Global Warming

95 % of the greenhouse gases (which Al Gore and his ilk like to claim is the root cause of "global warming") are actually caused by nature (mostly through photosynthesis). That would leave the remaining 5% of greenhouse gases caused by people (specifically the big bad Americans since it is claimed by some that we cause 25% of the worlds air pollution.) Spock (the Vulcan, not the doctor) might find this to be "illogical".

About 95 percent of the greenhouse effect — the atmospheric warming due to the trapping of solar energy that makes life possible on Earth — is due to water vapor, 99.999 percent of which is of natural origin.

The other 5 percent of the greenhouse effect is due to carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other miscellaneous gases.

Although carbon dioxide is the most dominant of these gases by volume, comprising about 99.4 percent, the other gases trap more heat. So the contribution of carbon dioxide to the 5 percent of the greenhouse effect not due to water vapor is much less than 99.4 percent — it's about 72 percent.

Carbon dioxide, therefore, is responsible for roughly 3.6 percent of the greenhouse effect (5 percent, representing the percentage of the greenhouse effect not due to water vapor, multiplied by 72 percent, representing the percentage of that 5 percent due to carbon dioxide).

But carbon dioxide is produced both naturally and by humans. About 97 percent of atmospheric carbon dioxide is natural, in fact. Only about 3 percent is from human activity.

That means that only about 0.11 percent of the greenhouse effect (that is, 3 percent of 3.6 percent) is due to human releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Put another way, about 99.89 percent of the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with carbon-dioxide emissions from human activity.

Factoring in the other greenhouse gases, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.3 percent. In other words, about 99.7 percent of the greenhouse effect is due entirely to nature.

When you consider that the greenhouse effect contributes about 60 degrees Fahrenheit to the Earth's average temperature (which would be about zero degrees Fahrenheit without the greenhouse effect), it doesn't really seem like atmospheric carbon dioxide levels — even if they triple or quadruple because of human activities — are all that important to global climate.

If the carbon dioxide-emissions reductions called for by the Kyoto global warming treaty were implemented, human greenhouse contributions would be reduced by about 0.03 percent. Atmospheric physicist Fred Singer says this would have an "imperceptible effect on future temperatures — one-twentieth of a degree by 2050."

As the Kyoto protocol would require cutting energy use by about 30 percent by 2010 — necessarily causing inestimable negative economic consequences — it's easy to see why U.S. politicians can't run away from the Kyoto protocol fast enough."

"Facts are the enemy of truth."

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
--- Galileo

So here are some facts:
(1) The wealthy are paying a greater share of taxes than in the past. A recent Congressional Budget Office report shows the top 1 % of taxpayers pay 34.8% of ALL income taxes, when in 1987 the top 1 % paid "only" 24.8% of all taxes.

(2) The top 25 % of all taxpayers now pay 82.7% of all income taxes, as compared 1987 when the top 25 % of all taxpayers paid 76.9%.

(3) Since the 2001 and 2003 taxcuts, 39.6 million families have been removed from the income tax rolls according to studies by the Tax Foundation and Citizens for Tax Justice.

How does this square with the claim, "the tax cuts were only for the rich"?

RNC

The RNC called me today looking for donations ($75 was his request). Their present spiel is based on telling us how effective Howard Dean is at fundraising although Robert Novak seems to dispute this "fact"as he writes:

DEAN'S DEBACLE

Democratic National Committee (DNC) fund raising under the chairmanship of Howard Dean shows a disappointing $16.7 million raised in the first quarter of 2005, compared with $34 million reported by the Republicans.

That tends to confirm dire predictions by old-line Democratic fund-raisers of a fall-off in money if Dean became chairman. He had promised to bring in heavy individual contributions, as he did in his 2004 campaign for president. But the DNC in the first quarter received only $13 million from individuals, compared to $31 million for the Republican National Committee (RNC).

A footnote: A recent DNC fund-raising appeal promised to send field workers to North Carolina, which does not have a major statewide election until 2008."

(hat tip Powerline)

At any rate, the RNC also is claiming that his present plan is to start attacking GOP politicians at the state level. They need more money to counterattack "Howies" new offensive on state GOPers, they say.

I had to tell them that I wasn't going to be donating until I see some results. The caller said he "understood". However, this did not deter him. He then asked for $50 saying it would be helpful in the GOP fight against abortion, border control, and getting judges confirmed.

