Happy New Year!

Every new year, since I was twenty-three, I have had a New Year's day ritual of determining as accurately as possible my net worth. So long as the results are good, this is better than a glass of bubbly in Times Square. The practical reason is to allow me to take the long view on my portfolio and to recalibrate my personal financial strategies if necessary.

Net worth is simply assets minus liabilities. However, I try to make an effort to be as accurate as possible, so I exclude home furnishings, furniture, appliances, sports equipment, tools, art, rental agreements, and hobbies. Liabilities include mortgages, credit card debt, equity loans, and the like.


This has been a hard year for just about everyone. The stock market, in particular, the banking sector, has been bad. And home property values have eroded, in some markets, by twenty percent. For the remnant of true believers in President Bush's free market economic theories, I suggest you only type in the address of your home in the following web site to see objectively what he has wrought on your family's biggest and msot improtant asset. The difference in what your house was worth last year and what it is worth now is your Bush tax. I don't think it will make your smile.

http://www.zillow.com/

In addition to this, state taxes have increased to accomodate what federal tax revenues have not been able to do, in infrastructure, education, immigration, and health care. The final insult has been the massive offshoring of middle class jobs. Look for the price of oil to climb while the value of the dollar declines. A recession next year wouldn't surprise me.

Folks, wake up. In 2008, vote your personal interests-- not your prejudices nor your fears. And surely it is in your interest to reverse the trends that are hurting you and your family economically.

I'm not completely sure that a Democratic president is the answer. But I am sure that that there must be a serious change in the nation's direction and a systemic change in how the president and congress conducts the people's business.

Despite this past year's generally poor economy, we were able to eke out a small increase of about ten percent this year, thanks to diversification in a number of funds and by understating the value of our real estate in prior years.

Pakistan: What's Next?

With the assasination last week of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, there is much handwringing as to what should be done next.

As to who killed Bhutto, the answer lies in another question: who has the most to gain from the death of Bhutto?

There are surely Islamic anarchists that delight in the downfall of the powerful, and Al Queda may be involved. I'm however not all that trusting of reports of intelligence intercepts that claim to prove that. Their motivation for assassinating someone who at the very minimum would be a thorn in the side of the existing regime as well as the United States seems shaky at best.

A stronger motivation is someone who is aligned with Pervez Musharraf in some way, as a way to re-ignite and justify Parkistan's state of seige. It could be someone within the military, the intelligence, a free lancer, or someone friendly to the existing government, perhaps from the United State's CIA or Britain's MI5. But I think it is unlikely that foreign intelligence was involved, as history has demonstrated that such actions randomize events and diminish the control they want to have on the unfolding of events.

Those within the Pakistan Muslim League and even Bhutto's own party the Pakistan People's Party might have their own byzantium motivations. Much less likely, the assasin might simply be an Oswald-like kook wanting to carve his name into history.

What the United States should do relative to this situation is nothing, although there is much temptation to meddle because of its importance as a nuclear power in proximity to other nuclear powers. Any interference in Pakistani politics could backfire horrendously. Our hope is that elections will confer legitimacy to the government, and a legimitately democratic government will be a friendly government to US interests. But this theory, or what I call the democratic fallacy, is disproven by regimes that are unfriendly to the US but still enjoy broad popular domestic support, such as Russia, Cuba, and Iran. It is not elections that confer legitimacy but security and stability. Accordingly, I think elections are going to be a sideshow, perhaps even an irrelevancy.

What will happen in my view is that the Mush-Bush regime will work out a modus vivendi with antagonsitic tribal leaders, including those who have terrorist ties, to establish in particular a secure Afghanistan-Pakisitan border and to prevent civil unrest from metasizing into political chaos that could compromsie control of Pakistan's nculear weapons. The upshot, I believe, is that there will be a low grade border war that continues indefinitely as well as a military dictatorship that continues indefinitely.

The Bush Years

The Huffington Post sponsored the following posters that powerfully invoke the case for change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huffposts-the-bush-year_b_75722.html

There are three posters that are meant to capture "the lunacy of the Bush years". I recall a similar poster created for the 1968 Nixon campagn that did much of the same thing, but using illustrations from the LBJ era. Like all propaganda, it is unfair but compelling.




Events



Slogans



People

However, these posters beg the question. Surely, there should be change. But what kind of change? If the change is a Clintonian restoration, then we could create similar posters for those years as well. Here are some reminders of those good old years.

THE CLINTON YEARS

Events

NAFTA
BIMBO ERUPTIONS
TASK FORCE ON NATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM
TRAVELGATE
NO-FLY ZONE
GOOD FRIDAY PEACE ACCORDS
STARR REPORT
OPERATION DESERT FOX
DAYTON ACCORDS
IMPEACHMENT

Slogans

REINVENTING GOVERNMENT
TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE
I DIDN'T INHALE
IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID
BOXERS OR BRIEFS
HILLARYCARE
TRIANGULATION
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
I DID NOT HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH THAT WOMAN, MISS LEWINSKY
FIRST BLACK PRSIDENT

People

SISTER SOULJAH
GENNIFER FLOWERS
ARSENIO HALL
JAMES CARVILLE
JANET RENO
DICK MORRIS
VERNON JORDAN
LINDA TRIPP
DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
SLICK WILLIE

The Way of the Mouse

I returned today from a week in Orlando, Florida for the holidays.

