Now they can finally come home, right?

What would the US military do without authoritative websites? From Australia's 'The Age:' US troop deaths in Iraq reach 3,000:

The number of US military deaths in Iraq has reached 3,000 since the 2003 US-led invasion, an authoritative website tracking war deaths says.

Authoritative? Here's what they say about themselves:

This site is maintained by amateurs. We have no affiliation with the government, think tanks, or news organizations. The site is maintained during the early morning hours, late at night, and during lunch breaks.

This site is provided as a free service and is self financed with cost off set by user donations.

On the bright side, it's good to see a blog outfit recognized as a news source. Just wait 'til Three Sources hits the Mainstream!

US Army Specialist Dustin R. Donica of Spring, Texas, rest in peace. Your actions in life were part of something far greater than a macabre, anti-Bush milestone.

Resolutions

Why write your own? We have an Internet and there will be some out there that are better. Me, I'll take Greg Mankiw's even though they're last year's.

#7: This year I will be modest about what government can do. I know that economic prosperity comes not from government programs but from entrepreneurial inspiration. Adam Smith was right when he said, "Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice." As a government official, I am not going to promise more than I can deliver. I am going to focus my attention on these three goals -- peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice -- and I am going to trust the creativity of the American people to do the rest.

They're all good; he even comes down on my side of the penny controversy. "When people start leaving a monetary unit at the cash register for the next customer, the unit is too small to be useful."

Maligayang at manigong bagong taon, y'all.

[sic] Semper Tyrannis

Wow. The AP is on hand to tell you all you need to know about the late Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. In U.S. tolerated, then villified [sic] Saddam you learn from one Calvin Woodward that Saddam wasn't such a bad guy (well, apart from those atrocities) but that America just has a need to personify its struggles -- especially one with a moustache.

WASHINGTON - When U.S. leaders decided it was time to despise Saddam Hussein, he made the perfect villain.

He was cocky and cunning. He looked dangerous and deranged standing at rallies firing a gun into the air, conduct unbecoming a head of government.

He was Hitler Lite, or as the first President Bush put it, "Hitler revisited," lacking the endless armies, but close enough for U.S. purposes. He had a history of atrocities. His black mustache heightened the aura of menace.

Had Hitler shaved, I'm sure we'd have left him alone. (George Carlin had a great routine: "Stalin had a beard. Teddy Roosevelt had 'whiskers.'")

It just gets worse. The death of a ruthless dictator who has put hundreds of thousands of his countryman to death is such a grand occasion to do a little America bashing. Don't make fun of the AP mispelling in a headline though, you'll anger Joseph Rago and expose yourself as one of those petty bloggers.

Fractals, Weather, and Climate

I'll stop boring my Keystone state friends with Colorado weather reports, though I'll give a quiet shout out to a Nebraska reader who may be seeing our storm today.

That last foot we were supposed to get today is now predicted to be 2-4" and I doubt we'll get that (always look at the first differential of the forecast -- if they're backing off grab the swim trunks, if they're increasing, fill the car with gas). It seems a puff of air from out West will keep the storm from the mountains and prevent the "upslope" pattern where a storm gets pushed against the hills and drops its load. My toy car will be beached a few more days, but what the TV newscasters call "The Blizzard of 2006: II" has moved out to the eastern plains.

I will aggravate the climate change faithful with this observation, but hear me out. Being a math geek, I remember James Gleick's Chaos. Of the three pop math books I can think of, Chaos was the biggest seller. It introduced much of America to fractals, chaos theory, and the butterfly effect.

Old Chris what's-his-name on Fox31 weather is a smart fellow with a lot of shiny equipment. He was convinced that we were in store for another foot-plus today. One little breeze from the West and it's not to be. The fact is there are too many variables to predict weather. This is obvious to anybody who lives in front of the mountains. They create a chaotic interstice for moving weather that precludes prediction.

"But that is weather, jk. Weather is capricious. Climate is not," the dissenter points out. This is fair although the next sentence about "You #%$^%^ink stupid Republicans!" goes too far.

But what if climate is just as capricious? The really interesting thing about fractals is their repeatability at different scales. Trace a foot of coastline and a mile of coastline and they look the same. A friend had a record of nature sounds which sounded exactly the same at 16, 33 1/3, or 45 RPM. I could never figure that out until I read the Gleick book.

I posit that climate is equally and similarly capricious to weather, if you change the scale of the graph from days to millennia. A moth only lives for a day -- don't you figure the VP Al Gore moths worry about "global darking" when night falls?

Albums of the Year

Only two days to pick the ThreeSources Album of the Year. Get your nominations in.

ThreeSources friend SugarChuck sends his picks:

• Marty Stuart's Soul's Chapel. This is an all gospel record featuring our old pal Kenny Vaughn, who I believe is the greatest guitarist I've ever seen. There are no pyrotechnics, just great singing, archetypal tones and an infusion of the spirit of Pop Staples. This is what happens when people that love country music, blues, and gospel make records. No Cashville Gnats here...
• Roy Clark & Joe Pass Play Hank Williams It might be more of a guitarists only record, but what a great record it is. The simplicity of the Hank tunes demonstrates the genius of Joe Pass in a way that covers of Monk wouldn't, though I would love a Joe Pass plays covers of Monk. [ed: this is hard to get in CD format but iTunes has it.]
  
