Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil was at St Thomas in St Paul Wednesday night and I was lucky enough to get to listen to his talk. I'd rate it as maybe the fastest 90min lecture that I've sat through. I've Blogged on "The Singularity Is Near" previously. Ray is a strict materialist atheist that is EXTREMELY optimistic about technology. As readers of this Blog know, while I believe in realism, I'd much prefer to listen and read someone that errs on the side of optimism than pessimism. There is great plenty of that.

He discussed "designer drugs". Formerly we took compounds that seemed to do what we want (lower BP, decrease pain, remove fluids, etc) and messed with them vs trial and error. We are now able to look at how systems in the body work and design drugs that affect the systems in the way we want. Two examples are a pill that prevents the body from storing fat, and one that raises the HDL cholesterol enough to actually clean out arteries. These two drugs are supposed to be on the market in less than five years and should radically change health care and how good people look at the beach.

He believes that all his fantastic predictions for medicine, nanotech, high speed computing and AI are in fact "conservative" even though they sound off the wall. Two examples of his predictions, are that he predicted the internet in the mid-90's and a computer beating a human and chess before the millennium. In the early '90s, he was being mocked by people saying they didn't see any internet, and the chess programs were terrible compared to even a master level human. Both predictions came to pass right on schedule.

I don't tend to believe that many of his predictions will come true, BUT, "hopeful" is very nice to see these days since there is so much of "hopeless". I believe Ray is very much close to the truth than those who are sure that nothing good is going to happen.

Fahrenheit 911

I figured that a Netflix rental 2-years after the fuss shouldn't line Michael Moore's coffers too much, so I finally forced myself to sit through it. My biggest impression is "an orgy of innuendo", the movie really comes out and says very little. It strongly insinuates that Bush knew of 911 in advance because of ties with the Saudis in advance maybe even ties with the Bin Ladin family. The "points" are all made with lots of music for the "appropriate" emotional response ... No doubt Moore enjoyed "Triumph of the Will".

Richard Clark, the book writer that "could tell Condi didn't know who Bin Ladin was when he talked to her" shows up on tape. He is a good source, Condi is on tape on a ton of radio programs talking about the threat from Bin Ladin years before Clark was able to expertly "read her face". With great spies like that, it is no wonder the Clinton administration did such a bang up job on terrorists. Somehow no mention of the Clinton history.

Afghanistan might have been mostly about building a big oil pipeline for UniCal ... maybe Bush had ties to the Taliban too. But the general message is sort of made that "any kind of war is bad" ... so maybe Bush shouldn't have responded anywhere at all.

Iraq, apparently under Saddam is portrayed as a relative garden spot, hard to tell that the Iraqi people would have any problems under Saddam. Bush may have attacked them because of his Daddy, likely for Haliburton or maybe because he just wants to keep the whole US in fear. It could be all of the above, but the music, the tone, and the words let you know that Bush is sinister and wrong. Iraq is of course "like Vietnam" ... With desert rather than jungle, Muslims rather than Buddhists, and oil rather than rice ... "Like" in any case.

The end of the movie gives gives the exaggerated idea that the military is a "place for the poor". It is much more a "place for the rural and southern". No matter, he leads on to the "essential liberal assertion about America" ... no class mobility, corrupt a place where "decent people don't have a chance". The corrupt US system is massively rigged against the poor and black, even Al Gore wants to disenfranchise them. Oh yes, and of course we all know that Bush stole the election of 2K ... "a bunch of independent studies" show that Gore won ... only NONE of the studies by even liberal papers, universities, or other groups that were even remotely following any sort of repeatable procedure showed that. Mikes own study did though, so that must be it.

We do live in a great country where a massively overweight multi-millionaire can make a piece of political propaganda in an election year and have it treated like a "documentary" by the MSM. No matter, Bush won again, and we have been pretty much spared listening to Moore since. Thanks be to God!

Waterloo John Deere

My wife and I spent the day today at the John Deere tractor assembly plant in Waterloo IA watching her brothers 8330 4x4 tractor built on the assembly line as part of their "Gold Key Program". Giant facility, over 1K workers, lots of automation, and a lot of huge tractors. I need to get a blog written on the book "1776" that I just finished, but suffice to say that the manufacturing capability that we take so much for granted wasn't available in 1776, and for long after ... Henry Ford in the early 20th century kicked it off. It works very well today.

