Democrats can't win no matter how hard they try. Every time they assay to land a whopping insult on the presidential kisser they just wind up making themselves look laughable. The latest exhibit is this photo of Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan trying to call attention to the president's inadequacies on the Senate floor.
No doubt Michigan Republicans are archiving this shot for use in future campaign ads.
Maybe Tim Russert should interview Oliver Poole, the reporter who penned the following article in Britain's Telegraph. Given that it contains some positive developments in the war against al-Qaeda, however, Mr. Russert would probably not be interested.
Insurgent groups in one of Iraq's most violent provinces claim that they have purged the region of three quarters of al-Qa'eda's supporters after forming an alliance to force out the foreign fighters. If true, it would mark a significant victory in the fight against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'eda in Iraq, and could partly explain the considerable drop in suicide bombings in Iraq recently.
Considerable drop in suicide bombings? We thought the country was going all to pieces.
"We have killed a number of the Arabs, including Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians, Kuwaitis and Jordanians," said an insurgent representative in the western province of Anbar. The claims were partly supported by the defence ministry, which said it had evidence that Zarqawi and his followers were fleeing Anbar to cities and mountains near the Iranian border.
Iran? Why Iran? Iran wouldn't harbor terrorists would it? The left will soon be snorting that this claim is just disinformation put out by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, the Satanic trinity, to create a pretext for war with Iran.
It is this move that is believed to have prompted a statement a fortnight ago from the insurgent groups in the central city of Hawija that they were declaring war on al-Qae'da. It is being interpreted by intelligence experts as a response to an unwanted influx of foreign fighters seeking refuge. Iraq's Sunni Muslim insurgents had originally welcomed al-Qa'eda into the country, seeing it as a powerful ally in its fight against the American occupation.
But relations became strained when insurgents supported calls for Sunnis to vote in last December's election, a move they saw as essential to break the Shia hold on government but which al-Qa'eda viewed as a form of collaboration. It became an outright split when a wave of bombings killed scores of people in Anbar resulting in a spate of tit-for-tat killings.
In reaction, the insurgent groups formed their own anti-al-Qa'eda militia, the Anbar Revolutionaries. The group has a core membership of 100 people, all of whom had relatives killed by al-Qa'eda. It is led by Ahmed Ftaikhan, a former Saddam-era military intelligence officer. It claims to have killed 20 foreign fighters and 33 Iraqi sympathisers. Many more are said to have fled. The United States has confirmed that six of Zarqawi's deputies were killed in Ramadi.
Osama al-Jadaan, a tribal chief, has claimed that with the support of the Iraqi army his supporters have captured hundreds of foreign fighters, and has sought to prevent jihadis entering the country from Syria.
So the insurgency has had it with al-Qaeda and is cleaning them out, or claiming to. Of course, this will make it much more difficult for the malcontents to fight against the coalition and more likely that they'll eventually start laying down their arms. It's going to be messy there for a long time, but the trend lines, despite what we hear from the defeatist media, are pointing in the right direction. Iraqi security forces are gaining in numbers, competency, and operational experience. Attempts to build a government continue. The people want peace. But it would all fall apart if we were to pull out too soon and leave a vacuum that the most ruthless would fill.
The nay-sayers, having had their hopes of a civil war dashed in recent weeks, are now promoting the case that the administration's incompetence and bull-headedness made the situation much more difficult to manage than it needed to be, and perhaps they're right, but how do we know? How can we say for certain that had we sent in more troops to keep the peace after toppling Saddam that the results would have been significantly different from what they are? I tend to believe that we should have used more troops, but whether they would have prevented the insurgency or not, who knows?
Here's an interesting wrinkle in the case of presidential advisor Claude Allen who has been charged with fraud in a scheme to steal goods from a Target store in Gaithersburg, MD: Allen has an identical twin. Michelle Malkin wonders why the left thinks that's funny.
We take no position, of course, on the significance of this development with respect to Allen's (Claude) guilt or innocence. We just thought you might like to know about it.
Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), often portrayed as a serious voice along the left-most aisle of the Senate chamber, has made himself look more like a ridiculous Don Quixote tilting at windmills with his attempt yesterday to curry favor among the MoveOn crowd. Feingold introduced a resolution into the Senate calling for censure of President Bush on the grounds that the president has broken the law by directing the National Security Agency to listen in on phone calls made by suspected terrorists to people in this country who may be accomplices.
Feingold claims that Bush did not follow the protocols established to govern such eavesdroppings and therefore deserves censure. This is absurd, of course, but absurdity does not have much deterrent effect upon the Ahabs on the left obsessed with their pursuit of Moby George.
It is absurd because 1) It's not at all clear that the president lacks the authority to do what he has done; 2) In any case, his actions were taken to protect the American people, not to benefit himself in any way; 3) He hasn't done anything that everyone of his predecessors both themselves approved of and carried out without complaint from the Democrats; 4) Senate leaders of both parties were kept apprised of the existence and findings of the program.
Feingold, the only Senator to oppose the Patriot act in 2001, left the chamber immediately after introducing his proposal, not even sticking around to debate its merits. Presumably he was in a rush to leap astride his steed and search out further villainous windmills in Washington to impale upon his sturdy lance. Or perhaps he left in order to spare himself the embarrassment of watching his fellow Democrats moonwalking away from his risible resolution.
I was reminded of Matthew 7:21-23 when I read this story of people who call themselves Christians but who demonstrate at funerals of dead soldiers in the most vile and despicable ways, exploiting the grief of bereaved families in order to make a hateful socio-theological statement:
Five women sang and danced as they held up signs saying "thank God for dead soldiers" at the funeral of an army sergeant who was killed by an Iraqi bomb. For them, it was the perfect way to spread God's word: America was being punished for tolerating homosexuality.
For the hundreds of flag waving bikers who came to this small town in Michigan Saturday to shield the soldier's family, it was disgusting. The fringe group of fire and brimstone Baptists from Kansas has been courting controversy for more than 15 years, traveling the country with their hateful signs and slogans.
Pastor Fred helps said he and his congregants are targeting the funerals because God's way of punishing an "evil nation" of "fags and fag enablers" is to "pick off its children."
"I don't have any sympathy for these parents. They're all going to hell," Phelps said. "The family's in pain because they haven't obeyed the Lord God."
The Westboro Baptist Church first gained national notoriety when they picked the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay. In Flushing, Michigan they turned their leather-clad backs to the five women and held flags and tarps up so that mourners walking past wouldn't see the signs saying "God hates fags," "fag vets" and "America is doomed."
Many found it hard to hide their anger when Margie Phelps, the daughter of Westboro's founder, called out "All this for little old us? Oh, you shouldn't have. I feel so special," before she started singing "the Pope, the Pope, the Pope is on fire. He don't get no water let the heretics burn" in front of a Catholic church.
Jesus says in the passage in the gospel of Matthew mentioned above that:
You will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?" And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from me you who practice lawlessness."
Perhaps the worst photo of the Westboro haters appeared in our local paper. It was of a child holding up a sign at the funeral of a young man who was killed in Iraq. The sign had the words THANK GOD FOR IEDs.
Christ also has a word for people who would put children up to that sort of evil. He said: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to stumble, it is better for him that a millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matt. 18:6).
The people at Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas will some day have a lot to answer for, not the least of which is the unChrist-like image of Christianity that they have presented to a world eager to believe the worst of Christians. Pastor Phelps is an answer to their prayers.
Omar at Iraq the Model tells us that:
Sheikh Usama said today that the "Nakhwa" 4,000 man-strong tribal force he's supervising has succeeded in capturing yet another 169 infiltrators coming mostly from the Jordanian borders during the past week.
The sheikh also spoke of disbanding 9 terror groups working with Zaraqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq and confirmed that the recently captured infiltrators were mostly non-Iraqi Arabs with some Iraqis guiding them in and providing logistics and that they brought weapons, explosives and sophisticated maps with them with a selection of targets pointed on those maps.
