Follow up

While surfing the 'net, I came across this must read article:

These paragraphs hit me right between the eyes as they, and the rest of the article, articulate the point I was trying to make in my previous post very nicely...

They export to the US but they want to strengthen the other Asian countries in order to have strong neighbors that will depend in the future more and more on the Chinese economy as an engine of growth and less on the US. Chinese imports from South East Asia are growing at a very rapid pace.

In the process of industrialization, energy needs go up. China consumes 1.7m barrels of oil a day; India 0.7m barrels. The whole of Asia has 3.6bn people including Japan and it consumes 20m barrels of oil a day. The US has 295m people and consumes 22m barrels of oil a day. For sure oil demand in Asia will double to 40m barrels of oil per day. Whether it takes six years or 15 years, I don't know, but it will double. In your lifetime you won't see oil at US$12 a barrel again - ever. The Chinese used to take 6% of the world's copper market in 1990, 12% in the year 2000; now they're the largest copper user, 21%. For Iron ore they consume up 27% of total production in the world.

The incremental demands from industrialization do not come from China only, but also from India, from rising standards through this wealth transfer from the Western World to Asia, and this will lift commodity prices.

Keep your eye on China

I don't know if this is article is credible but if it is, it's not good.

http://www.321energy.com

From the link:

Despite what Washington may say about Iran, China is the primary number-one national security threat for these reasons: China and the United States are the largest users and competitors for the world's rapidly diminishing oil reserves. Going forward, the US and China's projected requirements will consume 60%-70% of the world's production. This demand cannot be met and one country will experience brown outs, gasoline shortages, factory shutdowns as a result of having a lack of energy.

China has aligned itself with Iran, cited by Bush as the world's leading terrorist exporting nation and nuclear threat. Military alliances with Iran coupled with a massive naval build up have Washington concerned.

The Chinese have the United States in a dollar and Treasury note trap which could put the economy in a tail spin with one news announcement that they are no longer buyers of U.S. debt.

The war for final resources is the ultimate global showdown. The People's Liberation Army Colonels have developed a blueprint to destroy America. Actions, not words, seem to be bearing out this fact. China is merging financial, economic, political, and military forces together in a pursuit to dominate the world's resources, particularly oil.

The article also mentions that China has signed a deal with Venezuela for most if not all of their oil. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't start hearing about the need for military action in Venezuela soon.

I find it extraordinarily odd that given the text of the link, the country we are most indebted to is China. Something very strange is going on here. It appears that the very plan of U.S. dollar hegemony to exploit and dominate the world is going to backfire on the U.S. because China is using it as a means to our undoing.

Today, the U.S. is the world's largest debtor nation. We must borrow $2.6 billion dollars each and every day to finance our society's addiction to consumption. The lion's share of this borrowing is done with China which is going through their own industrial revolution just as we did 100 years ago. They lend us billions of dollars so we can continue to purchase goods from them creating demand which in turn fuels their growth. We are consuming and they are producing. We are now in a dangerous downward spiral.

This is not a symbiotic relationship. We have everything to lose and China has everything to gain and they are in total control of the situation. The danger is that if they were to stop lending to the U.S., we would be economically devastated. China on the other hand, would only have to open new markets for their goods. This might not be particularly easy but it could be done.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that while we fuel their economy (to the detriment of our own) we are promoting their demand for oil and other natural resources. So the side effect of our policies are creating a serious competitor for the very life blood of our country. This demand can only lessen availability and pressure the cost of these resources upward, something we can ill afford.

I wonder if all of this has something to do with my rant from the other day about the latest wave of corporate insiders selling their shares.

It would be interesting to examine the stock portfolios of our congressmen. I suspect we would see large holdings in companies involved in defense, energy and natural resources. They are directly responsible for the predicament we are in today and one can count on them "getting theirs" on the way down. Kinda' like the crew of the Titanic raiding the ship's wine cellar after hitting the iceberg.

I'd like to write more on this if time permits.

The Loopy Logic of Hate Speech Law

Viewpoint posted a report a couple of months ago on the case of a Swedish pastor who was convicted of hate speech and sentenced to a month in prison for preaching against homosexuality. Now that conviction has been overturned on appeal. Here are excerpts of the story from an English language Swedish newspaper called The Local:

The Swedish pastor sentenced to prison for a sermon that was said to spread hatred against gay people has had his conviction quashed on appeal, in a verdict that a Swedish gay rights group has called "disturbing".

Ake Green, a pentacostalist pastor from Borgholm on the Baltic island of Oland, was convicted last year by a court in Kalmar under Swedish laws banning 'agitation against minority groups'.

In the original verdict, the court ruled that certain phrases in his sermon amounted to an attempt to stir up hatred of homosexuals. During the sermon, copies of which were later distributed by Green to local media, the pastor called homosexuality a "cancer on the face of society", and said that homosexuality could lead to bestiality and pedophilia. The court sentenced him to one month in prison.

Overturning the earlier ruling, the appeal court in Jonkoping said that there was "no evidence that the pastor was using his preaching as a cover to attack homosexuals," arguing instead that Green was clarifying his beliefs and his interpretation of biblical passages.

Green's conviction had also been attacked by the Swedish press ombudsman, Olle Stenholm, who said that Green should be made to defend his statements in a "free and open debate".

The appeal court agreed, but it is unlikely to be the end of the matter: prosecutors see this as an important test case. Before the appeal, Kjell Yngevesson said that he intended to take the case to the supreme court if he lost.

Gay rights groups have declared their disappointment. RFSL spokeswoman Maria Sjodin said in a press release that the verdict was "disturbing", when hate crime is "on the rise."

"Agitation, whether it is based on religious or neo-Nazi beliefs, legitimizes violence," she continued. "The verdict would have been very different if Ake Green had agitated against black people or Jews."

Of course, it probably hasn't occurred to this spokeswoman that homosexual behavior is categorically different from race or ethnicity. Behavior is, or should be, legitimately subject to moral criticism. Race and ethnicity, being matters which are not chosen by individuals, are not.

Leaving aside the question of whether the pastor's judgments were correct, the idea that moral criticism constitutes hate speech and should therefore be illegal is self-refuting. After all, if it is hate speech to make public moral judgments then the public judgment that hate speech is wrong, being a moral judgment, is itself a form of hate speech and should be illegal. Thus, to condemn the pastor's behavior on the grounds that his moral objections to homosexuality constitute hate speech, is itself an expression of hate and should be prosecuted.

Closer to home the free expression of opinion about the moral standing of homosexuality and dissent from the current orthodoxy lead, perhaps, an even more precarious existence than in Sweden. Consider the case of four anti-gay protestors in the City of Brotherly Love.

During Philadelphia's annual homosexual "Outfest" rally, 11 Christians were herded into a police truck for refusing to obey a police order to relocate, and for using signs and megaphones to proclaim Scripture verses during the gay-pride celebration. The Christians are members of the evangelistic group Repent America.

Repent America director Michael Marcavage, 25, is facing three felony charges and five misdemeanors. The felonies include conspiracy, inciting to riot, and ethnic intimidation-a charge filed under the state's hate-crimes law, which specifically mentions sexual orientation as one object of hate speech. Charges against seven of the Christians were dismissed. The others are now known as the "Philadelphia Four."

"This is the first time in this country where singing hymns, praying, and reading biblical passages have been described as 'hate speech' and 'fighting words,'" said Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy. Fahling has filed a federal suit to stop his clients from being tried by the Philadelphia courts.

Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia district attorney's office, said the case was "not about content of speech" but "conduct and behavior."

During the incident, which happened in October, several of the Christians were calling out, "Sodomists repent. You're going to hell," a police officer testified.

Marcavage said the case is about free speech. "The hate-crimes legislation is being used to target Christians who call homosexual behavior sin."

On January 21, Judge Pamela Dembe dissolved an order prohibiting the accused from gathering within 100 feet of any gay-rights event, calling the order "an unreasonable restriction on a person's right to speak."

In Philadelphia speech is free and unfettered as long as it conforms to politically correct norms and does not offend members of a legally privileged group. Marcavage and his friends could have stood on the corner shouting obscenities and they probably would've received a slap on the wrist from the Philadelphia police, no matter how offensive their behavior may have been to average citizens, but calling gays to repentance turns out to be beyond the pale of acceptable behavior in the City of Brotherly Love.

Frankly, we were surprised that anything was beyond the pale in Philadelphia.

