Bar Stool Economics

This one has been around the net for a long time, but wisdom is worth capturing. One can't expect the angry envious left to get this, but the story is as old as the golden goose and will be with us over and over for as long as humanity exists.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men—the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “But he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I did!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up any more. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.


Dr David R. Kamerschen
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia
For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Snow Jobs

We seem to be enjoying the start of a normal winter here in MN. I say "seem", because although I was out riding snowmobile in December on limited snow in Dec 2004, it promptly melted and it was still a mild winter. Last winter was mild as well, but we did have a monster late-season storm and we were able to get out. It was also somewhat colder, since we were able to ride in Iron River WI on solid snow for the first time in years rather than having to go all the way to the Keweenaw Peninsula of upper Michigan.

I make these observations somewhat with tongue in cheek because although Christian, I am not a young-earth fundamentalist that believes in a 6K age of the planet. Even on that scale, trying to discern climate trends on years and decades would normally considered completely irrational. This however is the age of "Global Warming", now re-christened "climate change". Now, only the "most foolish" fail to believe that not only climate direction on a planetary scale, but causality for same as, can be discerned in years and decades. In any case, we have to "assume the worst" and "play it safe".

How different this doctrine from the believability of threat assessments by our security agencies. When they asserted that WMDs were in Iraq, only to apparently be wrong because of failure to find the weapons, the culprit was the President believing the assessment. The same security services also asserted that Iran was building nuclear weapons, but apparently decided based on new information this last summer that this was no longer true. They changed their minds, thus, it is a problem for THE PRESIDENT.

I listen to the MSM all the time, so this doesn't really surprise me. The answer these days is always "bad for Bush" ... stocks up, stocks down, deficit up, deficit down, surge bad, surge working, the answer is always "Bush Bad".

As the snow drifts down as it should in early December and we complete yet another year with well below normal hurricane activity when it was publicized after Katrina that "due to Global Warming" we would have season after season of worse and worse storms, but in '06 we had none and this year we had a single barely cat 1 qualifier, one tends to wonder.

We were assured by the left that "Iraq was all about oil", by which I guess I falsely assumed meant "cheap oil". It was $20 a barrel before the war and around $90 now. Does that mean that they were wrong, it wasn't about oil? We were assured that the Surge was "a huge mistake" and "there was no way a military solution could work". Bush was called "delusional" and worse. So now even Jack Murtha says the surge has worked? (although you have to search for that almost as hard as news of a new stock market high or yet another good economic number).

So BOTH Libya and Iran apparently decide to bail out of their covert weapons programs as the US decides to invade Iraq and that invasion gets no credit for that result? We had "No Blood for Oil", would the left feel as good with a bumper sticker saying "No Blood to Stop Nukes"?

I must have listened to 100s of NPR stories on "the failure of Bush to stop the REAL threat of Iranian (and N Korean) nukes while he "wasted our blood and treasure" in Iraq. So when the best data that we have shows that they DID stop their program at about the same time we invaded their neighbor, THAT is yet ANOTHER "failure of the Bush Administration"?

The sheep must be willing to be led off the cliff even more than usual these days.

NPR on Politics and Torture

Driving into work today I got to hear an NPR segment that purported to be a "discussion of what the Republican Presidential Candidates positions were on torture". It seemed that the purpose of the piece was to try to make the topic an issue, all of them were clearly "against torture", but it was asserted to get complex when the question became "what is torture".

Naturally, Democrats are completely clear;  they are against it all - even sleep deprivation. I'm quite certain that they would be 100% clear if asked that there is really no such thing as a "terrorist" and in the unlikely event that anyone has to be "detained", it is important that this be with conjugal visits, weekend release, the diet of their choice and 24x7 entertainment. (Unless they are an American Corporate "criminal" like the Enron guys, then the death penalty isn't strong enough)

Ah yes, folks that would give their lives in suicide attacks to kill as many Americans as possible in any manner they can, who regularly cut the hands off thieves and stone adulterers and gays must really enjoy the spectacle of americans caught up in an endless discussion of whether "water boarding" is torture. I'm sure they are deeply respectful of the "moral high ground" that many on both the left and the right seem to think such a discussion stakes out.

Imus: 'The program is not going to change' - CNN.com

"Just three months after he was fired, the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the strongest voices calling for his firing, said Imus had a right to make a living and could return to radio. Sharpton planned a news conference later Monday."Nice to see that the Rev. Al says that "Imus has a right to make a living".

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Power Line: A general the Democrats can embrace

Being "credible" to the MSM and the Democrats is pretty easy. Declare defeat and hopelessness for America on all fronts early and often, especially in Iraq. Progress? Never the truth. Maybe time to be renamed into "General Betray Us". Defeat? Little history of being in charge of Abu Griab like Richard Sanchez? NO PROBLEM!!!

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My Grandfather's Son

This memoir by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a fairly quick and I believe important read for our times. The left has of course come out and called this an "angry book" and been strongly against it even though it is selling pretty well from what I hear. It is a book with emotion, but the primary emotions that I find come through are regrets, uncertainties, shame, feelings of inadequacy and yes anger, but primarily at himself, although also at injustice in many forms. To dismiss it as an "angry book" says more about the people dismissing it than it does about the book. They must have REALLY missed Dawkins and almost every anti-Bush, anti-War, anti-business and anti-everything screed out there.

His grandfather taught Clarence about personal responsibility, truth, character and "playing the hand that you are dealt". Thomas started out literally no running water barefoot poor and learned about hard work and stern discipline from his grandfather. One of his major regrets is that he rebelled and due to the makeup of both men, irreparably damaged that relationship. Thomas left the training of his youth behind for a time and dabbled in the "racism / victim hood world" during his Yale years and for some time after. His slow trend to conservatism and essentially back to the training of his grandfather was based on life experience and the influence of people of the right, especially John Danforth.

I find that Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas provide a very good set of book ends to understand that people one truely can and can't respect and trust. A significant number of the same ones were supporters of Clinton and no difficulty with his actions, yet either at the time, or as time as unfolded have come to think of Thomas as having "poor character". Certainly the facts can't warrant that assessment, so one can understand a lot about the worldview of one on opposite sides of those cases. Biden and Kennedy are two that come to mind as especially good examples.

For me, the biggest insight of the book is how much courage is really required for a black man to hold views on life that don't align with those allowed by the Democratic liberal "proper worldview for blacks". Even conservatives have a hard time believing that blacks can think independently on issues like victimhood, racism and personal responsibility. Thomas makes it clear just how lonely it really is to really be "away from the herd".

I was also impressed with how willing he was to open up and put his self-doubts, fears, drinking, broken marriage and other items that he is clear he isn't proud of, but is willing to accept as part of the life he has lived. It provided an insight into a VERY different human experience of a black man in the old segregated south growing up and making good in life against long odds and a lot of difficulties. It is the kind of story only a liberal could hate!

The Language of God

In the subject book, Francis Collins, the head of the government side of the Human Genome project attempts to "provide evidence for belief". While I enjoyed the book quite a bit, if you are looking for "evidence of God", Collins pretty much just defers to C S Lewis on the actual discussion of "The Moral Law" which is the cornerstone of his "evidence". I'm still in the "belief and unbelief are equal leaps of faith" camp, but the point is that there is logic for either case and nothing in science, philosophy, or religion are going to "rationally prove" the case in this universe. Either God or chaos decided that our existence wasn't going to give us that rational proof in this universe.

The question of the book is: "In this modern era of cosmology, evolution and the human genome, is there still the possibility of a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific and spiritual worldviews?" His answer is very much "yes", as is mine. "Whether we call it by name or not, all of us have arrived at a certain worldview. It helps us make sense of the world around us, provides us with an ethical framework, and guides our decisions about the future." Seems obvious.

