Rusted Sky

Retired Green Beret Gets Court Martial After Shooting Intruder

The charge? Using a weapon of insufficent caliber.

He used a .22 - the court martial prosecuter said he should have used a .38 or .45.

But justice was done - he was acquitted, and given a round of applause.

The moral? Don't mess with a Green Beret. Even if he's 80.

J.

The world economy on the cheap - how would you do it?

The quickest way? Disrupt the internet. And unless you've got control of the international routers and switches, the quickest way to do that would be to distrupt the communication between continents by breaking the cables.

I came up with that thought after reviewing Wretchard's article here - and then finding out that Iran's internet connection seems to be completely down. A third cable was damaged today, oddly enough.

Three submarine cables in less than a week.

Now - it's probably not too inaccurate to liken the submarine cable infrastructure to the veins and arteries through which flow the lifeblood of modern commerce - information. Consider what a fiber optic undersea cable allows...

Near instantaneous communication between banks.
Near instantaneous communication betweern companies looking to buy and sell.
Someone in Australia buying a DVD set from someone in the US via EBay.
Tracking information on international shipping.
Telecommunications and television programs between the continents.
And many, many, MANY more things - items too numerous to mention.

Lose a cable, and the messages reroute. Lose a second, and things reroute again. But if there's no dark fiber left, if there's no cable access... your country is forced back to letters until another cable can be laid or the broken one fixed. Better hope FedEx is up to the job...

During the Cold War, it was possible to tap submarine cables. (Please note it wasn't easy at all - but it could be done. And it makes me wonder if it's being done now, by the way.) Now - all you need is an approximate location of the cable - and then run a ship across it dragging an anchor. Glass fiber is pretty tough stuff - but it's not unbreakable.

So IF you were looking to cripple the world's communication infrastructure... how many cables would you need to destroy? By the map here - it looks like about 35.

Oh, there's undoubtedly others that don't show on that one... but it's an intereesting thought, isn't it?

And I don't know how you could effectively guard it all.

J.

First, a little film about 'isms...'

And - A little film about labor costs.

It's kind of funny looking at these - no qualifiers, no hedging, the ideals of freedom and capitalism are labeled as positive goods, not things to be barely tolerated by an 'enlightened' and 'progressive' society.

Why do I get the idea that folks in Berkely would have to take sedatives after seeing them?

J.

An open flame does the trick!

Flame Triode With Gain.

Neat science - found here... and here. Have fun, and don't burn the house down trying to duplicate a Pentium. Please pay attention to the disclaimer on safety...

Disclaimer

Anyone reading this web page should not assume that any given subject is safe or legal. The purpose here is to give information only. I take no responsibility for what anyone may do with the information given here. What you do with it is your own business and responsibility. Building some of the projects, described here, can be dangerous, illegal or both; and require that the builder or user be very conscientious and able to exercise a great deal of Caution and Common Sense. A project described as "relatively safe" may not be completely safe. It may be described as "relatively safe" only because it appears to be safer than making a batch of Nitroglycerine. Never get cocky where safety is concerned.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!! This page welcomes all varieties of race, gender or anyone interested in its contents. If you are offended by anything that seems politically incorrect, don't write to me. I do not care to be annoyed by fanatic whiners who expect every printed line to pass correct political specifications.

J.

Update -

This one is, as SueK politely pointed out, old news. How old? From 1991 - and since it's long since repealed, I apologize for not checking the dates and info properly.

Sigh. The internet never forgets - but with automatic page formatting, you can take old news and make it look fresh and sparkling, with today's date and everything.

I apologize for the mixup, and will double-check stuff like this in the future.

(One interesting little factoid, though - you'll notice this tax was supposed to rake in billions. Instead, it ended up costing several hundred million more than it brought in. I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions from that.)

J.

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So here comes Round 2.

New Luxury Tax May Cost More Than It Can Bring In - New York Times

The tax places a 10 percent levy on the retail price of five luxury goods, when the price exceeds a specified threshold. For autos it is $30,000. So when a consumer buys a car that cost $33,000, the tax is 10 percent on $3,000, or $300. For private aircraft the threshold is $250,000, for pleasure boats $100,000, and for jewelry and furs $10,000.

Oddly enough, they learned at least a little bit from the first time around - they're exempting GA aircraft built in Kansas.

But the rest? Typical 'soak the rich' bull. Last time, the luxury tax was quite 'revenue negative'. I don't expect this will change in Round 2.

J.

Multiple wives will mean multiple benefits - Telegraph

Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

There was a time when something like this wouldn't even get looked at, much less passed...

Well, the future's going to be pretty interesting. Darn shame, that...

Update - Read the comments. The people are not amused.

I could be way off the mark, but it appears as if the government is bent on destroying the UK culturally, socially, and economically.

J.

Conspiracy theories emerge after internet cables cut - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Is information warfare to blame for the damage to underwater internet cables that has interrupted internet service to millions of people in India and Egypt, or is it just a series of accidents?
When two cables in the Mediterranean were severed last week, it was put down to a mishap with a stray anchor.

Now a third cable has been cut, this time near Dubai. That, along with new evidence that ships' anchors are not to blame, has sparked theories about more sinister forces that could be at work.

And now - there's this.

Fourth cable cut in Mideast | Threat Chaos | ZDNet.com

Think there'll be a fifth, and sixth?

It's peculiar - whatever it is.

And it looks like I wasn't the only one thinking of the commerce aspects of this... India seems somewhat sensitive to the implications.

And then I remembered... Russia sold Iran some subs in '97... Iran Bolsters Its Fleet With 3d Russian Sub - New York Times

Would Iran be stupid enough to use the Russian subs to sneak in, snip cables, and then boogie quietly away?