My response to him was that I didn't think he understood at all. I pointed out that it didn't cost money to speak out and show leadership and show some backbone; things that I found lacking presently.

I wished him a good day, and he did the same, but he sounded awfully dejected and beaten down. I wonder how many rejections of this kind they are getting.

Asbestos Fraud

INSULATED FROM HONESTY: The Quarter-Trillion Dollar Asbestos Criminal Conspiracy
by Dr. Jack Wheeler

"In the past dozen years, 700,000 people have sued over 8,000 companies, schools, and municipalities for asbestos-exposure damages. In 2003, some 110,000 individual claims were filed in that year alone. Asbestos litigation has bankrupted over 70 corporations, costing 60,000 jobs, and forced companies to pay out over $70 billion in court judgments and settlements. The suits were filed as “class action” lawsuits by trail lawyers, who of course got most of the money.

The litigation is predicted to eventually produce as many as 3 million individual claims, with a final total of $200 to $300 billion paid by businesses and insurance companies in judgments – or by the taxpayers via Arlen Specter’s bill in the Senate should those companies go bankrupt which many will. That’s over a quarter of a trillion dollar pot of ripped-off gold at the end of the trial lawyers’ rainbow.

And over 95% is willful fraud. The quarter-trillion dollar asbestos litigation is a criminal conspiracy between plaintiff trial lawyers and the medical doctors they bribed to fake the evidence."

Democracy at the Doorstep of Minsk & Moscow ?

President Bush, next week, will stand alongside Vladimar Putin in Moscow’s Red Square remembering and celebrating the end of World War II. On his way to Moscow, and when he leaves Moscow, President Bush will meet with the leaders of former Russian colonies Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Georgia on "how to end the dictatorship of Aleksandr Lukashenko in Belarus."

The Kremlin has made it known publicly that it is not keen at all with these meetings. However, the Kremlin really ought to be far more concerned with an "unknown, anonymous student alliance that has successfully overthrown autocrats in four ex-Soviet states", (that’s four successful democratic revolutions inside the former Soviet Empire in 4 ½ years, three in the last 18 months) and now has Belarus and Russia itself in its sights. While theses student groups have names, the "alliance itself has no name and no leader".

According to Dr. Jack Wheeler, here's the historical timeline of these four successful deomcratic revolutions:

Otpor in Serbia
In October 1998, a group of Serbian university students formed a democracy movement dedicated to ending the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. The movement was called Otpor! – Resistance! – and advocated relentless, well-organized, yet nonviolent street demonstrations and protests. Such a method – known as “Triple U” for Uncontrollable Urban Unrest – had been used to overthrow the Soviet colonial regimes of Eastern Europe in 1989.

Otpor was distinct in two ways. It was amorphous, with no charismatic leader attracting publicity and whose elimination would disband it. It was extremely street-smart clever. Otpor sought in particular, for example, to appeal to the police, forswearing violence, telling policemen they were fellow victims of an oppressive regime, with signs at protests saying: “Some victims are in blue jeans, others in blue uniforms.”

By mid-1999, persevering against gangs of Milosevic’s thugs, Otpor had grown from a few hundred students to over 4,000 members; by mid-2000 to over 70,000. In the September 24, 2000 presidential election, opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica defeated Milosevic. When Milosevic attempted to force a second round of the election, Otpor staged a series of mass rallies in Belgrade chanting the slogan gotov je – “He’s finished.” On October 5, Otpor students and Kostunica supporters stormed the parliament and occupied Serbian state television. Two days later Milosevic conceded electoral defeat, and Kostunica was inaugurated. Otpor’s democratic revolution had succeeded.

Kmara in Georgia
In the spring of 2003, a group of Georgian university students went to Belgrade for a meeting with Otpor leaders. They returned to Tbilisi and formed a democratic resistance movement called Kmara! – Enough! – with the goal of removing the corrupt dictatorial regime of Eduard Shevardnadze.

Grafitti appeared all over Georgian cities simply proclaiming Kmara! Young Kmara activists cleaned rubbish from the streets, organized concerts, collected money for charity, protested against police violence and ran TV ads condemning the government. Whatever the action, the message stayed the same: the government has failed to keep its promises and it was time for the people to hold it to account. Otpor leaders made numerous trips to Tbilisi guiding Kmara activists over the next several months.