I gave my blog a rest as the only internet service was at the local Kinkos. They charged $12 an hour, about $10 too much in my opinion.

Some impressions:

Could airport lounges be any more uncomfortable? Even the TV volume is too soft and stuck on CNN. The customer service on United Airline's TED was better than most of the planes I've been on recently.

The bright colors of the southwest soon changed to periwinkle and steel tones when we landed in Chicago, just before the arrival of a blizzard. The pilot checked the de-icing of the wings before we left as snow eddied on the tarmac. We encountered grinding turbulance from 150 mile per hour winds.

The balcony of our condo is screened to prevent the loss of loved ones or things.

Black geckos or skinks infest the gardens. But they are timid and harmless. The lizards hang upside down on the railing of the pool to nibble the aphids.

A black and gold macaw in the lobby greeted me as many Floridians do-- first by saying "hello" and then secondly by screaming at me.

I'm impressed by Disney's polish and perfection and trying to "plus it" where ever possible. At the Animal Kingdom, the Everest Expedition is a must see. They set up the ride by mixing fact and fable in a faux museum to the Yeti, a giant hairy ape-like creature that likes to rip up roller coaster tracks. It was my first time to the Animal Kingdom. I also liked the zoo of real animals with its tigers and tapirs.

I'm amazed at how Disney strives for verisimilitude in recreating foreign locales, right down to the weathered bricks and fading wall posters. But they draw the line at taking the last step-- authentic smells. Having grown up in Asia, I can testify that the Asian exhibits lacks odiferous authenticity-- that uniquely wafting blend of curry, rubber, urine, and dung. Also screened out were the cries of beggers and the honking of the taxis. But they nailed the crowds.

We went to a timeshare presentation with "Gupta". An hour a half later, we ended up none the poorer but with two tickets to Universal Studios.

The Church of Disney is as ritualized as a high mass at St. Patricks and it is scheduled down to the second. MGM and the Magic Kingdom is much like I remember it from more than a decade ago, except for the retirement of some shows (where is Michael Jackson?) and the extra ring of security at ticketing. Some of the "cast members"-- what Disney calls all their employees-- have forgotten the magic as there were a few surly and harried souls who had grown tired of appeasing the Disney customer-- this coiling, shape-shifting beast with 200,000 eyes, 50,000 camcorders, and 10,000 screaming brats. It would be more than I could take. But Disney is a world-class expert in crowd control.

The best ride at MGM is The Tower of Terror, a twelve story high "Hollywood Tower Hotel", which, so the backstory as narrated by the Twilight Zone's Rod Serling goes, was built in 1917 and struck by lightning two decades later, transporting five guests into the beyond. The building we stayed in at the Cypress Pointe Resort looked a bit like The Tower of Terror-- the same verticle lines. But our habitat was one third the height and had no ghosts that I'm aware off.

Their Home

Our Home
My boy lobbed a tennis ball over two fences into a neighboring wooded lot. The resort wanted to charge us two dollars for the lost ball, so I went jungle bashing and found three balls. Money is money.

Splash Mountain, which features a fifty foot drop on a river roller coaster, was also a lot of fun, especially at night in the dark. I heard my neck crack in the first few seconds on the Aerosmith ride, named after the musical group. The best ride at Epcot was Mars Mission, although it made me green around the gills after my second trip into outer space.

Be sure to look for the hidden Mickey on the golf ball on "Soarin" .

I drove a Sedgeway, a two wheeler powered by a lithium battery and gravity, for the first time at Epcot. But I wasn't impressed with Epcot's home of the future, which seemed overly-digitized and stark. The tankless toilet and the biometric door lock were interesting. Most of the kitchen appliances came from Siemens and Kohler.

At the United States section, a robot Lincoln gave the same speach that I first heard in the 1968 New York World Fair. Some people applauded Bush when he spoke. Unlike all the other presidents, Bush's arms hung away from his body almost chimp like. My boy told me the android was smarter than our real president.

Since it was the holiday season, there was wall to wall people, with many families from overseas, no doubt taking advantage of the favorable exchange rate. However, there are ways to get around the crowds, by riding the most popular rides before ten am or after nine pm and by using fast passes. Some of the rides had waits for more than two hours, about an hour and forty-five minutes more than I can endure.

Would it be so hard for Disney to have more benches in their parks?

One thing that Disney doesn't do well is food. The food at most of their parks is basic and bad. The exception is at Epcot at some of the countries. The German buffet at the Biergarten Restaurant was wonderful.

Spectacular also was the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom and the holiday lighting of Cinderella's Castle in sparkling shades of blue, silver, and mauve. The parades that bisect the park can be annoying if you want to get to another part of the park during that time.

Also impressive was the Candlelight Processional and Massed Choir. The actress Marlee Matlin signed the Christmas story. The orchestra's rendition of "Silent Night" was the most beautiful that I've heard. The program ended with Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.