And just how loaded with hydrophones is that area, I wonder?

J.

The political mind: Chameleon credos - Politico.com Print View

The modern presidential campaign is a political junkie’s dream and an average citizen’s nightmare.

One can spend days trying to keep up with a virtual flood of political fact, spin and opinion — categories that are not easily distinguished.

Those simply trying to choose the best person for that tough and critical job must sort through more information than they can reasonably make sense of.

But that's not an option. As little as my individual vote does count, it still counts, and I won't waste it by throwing it in the trash because I'm sick of the overexposed candidates. They've been angling and positioning themselves more than NASCAR racers on their final lap - and they've been doing it for the LAST FOUR YEARS! The Perpetual Campaign cannot be good for our country - but it's what we've got to live with.

And with it, we're seeing the candidates constantly reinventing themselves, like actors trying on different personas, looking for the one that will give them the most votes. (Witness Hillary's second crying spell yesterday. Amazing what you can do with a bit of onion juice on your fingers at the right time, isn't it?) I think that was what attracted me so much to Bush in 2000, he didn't constantly change himself. He felt authentic, and he felt like he had integrity. Whether that was true is up for debate, of course, but can you really say that any of the candidates (aside from perhaps McCain and Romney) haven't been trying to find just that one persona that'll appeal to the most voters - no matter how inauthentic it might be?

Today's Super Tuesday - and I plan on voting after work. Not sure yet who I'm going to vote for, but there's folks I've definitly dumped out of the mix. We'll see what's left.

Hopefully, it'll be someone I can stomach.

J.

From ICANHASCHEEZBURGER.COM

One of the guys in the shop was trying to get me to vote for Hillary today. "Didn't I want change?" he asked?

I replied I'd rather have the whole dollar, instead of what change Hillary will leave me. His other arguments didn't impress me, either. I've watched the woman for the last 16-17 years - I wouldn't vote for her if Ron Paul was the Republican candidate. But she's sure got Sabby fooled - he's absorbed the 'soak the rich' rhetoric nicely, and figures 'universal health care' is the way to go. He's kind of a gullible sap, unfortunately - and hasn't yet figured out that any expensive programs come out of the taxpayer's money.

He doesn't realize yet just how much more that'll cost him in the long run.

Anyway - held my nose today and voted for who I found least objectionable. If my candidate doesn't win, that's okay. I'm not terribly impressed by any of them - but there's some I'd vote against in a heartbeat, and did.

Maybe some year there'll be candidates I can support whole-heartedly. This, however, is not the year.

J.

About three years back, we were looking for a replacement printer. The old HP inkjet wasn't printing magenta, no matter how fresh the cartridge, so it was time to find something new. I picked up a Epson Stylus C66 - and it's done pretty well for the last three years... and then, poof.

Or rather, no poof. No print - just a few faint lines of black. Repriming didn't help, fresh cartridges didn't do it - so it was time again to search for an affordable color inkjet.

Yeah, I'd like a color laster - but like inkjets, it's not the initial cost that's the problem... it's the consumables that'll kill you. Only with the laserjet, it's even more so - I can get an HP Color Laserjet 1600 for about $300 - but the toner cartridges are $82 each. Supposedly you get 2,000 copies per - so you're looking at a per-sheet cost of about 4 cents per sheet. That's not bad, but I don't want to pay more than the printer cost in order to refill it's consumables. Call me cheap, call me a wimp, call me a cheap wimp - but $328 to feed a printer that cost $300 is just a bit expensive.

Then again - when you consider how much color copies used to cost (when they were first available, about 15 years back) it's a miracle you can get something that'll do the job for so little dinero. But that's the way it is with consumer goods these days. You buy something, knowing that in a few years whatever you buy is going to be outmoded or replaced, or both.

(My HP Laserjet 4000 seems to be an exception to that - 10 years, and it's still working tolerably well. I do need to get a new cartridge soon, though. Of course, I paid about $1100 for it, and have put four or five cartridges in it at $120 each, so I'm still below the consumables limit on that one.)

Looking at printers this year, however, was kind of, um, depressing. The HP Deskjets at the price I wanted to pay had ink cartridges that hold very little ink. The prices aren't terribly bad - but spending $20 for a tri-color cartridge with less than a teaspoon of ink total in it seemed a bit much. I'd prefer a multiple cartridge printer with separate black, yellow, cyan and magenta cartridges. But those didn't start with HP until you get up to about the $150 mark.

Reluctantly, I looked at the all-in-one models - and was impressed by the Epson CX8400. The thing's on sale, so it's about $80 - but the ink tanks are tiny and the Amazon reviews range from "Blasted tiny ink tanks!" to "This works very well and the ink life is great."

Well, you pays your money and you takes your chances - and $80 for something that'll scan, read various memory media and print quite well is... affordable. It's a heck of a lot better than anything available 3 years ago for the price, that's for sure.

Even if it IS disposable after a few years.

J.

But that's probably because I never thought to search out the pictures. Oddly enough, there's loads of them out on the web...

I saw mention of them recently in a book called "Hardtack and Coffee" - a soldier's recounting of Army life. (Not fighting, but the general day-to-day details.) But there's sufficient archeological evidence that they've been around a while - long before the Civil War.

It's just a kind of creepy curiousity - until your son complains about an itchy head, and you find he's got graybacks. Don't know where they were from - but there's plenty of info about what to do.

Apparently it's quite a business opportunity... if you can stand the work. I'm not sure I could...