He lists 3 responses to the Anthropic Principle: (that the universe is uniqely tuned to give rise to humans, or as really good atheists put it "we are here because we are here"):

1). There are essentially an infinite number of universes (the "multiverse theory"), so "we had to be here", all possibilities are. (a current atheist favorite that they had to come up with fairly quickly)

2). We are just ultimately and incredibly lucky ... a string of many known and likely many unknown 10 to the - many 10's and even at least low hundreds of decimal place improbabilites all worked out in our favor. We won the cosmic lottery. No way to prove that the winning lottery ticket for the next 300 million Powerball WON'T blow into your house window. In fact, it would be nearly a dead certainty stacked against the odds that you would be here at all.

3). God did it.

Actually, in the ebb and flow of human history, this hasn't really changed much. We just have a few more specific numbers for just how high the odds against our random existence really are.

After some time wading through angry atheist tracts, the thing I liked best about this book was the tone and humility of the author and a lot less "intellectual grandstanding" than Gould even though this guy is clearly extremely intelligent and accomplished. He seems to be far more interested in his reader understanding the issues and his points than in being impressed with the authors intelligence.

A lot of time is spent on the problems of Creationism and Intelligent Design. I generally agree with his assessment that they cause more trouble than they are worth. I find "fundamental literalists" to almost always be quite brittle and quickly become uncomfortable and judgmental or both when issues of origin and science are discussed. However, I think Collin's fails to understand what I would see as the "the appearance of age problem". God could create the universe as I write this using whatever methods he chooses--how that happens to "look to us" is interesting TO US, but doesn't have anything to do with his "somehow trying to fool us". From a divine perspective, it is all "just stuff"(matter, or the appearance of matter), not of any great importance. The hope we have is that he has chosen to provide us with a "soul in his image" ... no doubt with less fidelity than a low res cartoon, but promised to be eternal.

Sit back, try to focus on the NOW, being as opposed to doing, "say thanks"--there may be more "proof" available than logic would indicate. God wants to know you, shut off your monkey brain and LET HIM!

What is Middle Class?

Tucked away in this unenlightening little column that I'm not sure why I read is an unintended gem. Howard clearly things that $100K is "rich". A couple of middle aged high school teachers in most areas make $100k. Do they believe they are rich?

clipped from www.newsweek.com To be sure, Hillary had her lame moments. She airily dismissed the NAFTA debate in 1993 as a cavalcade of "charts," forgetting, perhaps, that union members think they have lost a million jobs as a result of the deal. And she attempted to defend the idea that people making $97,000 a year are members of the "middle class."  That's true enough for some people—the ones who think it's reasonable to have diamonds and pearls.

Reviled and Isolated

The linked Krauthammer article is very much worth the read. BUSH is certainly "isolated and reviled" by the MSM, the left and the far right, but as one can see if they look at the success of the surge, relations with France and Germany, and the general health of the economy, he hasn't quit being successful just because the folks that hate him would want him to. In my book, if both the far right and the far left hate you, you must be doing something right.

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The Anti-Keillor

Two things strike me in this Power Line Post:

1). The idea that someone would need to be a "stealth conservative" at a paper is funny and sad. We know that 90% of media people self-assess themselves as "liberal" when given the chance and whine loudly about ANY sort of "conservative view" ever showing up in the media. It is just amazing to see the need for stealth by someone with a conservative view so prominently displayed.

2). Keillor is a great example of the constant liberal mixing of fact and fantasy to make their points. Hollywood for example is a master of the technique. The left loved to bash Reagan for allegedly "mixing up the movies with reality". Why does one have a humorist (Al Franken) running for Senator and a "Radio Humorist" writing a weekly column largely on politics for a major newspaper? Because for the left, "mixing" is never a problem as long as it is effective!

MSM Reports Iraq Headline

Hey, Iraq is back as headline news on CNN! Get a bunch of Democrats to figure out the most inflated cost figure they can come up with and it is printed as headline gospel truth. No need to report any positive news, we "just can't afford Iraq". It is already been declared a "defeat", no need to make any reassessment just because of problem. It is never too soon to declare defeat.

Oh, and Al Quaeda interrupting oil shipments at the Straights of Hormuz, or another attack on US soil? "Free" I assume.

Of course, entitlements are over $1.5 TRILLION every year and the "futures" if done with same the pessimism as the Iraq analysis would run that "family of four" something well over $100K. According the the MSM or the Democrats though, no question about "affording" THAT.

'Buckwheat' Comment Gets Candidate In Trouble

Guess the political party of the "Rep"? Well, the article doesn't say, but it DOES say that her HUSBAND is in a key position with the state DEMOCRATS. Gee, I wonder why it doesn't say? I always find it interesting when there is negative news on a Democrat the MSM somehow finds "Representative" too long to spell out so has to be abbreviated "Rep", and also fails to find the letter "D" on their typewriter. Not that the MSM would ever want to confuse anyone.

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Peru and Other Menaces, George Will

"The stock market has predicted 9 of the last 3 recessions" is something worth remembering. On a more somber note, Democrats while most likely headed for power seem to be solidly protectionist, and everyone seems to want to talk the economy down. Will does a good job of covering some of the key bases.

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Are The Poor in America Really Getting Poorer?

Excellent Walter Williams column, VERY worth reading it all, but a highlight quoted here. As Jesus said, "the poor will always be with us". Why? Well, because if you decide call the bottom 1/5 of the population "poor", then there will ALWAYS be a bottom 1/5. They may have two cars, air conditioning, color TV and more space than the middle class in Europe and Japan, as those in the US do, but RELATIVE to the rest of the US, they will be "poor". Relative to something like 70% of the people on the planet, they are RICH! As Dinesh DeSouza says brought him here; "I want to live in a country where the poor people are fat!".

Having a lot has never prevented people from being envious. Jimmy Buffett with only a Cessna Citation jet is envious of someone with a Gulfstream. The US "poor" are envious of those that have more, and typically so is the middle class-envy is fun! No matter what you have, you can always want more-especially if you don't look at the "costs" in effort, risks or other changes that would get you to that "more" that you desire.

In the US however, if you ARE willing to look at that other side of that coin, the evidence is strong that you can move up that income ladder, and in fact have a 30% chance of moving into the TOP 1/5th from the bottom. None of this will ever be good enough for the lefties though. Like suicide bombers, they don't really care if their policies take EVERYONE down including themselves and the poor they are supposedly helping.

To a lefty, it is worth seeing an honest poor person actually hungry if that will get some upper 1/5ther to have to vacation in FL rather than taking a cruise this year. It makes no difference if that poor persons problem without the "help of the left" would have been "buying a smaller color TV than they wanted" vs going hungry. The important issue is for that upper 1/5ther to feel some "sting", then mission accomplished! What's a little collateral damage if the "rich" have to "pay the price"?

As study after study as shown, if you are able to get and stay married and work reasonably hard, success in the US is as close to a guarantee as anywhere in the world.

What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? The only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage. There is far less poverty in married-couple families, where presumably at least one of the spouses is employed. Fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.

Poverty is not static for people willing to work. A University of Michigan study shows that only 5 percent of those in the bottom fifth of the income distribution in 1975 remained there in 1991. What happened to them? They moved up to the top three-fifths of the income distribution -- middle class or higher. Moreover, three out of 10 of the lowest income earners in 1975 moved all the way into the top fifth of income earners by 1991. Those who were poor in 1975 had an inflation-adjusted average income gain of $27,745 by 1991. Those workers who were in the top fifth of income earners in 1975 were better off in 1991 by an average of only $4,354. The bottom line is, the richer are getting richer and the poor are getting richer.