• I am going to throw one more out there and then call it a day. Larry Carlton Sapphire Blue. Amazing. Like Pass playing Hank, Larry playing straight up blues without the west coast syrup dripping all over everything is a gift. He also did a rock record that was darned interesting but the blues one goes to the island.

I will add a few to that list that make a trend:

• The Little Willies. I have a theory that twice in a decade, a good musician hits the pop charts and, likewise, there are two good TV shows each decade. That theory was based on Norah Jones. The Little Willies features her vocals, great guitar work from Jim Campilongo, and a great take on non-pop country sound. This is a must buy, but if the country genre scares you, buy "Lou Reed" on iTunes and check it out.


• Van Morrison Pay the Devil. A friend called Van "the only white guy with soul." I don't want to start a flamewar but you can make a good case for that. This is "Van the Man"'s rendition of country and it is haunting.


• The trend is people playing outside of genre, and specifically taking the country mantle. Many folks are scared off of country by all the bad stuff that comes out on Nashville. My last pick is pop artist Michelle Branch's foray into Country: The Wreckers Stand Still, Look Pretty. This has more of the contemporary Nashville sound and if you "hate country" give one of the others a try. I, naturally, discovered Branch when she did a live performance of "Goodbye to You" at the Bronze on Buffy. She has a haunting voice and style that she brings to the Wreckers.

I know we all agree on music, religion and politics around here. Anybody else see one we've missed?

Happy New Year.

Ding, Dong, Dead

Reports: Saddam Executed in Baghdad

The New York Times calls this a "rush" to execute the former national leader. By American standards, perhaps. The crimes his neck was stretched for were committed in 1982. He was arrested by US troops on December 13, 2003. It took three years for an Iraqi court to be established and to find him guilty. The Times' real problem here is not the time it took, but the finality of the verdict. "Surely there must be some doubt."

This execution marks a definitive end for the Saddam era. It is a good day for Iraq (and for America, whose finest delivered the tyrant to justice). It is not, however, the turning point for peace and harmony and goodness in the world, nor does it even "automatically create a new and better Iraq." But then, who ever said it would?

Welcome to the Blogroll

Two I have been visiting everyday:

Greg Mankiw's Blog

Becker-Posner Blog

JK Questions Their Patriotism

A terrible thought occurred to me a few weeks ago. It's not necessarily original but I think it deserves a hard look. And, today, I got the perfect segue to discuss it thanks to Perfesser Reynolds.

A strain of CW says that support for the war in Iraq has dropped because the struggle has been more difficult than anticipated. I have certainly believed this, and I have admitted to war opponents that I thought it would be easier.

But what has changed for the war opponents? We're not rationing gas, holding blackout drills, or conscripting their family.

War opponents are Bush opponents and they are merely being opportunistic. They count the casualties and await macabre, invented benchmarks: "more people have died in Iraq than have hit over .250 in the major leagues!” The problem is not lack of will, the problem is a lack of belief in American exceptionalism.

Instapundit links today to a Dave Kopel piece about long standing tribal conflict between "the Anuak, Nuer, Majangir, Opo and Komo." It's another lugubrious tale of tribal conflict than has gone on for n years, and you cannot help but glaze over, because the story is as common as it is sad. Reynolds links, and closes with this- startling yet true statement:

Nobody has cared, but now that Ethiopia is opposing the Islamists in Somalia with U.S. assistance, we'll no doubt see a sudden surge of "human rights" advocacy on the subject, though the whole disarmament thing might make it politically tricky . . . .

Nobody cares that people are killing each other, until the United States should have a strategic interest in siding with one tribe over another. To oppose the interests of the US, we will suddenly face education on the perfidy of the Ethiopians and the gentle goodness of the Anuak.

I remain in the shrinking population that supports the war because I think we have a far better life to offer and that we will ultimately reap security rewards for our efforts. Aside from the occasional Cindy Sheehan, it strikes me that the people who are doing the sacrificing, as a general rule, are prepared to continue sacrificing to achieve the mission. Those who have "grown weary" will not and never did sacrifice, they just do not believe in what America has to offer.

The Caffeine Curve

Hat-tip: Club for Growth

Latest Global Warming Strategy: Endangered Species Act

Having heretofore failed to impose a new national global warming tax through all prior strategies, anti-progress envinronmental extremists are turning to an old friend for help: the Endangered Species Act.

Kassie Siegel is the lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, a group based in Arizona that took the lead in the lawsuit calling on the department to list the polar bear. She said, “I don't see how even this administration can write this proposal without acknowledging that the primary threat to polar bears is global warming and without acknowledging the science of global warming.”

Translation: "Even the Bush administration now admits that human induced global warming is real science and is the primary threat to polar bears and all the earth's creatures."

Hat tip: NPR radio two nights ago

About Giving Money Away

I wince when I hear a politician giving money away. But I am trying to consider, seriously, some policy ideas that may be the best we could expect.

First was Senator Jeff Sessions's $1000 to newborns. He was on Larry Kudlow's TV show early this week pitching this idea. He has been pushing it for sometime but believes it may be more conducive to the 110th Senate.

The idea is to create a government savings account fir every child born after the bill is signed, to fund that account with $1000, paid now not on debt. Then to mandate employers' contributions of 1% of wages to the account and to have the government match it under a certain income level.

"Oh my God!' yells I at the TV. "This is Republicanism in the 21st Century?"