When international observers denounced the parliamentary elections of November 2, 2003 as grossly rigged, Kmara was able to put tens of thousands of people on the street in central Tbilisi and in every major city in Georgia, all carrying or wearing roses. The “Rose Revolution” peaked on November 22, when Kmara-led protestors seized the parliament building in Tbilisi, interrupting a speech of Shevardnadze, forcing him to escape with his bodyguards.

When Shevardnadze declared a state of emergency and began to mobilize troops and police near his residence, the elite military units refused to support the government. He resigned the next day, paving the way for the presidential election of Mikhail Saakashvili on January 4, 2004 and honest parliamentary elections on March 28. Kmara’s democratic revolution, trained by Otpor, had succeeded.

Pora in Ukraine
In early April 2004, 18 Ukrainian university students traveled to Novi Sad, a city in northern Serbia, to meet with Otpor leaders. They returned to Kiev to announce the formation of Pora! – It’s Time! – a youth movement espousing democracy in place of Ukraine’s ex-Soviet apparatchik authoritarian regime, to be achieved through nonviolent resistance.

Through the use of pranks and slogans – posters of a giant boot crushing a cockroach, spray-painted graffiti and stickers saying “Time to Arise!” – and sophisticated communications techniques with websites, cell phones, and text messaging, Pora’s membership and popularity exploded. All through this, Otpor and Kmara activists were visiting Kiev frequently providing guidance.

When the Ukrainian KGB, the SBU, attempted to assassinate opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin poisoning (at the direction of Gleb Pavlovskiy, a top advisor to Russian President Putin) in early September 2004, Pora organized enormous street rallies in his support. The two rounds of presidential elections on October 31 and November 21, giving victory to government candidate Viktor Yanukovych, were declared blatantly fraudulent by international observers.

Pora organized rallies at Maidan (Independence) Square in Kiev attended by hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians all wearing orange ribbons. When Nazi skinheads and government secret police were sent in as agents provocateur to incite the crowd to violence, they were ignored. Non-stop rock concerts – literally rock-around-the-clock – were performed.

After 13 consecutive days of these “Orange Revolution” demonstrations, the Ukrainian Supreme Court declared the election results void and a new election held – which it was on December 26 with Yushchenko winning in a landslide. Viktor Yushchenko was inaugurated President of Ukraine on January 23, 2005. Pora’s democratic revolution, trained by Otpor and Kmara, had succeeded.

KelKel in Kyrgyzstan
Shortly after the December 26, 2004 election in Ukraine, Pora leaders in Kiev were contacted by a group of student democracy activists at Bishkek University in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Their country’s leader, Askar Akayev, had turned into an autocrat and they wanted Pora’s help.

Within days, Pora leaders were in Bishkek training the young Kyrgyz. On January 11, when Roza Otunbayeva, leader of the Ata-Jurt (Fatherland) opposition party was not allowed to register as a candidate for the upcoming parliamentary elections, the formation of KelKel! (Revival!) was announced. Holding a protest meeting, KelKel members passed out lemons to the protestors “to help you stay healthy in the cold” (it is bitterly cold there in January).

KelKel catalyzed a protest movement that spread far more quickly than anyone anticipated. As the results of the first round of parliamentary voting on February 27 came in, protests throughout the country began erupting. KelKel activists focused the protests’ demand that the only solution to the corrupt rule of the Akayev family would be for Akayev to resign.

Shortly after the second round results were announced on March 13, the protests grew dramatically. On March 18, thousands of demonstrators occupied the governor’s office in the city of Jalal-Abad and various government buildings in Osh. On March 20, police unsuccessfully attempted to recapture the buildings. By March 21, demonstrators had seized all of Osh, including the police station, television station, and the airport.

On March 24, the protests reached the capital of Bishkek. Tens of thousands of protestors gathered in front of the main government building housing parliament and the presidential offices. When police and government thugs began beating KelKel students in the front of the demonstration, the outraged demonstrators swept aside the police and thugs, stormed into the building and seized it. President Akayev and his family escaped via helicopter to neighboring Kazakhstan.

That afternoon in Tbilisi, Georgia, viewers of the Rustavi-2 television channel saw a member of their parliament, Givi Targamadze, broadcasting live from the demonstrator-captured television station in Bishkek, giving an eyewitness account of the overthrow of the Kyrgyz government.