"Our main problem is the vast size of Anbar as well as having shared borders with 3 countries; Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria and recently we have that more and more infiltrators are coming through the borders with Jordan rather than the other two countries...We have rid about 90% of the province of Zaraqwi's criminal thugs and we are coordinating our work with the ministries of defense and interior and we had several meetings with Iraqi officials as well as General Casey. Now we believe Zarqawi had escaped to Salahiddin province and we are cooperating with the tribes of Salahiddin to find out where this criminal is hiding."
Our question is what happens to all these infiltrators once they're captured. Are they returned to Jordan? Are they turned over to the coalition authorities? Are they sent on their way to their assignation with seventy two virgins? What?
Iran is convinced that the West lacks the will to block its production of nuclear weapons but is nevertheless preparing for a half-hearted gesture in that direction:
Iran's leaders have built a secret underground emergency command centre in Teheran as they prepare for a confrontation with the West over their illicit nuclear programme, the Sunday Telegraph has been told. The complex of rooms and offices beneath the Abbas Abad district in the north of the capital is designed to serve as a bolthole and headquarters for the country's rulers as military tensions mount.
The recently completed command centre is connected by tunnels to other government compounds near the Mossala prayer ground, one of the city's most important religious sites. Offices of the state security forces, the energy department and the Organisation of Islamic Culture and Communications are all located in the same area.
The construction of the complex is part of the regime's plan to move more of its operations beneath ground. The Revolutionary Guard has overseen the development of subterranean chambers and tunnels - some more than half a mile long and an estimated 35ft high and wide - at sites across the country for research and development work on nuclear and rocket programmes.
The opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) learnt about the complex from its contacts within the regime. The same network revealed in 2002 that Iran had been operating a secret nuclear programme for 18 years. The underground strategy is partly designed to hide activities from satellite view and international inspections but also reflects a growing belief in Teheran that its showdown with the international community could end in air strikes by America or Israel. "Iran's leaders are clearly preparing for a confrontation by going underground," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the NCRI official who made the 2002 announcement.
As the United Nations Security Council prepares to discuss Iran's nuclear operations this week, Teheran has been stepping up plans for confrontation. Its chief delegate on nuclear talks last week threatened that Iran would inflict "harm and pain" on America if censured by the Security Council.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline president who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", also said that the West would "suffer" if it tried to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. As the war of words intensified, President George W Bush said that Teheran represents a "grave national security concern" for America.
In Iraq, which Mr Ahmadinejad hopes will develop into a fellow Shia Islamic state, Iran is already using its proxy militia to attack British and American forces, often with Iranian-made bombs and weapons. As tensions grow, Teheran could order Hizbollah - the Lebanese-based terror faction that it created and arms - to attack targets in Israel.
The regime is also reviewing its contingency plans to attack tankers and American naval forces in the Persian Gulf and to mine the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 15 million barrels of oil (about 20 per cent of world production) passes each day. Any action in the Gulf would send oil prices soaring - a weapon that Iran has often threatened to wield.
The Pentagon's strategic planning is focused on the danger that Iran might try to mine the strait and deploy explosive-packed suicide boats against its warships. In May, American vessels in the Gulf will take part in the Arabian Gauntlet training exercise that deals with clearing mines from the strait, which has a navigable channel just two miles wide.
The naval wing of the Revolutionary Guard has in recent years practised "swarming" raids, using its flotilla of small rapid-attack boats to simulate assaults on commercial vessels and United States warships, according to Ken Timmerman, an American expert on Iran.
The Pentagon is particularly sensitive to the dangers of such attacks after al-Qaeda hit the USS Cole off the Yemen with a suicide boat in 2000, killing 17 American sailors. Last month the White House listed two foiled al-Qaeda plots to attack ships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
US intelligence believes that if Iranian nuclear facilities were attacked by either America or Israel, then Teheran would respond by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz with naval forces, mines and anti-ship cruise missiles. "When these systems become fully operational, they will significantly enhance Iran's defensive capabilities and ability to deny access to the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz," Michael Maples, the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency testified before the Senate armed services committee last month.
