive, and hope they do not arrest you for having interfered with a crime in progress, which all Californians should know is not a job for a common citizen. No, only people with state authority have the right to stop a crime in progress.

Then this picture would be slightly different, but it would still show Nancy Pelosi kissing ass and making Americans look weak and divided.

I suppose the next step is for her to convert to Islam. And from now on, I will be demanding that all Muslim women wear tank tops and tight shorts when visiting American malls, because that seems to be our custom, and by God, Nancy Pelosi just set the example that when in Rome. . . What a crock.

The circus show must go on, I suppose, but seriously – what is the message Nancy is trying to send? We all need a little more hijab in our day? The first phrase that came to mind when I saw this image was, literally, get the fuck out of here.

That’s what the ruffians I used to hang with in my teenage years would say whenever someone did anything unbelievable. Nancy Pelosi wearing a hijab and acting as her own "special" arm of the U.S. government should be eliciting a big get the fuck out of here from all of us.

I’m tired of the Republicans, but I’m even more tired of the Democrats. Just stay over there Nancy. You’ll fit right in.

Michael Yon represents the best of the reporting going on about our troops in Iraq. If I had the power, I would put him in charge of running the war.

A general emailed in the past 24 hours threatening to kick me out. The first time the Army threatened to kick me out was in late 2005, just after I published a dispatch called “Gates of Fire.” Some of the senior level public affairs people who’d been upset by “Proximity Delays” were looking ever since for a reason to kick me out and they wanted to use “Gates of Fire” as a catapult. In the events described in that dispatch, I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire. That’s right. I’m not sure what message the senior level public affairs people thought that would convey had they succeeded, (which they didn’t) but it was clear to me what they valued most. They want the press on a short leash, even at the expense of the life of a soldier.

Some readers might recall that LTC Barry Johnson denied my embed requests in 2006, but after I wrote “Censoring Iraq,” somehow the door opened up. Strangely, a couple days ago, LTC Barry Johnson invited me to be a panelist at a symposium in Washington D.C. on ”the role of blogs and bloggers in the news environment today. The intent is to help PAOs better understand the issues involved.” Call me suspicious, but my whiskers tingled on that one.

If you wonder why we are losing in Iraq, and we are, I can tell you the reason in one word: bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are killing our chances of winning more surely than any other single factor. They are a worse enemy than the insurgents. Want to do something that makes sense and would help us win? Submit your application through the proper channels and wait two years. By then, you’ll have rotated home and stopped caring. I’m not exaggerating.

Yon brings up the salient point that the U.S. military does a piss poor job of accommodating the press trying to report on the war. I know this first hand. We were too busy micromanaging our troops in my unit to really focus on the mission of taking care of reporters. And the politics of who got the embeds and why would make you sick were privy to them. I’ll go into details after I’m safely out of uniform, thanks. No need to expose myself to retribution now.

So anyway, Yon gets it, and the brass, as usual, don’t. Why in the hell are we selling big-screen TVs in our combat zone PX facilities?

But considering all the planning, organization, logistics and resources that went in to putting up what amounts to a food court in a surburban mall, how hard would it be, really, for there to be a clean, well-lit press trailer, open 24-7, with some desks, chairs and lockers, wired for the internet? Not on every base, but on enough of them so that stories from everywhere else could get out on a regular basis. For a military that is the first to gripe about not getting enough press–in a kind of war where the press can determine the outcome–it seems fairly obvious that the first step would be to at least make sure there is a place for the press to work. If this were a few months into this war, I could understand it, but to not even be at square one this far in?

Mike, keep killing the bureaucrats with your pen. I’m in your corner.

So 16 dogs and cats have died from what is now being called rat poison in their food supply.

So far, I haven’t heard anyone in the media speculating on this, but what if this whole pet food debacle is just a test. After all, wouldn’t it be just as easy to put rat poison into the human food supply chain? I wonder how many would die before that got stopped.

What if someone is planning on putting something much worse than rat poison into your next Big Mac? No worries, Homeland Security’s best crack agents are on the job.

Never trust a talking turd or a Congressperson. They are essentially one in the same 98.9% of the time.

While the premise “The readiness challenges facing the US military today are immense,” and much of the content of How to fuel up the out-of-gas US military machine is valid, the whole article becomes bullshit when Democrat Neil Abercrombie concludes:

President Bush has used Congress as a money spigot, funding military operations through a series of emergency budget requests with no oversight. The government has spent money it didn’t have and paid for it with deficit spending – essentially raising taxes on America’s children.

That’s about to change.

We’re committed to funding major recurring war costs through the regular budget process, while ensuring that real emergencies, real unforeseen expenses, and real battlefield needs are funded quickly. With Democrats in power, the American people can expect requests by the Pentagon and administration for “emergency” supplemental funds to be scrutinized much more closely.

We understand that wars always give rise to unforeseen circumstances and unexpected needs. However, there will be no more blank checks for Defense spending unrelated to battlefield needs. Everything must be prioritized so Congress can make the most informed choices.

Give me a break. Democratic senators and representatives lie, cheat and steal just as well as Republican ones, if not better.

Do I think we’re breaking the U.S. military? Yes, I do. I won’t be re-enlisting when my current contract is up. I am very worried about where the nation will be ten years from now when it comes to an all volunteer professional fighting force. And when a Democrat has the audacity to claim his party is the solution to the problem at the very same time his fellows are adding nonsense non-military pork spending, I’m tempted to punch him in the mouth and spit in his eye.

From my day to day perspective, Congress is vying for the title of America’s Wost Enemy right alongside jihadis. In the meantime, our military is slowly grinding itself to pieces as bureaucrats lead from behind. Sure, we have lots of heroes to throw at this problem. For every hero I see, there seem to be three or four cravens either whining, pointing fingers, misdirecting, spinning, stealing, or coming up with reasons why it’s actually us who are the terrorists.