Well, things are certainly cleaner around here at this point. I'm hoping we got 'em stopped before they bred and spread...

J.

Headless Body In North London: Police Name Decapitated Victim |Sky News|UK News

Police have named a man whose headless body was discovered behind a shopping centre.

Body found behind supermarketLakhdar Ouyahia, 43, was found wrapped in blankets by shoppers in a supermarket goods cage in Kingsgate Place, Kilburn, on Wednesday.

Police have charged a 45-year-old man over the murder.
Mohamed Boudjenane, of Kingsgate Road, Kilburn, north London, will appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on Monday.

It took four day for Ouyahia's missing head to be found, in the Grand Union Canal, Blomfield Road in the St John's Wood area of west London.

Post-mortem tests carried out at St Pancras mortuary found the cause of death to be a "blunt instrument to the head".

Officers are still searching for the murder weapon.

An earlier examination of the headless corpse had failed to establish the cause of death.

Seriously, though - Britain's having some pretty bad times with Muslims demanding special dispensations for their religion. From legal to health-related, it would seem Islam is trying for rights not granted other religions.

Seems to me there's going to be real trouble down the line with this. It could be what the Archbishop said will spark a re-examination of what's going on...or it could be that a critical mass has been reached, and in a fewyears the UK will be an officially Muslim nation. Which would be a considerable loss to the world...

J.

Reality - what a concept! From DRUDGE REPORT 2008� -
Don't you hate it when the facts don't fit the narrative?

Pelosi: Iraq 'is a failure' -- surge was bust...

Al-Queda in Iraq in 'total collapse', say seized letters...

And in other news, those lovely nuts in Iran are spending good money (which they don't have) to develop an independent launch capability.

Iran says to launch two more rockets in space...

Aims for summer satellite...

Marks revolution, defies nuclear pressure...

But in THIS hemisphere...

Bloomberg.com: Latin America

Chavez Calls for Farm Seizures, Raises Prices Amid Shortages

By Steven Bodzin

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in an effort to deal with food shortages nationwide, threatened today to expropriate farms and raised the price rice producers are permitted to charge.

Fallow farmland ``can't be allowed,'' Chavez said on his weekly television and radio broadcast, calling for the National Guard to take over farms with nonproductive lands. He also announced a price boost of 44 percent for rice growers.

It was at least the fourth time this year that Chavez's government has threatened to use expropriation to deal with shortages of milk, rice, cooking oil and other price-controlled basic foods. The decision on rice prices was another in a series of increases this year, following boosts in the prices of beans, cheese and ultra-pasteurized milk.

The government says the shortages are the result of smuggling of the food out of the country, hoarding by wholesalers who hope to force price increases and growing consumption as poor people get more disposable income.

Farm groups have repeatedly called on the government to remove price controls and criticized previous seizures of land and farm equipment as counterproductive.

Chavez also announced projects to improve farm-to-market roads and irrigation systems.

(Sucks to be Venezuelan, in that case...)

Maybe they'll smarten up before he completely wrecks the joint. Or maybe not... time will tell.

J.

MyFox Houston | Texas Primary Crucial for Democratic Presidential Hopefuls

About 30 seconds into a video clip you get... this.

That's in one of Obama's offices.

You know, office decor tells a lot about what's being sold. Out at the plant, you see a whole lot of stuff on the walls and in the cubes that's military and aircraft related.

In a political office, you see this? It's not hard to figure out the ideology there.

Funny the things that slip when you think nobody's looking.

J.

Protector.

It's... fun.

Really.

(If you can figure out a combo to get the Mainland Mines, please let me know.)

J.

From DRUDGE REPORT come the following two.

Bloomberg compares climate change to terrorism: Warming 'has the potential to kill everybody'...

versus

Snowiest winter on record in Wisconsin...

Humans adapt to temperature differences. And it's easier to adapt to heat in a low-tech environment than it is to cold. (Don't believe me? Contrast the population of, say, Africa, to upper Canada. At it's peak, the Inuit culture did some darn sophisticated things with what they had to hand - which wasn't much.)

So I think Mayor Bloomberg's spent too much time with AlGore.

Something else I've noticed in some of the Global Warming stuff, which may not be typical, is that their data points seem to be exhibiting a cutoff date of 2005 or so. Kind of odd to ignore the last couple of years.. unless they'd completely nullify the argument.

J.

Diary of an Insurgent In Retreat - washingtonpost.com

BAGHDAD, Feb. 9 -- On Nov. 3, U.S. soldiers raided a safe house of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq near the northern city of Balad. Not a single combatant was captured, but inside the house they found something valuable: a diary and will written in neat Arabic script.

Well.

Don't know if the guy's alive or dead. Doesn't much matter, I guess - because unless we change our tactics in Iraq, he's dead or imprisoned anyway. It's STILL possible for them to pull off a 'win' in Iraq, if the Dems (and Pelosi) pull a second Viet Nam '75 - but there's a lot of folks watching, and a lot of progress being made, and far from being 'lost', we're close to 'won'.

J.

Best of the Web Today - WSJ.com

James Vicevich, a Connecticut radio talk show host, takes note of yet another creepy element of the Obama campaign...

In fact, some folks do.

What exactly are we to make of this? A cynic might wonder if the whole thing isn't staged, given how often it happens and how well-honed and self-serving Obama's standard response seems to be.

But if it's spontaneous, that's in a way even more unsettling. At the New Hampshire rally, Larry David of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" fame quipped, "Sinatra had the same effect on people." Sinatra made girls swoon by singing romantic songs. But America isn't electing a crooner in chief.