This holiday vacation was interesting and fun. But there's no place like home and it's good to be home again.

Severe Weather Ahead

As among the 65 million traveling during the holidays, we're keeping an eye on bad weather. Delays are reported for Chicago.

http://www.wunderground.com/severe.asp

http://www.flyted.com/

Condoleezza Rice is Ludicrous

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters Friday that Mike Huckabee’s recent comments criticizing some aspects of Bush administration foreign policy were “ludicrous.”
“And one would only have to be not observing the facts, let me say that, to say that this is not a ‘go it alone foreign policy,” said Rice.

In an article in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, released last week, the Republican presidential candidate characterized the Bush administration’s foreign policy as an “arrogant, bunker mentality.”

That sounds about right. And if Huckabee wants to capture the swing vote, I suggest that he doesn't back away from those comments. Not only would that be politically foolish. It would also be untrue.

Let's take Rice up on her challenge and observe the facts. Of course, the United States has multinational contacts, exchanges, initiatives, and allies. An example are the multinational talks that were used to encourage North Korea to close down its nuclear weapon operations. But it is disingenuous to point to this kind of diplomatic coordination and lose sight of the Bush administration's core premise when it comes to foreign policy-- that of preemptive first-strike unilaterialism, irrespective of whether there is justification for that action at all.

Here is the president's own words in the State of the Union Address in 2004.

"From the beginning, America has sought international support for ouroperations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have gained much support. There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few. America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html

During the presidential race, conservatives derided John Kerry for his "global test" remarks, the implication that our national interest was somehow in thrall to the United Nations or other countries from around the world who were unfriendly to our democratic ideals. But the test of which Kerry spoke was the same one that the signers of the Declaration of Independence proposed: "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." With the hindsight of history, it now appears that the Bush administration's permission slip was based on lies, propaganda, and arrogance of which Rice with her invocation of mushroom clouds on the Sunday talk shows was a part.

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter says that "nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." However, the Bush administration has gutted the meaning of that clause to allow the United States to attack another country if there is a perceived threat or even if there is no threat at all. In the fall of 1939, the Bush Doctrine would be the only permission slip Hitler would need to commence Operation Barbarossa, the blitzkrieg into the Soviet Union.

As policy in the hands of our mortal enemies, the Bush Doctrine can only make the world less safe. The ironic consequences of the doctrine is that it will force competing powers in the Middle East to gravitate to balance of power alliances, which in a backhanded way may keep the peace through the cold war mechanism of mutually assured destruction. Thus, I see an emerging Triple Entente between Russia, the People's Republic of China, and Iran as a buffer against Western adventurism, which is looking more and more to be only the United States. However, history has demonstrated that such alliances are fragile and mutable with tendencies toward military catastrophy.

Looking at Iraq in particular, the entire policy is predicated on some rather large assumptions. These include that US military might can prevail against a thousand years of tribalism, the lex talonus; that democracy can take root in a part of the world that has no history of democracy; that the mass of the ordinary people in Iraq even desire democracy; and that US military power can provide the transition into the creation of political institutions.

No previous president has been this forward thinking in regards to the middle east. Instead, they have simply reacted to events in predictable knee jerks. None has done the heavy lifting needed to effect real change in this important area of the world.

Most presidents are not prepared as Bush was to invest the treasure and blood of our country on the most flimsy of evidence.

To surrender - to turn and run - to yield the battlefield to our enemies will result in the same thing we saw at the end of Vietnam - millions will be displaced with no hope and thousands will be murdered as thugs emerge to fill the vaccuum we leave.

This statement is a dishonest re-writing of history. America invested more than 50,000 of their bravest. Today, we are friends with China and Viet Nam. Is it your contention that we should have moved troops into Cambodia and Laos and kept fighting in Viet Nam for another decade? To what end? How many more dead would have satisfied you? To put in in personal terms, are you prepared to sacrifice yourself or your children for Bush's vision?

I appreciate your input more than the lengthy words of the President. That said the Bush doctrine as explained in the first post does three important things - first, it aggressively seeks to take the battle to our enemies. Second, it takes into account the need for real change that will impact the situation over the long haul - essentially establishing a democractic government, rebuilding the country's infrastructure and educating the next generation about the dual threat created by Baathists and terror groups who want to dominate the region. Third, it serves notice to other countries the USA is serious about our long term strategic goals and that we want good things for the region, but not at the expense of relying on failed policies and governments of the past.

"Mortal Combat Made Me Kill"

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/12/analyst-mortal.html

"There is no such defense as, 'The video game made me do it.' It won't even act as mitigation at sentencing if these teens are convicted."

Varsha Sabhnani: Jetsetting Slaver

"A federal judge in Central Islip ordered Varsha Sabhnani to jail Thursday, days after a jury found her guilty of enslaving and torturing two domestic workers at her Muttontown home."

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-bzslav21,0,7487285.story

http://indiequill.wordpress.com/2007/05/31/varsha-sabhnani-is-scary/







"Judge, please!" she said through tears after Spatt denied her attorney's request that she be allowed to remain home through Christmas. "Judge, please change your mind."