Wonderful Life

I finally slogged my way through the last of what is certainly a very worthy text on the Burgess Shale, the Cambrian Explosion, and the proper way to understand contingency in evolution, by Stephen Jay Gould titled "Wonderful Life". Yes, the title pays homage to the Frank Kapra movie "It's a Wonderful Life" because the angel shows Jimmy Stewart's (George Baily) what the town would be like if he had never been born. Gould attempts a bit of that conjecture, but mostly he just points out how very likely it is that humans would have never happened in any "roll of the tape".

Gould is considered by many to have been the foremost expert on Darwinian evolution of the late 20th century (he is recently deceased), and his expertise shows through in the book. He writes well, but feels that a huge amount of detail on personalities, latin names and classification jargon is required to tell the story. I disagree; the book, while significant, borders on the unreadable to all but someone VERY interested in paleontology, evolution studies, and minutia of Gould's ways of thinking of the people involved in science.

The actual message is very simple; If one would "rewind the tape of evolution" (he says that a lot) to the point of the Burgess Shale and start again the odds that any of the rewinds would result in human consciousness are infinitesimal. Darwin, Charles Walcott, and most every textbook have an erroneous idea of the "cone of increasing diversity" in evolution that leads by "design" to man. I give Gould credit for not harping on the relationship (although it is mentioned) that Walcott still believed in a "designer" (God), so that influenced his thinking that "evolution was part of the mechanism", and therefore "directed". A more apt description might be "the wastebasket of evolution" and the "graveyard of creative destruction" as much of the massive diversity of the early Cambrian simply ceases to exist, and it the reasons for the destructed and the selected are unknowable to us, and probably much more "contingency" than "order".

The book drives home the point that there isn't any such "assumption of progress" or even idea that "progress" means getting to something like humans. Gould's "watchmaker" is not only blind, but purposeless. There is no thought that "a watch" is a worthy outcome. Gould seems to think that life showing up was "inevitable" (oddly, he provides no scientific basis for that, and nobody has gotten close to creating even the simplest of life in the lab).

Other than that "inevitability", even the development of the eukaryotic cell (the type we are made of, with the wall and structures in the cytoplasm) doesn't show up until 1.5 billion years ago. Gould suspects that this is another major league accident in planetary development that often wouldn't happen soon enough before sun depletion (something like 4 billion years) to give a decent chance at consciousness like ours. There is very little chance of the undirected, completely random evolutionary accident arriving at us (uh, "news at 11 I guess" ... this wasn't exactly a surprise).

I'm struck by how often very intelligent people find a flaw in one item that someone else had asserted for evidence of God, and immediately jump to the "SEE!, it isn't created!". Meanwhile, they almost always expand the odds against their own existence by some astronomical factor. Gould never provides an imagined "10 to some huge negative decimal" odds against humans showing up, but over and over he indicates how at MANY points in the random dance of evolution, if one "rewound the tape", there is no way we ever happen.

He brings up the "anthropic principle" that says "this is the universe we see, because we are here" as about the only possible explanation a dutiful atheist scientist can be left with. This explanation is pretty much "it is because it is", or "we did a lot of study, discovered that the odds against us defied explanation, so we decided that we are just here because we are".

Say you are on Death Row and I'm your lawyer. I come in and tell you that we have exhausted all appeals, but you will be released before you are executed because "I've never lost a capital case". Are you comfortable? Turns out that in the real world, I've never lost a capital case nor had one of my patients die in brain surgery! Therefore, by the sorts of odds of us being here in this universe, you ought to find me as a "reasonable choice" for a lawyer at a murder trial, or your brain surgeon if you need one! "We are here because we are" has just as much to suggest it as a wise answer philosophically.

I suppose if you are betting against God, then any explanation that lets you live without that concern is comforting. Gould allows us to stack yet another giant but unstated number against us being here on top of a stack from physics with the wonderful cosmological constant of 10 to the -120, not estimated by man, but DISCOVERED in the fabric of our universe saying, "It could be ANY number, none of the others allowing your existence.How do you like those apples?".

I find that simple premises in life tend to work best. The old "If you are in a game of chance and you don't know who the patsy is, it is probably you" has a lot of truth. That is also heavily related to "the house wins"-you just have to figure out who "the house" is. In Vegas, that is pretty easy, in the US, lots of folks would like you to believe "corporations", and I falsely went with that, thinking it was a good idea to "work for the house". Unfortunately, it is Lawyers. If you look closely at our system you find they are all the politicians, judges, and BOTH sides in any dispute. Take a look at John Edwards-oh, and BTW, how many Lawyers are running for President vs CEOs or even long term corporate employees? But I digress.

Lots of scientists and atheists seem to think that they can explain to God just how he can run his house. "If evolution doesn't look ordered to US, then it can't have INTELLIGENCE behind it"! Uh, and exactly what would it be that would give us the perspective to decide that as little more than pond scum orbiting on obscure rock on the outskirts of one obscure galaxy out of what we believe to be 100 billion galaxies in at least this universe?

If one wants to believe string theorists, that would be out of 10 to the 500 universes. Is even the definition of "intelligence" that simple? Isn't even defining what our yet not understood to ourselves consciousness does as "intelligence" in some universal sense a pinnacle of hubris WAY beyond the simple idea that the earth was the center of the universe? We have decided we KNOW the parameters within which an ultimate power can decide to create? We believe God wouldn't play dice, it looks random to us, ergo, there is no God.

I was glad to finally read a Gould book since I've heard a lot about him and seen him quoted by many atheists as a comforting; "See, he is a really smart piece mass of protein, he has done a lot of study and decided God didn't create life, so let's commit the unforgivable sin and maybe set up a website where teens can do it, because we are scientists and only think RATIONALLY".

Maybe so; if it happens that randomly generated protein arrived at the proper definition of "rational" then my hopes are in vain and life has the atheist desired lack of meaning. Strangely, it seems like other than really large odds against OUR existence, it is going to be hard to have any evidence for or against God.

How to Report War News

The linked article shows a theme picked up by the MSM to get the war back in the news in a way they find acceptable after a few months in which they have been forced to drop coverage because of not enough bad news. Headlines of "Bloodiest Year Of War" in some format or another have started to crop up, and the linked article is even better because since Afghanistan deaths can be used, they don't even need to give a hidden line on the success of the surge inside the article.

Tommy Franks was against putting more troops in Iraq mostly because more troops meant more targets and more deaths. In retrospect, that was probably wrong thinking, but it is a pretty easy sentiment to understand. When Bush was effectively backed into doing the surge, it resulted in more deaths as those more soldiers acted against the enemy, but it also resulted in the tide being turned and the locals finally beginning to pick up more of the load as well.

Can it keep working? Well, not if the Democrats and MSM have anything to do about it. The Democrats fabricated a resolution on asserted genocide in Turkey in the 19th century and successfully created a diplomatic and potentially shooting crisis in Northern Iraq. In the MSM, it is nearly as hard to find information on the surge working as it is on the stock market going up or the economy being good. Most people have no idea. Now, rather than reporting "the death of the day", we are going to report "a new record number of deaths for the year" as long as we can in order to keep the war news negative.

"Success" at this point for the Democrats and their supporting MSM involves defeat in Iraq being as clear as possible. The last few months it has looked like success in Iraq was a very real possibility, although not one that there was likely to be any significant reporting on. They appear to be making progress on a move back to defeat at this point.