Obama has a talent for eliciting intense emotion--an ability that can be dangerous in a politician. What more does he have to offer? That's a hard question to answer, and it makes the prospect of an Obama presidency quite worrisome.

The alternative, that this is 'scripted' - is even less appealing. The Democrats DO think their 'base' is gullible as hell, if so.

By the way, the guy at work I mentioned? I've tried asking him what 'Change' means - he says Hillary will make things better for us all. I can't get him to define 'better', though.

But he believes. Oh,yes - he believes.

J.

Parent Shock: Children Are Not Decor - New York Times

High style and kids not mixing? Who'd have thought it?

J.

It's getting a bit... disturbing... watching the Obama campaign. In particular, I'm disliking the preaching that's going on in the speeches.

I'm looking for a President, not a Preacher.

In Obama, we seem to have the latter more than the former. Only his religion isn't Christianity, or Islam, or Hindu, FSMism or (Insert religion here) - he's preaching the Church of the State.

The State can do anything. It can take care of you. It can fix your life. It cam make everything wonderful for you. It can cure your warts through health care. It can make peace break out in the world. It can give you everything you want - up to and including a slimmer, trimmer figure.

It can even help you fix your soul. Because it's broken, you know.

But the price? There's the sticking point. How much are you willing to pay to let government do everything for you? What would you give up? How much personal autonomy are you prepared to part with so you don't have to make any hard choices or sacrifices in your life?

Would you be willing to live in government housing?

Would you be willing to subsist on what food the government is willing to give you?

Would you be willing to let the State tell you where you can travel?

Or who you can associate with? Or the bad habits you can indulge?

How about what you can buy? Or how you can communicate?

Seems to me that when you let the State do everything - you don't have any say in what you get in return. That's heading toward totalitarianism - and we know how well THAT works long term, don't we?

J.

OBAMA ROBBED IN NY - New York Post

February 16, 2008 -- Barack Obama's primary-night results were strikingly under recorded in several congressional districts around the city - in some cases leaving him with zero votes when, in fact, he had pulled in hundreds, the Board of Elections said today.

Unofficial primary results gave Obama no votes in nearly 80 districts, including Harlem's 94th and other historically black areas - but many of those initial tallies proved to be wildly off the mark, the Board of Elections confirmed.

And they say here in GA that we don't need voter ID, or much in the way of poll oversight because such things just don't happen. Anywhere.

Right. It's just a case of making sure the correct candidate gets elected.

J.

Paleo-Future: Monsanto House of the Future (1957-1967)

Went through this in Disneyland once - I remember the shape of it more than I remember the insides. Goes to show a 'cool' house in one decade is next decade's joke... but you know something? I'd still like to have one like it...

And that's a fun blog, by the way. The future as it was envisioned...

J.

Gateway Pundit: Brrrr... The Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Back <em>And</em> It's Thick

J.

Looks like the economy, which - if you were to believe the media - is supposedly in the throes of a recession... isn't. Larry Kudlow at The Corner on National Review Online explains.

A number of economists on and off Wall Street are ringing the recession bell, as they have so many times in recent years. But the Goldilocks economy has proven to be more durable and resilient than her critics appreciate.

Goldilocks dodged two potentially recessionary bullets this week. While modest gains in retail sales and industrial production suggest temporarily slower growth for the U.S. economy, these indicators are not signaling recession. In particular, Friday’s 0.1 percent production increase — which comes to 2.4 percent at an annual rate over the past 3 months and 2.3 percent over the past 12 months — removes the recession scenario. It’s slow growth, but it’s growth nonetheless.

To get a true recession reading, the production index would have to fall for 4 to 6 months in a row. That’s not happening. Despite some monthly declines over the past half year, the production reading for January was 114.2 — exactly where it was in July and September of last year. Looking inside the January index, there was a 0.3 percent increase for consumer-goods production and a 0.4 percent rise for business equipment. Both are solid numbers..

Meanwhile, the just-released January retail sales report defied the recessionistas with a better-than-expected 0.3 percent gain. Retail sales are climbing at a 2.7 percent annual rate over the past 3 months and a 3.9 percent rate over the past year.

Trade exports also continue strong, with the new December number showing a huge $144 billion gain. Out on the campaign trail, Hill-Bama mutters protectionism at every stop. But export trade has grown by nearly 50 percent — or 9 percent yearly after inflation — for the past four years. The real export sector now accounts for nearly one-third of U.S. gross domestic product, yet more proof that the global economic boom is alive and well. .

There seems to be too much angst over various credit problems in the banking system — such as defaulting sub-prime loans, leveraged corporate-buyout paper, unhealthy bond insurers, and, more recently, a clog up in short-term municipal bonds. All these credit issues have yet to be fully worked out. But there is so far no evidence they have dragged the economy into a contraction. .

It’s also noteworthy that the Bush tax cuts remain in place for investment. And while the newly signed rebate package is a wet noodle, it does call for temporary cash expensing to promote business investment. This could ultimately do some good.

Critically, the Federal Reserve’s easing moves — going back to last September and including January’s “shock and awe” 125 basis point rate cut — are beginning to impact the economy and should deliver more pronounced effects later this winter and in the spring. An easier Fed and low tax rates may not only keep us out of recession, they could move the economy up from 1 percent growth this winter to 3 percent growth in the second half of the year — perhaps as early as the second quarter. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. But free-market capitalism on the supply-side is weathering the credit storm better than most folks think..

The challenge now is to ensure that free-market capitalism on the supply-side continues.

Hill-Bama is campaigning on a populist platform of taxing businesses and rich people. This fiscal nymphomania will create new government bureaucracies on infrastructure and energy totaling a couple hundred billion dollars. It’s beyond the pale. .