The Eason Jordan Scandal

By now anyone who gets their news from the new media has heard of the Eason Jordan disgrace. The problem is that if you get your news from the old media you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. To catch up see here. The short version is this:

Last week CNN executive Eason Jordan addressing an audience in Davos, Switzerland, accused American troops of deliberately targeting journalists for death. He offered no evidence, of course, because there is none. In the audience were Massachusetts representative Barney Frank, and Connecticut senator Christopher Dodd, both of whom are liberal Democrats not particularly friendly to the military. Both reported that Jordan did indeed say what he is alleged to have said. Also in attendance serving as moderator was David Gergen who confirmed that Jordan made these outrageous charges. Jordan claims he was misunderstood, but a videotape was made of the event, and Eason does not want it to be released.

The scandal here is not just that a CNN executive has played fast and loose with the truth. This is, after all, the same guy who stifled coverage of Saddam's atrocities in order to retain access to Iraq. Nor is the scandal merely that a lefty would libel American troops. That's a quotidian occurrence. The scandal is that few major news outlets, except the Washington Times and perhaps FOX, has carried the story. It's been spiked everywhere else, evidently to protect the reputation of CNN as a trustworthy news organization and perhaps also to protect the career of yet another dishonest leftist in the MSM.

The MSM gives the impression of being comprised largely of members of a liberal Liars Club with Pulitzers promised to whomever can get away with telling the biggest whopper. Journalistic ethics in this association require members to form a protective ring around any brother who has been wounded, to protect him from scrutiny by the hoi-polloi out here in red state territory who are still naive enough in this post-modern age to believe that truth is something more than whatever you feel most strongly about. A curtain of silence must fall down around the Jordan episode lest he be made to suffer for proclaiming his "truth".

The po-mo philosopher Richard Rorty once wrote that "truth is whatever my peer group will let me get away with saying." By that standard Jordan's asseverations of murderous American soldiers assassinating journalists is true beyond any doubt.

UPDATE: Drudge is reporting that Jordan has resigned today from CNN. Maybe now the story will get reported.

Dust in the Wind

I noticed that Mark Roberts uses the 1978 Kansas song Dust in the Wind as a jumping off point for a post on Ash Wednesday. This was an interesting coincidence since just a few days before I had played that song for my philosophy class, as I do each semester, to illustrate how the death of God manifests itself in the culture in expressions of despair.

For those who may not recall the lyrics they go like this:

I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment's gone; All my dreams pass before my eyes a curiosity; Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea; All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see; Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.

Don't hang on, nothing lasts for ever but the earth and sky; It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy; Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.

The forlornness of this song reflects an inevitable and melancholy consequence of the denial of a personal, transcendent deity. Modern man lives under an illusion that he can revolt against belief in God, declare Him to be a dead issue, and that the whole experience is bracing and liberating. He has led himself to believe that God is a burdensome, unnecessary, superstitious anachronism that we are much better off to put far behind us.

This is quite a distance, however, from the truth. Everything in life that really matters is ontologically dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the existence of God. To consider just one important example, if atheistic naturalism is correct and there really is no transcendent creator then there is no ultimate meaning to our existence. Our lives are purposeless and we are insignificant. As the biologist Theodosious Dobzhansky put it, the only meaning we can hope for "is to live, be alive, and to leave more life", but if this is what it's all about our life is no more purposeful than that of a bacterium. Famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow saw life as nothing more than "an unpleasant interruption of nothingness." Historian Will Durant claimed that man's only significance lay in the fact that he can "look out upon the universe and it can't look back on him." These men recognized that the modernity they embraced ultimately strips us of the only thing that can put genuine meaning into a person's life, and that realization left them without hope of any but the most superficial meaning.

Jean Paul Sartre writes in Existentialism is a Humanism that man without God is forlorn, abandoned, alone in the cosmos (as Walker Percy puts it). Woody Allen claims in Hannah and Her Sisters that "the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless." Albert Camus compares life to the crushing futility of Sisyphus condemned by the gods to eternally push a rock up a hill only to have it roll back down each time.

Notwithstanding the cries of existential despair from writers such as these, if there really is a God who made us then we can assume that He had some purpose in so doing, and we can assume that there is some underlying point to our lives. We may not know what that point is, but we can assume there is one. If, however, there is no God, then we in fact just are the product of eons of blind, purposeless forces, which somehow by chance accidentally spit us up out of the darkness. There's no reason why we're here, we just are, and after a relatively brief moment we'll return to the dust from which we sprang. For most of us, whatever we accomplish in that exquisitely brief span we call life will perish with us so that after we're gone we and all our deeds will be just as anonymous to our descendents as most of our great great grandparents are to us. It will be as if we never lived at all. What meaning can there be in this?

Even so, man can't live without purpose. Despite the fact that most people are only dimly aware of their predicament, they still often have a vague sense that something is wrong, that something is missing, something is out of whack, yet they have no idea what it is. They convince themselves that they can alleviate this sense of dis-ease with material things, or a new romance, a new job, drugs or alcohol, but nothing works for very long. Some turn to politics and ideology seeking in these a substitute religion to make their lives significant and to do for them what only trust in God can actually do. Others fill their lives with work, a ploy that occupies the mind so as to keep it from focusing on the futility of it all. None of this fills the emptiness, though, none of it satisfies the hunger, so most people continue to live out lives, as Thoreau puts it, of quiet desperation.

Augustine declares that "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." Nothing else can give our lives meaning and fulfillment except that for which we were made in the first place. Unless life is eternal it ultimately comes to naught, but it can only be eternal if God is truly there, and this is the one solution to his situation that the modern materialist refuses to consider.

The rock group Smashing Pumpkins articulated the bleak darkness of modern man's circumstance with more cynicism and despondency, perhaps, than even the thinkers cited above: "We're nowhere," the lyrics of Jellybelly go, "We're nowhere. Living makes me sick. So sick I want to die." The lives of the characters in the movie American Beauty vividly illustrate this "nowhere-ness" of modern, secular life. Their daily existence is so tawdry, empty, and inane that the viewer can almost feel the ache in their souls himself. The characters in that movie were untypical of men and women without God only, perhaps, in the astonishing and depressing depth of their shallowness.

The modern atheist revels in his Promethean rejection of God. He proclaims himself free. He's thrilled by the audacity of his deed and excited by the prospects and promises his new-found liberation hold out to him. Yet all he has accomplished by spurning the true ground of his being is to condemn himself to a life of utter meaninglessness, and, as he discovers if and when he truly reflects upon it, a life of nihilistic emptiness and existential hopelessness.

So much for the exhilarating joys of being an intellectually consistent atheist.

News From Iraq

Strategy Page gives us this report in its daily briefing:

February 10, 2005: Terrorists in Iraq have resumed their terrorist campaign of suicide bombings, murders and threats. But there's been a change since the January 30th elections. In many mixed neighborhoods (where Sunni Arabs live next to Shia Arabs and/or other minorities), the amount of tips to police regarding terrorist activity has increased. It's uncertain if this is because of the morale boost from the election turnout, the growing use of Iraqi commandos and SWAT teams for raids against terrorists, or the growing availability of cell phones. It's probably all three. As a result, American and Iraqi security officials are more confident that American troops will be able to start leaving this year. While details are not given, there is apparently better security on the Syrian and Iranian borders. There are dozens of new border guard bases (actually small forts) being built on those borders, and more aircraft and UAVs patrolling there as well.

The economy is booming. The terrorist attacks are too few to paralyze the entire country, and seem to stage their operations mainly for the foreign media friendly to their goals (the return of a Sunni Arab dictatorship). The number of cars on the roads has nearly tripled in two years and sales of consumer goods continues to grow as electricity is more widely available. Because it takes so long to build oil refineries, Iraq must import most of its vehicle fuel. That, with the growing number of personal and commercial vehicles, creates frequent fuel shortages.

But then you probably knew all this from watching CNN and reading the NYT.

Nothing New Under the Sun

From the link:

The gap between US exports and imports hit an all-time high of $671.7bn (484bn euro) in 2004, latest figures show.

The deficit with China, up 30.5% at $162bn, was the largest ever recorded with a single country.

Democrats claim the administration has not done enough to clamp down on unfair foreign trade practices.

Absolutely. For once, the Democrats get something right. Foreign country corporations don't operate under the same conditions as those in the U.S. They don't have to deal with the taxation, environmental regulations, labor laws, or labor unions that raise the cost of doing business astronomically.