And so, we come to this great crossroads of American history. The second half of my life should be very interesting. Today, the talk is often of civil war in Iraq. It could just as easily happen here. Baghdad and Washington, D.C. are not that far apart in a shrinking world.

Remember that you voted for these people. While they fuss and fight in our Capitol (when they can be bothered to show up) a very large machine is quietly destroying itself. When this machine that protects you from yourself and others finally implodes, the world you know will change forever. It will be reshaped in a new image that few of you can imagine.

We still have time to fix things.

When it comes to Iraq, I’m usually highly dubious of the messages I hear from the Bush administration. While I agree, in principle, with the ideas that we should fight terrorism at the source and that human beings in the Middle East want to determine their own paths in life as much as I do, George W. Bush is a terrible, horrible marketer. The messages about Iraq are so muddled, on both sides, that one comes away from most media articles about this war feeling confused or hopeless.
Having spent a year there, I tend to look to non-governmental sources when I want to answer the question: are we making progress in Iraq?

I’ve been fairly dubious that the troop surge is going to be enough to change the situation on the ground short term. But this seems like a glimmer of hope to me:

There’s also the month-old and continuing Baghdad security operation, and the apparent determination of PM Maliki to confront and disarm all outlaws — especially those with connections with neighboring countries. In addition, the flight of Sadr and many others from Iraq has also dealt a blow to Iran’s influence in Iraq.

I’m almost certain Maliki’s statement during the conference last Saturday caused disappointment in Tehran. For the first time the head of state didn’t use double standards in addressing Iraq’s neighbors. Iran was addressed in the same tone that Suuni neighbors were addressed. This by the very Shia premier Iran was hoping to make its puppet.

Ultimately, only Iraqis can decide that Iraq will be a place of peace. Perhaps they are finally growing weary of the bloodshed.

Minimizing Iranian government meddling in Iraq’s affairs is one step towards stability.

When the President initially announced his 20,000-strong “troop surge” to Baghdad and al-Anbar, I said I thought 200,000 would be a more realistic number but that we didn’t have that many fighters available. We may not have 200,000 additional troops ready to fight in Iraq, but that hasn’t stopped commanders there from asking for what they think they can get:

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq has asked for an additional 2,500 to 3,000 troops to be sent to Iraq as part of the Bush administration’s military buildup to crack down on rising sectarian violence and insurgents, The Boston Globe reported.

Too bad previous leaders didn’t demand more human resources a long time ago.

It may take ten years and 10,000 more American lives to stabilize Iraq, but I dread the alternative.

Americans of African descent often forget just how easy they have it. Just ask someone who is actually an African. That continent is the forgotten place, mostly ignored most of the time by most people who don’t happen to be in Africa.

It’s also the world’s biggest humanitarian tragedy, and has been much longer than I have been alive.

“The attackers came to our home. They hit my husband and my son – I cried a lot and one of them rushed at me and tore my skirt. They raped me in front of my husband and children,” said Benedicte, who was raped by rebels in Bouake in 2002.

The report alleges that those responsible include the New Forces rebels, the militias who support President Laurent Gbagbo, and members of the security forces who are loyal to President Gbagbo.

Count your blessings, Americans.

I wrote a few months ago about my company’s quest to implement a storage area network.

We’ve arrived at a clear and definitive choice. After initially looking at about seven vendors, we narrowed down our search to three contenders: Xiotech, Left Hand Networks, and EqualLogic. Xiotech was eliminated first – they simply didn’t fit into our budget plan. We liked the product but it was way out of range for us.

Left Hand and EqualLogic both agreed to provide a demo unit for 30 days, although Left Hand was much harder to convince. When we asked for the demo product, they reluctantly agreed after much hem-hawing and several phone conferences. EqualLogic provided a demo unit that actually matched the specs of the quote we had with them, while Left Hand provided a unit that differed from the one we were being quoted. That meant if we decided to stay with Left Hand, we’d have to switch units later or change our mind about the product we were buying.

Our EqualLogic box was set up and configured in less than two hours, with all the storage volumes we wanted to create functional and correctly attached to our IBM blade server.

Left Hand, however, proved to be more of a challenge. We struggled for hours trying to connect and properly configure the Left Hand product so it would communicate with the rest of our network. Ultimately, although Left Hand’s engineers made a valiant effort trying to help us get started, we gave up. Left Hand’s product forced us to jump through hoops trying to get our HBAs configured so we could create LUNs that could be accessed by our blade server.

We actually got one LUN configured and attached after hours of painstaking phone banter, but we found that we could only use one of our two HBAs at a time and Left Hand had no resolution imminent for that problem. This meant that our data pipe would have been halved. We also had issues trying to get additional LUNs recognized.

The EqualLogic PS300E became our clear winner after we ran Jet Stress to ensure our Exchange server would be able to handle heavy loads. The first trial failed. We put in a call to EqualLogic and within an hour, we had three of their employees on the phone helping us analyze why Jet Stress had failed. A few adjustments later, or second Jet Stress test passed with flying colors.

For our company, EqualLogic was the clear choice, offering us the best combination of features, attractive pricing, storage space and most importantly – a company that clearly cares about its customers.

If you only have time for one perspective on Iraq then the name you should remember is Michael Yon.

His latest dispatch, Ernie is Dead, should be read before you lay down and go to sleep tonight.

In his notes today, Neal Boortz suggests that “universal health care” will ensure that all Americans receive equally mediocre health care.

Come on folks, wake up and smell the antiseptic. If this is the medical care our wounded soldiers from the Middle East receive from a government-run health care system, what makes you think that the care you are going to receive under “universal health care” is going to be any better?

“Freedom loving” Americans have decided that their health care is not their responsibility. It’s the responsibility of either the government or their employer. Walter Reed is your future. You asked for it … enjoy it.

I completely agree with Mr. Boortz. Government almost never does anything very well or excellently. Why should I believe that I’ll be happier with taxpayer funded health care than I am with what I receive privately now?