Unless they don't - in which case the economy takes a big hit. But hey, that just means more people on the dole, and more votes you can count on... right?

For the fiscally tightfisted Sen. John McCain, and his crusade against unnecessary spending and earmarks, there is a great opportunity here. McCain can build on his pro-growth corporate-tax-cut proposal with a broad-based tax-reform plan. This approach would lower tax rates across-the-board and broaden the base by removing unnecessary exceptions and loopholes. In effect, while Hill-Bama copies Western Europe’s failed economic playbook, McCain can replicate the tax-reform success over in Eastern Europe. .

Whether it’s national defense, homeland security, or economic growth, the key to a McCain victory over Hill-Bama in November is to compare and contrast two visions of America’s future. The contrast couldn’t be greater. Hill-Bama trashes corporations. But Sen. McCain understands that by lowering tax rates on corporations, vital capital will be unlocked, leading to business expansion and job creation..

Speaking in Warren, Ohio, this week, Sen. Clinton singled out oil, credit-card, insurance, pharmaceutical, investment, and student-loan firms in a massive attack on business. She’s attacking corporations that employ 23 million people and, by the way, pay higher than average wages. In other words, Clinton is attacking 23 million jobs. This is the forgotten middle-class. And they know that if politicians curb or confiscate the profits of their companies, it is they, the workers, who will be harmed.

This is what Hill-Bama fails to understand. This is why Hill-Bama policy would be so damaging to the economy. Corporations are profitable, sure. But wage earners get 70 percent of the profits; investors share the remaining 30 percent.

And these companies pay a colossal fortune in taxes. Exxon Mobil is a perfect example. Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. $27 billion! As my friend, economist Mark Perry, points out, while corporate profits receive a lot of media attention, the corporate taxes paid on these corporate profits are largely overlooked. Dr. Perry also points out that Exxon Mobil pays as much in taxes annually as the entire bottom 50 percent of individual taxpayers — a full 65,000,000 people.

The choice is clear: Jimmy Carter-style big-government spending, taxing, and regulating all over again. Or supply-side free-market capitalism that can endure the inevitable negative shocks, shorten the cyclical downturns, and fuel the engines of economic growth.

J.

Guess they asked the corpse if it wanted to continue ruling, and then they shook the coffin.

Fausta's blog has more info.

Supposedly Raoul will take over. Will he continue the policies set by his brother, or do something else? Guess we'll see what happens. It's about time that Cuba had a chance to be something other than a '50-style Soviet Dictatorship.

J.

Every so often, I lose one of the tools I carry around for work. Then I've got to replace it - and although it's not difficult to find replacements, it does carry an annoyance factor. (Nope - the company doesn't provide tools, nor is there a tool allowance. But hey, $10 or so every year I can live with...)

I don't carry much - I can get by pretty well with just a standard 12-bit multi-tip driver with extension, a flashlight, and a 6" adjustable wrench, and a small wirecutter for zip ties. But the driver's got to be a certain length, about 7" or shorter, and the flashlight the same length. I don't use all the tips - a #2 and #0 Phillips, a medium flat screwdriver tip, a T15 and T20 fit most of my needs, but occasionally the other tips come in useful.

Recently, I misplaced the driver I carry around and hit a local hardware store for a replacement. Their selection was pretty much worthless - I can appreciate the utility of a 12" scrrewdriver/multi-tip set, but it's not suitable for my needs. On the other end of the spectrum, they had a small 4-bit multi-tip with extension that was TOO small... but I could make do with it until I found something better.

"Better" was found later in the day at Home Depot - a 6 bit multi-tip... but no extension. Well, it kind of irked me to carry two screwdrivers around, but I could cope.

Saturday I found something ALMOST perfect. Sturdy, heavy-duty, and with the bits and extension I needed... and even in a color I liked. But note the solid aluminum construction - if I'm working on the innards of a printer and have to have the power on (rare, but it happens) I don't like the idea of the tool I'm using being a great conductor.

Every one of the tools I could get had drawbacks. None really insurmountable, but annoying and aggravating. None of them anything I'd want to be FORCED to use - but sufficent until something better comes along. And what I think are good qualities for something I'll be carrying around might cause the items I carry to be rejected by someone else. There is no 'perfect tool' - it depends on the needs of the user and the job to be done.

Now - take a look at the major political ideas of the last century. There was Democracy in the West. Marxism in Russia, Socialism in China, the Aryan ideology of Hitler, the militant Shintoism Japan, various cults of personalities scattered here and there - and aside from Democracy, none of them worked worth a flip in the long run. They had appealing characteristics which got folks to try them - but the drawbacks kept them from working well. And a lot of the parts couldn't be interchanged - you took the whole package and it worked as it was designed.

Of course, 'worked' is kind of on the variable side. You have to consider the purposes of the people attempting to administer the ideologies involved - I doubt seriously the leadership of the Sopviet Union actually cared much about the people outside the ruling circles, but you've got to consider THEIR point of view. THEY had what they wanted - the perqs opf the office were pretty darn sweet. And if they had to put up with Stalin and Beria, and the KGB, and all the fun and games THAT implied, well, there's drawbacks to everything. They could at least tell themselves they were in the forefront of human social evolution... even if other countries were outproducing them like crazy. Who needs consumer goods when you've got ideology? Or in the case of the various cult-of-personality dictatorships - if you're at the top of the pyramid, as long as you get your goodies, who cares if your peons starve? Consider it feudalism writ large - you've got the baron of the castle, and the peasants who make life good for him. Everything else is irrelevant, unless it keeps you at the top.