Biblical Proof

Now as to proofs that God does or does not exist—I believe they are not possible. Here I quote Hans Kung, the Catholic theologican:

• It is possible to deny God. Atheism cannot be eliminated rationally. It is irrefutable.

• Affirmation of God is also possible, Atheism cannot be rationally established. It is undemonstrable.

•If God is, he is the answer to the radical uncertainty of reality.

•The fact that God is, can be assumed not strictly in virtue of a proof or indication of pure reason (natural theology), not unconditionally in virtue of a moral postulate of practical reason (Kant), not exclusively in virtue of the biblical testimony (dialectical theology), but only in a confidence rooted in reality itself.

From his book, Does God Exist?

You cite scripture as your "proof" that God exists, the basis of your knowledge of what you believe is fact. I have a problem with that assertion, namely that it depends on an assumption: the Bible is the word of God. You are free to make any assumption you wish, but the proposition the Bible is the word of God itself presupposes the existence of God—in other words, it makes no sense unless God is assumed to exist.Consequently to use it to deduce the existence of God is circular reasoning. To be quite explicit your reasoning has to run: "I believe that God exists and that the Bible is the word of God. Therefore I may conclude that God does in fact actually exist."

Yes, there is a problem with circularity. Thus, the Bible is true because it confirms that is is true, a premise Christians would reject in considering whether on not other holy books were true. But even the assumption that you make "the Bible is the word of God" goes beyond what the Bible really says. The Biblical canon is no where defined. Secondly, the Bible is far from uniform is asserting that its words are God's words. It's our assumption (or rather the judgement of councils over the centuries) as books of the Bible were included in the canon while others were excluded. Thirdly, no where does the Bible make any effort to prove God's existence. Rather, God's existence is assumed by the writers of the Bible.

The Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer asserts that his world view derives from the axiom that "the God of the Bible is." However, the problem with this is that the God of the Bible is anything you want it to be based on how you read particular verses in the Bible-- immanent, transcendent, montheistic, polytheistic, triniterian, and so on.

The proof most people resort to is experiential and existential-- it is true because I feel it to be true. I'm not sure it's easy to argue against such claims. On the other hand, such statements are outside what we commonly understand is fact or proof.

Why?

President Bush meets with Lance Cpl. Isaac Gallegos during a visit to the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, November 8, 2007.

REUTERS/Jim Young








And then there is this.

The Lifeboat Ethic: The Limits of Morality

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html

Excerpts from this essay by Garrett Hardin.

So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being "our brother's keeper," or by the Marxist ideal of "to each according to his needs." Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as "our brothers," we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.

Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it. But which 10 do we let in? How do we choose? Do we pick the best 10, "first come, first served"? And what do we say to the 90 we exclude? If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our "safety factor," an engineering principle of critical importance. For example, if we don't leave room for excess capacity as a safety factor in our country's agriculture, a new plant disease or a bad change in the weather could have disastrous consequences.

Suppose we decide to preserve our small safety factor and admit no more to the lifeboat. Our survival is then possible although we shall have to be constantly on guard against boarding parties.

While this last solution clearly offers the only means of our survival, it is morally abhorrent to many people. Some say they feel guilty about their good luck. My reply is simple: "Get out and yield your place to others." This may solve the problem of the guilt-ridden person's conscience, but it does not change the ethics of the lifeboat. The needy person to whom the guilt-ridden person yields his place will not himself feel guilty about his good luck. If he did, he would not climb aboard. The net result of conscience-stricken people giving up their unjustly held seats is the elimination of that sort of conscience from the lifeboat.

Wrapped Presents on Planes

Remember! – do not wrap gifts you're taking on the plane. Security officers may have to unwrap gifts if they need to take a closer look. Either ship wrapped gifts ahead of time or wait until your destination to wrap them.

The Transportation Security Administration presumes that all wrapped presents are gifts for them.

http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/holiday_311.shtm

Lori and Ashley and the Ox-Box Incident

I recently saw the 1943 Henry Fonda movie The Ox-Box Incident, in which the townspeople form a posse and hang three innocent people. That incident is placed in the wild west where law was harsh but certain. Like the movie, the Drew-Megan incident has no happy outcome. Lori lost her nine year old business. Ashley Grills, the 18 year-old who set up the My Space account, is under a suicide watch. And, of course, Megan is dead. As in the movie, the law is impotent, and there is no sense that justice will prevail. And, in the absence of justice, you see the modern day equivalent of a lynch mob, which is as American as apple pie.

I'm stumped on this. In the movie, what if, for example, the mob hung three guilty men? Would that be jsutice? Or what if the court had freed those guilty men? Would that be an injustice? However, if the notion of civilization is to have any meaning, I do believe we need to make an effort to comport ourselves to principles of law that go back to the Magna Carta seven hundred years ago -- due process and a jury trial, the use of argument, precedent, and evidence, competent advocacy, and perhaps enough doubt in our verdict to take the penalty of capital punishment off the table. But that is the ideal and the bloggers who post the cell phone number of the Drews and harass their business partners know the reality-- that law often has little to do with justice.