But Mr. Kudlow is -- not only deferential -- supportive. He sees it as a step toward private accounts and an introduction to savings and investing to some lower on the income scale.

Today The Everyday Economist links to an article in the NYTimes by George Mason U. Professor Tyler Cowen. Cowen suggests Universal 401(k) Accounts Would Bring the Poor Into the Ownership Society

The core idea is simple. The federal government creates tax-free retirement accounts for lower-income Americans, supplementing private accounts where they already exist, and matching personal contributions to those accounts. The amount of the match would depend on the income of the family and how much they save.

Cowen wants to fund it by removing $1 from Medicare or Social Security for each dollar applied to matching 401K contributions.

Once you admit that we're not going back to the 19th Century, these giveaways look pretty good. There will be a huge government component in retirement, why not create a viable funding mechanism and wrap it in a positive incentive structure?

Milton Friedman appreciated the efficiency and incentive of the EITC. I'd love lasseiz faire but this is a good model to settle for.

The Religious Test

I "joined" the New Republic so I could see the blue-on-blue violence of Martin Peretz vs Daily Kos. But now I get their emails every couple of days.

Here's the latest.

When Massachusetts Mitt Romney announces his bid for the Republican nomination, the race for the White House will suddenly include a Mormon. Romney's presence has led the political theorist Damon Linker to ponder the political implications of Mormonism. Is there any reason to fear a Mormon commander in chief? How should religion enter our calculus for selecting presidents? Linker takes a view that might not seem very politically correct. He argues for taking religion--and its stated beliefs--with the utmost seriousness. Such seriousness would lead a voter to reject an orthodox Mormon presidential candidate. If Romney enters the race, he'll be forced to answer the important questions that Linker poses.

Ugh. Really, haven't we as a country grown beyond this?

Clearly some on the left haven't.

Holy Precipitation, Batman

Get ready for some more blizzard blogging:

Today: Scattered snow showers with snow becoming steadier and heavier late. Cold. High 33F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulating 1 to 3 inches.

Tonight: Periods of snow. Low 21F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%. 5 to 8 inches of snow expected.

Tomorrow: Windy. Snow during the morning followed by a few snow showers during the afternoon. Cold. High around 25F. Winds N at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow 70%. Snow accumulating 2 to 4 inches.

Tomorrow night: Snow along with gusty winds at times. Low 17F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 70%. Significant snow accumulation possible.

Saturday: Snow. Highs in the upper 20s and lows in the upper teens.

Again, troops, I am safe and well provisioned. But I have not been out of the house in a week and a half. They plowed my street yesterday, so now I have a foot of solid ice right at the bottom of the driveway. I actually like it, but this will get old before it goes away.

48 Hours of Wii

It's been, well more than two days, since Christmas morning, and Santa brought us a Nintendo Wii, Rayman Raving Rabbids and an extra controller. (I picked up Madden 07 and another nunchuck controller yesterday).

My wife and I have discovered that we are sadly out of shape as our arms are burning with soreness.

But it's fun.

Easily the best game system I've ever purchased.

Swinging the controller like a tennis racket, baseball bat, bowling ball or boxing gloves adds a dimension to gaming heretofore unexplored. My soon-to-be four year old daughter can really box well.

Rayman makes use of the motion detecting sensors in pretty clever ways. Milking cows, those old-fashioned tilting marble games, shooting plungers, whack-a-mole etc.

Madden Football '07 is pretty sweet. Throwing touchdown passes or kicking fieldgoals is pretty straightforward, though the tackling is a bit more complicated.

Fun.

Soft Landing in Housing?

Larry Kudlow keeps praising the "Goldilocks" economy (not inflationarily hot nor contractionally cool). He attributes it to the 2003 Bush tax cuts and called it "the greatest story never told" through the election cycle.

The only credible data that naysayers can use to contradict is "the burst of the housing bubble." There is always something that will take us back to "Grapes of Wrath" American refugeeism and soup lines. Now it's housing.

So it was good to see better than expected housing numbers. (Paid link, sorry!)

WASHINGTON -- New-home sales bounced back in November, rising more than expected, while inventories fell and the median price climbed.
Sales of single-family homes increased by 3.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.047 million, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. October sales fell 3.8% to 1.013 million, revised from a previously estimated 3.2% retreat to 1.004 million.
The sales numbers Wednesday were better than Wall Street was looking for. Economists expected a 1.6% increase to an annual rate of 1.020 million in November. The advance in November was the third in six months; sales were up 3.1% in September, up 4.3% in August, down 9.2% in July and down 2.1% during June.

Wage Subsidies

Must read post from Greg Mankiw

The Booming Economy You Don't Hear About

Nope, not here. As Larry Kudlow has been mentioning, a boom in Iraq.

Larry links to an Amir Taheri piece in The New York Post

Four years ago, this was a jumble of rusting quays, abandoned houses and gutted buildings. By the spring of 2003, its population had dwindled to a few dozen, along with hundreds of stray dogs. There was even talk of abandoning it altogether.

Today, however, Um Qasr is back in business as a port with commercial and military functions. Hundreds of families that had left after the first Gulf War in 1991 have returned - joining many more who have come from all over Iraq.

The boom in Um Qasr is part of a broader picture that also includes Basra (the sprawling metropolis of southern Iraq), the Shi'ite "holy" cities of Najaf and Karbala, Mandali on the Iranian border and much of Baghdad.