We had a retired assembly worker assinged to the four of us all day long. We got some heavy duty steel to wear around our shoes, safety glasses and gloves, and were able to mix right in with the assembly workers on the line. We got to put on a decal, attach a fender, put the lug nuts in on a wheel, and the brother-in-law got to start it up and drive it off the assembly line. An excellent piece of customer relations by John Deere, and a very enjoyable day for me.

It again reminded me of how human the supposed "faceless corporation" is. I've traveled to a number of different sites in this country and overseas in my own 28-year corporate career, and there are remarkable similarities. Corporations are all made up of pretty normal people, generally from a lot of fairly humble backgrounds. From the levels of people that I've been able to get to know in some depth over a so-far ("bottom" to upper mid-level), they are generally pretty dedicated, have a decent level of persistence and have a basic understanding of what business means ... providing a quality service or product in a manner that a profit can be made so stockholders are willing to keep investing in the business, and customers are willing to keep buying.

They also tend to generally be "nice people", a great part of that I suspect coming from they see the "system as working" since they are playing a part in it, and are very willing to be friendly with certainly customers, but quite commonly other people in general, and often even competitors. That doesn't mean they don't compete, any more than baseball players shaking hands after the game means that the game is somehow "rigged". It means that they understand that competition and alternatives are key to our (and increasingly the world) economy.

A marked contrast to the "angry left", a few of which even manage to work inside companies. Since they are pretty much convinced that "everything is broken" ... Economy, society, family, gas prices, business in general, stock market, foreign policy ... you name it, they can only have any sort of relationship with you if you are as mad as they are. Seeing any glass at all as "half full", or "improving", let alone "good enough" is in direct conflict with their world view, and enough to label you as someone not worthy of their association.

There still is real manufacturing in the USA with at least a few thousand jobs that I got to see personally, and since the orders for the tractors are backed up 5-6 months, it seems to be going very well, no matter what the media might like to tell you.

Lay Brings Out Some Honesty from Left

I'm always amazed when the folks on the left accidently lift the veil of what makes them tick just a bit and we get to see inside. Enron and Ken Lay (along with Bush and Cheney) are cases where they open that veil. As I heard on the NPR story, while the left has endless sympathies for terrorists and criminals of all stripes except Republican. Once their strange form of "morality", based on their own model of "what feels good is good" kicks in, they realize that revenge "feels good", so why not torture?

I know, some of you are thinking, he has to be making this up, but although the author decides to euphamize it as "chi-chi", he clearly comes to the conclusion that torture is what he would really have liked to see happen to Ken Lay.
Post:Ken Lay's Last Evasion

This quote shows that deep down, your average liberal understands. His own editorial should be more than enough to notice that yes, savagery isn't really below the surface at all when it comes to the folks that the liberals hate. They are ready to attack and torture as soon as they get their shot.

but so many people may well have responded to the news of Lay's untimely death by feeling cheated, by saying that death wasn't good enough for him, by sensing a frustrated craving for revenge burning in their backbrains like a fire in a tire dump.

Is it possible that a micron below the surface of our liberal and enlightened beliefs lurks savagery? Was the French Enlightenment wrong about our essential goodness, and were the medieval churchmen right about our innate depravity?

The liberal brain is focused on feeling. It is how things make them feel that counts as morality, and in general, the feeling impulse will take us back to childhood. They didn't like the idea that their parents, schoolteachers, or pastors had "power". Power to make them feel "less than perfect", or to force them to do things that didn't make them feel good. They also noticed that their parents and other in authority "had more". They built up feeling of resentment for people that they saw as "having more". Almost always they see however those people got more as "wrong". In a situation like Ken Lay, they find their feelings to be validated, so they are allowed to express their outrage.

Although liberals try to elevate feelings to the level of the spritual and sublime, feelings tend to be quite primitive. For the author of this piece to use the analogy of "a primitive tribe" to express his desire to torture Ken Lay is a pretty transparent symbol.

Note that the very same person would very likely abhor Abu Grahb, Guantanemo, the death penalty in the US, or any other treatment of other prisoners that they would find to be less than commendable. How can this be? They see Ken Lay (or Bush/Cheney) as "inhuman", but they don't assign that view to terrorists or other criminals. Why? The liberal is God, there is no higher power, and any inkling of someone that really is a "higher power" ... through political position, money, or something else, and isn't in agreement with the liberal is "evil" ... but a criminal or terrorist that isn't directly seen as attacking the liberal is not a threat. They are seen as "lower status", or even "victims" and thus worthy of good treatment, understanding, and compassion.