Lori Drew

Reviled Mother




Ashley Grills

The Tormentor, The Tormented



Megan Loved Josh



As American As Apple Pie

Obama For President

My choice on the Republican side is Mike Huckabee, but I'll talk about that on another day.

On the Democratic side, Barack Obama gets my nod. In making the choice generally, I want to choose someone who can be a president, not some who seems to be running to make a political point, such as Kucinich or Paul. I also want to vote for someone, not against someone. As much as I dislike Hillery, I don't want my vote to be for the person who is running against Hillery. Finally, I want to vote for someone who represents a genuine change, not just with the Republican administration but also with the way politics is conducted today.

David Brooks, in The New York Times, best articulates for me at least why Obama would make a good president. Obama would be a good president because of his moderation, his centeredness, his vision, his integrity, and in his yearning to reduce the politics of attack and division. In a previous post, I mentioned how how children can rise above their backgrounds and bad parenting. And I am especialy impressed that Obama has made the kind of chocies that has allowed him to rise to where he is today.

"Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones. He was forged by the process of discovering his own identity from the scattered facts of his childhood, a process that is described in finely observed detail in “Dreams From My Father.” Once he completed that process, he has been astonishingly constant.

"Like most of the rival campaigns, I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none. The unity speech he gives on the stump today is essentially the same speech that he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, and it’s the same sort of speech he gave to Illinois legislators and Harvard Law students in the decades before that. He has a core, and was able to maintain his equipoise, for example, even as his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall.

"Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. Though Tom DeLay couldn’t deliver much for Republicans and Nancy Pelosi, so far, hasn’t been able to deliver much for Democrats, these warriors believe that what’s needed is more partisanship, more toughness and eventual conquest for their side.

"But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

"Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. In her outstanding New Yorker profile, Larissa MacFarquhar notes that Obama does not perceive politics as a series of battles but as a series of systemic problems to be addressed. He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.

"Obama also has powers of observation that may mitigate his own inexperience and the isolating pressures of the White House. In his famous essay, “Political Judgment,” Isaiah Berlin writes that wise leaders don’t think abstractly. They use powers of close observation to integrate the vast shifting amalgam of data that constitute their own particular situation — their own and no other.

"Obama demonstrated those powers in “Dreams From My Father” and still reveals glimpses of the ability to step outside his own ego and look at reality in uninhibited and honest ways. He still retains the capacity, also rare in presidents, of being able to sympathize with and grasp the motivations of his rivals. Even in his political memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” he astutely observes that candidates are driven less by the desire for victory than by the raw fear of loss and humiliation."

Let me finally end this post by trying once again to put to rest the silly lie that Obama is the educational product of an Islamic madrassa. Of all people, Christians should stand for the Idea of Truth. But it is they who perversely seem to be jumping on this dishonest bandwagon. Here is a column I did earlier this year on this so-called issue. But ignorance and expediency being what it is, I expect this lie to continue to have a long life.

www.mymallandnews.com/2007/04/why-i-dont-watch-katie-couric.html

Lynne Spears: A Mother of Faith

Thomas Nelson, the world's largest manufacturer of Bibles, has decided to delay publishing Brittany Spear's mother's reflections on faith and parenting.

"On the heels of the announcement that Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant with her first child comes word that the parenting book due for release in the spring from the girls' mom, Lynne Spears, has been delayed. People magazine reports that the book, which was to be released under the title Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World, is on indefinite hold by publisher Thomas Nelson, which puts out inspirational literature and Bibles."

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1576784/20071219/id_0.jhtml

What even remotely qualifies Brittany's mother to write about either faith or parenting? It seems like this is a book that is going straight to the remainder bin. I don't think Lynne is a good mother and in some respects she acts like Brittany's only slightly older but less talented sister, intoxicated as she is by the flash of lightbulbs and the ink of tabloids. As the article above notes, Lynne even yearns that Jamie follows in Brittany's footsteps. This kind of book idea seems to have more to do with celebrity worship than it has with sound advice on parenting. And there is nothing good about teenage promiscuity or teenage parenting. The fact is that two-thirds of teen moms never even finish high school and only 1.5% get a college degree by the time they are 30.

Having said that, I'm not sure it's fair to attribute Jamie's pregnancy to bad mothering. Parents can take their kids only so far, and it is not unusual for parents to do the right thing in all respects and still have kids that that don't turn out well. Conversely, I've known kids that come from utterly gothic backgrounds with no parents or cruel parents. Yet, they manage to transcend their background and they turn out to be great parents. The reason is that some kids are for whatever reason born to be less resistent to making bad choices than other kids. At some point, children need to take responsibility for themselves and try to sort out life for themselves by making wise choices despite the bad choices or behavior of their parents or siblings.

Jamie Lynn Spears' boyfriend Casey Aldridge

Expel Francisco Nava

Princeton University Junior Francisco Nava has confessed to self-assault.

According to the AP, "Nava claimed to have been assaulted Friday by two men off campus, police said. But he later confessed that scrapes and scratches on his face were self-inflicted, and that the threats were his work, too, said Detective Sgt. Ernie Silagyi.