Democracy, however - that's a different matter. At the risk of confusing political and economic systems, it's pretty safe to say that capitalism is a financial hallmark of a social structure that's willing to let the people decide their own path, while the centrally planned economies that were emblematic of the Marxist brand of socialism were not designed to let the people pursue what would make them rich - or even well off. (In fact, the conditioning of the people was such that any attempt to get 'rich' (which could be defined as having anything more than what everyone else had) was automatically seen as evidence that you were cheating people around you.)

The other ideologies (indeed, some of the social proposals in the US today) consider the pie to be a fixed size -- there's only so much pie, so get what you can however you can. But in a capitalistic democracy, you don't have to step on someone else to get a larger piece of the pie - you can, instead, go off and make a new one (if you have the talent and drive to carve out a niche for yourself.) and add to the amount of pie available to all.

Socialism and Marxism/Communism in Russia and China attempted to tell people what they needed, and provided what the central planners thought best for all - sort of a 'one size fits none' solution that got the job done in an unsatisfactory manner. The State made the pie, and when it was out, that was that. The people couldn't make more pie - because the State wouldn't let them.

The various dictatorships and cults of personality - well, Cuba's a dirt-poor country, Haiti likewise. Uganda, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and to a lesser extent Burma/Myanmar and Venezuela aren't shining examples of economic success, but you can bet their leaders aren't starving. In that case, the ideological and political tools they're using are quite sucessful - at least for them. The peasants? No, but they can have the satisfaction of knowing their barons aren't hungry. Small pie, lots of people - hey, as long as the misery is shared, that's all that's important.

But why have misery in the first place? Surely the ideals espoused, the bright and shiny promises of Communism/Socialism/Marxism or the inherently more stable situation of having one man in complete charge of a country MUST work better than that old Democracy. Right?

Judging by the record - apparently not.

A tool might appear bright and shiny, the salesman selling it extolling the virtues of that particular implement for your particular purpose - but you've got to be pretty selective in your evaluation in order to get the right tool for the job. The folks who sold Communism sold an iidea - not the actuality. Looking at what happened long-term in the USSR, can you argue that it was a 'better' system for the people than living under the Tsars? (Actually, from what I've read, you very esasily can. However, the Tsar Nicholas II was working at reforming the system, and given time, the nobility would have been rendered much more peasant-friendly. Time, however, was not on their side, and the pace of change was not sufficient. Getting things 'better' is not necessarily 'good enough'.) The tool of the Communist ideology was ALMOST good enough - but it didn't have enough range of utility. It was better than the feudal monarchy it replaced - but it had some pretty severe inherent limitations and imposed restrictions on the people that were almost as bad as the days of the Tsars, and it was much more resistant to change.

Capitalism itself has limitations, as does Democracy. However - so far there hasn't been a more versatile combination that works on both the management and financial sides of a fairly technological society with a large population. I could be wrong - but you're going to have a hard time persuading me of that. Capitalism has some pretty flexible qualities to it, and works well under a variety of social conditions. Communism is pretty inflexible, and requires particular social conditions to work long-term.

In the end - ideas are tools that shape culture, much as a chisel and rasp shape a block of wood. The shape of the culture reflects both the tool and the material - but with the wrong ideas even a thriving and prosperous culture can be brought to ruin.

(I reserve the right to refine the above - my phrasing could be improved...)

J.

Got the little guy a copy of "Have Spacesuit - Will Travel".

Got it today - he flipped through it at 8:30, before going to bed... then he had to read the first chapter of it before lights out.

Bwahahaha....

J.

Afghanistan: Reinforcing Failure

February 15, 2008: The cold weather in western Afghanistan has abated. The snow and low temperatures were the worst in decades. Over 300,000 cattle died, along with over a thousand people. In addition, several thousand suffered cold related injuries (particularly lost limbs from frost bite). The cold has also shut down the usual Taliban activities, which have largely shifted across the border to Pakistan, where the Taliban is fighting for its very survival against an enraged government and population.

Recent cold snap helping Arctic sea ice, scientists find

There's an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it's been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year.

Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas.

Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.

Global WARMING!!!

Heh.

J.

One Shot- One Kill.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A missile launched from a Navy ship struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, the Pentagon said. It was not clear whether the operation succeeded in its main goal of destroying a tank aboard the satellite that carried a toxic fuel that U.S. officials said could pose a hazard to humans if it landed in a populated area.

"Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours," the Pentagon said in a written statement.
The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles - not orbiting satellites - launched the attack at 10:26 p.m. EST, according to the Pentagon. It hit the satellite as the spacecraft traveled at more than 17,000 mph.

Feh. Whatever. Good shooting, guys!

J.

Obama.

The man knows how to orate, to be sure. And get the crowds fired up... But does a charismatic personality mean someone either is or will be a good leader?

I'm thinking... not. Yes, they can get followers - but in the end? Something seems to go... wrong.

We haven't had many Presidents in the US who tried hard to be charismatic - at best, a lot of them were friendly, down-home sort of folks, the sort of people you'd like to go to a party with or have as a neighbor - who were able to step up and do what had to be done when things went all pear-shaped.

But aside from one or two that didn't last long, we've not really had 'charismatic' Presidents.

And it disturbs me to see Obama's charismatic campaign. It's seeming startlingly devoid of actual issues - but it sounds good.

Clinton went into the debate needing a change in the course of the campaign, and waited patiently for an opening to try to diminish her rival, seated inches away on the stage. "I think you can tell from the first 45 minutes Senator Obama and I have a lot in common," she said.

Barely pausing for breath, she went on to say there were differences.