Liberalism is the essence of humanity. We are naturally liberals. We have to be somehow "saved" ... in some combination of a religous, intellectual, philisophical, or phycological way. Even then, we remain at core liberals and if left to our own devices will return to primitive feelings and rage, just like some "primitive tribe". Intellectual honesty is not a commoodity that is commonly associated with liberals, but cases like this column where the truth boils to the surface and is expressed directly allow us to understand why liberals behave the way they do.

Coleman

MN Senator Norm Coleman stopped by at work today and spoke to a large conference room with 150-200 people, packed to the rafters. Being a high technology company, the audience seemed to be 90%+ supportive. His 15min talk was pretty much centered on innovation, technology, education, and global competitiveness. He took questions for 15min, they were all courteous, and covered the topics of making the tax cuts permanent, intellectual property / China / India, health care, and American's willingness to continue to take risks as in the space program.

The most memorable part of his talk was as he mentioned that as he meets with Mexican leaders they complain about being undercut by China and India, as he meets with Chinese and Indian leaders they complain about being undercut by Vietnam, Brazil, and Russia. The point is that if one wants to race to the bottom as low cost producer for low skill and increasingly medium skill jobs, there are plenty of folks ahead in the race. We don't want to be in the kind of standard of living that the countries in that race are in, so we want to keep racing for the top of the best innovators with the best technology, it is a tough race, but the prizes are worth it.

As he answered the questions, the first thing that struck me was how non-partisan his comments were ... he talked about "working with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle", or "my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are coming to understand this more and more". Yes, it could be taken as "patronizing", but certainly not as the mean and nasty that Republicans are portrayed at in the media or we regularly hear from Democrats.

The second thing is how good a job he did of sticking to the Republican value of taking responsibility and not blaming others. There was no "blame the media" from him, it was "we haven't done a good job of communicating on tax cuts and Medicare part D'. Never mind that the MSM is hammering away every day with every negative to Republican story they can come up with, Coleman understands that complaining about it isn't going to change it, and realizes that no matter how difficult it might be, guys like him have to do the job. Gratifying, one is happy to stand up and applaud that kind of understanding and acceptance of the way things are.

It was a great opportunity to see a US Senator at close range, and he lived up to every expectation. A different and enjoyable way to spend 30min of the work day.

Short History of Bush the Divider

The following quoted from
Frontpage discussion between David Horowitz and Peter Beinhart relative to "soft and hard liberals". The discussion is a nice short synapsis of how difficult it is to support the typical Democrat / MSM synthesis that "Bush is the divider, and Iraq is the dividing point".

In your view, the problem we are discussing is not really a problem created by liberals and leftists. It is – like many other problems as you see them – a dilemma created by George Bush.

You regard Bush as the divider, and the declaration of war in Iraq as the division point. But how much reality is there in this claim? The use of force in Iraq was authorized by both parties and by UN Resolution 1441, which was a war ultimatum. (This is not a conservative view. It was so described by Hans Blix, who of course is a Swedish socialist, in his book Disarming Iraq). 

The ultimatum deadline for Saddam was set for December 7, 2002. Saddam failed to meet the deadline, in fact did not take it seriously (again, this is the judgment of Blix). This was the 17 UN Security Council Resolution he had basically ignored. The United States and Britain felt that 17 was more than enough and to fail to enforce a war ultimatum would have created a very dangerous situation. But three of the veto powers on the Security Council refused to join America and Britain in enforcing the ultimatum they had signed, leaving it to Bush and Blair to go it alone. These are the facts.

The reason there was no Security Council support for enforcing the ultimatum is that France, Russia and China were actually allies of Saddam who had armed him to the teeth and probably helped him to squirrel his WMDs to Syria just before the war broke out.

Nancy Pelosi began the Democratic attacks on this war on April 13, 2003, six weeks after it started, and just four and a half months after the Democrats in Congress had voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force against Saddam. By June, the Democratic Party leadership was in full attack mode over the trivial Niger issue, calling the commander-in-chief a liar who had gone to war on false premises. In fact Jimmy Carter and Al Gore had already launched attacks on Bush’s foreign policy that were unprecedented in their harshness in September 2002, even as Bush was attempting to bring Saddam to heel and going to the UN General Assembly for help. So how can Bush be blamed for being the divider and using the war as a wedge issue, when the Democrats who betrayed their own votes to authorize force were clearly the aggressors?