A senior American intelligence officer said that the US navy would be able to reopen the strait but that it would be militarily costly. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former Iranian intelligence officer, recently told Mr Timmerman that the Iranian navy's Strategic Studies Centre has produced an updated battle plan for the strait.
Its most devastating options would be to use its long-range Shahab-3 missiles to attack Israeli or American bases in the region or to deploy suicide bombers in Western cities under its strategy of "asymmetric" response. "The price to the West for standing up to Iran is clear," Gen Moshe Ya'alon, the former Israeli defence chief said last month in Washington. "It includes terror attacks, economic hardship... and consequences resulting from fluctuations in Iranian oil production. Indeed, the regime believes that the West - including Israel - is afraid to deal with it."
Indeed, the West should be afraid to deal with Iran, but then courage is the doing of that which one is afraid of doing. Attacking, and destroying, Iran's nuclear program and replacing its government and fearsome tasks, fraught with all manner of peril, and should be our next-to-last resort.
The last resort is letting the mullahs and Ahmadinejad have the weapons they seek.
Professor of Anthropology Chris Toumey has some advice for his colleagues:
Our discipline of anthropology ought to take the intelligent design agenda seriously, and should actively oppose it, for two reasons: First, it is wrong for our public schools to mislead students. Secondly, intelligent design is a prominent feature of the so-called culture wars. Each victory for intelligent design in the classroom or the courtroom makes it easier to discredit the accounts of human origins that we generate in anthropology, along with the methods and concepts that guide our work.
I thought scientists opposed hypotheses because they believed them to be false, or because they lack the explanatory power of the favored hypothesis, not because they discredit their own position.
In any event, Mr. Toumey goes on to list four themes that anthropologists should stress in debating ID proponents. All four of them are irrelevant to Intelligent Design. For anti-IDers to employ any of them would be as smart as picking up a rattlesnake by the tail:
Gaps Argument: The core of intelligent design theory is the belief that, because we do not know the entire natural history of a complex phenomenon, it must be a miracle. This is too goofy to be either science or science education.
This is precisely wrong. ID is not predicated on what we don't know, it's based on what we do know. What we do know is that specified complexity (information), such as we find in living things, is not generated by blind, purposeless processes or random chance. It's generated by intelligent minds.
Are All Creators Equal? Intelligent design advocates pretend not to identify the Intelligent Designer, but use a wink and a nod to point to the conservative Christian portrait of the Judeo-Christian creator. Let there be a price to pay for being too cute. Just as the creationist effort to authenticate Noah's Flood makes the Babylonian hero Utnapishtem and the Sumerian Ziusudra just as real as the Biblical Noah, so the intelligent design effort to steer people to a creator god makes Kali, Allah and other non-Christian gods just as valid as the Christian god.
This is as dumb as saying that evolution advocates pretend not to be driven by atheistic materialism, but we know they are, so evolution is false. The designer may be the God of the Bible, many ID advocates believe that it is, but ID itself doesn't lead to that conclusion. For all we know the designer could well be an inhabitant of some other universe in the multiverse that physicists speculate about. If there can be other worlds why is it so difficult to accept that one of those worlds could contain beings capable of creating this world?
Evidence of Incompetent Design: The supposed proof of intelligent design consists of biological structures or behavior that work perfectly, or nearly perfectly. In other words, a simplistic biological functionalism. The counterproof includes vestigial structures that don't work anymore, or that put a creature at a disadvantage, plus anything else in anatomy or behavior which is not perfect.
This is an argument, such as it is, against belief that the designer is the omnipotent, omniscient God of the Bible. It has nothing at all to do with ID. After all, even an incompetent designer is still a designer. Parenthetically, even if the designer of this world didn't get everything right, it still turned in a pretty impressive performance.
Question the Single Alternative Science: Advocates of intelligent design say they want to broaden the public school science curriculum by adding "alternatives to evolution." Challenge them also to take the next logical step and add alternatives to astronomy and chemistry, and see whether conservative Christian parents are willing to include astrology and alchemy in their children's science courses.