Targamadze had been one of Kmara’s main leaders, and he, together with two other former Kmara leaders turned elected Georgia Parliament members, had been in Kyrgyzstan for a month in cooperation with Pora leaders, advising KelKel. The Rustavi-2 announcer closed the broadcast by noting, “In the last year and a half, this is the third revolution for Givi Targamadze, after Tbilisi and Kiev.”

While far more accelerated than imagined, and thus far more violent and chaotic than desired, KelKel’s democratic revolution, trained by Pora and Kmara, had succeeded.

That’s four successful democratic revolutions and with each revolution, they get better at it.

One technique they’ve mastered is the use of Democracy Babes. When they bat their baby blues or browns at the police and hand them a rose or orange scarf, it’s hard for the police to obey orders to beat them up or shoot them.

Europe’s “Last Dictatorship” of Belarus is next in line. Pora has helped students in Minsk, the Belarus capital, set up a sister group called, somewhat mysteriously, Zubr, Belarusian for Buffalo.

Pora is not the only one that is helping ZUBR. California Students Hike to Raise funds for ZUBR.

The Zubr's have their own Zubr website in English.

Dr. Wheeler then goes on to write:

Then comes Putin’s Russia. Sure enough, there’s already a student organization at Moscow University called Porá (same word in both Ukrainian and Russian, with emphasis on the first syllable in the former, the second in the latter). They’re calling for Putin’s impeachment and the creation of a true free market democracy in Russia.

So perhaps there is a reason why Putin and the Kremlin oligarchs are nervous over Bush’s meetings next week in Riga, Latvia and Tbilisi, Georgia. The last time Bush and Putin met, in Bratislava, Slovakia on February 24, 2005, the very next day Bush had a private meeting with Vladyslav Kaskiv and other leaders of Pora.

Kaskiv was told by Bush: “Freedom cannot stop at Ukraine’s border.” Ukraine borders Belarus, Moldova, and Russia. Week before last, on April 20, Vladyslav Kaskiv was made Special Advisor to Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko. He’ll be there in Tbilisi next week, sitting in on Bush’s meeting with Georgian President Saakashvili and his Kmara advisors.

The good Dr. theorizes that "time is closing in on the autocrats of Minsk and Moscow." And, he could very well be right.

Long Live Belarus - A struggle for democracy

California Students Hike to Raise funds for ZUBR Berkeley, California, USA -- A group of 30 students at the University of California, Berkeley, organized a Hike for Democracy to raise money for the Belarusian pro-democracy youth movement, ZUBR. On 30 April 2005, the students, in the organization "Berkeley Students for Global Democracy" (Berkeley SGD), hiked 17 kilometers around Tilden Park, a beautiful protected wild area in the hills above the town of Berkeley in California. The group raised more than US $1000, to be given to ZUBR to support their printing of independent pro-democracy leaflets and newspapers. Berkeley SGD coordinator Arthur Edelstein said, "Students at Berkeley have a history of fighting for free speech since the 1960s. It`s clear to us Belarus deserves to be free. We believe that Belarusian students, including those in ZUBR, are the ones who will bring much-needed democracy to Belarus. We are glad to be able to give support to ZUBR`s activities in their important struggle for freedom." The hikers displayed signs with several messages (in English and Belarusian) in support of ZUBR and Belarusian students struggling for freedom in their homeland. Their messages of solidarity included "Long Live Belarus", "Belarus to Europe", "California Students Support Democracy in Belarus", and "We are together with you." The hikers also wore blue t-shirts emblazoned with ZUBR`s name and logo (a European bison), and carried two white-red-white flags of Belarus. Berkeley is a chapter of an international coalition, Students for Global Democracy (www.sfgd.org) that is organizing the BELL Campaign (Belarus Endowment for Life & Liberty) to raise money for ZUBR`s activities.

Incommunicado ?

NEW THREATS
by Dennis the Wizard - Dennis Turner

Is it just a matter of time until cellphone viruses muck up mobile voice communications as they did email? Will we be subjected to ceaseless beeping from phony messages, causing users to chuck their cellphones and thus rendering them incommunicado while on the road (considering that public phones are nearly extinct, having been done in by those selfsame cellphones)?

One of the things that makes virus writers tick is the challenge - the ability to get into a system, bend, break and shape it to the virus writer's will. So, with the ubiquity and popularity of cellphones, there's no doubt virus writers will be very tempted to come up with a phone killer, just to be able to say they did."

Yes, this is a reality. In fact there has been (although minimal) some reports of viruses in cell phones already. Think of what this means along with other technological advances that the likes of China has made and potential harm it could do to our military weapons as we become more dependent on hi-tech weapons.