So while the Dem's have the right argument, it's for the wrong reason. They maintain:

For example, they believe China's currency policy - which US manufacturers claim has undervalued the yuan by as much as 40% - has given China's rapidly expanding economy an unfair advantage against US competitors.

The gist of this statement is correct except that there's nothing "unfair" about a country establishing a policy that maintains the value of its currency in direct proportion to that of the U.S.

The following may be absolutely the most inane statement uttered in recorded history...

Meanwhile, the Bush administration argues that the US deficit reflects the fact that America is growing at faster rate than the rest of the world, spurring on more demand for imported goods.

Duh! Why doesn't America's fast growth rate spur demand for domestic goods?

Now, here's a question to ponder...why is it that the U.S. government ONLY allows foreign countries to return their dollar surplus to the U.S. by purchasing U.S. treasuries?

Answer: Because they would own this once great country lock, stock, and barrel. But since they can only use their U.S. dollars to by our debt (Treasury bonds), they continue to finance our current life style of manic consumption. Can you say "dollar hegemony"? It is truly a house of cards.

Lastly, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that the major Medicare reform isn't going to cost the estimated $400 billion to implement.

The bad news is the latest figures just released are estimated at $700 billion to $1 trillion and they haven't issued dollar one for a prescription yet.

Check out this link for an audio interview with Laurence J. Kotlikoff. Scroll down to the Real Player or MP3 links on the left side of the page to listen to a shocking discussion. Truly a voice in the wilderness.

Wake up America!

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

From CFO.com:

In January, insiders bought a mere $34.1 million of their own companies' stock, little more than a third of the $95 million for December, according to MarketWatch, which cited data from Thomson Financial. The January number was the lowest since July 1993, when insiders bought just $26.3 million, according to MarketWatch. That month, however, insider purchases still accounted for roughly 5.5 percent of all dollars spent on insider-trading activity; in January 2005, purchases accounted for a mere 1.8 percent of the total dollars spent by insiders.

Hmm. So if the company insiders don't have any confidence in their own companies to do well going into the future, why should I or anyone else be buying their shares? More importantly, why is President Bush pushing for a privatization of Social Security where the proceeds are placed in the stock market while the insiders are cashing out? It would seem that the insiders would be buying shares with both hands in their companies and others to position themselves to capitalize on the imminent influx of hundreds of billions of dollars.

One can only speculate on the answer to these questions and since neither the insiders nor the President confide in us all we can do is "follow the money". I suspect the insiders are persuaded that the chances that the stock markets and economy in general are headed for a firestorm are high and the chances of Bush getting his privatization plan through congress are low. Given these probabilities, they don't want to be among the bag holders when the expletive hits the fan...and either should any other thinking person.

The Face of the Secular Left

Jacob Laskin and Ann Coulter limn portraits of Ward Churchill on Front Page Mag, and they are not pretty pictures. Churchill's is the face of the contemporary secular left: mendacious, fraudulent, violent, and hate-filled, a superannuated hippie from the halcyon and hallucinogenic sixties who languishes in a permanent state of arrested development. It gives us a feeling akin to nausea to reflect that his pathetic existence is being subsidized by taxpayers.

The Richard Sternberg Affair

Readers may recall the contretemps surrounding the Richard Sternberg affair and his alleged mistreatment at the Smithsonian Institute, which he attributes to his having published a paper written by Intelligent Design theorist Stephen Meyer. There are conflicting accounts of exactly what has happened to Dr. Sternberg, but Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost offers the following as to why he thinks Sternberg is more credible than the gentleman from the Smithsonian who denies Sternberg's charges:

While there is no way for us to know exactly who is telling the truth, let's look at how each side's point of view was presented:

Sternberg filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency. By making the claims and signing Form OSC-11 (2-05) , Sternberg acknowledged that he was aware that making a false statement or concealing material fact would be committing a criminal offense punishable by a fine of up to $250,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both. He also agreed to speak on record with a columnist who was writing an editorial for the Wall Street Journal, ensuring that his claims would be on public record in a national newspaper.

Jonathan Coddington was offered a chance to present his side of the story in the WSJ article but chose not to do so. Instead, he thought it would be more appropriate to present his rebuttal in the comments section of a blog.

This is not dispositive, of course, but Carter's argument is persuasive. Why would Sternberg place himself in serious legal jeopardy if his charges were false, and why wouldn't Coddington, if he were going to deny Sternberg's allegations of mistreatment, use the same venue that Sternberg used? Why announce your denials in a blog? Stay tuned.

Making Them Talk

Power Line has some good news on the war against Iraqi terrorists:

The latest top al Qaeda operative to fall is Zarqawi's military advisor, Adnan Muhamed Hamed Alqeisi. Haider Ajina sends us this translation of an article that appeared today in the Iraqi Arabic newspaper "Nahrein":

"Iraqi security forces arrested Adnan Muhamed Hamed Alqeisi also known as Abu Walied, during surprise operation in southern Baghdad. Abu Walied, and Iraqi of 41 years of age, was a facilitator for the terrorist group led by Alzarqawy who is tied to Alqaida. He was also in contact with Abu Omar, Hassan and Abu Seif who Zarqawy named commander of Baghdad; those were arrested earlier last month."

"The Iraqi vice president Dr. Berhem Saleh said that Abu Walied was working as a military advisor to the top leaders in Zarqawy's terror group, and he also supplied terrorist activities in Baghdad. The vice president also said that Zarqawy is loosing his battle against the Iraqi people and his organization of terrorists and criminals is loosing its main leaders over the last few weeks. This is to the credit of the Iraqi security forces and tips from the population."

A few weeks ago there was speculation that Zarqawi himself may have been captured--not, of course, for the first time. But the continued roll-up of the gang members closest to him suggests that either he has been captured and is giving up his colleagues, or, more likely, the net is steadily closing on him.

This latest arrest raises some troubling questions, actually. Obviously these guys are ratting on each other and giving each other up to the Iraqi police, which causes us to wonder what sort of interrogation techniques are being employed there. Are the Iraqis resorting to torture to extract their information? Are they, for instance, saying mean things to these thugs about their mothers to get them to give up their secrets? Are they using stressful methods like raising their voices and making them sleep in single instead of queen-sized beds? Are they subjecting them to excruciating ordeals like forcing them to listen to AC/DC albums? Just wondering. Maybe TruthOut.org should look into this.

State of the Union...

Ughh...I'm reeling from the recent price drop in gold...all the way to my favorite gold dealer to buy more! Why? Simply because gold serves as the ultimate barometer of the "perceived" value of a country's currency even though there can be short-term events that cause things to appear to be otherwise. In the '90s, when the NASDAQ went from 500 to 5000, the common expression was "buy the dips". People that did that made out handsomely...until the year 2000.

Briton's Chancellor Gordon Brown has come out from under his rock, once again, to suggest that the IMF sell some of its gold to alleviate the debt of third-world countries. The possibility of this event has made a huge contribution to the recent decline in the gold price (even though such sales would only be to central banks meaning the gold would not appear on the open market). While appearing to be a champion of people of low economic status, consider this article

So I interpret such news as efforts to distort economic reality. If you look at a long term graph of the price of gold, you can see that it's not uncommon for it to pull back anywhere from 50% to 100% of its previous rise. Then it turns around and goes to new highs. The important thing to keep in mind is that the fundamentals (trade and budget deficits) that have caused the price to be where it is from its low of $260 in the year 2000 are still firmly in place and as long as they are, the price over the longer term will continue to trend upward. Any short term moves are temporary anomalies.

Now let's look at another component of the economy that motivates me to "go for the gold"...

From Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley:

The Federal Reserve is trapped in a moral-hazard dilemma of its own making. It dates back to the Great Bubble of the late 1990s and the central bank's unwillingness to take away the proverbial punch bowl just when the party was getting good. The close brush with deflation that then ensued was a painfully classic post-bubble aftershock. That experience underscores the greatest shortcoming of modern-day central banking -- the inability of monetary policy to cope successfully with asset bubbles and the deflationary perils they engender. The history of the 1930s and Japan in the 1990s are grim reminders of that shortcoming. Alan Greenspan's confession finally sets the record straight on how he got us into this mess.

And for you odds players out there, this link from his article in November where he says:

The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.

To finance its current account deficit with the rest of the world, he said, America has to import $2.6 billion in cash. Every working day.