This tactic is an indicator of the paucity of good arguments available to ID's opponents. Neither astrology nor alchemy are live options in the physical sciences. In the biological sciences, however, there are two alternatives: Either the information which fills the biosphere is the product solely of material forces or it is, at least in part, the product of intelligent agency. There are no other options, and both of these are live.
In the physical sciences there are also two options: Either the parameters, constants, forces and other properties of the physico-chemical universe are the product of purely naturalistic coincidence or they are the product of intentional engineering. There are no other options besides these, both of which are live. Throwing other creation myths, alchemy, or astrology into the mix is simply an attempt to blow smoke in peoples' eyes so that they won't see the real alternatives with which we are confronted in this debate.
Teach students the facts about the fine-tuned structure of the universe and then ask them which they think it is, chance or intelligence, that is responsible for the phenomena. Show them the computer generated videos of protein synthesis such as are found in the video The Mystery of Life's Origin and ask students whether they think this process is solely the result of chance and natural forces or whether they think it required some intelligent agency.
The vast majority of young people will agree that to believe that it's just a matter of chance and physics takes more faith than what they can muster. That's why secularists don't want students to know that there actually are alternatives to the materialist orthodoxy. They know that their metaphysics requires a superhuman exertion of will on the part of young people to believe it.
Here's a prediction I might have made before, but I'll reiterate: Because the evidence of intentional design is so strong in both the physical and biological world, as time goes on, materialists will increasingly encourage science teachers to down-play in their classes the wonders with which they seek to dazzle their students. The more teachers fill their students' minds with the fantastic truths of nature, the materialists will implicitly argue, the harder it will be to keep the young ones from wandering off the materialist plantation.
Of course, if they are ever successful in "sanitizing" science, it will mark the beginning of the end of scientific investigation and discovery because fewer students will be inspired to study it.
A friend recently asked me to list my five favorite novels. I couldn't do it because, although I'm not much of a novel reader, I've read too many that have either moved me, instructed me, challenged me, or just entertained me to limit myself to only five. Instead, I gave him a list of twenty one, and I still had to leave some out that I should have included.
Herewith is the list, in no particular order, with a sentence or two of explanation:
The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksander Solzhenitsyn): a powerful indictment of the Soviet state and, by implication, it's leftist apologists in the West.
The Stranger (Albert Camus): Camus' mesmerizing vision of the post-modern nihilistic man for whom nothing really matters.
The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky): A powerful tale of innocence and faith, evil and skepticism. The chapter titled The Grand Inquisitor is a stand-alone classic.
1984 (George Orwell): Orwell's j'accuse of the totalitarian state.
Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe): Wolfe is an excellent writer and deft social satirist. His image of the "social x-ray," the anorexic dowagers of the Manhatten social elite, has been imprinted indelibly on my mind.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe): A wonderful narrative of the misery and horrors of slavery. Every high school student should read it, but sadly few do.
Roots (Alex Haley): This book inspired me to begin a study of my own family's history, a pursuit which has led me overseas and which has been sometimes exciting and always satisfying.
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee): A warm tale of family and moral heroism in the face of the banality of evil.
Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt): A delightful account, full of humor and pathos, of one man's struggle to rise out of the grinding poverty of his childhood in 1950's Ireland and make something of his life here in America.
Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor (Flannery O'Connor): Not a single work, of course, but I have to include this ouvre because O'Connor is just wizard with words, and her ability to skewer liberal pieties appeals to anyone cynical about the doctrine of the inherent goodness of human beings.
Moby Dick (Herman Melville): Melville captures the self-destructive nature of human vengeance, pride and obsessiveness and along the way offers a fairly complete course in whaling and cetology.
Billy Budd (Herman Melville): A marvelous work of human psychology. A good and innocent man is put to death and Melville almost has you thinking that it was the right thing to do.
Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkein): A tour de force of the imagination. It is astounding that one man could have conjured up this fabulous tale. Tolkein is in a class with Homer.