You have invoked Truman, as an exemplar of Cold War liberalism to distinguish him from the conservatism of George Bush. I have already dealt with this in relation to the nuclear threat. But even on the conventional front it is hard to see any difference between the positions of Truman and Bush. Did North Korea’s attack on South Korea pose an “imminent threat” to the United States? Hardly. Did Truman get UN support? Yes. But how was he able to do that? Because Russia had previously walked out of the UN Security Council and was unable to exercise its veto. If Russia had not denied itself the veto, Truman would have been in the same position as Bush was in regard to Iraq following the Security Council war ultimatum. In other words, he would have been faced with the decision to go to war without UN approval or let the North Korean Communist aggressors conquer the South. Is there any doubt in your mind as to what decision Truman would have made?

If Truman had come to the aid of the South Koreans without UN support how many Democrats do you think would have opposed him? We can only speculate on the answer but the fact is that Vito Marcantonio, a Communist fellow-traveler, was the lone vote in Congress against the Korean war. Whereas more than 100 Democrats voted against the use of force to topple Saddam Hussein, not only in 2002, but in 1990 following his invasion of Kuwait. Only six Democrat senators voted to oppose Saddam’s aggression in 1990. One of those was Al Gore who has now joined the anti-war camp. What a different party the Democrats became after 1972. Surely you cannot lay all this at the feet of George Bush.

So, yes, the question before us, as you put it, is flagging Democratic support for the anti-jihadist struggle. You and I both think that there are too few Democrats committed to this cause. But you attribute this to the divisive incompetence of Bush. I don’t, and my critique of your book is that you fail to examine how the Democratic Party went from a Party in which only one of its members voted against the Korean War, to the party of 1980s which in its majority opposed the anti-Communist struggle in Central America, and the party of 1990 which in its majority opposed the anti-Saddam war, and the party of 2006 which is virtually united in its opposition to the war against al-Qaeda and its allies in Iraq.

Normal Left Treatment

On the way home tonight I had NPR on and they got into talking about the death of Ken Lay. The announcer casually mentioned that "Former Enron employees and stockholders are holding parties to celebrate". Now I know that we have all been told to hate Ken Lay more than any terrorist or child molester, even though most actual business and financial analysts would point out that nothing he did was illegal at the time he did it. It was some combination of hyper-aggressive, stupid, imprudent, greedy and wishful thinking, but then Social Security and Medicare are pretty much that, just bought into by a larger group of people. Enron crashed, the public wanted a pound of flesh, so Ken made a good target and took the hit.

Are they really holding parties to celebrate? Maybe, I'd be pretty ashamed to hold a party to celebrate the death of anyone short of at least Bin laden, and as a Christian, I'd certainly want to be making it a private party even then. The point is that the NPR announcer obviously enjoyed the idea and would be happy to attend. These are the people that think that Ann Coulter is "coarse and nasty". Yes, Ann can be caustic, but people of the right pretty much understand she is being caustic when she is. I honestly don't think the lefties even see their coarseness since they are all so certain of their lefty moral superiority.

One if by land

Powerline had that great fake NYT at LINK. It is solidly done, and humor gets the point across very well. They hate Bush so much that they can't help but see him as a greater enemy than any terrorist.

Godless

I finished Ann Coulter's "Godless, The Church of Liberalism a few days ago, and enjoyed the book very much. It was my first Father's Day present purchased with my son's own money and carried out with his own Amazon account, so that may have biased me a bit!

My first reaction is how the MSM and even many folks on the right treat Ann as a pariah and either don't mention her at all, or point out how "divisive" she is. Meanwhile, on the left, Al Franken has moved back to MN and is considering a run for Senate, and at least local lefties are writing him up as a legitimate candied. Michael Moore sits next to former president Jimmy Carter at the 2004 Dem convention. At best, both these guys are equivalent bomb-throwers to Ann and I'd argue far worse.

I have a bit more authority to say that than something like 99% of people, since I've actually read them both, as well as Ann. I don't claim to unbiased, but I'm willing to see what the other side puts out. To the extent Ann is less than perfect on her facts, the MSM and the left is very happy to air anything that is even a potential issue, even though it may not actually affect the truth of her conclusions. (To whit, a lot of time spent by Franken on the fact that the NYT reported Dale Earnhardt's death, but Ann said they didn't ... BUT, the point is that the NYT and the folks on the left miss the importance of NASCAR and things like values ... which is pretty much true, even though she got a fact wrong).