Physically and mentally handicapped citizens should be taken care of for humanitarian reasons, but I’ve never been convinced that our federal government is the correct entity to do so. Perhaps Bill and Melinda Gates have an interest in starting a national foundation?

What scares me most about the idea of universal health care is the idea that professional liars and powermongers (politicians) will be in charge of making decisions that limit my options relating to health, the most important thing I have in life. These people have made a mess of almost everything they have touched. They already have a direct siphon into my paycheck. Why should I give them control of my health?

Here’s a thought provoking article by John Noonan on the war in Iraq.

True to Clausewitzian thought, the answer lies in the political realm. Opposition to President Bush has become downright religious for some Americans—activists whose greatest fear is that victory in Iraq would be tantamount to justifying the whole invasion and occupation.

Thus leftist pundits erect pyramids of anti-war rhetoric, built on falsehoods, misconception, and doubt—constructs that serve as pillars of justification for a hasty retreat. None of it is built on sound military judgment or expertise, which should be a requisite for respected war punditry, but like Ronnie said, “they know so much that isn’t so.” And, there’s nothing left-o’-center bloggers love more than to show off that knowledge.

It would be interesting to me to hear an honest Democrat tell the truth by saying “we want to lose the war” or “Yes, we’re ready to throw away all those lives and give up.”

We can defeat the insurgents, but can we defeat our own defeatists, or will we let them defeat us?

Virgina recently apologized for slavery.

Walter E. Williams suggests that Virginia has a few other things to apologize for, some of which are more relevant to the problems of living Virginians:

The U.S. murder rate is 5.6 people per 100,000 of the population. In the Commonwealth of Virginia’s capital, Richmond, where the General Assembly meets, the murder rate is 43 people per 100,000 of the population, making Richmond the city with the third-highest murder rate in the nation, according to a 2005 FBI report.

Personally I think I’m owed an apology by someone for all the stress my taxes cause me.

I bought the domain hillarysblog.com a while back with the idea that I would write a satirical blog chronicling Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “daily thoughts” as she makes her bid to be the first woman President of the United States of America. Not only will she be the first woman President, she’ll be the first sociopath woman President if she is successful. All hail!

I am going to need some help to make this a success. I need others to write blog entries on Ms. Clinton’s behalf. If you think you’ve got what it takes, or know someone else who does, and has an active interest in seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton mocked, please contact mspresident@hillarysblog.com.

I would love to see this passed around so I can get a team together and have at least a minuscule effect on the campaign.

I just installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my home rig and work laptop.

So far, I see no compelling reason to upgrade. Not only is Microsoft confusing everyone with six different versions of their newest OS incarnation, but the price is still too high, and the product is still not going to think for you.

Wikipedia has detailed information on the new "advances" in Vista here. Some of them, like the new graphical interface, are pleasant, if your system is less than two years old and began as a high-end machine. Otherwise, you’re really not getting anything great. In fact, in some areas, like user control, you’ll actually be stepping backward. Windows Vista forces you to answer many irritating prompts authorizing actions to take place that you most likely already initiated. Vista approaches security much like airports do by relentlessly asking you if you’re sure that no one else has handled your "bags" – in this case the bags are installer packages. Then there is the improved DRM (digital rights management) – Vista attempts to completely control your ability to make copies of various media. If you like being babysat, then Vista is an improvement. If you don’t, then Vista is a big kick in the rear end.

My initial installation attempt (upgrade) failed at home due to my use of a simple RAID mirroring configuration. The installation finished, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that the computer wouldn’t boot after it was done. Vista didn’t like either the on-board RAID on my two year old Intel motherboard or the add on PCI RAID card by Adaptec. Needless to say, I ended up getting rid of the RAID configurtation, and doing a clean install on the home machine. Now I’m slowly restoring applications by manually reinstalling, and I am carefully guarding my backup. A lot of older CD burning apps won’t work in Vista. Neither will my PGP Desktop software. And I’m sure there are other problems I haven’t yet discovered.
At work, things went a little smoother with my upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Windows warned me prior to installation that my scanner wouldn’t work. It did anyhow, when the process was over. What stopped working? Our corporate anti-virus product by Trend Micro. And there were other irritating quirks. My applications all stayed alive through the upgrade process, but almost all of them act as if I’ve never used them before. My preferences have all but disappeared across the system.

The bottom line – Windows is still too hard for the average user to upgrade successfully without any blood pressure raising events. You’re better off buying a pre-configured Vista box and then paying a professional to migrate your important data over.

There are very few compelling reasons to rush out and implement Vista. In the long-term, it will change the way some users work, especially with the new sidebar. But if you don’t have a lot of free time on your hands, wait at least a year before you make the switch. By then, Microsoft will have worked out many of the irksome little things that are going to break if you install your fresh new copy of Vista today.

UPDATE: Microsoft tech support has become less and less coherent and competent with every passing year. My work PC, which seemed to handle the upgrade to Vista Ultimate fine on first glance, has decided it needs to create me a new profile every single time I log into the company domain. This results in a complete inability to retain any personalized settings, browser favorites, document history and so on. Many of the highly touted new features, such as feed lists and custom widgets don’t work when the user profile aspect of Windows breaks. So far, I’ve been either on hold or arguing with customer "service" representatives for about two hours. Microsoft won’t acknowledge that I am a customer entitled to free support incidents and keep trying to get me to pay for the call, although we already have an agreement with them for "free" support. The automatons on the other end of the phone tell me they cannot find a record of my existence in their database, and that’s pretty much where we end all progress. I can log on and see my existence in Microsoft’s system on-line but its own employees cannot.

Reiterate – if your Windows XX version works now, DO NOT UPGRADE if you a) have little free time or b) get easily frustrated or c) don’t want to pay for extra support or d) any of the above.