When the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank reported two years ago that the Iraqi economy was heading for a boom, skeptics dismissed it as misplaced optimism. Now, however, even some of those who opposed the toppling of Saddam Hussein admit that many Iraqis share that optimism.

Newsweek has just hailed the emergence of a booming market economy in Iraq as "the mother of all surprises," noting that "Iraqis are more optimistic about the future than most Americans are."

Of course they're more optimistic. The New York Times doesn't deliver that far.

The D in DAWG

The 2006 Census Estimates are out (It's like Christmas!) and they offer some hints at reapportionment after the 2010 Census.

Club for Growth linked to it because most of the states that stand to gain seats are friendlier to pro-growth economic policy than the states that are losing seats. That seems fair, although I have watched Colorado shift from Red to Purple as it gained seats, so it is difficult to extrapolate. All the same, one must agree that any loss of political power in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would be a good thing for the republic.

Hurting for blogworthy material in a slow news week, I was struck by the tale it tells of migration to warmer climes: The six states listed as certain to gain seats are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Texas and Utah. A few ski areas notwithstanding, that strikes me as a sunshine list. Certain to lose? Iowa, Pennsylvania (sorry friends), New York, Ohio -- only Louisiana and Missouri buck the trend.

Polidata’s Clark Bensen also observes that Florida (currently with 25 seats) is now poised to replace New York (29 seats) as the third most populous state – and that both states might end up with 27-member delegations when the dust settles after reapportionment.

Sixty years ago, no one would have believed that Florida and New York might one day have House delegations of equal size. In the 1940s, the New York delegation was a 45-member congressional powerhouse while Florida was a puny 6-seat weakling. But between 1942 and 2002, Florida gained 19 seats while New York lost 16.

Back to my tendentious acronymical invention. If Global Warming exists and is Anthropogenic, is it Deleterious? A shift of 20-something house seats shows that warmth has a value. It's been seven days since I left my house, you can call me interested.

RIP, Godfather

Uhnh!

James Brown, the undeniable "Godfather of Soul," told friends from his hospital bed that he was looking forward to performing on New Year's Eve, even though he was ill with pneumonia. His heart gave out a few hours later, on Christmas morning.

The pompadoured dynamo whose classic singles include "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)" died Monday of heart failure, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. He was 73.

"People already know his history, but I would like for them to know he was a man who preached love from the stage," said friend Charles Bobbit, who was with Brown at the hospital. "His thing was 'I never saw a person that I didn't love.' He was a true humanitarian who loved his country."

Merry Christmas

... in Philadelphia it's 42 and raining.

I blame global warming.

In 1902, the Los Angeles Times reported that the great glaciers were undergoing "their final annihilation" due to rising temperatures. But by 1923, it was the ice that was doing the annihilating: "Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada," the Chicago Tribune declared on Page 1.

So it was curtains for the Canadians? Uh, not quite. In 1953, The New York Times announced that "nearly all the great ice sheets are in retreat." Yet no sooner did our neighbors to the north breathe a sigh of relief than it turned out they weren't off the hook after all: "The rapid advance of some glaciers," wrote Lowell Ponte in "The Cooling," his 1976 bestseller, "has threatened human settlements in Alaska, Iceland, Canada, China, and the Soviet Union." And now? "Arctic Ice Is Melting at Record Level, Scientists Say," the Times reported in 2002.

Over the years, the alarmists have veered from an obsession with lethal global cooling around the turn of the 20th century to lethal global warming a generation later, back to cooling in the 1970s and now to warming once again. You don't have to be a scientist to realize that all these competing narratives of doom can't be true. Or to wonder whether any of them are.

Merry Christmas From Dubai

Now don't you wish we'd let them buy the ports?

Hat-tip: Insty

Go for Two?

I'm glad my beloved Broncos won the game today. They did many things to deserve the victory.

I've got to ask why Cincinnati did not go fir a two point conversion. I was surprised to see the kicker line up for the PAT. They had run at will against eh Broncos all day, and have the most explosive offense in football. Would not a two point try by statistically preferential to kicking the PAT and scoring a field goal before the other team? Snowy field conditions, if anything, would lean me toward a two pint attempt, where the weather favors the offense.

'M I whacked?

Defending the Blogosphere

One more wade into l'Affaire Rago. I mentioned that I thought Rago misses the point in his anti-blogging screed (you remember, "Written by fools to be read by imbeciles.")

For the most part, Methinks that the blogosphere hath protested too much. Taranto makes a case that the surfeit of vituperative attacks has done more to prove Rago's point than refute it.

I remain a fan of blogging, although no doubt much of my writing could be used to inculpate Rago's thesis, this sentence included. However, I am a Hayekian at heart and champion the competition of ideas in the free market. I'm also an Army-of-Davidser and a Long-Tailer. I celebrate the removal of barriers to entry in media production and distribution.

Rago fails to recognize the amount of superb writing out there. Dean Barnett offers many counter examples. Some of the best bloggers are professional journalists: Lileks, The Corner, Galley Slaves, and Rago's online editor and defender, James Taranto.

I offer a blog I just discovered: The Becker-Posner Blog maintained by Gary S. Becker, University Professor Department of Economics and Sociology Professor Graduate School of Business The University of Chicago and another intellectual lightweight, Judge Richard Posner, Senior Lecturer in Law at the Chicago School of Law.