Understanding Hillary

There was some coverage of Hillary taking 3-4 positions on drivers licenses for illegal immigrants in a 3 minute time span in the Democrat debate a couple of weeks ago, and then accusing Tim Russert of playing "gotcha" in trying to pin her down. This week we have Slick Willie coming out with accusations of "Swift Boating", apparently now extended to mean any criticism of a Democrat by anyone.

The video is worth taking the time to watch, because it suggests a lot about Hillary as a person. She strongly feels that she ought to have any group of positions she wants and never have to be pinned down to anything. For a Republican front-runner, a ham-handed gaff of this level would have the MSM talking "unfit", but as we charge on to the coronation, it gets barely a whisper.

I Got My Buck

It only took until age 51 to finally get a deer. Fourteen years of hunting prior to getting married, a 21 year "break", and then the last couple of years with my youngest son. I always enjoyed "the hunt", especially now that I've had the chance to spend some time in the stand with my son. There are a number of pictures out here.

The first 14 hunts I was younger and generally hunting with older hunters in NW Wisconsin farm country. I tended to be pretty impatient and unable to stay on a stand for a long while, so was usually "driving" (walking to move the deer to others). I covered a lot of brush country in those days, and did a fair bit of "road hunting"; driving around to find deer and then shoot from the road (illegally, but it was sparsely populated and not a lot of enforcement). Through a combination of poor skills, badly suited personality traits and no doubt a little bad luck, I just never quite downed a deer even though I had a number of what seemed like "golden opportunities" over the years.

One thing that likely contributed was my tendency to enjoy technology may have hurt me in deer hunting. I purchased a 30-06 semi-automatic rifle while I was in college with a 3-9X scope that I really couldn't afford. I never spent enough time shooting it to be comfortable since the ammo was also very expensive. Worse, I was usually trying to shoot at a deer 200 yards away with the scope cranked up to 9x in order to be sure of seeing antlers. A really bad combination for accuracy.

Some tendencies hold in life, especially if they at least seem to be beneficial, so I bought a 3-9x scope to put on my smooth bore 12ga for hunting this year, but the fates spared me. After 2 attempts to get sighted in I was unable to hit the target at all and was starting to panic that I'd have no gun on opening day of hunting in my new stand. I decided to purchase a cheap 20ga rifled barrel single shot open sights as a "backup" as I launched on my last ditch attempt to sight in the 12ga.

The second shot with the single was the best target shot I've ever made-completely center, and moving out to 50yards, I was able to shoot a 3in group. As things usually work, the 12ga also sighted in with ease on that outing BUT, I came to the conclusion that "simple was better" in this case. I didn't get a shot Saturday with that gun, and if I had, yet another piece of "bad luck" would have played out. Although the gun shot perfectly so I never touched the sights, apparently they weren't tightened at the factory and the perfection was random. Saturday PM I noted that the rear sight was ready to fall off the gun.

My son however decided to head for home Saturday night, so I was able to hunt with his 20ga pump open sights on Sunday AM and for a change I had a standing shot out the window of my stand, braced, through open sights, and hit the deer in the heart. Surprisingly (to me) he ran about 25 yards directly at the stand before simply falling over.

So ends my deer curse. Hopefully I will be like Boston and be able to show a new trend pretty rapidly in future years, but no matter, I will still enjoy the hunt. It is very much about the activity rather than the result, just like fishing. It is also another of those "great equalizers". The stands may be a bit nicer than my youth, the "shack" much nicer, but cool stands, guns, clothes, or camp technology won't really bring the deer in. Being able to afford expensive sabot ammo for targets is nice, but the deer have to show up AND, the accuracy has to be reproduced with a live creature out there.

Rather, senior corporate management and technical people are pretty much identical to farmers, construction workers, college kids and mechanics in deer camp. Difficulty rolling out of bed in the AM, the cold, the need for naps at noon, the appetites in high gear due to the time out of doors, stories of "the one that got away" or the "big one", just glimpsed through the brush or more imagined than real. All those memories and more translate over the 21 year gap with perfect continuity. Most of the things that the masses believe make a difference really don't, but many that they assume don't count, really do.

The hunt is one of those experiences that ties one rather closely with reality. The planning and calculations to arrange for deer and projectile to come to the same point at the same time and of course the facts of "life and death". The steak or burger on the plate is quite abstract, the connection to the living thing it came from tenuous at best. The still-warm gut sack that one can't help but realize is very much like the "power pack" that gives us our motive power is much more connected with reality. Our species is significantly better equipped for a small group to venture out in search of game than it is to conceive, design and build computer systems. True, we are ABLE to do the latter, but our natural adaptation is much more to the former. To those willing to relate to reality, hunting is almost certainly "familiar" at some basic human level.

There are of course very few "liberal hunters". The concept is very close to an oxymoron. To interact with reality in real vs imagined and ideal nature, using guns, a potent symbol of "individual rights and power" is something that isn't going to sit well with many on the left. The idea that people are allowed to have guns for any purpose is only given lip service in the interest of political calculation. Guns are one of the hated "dividing issues" as in "God, Guns and Gays", the "false issues" that the evil right uses to divide the country according the the MSM. The existence of hunting is part of the "barbarism" of the right, the left has "evolved beyond that".

Calling hunting "barbaric" in one breath, holding up human kind to be worshiped, and then explaining natural selection as taking "millions of years" in the space of a few paragraphs of thought would make perfect sense to most liberals. However, it seems pretty undeniable that we were fully adapted to hunting and it was our main manner of survival up to 10K years ago when we began the farming task. Not much in the way of natural selection happens in 10K years, so we have exactly the same human nature that we had at that point. If hunting was "barbaric" then , we are still very much "barbarians" and there is nothing the left can do to change that.

I've succeeded in the hunt. Long live the barbarians.

Tale of Two Houses

I've blogged on the contrast between Gore's house and Bush's house before, Snopes is usually pretty reliable, so it looks like the previous stories are pretty correct.

As I've said before, if the MSM covered Republicans like they are covering Gore, I'd have no problem with this not being covered. Anytime humans try to adhere to a higher standard, some level of hypocracy results, since humans, especially humans in leadership positions, are going to fall short; because "leadership" means trying to push beyond what everyone else is doing.

Gore wants to be an "environmentalist", but he falls well short. He happens to fall well short of even the "Evil George Bush". It would seem that anyone that is in the "story business" would find a story that the "supposed non-environmentalist horrible President" actually does BETTER in his personal life environmentally than the "Author, Oscar Winning and Nobel Prize winning" ex-VP Gore. Naturally, those that believe that "the press is unbiased" will see no difficulty at all with this.

The following is from an e-mail being passed around ...

House #1
A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by
natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the Sout

House #2
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground.