In the Heart of the Sea (Nathaniel Philbrick): This is not a novel, but it reads like one. It's actually a true story of amazing human endurance and survival at sea in the 19th century.
Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck): Classic tale of the dislocations and misery of Oklahomans during the depression-era "dust-bowl."
Les Miserables (Victor Hugo): Perhaps my very favorite novel. Hugo weaves so many threads through this story that you're tempted to focus on just a few, but then, in a stroke of literary brilliance, he ties them all together at the end. Read the unabridged version.
Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens): Another great writer tells an epic narrative of altruism and love. The image of Madame DeFarge knitting while victims of the terror are losing their heads is unforgettable.
I Am Charlotte Simmons (Tom Wolfe): A sleazy, lubricious story of big time university basketball and campus life served up in masterful prose. I haven't read all of Wolfe's works but of what I've read, this is, in my opinion, his best. It's not for children, but it is must reading for every parent sending his/her child off to college.
A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) : A tragic and compelling tale of growing up poor in India in the fifties. Powerful.
The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown): A page turner of a novel full, unfortunately, of theological axe-grinding and historical flummery. Despite Brown's anti-Catholic, anti-Christian agenda, his book was an exciting read.
The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis): Lewis packs more deep theological insight and wisdom about human nature into this little volume than one might think possible. Your view of hell, and heaven, will never be the same after you've read it.
The New York Times has a fascinating article by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, based on their new book titled Cobra II, which highlights the strategic thinking in Baghdad prior to the war, and how Saddam's fear of internal coup made defending his country virtually impossible. It also raises the very important point that even Saddam's military leaders thought Iraq had WMD until just a few months before the war started, and that they were stunned to learn that "the cupboard was bare." Some of them even said that after Saddam told them that there were no weapons they still found Colin Powell's case at the U.N. persuasive and thought that maybe the U.S. knew more than they themselves did.
It is a terrible irony that Saddam's attempts to remove all traces of earlier WMD programs, so as not to give weapons inspectors reason to believe that the programs were still ongoing, actually caused the U.S. to think that he was trying to hide those very programs. Saddam tried to deny having the weapons without actually allowing inspectors to prove he didn't have them because he didn't want to appear weak. His ambiguity left the U.S. with no choice but to assume that he did indeed have them.
Those who were so quick to accuse George Bush of lying to get us into war in those days should be chastened by this revelation, but, of course, they won't be.
The Serbian Saddam has died. There's a brief sketch of Slobodan Milosevic and what made him infamous here. A more detailed picture can be found by going here and following the links.
Milosevic, Saddam, and their ilk in Rwanda were the last of the twentieth century's mass murderers. As long as the civilized world has the power to stop such men it is a moral disgrace to refuse to do so. This is why "Bush's war" in Iraq was the right thing to do even were there no reason to believe that Saddam had WMD. It was as right for the U.S. to unseat Saddam as it was to stop Milosevic, as it was right for the U.S. to enter the war in Europe against the Nazis.
To stand by and let mass murder take place when one has the power to stop it is to be either complicit in the crime of genocide or to be craven in the face of it. In either case, it is a shameful stain on a nation's honor.
Yet much of the left is outraged that the United States employs military might against tyrants around the world when other measures fail. It's not that they object to force itself, mind, because throughout the twentieth century they never uttered a peep when the Soviets used it to keep their satellites in line. Rather they recoil from American use of force because they loathe this country and its values and do not wish to see either its power or its honor increase vis a vis the rest of the world.
A strong, dynamic and just U.S. is a reproach on all they believe and all they have given their life to convince others of. It's a reproach that they cannot bear, and it's one reason why they are not dismayed by American setbacks or when Americans betray their own principles, as at Abu Ghraib. Rather many on the left revel in these meager confirmations of their basest suspicions. It's really quite pathetic.
Academics and media types often give the impression that those who would like some mention of alternatives to evolution taught in their high schools are backwater rubes so far out of the cultural mainstream as to be flopping like beached fish on the riverbank.