I discovered this blog through The Everyday Economist. Josh linked to a discussion on the New York City ban of trans-fats. Posner starts by declaring the information cost of a person educating himself on trans-fats as being too high. Becker rebuts, not only with a freedom and choice argument, but also with suggestions that younger consumers expect pharmaceutical advances to help them before adverse effects materialize, and this gem:

If they value the taste of trans fats in their foods only by 35 cents per meal, the taste cost to consumers of the ban would be $70 million per year. Then the total cost of the ban would equal the benefits from the ban.

I ruin both pieces by paraphrasing. They are intelligent, well thought, and well written. (The Chicago Manual of style suggests the comma after thought, I use it in deference to the two Chicago academics). The comments, like Samizdata's are penetrating and well written. The two pieces and the comments combine to make a more serious and probing discussion of the issue than was presented anywhere by MSM.

Rago has seen some bad writing in the blogosphere. I'm shocked. He conveniently neglects the volume of serious thought and good discussion.

Git a Mac?

After bad mouthing the Mac commercials, my trusty old laptop that I use as a personal computer has died and I suspect a virus. It got real slow a week ago, and now will not boot: ntfs.sys is corrupted.

The OS disks are an image, so I cannot recover my existing files on a repair. As it is truly a personal machine, there is no great loss if I just wipe it clean, but it will take me a day or two to rebuild and reload the applications I like. And there are always a handful of things that are truly lost.

Rats ass. Any email sent after yesterday afternoon is likely lost to the aether.

I develop in the Microsoft world so a Mac would really not be an option. But I won't bad mouth them again -- I'm sure that's what got me last time. "I, for one, welcome our new Cupertino overlords..."

Christmas Extremists

Boy.

A man used flammable liquid to light himself on fire, apparently to protest a San Joaquin Valley school district's decision to change the names of winter and spring breaks to Christmas and Easter vacation.

The man, who was not immediately identified, on Friday also set fire to a Christmas tree, an American flag and a revolutionary flag replica, said Fire Captain Garth Milam.

Seeing the flames, Sheriff's Deputy Lance Ferguson grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran to the man.

Flames were devouring a Christmas tree next to the Liberty Bell, where public events and demonstrations are common.

Beside the tree the man stood with an American flag draped around his shoulders and a red gas can over his head.

Seeing the deputy, the man poured the liquid over his head. He quickly burst into flames when the fumes from the gas met the flames from the tree.

Call me crazy, but I'm sure that the loss of "winter fest" and "spring fest" didn't put him over the top.

Greetings of the Season

From my brother, via email:

For My Democratic Friends:

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."

For My Republican Friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Senator Backbone

I thought my hero, Larry Kudlow, was writing an article on oxymorons: "Senator?" "Backbone?"

He writes, instead, on Senator John McCain's courage to push for victory in Iraq against the polls, the CW, and the Baker Surrender Group.

McCain clearly would rather do the right thing in our nation’s interest than the politically correct thing. He is about leadership and character and decisiveness. He seems to have the ability to assess American national-security needs, not just for the next few weeks, but the next few decades. And he is almost single-handedly lifting our war policy towards strength rather than weakness.

McCain is standing tall against the tides of wartime fatigue, the polls, and the conventional Beltway wisdom. Whatever the outcome of the Iraq debate, and even the 2008 presidential election, the senator is behaving in a remarkably brave and steadfast manner at a time when so many of our leaders are shrinking from those crucial public duties.

Kudlow has been hitting the pro-McCain theme hard on his TV show for a couple of weeks. McCain's stand on the war is admirable, and none of the other candidates are wowing me (I'd give Mayor Giuliani a chance).

War is the issue. McCain is likely the candidate. My on again, off again endorsement is now on again.

Now a Word Against Enforcement

Full of Christmas Spirit, I thought I mightn't start a squabble about immigration on December 22. Naaah:

The lead editorial (free link) questions the cost benefit ratio of the immigration raids on the Swift meatpacking plants.

Immigration restrictionists would have us believe that harassing businesses like Swift, the world's second-largest beef and pork processor, helps make America safer. But so far the Swift raids haven't uncovered any al Qaeda cells, merely a bunch of hard-working people trying to feed their families. The operation involved more than 1,000 federal agents in six states. And of Swift's 15,000 or so employees, a grand total of 144 have been charged to date with misidentifying themselves to get hired.

Put another way, 1,000 federal agents that could have been focused on potential terrorists or other dangerous threats were instead focused on a meatpacking company that hires thousands of willing unskilled workers and pays them more than twice the minimum wage with full health benefits after six months. How's that for government efficiency?

I suppose that enforcing the law is its own good and I do not post this to criticize. I post this to rebut those who say that it should be the responsibility of employers to enforce our immigration laws. It seems that Swift tried.

There's a common notion that businesses seek out illegal aliens to employ. So it's also worth noting that since 1997 Swift has voluntarily participated in a government program for vetting new hires known as Basic Pilot. Under this system, the names and Social Security numbers of all job applicants are checked against a federal database. Which is to say that the presence of illegal workers at Swift is not the result of a company's indifference to the rule of law. It's the result of a flawed government system for determining who's eligible to work here. A few years ago Swift's management attempted to go even further than Basic Pilot to screen job applicants, only to be sued by the Justice Department for employment discrimination in 2001.