However on the left, the book points out again and again how "fake but true" is pretty much as true as anything ever gets from the left. The fake Bush National Guard documents used as support by CBS are the clearest recent example, but Willy Horton, Anita Hill, the Kerry Military record and defense thereof and even a significant portion of the "evidence" in support of evolution are also in that camp. The left is the bastion of "if it is repeated enough times, it will become true". Thus there are certain phrases like "the failed economic policies of the '80s" or "the discredited charges of the Swift Boat Veterans" that are uttered enough times so the left and a huge chunk of bleating MSM sheep in the masses believe them simply because they are certain that it MUST be true.

I was most surprised to see her takedown of evolution evidence that has been finally reported in the NYT as being a hoax, only because they are concerned that the number of hoaxes out there in evolution textbooks make evolution look pretty bad as it is challenged by Intelligent Design. It is pretty clear that in order to claim that there ISN'T any intelligence behind the universe is at least as big a "faith statement" as to claim that there is. Ann makes the point that evolution is the creation story of the state religion of liberalism, so no discussion can be allowed in the schools whose primary purpose is to convince young minds of the unnatural path of liberalism.

I loved her start to chapter 8; "Even if evolution were true, it wouldn't disprove God. God has performed more spectacular feats than evolution. It's not even a daunting challenge to a belief in God. If you want something that complicates a belief in God, trying coming to terms with Michael Moore being one of God's special creatures."

Having been hammered with the fundamentalist view as a child, it took a long time to move my own puny picture of "how big is God" beyond the little fundamentalist view from either the left or the right, that "if evolution is true, there is no God". We tend to spend a lot of time listening to fundamentalists from the left wing that control the MSM and the educational institutions of America bluster from the "evolution is true, there is no God"! Side of that equation. We spend less time, but still a significant amount listening to some Kansas fundamentalists of the right scream "God is real, therefore evolution is false"!

Her first statement is that "Survival of the the fittest" is a better statement for some pseudo-science like astrology than for something that claims to be actual science. It is a tautology. How would one disprove it? Find a species that wasn't fit that was still alive? Have the humans all commit suicide? But wait, I guess that would make us unfit. It is like saying "Tallness of the tallest", it doesn't add a single thing to the discussion, yet it is repeated as holy writ.

She points out that a random process would throw off TONS of "unfit or less fit" intermediate forms in it's unordered, undirected, non-striving way. There are no such forms in the fossil record. There are a lot of attempted excuses as to why not, and some hoaxes attempting to create some since the lack of such fossils is an extreme embarrassment. It would be as if Einstein did E=MC**2, pointed out what it should mean when we measured things to prove it, but then the things DIDN'T come to pass. For Einstein, the "theory" DID bear out (and still does) as more data could be gathered. For Darwin, it has not ... BUT, the godless liberals are left with no other creation story, so they keep using only one they have, and defending it harder.

She goes in detail through Piltdown Man, peppered moths and Nazi Earnst Haeckel with his drawing of the stages of embryo development mirroring the stages of evolution. His drawings are a hoax, but what is always funny to me is how often the left chooses to lift ideas that they like from Nazi's, then cover up that they are Nazi ideas, while in parallel trying to create links from people on the right to Nazis even where they don't exist, or are weak at best. They know what evil is, they want to use it when they can without taint, yet link the innocent with it whenever they can.

She closes off the book with a discussion of the obvious point that if there is no God, then there is no morality at all beyond the current whim of whomever can get power, and "survival of the fittest". Peter Singer, Princeton "ethics" professor that believes in infanticide and killing the "unfit elderly" for humans, "equal rights" for apes, not allowing humans to eat meat, but allowing beastiality; is used as an example of what "anything goes" really means. The MSM ignores that this man has written books on all these topics and still sits in a position at a major US university in spite of a few courageous folks like Steve Forbes stopping any of their funds from supporting the school as long as he holds his position. In the church of liberalism though, the only God is "anything goes", and Singer is an example of where we are headed if we don't heed the warnings that Ann Provides in this excellent (and fun) book.

Scientists Agree With Gore

"Climate Experts: Gore's Movie Get's Science Right", with the sub-headline, "The nation's top climate scientists are giving "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy".