The Republicans are losing the PR battle

WINNERS WITHOUT A SPINE ..... Don'’t Stay Winners For Long
By Jack Kelly

The only thing harder to find in the U.S. Senate these days than a Democrat with a conscience is a Republican with a spine.

Ouch!

Also:

Democrats benefit enormously from having most of the major media in the tank for them. Although media bias is more egregious than ever, it's not exactly a new phenomenon. You'd think Republicans would be prepared for it by now.

And:

Blame falls also on the White House. You'd think the president's men would be counting votes and keeping Clueless George and the others in the loop. Columnist Robert Novak says Bush's congressional liaison operation is the worst he's seen in his (long) lifetime. The evidence suggests Novak is right.

Blunt, but spot on. It's hard to argue against the points he's making. Read the rest of Jack Kelly's assessment here.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Thoughts and quotes from Thomas Jefferson:

"No power over the freedom of religion...(is) delegated to the United States by the Constitution." (1798)

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." (1800)

"Nothing in the Constitution has given them (the federal judges) a right to decide for the executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them....But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what (are) not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch." (1804) - Emphasis mine -H.H.

"......to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; (would be) a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so...and their power (is) the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots." (1820) - Emphasis mine - H.H.

"I am for freedom of Religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendacy of one sect over another." (Written on the index page of his own personal well-worn bible; date unknown.)

"I have always said, I will always say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume (bible) will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands." (1816)

"I have little doubt that the whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also." (1816)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Put your thinking caps on folks. A Shot in the Dark is asking some questions.

For the purposes of argument:

Pharmacists have a legal duty to fill doctors' prescriptions (and, their employers might add, to not turn away legal business). Their own moral qualms about the prescriptions have no place in the equation. Right?

OK. So - corporate officers have a legal, fiduciary duty to their shareholders. Yet corporations sometimes skirt or pummel the law. Many of the same people who castigate pharmacists for resisting a legal duty on moral grounds are the ones who lionize corporate whistleblowers whose ethics harm the shareholders they are legally bound to protect.

Perhaps a better example: soldiers have a legal duty to fulfill the terms of their enlistment contract. Yet as we've seen in the news this past year, some servicepeople, after joining the military with full awareness of what militaries do (and, often, after taking their full share of pay and benefits from their services), develop conscientious objections about serving. Some desert - some of them directly to a welcoming media. Many of the people who castigate the pharmacist for standing up for his/her ethics are the same ones that hold up "conscientious" deserters as heroes.

If I were Atrios or Oliver Willis, I'd entitle this post "Why Do All Leftists Hate The Truth And Love Hypocrisy". I'll be a tad less inflammatory and simply ask; is it just me, or is there an inconsistency here? Does the "Conscience" and "Ethics" you're willing to hear out depend entirely on its politics?

Just curious. Discuss amongst yourselves."

Any comments? Anyone?

Their Work is Hard

Little Girl - from Michael Yon: Online Magazine (hat tip to LGF)



Mosul

Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids. Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn't make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away. He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.

The soldiers went back to that neighborhood the next day to ask what they could do. The people were very warming and welcomed us into their homes, and many kids were actually running up to say hello and to ask soldiers to shake hands.

Eventually, some insurgents must have realized we were back and started shooting at us. The American soldiers and Iraqi police started engaging the enemy and there was a running gun battle. I saw at least one IP who was shot, but he looked okay and actually smiled at me despite the big bullet hole in his leg. I smiled back.

One thing seems certain; the people in that neighborhood share our feelings about the terrorists. We are going to go back there, and if any terrorists come out, the soldiers hope to find them. Everybody is still very angry that the insurgents attacked us when the kids were around. Their day will come."

I keep praying the day that this ends - will come soon.

Headline News

Insider Headlines
Thursday, May 5, 2005
Registration required.