"A spokeswoman for the Ivy League university said punishment, which could range from a warning to expulsion, was pending Monday."





Francisco Nava
Tiger, Moralist, Hoaxer

The 23 year-old junior politics major, residential assistant, and member of a campus wide committiee of religious life from Bedford, Texas cultivated a reputation riling up his fellow students for their liberal views. He belonged to the Anscombe Society, a student organization that seems to exist for the purpose of discussing Princeton's sexual mores, as we see from the society's calendar

Designed for Sex
A Pro-life, Pro-family Evening of Dessert, Coffee, and Conversation
Sexual Propositions: Romance Without Regret
Making Love Last: Finding Meaning in Sex and Romantic Relationships

It makes me yearn for the Princeton of yesteryear where the annual bacchanalia of Naked Olympics at first snow replaced such solumn thought and discourse. In this hot house of sublimated sexuality, Mr. Nava appears to have lost sight of another commandment in the Decalogue: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright/In the forest of the night," and Francisco's fellow tigers must be struggling to account for this sad-sack, self-loathing lost soul. "What the hammer? What the chain?/In what furnace was thy brain?" But I'm struggling to account for how this chap even made into Princeton in the first place, in the face of compelling evidence that argued against his admission.

I remember my own trangressions during that confusing time of life, and my first instinct is one of forgiveness-- perhaps the semester off with a gentle suggestion that he might consider the spires and gargoyles of the Brigham Young University instead of the spires and gargoyles of Princeton. But this is more than just a prank or even a libel at the over-privileged kids at an Ivy League campus. It epitomizes the illusion that fosters the elites that a generation later will start wars and plunder our treasury.

Like George Bush, Francisco Nava is not an aberration of the Ivy League. He is the very flower of the Ivy League, with his dishonesty, arrogance, pomposity, and moral strut. While I was browsing through Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas' whiney new book My Grandfather's Son, it occurred to me that Thomas and Nava are hypocritical brothers under the skin as they are both beneficiaries of affirmative action that placed them in these clubs for superior humans while they deny the same privilege to anyone else that follows them in the name of conservative orthodoxy.

What a tribute to Princeton's Dei sub numine viget. And it is for that reason that the only appropriate penalty will be Mr. Nava's expulsion.

By every measure, Princeton University is one of the great educational institutions on the planet. U.S. News and World Report claims that Princeton is indeed the best university in America, and I have no reason to doubt that magazine or the experience of child porn star Brooke Shields.

Although conservatives condemn the Ivy League for its liberalism and general wickedness, they nevertheless clamor to send their own kids to those schools. And the reason is that these school give their kids the keys to the kingdom-- posh mansions on the main line, exemption from the hard life, and boundless political influence and social opportunities.

But I wonder if this is a case of a victory of illusion over reality, at least when it comes to developing the mind. Graduates from this intellectual sausage factory have the Seal of Good Housekeeping upon graduating. But is their education really any better than what you could get at, say, Arizona State? There is little interaction with the Nobel Prize winning superstars, and assistants not much older than the typical freshman teach some of the survey classes. When a demi-god does descend from the clouds to teach lowly underclassman, it's more often than not grunts from thirty-year-old notes. Frankly, I think most people can do better with a card to their local library.

Perhaps all of this could be tolerated, except for the suspicion that rather than being a center for excellence it is rather a cesspool of mediocrity. Princeton, like many of the top private universities, is as far from the ideal of meritocracy as cats are from kings. At Harvard, for example, Daniel Golden estimates in How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite College-- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates that as many as 60 percent of the freshman slots are reserved for legacy and investment admissions. This would make a good SAT question: If the average SAT of the 40 percent who get in on their intellectual bandwidth is 1500 and the average SAT of the remaining legacy kids is 900, what is the average SAT of Princeton University? The answer: probably less than the students at most trade schools. According to Golden, investment admissions seats are reserved for those who have parents who buy their way into the school, and the going price at Harvard is currently about $2.5 million dollars.

Princeton expects an average SAT score of 1500. But, like the price tag for education, this too is a fiction. The true score that they expect from you on your applications depends on all kinds of affirmative action diversity factors. Starting with a base of 1200, you can subtract 100 if you are Jewish kid from Boston but add 100 if you are a Baptist kid from Salt Lake City. Subtract 100 if you are Chinese majoring in math but add 100 if you are a Chinese hockey player. And add another 300 points if your daddy has endowed a chair or if your last name is Bush or Kennedy. The admissions process is indeed fertile ground for ample cynicism.

SAT scores, or what psychometricians a generation ago called IQ, have little real intellectual meaning, and it is surely true that the legacy from Groton prep with a SAT of 1300 is a dunce compared to the his peer in a barrio or a ghetto with a SAT of 900. Yet, there are only a small number of seats that are available at institutions such as Princeton, and I don't think it is rude to suggest that admissions committee at Princeton dropped the ball in Mr. Nava's case. The case for affirmative action based on poverty seems stronger to me than basing it on race, sex, and family wealth. But surely among the factors that admission committees should consider as part of the package is a person's ethical maturity and psychological stability.