That is an amazing 80 percent of the entire world's net savings.

Sustainable? Hardly.

Meanwhile, he notes that household debt is at record levels.

Twenty years ago the total debt of U.S. households was equal to half the size of the economy.

Today the figure is 85 percent.

Nearly half of new mortgage borrowing is at flexible interest rates, leaving borrowers much more vulnerable to rate hikes.

The U.S. has become the consumer of last resort for the world's goods brought to you by 40 year low rates of interest from the Federal Reserve and, as a result, the typical U.S. consumer has been refinancing their mortgages and financing their consumption by borrowing against the equity in their homes. Stephen Roach says:

"through home income extraction [home equity loans] income-short households pushed the consumption share of US GDP up to a record 71.1% in early 2003 (and still 70.7% in 4Q04) -- an unprecedented breakout from the 67% norm that had prevailed over the 1975 to 2000 period."

This will end and it will end badly and this is why. Today, the engine of consumption is enabled by the lowest interest rates in 40 years. Interest rates are a tool that is used by the Fed to control the flow of dollars into the economy. When rates go up, it chokes the supply of new dollars into the economy, decreasing inflation. Remember that dollars are "borrowed" into existence. The Fed could print a billion dollars but that has no impact on the economy until someone borrows them. So if rates don't rise people and businesses are more inclined to borrow.

The bigger issue is that the Fed doesn't have total control of interest rates. There comes a time when they are forced to raise them because too many dollars are being pumped into the economy. That's what happened in the '70s when Paul Volker raised rates to 18%. He had to do this because inflation was showing up in the general economy in terms of higher prices of consumer goods. Today it's showing up in the stock market and housing.

On the other hand, with the dollar dropping in value against other currencies, the U.S. is forced to raise interest rates to make the Treasury bonds foreign countries buy more attractive so they continue to buy them. Those Treasuries are how the U.S. finances it's trade deficit. In other words, the Fed is in a no win situation. If they raise rates, they might continue the trade deficit but tank the economy.

Just the other day, the latest employment numbers were disappointing yet the stock market surged. Why? Because this was perceived as an indicator that interest rates would stay low to help a still-struggling economy. But if the Fed keep rates low, inflation will go out of control.

If anyone finds fault with my reasoning I sure would appreciate hearing from you for an alternative interpretation of what is going on. But in the mean time, it's "Katie, bar (as in gold bar) the door."

As always, thanks for reading.

The President's Numbers

We're not big on public opinion polls unless they confirm our prejudices, of course, and this one by Gallup does just that so we'll share it with you:

A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey shows that President George W. Bush's approval rating has increased to 57%, up from 51% three weeks ago. The approval increase appears to be related to the recent Iraqi elections, which the poll shows went better than most Americans expected. In general, the public is more positive now than it was before the elections about the way Bush has handled the situation in Iraq, as well as how the war is faring for the United States. At the same time, the poll shows little change in Bush's job approval rating on the economy or on Social Security.

By almost a two-to-one majority (61% to 31%), Americans said the elections in Iraq went better than expected. This perception appears to have led Americans to a generally more positive view about Iraq and about Bush.

The poll shows that 55% of Americans now say the war in Iraq was not a mistake, while just last month 52% of Americans felt it was a mistake.

Also, there is a 13-point increase in the percentage of Americans who say things are going well for the United States in Iraq -- 53% say either "very" or "moderately" well now, compared with 40% prior to the Iraqi elections.

We'd like to know what it is that has changed in Iraq in the last three weeks, or the last three months, that has caused people to give the president higher marks now than previously. The elections occured in Iraq, of course, but they weren't a surprise. They had been scheduled since last year. Nor should their success have been a surprise except perhaps to those whose only news source is the MSM or Left-wing journals and blogs.

The fact is that things are going about as well in Iraq now as they have been for the last year or so. The difference is that the MSM, having very few blown up cars and shredded bodies to report about on election day, focused instead on something which they had ignored ever since the fall of Saddam - the joy and hope of the Iraqi people. Evidently, when a lot of average Americans saw Iraqi jubilation on their television screens it jolted them into changing their minds about the quality of the job that Bush is doing there.

Unfortunately, if that's the reaction that positive news coverage is going to produce, then we fear we shouldn't look for too many more upbeat stories from Iraq for awhile. The last thing the MSM wants is to be responsible for continued improvement in Bush's approval numbers, and they're probably aghast that they've precipitated this recent spike.

We Report, You Decide

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has a problem with some of the tactics employed by female interrogators at Guantanamo Bay on Muslim prisoners, and Debbie Schlussel thinks he's off his rocker.

We think that both of them are partly right, but read both articles and see what you think.

Is Killing <i>Fun</i>?

Adventures With Chester has a ton of background on the now famous LtGen Jim Mattis who shocked the delicate sensibilities of the fragile flowers in the MSM by stating that he enjoys killing people who beat up women for not wearing a veil (and presumably people who behead innocent captives and people who trick Down's Syndrome youngsters into conducting suicide missions to blow apart other children, etc).

We wouldn't put it quite the way LtGen Mattis did, and in fact we are prudish enough to think that killing should not be "fun" under any conditions. It should be undertaken only with deep regret that it's necessary. Having said that, however, we do not deny that there is something deeply satisfying about justice, and though it should not be regarded as fun, there is, no doubt, a large measure of satisfaction to be taken from knowing that one has removed from the planet someone who preys on innocent women and children and who kills wantonly. Taking the lives of such individuals is an act of justice, it is the right thing to do, and there is nothing reprehensible in LtGen Mattis finding satisfaction in the doing of it.

Anyone interested in this story should check out Chester's site.

Ideological Flip-Flop

Back in the early fifties William F. Buckley defined conservatism as standing athwart the juggernaut of history shouting "stop." We thought of this the other day and marveled at how things have changed.

Consider this little quiz: Of the two, conservatism or liberalism:

1) Which is more likely to be "reactionary"?

2) Which is most likely to oppose reforms designed to protect the common man?

3) Which is most likely to protect the fat cats?

4) Which is most likely to oppose deficit spending?

5) Which is most likely to impede individual liberties?

6) Which is most likely to oppose measures to free oppressed peoples from tyranny?

If you answered "conservatives" for any of these then you're still living back in the sixties with Ward Churchill:

1) Contemporary liberals have no plan or ideas for Americas future except to keep us from moving beyond the same threadbare socialist nostrums that emerged in the thirties and blossomed in the sixties and seventies.

2) Conservatives support Bush's proposals for reforming tax law, tort law, and social security. Liberals oppose all three. Conservatives also met serious liberal resistance in the nineties when they pushed for education and welfare reform.

3) Liberals will support no reform which works to the economic detriment of their deep-pocket donors in the legal profession.

4) Traditionally liberals reveled in deficit spending. Now that the Bush administration is spending more than the government is taking in liberals would have us believe that they've transformed themselves into parsimonious misers.

5) For the last thirty years Liberals have been the most radical opponents of genuine freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the freedom to bear arms. No challenges to any of these freedoms have come from the Right in decades.

6) The opposition to freeing people from tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq comes primarily from the Left. The loudest calls to pull out of Iraq now and leave the Iraqis to the tender mercies of al Zarqawi and the circling hyenas in Damascus and Tehran are coming from the Left.

It might be argued that liberals don't oppose the ends that conservatives seek, they merely disagree on the best means to get there. Yet they offer no alternative proposals for achieving those ends. Everywhere we look we find liberals doing nothing, offering nothing, except resistance to change. Their sole contribution to the issues of our time is to stand athwart history shouting "stop."

The Other Side of the Story

The other day we posted and commented upon a story which appeared in the WSJ by David Klinghoffer about the reaction at the Smithsonian Institute to an article on Intelligent Design which appeared in a journal edited by a research associate at the Smithsonian. There were some allegations made in that story which reflected poorly on the open-mindedness and ethics of Smithsonian employees.

Now one of those employees has come forward to present another side and to address some of Klinghoffer's allegations. His remarks can be found at The Panda's Thumb. Evidently, somebody in this dispute, intentionally or not, is misleading us. We'll let you know where the truth lies if, and when, we find out ourselves.

Follow up on gold

Back in November I posted an article Gold vs the U.S. dollar.

At that time I mentioned that the price of gold, having risen to new highs, might drop to $420. Well, that has happened and the way things are going now, the price might even drop to $400. Personally, I see it as a great buying opportunity, compliments of those who are wont to suppress the price of gold in an effort to distort economic reality.