Really? I hope these scientists don't use statistical methods like the AP, and who by the way picks "the top scientists"? Is there a referreed list provided by vote, or do they all do a ranking each year? I don't think so.

In the first paragraph, they admit ..."mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from The Associated Press.". They mention this is out of over 100 that they contacted. So, you take a self-selecting sample, use only that sample, and draw a conclusion.

So can I poll scientists walking out of Baptist Churches and ask them if they believe that God created the earth, and then run my headline saying "Scientists Agree: God Created the Earth"? Why not? Same logic entirely.

This is a press that is unbiased? Well, if it IS unbiased, I'd hate to have to defend it's intelligence.

Prosecute the NYT

In his column
Barone: NYT at War With America Michael Barone stops short of saying that it is time to prosecute the NYT for publishing national secrets in time of war. Why? This is the second time for sure that they have broken stories that are classified and have had a negative impact on tracking terrorists. The idea that financial transactions being tracked internationally is "a concern" is laughable. What DOMESTIC private transaction isn't tracked by some government agency when one considers all the federaal and state taxes as well as sales taxes? Other than buying soemething for cash, I assume that every transaction that I do has a record that is likely to be accessible by the government (not to mention the credit card company, which I KNOW is more than happy to sell information). So? Are we out to create a "terrorist shield" so that every US consumer is mercilessly tracked UNLESS they try to buy something that may be used for terrorism?

It should be obvious by now the that the NYT is far more conserned with damaging Bush than they are with anything about reducing terror. They have generally staked out their target market on the far left of the political spectrum, but that ought not be confused with "freedom of the press". The press isn't free to break the law. When they breech national security, as they did in this case, someone ought to go to jail.

Of Course Iraq Had WMD

Next to the party of Jim Crow and the KKK being re-branded as the party that protects the black man, and Alger Hiss being innocent, the "Where are the WMDs" charge is fast on it's way to going down as to one of those "myths of faith" that is part of the liberal religion.

Anyone with a brain knew Saddam had WMD, because he had used them, and he was documented by everyone to have them. Not long after the war, 30 shells with sarin in them were found, along with 100s of other shells only used for chemicals and equipment to load them. Those stories made it out, mostly in the right-wing press, but the MSM and the Democrats have kept up the "where are the WMDs" drumbeat anyway since it fits with their myth.

Any honest person would admit that the "unbelievable surprise" was that "no WMDs were found". Everyone knew he used them, everyone knew that every intelligence agency in the world had him listed as possessing him. If you hate Bush and think he is the most evil guy ever, it has to be surprising that he wouldn't plant some. After all, if Bush knew Saddam didn't have WMD, he would know they certainly wouldn't be found, so would have to "manufacture some". Not much of a trick for level of evil that most of the left assigns to him, but it never happened. He faked 9-11, then he forgot to plant some WMD? Oh, I forget -- W was both as evil as Hitler and as dumb as a stump!

Now, some Republicans in Congress are starting to force the CIA to release information on the over 500 munitions filled with sarin and other chemicals that have been found to date. Why would the CIA not want information out that shows that their own pre-war intelligence wasn't nearly as bad as it has been made out to be? Your guess may well be as good as mine.

Ever since the "Plame Game" fake "outing" I've been convinced the CIA is more interested in running operations on Bush than on terrorism. Like all big government organizations it is mostly populated by liberal union members with lifetime employment who think that Republicans are some combination of evil and stupid. Having Reagan prove them to be completely wrong on the USSR was no doubt painful.

Having 9-11 happen had to be embarrassing, and no doubt they didn't like having a guy that they saw as mentally inferior working to mold them into shape after they had proven that they couldn't predict even a major event like 9-11 was simply "over their pain tolerance". If they could manage to take Bush down as disgraced, maybe folks would forget the intelligence agencies that completely failed us prior to 9-11.In any case, the following from WSJ is something that the MSM will not doubt not want to talk about.

Saddam's WMD
Why is our intelligence community holding back?

BY PETER HOEKSTRA AND RICK SANTORUM
Monday, June 26, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Wednesday, at our request, the director of national intelligence declassified six "key points" from a National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) report on the recovery of chemical munitions in Iraq. The summary was only a small snapshot of the entire report, but even so, it brings new information to the American people. "Since 2003," the summary states, "Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent," which remains "hazardous and potentially lethal." So there are WMDs in Iraq, and they could kill Americans there or all over the world.
This latest information should not be new. It should have been brought to public attention by officials in the intelligence community. Instead, it had to be pried out of them. Mr. Santorum wrote to John DeFreitas, commanding general, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, on April 12, asking to see the report. He wrote, "I am informed that there may well be many more stores of WMDs throughout Iraq," and added, "the people of Pennsylvania and Members of Congress would benefit from reviewing this report." He asked that the "NGIC work with the appropriate entities" to declassify as much of the information as possible.