Bush praises Pakistan on terror arrest / Bill Sammon President Bush yesterday hailed the arrest of al Qaeda's third-ranking leader by Pakistani authorities as a major blow in the war against terrorism that will make the United States safer. (Nation/Politics)

Capture seen as path to bin Laden / Rowan Scarborough and Bill Gertz
The arrest of al Qaeda's No. 3 man, Abu Farraj al-Libbi, in Pakistan promises to provide new information on Osama bin Laden's life on the run and deprives the terror network of its chief operating officer, according to counterterrorism and defense officia (Nation/Politics)

Gang follows illegal aliens / Jon Ward
The violent MS-13 -- or Mara Salvatrucha -- street gang is following the migratory routes of illegal aliens across the country, FBI officials say, calling the Salvadoran gang the new American mafia. (Metropolitan)

Analyst accused of leaking defense data / Jerry Seper
A veteran Pentagon analyst was arrested yesterday by the FBI on charges of illegally disclosing classified information -- nearly two years after he first was identified as having passed national security documents involving Iran to a pro-Israeli lobbying (Nation/Politics)

Todays' Humor - Cow & Politics

DEMOCRAT
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature' private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegals.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Headline News

Pelosi's ethics stance hypocritical, GOP says
House Republicans called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi a hypocrite yesterday for not demanding investigations into new ethics questions that have arisen about the travel of her fellow Democrats.

$82 billion spending bill gets nod
Congressional negotiators yesterday agreed to an $82 billion bill to fund the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that also includes major border security measures and standards to prevent illegal aliens from obtaining or using driver's licenses.

North Korea, slave state.

A very good editorial piece at Slate by Christopher Hitchens, "Worse Than 1984".

How extraordinary it is, when you give it a moment's thought, that it was only last week that an American president officially spoke the obvious truth about North Korea. In point of fact, Mr. Bush rather understated matters when he said that Kim Jong-il's government runs "concentration camps." It would be truer to say that the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, as it calls itself, is a concentration camp. It would be even more accurate to say, in American idiom, that North Korea is a slave state.

This way of phrasing it would not have the legal implication that the use of the word "genocide" has. To call a set of actions "genocidal," as in the case of Darfur, is to invoke legal consequences that are entailed by the U.N.'s genocide convention, to which we are signatories. However, to call a country a slave state is to set another process in motion: that strange business that we might call the working of the American conscience."

Full Details.

A Scary Thought.................

Iran military journal eyes nuclear EMP attack on U.S.
High-altitude missile detonation could be launched from ship, warn top scientists

WASHINGTON – In the latest evidence Iran is seriously planning an unconventional pre-emptive nuclear strike against the U.S., an Iranian military journal has publicly considered the idea of launching an electromagnetic pulse attack as the key to defeating the world's lone superpower.

Congress was warned of Iran's plans last month by Peter Pry, a senior staffer with the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack in a hearing of Sen. John Kyl's subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security. Full article.

"If God is dead, everything is permitted."

Another great piece from Victor David Hanson:

Yet even after Auschwitz, even after the gulag, after mass-murderers like Stalin and Mao and the Khmer Rouge, after Bosnia, Rwanda, the Sudan, after murderous autocrats like Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein, and despite the daily horrors of torture, rape, and murder filling their newspapers, the secular materialists still persist in their superstition that evil is just an outdated name for what is really the manifestation of material causes, a glitch in chemical, genetic, social, economic, or political structures that can be corrected if only the enlightened "technicians of the soul," as Stalin called them, are allowed to work their magic, and the quaint believers in various supernatural truths are gotten out of the way."

Worth going here and reading the whole thing.

Singapore leader sees a China challenge

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

China's economic explosion is transforming Asia's political landscape, posing problems and opportunities for its neighbors and for the United States, Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo said in an interview yesterday...................................

..................................The emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India, "changes the global polarity," said Mr. Yeo, predicting it will shape everything from Latin America's development to Middle East politics to the evolution of Islam in the 21st century.

Countries such as South Korea and Japan are already having to adjust their policies as China passes the United States as their leading trading partner......................

.........................................Despite China's gains, Mr. Yeo said the United States enjoys a potent political weapon in the attractiveness of American culture and American values to Asians.

"It's not about the government or President Bush, but there is an affection for the United States in the abstract, as an idea, that you can see all over Asia, even in China," he said. "It's amazing how deep it is."

He said the images of U.S. soldiers mobilizing to aid victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami had reinforced popular images of American power and generosity."

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Maryland criticized for denying licenses

As crazy as this seems, it's become commonplace for these wacky ideas to spring up everywhere. I am sure all you gotta' do is shop your case around a little bit and eventually you'll find a judge that is "sensitive" to your "cause".

From The Washington Times, by S.A. Miller

An immigration rights group says the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration is violating state law by denying driver's licenses to illegal aliens."