As anyone who has read my Gold Page can surmise, my advice to acquire gold isn't about a "get rich" scheme, rather it's about protecting one's self from dishonest government. More to the point, it's not about Democrats or Republicans or any other party affiliation...it's about returning to a value system upon which our great country was founded. It's about being a Patriot.

Having said that, I offer the link below to An Analysis of Antal Fekete's Plan for a Parallel Gold-Coin Standard by Nelson Hultberg

From the link below:

If a free society is to be restored to America, then gold and silver must become the fulcrum of our monetary reform. Dr. Antal Fekete has given us a brilliant means to achieve such a monetary system with his new theory of the gold standard incorporated with the Real Bills Doctrine. It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to objectively investigate his plan and his marvelous works. If Jefferson and Jackson were alive today, they would be seeking this man's counsel. All contemporary patriots, pundits, and freedom advocates should do likewise.

Antal Fekete is a truly brilliant individual and I encourage you to read the article in its entirety.

www.afr.org/Hultberg/013105.html

Ernst Mayr, Dead at 100

Ernst Mayr, the very prominent Harvard evolutionary biologist, and author of numerous works on the subject is dead at age 100. Mayr was a key architect of the neo-Drawinian synthesis, the blending of Darwin's theory of natural selection with the science of genetics, and was instrumental in persuading biologists to accept the view that species evolved only when isolated from their parent populations. His influence among modern evolutionists is probably second only to that of Charles Darwin himself.

A Democratic Paradigm

Omar at Iraq the Model posts an amusing parody of a Syrian news article praising elections in Syria. Omar writes:

I received this sarcastic article via e mail from a Syrian friend who's a member of the "Reform Party of Syria". The article talks about the latest election in Syria and compares between this one and the Sunday elections of Iraq. Here's the whole article:

Doubt reigns over the outcome of Syrian elections; Outside observers question legitimacy of Bashar Assad's 99% victory over (now presumed missing) opponent.

Results from Monday's Syrian elections were announced today, with a clear mandate handed to Bashar Assad, with his ruling Ba'ath party sweeping the elections with a staggering 95% of the votes. However, opposition parties such as the Communist Party and the Liberal Syrian Nationalist Party voiced complaints that their election results of negative 5 and 3 percent respectively were products of an unfair and rigged election process.

The head of the Ba'ath party regional politburo promised to immediately look into allegations of fraud and "resolutely and mercilessly deal with complaints so that they never ever happen again...ever."!

CNN analyst Fareed Zakaria however moved fast to point out that the high voter turnout rate ought to be looked at as a positive developmental sign for democracy in Syria. "With a 90% voter turnout rate, Syria remains light years ahead in the field of democratic involvement as opposed to one certain neighboring Arab so called democratic state...I don't want to start naming names here or getting into a game of my-Arab-country-is-more democratic-than-yours...but lets face it, Syria's elections went off without a hitch and were never marred with the uncertainty and chaos of not knowing who was going to win."

When asked for their opinion on the remarkably high turnout of Syrian voters, unfriendly election 'monitors' simply shrugged and pointed to their bats.

A number of Middle Eastern experts also praised the convenient simplicity and easy to understand ballot for the Syrian presidential elections. While the ballots in the recently conducted Iraqi elections included as many as a hundred different entities and nearly seven thousand candidates, the Syrian ballot was in contrast much more compact allowing for little room for voter confusion (in most instances the ballots were already pre-marked in favor of Bashar Assad).

In addition, Ba'athist officials this year introduced a new 'voter friendly' ballot to ensure that absolutely no Syrian citizen would be faced with the dilemma of indecision (let alone chaos) that plagues many voters in the democratic world. At the top of each ballot now stands a picture of a smiling Bashar Assad above a caption that reads: 'Vote, your life may depend on it'.

Ba'athist elections officials were mulling using a more direct slogan next year 'Vote or die' but feared comparisons with a similar slogan by American channel MTV urging young people of that country to vote. However, Syrian Ba'ath officials were quick to remark that any superficial similarities between the slogans were completely coincidental and not to be taken in similar context. 'Believe me, we mean it in a totally different way' said Nabil Wahshi, general secretary of the Damascus Ba'ath party.

In a New York Times editorial, Michigan University's professor of Middle Eastern studies Juan Cole said that he saw the elections in Syria as a model for other Arab countries to follow. "The last thing the Arab people need is a red herring like 'free and open elections' to distract them from the international Zionist/Neo-Con conspiracy to take their oil" Professor Cole then added that President Assad's ability to gain such a high percentage of the vote "all the while maintaining an oligarchic cult of personality oppressive regime mired in nepotism and corruption" was "truly impressive" and a positive sign of "Arab solidarity."

Indeed, many regional experts contend that the Syrian elections are the most legitimate to date among any held in the Arab world. According to one (unnamed) Syrian political analyst, "The Syrian elections are totally legitimate and a great advancement of Arab pride. No one can say that Bashar Assad heads a puppet regime, it is not controlled by foreign outside forces... or by the people, and it is completely unbeholden and unaccountable to anyone!"

In a sign of international solidarity, Richard Gere phoned to give his congratulations to president Assad and according to one observer was overheard playfully teasing Assad - reportedly remarking -"Hey buddy, 20 more years, eh?"

Assad in a televised address this Tuesday said that he wished to thank the Syrian people "from the bottom of my heart" for their support and continued faith in his Baathist regime, cryptically concluding that "While I may not be able to thank each and every one of you who voted for me...rest assured, someone on my behalf will be paying a visit for those of you who did not."!

Ninety percent turnout?! We Americans could certainly learn something from the Syrians about the importance of voting in a democracy. Maybe they'd be willing to send some advisors over here in 2008 to help us develop a deeper appreciation for the beauty of free elections. The Syrian government would probably insist, however, that no advisors be permitted to come unless there are guarantees that they won't be allowed to defect while they're here.

The Wild Ride to the Bottom Has Begun

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost informs us that New York has pushed the toboggan over the brow of the slippery slope, and the wild ride to the bottom, monotonously predicted by Viewpoint on a number of occasions (see here, for example), has commenced:

In a stunning decision handed down earlier today, a New York state court ruled that same-sex couples cannot be denied the right to marry. What is even more surprising, however, is the way in which the judgment leaves the door open for the legalization of polygamy:

"The challenges to laws banning whites and non-whites from marriage demonstrate that the fundamental right to marry the person of one's choice may not be denied based on longstanding and deeply held traditional beliefs about appropriate marital partners."

If longstanding and deeply held traditional beliefs are not enough to restrict who may marry, then it is unlikely that previously held views of marriage could be denied either. In fact, the court even opens the door for polygamy by including it as an acceptable definition of marriage:

"Defendant's historical argument is no less conclusory than amici's tautological argument that same-sex marriage is impossible, because, as a matter of definition, "marriage" means, and has always meant, the legal union of a man and a woman. Further, the premise of that argument is factually wrong; polygamy has been practiced in various places and at various times, for example, in the Territory of Utah. See Davis v. Beason, 133 US 333 (1890); Genesis 29: 21-30; Deuteronomy 21: 10-17."

Carter says he can't decide which is more ironic: "the fact that the judge uses the Bible as a reference source in making the case for same-sex marriage or that polygamists will use that wording to justify extending marital rights to their own relationships."

It won't stop with polygamy, nor can it. Once the breach is opened in the traditional definition of marriage, there is no non-arbitrary stopping point. Next up: Group marriage.

Another Media Fantasist

The Washington Times reveals the rich fantasy life, while noting the execrable behavior, of CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. During a discussion on media and democracy, Mr. Jordan apparently told the audience that "he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted..."

Jordan has made similar accusations on previous occasions. According to the Times:

In November, as reported in the London Guardian, Mr. Jordan had said, "The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by U.S. forces." This is very serious stuff, if true. Yet aside from Mr. Jordan's occasional comments, there's no evidence to support it.

The MSM has chosen to completely ignore Mr. Jordan's irresponsible allegation, realizing, no doubt, that any claim this bizarre should probably be supported with at least some evidence, a minimal requirement Mr. Jordan has completely disdained. An unsubstantiated charge of this magnitude sounds like another Dan Rather scandal in the making, and Big Media doesn't want to be the catalyst for destroying the credibility of yet another major news institution.