Update II: I got the issue with my profiles in Vista fixed by using the networking wizard. In the meantime, I wasted about three hours on the phone with Microsoft trying to get them to assist me. They finally acknowledged that I was entitled to free support but I fixed the problem myself by experimenting while I was waiting to get that support.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame writes in the New York Times of new, albeit very localized, efforts to promote a culture where individuals rather than the nanny state take ultimate responsibility for their own physical safety.

Last month, Greenleaf, Idaho, adopted Ordinance 208, calling for its citizens to own guns and keep them ready in their homes in case of emergency. It’s not a response to high crime rates. As The Associated Press reported, “Greenleaf doesn’t really have crime … the most violent offense reported in the past two years was a fist fight.” Rather, it’s a statement about preparedness in the event of an emergency, and an effort to promote a culture of self-reliance.

The next time you call 911, assuming you ever have to do so, remember that you could have pulled out your weapon and controlled the situation yourself in the same amount of time it took to pick up the phone and start waiting for events to take their course without any control on your part.

Just before I left Iraq, I wanted to check my credit score for free on-line. And that’s when I made a mistake. I was dumb enough to use freecreditreport.com to check my credit score. The site is owned by Experian, one of the big three credit reporting agencies, so I figured it was safe to give them a credit card number to “verify” my identity. Boy, was I wrong.

Three months after my mistake, I noticed a charge on my credit card that looked like this –

I didn’t remember signing up for a monthly subscription to anything, so I called the number and was surprised to learn that by trying to get my one free yearly credit report as authorized by federal legislation, I had inadvertently “signed up” for a $13 a month service that would keep me apprised of my credit score moment by moment. That is a service I simply don’t need.

I immediately told the representative, who sounded like she was at the bottom of the ocean somewhere off the coast of the Philippines that I wanted to cancel the account and that I wasn’t even aware I had signed up for a monthly fee based service. All she wanted to do was argue about how valuable the service is to me. I find it highly insulting that a large company like Experian, a company that keeps track of millions of people’s financial data without their consent, is also in the business of trying to rip those people off. Experian trains their customer service representatives to treat callers like cowardly idiots who aren’t intelligent enough to make their own decisions about how much money they want to spend on a “free” monthly-fee based service.

Experian has earned my ire for life. Any opportunity I have to steer people away from doing business with Experian or any of its subsidiaries will be my pleasure. I am warning anyone who reads this blog entry to stay away from any services provided by Experian. They are unscrupulous rip-off artists who practice misleading advertising techniques and purposefully make it painful to cancel their completely useless service once they have tricked you into “signing up.” I’m sure that eventually, Experian will face a class-action lawsuit because of their unsavory business practices, but for now, make sure you steer clear of freecreditreport.com. Instead, use annualcreditreport.com. And boycott Experian whenever possible.

Another 200,000 troops might make a difference. 20,000 additional sets of boots on the ground is not going to help Iraq any corners that lead to the promised land.

The real question in my mind is: how can we expect to win politically when we don’t have the willpower to win militarily? Iraqis may have been ready to vote, but their leaders are not ready to lead. The President would have done better if he had announced that we were going to deal with militias once and for all, starting with the elimination of Moqtada al-Sadr. But we Americans are growing increasingly spineless when it comes to following through with any painful, messy decisions. I’ve suggested that al-Sadr must be dealt with before in a post entitled Muqtada al-Sadr: enemy of a free Iraq. When Saddam was deposed, he was replaced with 1,000 little Saddams due to poor planning and ignorance of the realities of life in Iraq on the part of the invaders.

One of the most powerful of these little Saddams is Moqtada. We put out an arrest warrant for the man years ago, but we haven’t had the willpower to follow through on it. We need a full scale attack on his followers, instead of constant little clashes. Moqtada must most likely be killed. It’s easy for fat, comfortable Americans back home to complain about how brutal and harsh this approach is, but Iraqis would understand it. They lived with it under Saddam, and under many of his predecessors.

Killing Moqtada would send a message – that we mean business, and that we are not going away. If Iraq is to be pacified, if it is to be given a chance to develop and grow out of its savage state, we will probably have to continue killing every harbinger of violent and torture that steps forward until there are so few left that they run and cower. Instead, we’ve emboldened these crackpot fundamentalists by threatening them with a spanking instead of giving it to them. We have the military capability to put Iraq back in the Stone Age overnight, but we’re hesitant to use it because we’re compassionate.

Iraq’s politicians are not going to bring the bubbling cauldron back under control. We need to put aside our compassion and face the facts – daily life in Baghdad is a living hell for most of its residents. Now all we have to do is decide whether we want to set the conditions under which the militants there are going to die, or whether we want to continue allowing them to set the conditions.

As long as we continue allowing our enemies to choose their battlefields, we will continue suffering and fighting amongst ourselves about whether or not we’re accomplishing anything. It’s time to decide whether we’re willing to win. If we are, it could get very, very ugly in the short term, but in the long run, Iraqis and their neighbors will be better off. Let’s get serious about controlling Baghdad by any means necessary. That means destroying anyone that gets in the way.

20,000 more policemen won’t accomplish that. No, 20,000 more American uniforms in Baghdad will create what we in the U.S. military call a target-rich environment. Unless, of course, we send those 20,000 new fighters in with the discretionary authority to do whatever they need to do to subdue their enemy. But I don’t think we will do that. We’ve become weak-willed due to our own Sunni-Shia type split. Maybe we’re headed towards our own next civil war.

I listened to the excerpts from Nancy Pelosi talking about how the Democrats will turn America into a nirvana for everyone. Yeah, right.

She seemed particularly excited about her own importance as a woman and kept referring to how historic it was that SHE is now the third most powerful person in government here in the United States. True to form, the fawning mainstream media poltroons are eating this drivel up:

A new chapter of American history was written Thursday when California’s Nancy Pelosi was formally chosen as the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s taken more than 200 years for “the marble ceiling,” as Pelosi and others described, to be shattered by a woman. But it happened as the 110th Congress convened, making the San Francisco Democrat next in the presidential line of succession after the vice president.

