Favorite Movie of 2004

Christianity Today is surveying readers of its web site to determine their favorite movie of last year. Being cultural recluses we saw too few movies to make an intelligent choice ourselves, but maybe some of our readers would like to cast a vote. If so, you can do it here.

New Virulent HIV

An article in Bloomberg.com reveals that a new and extremely virulent strain of HIV has been found in a New York man. Following are excerpts from the article:

New York City doctors have discovered a man with a previously unseen strain of HIV that is resistant to three of the four types of anti-viral drugs that combat the disease, and progresses from infection to full-blown AIDS in two or three months, the health department said.

"We've identified this strain of HIV that is difficult or impossible to treat and which appears to progress rapidly to AIDS," said New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. "We have not seen a case like this before. It holds the potential for a very serious public health problem."

The case was diagnosed in a New Yorker in his mid-40s who reported multiple male sex partners and unprotected anal sex - often while using the drug crystal methamphetamine.

"It is likely there are others infected with this strain and this individual has infected others," Frieden said. The case is "extremely concerning and a wake-up call," he said.

Frieden said the one drug the HIV strain isn't resistant to is Enfuvirtide, sold under the trade name Fuzeon....The drug, which costs a patient an average $20,000, is the first in a class called fusion inhibitors that work by preventing HIV from infecting healthy cells.

The normal time of progression from infection to full-blown AIDS in an untreated patient is about nine years, with death following within 18 months, said Karlie Stanton, a spokeswoman for the CDC in Atlanta. For someone treated with anti-viral drugs, the average progression to disease from infection is 11 years, with death occurring within an average six years, Stanton said.

Persons diagnosed and living with HIV/AIDS in New York City totaled 88,479 out of a total population of 7.3 million in calendar year 2003, the last year in which statistics are available.

This is certainly chilling news, especially to the homosexual community. Whether it will place a chill on the incredibly promiscuous lifestyle that many of them maintain, however, remains to be seen.

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