First, she said she had seen a supporter of Obama interviewed on television recently, and unable to name a single accomplishment the Illinois senator had on his record.

"Words are important and words matter but actions speak louder than words," she said.

Obama agreed with that, then noted that Clinton lately had been urging voters to turn against him by saying, "let's get real."

"And the implication is that the people who've been voting for me or are involved in my campaign are somehow delusional," Obama said.

Personally? I think he missed his calling. I, for one, don't want a charismatic President. Guess I've read too much SF where some slick-tounged scoundrel ended up manipulating a population into ruin, or establishing a hereditary theological dictatorship. And really, his wife isn't helping any.

"Barack Will Never Allow You to Go Back to Your Lives as Usual."

Last night I appeared on Hugh's show, and his producer Duane mentioned a Michelle Obama speech at UCLA. Captain Ed talked about this a bit, but I hadn't seen anyone transcribe the part of the speech where it gets a little... unnerving. It starts at about 8:41 in the audio.

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

I'm sorry, nowhere in the Constitution does it authorize the President of the United States to demand anyone shed their cynicism. And I'm all for people pushing themselves to be better, but I don't think the President demanding it is the way to go about it.

At least - not yet.

J.

Alas, it's that time of year again - when we go through the papers and forms and try to figure out just what's going on with the taxes... Rebates and credits and stuff, oh my! And all that to get something back - having overpaid throughout the year. There's gotta be a simpler way...

Well, there is. It's called the FairTax.

I first read about it three years ago or so - and it makes sense to me. It would seem to make sense to a lot of folks with MUCH more experience than I have - and there's a lot of folks who seem just plain horrified at the idea.

But me? Well, it seems like a nice idea - but I don't see any real way this can get enacted. Until...
And then there's these - listings of who supports what in Washington. There's been more progress made than I realize.

This book hasn't got me COMPLETELY convinced, but judging by the history in it, the idea's got a pretty good chance... if we keep pushing it at Congress. You can sign up to be a member, financing lobbyists in Washington for a small fee - and I think it's worth it.

For sure our present tax system isn't - and from what I see of the FairTax, it's about the only thing that'll keep us from strangling in red tape. (Did you know there's been over 20,000 tax code changes in the last two decades? No wonder the IRS can't keep things straight!)

Take a look for yourself. What have we really got to lose?

Without a lot of government help.

That would seem to be the story the Dems are telling any more, have you noticed?

There's never anything positive said - it's pretty much completely negative. The economy sucks. The job market sucks. Medical care sucks. And the Democrats will fix it all for you.

The price? Higher taxes.

Now, far be it from me to suggest that raising taxes won't cure the various ills we're supposedly suffering from. Or that higher taxes might even make the problems worse. Instead, Victor Davis Hansen has an interesting take on things at RealClearPolitics - Victor Davis Hansen - Ivy League Populism

Barack Obama may have gone to exclusive private schools. He and his wife may both be lawyers who between them have earned four expensive Ivy League degrees. They may make about a million dollars a year, live in an expensive home and send their kids to prep school. But they are still apparently first-hand witnesses to how the American dream has gone sour. Two other Ivy League lawyers, Hillary and Bill, are multimillionaires who have found America to be a land of riches beyond most people's imaginations. But Hillary also talks of the tragic lost dream of America.

In these gloom-and-doom narratives by the well off, we less fortunate Americans are doing almost everything right, but still are not living as well as we deserve to be. And the common culprit is a government that is not doing enough good for us, and corporations that do too much bad to us.

In the new pessimistic indictment, the home mortgage meltdown has not occurred because too many speculative buyers were hoping to flip houses for quick profits. It had nothing to do with misguided attempts of government and lending institutions to put first-time buyers in homes through zero-down payments, interest-only loans, and subprime but adjustable mortgage rates - as part of liberal efforts to increase home ownership rates.

And there apparently are few Americans who unwisely borrowed against their homes a second and third time to remodel or purchase big-ticket consumer items - on the belief that their equity would always be rising faster than their debts. Nor are we to look at this downturn as part of a historical boom-and-bust cycle in the housing industry - the present low prices and non-performing loans the natural counter-response to the overpriced real estate of the last five years.

But you'll note the apparent answers to ANY difficulty posed by the Democratic contenders seems to rely on expanding governmental powers significantly.

Here's an odd thought - what if the problem isn't something that government can fix? What if it's the current governmental interference that's causing the problems? The loan market was 'encouraged' to make loans that were very risky - but it wasn' their idea to do it. Detroit's having problems - but is protectionism the answer, or a slimming down of the bloated entitlements for the autoworker? We have an energy problem - is it sensible to expect government to solve it, when they won't allow companies to drill off the coast of Florida, in ANWR, or off the California coast - AND mandate pricy ethanol to boot?

Dr Sanity has an interesting post up about governmental involvement in pretty much everything... Dr. Sanity: IVY LEAGUE POPULISM AND THE PATH TO POWER

As I have said multiple times, poverty has a cure and it it capitalism. But for the left--those "progressives" that Sowell identifies, to embrace that cure would require letting go their death-grip on an ideology whose economic redistribution plans have repeatedly been shown to be catastrophically ineffective and oppressive in the real world.

Indeed, their "progressive" ideology has, in fact, caused all the societies which believed in it to regress economically and politically; causing misery and death for many millions of souls.

If trillion of dollars in investment and aid hasn't been able to raise economic output in such countries, then what can? It turns out that democratic institutions and economic freedom have been shown to be the key determinants of growth and have "

a positive influence on economic growth, while foreign aid does not

."