But wait, there’s more:

“Becoming the first woman speaker will send a message to young girls and women across the country that anything is possible for them,” Pelosi said before being sworn into office.

The only signal I get from this “momentous” event is that women are just as eager to control my life with every means possible via the mechanism of big government as men are. We’re supposed to celebrate that, but I cannot figure out why. Women have been making strides for decades now. I’ve had women bosses in the private sector, the military, and of course, in married life. I don’t need Nancy Pelosi helping out while crowing about how historically significant she is. No one in their 30’s who has been a professional in any venue has a hard time understanding the women in the United States have a pretty equal playing field with men both in business and legally speaking. So please shut up, Nancy. You’re a two-bit politician and you haven’t done anything to improve my life that I am aware of.

If you must insist on continuing to speak, try and talk in terms that resonate with standard issue run of the mill Americans. Otherwise, you’re just going to end up being as hated as every other politician running around the arrogant ant hill called Washington, D.C. Thanks for not listening to what I have to say, you self-congratulatory idiot.

Happy New Year everyone who followed my journey through Iraq! Especially my secret readers from back home who watched and didn’t comment. I’m glad you were paying attention, even if you didn’t say anything till I got home.

Saddam is dead. I didn’t really have any feelings about that. People have been asking. I just cannot bring myself to care. Saddam had a major impact on the region that will outlast him. Saddam being dead is irrelevant to me because what he did while he was alive is still affecting us all, to one degree or another, and will for decades to come. Saddam was just a little piece in a 12-century jigsaw puzzle filled with hate, ignorance and power struggles.

It is interesting to me that the top search phrase bringing people to my blog right now is “Saddam hanging joke.” I really don’t want to joke about the man. He was an evil human being. I’ve been reading lots of pseudo-journalism about how Saddam spent his last years feeding the birds and talking to his nurse. I’ve read how his family loved him and wanted to say goodbye. And on and on. I have very little sympathy. All I can think is that I wish he’d died sooner. Not because I personally hated the man. I didn’t. I viewed him the same way a cancer patient feels about their disease. They want the mutant cells to be expunged from their bodies.

Iraq continues to be what it has been for so long – a horribly insecure place to be born, a place where life is cheap. Saddam reinforced that lesson over and over during his rule – he made it a part of the culture, and it should be no surprise that in the end, his own life was just as easy to snuff as that of the victims of his regime. If you want to make jokes about Saddam, please, be my guest. Just don’t be surprised if I don’t laugh.

Saddam is gone but his works live on. I won’t laugh about him until Iraqis can. That time is far away.

by John DeJong of NotMeUSA.com

The Fair Tax Plan (HR.25/S.25) has been out for well over a year now and yet there are still many people who have never even heard of it. One would think that a plan as bold and beneficial as this would be sounded from one coast to the next. Yet that is not the case. As a point of fact there are many liberal political leaders who continually ridicule the Fair Tax Plan whenever it is mentioned. Theyre acting under the misguided belief that this wonderful plan favors the rich. That is the farthest from the truth as one can come.

The sad fact is that if any of these doomsayers would take the time to actually read the entire plan then they would quickly recognize it for what it is the greatest social welfare program of all time. This belief Fair Tax proponents share is held because HR.25/S.25 will do more for the lower income wage earners in the U.S.A. than any other liberal program(s) in existence today.

You see, all consumers will receive an annualized rebate (in 12 equal monthly installments) on necessary living expenditures up to the poverty level. The size of the monthly rebate will be determined by the governments published poverty level for a particular household size, multiplied by the tax rate. What this means is that for each person the monthly rebate will be increased in order to pay for the entire household costs for the basic necessities of life. This monthly rebate is given to all citizens regardless of age, sex, race, or income level.

This is how the Fair Tax would have worked in the year 2000. An individual would have received 100% of their pay check. That is if they earned $250 per week they would have taken home $250 per week. Plus, the individual would also receive a monthly check of $160 each month to help pay for their basic necessities of life.

Thats a tax-free income and another $40 a week for your own benefit. The best part of all is what the Fair Tax Plan will do for families. Back in the year 2000 a family of four would have received an additional $431 rebate per month for their livelihood. That payment will happen each and every month until the children become adults. When one considers all of the added values with the Fair Tax in buying used items like cars and homes tax free; there is no better way of helping others to live the American dream.

Is that not what we all want in these United States? Is it not the entire Democratic doctrine to bring equality among the masses? So then why do your democratic leaders refuse to back HR-25/S-25 and all that it will do for America? These are the questions that you must demand of all of your representatives to answer  Democrats and Republicans alike.

The above are just a few of many more questions to be asked and I will address them all in following articles. Until then you can download and read the entire 40 page Fair Tax Plan brochure at the Fair Tax Volunteer website. While youre there you will also find tons of stuff and highly important political information on how we can all persuade our representatives into enacting the FairTax Plan. Of course you can also join the revolution while you are there.

The FairTax Blogburst is jointly produced by Terry of The Right Track Blog and Jonathan of Publius Rendezvous. If you would like to host the weekly postings on your blog, please e-mail Terry. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll.

There is no doubt in my mind that Iraq is in a state of civil war. What an oxymoronic term.

It’s been a civil war for some time. In fact, it started more than 1,200 years ago. If you want to nit pick, Iraq’s current iteration of the larger scale war between Sunni and Shia “started” in earnest after the bombing of the gold-domed mosque last year.

President Bush can refer to the situation as “sectarian violence” all he wants, and he isn’t helping to solve the problem or frame it correctly when he does. He’s just being stubborn. Meanwhile people continue to be murdered in various horrific ways.