Since the MSM won't do their job one must turn to alternative media for the details. Luckily, Hugh Hewitt and Ed Morrissey are on the case. Between the two of them all the sordid details can be pieced together.

The director of CNN News evidently thought he could get away with slandering American troops without anyone noticing. The American public should demand that he come forward with evidence for his libels or else be fired (and sued) for lying about our troops.

American Hero

This photo at Release the Hounds and the accompanying explanation are worth seeing and reading. Why doesn't the MSM run stuff like this?

A Picture of Evil, A Portrait of Heroism

This account from Omar at Iraq the Model shows how despicable are the savages our troops are working to extirpate in Iraq:

I strongly believe that terrorists are cowards but the cowardice you're going to see in this story is just exceptional. The suicide attack that was performed on an election center in one of Baghdad's districts (Baghdad Al-Jadeedah) last Sunday was performed using a kidnapped "Down Syndrome" patient. Eye witnesses said that (and I'm quoting one of my colleagues; a dentist who lives there) "the poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response, the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance".

I couldn't believe the news until I met another guy from that neighborhood who knows the family of the victim. The guy was reported missing 5 days prior to elections' day and the family were distributing posters that specified his descriptions and asking anyone who finds him to contact them.

When a relative of mine (who has a mental handicap due to an Rh conflict at birth) told me a month ago that a group of men in a car tried to kidnap him as he was standing in front of the institution he periodically visits to get medicine and support waiting for his brother; I thought that he was imagining the whole story. He said that they tried to force him into the car telling him not to be afraid and that they're from the "mujahideen and not going to hurt him". My relative, despite his handicap was moved by his survival instinct and managed to run away.

After I heard the other story, I began to connect between the two stories and to consider my cousin's story as a true one that uncovered a new miserable war technique that can come only from the sickest minds.

What a huge difference there is between those who kidnap and use the mentally handicapped to perform their murders in cold blood and between the brave Iraqis who sacrificed their lives to protect their brethren. One story that is famous now in Iraq is about one brave Iraqi (A'adel Nasir) who saw a suspicious looking guy walking around a polling center in (Al- Hurriyah) district and soon the brave man realized that the suspicious guy was trying to commit a suicide attack; he ran towards him, wrestled with him and knocked him down causing the bomb carried by the terrorist to explode, sacrificing his own life and saving the lives of the people standing in line at the gate of the voting center. It turned out later that the terrorist carried a Sudanese identification. Now, the school that hosted the voting center on the 30th carries the name of A'adel Nasir, as the Iraqi minister of education announced today.

The pathetic terrorists are breaking one world record after another in cowardice and insanity and this tells how bankrupt they're getting.

The story of A'adel Nasir (I've seen his name rendered differently in different reports) is especially significant. Everyone knows that Americans and Brits have acted with extraordinary courage in Iraq, but the MSM seems to be convinced that Iraqi troops and police have been less than audacious in risking their own lives in the fight for their own freedom. Not only does the behavior of millions of Iraqis who braved death threats in order to vote explode this myth but so does the heroism of A'adel Nasir whose courage will be a model for young Iraqis to emulate for generations.

More Gators in the Moat

The talented Tom Graffagnino posts this clever piece of verse at Without Excuse Creations:

"More Gators in the Moat!"

or

("Piltdown! Man the Iv'ry Towers!")

The Supernaturalists are coming!

Egad! By land!...

....By sea and boat!

Piltdown! Man the Iv'ry Towers!

Quick! .....

More 'gators in the moat!

Don't they know our Theory's Fittest!?

How dare they challenge you and me!?

O my Gawd! Can you imagine!?

We shan't allow this Heresy!

Call the Bio-Bishop Council!

Convene the Cardinals from their perch!

Yo! Onward Evo-Soldiers!

We must defend Pope Darwin's Church!

Kids today know how we got here....

It took a while....

But they believe!

Magik Microbe straight to Shakespeare!

What more could "Lucky Mud" achieve!?

No! We mustn't give them access,

To our children made so bright.

Darwinistas! Man your stations!

No Debate!

Comrades, Unite!

Battle Cry: "From Scales to Feathers!"

Battle Hymn: "From Mud to Man!"

And the drumbeat in the background?....

Censorship!

Impose the Ban!

Rowdy Red-State Rabble-Rousers,

Knuckle-dragging Retro-Brains....

Keep your thinking in the Ghetto.

Hey, monkey!....

Mother Nature Reigns!

So, Battle Stations, Nature's Chosen!

Priests of Darwin, clean their clocks!

This ain't no monkey business....

Stand your ground, Ye Orthodox!

There!

The hoi-poloi's advancing!

Raise the drawbridge right away!

Sir, defending "Fortress Darwin",

Is the order of the day!

Sister "Lucy"! Man the Ramparts!

From high above, look down your nose,

On those attacking our assumptions.....

Who claim the case just isn't closed!

Don your helmet and your breastplate....

Our metaphysics they dislike.

The Naked Apes just keep-a-comin'...

Quick!.....

More fingers in the Dike!

Gird your loins, Ye Missing Linkers!

The Great Unwashed we shall defeat!

My! Their Wedge of Doubt grows sharper....

I'm not so sure that they'll retreat!

Yes! Defending Darwin's Castle's

Our Crusade.....and Sacred Cow.

Clarence Darrow wouldn't like it...

But some debates we can't allow!

We're entrenched in Naturalism...

We're locked in...Unbending, too.

"Liberal" Thought's not always healthy,

When we're beseiged like me and you!

So, ever "Onward Evo-Soldier"!

Fight the Fight!

And spread The Word!

Naturalism's Fundamental!

Keep the Faith, Ye Undeterred!

Very witty, and it makes an important point: Darwinism is a indeed a religion. It offers its votaries a creation myth (Life arose by chance in a primordial sea), an answer to the question of life's meaning (to perpetuate the species or at least one's genes), a ground for morality ("Right" is whatever conduces to survival), and an answer to the question of where we are going (When we die we return to the earth so that our matter may continue on as part of the great cycle of life).

Darwinism, by offering us an opportunity to "liberate the human spirit" from superstition and clerical oppression, affords us a vehicle for "salvation". It moreover maintains a priestly class of scientists and philosophers who pontificate on matters of doctrine, faith, and practice, and it proudly boasts a pantheon of saints who have gone on before. It embodies a worldview that encompasses every aspect of life. It cherishes its dogmas and orthodoxies, defending them assiduously against challenge from heretics, and traces its beginnings to the holy scriptures recorded by its founder in the Origin of Species.

Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, quotes philosopher and Darwinian Michael Ruse, who says that "I must admit that....the [critics of evolution] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning and it is true of evolution still today."

She also quotes from historian Jacques Barzun who writes that the so-called warfare between science and religion should really be seen as the "warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths." It's a dispute, he writes, "between believers in consciousness and believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance."

Precisely. The fundamental difference between Darwinism and Christianity is that Christianity traces the origin of the world and of life back to an intelligence whereas Darwinism traces it back to random, purposeless forces. Both Darwinism and Christianity are thus grounded in metaphysical faith commitments, and from those commitments flow all of their differences.

New ID Blog

The Discovery Institute has a new blog that focuses on media reporting and misreporting of the Darwinism/Intelligent Design debate. The news media in the U.S. seem to have rediscovered the controversy, but unfortunately, much of their coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in several cases, overtly biased. Evolution News and Views aims to offer a corrective, and anyone interested in the issue should check it out.

Conservative Inconsistency

Andrew Sullivan, who, by the way, is largely shutting down his blog for a couple of months, relays to conservatives this question from a friend:

WHY NOT AN ANTI-ABORTION AMENDMENT? Here's an interesting question, posed by my friend Jon Rauch. The Senate Republicans have vowed to push their anti-gay marriage amendment, even though it won't stand a chance of getting the necessary 67 votes. The point is political and rhetorical. They are trying to build momentum, raise money, and keep the cause of banning same-sex unions alive. So why not push an anti-abortion amendment instead? They have one such amendment on hand. Both proposed amendments are allegedly against judicial meddling. Both will fail. But one deals with a much graver issue, by the religious right's reckoning - an immense loss of human life, rather than the grave evil of two human beings committing to one another for life. So why this priority? Surely, abortion is a more important matter than same-sex marriage - even for the religious right. Or is it?