The senator received no response. On June 5, he wrote again, this time to John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, "concerning captured Iraqi documents, data, media and maps from the regime of Saddam Hussein." He mentioned his disappointment that many captured Iraqi documents had been classified, and that he still had received no response from Gen. DeFreitas. Some 10 days later, still with no response, he shared his dismay with one of us, Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence, who on June 15 wrote to Mr. Negroponte, urging him to declassify the NGIC analytic piece. Mr. Hoekstra was also dismayed because he had not been informed through normal intelligence channels of the existence of this report.

To compound matters, during a call-in briefing with journalists held at noon on June 21, intelligence officials misleadingly said that "on June 19, we received a second request; this time asking that we, in short order--48 hours--declassify the key points, which are sort of the equivalent to key judgments from something like a National Intelligence Estimate, from the assessment." The fault was their own; we had been requesting this information for nine weeks and they had not acted.

On Thursday, Mr. Negroponte's office arranged a press briefing by unnamed intelligence officials to downplay the significance of the report, calling it "not new news" even as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was reiterating the obvious importance of the information: "What has been announced is accurate, that there have been hundreds of canisters or weapons of various types found that either currently have sarin in them or had sarin in them, and sarin is dangerous. And it's dangerous to our forces. . . . They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found. . . . And they are still being found and discovered."
In fact, the public knows relatively little about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, we do not even know what is known or unknown. Charles Duelfer, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, stated that the ISG had fully evaluated less than 0.25% of the more than 10,000 weapons caches known to exist throughout Iraq. It follows that the American people should be brought up to date frequently on our state of knowledge of this important matter. That is why we asked that the entire document be declassified, minus the exact sources, methods and locations. It is also, in part, why we have fought for the declassification of hundreds of thousands of Saddam-era documents.

The president is the ultimate classifier and declassifier of information, but the entire matter has now been so politicized that, in practice, he is often paralyzed. If he were to order the declassification of a document pointing to the existence of WMDs in Iraq, he would be instantly accused of "cherry picking" and "politicizing intelligence." He may therefore not be inclined to act.

In practice, then, the intelligence community decides what the American public and its elected officials can know and when they will learn it. Sometimes those decisions are made by top officials, while on other occasions they are made by unnamed bureaucrats with friends in the media. People who leak the existence of sensitive intelligence programs like the terrorist surveillance program or financial tracking programs to either damage the administration or help al Qaeda, or perhaps both, are using the release or withholding of documents to advance their political desires, even as they accuse others of manipulating intelligence.

We believe that the decisions of when and what Americans can know about issues of national security should not be made by unelected, unnamed and unaccountable people.

Some officials in the intelligence community withheld the document we requested on WMDs, and somebody is resisting our request to declassify the entire document while briefing journalists in a tendentious manner. We will continue to ask for declassification of this document and the hundreds of thousands of other Saddam-produced documents, and we will also insist on periodic updates on discoveries in Iraq.

This is no small matter. It is not--as a few self-proclaimed experts have declared--a spat over ancient history. It involves life and death for American soldiers on the battlefield, and it involves the ability of the American people to evaluate the actions of their government, and thus to render an objective judgment. The people must have the whole picture, not just a shard of reality dished up by politicized intelligence officers.

Information is a potent weapon in the current war. Al Qaeda uses the Internet very effectively and uses the media as a terrorist tool. If the American public can be deceived by people who withhold basic information, we risk losing the war at home, even if we win it on the battlefield. The debate should focus on the basic question--what, exactly, we need to do to succeed both here and in Iraq. We are dismayed to have learned how many people in our own government are trying to distort that debate.

Limbaugh Harrassment

The same CNN that always pointed out it was a "private matter" for a president under investigation for sexual harrassment to have sex with an employee at the office finds it national news if a conservative commentator is detained for having viagra in his possession that may or may not be without a perscription. The only reason this is news is to harrass a voice that doesn't tow the left wing party line and has an audience.