Full of hope for the season (that's twice he's said "full of it..."), this might be a big plus for having a Democratic 110th Congress.

On Wednesday, Mr. Bush reiterated his position that the most "humane" way to deal with illegal immigration is to combine enforcement with a guest worker program that would address the country's obvious labor shortage. "I want to work with both Republicans and Democrats to get a comprehensive bill to my desk," said the President. "It's in our interest that we do this."

Merry Christmas ThreeSourcers!

Patents Are Killing You

So say the would-be thieves.

A report by the General Accounting Office concludes that current patent law discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by allowing them to make excessive profits through minor changes to existing pharmaceuticals. While pharmaceutical research and development expenses have increased by 147% since 1993, applications for approval of "new molecular entity" (NME) drugs, or drugs which differ significantly from others already on the market, have risen only 7%. According to the report, the majority of newly developed medicines are so-called "me-too" drugs, which are substantially similar to existing drugs, are less risky than NMEs drugs to develop, and which "offer little in the way of therapeutic breakthroughs."

Blizzard Blogging

The last numbers I heard were 33" for boulder and 25" at DIA.

The snow has stopped where I live and it is bright but overcast. My niece was on a plane on the tarmac at SFO yesterday when they stopped the flight (good thing, I'd say). She will be in Saturday night, our Friday Night Christmas plans have been rescheduled for the night of the 25th. All is calm, all is bright.

I have a few more photos I'd like to post but my card reader is not recognizing memory cards.

UPDATE: The skies are blue. That's why you live here -- when you get one of these it does not last too long. By the time I dig out the convertible, it'll be nice enough to take the top down.

UPDATE: (jg) OK, we need some more pictures here.

There is one drift bigger than this one but I didn't get down to it until later when the road was plowed. This one, however, is taller than dagny.

The snow drifts were not limited to outside the buildings.

Of course, there are rewards. Like watching our two year old have the time of her life.

Then it was time to plow the driveway. After pushing the pile for about 5 feet it started cascading over the bucket and into my lap.

Time to get a bigger tractor!

As you can see, utility is much more important than fashion out on the farm. At least that's what I tell myself everytime I put on that chocolate brown snowmobile suit and that goofy stocking cap.

Equal Treatment Under Law

John Fund, writing in the OpinionJournal Political Diary, says "Life's a Beach" for Sandy Berger.

Yesterday's report by the Inspector General for the National Archives makes it more obvious than ever that Sandy Berger, President Clinton's former National Security Adviser, got off easily in his document-filching case. Mr. Berger pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor charge of improperly removing classified material from the Archives. As part of a plea agreement, federal prosecutors asked him to pay a fine of only $10,000; an outraged judge bumped that up to a $50,000 fine.

It's now clear Mr. Berger is lucky to have stayed out of jail. The Inspector General's report found that the paper he stole outlined the government's knowledge of terrorist threats in the U.S. in the final months of the Clinton administration -- documents of some interest to the 9/11 Commission that Mr. Berger was preparing to testify before. He admitted to investigators that he later retrieved the documents from their hiding place and brought them to his office, where he tore some up and placed them in the trash.

Mr. Berger originally maintained his actions were "an honest mistake" rather than an attempt to cover up aspects of the Clinton administration's counterterrorism efforts. But Rep. Tom Davis, the outgoing chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, told C-SPAN this morning that Mr. Berger may have taken working documents for which no copies exist. "There is absolutely no way to determine if Berger swiped any of these original documents. Consequently, there is no way to ever know if the 9/11 Commission received all required materials," Mr. Davis said. Mr. Davis ended with this tantalizing hint: "More is coming on this, and the committee will be issuing its own findings in this soon."

Scooter Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Cheney who is now facing felony counts for supposedly lying to federal investigators in the Valerie Plame non-case, must be bemused at how the worm turns in Washington. Sometimes the tale of who is vigorously prosecuted and who is dealt with leniently is the most perplexing Beltway ethics story of all.

Yesterday's report by the Inspector General for the National Archives makes it more obvious than ever that Sandy Berger, President Clinton's former National Security Adviser, got off easily in his document-filching case. Mr. Berger pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor charge of improperly removing classified material from the Archives. As part of a plea agreement, federal prosecutors asked him to pay a fine of only $10,000; an outraged judge bumped that up to a $50,000 fine.

It's now clear Mr. Berger is lucky to have stayed out of jail. The Inspector General's report found that the paper he stole outlined the government's knowledge of terrorist threats in the U.S. in the final months of the Clinton administration -- documents of some interest to the 9/11 Commission that Mr. Berger was preparing to testify before. He admitted to investigators that he later retrieved the documents from their hiding place and brought them to his office, where he tore some up and placed them in the trash.

Mr. Berger originally maintained his actions were "an honest mistake" rather than an attempt to cover up aspects of the Clinton administration's counterterrorism efforts. But Rep. Tom Davis, the outgoing chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, told C-SPAN this morning that Mr. Berger may have taken working documents for which no copies exist. "There is absolutely no way to determine if Berger swiped any of these original documents. Consequently, there is no way to ever know if the 9/11 Commission received all required materials," Mr. Davis said. Mr. Davis ended with this tantalizing hint: "More is coming on this, and the committee will be issuing its own findings in this soon."