The Associated Press reports that Mr. Bush still says that the violence in Iraq is not a civil war. Rather, he says, it is actually part of an Al Qaeda plot to “use violence to goad Iraqi factions into repeatedly attacking each other.” He made the comments at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

I gave up a year of my life in Iraq trying to help stabilize the place and make it better for all those who are stuck there. That didn’t really happen. We made small steps forward and took big ones backwards. By nearly any measures that matter – quality of daily life, sense of security, economic indicators, death rate per capita, access to medical care, etc. Iraq has deteriorated in the last year. Baghdad is a mess. Operation Together Forward is stagnant.

Can we please stop debating whether there is a civil war and start talking about how many more troops are needed in the short term to get things secure in Baghdad? That would be nice. Of course, I find it unlikely that our politicians will manage to get much accomplished. If we lose in Iraq, it won’t be because our troops or military failed. It will be because our politicians bicker like four-year-olds and cause us all to lose face on what journalists love to call “the Arab street.” That’s stupid. In Arab culture, pride is just about the most important thing there is. American politicians need to understand that they are playing with the outcome of the way the entire century is going to go. Do we throw our hands up and run away from problems or do we continue taking our licks until Iraq is stable enough to manage its own affairs without turning into the century’s largest exporter of human incendiary devices that home in on Americans? On the other hand, Saudi Arabia currently holds that honor, and we continue speaking out both sides of our mouth about freedom and democracy while holding hands with the royal family in that rather unfree nation populated by an alarming number of violently oriented religious zealots.

What a world.

Wow! A lot of you said “none of the above” in response to my “How did you spend your Thanksgiving poll.” So if you weren’t eating, sleeping, shopping or any of the other choices, exactly what were you doing on Thanksgiving day?

SAN. What a nice three letter acronym. Zzzzzz. Well it does stand for something – storage area network. And since the company that employs me has been going through a massive growth streak, we’ve implemented a SAN. If SANs had existed during the Middle Ages, they would have been managed by wizards and other practitioners of assorted arcanery. You almost need a new bachelor’s degree to understand the basic concepts that underlay the technology.

So anyhow, while I was away at war, the company, led by my trusty right hand man, who I’ll refer to as Mighty T, put in a fibre channel SAN in the main corporate office. Problem – we have four corporate offices, each of which should probably have its own SAN. After all, our data pipes are T1s not OC3s. It takes time for the electronic soup to move back and forth through those little pipes. Our employees are taking cold data showers. They’re tired of waiting for the information to warm up…

Long story short – we’re investigating new SAN solutions that might be better fitted to our company’s needs. Enter the vendors.

Using only the company initials (I lie sometimes), we’re in talks with Left Hand Networks and Equallogic. They are not the only two dealers of SANs in existence, but we don’t have time to listen to 17 pitches. I wish we did, because I could probably get a free lunch every time.

Left Hand Networks seems to have a less proprietary thing going, and I tend to like that approach. They use several different vendors hardware to build their systems, and they had a good pitch. Equallogic is a bigger company. I missed their pitch because I was still in Iraq. So I’m scouring the net today for comparisons of the two vendors SAN systems.

First, let me explain that our basic operating premise is that fibre channel is too expensive and complicated for us. We think iSCSI will be the dominant SAN technology. It’s cheaper, more scalable, seems very reliable and redundant and most of all it’s cheaper. According to Network Computing:

iSCSI accounts for only two percent of the SAN market, but its low cost and ease of use are positioning it for growth. We examined four iSCSI modular SANs and found our Editor’s Choice running circles around the competition.

Network computing also decided that they had a clear winner in their “real-world” tests:

In our real-world performance tests, the EqualLogic dominated the competition, with MPC and LeftHand Networks following at a distant second and third.

On the other hand, Storage Networking World Online (crappy long name, I know) says that:

Consistent customer feedback says that LeftHand’s solution is “easy to implement,” “really drag-and-drop storage” with “the ability to easily auto grow volumes.” One user declares, “We are one of the few organizations our size with a DR plan in place. The reason is that LeftHand makes it so easy to do.” Upgrades are reported to be very smooth and often done while in production.

While users report an occasional hardware failure, they are highly complimentary about SAN/iQ’s ability to tolerate such failures with minimal degradation due to seamless, non-disruptive re-striping. Users are also very happy with LeftHand’s direct support.

And in the “guys I know” department, one guy has a Left Hand SAN solution and loves it. And another guy I know who consults for a living says they are a “garage operation” and to stay away. It’s the age old dilemma we’ve all faced at one time or another – do I want to buy my SAN from the big name corporate suits or should I give the little guys in Dockers and scuffed hush puppies a chance?

What I want to know is – do any of you experienced uber-admins out there have an opinion *insert sarcasm*? Is EqualLogic the only game in town when it comes to an iSCSI SAN? Some of you have real world experience that you might share with no vested interest in the eventual outcome for my company. I want to hear from you. I want to know what you think of EqualLogic, Intransa, StoneFly, Nimbus Data, FalconStor, Xiotech or Network Appliance. Who has the best product, the best price and the best support? We need all three in a package. That should be simple, shouldn’t it?

My life has resumed its normal pace. I once again find myself fully engulfed in the terminology of technology, which I much prefer to the terminology of war. SAN, LAN, WAN and others are much more comfortable than FUBAR, SNAFU and VBIED. I’m not sure why military/government acronyms tend to be longer than private sector ones, but they do.

As I absorb the changes at my company – rapid growth, a larger staff under my management and new office locations, I am busy enough that I don’t think much about Iraq. Except when I’m sleeping.

I’ve dreamed about the place a number of times. The dreams are vivid, lucid and haunting.

Once, I was with my family in a market, and a mob formed. Once, I was in a convoy desperately trying to avoid being blown up. I don’t know what my subconscious is doing, but I do know Iraq will always be with me.

The path ahead seems unclear. Could we have used more troops? Yes. Doubling the troops would change the equation drastically. Half a million troops would be even better. The problem is we don’t have the raw numbers. There simply aren’t that many available troops. Can political negotiation still solve Iraq’s low-intensity civil war? I’m dubious.