It appears to me that Mr. Nava's story of his life's journey blinded to committee to these more fundamental considerations. Perhaps it is more accurate to say the the people on the Princeton admissions were blind because they wanted to be blind. I hope today that their eyes are open and their faces are red.

Princeton and other Ivy League schools will continue to attract brilliant students and professors, and must do so to offset the possibility that the schools are merely diploma mills willing to sell a piece of paper to the highest bidder. But the reality is that vast numbers of people are excluded from these gateways to the good life and power, not through lack of effort and ability but through an accident of birth, in this case, birth into the home of the not so rich and not so famous. There is nothing American about this kind of unfairness, so in that sense I do think Princeton and the other Ivys hate America.

While I think that the ending class-based discrimination should be a condition of continued federal funding, I think also it's unlikely that will ever happen. Thus, for most people, that is just one more hurdle to jump, not unlike the numerus clausus that these schools inflicted on Jewish students for decades. In face of such obstacles, the answer is not to retreat but to study harder and be mentally tougher than the legacy or the affirmative action kids.

With his family connections and his ethnic and boarding school background, Francisco Nava will thrive, enjoying a future someday as a Republican investment banker or as a congressman, although his diploma probably won't come from New Jersey.

Holiday Party

Embassy Suites, Phoenix



Stepping out into a fun evening.

Mitch the Grinch

A letter from James Carville.

I've always told my daughters that it's Santa's job to figure out who's been naughty and who's been nice. But I thought that this year it would be fun for all of us who support the DSCC to help Santa out a little bit.

After all, he's got so much work to do figuring out what gifts to bring for the nice kids, wouldn't it be nice if we could make his job easier by identifying a few of the naughty ones? In fact, I've got one guy in mind who really should have a lump of coal coming his way.

I'm talking about Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

In the last year, Senator McConnell has been a grinch to the more than three million uninsured children who would benefit from the health care bill he blocked. He's been anything but helpful to our soldiers in Iraq, blocking Democratic efforts to set a new course. He's tried to allow a lot more elected officials to be naughty rather than nice by delaying true ethics reform.

The man is just begging for a lump of coal.

And we're just the folks to give it to him.

Every day, Mitch McConnell is showing why come next election, we need a lot more than 51 Democratic Senators. By gumming up the works so badly, thwarting the will of the people, Mitch McConnell has been anything but good for America.

And for that, he deserves a lump of coal.

Next year, we'll get to send Senator McConnell a message with our votes. But for now, let's just make sure that this holiday season he gets a stocking overflowing with coal.

After all, when it comes to sending Republicans a message about how bad they are for this country, it really is better to give than to receive.

Click here to send Mitch McConnell a "virtual" lump of coal this holiday season.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

The Elephant Man Lives

http://www.tmz.com/2007/12/17/jackos-face-its-bad/

Duellmanohyla Uranochroa

This represents my first Wikipedia edit.

I changed this:

Duellmanohyla uranochroa is a species of frog in the Hylidae family. It is found in Costa Rica and Panama. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical moist montanes, and rivers. It is threatened by habitat loss.

To this:

Duellmanohyla uranochroa (Red-eyed Stream Frog) is a species of frog in the Hylidae family. It is found in Costa Rica and Panama. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical moist montanes, and rivers.

This species is critically endangered (Shoville). Declines and local extinctions have been reported for populations (referred to as Hyla uranochroa) within the Monteverde region of Costa Rica's Cordillera de Tilaran, synchronous with the decline of 24 (from a total of 53) other amphibian species during 1990 (Pounds et al. 1997).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duellmanohyla_uranochroa

The Scourge the Meadow

My eleven year-old wrote the following story as an allegory of the holocaust.

Political Endorsements

I endorse for the Republicans Huckabee and for the Democrats Obama.

I will explain my thinking in the next few days. But I have no illusions. My endorsement will have as much impact on voters other than myself as it has on my cat. To put it another way, my endorsement will have no less impact as the endorsement of Barbra Streisand for Clinton or the smarmy Dennis Miller for Giuliani. There is no proof that celebrities or the media can turn public opinion on a dime. To the contrary, in the case of Streisand's endorsement, for example, it can have a negative effect as it reinforces latent fears about Hillary's authentic beliefs, that she is more in sympathy with the Hollyweird elite than Main Street, USA. Miller, grinning on the O'Reilly show like a pervert in an adult bookstore, can only help the Democratic cause. And this statement from former Nebraskan Senator Bob Kerrey about Obama did Obama no favors: "I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim," said Kerrey.

Deciding who to vote for at the top of a state or national ticket is an accumulation of facts, impressions, and prejudices over many months and sometimes years.

"Look, Daddy, Kittens!"

People We Work With

Ain't it the truth?

http://www.mymallandnews.com/People.pps

"I've Lost My Job."

I just heard that a family member lost his job, a nasty turn of events given the time of the year and his age. In the last decade, I've gone through seven jobs, which in a backhanded way has given me the confidence to know that there are always jobs out there for me. I've also developed a sharp spider sense to know when my job is in peril. I'm reluctant to provide unsolicited advice to anyone who may be out of work. Generally, their circumstances are unique and they have to work the problem within the context of their own family. However, I can offer these general guidelines that come from my many years of hard experience finding and retaining good employment.