Scooter Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Cheney who is now facing felony counts for supposedly lying to federal investigators in the Valerie Plame non-case, must be bemused at how the worm turns in Washington. Sometimes the tale of who is vigorously prosecuted and who is dealt with leniently is the most perplexing Beltway ethics story of all.

Prosecutorial discretion vs. prosecutorial overreach. It's been said before, but imagine the uproar if Condi Rice has been caught stealing and destroying documents. President Clinton was said to have laughed when he heard about this. And some think he did not take security seriously...

The Sartre Cookbook

This is the funniest thing I have seen on the Internet in, umm, forever.

The Jean Paul Sartre Cookbook.

I would have nothing kind to say about Sartre, except that he inspired Joss Whedon to create my favorite TV villain of all time. Jubal Early, the existentialist bounty hunter in the Firefly episode "Objects in Space" comes from Whedon's love of the Sartre book "Nausea." I think that's one of two that I have read. Sadly, it inspired nothing so grandiose.

Hat-tip: Insty.

VP Gore Must be holding a rally

	We are expecting 10" of global warming and it looks like we are most of the way there. My place of employment has officially closed down for the day. I have worked there on and off for 18 years and cannot remember ever "officially" closing. They just sent people home and locked the doors. ‘Course, that’s a warm day at Sugarchuck’s… The view is out my home offiice window. The streelight is the corner of my driveway, and the shadow is a house across a plain old suburban street.
UPDATE: a couple more pix...
UPDATE: Fights cancelled, roads closed...

UPDATE: (jg) Did I hear somebody say glacier?

I have no idea how much snow we've received so far. Do I measure it here?

Or here?

Or maybe here, next to the hay baling machine. We'll just call it a "Goregasmic" amount.

(Apologies for the grainy pics. I'll take more tomorrow in the daylight. It took me over 9 hours to get home from work today.)

Chris Matthews

Hugh Hewitt blasted Matt Damon's performance on Hardball last night.

I expect nothing but vapid blather from another celebrity, I was struck by Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Do you think guys like Cheney—I love to pronounce his name correctly, by the way. Do you think guys like—it‘s like a Dickensian name, Cheney. Do you think he knew he was saying stuff that wouldn‘t turn out to be true, or was he just mad dogged to fight the war?

DAMON: I‘d like to see him under oath.

MATTHEWS: I would, too. I‘d like to see him with you.

(APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: Do you think if you waterboarded Cheney, like in the movie, that you‘d get a different truth out of him?

Wow. Torturing the Vice President. Even worse, pronouncing his name in a nefarious manner. I'll bet the Vice President is distraught.

I was the world's biggest Hardball Fan, I bought two of his books, and, in case it comes up in a Trivia game, I was the first caller when he debuted "You Play Hardball," soliciting viewer statements (Tucker Carlson tried this as well).

But Matthew's, pari passu Andrew Sullivan, dropped from the top to the bottom by letting bad ideas take over his emotions.

UPDATE: ALa at Blonde Sagacity has video. Left out of the transcript: Matthews's calling DeNiro "ballsy" for taking on the CIA in a film. Oooh ya, that's pretty brave. Rodeo Drive is littered with the carcasses of big film directors who dared to take on the establishment.

Fool to Imbeciles: Get a Life

I sometimes have to look hard for something on the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page with which I disagree.

Sometimes, it's easy. Assistant Features Editor Joseph Rago lets loose at bloggers today.

Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion . . .

And those would be the nice bits.

Blogs are a long-tail phenomenon, and Rago misses it. There are n million blogs out there and n - 0.05 are bad. Finding a circle of interesting blogs widens your worldview considerably.

I read Rago's employer's page second thing every day, subscribe to four print magazines and a couple digital-only. I agree that blogs should respect the foundation and infrastructure that the MSM provides. Yet I cannot imagine a day without hitting at least half of the blogroll.

Rago will be vilified by the blogosphere for this. I mentioned I read the WSJ second thing every day. First is DayByDay, and today Chris takes a whack at Rago.

Your Problem

Now he's your problem, Denver.

Peace in Our Time (Again)

LMAO!

(tip to HotAir)

A Blogger in Need

heh.

Fruitcake ...

... or vomit?

What's your preference?

I'm more partial to the vomit, myself.

Person of the Year

Some people are upset about my selection as Times' Person of the Year

For Time's Man of the Year, now Person of the Year, is the figure who, for good or evil, dominates the news. Yet this year Time could not bring itself to name the obvious choice. Instead, it chose you and me, all of us citizens of the digital democracy who create on the Worldwide Web. Why the copout?

Perhaps it was Ahmadinejad's hosting of a conference of Holocaust skeptics, including David Duke, that caused Time to recoil. Perhaps it was fear that the face of the Iranian president on the cover of Time would repel the American people and be death for sales.

Surely that was the reasoning behind Time's refusal to name Osama bin Laden in 2001, choosing Rudy Giuliani instead, though history is unlikely to conclude that Rudy, his crowded hour notwithstanding, was the central figure of that annus horribilis.

Richard Stengel, editor of Time, as much as concedes he could not bring himself to choose by the traditional standard, if that meant choosing Ahmadinejad: "It just felt to me a little off selecting him."

Understandably. But the refusal to select Ahmadinejad reveals an unwillingness to confront hard truths. For putting his face on Time's cover would have done a useful service, jolting America to a painful realization. Not only George Bush, but the United States, its Arab allies and Israel, had a dreadful year, as Iran emerged as first beneficiary of a war fought by this country at a cost of 25,000 dead and wounded.