Good question. In fact, Viewpoint will go one better. Why should this be a matter of one or the other? Why shouldn't conservatives be arguing for both amendments? If the marriage amendment is necessary to protect marriage, and it may well be, surely an anti-abortion amendment is necessary to protect the lives of unborn children and is long overdue. It doubtless would not have been possible to get such an amendment through congress before now and may not be possible to get one passed even now, but shouldn't the arguments for it at least be raised?

That some conservatives have gone on record calling for the marriage amendment, but none appear to be interested in a constitutional corrective for Roe v. Wade, a decision many believe to be a clear case of judicial overreach that has resulted in the sacrifice of millions of lives, seems at best a little inconsistent.

The Democratic Definition of Freedom

The Democrats have vowed to fight President Bush's Social Security reform proposals with every weapon at their disposal. The President wishes to give people control over a portion of their retirement, and the Democrats are opposed. A number of commentators have noted the irony of liberals insisting that people have a constitutional right to choose whether their unborn children live or die while at the same time refusing them the right to choose how to invest for their retirement (or, for that matter, where to send their children to school if indeed they should choose to have them).

For the freedom-loving folks in the Democratic party freedom to choose extends little further than whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. For them, freedom's just another word for nothing left to choose.

Free At Last

After the Civil War there was a massive migration of blacks from the south to the cities of the north. They came looking for opportunities and a better life. There are signs that another African-American migration is taking place in our own day only this one is political, not geographical, and it is causing alarm in liberal precincts. Apparently, the Republican party is beginning to make serious inroads into a demographic group that Democrats have had locked up for sixty years, and if they are successful it would have serious consequences for the future of the party.

An article in the Los Angeles Times sounds the tocsin. Here are a few excerpts:

Black conservatives who supported President Bush in 2004 and gained new prominence within the Republican Party are launching a loosely knit movement that they hope will transform the role African Americans play in national politics.

The effort will be visible today at the Crenshaw Christian Center, one of Los Angeles' biggest black churches, headed by televangelist Frederick K.C. Price. More than 100 African American ministers are to gather in the first of several regional summits to build support for banning same-sex marriage - a signature issue that drew socially conservative blacks to the Republican column last year.

Before the meeting, one prominent minister plans to unveil a "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," a call for Bible-based action by government and churches to promote conservative priorities. It is patterned loosely on the "Contract With America" that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used 10 years ago to inaugurate an era of GOP dominance in Congress.

A separate group with ties to Gingrich will announce a similar "Mayflower Compact for Black America" later this month in Washington, which includes plans to organize in key states ahead of the 2006 and 2008 elections. And at the end of the month, the Heritage Foundation will cosponsor a gathering of black conservatives in Washington designed to counter dominance of the "America-hating black liberal leadership" and to focus African American voters on moral issues.

"I am frightened by what is happening," said Rep. Major R. Owens, an 11-term Democratic congressman from New York who has been conferring with colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus. "Our party is in grave danger. This Republican movement is going to expand exponentially unless we do something."

Failure to respond to the GOP investment in black communities, he said, could allow Republicans to add five percentage points to the 11% they received among African American voters nationwide in 2004.

Republican officials, such as outgoing party chairman Ed Gillespie, have said they think the percentage could rise to 30 in the next presidential election - a prediction that even some GOP strategists called overly optimistic.

Even if it rises 5 percentage points, Owens said, "the Democratic Party will be paralyzed."

Owens said the GOP strategy of courting church leadership was on target. "The churches are the last institutions alive and breathing in some of these neighborhoods, and people look to them for leadership," he said.

African-Americans are evidently tired of being snookered by Democratic leaders, both black and white. They are at last beginning to realize that liberal policies since the 1960s have often been counterproductive at best and dysgenic at worst.

Now comes a Republican president who may have done more for black racial esteem than all the liberal multicultural/diversity/ethnic/racial pride celebrations of the last three decades put together. He has actually elevated blacks to some of the most prominent positions of his administration, something no Democrat ever did. He also understands that what is good for America is good for African-Americans, and has steadily worked to improve the economy, create jobs, and set a positive moral tone for the country. Moreover, he has steadfastly refused to do what is standard practice for many Democrat politicians - he has refused to pander to blacks, or to treat them as if they just can't be expected to manage their own lives.

To many liberals blacks are the white man's burden, and African-Americans may finally be growing resentful of the implicit racism of this patronizing attitude. Perhaps they are tired of their indenture to the Democratic bosses and have become a field ripe for a conservative harvest. If so, a significant African-American defection would quite likely signal the demise of the Democratic party.

The Litmus Test

John Podhoretz asks an intriguing question:

When you heard about the stunning success of the Iraqi elections, were you thrilled? Did you see it as a triumph for democracy and for the armed forces of the United States that have sacrificed and suffered and fought so valiantly over the past 18 months to get Iraq to this moment? Or did you momentarily feel an onrush of disappointment because you knew, you just knew, that this was going to redound to the credit of George W. Bush?

There are literally millions of Americans who are unhappy today because millions of Iraqis went to the polls yesterday. And why? Because this isn't just a success for Bush. It's a huge win. It's a colossal vindication. And [the Left] knows it. And it's killing them.

This really is a kind of litmus test for the quality of our character, isn't it? Were we genuinely glad for the Iraqi people, or at least relieved, that things went well for them and their country on Sunday, or did we feel indifference or even somewhat of a letdown that there wasn't more chaos and carnage? If it was the latter then we need to have a serious conversation with ourselves about the state of our soul.

For an example of someone who stands in urgent need of just such self-examination read the piece at Good News From Iraq is up, and, as usual, it's packed.

Those who were surprised at the enthusiastic turn out at the polls last Sunday could not have been following Chrenkoff's fortnightly posts. If they had been, January 30th would have been no surprise at all.

Re-Vote

In the wake of November 2nd our inbox was clogged with e-mails from TruthOut.org updating us every hour on the "crisis" in Ohio and the "evidence" that Republicans had been up to election day hanky-panky. About Washington state, however, where there are genuine indications of fraud in the gubernatorial balloting, TruthOut has had almost nothing to say. Doubtless that's because the tentative winner in that election was a Democrat and because the evidence of voter fraud points directly at Democrats as the culprits.

National Review Online notes that:

[I]n King County alone, there are 3,700 unaccounted-for ballots or voters. Some precincts have more ballots than voters, for a total of 2,900 "extra" ballots. Other precincts have more voters than ballots, for a total of 800 "extra" voters. These mystery voter-less ballots and ballot-less votes obviously are enough in themselves to put [Democrat Christine] Gregoire's 129-vote margin in serious doubt.

Other irregularities abound. The Seattle Times has reported that 129 felons voted in King and Pierce counties. At least 348 provisional ballots - which are supposed to be closely inspected to see if they are legitimate - were directly fed into machines and counted in King County. Some 55,000 optical-scan ballots (ballots on which the voter marks a bubble) in King County were "enhanced" so that the voters' supposed intent could be determined, with no uniform standard governing the process. Roughly 500 voters used the address of the King County Administration building as their home address.

We're convinced that TruthOut and its friends in the MSM, like Keith Olberman at MSNBC, who were so sure that there was perfidy afoot in Ohio on November 2nd, will join with the editors of National Review in calling for a re-vote in Washington. It is the Left, after all, which was incensed in 2000 because they had incorrectly persuaded themselves that the winner in Florida had stolen that states' election, and it was the Left which was outraged in 2004 at what they had mistakenly assumed were voting irregularities in Ohio which favored the winner.

We're confident that their tardiness in joining the ranks of those demanding a re-vote in Washington has nothing to do with ideological hypocrisy, as some have alleged, and is, on the contrary, due merely to their getting their legal teams together to insure that justice will be done. Or something like that. At any rate, they'll be out there demanding a re-vote soon, you can count on it.

A Disintegrating Tyranny

There is a remarkable article in the U.K. Times Online concerning the political and social disintegration currently underway in North Korea. Not every member of the axis of evil needs to be confronted militarily. Some of them, evidently, are rotting from within and will, with luck, topple at the first strong wind.

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the tip.

The Continuing ID Conflict

The culture wars continue. We were reminded by this article in the Wall Street Journal of a quote from Darwinian biologist Richard Lewontin:

It's not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The WSJ article says this:

The question of whether Intelligent Design (ID) may be presented to public-school students alongside neo-Darwinian evolution has roiled parents and teachers in various communities lately. Whether ID may be presented to adult scientific professionals is another question altogether but also controversial. It is now roiling the government-supported Smithsonian Institution, where one scientist has had his career all but ruined over it.