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/FRAME19.HTM

The Bleating of Sheep

We got the following e-mail today. But it is a hoax.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_petition_2493.htm

I never cease to be amazed at the sheep-like credulousness of people who are willing to lend their good names to this kind of a viral evil. They cannot even get their facts right. O'Hare did not "successfully eliminate the use of Bible reading from public schools a few years ago." She won a Supreme court that ended the practice of daily prayer in public schools more than forty years ago. But there was no prohibition against reading the Bible in school in the context of an academic class, such as in literature, history, or philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O'Hair

Could it be that simple-mindedness and faith are one and the same? I'm also curious about the motivation of those who start e-mails like this. Some of them may be fundamentalist fearmongers. But others may simply be harvesting e-mail addresses for financial gain.

The following e-mail was followed by hundreds of signatures, the hoofprints of sheep from around the country.

Please read and sign

Sounds worth doing:

Dr. Dobson & CBS Response

Apparently we are to be allowed to watch TVprograms that use every foul word in the English language, but not the word "God." It will only take a minute to read this and see if you think you should send it out

DR. DOBSON'S PLEA FOR ACTION

CBS discontinued "Touched by an Angel" for usingthe word God in every program. Madeline Murray O'Hare, an atheist, successfully managed to eliminate the use of Bible reading from public schools a few years ago.Now her organization has been granted a federalhearing on the same subject by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Washington , DC .Their petition, Number 2493, would ultimately pavethe way to stop the reading of the gospel, our Lordand Savior, on the airwaves of America .They got 287,000 signatures to back their stand!

If this attempt is succes sful, all Sunday worshipservices being broadcast on the radio or bytelevision will be stopped. This group is alsocampaigning to remove all Christmas programs and Christmas carols from public schools!You as a Christian can help!

We are praying for at least 1 million signatures. This woulddefeat their effort and show that there are many Christians alive, well and concerned about our country. As Christians we must unite on this.

Please don't take this lightly.We ignored this lady once and lost prayer in ourschool and in offices across the nationPlease stand up for your religious freedom and let your voice be heard. Together we can make adifference in our country while creating a way forthe lost to know the Lord.Please press "forward", an. Together we can make a difference in our country while creating a way forthe lost to know the Lord.Please press "forward", and fo rward this to everyone that you think should read this.

Now, please sign your name at the bottom ( youcan only add your name after you have pressed the"Forward").

Don't delete any other names, just go to the nextnumber and type your name and state. Please defeat this organization and keep the right of our freedom of religion.

REMEMBER: Our country was founded on freedom of religionand our Constitution is based on the 10 Commandments.

Agree or Delete: Instructions to sign are at the bottom.

PETITION FOR PRESIDENT BUSH

PETITION TO REINSTATE PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS:

My Blog: A Status Report

My Mall & News keeps surging in popularity. I'm now getting more than 2,000 hits each day, with a maximum of 968 per hour.

As of today, the year to date counts are as follows:

Pages 163986
Files 250693
Hits 381333

Here are some definitions:

Files: The number of files that have been requested (downloaded) from your site during the report period. Web sites contain a collection of computer files, which are sent by a remote computer (Web server) to the client (Web browser) as the client requests them. Files (the outgoing response to a request) include all viable Web file formats, such as HTML files (.html), graphics files(.gif, .jpg or .png), Adobe Acrobat files (.pdf), Macromedia Flash files(.swf), Microsoft Word files (.doc) ASP files (.asp), etc. The relationship between hits and files can be thought of as incoming requests and outgoing responses.

Hits: The total number of requests that were made to the site during thereport period. Any request made to the Web server is logged as a hit. The request can be for files, such as an HTML page, graphic image, audio file or CGI script, or for queries made by search engine spiders.

Pages (Also called Page Views): The number of pages viewed during thereport period. Hypertext mark-up files (.html or .htm) and files that generate HTMLdocuments (for example, .asp .cgi). are considered pages, with thedefinition of a page varying by server. BizLand's servers define as apage any file with one of the following extensions: ( * represents any character)Some people consider the pages total to be the number of pure hits. Inother words, it is a truer indication of the traffic your site receives.

Using the following site, my website grade is as follows:

http://www.websitegrader.com/

WebSite Grade For www.mymallandnews.com : 71/100 (December 14, 2007)A website grade of 71 for www.mymallandnews.com means that of thethousands of websites that have previously been submitted to the tool,our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 71% ofthem in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses aproprietary blend of over a dozen different variables, including searchengine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance,and others. The Google page rank is three.

The alternative website name has a grade of 86 percent and a page rank of 4.

WebSite Grade For mymallandnews.bizland.com : 86/100 (December 14, 2007)A website grade of 86 for mymallandnews.bizland.com means that of the thousands of websites that have previously been submitted to the tool,our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 86% ofthem in terms of its marketing effectiveness.

The phrase "my mall" consistently is nu