Air Quality

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

More than a dozen states sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today to lower soot levels from smokestacks and exhaust pipes, a move the state officials argue would save thousands of lives.

The states argue that the Bush administration is ignoring science and its own experts in refusing to slightly reduce the allowed threshold for soot. The "fine particulate matter" in soot contributes to premature death, chronic respiratory disease and asthma attacks, said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The pollution also leads to more hospital admissions and other public health costs, he said.

Officials from Pennsylvania, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia joined New York in the action filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

"It is unfortunate that this coalition of states must resort to legal action to get the EPA to do its job — protect the environment and the public health," said Spitzer, the Democratic governor-elect.

EPA lied, people died.

The states want to reduce the current limit of 15 micrograms of soot allowed per cubic foot of air. States say even a reduction of 1 microgram would save as many as 11,000 lives. They don't agree on a specific amount to cut the limit.

It's not clear how much the states want to lower it. But if one is good enough, why not five?

I mean there's lives at stake here.

How about 10?

That Horrible Economy

Breaking news from the Wall Street Journal: "Oracle reported its profit rose 21% and sales climbed 26% to $4.16 billion as the software giant continued to reap the benefits of its acquisition spree. License sales of its flagship database software rose 9% to $867 million, while license sales of Oracle's applications unit jumped 28% to $340 million."

Who owns tech shares? Everybody's all in Gold to weather the coming depression. The housing bubble's gonna burst any day now, and those guys who are long Oracle are going to be crying in their (domestic) beer.

Immigration Counters

Wow. JohnGalt almost had me. He provided a link to immigrationcounters.com.

Man, that's mighty damn official looking.

But then, I came across this page -- and I still think I'm right.

Coming to Review Corner in 2008

The woodcut artists at the Wall Street Journal get lucky every seven years and get to do Angelina Jolie instead of an incoming cabinet secretary or septuagenarian senator.

In OpinionJournal Political Diary, John Fund reports that the Atlas Shrugged movie is coming along: He titles the piece "Porn for College Republicans."

It was published almost 50 years ago, and has sold millions of copies. But only now is Ayn Rand's controversial individualist novel "Atlas Shrugged" about to become a movie starring Angelina Jolie.

Ed Hudgins, editor of the New Individualist, tells me that the screenplay adapting the 1,100-page epic novel is only a couple weeks away from completion. Production is set to begin next year with the release of the film in 2008.

Mr. Hudgins says fans of Atlas should be pleased that the adaptation is being authored by Randall Wallace, the scriptwriter for "Braveheart," Mel Gibson's epic tale of Scottish freedom fighters. "I was fascinated by Rand's book. It was original and provocative," Mr. Wallace told Daily Variety.

For her part, Ms. Jolie has told friends that she finds the character of Dagny Taggart the most powerful female role she can imagine playing. While Ms. Jolie adheres to conventional liberal politics, she is nonetheless a big fan of Rand's sweeping story-telling abilities.

Originally, the plan of producers Howard and Karen Baldwin was to follow the example of the makers of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," and adapt Rand's sprawling work into a three-part movie. But they were finally convinced that the story should be seen at one sitting, albeit at great length. I guess that means that the speech by anti-collectivist hero John Galt -- which runs to 72 pages in the novel -- will have to be trimmed just a bit.

An Underutilized Business Model

Hugh Hewitt links to a publishers' site that carries an article How Magazines Can Survive

The cable TV business combines a multitude of huge and small media aggregators together in a solo purchased package to the consumer. My suggestion is to mirror the package deals of this medium. This will work excellently for both print and online. It uses the power and accountability of the online digital business with flexibility and creativity. And it can offer many creative business models within the plan.

In the new model, we offer our customers a choice at all times. There's a "basic plan" publishing package offers the local newspaper and two magazines of your choice to be received in either digital format, printed format or both. The next step up offers the local newspaper and four magazines of your choice from a comprehensive list of offerings. We keep offering tiers of participation up until you get to the "platinum plan" that delivers the customer everything ever printed.

I think this is a perfect model for magazines and online content. The idea of including print versions in interesting, but more interesting to me is the idea of supporting an aggregation of online media and commentary on a subscription model.

I remain intrigued as well by employing this model in digital delivery of TV shows. Instead of 99 cents a show, sell a bundle that encourages a user to fork over 12.99 a month but to get more shows than he or she wants (like cable).

This brings the long tail to TV shows and will someday provide a market for a Firefly to circumvent network idiocy and be supported by its fan base.

A Sharanskyite Approach to North Korea

There's no reason to believe that North Korea would not fall as the Soviet Bloc nations did. The country is poor and isolated and should be susceptible to internal pressure.

To atone for my downbeat post yesterday, I offer the story of Pastor Buck, who rescues people from NK Communism.

OpinionJournal - Featured Article

Pastor Buck is a rescuer. It's a job title that applies to a courageous few--mostly Americans and South Koreans and predominantly Christians--who operate the underground railroad that ferries North Korean refugees out of China to South Korea, and now, thanks to 2004 legislation, to the U.S. Mr. Buck, an American from Seattle, says he has rescued more than 100 refugees and helped support another 1,000 who are still on the run. For this "crime"--China's policy is to