The position of the left and the MSM in this country is clear and has been for a long time. They will seek any means possible to suppress voices that disagree with them, legally or illegally. They will claim "free speech", but it is "free" only as long as the speech agrees with their view of the world. If it is conservative, religious, technically accurate on a subject where that damages their cause, or in any other way out of step with liberal orthodoxy, they will harrass, legislate, suppress, shout down, or take any other action that they can to suppress the speech. The leadership of the left understands that they can't openly state most of their beliefs, or they will suffer worse at the polls than they already have. In most cases, they also realize that legitimate debate has toe be suppressed or they will simply lose in the marketplace of ideas as well.

To people of the right, none of this should be any surprise, but sometimes the media goes out of it's way to make their positions crystal clear, and it is important for people that believe in truth and facts to take note so that the "everything is a shade of gray" crowd is faced with some specifics that show their primary colors.

Eagle

My eldest son's Eagle Scout ceremony was this past Saturday. I've been busy this spring doing digital slide shows to music for both his high school graduation and this ceremony on my Mac previous using iPhoto. Very impressive software, the "Ken Burns effect", done automatically by the program really does a lot, and the ability of the Mac to hook up to a projector, get the resolution right, ask you if you want to clone your screen, and "just work" is very impressive. Very much more impressive than all the time I've spent setting resolutions, hitting Alt-PF7 over and over, and then looking at a micro screen on the laptop while projecting off my Thinkpad.

Since I put the slides together and picked the music, one would think that a grown man without a reputation for emotion could avoid tears during the ceremony, but apparently not. It seems to be a pretty common problem, when we see pictures of our children growing up over a short period along with some evocative music like Pachelbel Canon in D, the sweeping realization of love, pride, shortness of time, blessing, our finitude, the joy of having been a part of their lives and a host of other things too difficult to name just comes flooding over me. It is enough to make me believe there is more to life than the material world, but apparently not for some. It gives me a shiver of awareness for the infinite.

As I reflect on the Scouts and the rank of Eagle, I'm utterly amazed at what percentage of our country has decided that "the Scouts have got to conform or go" on two issues. The first being that gay men ought to able to be scout leaders. Simply brilliant, and straight men would seem to be great girl scout leaders for girls from 12-17. Sure. "North American Man-Boy Camping Association"?

Second issue of course is that a scout is "reverent". Can't have that with about 50% of our current society, can we? Well, they haven't won yet. Another Eagle Scout goes into the fray. Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Brave, Thrifty, Clean, and Reverent. The liberal ranks used to like to fog the issues, but when they take on the scouts, their true colors become more visible.

The left lie of what they ACTUALLY think of real freedom and diversity of thought is laid bare.

I was never an scout at all, let alone an Eagle, so the path of exceeding dear old Dad is well under way and I couldn't be happier. Apparently I missed bursting with pride, but the thought crossed my mind. On new wings and our fervent prayers, a young eagle prepares to leave the nest for college come fall.

 I pray he can stand strong for the values that can give him a wonderful life and eternity!

"Bellweather"

For regular NPR and general MSM followers, there was a lot of anticipation for the special election in Californias 50th congressional district, formerly held by Randy "Duke" Cunningham, forced to resign after admitting to taking bribes. The MSM and the Democrats have done all they can to create "a culture of corruption" around Cunningham,Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay. Not neccesarily all related in any way, or even "corrupt", but facts have never been huge issues for either the MSM or Democrats.

Prior to Tuesday the chops were being licked over the prospect that Francine Busby would defeat Brian Bilbray in this heavily Republican district. Wednesday AM, the hopes had all been dashed and the story was gone, no "bellweather" here, no need to look at the story anymore. Yet another evil Republican took the district, even with a conviction on the previous congressman, and the MSM telling us every single day that everyone should hate Bush. A sad day for America.

Some MSM definitions need to be kept straght:

"Bellweather" - An election going in a way that looks bad for Republicans.

"Stolen" - Any election closer than double digits that a Republican wins.

"Whistle Blower" - Anyone that says anything that ought to be a secret but looks bad a Republicans.

"Leaker" - Anyone that says anything that is bad for a Democrat. Even if it was public knowledge before, soemone ought to go to jail for saying something bad about a Democrat.

Good - See Democrat

Evil - See Republican

Swiftboating - Anything said by a military person that isn't complimentaty to a Democrat.

Keeping the definitions straight can really help the understanding of the news!