The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from sho! wers, s inks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

~~~~~
HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the "environmentalist" Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

Mental Health?

You have to love the Democrats. Just when Kucinich is in the news as "questioning Bush's mental health", it comes out that he saw a "large triangular UFO at Sirley McClaines house", gets asked about it in a debate, and indicates "yes, he has seen a UFO".

http://www.onthewriteside.org/2007/10/kucinich-hears-directions-from-ufos-and.html

Today he has initiated impeachment proceedings against Cheney. He is a busy man, I think the obvious question in his case wouldn't be if he has SEEN a UFO, but rather if he has PILOTED one! It only makes sense, how else would the Representative from Pluto get back and forth to his consituency?

PC Magazine 'Leopard is “by far the best operating system ever written'

In his 4.5-star (out of 5) review of Leopard, Edward Mendelson (pcmag.com) maintains that Leopard is “by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers, with dozens of new features that have real practical value.” Mendelson “found Leopard to be startlingly fast, brilliantly streamlined, and packed with conveniences an

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ReaganLot

Many Democrats took until Bill Clinton to get over the fantasy of the Kennedy "Camelot" that never was. For liberals to create a fantasy and then try to hold reality to that fantasy is somewhat expected, but it is too easy to forget that conservatives are humans too. All too human; the beautification of Reagan seems to have really gotten into high gear on the right with the disenchantment of many with W, or maybe it just takes 20 years or so to create a good fantasy.

Here we have the supposed realist Patrick Buchanan waxing nostalgic - I'll spare a lot of copying, it really isn't worth reading, but have to bring in one paragraph:

Reagan defined conservatism for his time. And the issues upon which we agreed were anti-communism, a national defense second to none, lower tax rates to unleash the engines of economic progress, fiscal responsibility, a strict-constructionist Supreme Court, law and order, the right-to-life from conception on and a resolute defense of family values under assault from the cultural revolution that hit America with hurricane force in the 1960s

Eeek! Yes, the "good old days"! Lower tax rates? Certainly not relative to Social Security--nor even purely on general, Pat must have lost the budget deal of '86. Fiscal Responsibility? Huge deficits were a hallmark of the Reagan years. Strict Constructionist court? Does the name Sandra Day O'Connor ring a bell? Actually, I give Kennedy even lower marks, he signed on with the left on Kelo, and when private property goes, the very foundation of any rights are gone. Kelo is right in the running with Roe for worst abdication of the role of supporting the constitution in history, and we have a Reagan appointee with the majority on Kelo, and a Reagan appointee as the swing vote supporting Roe.

Abortion? Yes, the words were nice, but there wasn't even an attempt to actually move on anything. W got rid of partial birth, it shows a certain dis ingeniousness on Pat's part to not remember that Reagan did precisely NOTHING on that issue. "Family values"? Again, words are nice, but I'm not sure that I see anything of reality to point to as Reagan being any stronger than GW for example.

Republicans USED to be known as "the party of fiscal conservatism", but it was REAGAN more than anyone else that destroyed that issue for the party. I'm not saying that I "completely disagree"--it is VERY hard to win anything being "the party that says no", but making a decision and then claiming you never did takes "honesty and consistency" off the conservative table and then what you have left is called liberalism. I don't really think Pat wants to go there.

It is true that Republicans can see themselves as "victims of their success" relative to the loss of the USSR as the all-purpose enemy. It is apparent that Terrorism just isn't ideologically satisfying enough for guys like Pat, but it can take a few decades to fully develop a really good villain for some. Pat may need a few more 9-11s before he sees them as worthy of attention at a purist level, unfortunately after we take the HillBama plunge in '08, I expect that the Terrorists will help Pat see that the new evil can kill a few millions too, once you get "incompetent" folks like W and Cheney out of the way.

I'm not sure it makes any difference who is the Republican front runner. The navel gazing and wishing for the past seems like the prevalent Republican sentiment. I suspect after 4-8 years of 100% Democrat rule a few will start to realize that purity, navels and history are all nice but the real world tends to be more messy and tends to "intrude" on introspection and wishes after a bit. I don't believe in living by relativism, but only a fool thinks it isn't a factor. We tend to operate by "compared to what" and the frog boiling is always an issue.

Having said all of the above, I very much believe in Reagan and consider him EASILY the greatest President of the 20th century. The REAL Reagan, not an imaginary one. To buy into a fantasy Reagan reflects badly on the real meaning of what Reagan stood for.

Pat and many Republicans are comparing today with a vision of Reagan that never was. When they have the opportunity to compare the real experience of a number of years of HillBama, etc with the crop of Republicans running in the future, the bar will be at a different place and the tune will change. Words and ideas are powerful, but many times it takes experience before true understanding is gained.

McCain Blogger Interview

Good short summary of a McCain interview. The Powerline argument on waterboarding (which is in opposition to McCain) is pretty hard to argue with. Anyone that doesn't give the US the "moral high ground" compared to al Quaeda is probably enough a relativist that any moral high ground they might aspire to is pretty much a swamp.

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Media myths about the Jena 6

A local Jena Journalist gives another side of the MSM story of racism. Is this side all true? I have no way of knowing, but on NPR and CNN, this was a story for which there was "no other side". I'm always suspicious when a story only has one side. Much like the Duke Lacrosse team which was finally exonerated, the MSM isn't likely to go back and point out that the story isn't nearly as one dimensional as they indicated in their sensational reporting of the "racist side".

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Sharp drop seen in US deaths in Iraq

BAGHDAD - October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths and Americans commanders say they know why: the U.S. troop increase and an Iraqi groundswell against al-Qaida and Shiite militia extremists.This is AP, so not one of the more "right wing" sources. Reading the whole article is worthwhile-lots of military and Iraqi discussion on WHY the surge is working and how we can get to overall success. Expect this news to be generally buried in the MSM as it has during the whole surge process and resulting improvement in Iraq. The MSM and the Democrats decided "Iraq is hopeless", and it isn't likely that they will give up on that track since anything like success could be quite positive for Bush and therefore negative for Democrat prospects in '08. I expect their general control over the sheep is too great, and we are still headed to a Democrat landslide and the most damaging withdrawal they can arrange. Seeing Iraq as a "Fiasco" is central to their thinking, and having facts get in the way has never been a weakness of the Democrats or MSM. When one is a liberal it is NEVER either too early or too late to declare hopelessness and defeat in any endeavor!We all have emotions, one of the cleavages between left and right is if we believe that the world MUST match our emotions. Those of the left tend say "absolutely"-the world owes them behavior that matches what they feel, both positive and negative. Those that they hate need to fail, and the one that they love the most (self) needs to always be seen as "good or victim". Those that they "love" are those that make their world view seem more real. Those on the right, believing that the highest functions are logical rational have desires, but understand that these may or not be met. Results that match with desire often require lots of effort, time, thought, flexibility and just plain old "luck". Success is never assured for anything worthwhile, and failure is always within reach by just quitting. Such is the world, Iraq is a great example of the difference between the two types of people.

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Power Line: Best line of the campaign so far

"In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend one million dollars on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."I'm not a McCain person, but it is very hard to beat this for humor in politics!

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Wicked

My Son's marching band performed to music from this musical, and the Sophomore-Seniors had went down to Chicago to see it last spring while my son was yet a freshman. We journeyed to the Oriental Theater in downtown Chicago to see it Friday evening.

First of all, in entertainment value, acting, music, etc, it was a great evening. They did a find job and I loved the play. At the human emotional level, it draws you in, and you identify with the "Wicked Witch" and come to understand at least a bit how things could have gone so wrong for her.

My guess though is that the author of the book and the developers of the play would like one to get a whole lot more out of the tale than just "a nice evening". Most artists would. The original is a classic morality play-Good / Evil, and good wins in the end. Like many a modern portrayal, the update is a lot more complex. Modern artists find that to be much better, more "realistic". I find that a bit interesting-do we need our art to be "realistic" in that way, or is that even a reasonable concept?