In other words the alleviation of poverty is directly linked to economic freedom. The more liberty; the more people are free to pursue their own happiness, the less poverty.

And, needless to say, the LESS government interferes in economic matters, the more freedom each individual has to pursue his or her happiness.

That is how "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has slowly morphed into "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" as the mantra of the Democratic party.

"From each according to their ability blah blah blah.." has NEVER worked anywhere it has been tried. The only result has been dragging everyone down to the level of poverty and misery and keeping them there. There are many people --both Democrats and Republicans-- who genuinely want to end racism and poverty. Many sincerely want to help the poor to have better lives. So, the question is: why not go with what works, instead of what doesn't and has never worked?

So you get the Dem party line - "You can't succeed unless you get government to do it for you." Which has a number of unintended consequences, not the least is conditioning the citizenry to expect government to do everything the least bit difficult in their lives.

And government can do it. All it takes is a willingness to give up all you've got.

J.

With the star of the Clinton Inevitability finally fading, the glare is to the point where folks are finally noticing the missing pieces.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

But we've learned something important these past couple of weeks.

Clinton is a terrible manager of people. Coming into a campaign she had been planning for, what, two decades, she was so not ready on Day One, or even Day 300. Her White House, if we can glean anything from the campaign, would be a secretive nest of well-fed yes-people, an uncontrollable egomaniac spouse able and willing to bigfoot anyone if he wants to, a phalanx of flunkies who cannot tell the boss when things are wrong, and a drizzle of dreary hacks like Mark Penn. Her only genuine skill is pivoting off the Limbaugh machine (which is now as played out as its enemies). Her new weapon is apparently bursting into tears. I mean: really.

It's staggering to me that she blew through so much money for close to nothing (apart from the donuts). Without that media meltdown in New Hampshire, she would have been forced to bow out much earlier. She didn't plan for contests after Super Tuesday. She barely planned for any before that. She was out-organized in Iowa and South Carolina, and engaged in the pettiest form of politics in Florida and Michigan. Her fundraising operation was very pre-Internet. She has no message that isn't about her and the Republicans. Her trump card - Bill - managed to foment a 27 point loss in South Carolina. The Clintons, we can now safely say, got lazy. Or rather their old and now forgotten lackadaisical attitude toward governing returned like a persistent flu to campaigning. We tend to forget that their entire governing agenda after 1994 was essentially finessing Gingrich and battling impeachment. (Their entire agenda before 1994 was successful Eisenhower economics, and disastrous Hillarycare). It's been fifteen years since the Clintons actually stood for a coherent message, and it turns out they had forgotten that you kind of need that for a presidential run.

How did they come this close to losing this? They had all the money, all the contacts, all the machine levers, the entire establishment, the biggest Democratic name in decades, and they've been forced into a humiliating death-match by a first-term black liberal with a funny name. It seems obvious to me that the Clintons blew this because they never for a second imagined they could. So they never planned to fight it. Once put in a fair contest, they turned out to be terrible campaigners, terrible politicians, bad managers, useless executives, wooden public speakers. If you're a Democrat, that's good to know, isn't it? All that bullshit about Day One and experience? In retrospect: laughable.

This is it for her. She rolled the dice, bet the whole enchilada that she could dazzle her way into office. She's been running for this for 8 years. And now she's losing.

In all honesty? I think she's not going to go gracefully. Instead, the next couple of weeks are going to be REALLY nasty for the Dems as they watch her do everything she possibly can to trip up and rip down Obama. But more and more we're seeing what's underneath - and a whole lot of people are badly turned off by it.

And I don't expect she'll win her re-election bid in the Senate... but hey, I could be wrong on that one. Ted Kennedy's sock puppet JKerry is still in office, after all.

J.

Amy Proctor - Blog - Soldier Refutes Obama Assertion That Under-Equipped U.S. Troops Confiscate Taliban�Weapons

An anonymous soldier recounts a 5 year old story - and Obama spins it as something happening now.

Oddly enough, CNN has been skeptical and shot holes in this (so to speak) while ABC has apparently talked to the soldier and... confirmed there was someone who said he was the soldier who gave the story to Obama's campaign. Further than that? Apparently Obama kind of 'modified' the story to suit his needs.

You know, I really am starting to get a bad feeling about Obama. Yeah, I know he's in full campaign mode - yeah, I know he's running against Hillary - but this bozo will end up being Commander in Chief of the military if (the country has a collective brain fart and) he gets elected.

Carter wasn't so hot for the military. In 4 years he managed to do a lot of damage to our foriegn policy and our military preparedness. I think he may seem positively Reaganesque compared to Obama.

J.

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

(A 'little' one. But an ice age.)

Manny and Sid would be right at home. (If they didn't get eaten, that is...)

J.

My Way News - Civil Rights Leader Switches to Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) - Civil rights leader John Lewis dropped his support for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid Wednesday in favor of Barack Obama. Lewis, a Democratic congressman from Atlanta, is the most prominent black leader to defect from Clinton's campaign in the face of near-unanimous black support for Obama in recent voting.

Think she'll angle for VP? Or are her negatives too hgih?

J.

If the Government's simply got too many people without enough to do?

I mean - take this...

FBI Opens Investigation of Roger Clemens

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI has opened an investigation into whether baseball great Roger Clemens lied to Congress when he denied taking steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.
Law enforcement officials say the inquiry will focus on whether Clemens or his former personal trainer Brian McNamee (MAC-nah-mee) lied when they testified under oath about the use of steroids.

But baseball - that's visible. They can be seen as doing something... even if it's ultimately pretty meaningless make-work.

Well, at least they'll be ready when needed - right?

J.