American troops are doing some good but the security situation for common Iraqis is abominable and Americans don’t seem to have the will to follow through with what we started. Iraqis pay much more dearly for our mistakes and lack of willpower than we do – for now.

And I keep dreaming my dreams.

Milton Friedman has passed away at 94. I hope he has a good rest. Milton Friedman spent his whole life dealing with the role of government in relation to economics. In other words, Friedman’s ideas and writings may have influenced how many hamburgers you find yourself able to afford at any given time. How much of every dollar you work for do you get to keep? Do you even have a clue? How much money do you earn? Is that really how much you take home? Probably not. Government keeps a good chunk of that money, and uses it for various purposes, including muddling with interest rates and otherwise attempting to massage the economy. And that is what Milton Friedman spent his life thinking about. How money flows from point A to point B and back again, except in much more complex scenarios.

Born in New York City to a working-class family of Jewish immigrants from Beregszász, Hungary (today Berehove, Ukraine), Friedman grew up in Rahway, New Jersey, and was educated at Rutgers University (B.A., 1932) and at the University of Chicago (M.A., 1933). He was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner at Chicago, as well as Frank Knight and Henry Simons. He was unable to find academic employment, and working for the New Deal was "a lifesaver." He approved of "many early New Deal measures as appropriate responses to the critical situation", especially the job creating relief agencies WPA, CCC, and PWA. However, he disapproved of the NRA and AAA farm program because they fixed prices.^[3] He taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin, but encountered anti-Semitism in the economics department and went back to government service. In 1941-43, Friedman worked for the federal government, becoming an advisor to high Treasury officials. As a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury in 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation, and indeed helped develop the payroll withholding system of income tax payments. In his autobiography, he comments on "how thoroughly Keynesian I was then."^[4] As Friedman grew older he reversed himself and in 2006 said, "You know, it’s a mystery as to why people think Roosevelt’s policies pulled us out of the Depression. The problem was that you had unemployed machines and unemployed people. How do you get them together by forming industrial cartels and keeping prices and wages up?"^[5]
Friedman, before the late 1940s, focused mostly on statistical issues in his research, as exemplified by his dissertation on Income from Independent Professional Practice published with coauthor and thesis advisor Simon Kuznets (1945).
Columbia University awarded him a Ph.D. in 1946. He then served as Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, from 1946 to 1976, where he helped build a close-knit intellectual community that produced a number of Nobel prize winners, known collectively as the Chicago School of Economics. He spent the academic year 1953-1954 as a visiting fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Since 1977, Friedman had been affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Friedman also received the National Medal of Science in 1988.
Friedman’s son is the philosopher and economist David D. Friedman.
Many of us start off as socialists until we realize that socialism, rather than improving societies, often just gives people easier ways to scam other people via the power of government. Friedman seems to have been one of these. However, he spent his life learning, and adjusting his opinions:
Friedman was the leading proponent of the monetarist school of economic thought. He maintained that there is a close and stable link between inflation and the money supply, mainly that the phenomenon of inflation is to be regulated by controlling the amount of money poured into the national economy by the Federal Reserve Bank; he rejected the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management; and he held that the government’s role in the guidance of the economy should be severely restricted. Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, which he called the "Great Contraction," arguing that it had been caused by an ordinary financial shock whose duration and seriousness were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve. "The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933…. Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government."^[6] Friedman also argued for the cessation of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates. Friedman’s macroeconomic theories were soon displaced. His close friend George Stigler explained, "As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago."^[7]

Whatever the role of government is in your personal life Milton Friedman’s life and theories have probably influenced you indirectly. His latter life advocacy of economic freedom means that I will miss him. He leaves behind a great legacy and some important ideas.

Is it time for serious talks about dividing Iraq into three autonomous regions? I think so. And so does Peter W. Galbraith, who writes the following in this week’s edition of Time Magazine:

A divided Iraq will be destabilizing to Iraq’s neighbors. Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors all fear the destabilizing consequences of partition. But they fear an Iran-dominated Iraq even more. Turkey, Iraq’s other powerful neighbor, has a population that includes at least 14 million Turkish Kurds. The Turkish nightmare has been the emergence of an independent Kurdistan in Iraq. But now that it is actually happening, Turkey has responded pragmatically: it is by far the largest source of investment in Iraqi Kurdistan and has cultivated close relations with its leaders. As Turkey’s more sophisticated strategic thinkers understand, Turkey and an independent Kurdistan have a lot in common. Both are secular, pro-Western, democratic and non-Arab. Not only will Kurdistan depend on Turkey economically, but it can serve as a useful buffer to an Iran-dominated Islamic Iraq.

Prior to leaving for my year-long mission in Baghdad, I believed that we had to do something to stem the tide of Islamic terrorism against Western democracies. I still do. But Iraq isn’t even close to becoming a democracy. It’s not freer than it was under Saddam Hussein. Certainly, there are some freedoms enjoyed by Iraqis now that didn’t exist under Saddam – you can have a cell phone, satellite television and an Internet connection. I’m sure that’s of little comfort to people who cannot move freely through their capital city and must struggle daily just to avoid being murdered by their own police forces or army. I doubt that secular Iraqis who are now being forced to follow new religious mandates appreciate it much.
For the United States, the choices are tough. We lose our sons and daughters everyday trying to make the country a better place to live for its citizens. But are those citizens interested in what we want for them? Many are. But many more are busy being duplicitous with us while settling old scores with each other – and we pay for it daily.

Galbraith says:

Iraq’s national-unity government is not united and does not govern. Iraqi security forces, the centerpiece of the U.S.’s efforts for stability, are ineffective or, even worse, combatants in the country’s escalating civil war. President George W. Bush says the U.S.’s goal is a unified and democratic Iraq, but we have no way to get there. As Americans search for answers, there is one obvious alternative: split Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’ite states.