We are all well aware of the complexity of the real world-sometimes good people suffer and die horribly and the worst of the evil prosper. Like everything else, modern art wants to let us know that there is no transcendence -- the evil aren't really evil and the good are at least not as good as they seem, and maybe not even good at all. Many things aren't what we think they are, and maybe there are no answers at all. We who are alive and have some even slight level of life examination know that. Do we need art to try to drive it home as well?

The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory

Not very sensible, but kind of a good read.

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The Smartest Futurist On Earth, or at least Bill Gates thinks so.

If legendary inventor Ray Kurzweil is right, the future will be a lot brighter - and weirder - than you think.I've enjoyed his books and I've been lucky enough to hear him speak. Ray may be "out there", but it is great to hear someone positive once in awhile in this world where everyone has way more to be happy about than at any time in history, but most find a reason to be negative anyway!

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Consilience

https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X

I've been reading more books than I've been Blogging on. I just finished "Consilience" by Edward O. Wilson. A previous author of two Pulitzer prize winning books; "On Human Nature", and "The Ants". The term "consilience" refers to the "unity of knowledge", how discoveries in one field can be critical to others. One can view the physical world as a layered architecture where physics is the "base", with chemistry and biology on top, followed by all the social sciences, politics, the arts, religion, etc.

Wilson has the vision that it COULD all be linked together so that we would truly understand our universe. He strongly laments the "post modernist" view that "all points of view are equally valid" - not surprising for a scientist. He seems much more willing to entertain the potential for divinity than many scientists, even though for himself, he is a materialist. He DOES seem to realize at least part of the horror of a universe where there is no transcendence, but he sees the risks of transcendence as too high -- mostly on the environmental front. He sums up the materialist vs transcendent views as "The uncomfortable truth is the the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure".

That is an interesting statement in that I would question whether any human will acquire a "full measure" of EITHER of those areas separately either. However, to come to a conclusion of what that which completely transcends the physical can do, seems a bit presumptuous. Man is so quick to set limits on what it is that God can do, it is good God has us around to lock those limits in on infinite power since we are so "intelligent" (just ask us). While we seem good at providing limits for the infinite, it is strange that we seem less inclined to limit ourselves.

He makes a good comment on the state of knowledge and information in the world; "We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it and make important choices wisely". I think he is right on that at some level, and he also points out in the book how important it is to place the information into context with other knowledge, and even make it into a "story". He does seem to have some real insight into human nature.

He waits until the very end of the book to get into environmental doom and gloom. He sees us as rushing headlong to destruction of the planet, and has decided that "somehow" man needs to "morally" pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and see vast control on development and technology as "the only moral thing to do".

A neat trick for a strict materialist to come up with, apparently a new form of human brain will somehow "evolve" and suddenly operate with this "environmental moral imperative" in the next few decades? It seems unlikely to me that randomness should have bequeathed us with this function, and in a materialist universe we are just going to have to wait around for a few million years of "survival of the fittest" and hope that the right kind of "morals" for environmentalism randomly fall out the back end of the random process. 

If such doesn't happen, that must mean that "the right kind of morals" just didn't randomly arise at "the right time" and the great roulette wheel of randomness will just keep spinning along without us. Small loss in a cold godless universe!

It is nice to see that even strict materialists have "hope" -- I'm thinking that he may want to invest more in lottery tickets with his faith in the great god of the dice. It seems so strange that a random process would generate a brain that questions the outcome of the random process (the existing state of the world), yet somehow believes that one of the outputs of that random process (us) is somehow responsible -- and soon to be "morally mandated" to "fix it".

Goracle Peace Prize

Al is a Nobel Prize winner! He invented the internet, provided the model for "Love Story", personally flew down to the Texas fires with James Lee Witt, but now he has a a real win to go with some of his imaginary ones.

Given the list of people below, I think he fits right in.

2005 MOHAMED ELBARADEI -- Fantastic UN nuke inspector. Iran, North Korea, you name it, it keeps them all under control!

2004 WANGARI MAATHAI. A Kenyan ecologist who teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the industrialized nations.

2002 JIMMY CARTER JR., Was apparently an OK peanut farmer, but that was the peak of his ability. Has never met a foreign policy situation he couldn't make even worse.

2001 KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Managed to preside over Saddam lining various pockets with something like $20 Billion from the UN "Oil for food" (or more accurately "Palaces for Saddam") program

1994 YASSER ARAFAT, A guy that never met a Jews he didn't want to provide as painful a death as possible.

1992 RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Wrote the fake but not even close to true book "I, Rigoberta Menchu."

1988 THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES, Great group of folks that couldn't stop a sorority pillow fight, but are darned competent at various forms of rape and child abuse around the world.

Democrats Attack Turkey

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. Turkey has recalled their ambassador since the Democrats have decided it is time to label a pre-WWI action in Turkey as "genocide". I'm sure the fact that Turkey is one of the only allies in the region in the War on Terror with 70% of the air cargo and 30% of the fuel going through there has NOTHING to do with it.

The Democrats are real "bridge builders", in this case to Armenians that have been dead since before WWI. Just a small harbinger of the kind of inciteful foreign policy that we can look forward to when they take over completely in '08.

Oh, and on CNN, the HEADLINE was some Iraqi families sue Blackwater ... this did make the side headlines if one looked, but we DO know what CNN considers important. Nobody would ever accuse the MSM and the Democrats of overtly working to assure defeat in Iraq would they? No, deciding that a time when we have troops in harms way that depend on supplies through an ally is a GREAT time to "get the record straight" on something that happened 100 years ago!

Selling to the Lowest Bidder

Powerline has a good post on Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell. It contains one piece of logic on the idea of "Uncle Tom" Blacks, a charge variously leveled against any Black that claims a conservative position at any time; Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell ... all of them.

"You don't sell out to the lowest bidder". All of these people are extremely intelligent people, they are well aware of the price they pay to hold a conservative position. Given the society that we live in, accomplished Black people of their level of ability are nearly certain to be highly successful, AND, if they hold the "proper" political views, popular to the point of canonization.

Instead, people like Thomas have the strength of character to hold the positions that they believe in and face countless cruel attacks, usually with generally good humor and a lack of anger. Meanwhile, liberals and the MSM repeat like a mantra that "they have sold out". Clarence Thomas is far more intelligent than I, he knows the price he pays. I don't even have the intelligence to see through the most simple of MSM scams it seems-thanks to Powerline, I now see this one.

Best Economy Ever?

Powerline asserts that the current Bush economy may be the "Best Economy Ever". Is it? I don't have the time to go do research, but I can bet that the MSM won't be giving us any information on it if it was doing well, and they certainly seem to be avoiding that. Lots of job growth over a long period, lots of income growth and the stock market back at record highs.

In August as the sub-prime mortgage meltdown impacted the market and the Fed took actions though, the media had quite a lot to say. I notice that they never went back into the origins of the sub-prime mortgage market-a short perusal of the web looks like it showed up as a major option in the late '90s. I wonder who was President then? No doubt the whole deal was a very good idea, just "poorly executed" by the incompetent Bush.

I love how adding liquidity to the FEDERAL RESERVE system, which is "government banking" (something that one would think that liberals would LOVE) is viewed as "helping the wealthy". Avoiding a recession is pretty helpful to most everyone, and it appears that we have avoided it for at least the moment. No cause for celebration in the MSM though-keeping Clinton in was critical to the late '90s economy, even though it crashed in March of 2000, with him still in the White House. In those days though, the loss of $6 Trillion of internet bubble bursting stock market capitalization and all the econimic indicators sinking like rocks was no news story at all. In those days, only good economic news was worth printing.