The scientist is Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics--e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.

The offending review-essay was written by Stephen Meyer, who holds a Cambridge University doctorate in the philosophy of biology. In the article, he cites biologists and paleontologists critical of certain aspects of Darwinism--mainstream scientists at places like the University of Chicago, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. Mr. Meyer gathers the threads of their comments to make his own case. He points, for example, to the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago, when between 19 and 34 animal phyla (body plans) sprang into existence. He argues that, relying on only the Darwinian mechanism, there was not enough time for the necessary genetic "information" to be generated. ID, he believes, offers a better explanation.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Zoology Department, Jonathan Coddington, called Mr. Sternberg's supervisor. According to Mr. Sternberg's OSC complaint: "First, he asked whether Sternberg was a religious fundamentalist. She told him no. Coddington then asked if Sternberg was affiliated with or belonged to any religious organization. . . . He then asked where Sternberg stood politically; . . . he asked, 'Is he a right-winger? What is his political affiliation?' " The supervisor (who did not return my phone messages) recounted the conversation to Mr. Sternberg, who also quotes her observing: "There are Christians here, but they keep their heads down."

In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs. Mr. Sternberg was also assigned to the close oversight of a curator with whom he had professional disagreements unrelated to evolution. "I'm going to be straightforward with you," said Mr. Coddington, according to the complaint. "Yes, you are being singled out." Neither Mr. Coddington nor Mr. Sues returned repeated phone messages asking for their version of events.

Mr. Sternberg begged a friendly curator for alternative research space, and he still works at the museum. But many colleagues now ignore him when he greets them in the hall, and his office sits empty as "unclaimed space." Old colleagues at other institutions now refuse to work with him on publication projects, citing the Meyer episode. The Biological Society of Washington released a vaguely ecclesiastical statement regretting its association with the article. It did not address its arguments but denied its orthodoxy, citing a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that defined ID as, by its very nature, unscientific.

It may or may not be, but surely the matter can be debated on scientific grounds, responded to with argument instead of invective and stigma. Note the circularity: Critics of ID have long argued that the theory was unscientific because it had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Now that it has, they argue that it shouldn't have been because it's unscientific. They banish certain ideas from certain venues as if by holy writ, and brand heretics too.

Materialists certainly take Lewontin's words seriously. Any scientist in the church of naturalism who gives succor to the opposition is henceforth anathema. Like a gaggle of middle-school girls shunning one of their number who has transgressed some social protocol, Sternberg's co-workers studiously avoid acknowledging him when they pass in the halls. Is there anything more childish? They probably giggle among themselves in the break-room at how cleverly they execute their indignant snubs.

The alleged complaint against Sternberg is that he used his position as editor of a journal that deals primarily with taxonomy to permit an article on a subject that was not related to taxonomy. This, however, is ludicrous. Science journals like Science and Scientific American, though their mission is to address matters of science, sometimes run articles on foreign, social, or economic policy and no editors are ostracized from the community and have their careers threatened for it.

Another charge against Dr. Sternberg was that Meyer's paper was not original and simply re-worked some of his earlier published material and that featuring it damaged the reputation of the journal. This is an odd reason to punish the editor, though. How can you damage the reputation of a publication that no one ever heard of prior to this incident? Indeed, if anything, Sternberg should be rewarded for garnering publicity for the journal that it never would have gotten otherwise no matter how many papers it published on wildly popular topics like the discovery of a new subspecies of midge in New Jersey marshlands.

Sternberg's real crime, of course, was that the article he ran was critical of Darwinism as an explanatory model for how novel morphological patterns arise in nature. If the paper had been favorable to Darwinism it would have passed completely unremarked by the inquisitors at the Smithsonian no matter how modest its scientific quality might have been. As it was, Sternberg allowed a paper into his journal that dared to question the adequacy of Darwinian theory, so he must be cast out like the academic leper he so obviously must be.

Darwinism is a religion which brooks no challenges, and heretics need be punished severely. Maybe their bodies are no longer burned at the stake, but their careers are. It's unfortunate that middle-schoolers in adult bodies have that kind of authority.

Dispatches From the Democrat Left

California Senator Barbara Boxer, according to this article, is being touted on liberal blogs as the Democrats' best hope for the presidency in 2008. We don't know whether this is simply evidence of the woeful state of the Democratic party, or evidence that God looks out for Republicans, or a premonition that God has decided to punish America, or all three.

Meanwhile, George Soros, 74 year-old billionaire money bags of the Democratic party, who spent $26 million in last year's campaign against George Bush, said his effort was undermined by the candidate he supported.

"Kerry did not, actually, offer a credible and coherent alternative,'' Soros, said yesterday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``That had a lot to do with Bush being re-elected.''

The Kerry campaign "tried to emphasize his role as a Vietnam War hero and downplay his role as an anti-Vietnam War hero, which he was,'' said Soros. "Had he admitted, owned up to it, I think actually the outcome could have been different.''

In other words, in Mr. Soros' opinion, Kerry lost because he wasn't far enough to the Left. He should've portrayed himself as more of a radical anti-war protestor. He should've hugged Michael Moore more often. That would've swung those red state voters into his column, yessiree.

Maybe in 2008 Mr. Soros can persuade George McGovern to run, or Barbara Boxer.

Actually, rank and file Democrats probably would like to tell Mr. Soros to just shut up, but unfortunately for them you can't easily shut up a $26 million dollar sugar daddy.

Mice Brains

The following is excerpted from a National Geographic article which discusses research being done to blend human traits with those of other animals:

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras-a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Well, why not. They've evidently already put mouse brains in humans. At least that seems to be the most plausible explanation for the demands (see here and here) emanating from the political Left that we pull out now from Iraq.

Historic Day for Both Iraq and U.S.

Expressions of joy from a sampling of Iraqi bloggers: See here, here, here, here, and here.

Today has been a historic day not only for Iraq but also for the United States. No one knows what the future holds, of course, and things could certainly turn bad, but days like this make one awfully proud to be an American. What our country has done in Iraq is the sort of thing many Americans grew up believing was typical of the American people. This might be the grandest day in our history since the Marshall Plan era c.1950. If someone can think of a day that beats it, let us know because we can't think of one.

UPDATE: Ok. Maybe the day the Berlin wall was torn down has to be pretty high up on the list as well.

Winners and Losers

Today's WINNERS:

1) The Iraqi people

2) All who desire peace and freedom in the Middle East

3) George W. Bush

4) Neo-Conservatives

Today's LOSERS:

1) Islamo-fascist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere

2) Tyrants in Syria and Iran

3) The Michael Moore/Ted Kennedy wing of the Democratic party

More on the Shroud

FoxNews.com has a story about the Shroud of Turin, which many believe to be the actual burial cloth of Christ. Radiocarbon dating tests run in the 1980s seemed to place the cloth in the medieval period, but more recently that analysis has been questioned. Now a chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new tests on the fiber indicates the cloth could be as much as 3,000 years old:

The analysis, by a scientist who was on [a] 1978 team that was allowed to study tiny pieces of the cloth, indicates the shroud is far older than the initial findings suggesting it was probably from medieval times, and will likely be seized on by those who believe it wrapped the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.

"I cannot disprove that this cloth was the burial shroud that was used on Jesus," Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday from his home.

"The chemistry says it was a real shroud, the blood spots on it are real blood, and the technology that was used to make that piece of cloth was exactly what Pliny the Elder reported for his time," about 70 A.D., Rogers said, referring to the naturalist of ancient Roman times.

The American chemist said he decided to analyze the amount of vanillin, a chemical compound that is present in linen from the flax fibers used to weave it. Vanillin slowly disappears from the fiber over time at a calculated rate, he said.

Judging by those calculations, a medieval-age cloth should have had some 37 percent of its vanillin left by 1978, the year the threads were taken from the shroud, Rogers said. But there was virtually no vanillin left in the shroud, leading the chemist to calculate it could be far older than the radiocarbon testing indicated, possibly some 3,000 years old.

Asked why carbon-dating might have been off, Rogers contended that "the people who cut the sample didn't do a very good job of characterizing the samples," that is, taking samples from many areas of the cloth.

Apparently, however there's no chance of resolving the age discrepancy since secret alterations were made to the shroud which make it unsuitable for further analysis. You can read all about it at the link to FoxNews.com.