I saw many Iraqi Army units doing their jobs professionally while I was out and about in Baghdad. But I didn’t really get beyond what was on the surface. I don’t speak the language. I couldn’t tell whether I was watching Sunnis, Shias or a mixture of the two. I only got the “official” viewpoint. I don’t think we have enough Iraqi commanders committed to national unity and a nonsectarian outlook to make a real dent in the violence that takes place every day. The commanders and political figures who do espouse such views are often murdered.

The Kurds in the north live in a completely different world already. The have a de facto nation of their own, provide their own security, and they love Americans. They would welcome us with open arms on most levels. Countering all the messages of national unity that our own government insists on pusing, the Kurds have already stopped flying the Iraqi flag in their cities. And who can blame them? Iraq murdered so many of them under Saddam’s rule.

Southern Iraq is now completely dominated by the Shia and by Iranian interests. And in the middle sits Baghdad and the Western provinces – the sources of the majority of the violence you see on TV and read about in newspapers and on the Internet. These mixed areas are the battleground between the formerly ruling Sunnis and the new Shia power structure. The violence between the two is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, but perhaps it could be mitigated and minimized by the implementation of a Sunni autonomous region – that, at least, would give those now focused on only violence as a solution to problems some other more peaceful avenue on which to focus their energies.

Go read what Galbraith has to say. The debate over Iraq shouldn’t be about timetables or mistakes that have already been made. We shouldn’t talk in terms of abandoning the country. But we should be realistic about the nature of the beast we’ve created. We should be asking ourselves what we can do to help average Iraqis, regardless of their ethnic or religious status. We should be practical about what we can do to improve the security situation.
Autonomous or semi-autonomous regions seem to me to be the only near-term solution that has a practical chance of lowering the level of daily conflict. This might mean mass migration, but that is already happening. It might mean more division between Sunni and Shia inside Iraq but that is also already happening.

Four months before I left Iraq, we were told that Baghdad was the hub that held Iraq together, and that we would have to secure it before the country could have a chance. I don’t think that is even remotely possible with the current state of Iraq’s own military forces and our limited human resources on the ground. Those four months gave me no indicators of an improved security situation, no matter how various departments tried to spin it.

We must try new approaches. If partitioning the nation isn’t a viable one, then what else can we try that hasn’t been tried? I’d love to hear from you.

I’m home.

The trip seemed endless.

We had an awards ceremony at Camp Atterbury but the awards were cookie cutter style – everyone basically got the same thing regardless of what his or her contribution was during our deployment. I really don’t mind that but I’m noting it because it irritates me that the Army does such a poor job of individualizing and doling out promotions and recognition based on merit.

My friends and family surprised me with a welcome home party. The scam went like this – my wife’s boss called and invited us over for dinner and to “catch up.” When we got there, he told me me we needed to go collect his wife from their subdivision’s club house. When we walked into the club house the lights came on and everyone was there. It was great.
I’m not really the type of person who wears his emotions near the surface, and I’m not that comfortable being the center of attention, but I truly appreciated seeing the folks that really matter in life – the people who I interface with on a personal and professional level. I felt a little overwhelmed trying to talk to everyone at once, but it was good to see all those people who cared about me while I was away.
Many of them had been reading my blog without my knowledge and so they knew more about what I’ve been doing then I did about what they’ve been doing. I tried to get caught up with everyone.
The North Georgia mountains and the fall leaves are good for my heart. I love the rolling hills and the sounds of nature. I hope I never hear another mortar in my life. In the weeks it took to travel home and start putting my life back in order, events have continued in Iraq. The violence has continued, and things are still rough. Saddam Hussein has finally been sentenced to death – an end he worked a lifetime to earn. In my opinion, death by hanging is a light sentence. I’m not a judge, nor do I want to be, but the man was a human cancer cell.

He may have been somewhat shaped by his environment, but nothing justifies the sum of the actions that made up his legacy. Iraq is a mess, but I’d rather have the mess than the tyrant. I’m sure many would disagree. Some people would prefer an iron fisted ruler where the killing is done in dark rooms behind thick walls and none of us have to think about it because it’s far away.

Many of us don’t want to think about this war now. It’s painful, messy and heartrending. Some of us who went won’t be coming home – ever. I’m one of the lucky ones. To anyone who reads this entry – remember that this war has a human cost.

This is an election year. Honor those who defend you by taking some time out of your busy life to exercise your freedom and vote. Don’t just vote for anyone – examine the candidates and their stances and cast a ballot for those you believe in. And remember that on your worst day, you’re probably doing a lot better than a lot of people elsewhere in the world. You are blessed to be American. Don’t take what that means for granted.

First, if you’ve been a regular here, thanks! All things come to an end, including my time in Iraq. And that time has arrived.

We’re under 10 days to departure. Of course, I cannot give out the actual date we are leaving for security reasons, but the blog will probably fall fairly silent for two or three weeks. I plan to write numerous entries reflecting on my time in Iraq over the coming year, but for now, here are some blogs that will keep you abreast of individual troop perspectives from inside Iraq:

Bandit Three Six

American Citizen Soldier

There are plenty more to browse over at milblogging.com.

Our new unit is 50% better staffed than we were. In theory, that should make their mission easier. The reality is that they will probably have new duties invented for them and stay just as busy as we did.

Iraq is at a precipice. It should be a tumultuous year for the 10th PAOC (replacements). My friends on the janitorial and translation staffs here in Baghdad still have limited power in thier homes and their running water is unpredictable. They still cannot talk to friends and neighbors about where they work or they will be killed. Just because they do not wear the uniform doesn’t mean they are not soldiers. Their battle will be much longer than mine. I admire them for trying to be decent at the risk of their very existences in a nation where the easiest way to get employment in the capital city is to join the neighborhood militia.

All that will change over time if we have the willpower and can be honest about the nature of this conflict. I can only hope, because my small contribution is passing from present into past.