I suppose if one is a liberal, it is difficult to figure out what changed.

Winnie

I'm sitting in the Hilton Austin now on business, but last week I was up at Williams Narrows Resort on Lake Winnibigosh in NE MN on the annual fall fishing trip. Fishing was "fine" from Saturday through Monday night with a reasonable number, some keepers and some in the slot at 17-20", but just average. The weather those first few days was GREAT though, so it was a lot of fun to be away from work and outdoors having fun.

Monday PM the cold front came through and there was rain, but as sometimes happens in the fall, it turned them on and the action picked up for Tuesday and Wed. Most of the fish were on bars in 15-20', but some were caught up to 30' deep and as shallow as 5'. Some action on the N shore of the main lake, but most of the action was in Cutfoot Souix.

My new 80lb thrust trolling motor worked GREAT. I've never felt that my Tyee was controllable in wind with my old troller. This one plays with it and I can put the boat exactly where I want when I want it there ... and I can pull it around to troll cranks. All agreed it was the best upgrade that I've ever put on the boat in it's the 15 years I've had it. In combination with the onboard charger and the glass mat batteries, it just worked completely like a charm.

Very odd to be out fishing from Saturday-Thursday, home Thursday night and Friday night, and now out on the road and not getting back until Friday evening. Guess I'm getting to be a homebody.

The New Hillary Clinton

Powerline picked up a great little quote here:

Whenever I grow soft on the new Hillary Clinton -- the termperate, moderate, responsible senator who does her homework, ably represents her constituents, and respects those who may disagree with her -- it occurs to me that maybe I'm just engaging in the willing suspension of disbelief. I used to fall for every new Nixon, too.

That may be where we have seen her before. The "Zelig like" personality changes-radical in College, lawyer, doting Governor and Candidate's wife, firebrand firing the White House travel staff and running the secret healthcare talks, etc, etc. ... is she Hillary Rodham, Hillary Clinton, or Hillary Rodham-Clinton today? The laugh that sounds like it comes from some house of horrors tells us; both, all, and none of the above.

Discriminating Traveler

Sitting in the Starbucks at O'Hare out on a business trip for the first time since my '01 trip to Germany. It seems amazing to consider, I used to travel a ton for a few years, and probably prior to '01 averaged 3 to 4 trips a year. Most of it is "corporate austerity"-in the age of management of all the numbers on a quarter by quarter basis for stock price, every dollar counts. I've been convinced a number of times that it also leads to the phenomenon of "penny wise and pound foolish". We often struggle along with e-mail and telecons when a face to face could really speed things up, but of course that leads to the other reason for less travel. The fact that we CAN travel less. We have the technology. It may not be the best choice, but it can be done. Technology always requires us to be more intentional in what we do-it allows us to do more things, but where and how we make use of it is up to us!

O'Hare hasn't really changed a lot in the 30 years that I've been passing through here from time to time on personal or business travel. The laptops, iPods and high quality coffee are new. The other thing that is new getting into the system of course, the security. Sometimes our system of government really does create the "worst of all worlds". We end up with a government employed, unionized, slow-motion, minimum service TSA cadre of people and EVERYONE has to "go through the system".

It is pretty amazing to see them taking the shoes from a very elderly lady in a wheelchair. The odds against a plane crash are high, but they are pretty much a "dead certainty" compared to the odds that she is a terrorist! Does constant exposure to that level of stupidity corrupt the mind so that the MSM and the "general view" make the common public sheep unable to think critically? It may; it also increases the chances falling into the relativism that would equate something relatively innocuous like "sex sells", or "3.99 seems less than $4.00 more so than it really is", with a complete perversion of logic AND human nature that says "profiling is bad".

From the materialist point of view, the ability to discriminate on predictive patterns is very close to a complete and optimal definition of intelligence! To assert that "discrimination" (profiling) is "wrong" is to subvert everything that we have determined about intelligence in the service of postmodern nihilism. Sadly, most of the sheep can't tell the difference between what IS required (better airport security), and what is NOT required (taking granny's shoes)! The discussion about what is in between can be long and contentious, but at least it would be a RATIONAL discussion, and those are a significant part of what it is to advance as opposed to decline as a civilization.

Since I broached the subject, our world is loaded with countless little idiosyncrasies that we may or may not notice because they are in general "human oriented". No matter how much any of us may believe that we are somehow more observant or more cognizant, or deeper analysts than our fellow man, we remain fully human with all the characteristics that entails. For example, humans are wired to notice sex, and human males are especially adept at picking out a female form from virtually any background. A man was on a news show while I was up fishing had his sight restored after 40 years of being blind. When someone asked him something that he would like to see in another interview, he had blurted out "a topless beach" - which Dianne Sawyer brought up much to the chagrin of his wife.

He was honest about something that our socialization trains us to not be honest about-and this is one origin of the error of Rousseau's and many liberals thinking. We ARE, certainly human, BUT, happiness doesn't result from deciding that all human whims are to be honored. Being blind through adolescence the blind guy no doubt missed out on a ton of socialization training related to bare breasts and thus fell prey to making an inappropriate public comment. Pretty easy to understand and forgive (although it didn't appear that it was quite so easy for his wife).

The socialization works, but the wiring is still there, so marketers take advantage of this.

Similarly, we are "bad with numbers"-- we relate to numeric "milestones" in irrational ways. We don't have as large a celebration for 49th or 51st birthdays than we do for 50, even though given the passage of a half century of time, a year of age is much less significant. We PERCEIVE 49 to be "40's" and because of it, think far differently of 49 vs 50 than we should from a purely numeric view. Likewise, we see "less than $4" as a boundary, even though $3.99 is a lot more trouble than just rounding it up to $4.

The "error" is taking something that "doesn't make logical sense" -- preferring a female form to frog, or seeing $3.99 as more significantly less than $4.00 than it is, and seeing that as "the same" as saying "no profiling". Recognition that we are human and have human thought and emotion patterns is VERY rational at a secondary level.

It is in fact TRUE, we ARE human. Once we know that we are "being taken advantage of" because of our nature, we can decide to be more wary, but in MANY contexts, we will still see "human oriented" as VERY good. It will make products easy to use, because they are "natural". When we think a product is well-designed, it is ALWAYS from the human perspective (the only one most of us have --although those that work with computers also have a pretty decent handle as to what makes sense to a computer, eg. powers of 2).

This discussion quickly moves back to the discussion of transcendence. If human nature is to be "the highest good", then our answers to life are going to be radically different than if we arrive at the view that reason, and potentially spiritual insights can be an IMPROVEMENT on human nature. The line between "rational transcendence" and "social truth" is however a key cleavage to be aware of. Deciding to not profile says that "society" can and should make judgements that are both "anti-human" (they short circuit one of our basic abilities, the ability to "improve our odds" through discerning and applying predictive patterns) and "anti-rational" in that they are simply illogical and ineffective.

Pricing something at $3.99 vs $4.00 is certainly not rational in a scientific or ease of use sense -- but it is very much oriented to how humans see numbers from a marketing view.

Taking the shoes off an old lady in a wheel chair is fundamentally against any human orientation as in "respect for elders", "treating those less fortunate with added deference", and simply that everyone watching at a fundamental human level knows this is foolish! It of course makes no rational sense either; it is ineffective, it wastes the time of all concerned. The only "value" is to the left-leaning elements of society that are able to impose their will in a way that is fundamentally nihilistic in nature. It signals us all that we are under their power and it teaches us to COMPLY.

"We prohibit you from doing what is rational and human in the name of our abhorrence of a natural human characteristic (like prefers like), that we have decided to negate. In the same breath, we choose to honor as supreme many other characteristics simply because they are human".

This is an answer that in the final analysis leads to a decision that "there is no objective truth; all truth is a social construct". This is the cutting edge in post-modernist relativistic thought. Rousseau was one of the seminal thinkers in this foolishness. They believe reality is a state constructed by the mind, not perceived by it, so everyone's "truth" has merit.