A recent Zogby poll, however, gives us some insight into the question of who it is, exactly, who's floundering on the fringes of the "mainstream":
In response to a question as to whether biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it, 69% of respondents said yes.
If asked whether biology teachers should teach only Darwin's theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it, only 21% said yes.
By more than three to one, according to Zogby, voters say that biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it. Approximately seven in ten (69%) side with this view. In contrast, one in five (21%) feels that Biology teachers should teach only Darwin's theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it. One in ten is not sure.
When asked whether they strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement: "When Darwin's theory of evolution is taught in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life" the pollsters got this result:
Strongly agree 51%
Somewhat agree 26%
Somewhat disagree 6%
Strongly disagree 13%
Not sure 4%
In other words, three-fourths of respondents (77%) agree that when Darwin's theory of evolution is taught in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life. Furthermore, a majority (51%) agrees strongly. In comparison, one in five (19%) disagrees with the statement.
Four generations of indoctrination have not persuaded the vast majority of Americans that only one side of this issue should be presented in the classroom. This is one reason why this issue is not going to go away.
The elites who know what's best for us are alternately bemused, frustrated, and outraged that the masses seem unwilling to accept their word for it that materialist explanations for life are perfectly adequate and true. In their simple-minded way the common, unenlightened folk appear to think that if something looks designed that, heck, it just might be.
The Chicago Tribune informs us that enrollment in Christian Colleges is on the rise:
Evangelical Christian colleges are attracting record numbers of applications this year in a trend that bodes well for an educational niche that was struggling to survive just a generation ago.
Applications have jumped between 8 percent and 10 percent at the 238 colleges that belong to the North American Association of Christian Admissions Professionals," Religion News Service reports. "More applications mean more students on campuses next fall ... and that's good news since 25 percent of those schools are barely breaking even financially. ... Enrollment has increased 70 percent since 1990, from 135,000 to 230,000, at the 102 evangelical schools belonging to the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities.
Parents are evidently awakening to the fact that one of the best moves they can make for the spiritual, moral, intellectual and political health of their child is to enroll him or her in a school that offers an overtly Christian environment. Many students are themselves arriving at the same conclusion.
Secular universities have, in many cases, become joyless, sterile places where the only relief from the stifling bleakness of the materialistic, anomic, politically correct atmosphere is the weekend party binge. That's scarcely the sort of ambience one is eager to fork over $30,000 a year to have his child immersed in.
Charles Edward White explains why three special numbers give powerful testimony to the existence of a mathematical genius behind the structure of the universe. The article will be of special interest to those with an interest in mathematics, but anyone who has had high school academic math courses and/or physics should be able to comprehend White's discussion.
By the way, it may be that White omitted from his essay the most impressive mathematical indicator of design, the Fibonacci sequence. You can read here why this particular series of numbers is so astounding.
The second part of the interview with David Berlinski is up at Intelligent Design The Future. If you missed the first part you really should read it first. There's a link to it at IDF.
Connect The Dots!
For one to understand what is taking place economically in America today one must attempt to connect the dots. They must follow different events and associate them in a way that leads to an explanation of what is happening. Here is an example of such an exercise.
The starting point is the realization that a minimum of 65,000 H-1B visas are granted annually for foreigners plus an indeterminate number of L-1 visas enabling foreigners to enter the U.S. to work. So it seems we have a policy of importing skilled labor and no policy regarding illegal immigrants (they can come as they please).
I've worked with people in the tech industry who are "visiting" the U.S. under such visas. These people are highly skilled and typically from India or China. Often their families still live overseas and they send most of the money they earn home for the family to live on and the rest gets put into various investments in their home country's markets. The same mechanism occurs within the Latino community.
It seems that the U.S. is importing labor at every level of the spectrum at the expense of citizens of the U.S.. Skilled and unskilled labor alike are welcome.
Why, one might ask would this be so? Let's connect the dots. First dot. All of these people put pressure on the prevailing wage rate to lower it or keep it from rising. An American software engineer will find it difficult to command a $50 per hour salary when someone from overseas will do the same job for $35 or less.