There have always been two kinds of thinkers; one sees disorder and tries to create order, one sees order and seeks to create disorder. The nice thing is that the last 300 years especially have shown us that in the end "order always wins", BUT, since we are still human, the "order" has to be put into a "good story" (narrative, "myth"), or we won't be able to really understand it as humans. We are also prone to see order where it isn't and to falsely correlate things that are similar but different, and of course we are very capable of just being wrong.

All that comes with the limitations of our nature, BUT, when we expose ourselves in explicit mass to irrationality, I suspect that the overall effect on the population is quite corrosive.

Stunning Democrat Change

I have to agree with Chris Dodd that I'm stunned that Hillary, Obama, and Edwards would all not commit to having the troops out of Iraq by 2013. This is an excerpt from that CNN article:

STORM LAKE, Iowa (CNN) – At a campaign stop in rural Iowa Saturday Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, said he was stunned by the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina, would not commit to having all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by 2013.

Since I'm convinced that we are likely to have Hillary and Obama as President and VP, such rationality would be a wonderful thing if true. I'm an optimist, so I like to be hopeful, it COULD be that they have far more in statesmanship than it has appeared so far, and they have come to realize from the progress that there is no reason that Iraq has to be a costly defeat for America.

I'm also a realist however, they are politicians and I remember Bush Sr's "No new taxes" pledge. Even worse, they are Democrats that know that they will not be held to what they say ... their statements happened the middle of last week, and other than this little item in the CNN political ticker, it has been hard to find that they even said it. The MSM and most Democrats still realize that there is no way that terrorists could defeat a united America-they also know that a defeat in Iraq is better for their political power. I'm afraid that in the final analysis, that is what will win, BUT, I would love to see it be true. That is the weakness of the right, even though we know the odds are against it, we believe in redemption, and hope that even a Hillary Clinton can come to see the wisdom of persistence and strength.

The Myth of the Rational Voter

clipped from www.townhall.com Stupid, Ignorant or Biased? President Franklin D. Roosevelt's closest adviser and architect of the New Deal, Harry Hopkins, advised, "Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference." Professor Bryan Caplan, my colleague at George Mason University, sheds some light on Hopkins' observation in his new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies." Caplan is far more generous than Hopkins. Instead, he says people harbor economic biases, several of which he discusses.

FDR perfected the idea of buying votes, but never paid the cost because he was smart enough to use devices like Social Security that wouldn't explode until decades after his death, and he was lucky enough to have WWII to end the depression. The full article here is WELL worth reading so I'll copy it in, and it looks like the book will be as well.

We live in a country where the advantages of market vs government control and greater individual responsibility and choice are very evident. We don't need to take our own experience, we can look at England, Ireland, China, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and others and see the same rules play out. No small set of people in a centralized government can be as smart as the votes of millions and billions of people acting in a market. One wouldn't think that actually required as much thought as it seems to, but apparently it does. Since most of the basic biases discussed here are simply liberal biases and the MSM tends to agree with that point of view, the general public hears them stated as "fact" day in and day out.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's closest adviser and architect of the New Deal, Harry Hopkins, advised, "Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference." Professor Bryan Caplan, my colleague at George Mason University, sheds some light on Hopkins' observation in his new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies."  Caplan is far more generous than Hopkins. Instead, he says people harbor economic biases, several of which he discusses. There's the anti-market bias, the failure to believe that market forces determine prices. Many believe that prices are a function of a CEO's intentions and conspiracies. If a CEO wakes up feeling greedy, he'll raise prices. They also believe that profits are undeserving gifts. They fail to see that, at least in open markets, profits are incentives for firms to satisfy customers, find least-cost production methods and move resources from low-valued to high-valued uses.  A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, September 18, 2007. The U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday slashed benchmark U.S. interest rates by a half-percentage point in a bold bid to buffer the economy from a housing slump and related financial market turbulence. The unanimous decision by the central bank's Federal Open Market Committee took the overnight federal funds rate down to 4.75 percent, its lowest level since May of last year. The Fed also lowered the discount rate it charges for direct loans to banks by a half-point to 5.25 percent. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (UNITED STATES) Related Media: VIDEO: Economy And Fed In Spotlight VIDEO: FOX 5 News | Rasmussen Report: Iraq vs. Economy Then there's the make-work bias, where many believe that labor is better to use than conserve. Thus, the destruction of jobs is seen as a danger. Technology, as well as outsourcing, throws some people out of work. Caplan reminds us that in 1800 it took nearly 95 of every 100 Americans, working on farms, to feed the nation. In 1900, it took 40. Today, it takes three. Workers no longer needed to farm became available to produce homes, cars, pharmaceuticals, computers and thousands of other goods. Caplan doesn't make the equation, but outsourcing, just as technological innovation, frees up labor to produce other things as well. Next is the anti-foreign bias. Caplan explains that there are two methods for Americans to have cars. One is to get a bunch of workers into Detroit factories. Another is to grow a lot of wheat in Iowa. You harvest the wheat, load it on ships sailing westward on the Pacific Ocean, and a few months later the ships reappear loaded down with Toyotas. We have cars as if we produced them. In other words, exchange is an alternative method of production. Added to the anti-foreign bias is the balance-of-trade fallacy. Caplan says that nobody loses sleep over whether there's a trade balance between California and Nevada, or between him and iTunes. Trade balance fears arise only when another country is involved. The fallacy is not treating all purchases as a cost but only foreign purchases as a cost. There might be another bias as well. Caplan reports that, according to an opinion survey, 28 percent of Americans admitted they dislike Japan but only 8 percent dislike England and a scant 3 percent dislike Canada. People have a pessimistic bias where they believe economic conditions are not as good as they really are and things are going from bad to worse. This is the message of doomsayers, but the reality is quite different. By any measure of well-being, Americans at the start of this century are far better off than Americans at the beginning of the last century. Perennial doom-and-gloom predictions about resource depletion, overpopulation and environmental quality are exaggerated and often the opposite of the truth. Preaching doom and gloom has been beneficial to the political class. They use it to gain more power and control.  Caplan is one of George Mason University Economics Department's up-and-coming young scholars. In fact, I'm proud to say, he was hired during my department chairmanship. "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies" is a highly readable and interesting political-economic discussion of why we choose bad policies. Those policies are harmful to the general public but beneficial to particular interest groups who gain from restrictions on peaceable, voluntary exchange. Maybe that's why our founders loathed a democracy and gave us a republic -- which we've lost.

All In the Family: NYT and MoveOn.org

Those Republicans, can't they just shut up and sit down? Yes, Giuliani is talking, but what is important is the the MSM makes sure it is clear that HE is talking, other than lebeling him as an "R" (which means "don't tust him"), they have nothing to say on the likes of MoveOn calling a current military commander a liar and a betrayer of the country he is sworn to serve. It is pretty doubful if any of the left even understands the concept of honor and being willing to die for principles.

Hillary came close to calling Petraeus a "liar". The idea that Hillary has any concept of anything related to "truth or honor" is ridiculous. Hillary always was and always will be about "power for Hillary". It makes no difference what cost it takes for her to get that.

When the Swift Boat guys were out, we heard a lot of complaints about "how bad those orgs are". Of course MoveOn? Not a problem; "All in the Family" for the NYT.

clipped from politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com Giuliani blasts NY Times for MoveOn ad (CNN) — MoveOn.org's New York Times ad calling into question Gen. David Petraeus' testimony before Congress drew more Republican ire Thursday — this time over the price the non-profit political advocacy group paid for the full-page ad. The New York Post, citing MoveOn.org, reported Thursday that the organization paid $65,000 for the ad, calling it a $116,000 discount from the Times' usual $167,000 price. That prompted a pair of GOP presidential candidates to complain. MoveOn.org's ad appeared in the Times on Tuesday, the first day of Petraeus' testimony. Under the headline "General Petraeus or General Betray Us," the ad said that the top military commander in Iraq "will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war." It also suggested that Petraeus' testimony was influenced by the White House.