Second dot. Many illegal immigrants have found their way into less skilled jobs like construction. The American construction worker will find he can't compete for a job when the immigrant will do it for 40% or more less.
Third dot. Let's look at the cycle of events that causes inflation to be such a problem and for this example we will use oil. Let's say the cost of oil goes up due to a variety of reasons. First and foremost is that the value of the dollar is going down simply because we print so many of them. This price increase ripples through the economy because the cost of anything that is made from oil (which is almost everything) increases as does the cost to ship it from point of manufacture to point of delivery. These increased costs are passed on to the consumer and eventually impacts the cost of one's living expenses so they ask their employer for a raise to cover the costs.
Fourth dot. Historically, the employer had no choice but to comply with the employee demand because the expense of hiring a replacement would typically end up costing more.
Now that this event and others like it have just increased the costs of the employer, he reasonably concludes that he must raise the price of the goods or services that his company provides. And the cycle begins all over again. This is what causes inflation to "spiral" out of control.
So if I was a government bureaucrat charged with establishing policy that would enable my government to inflate it's currency and, at the same time, hide the evidence of doing so, or at least minimize the damage, what policy might I initiate to mitigate it?
Well, after much study, I would conclude I must break a link in the cycle of inflation that causes the nefarious beastie to manifest itself to the public in terms of ever increasing prices of goods and services. Since my employer is printing dollars at an ever increasing rate there isn't much I can do there. As I mentioned above, the increase of dollars is causing the cost of real assets like oil and services to increase in price. After all, can you blame OPEC for wanting more fiat dollars that we print with abandon for their real asset in the ground - oil? Of course not. To put things into perspective, a gallon of spring water cost $1. Fifty five gallons of spring water would be a barrel of spring water at $55. Given the investment costs to produce a barrel of oil compared to a barrel of spring water, oil is still a bargain.
Lastly, I can't do much about the increased cost of those assets trickling down throughout the economy causing prices in general to rise. Sheesh! If I don't find some way soon, I'll be fired and have to get a job where I contribute to the economy by being a productive individual! But wait...I've got it. I will let any and everyone into the U.S. and they will be willing to work for less than all those greedy American workers. So even though prices are rising, employers won't have to increase salaries as they did in the past which continues the virtuous cycle (spiral) of inflation. I've stopped it dead in its tracks! Surely I'll be promoted to a higher bureaucratic position of even more importance and influence...and higher pay rate. There is a God!
And here's the kicker. These people that I let into the U.S. will, for the most part, send their excess dollars, that would otherwise contribute to inflation by driving prices up, back home i.e. out of the U.S. so many of those dollars they earn won't be in the U.S. to cause prices to rise. What a genius!
But wait. There's only one problem. Such a plan will cause millions of Americans to find themselves unemployed, ruined, relegated to poverty with no hope. After a short deliberation I conclude...that's not my problem...that's their problem. I'm getting mine and after all, that's all I care about. Hah!
Here's an interesting article by Paul Craig Roberts. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.
The United States is the first country in history to destroy the prospects and living standards of its labor force. It is amazing to watch freedom-loving libertarians and free-market economists serve as full time apologists for the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the America of old an opportunity society.
America has begun a polarization into rich and poor. The resulting political instability and social strife will be terrible.
It's really quite simple. I've maintained for a long time that one shouldn't listen to what they are told by our government and the news media but rather observe what they see going on around them and think for themselves. Only then will the truth be found.
Philosopher Alvin Plantinga dispenses with Judge John Jones' reasoning in the Kitzmiller case as the pretensions of a lightweight (my assessment, not Plantinga's). Along the way he also argues that any attempt to disparage Intelligent Design as "not science" is doomed.
It's good stuff and, unlike a lot of Professor Plantinga's technical work, very accessible to the layman.
Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China, predicts a Chinese crackup. The only question seems to be whether it will occur before its clients, North Korea and Iran, lead us into a destructive war.
As China gets more prosperous, it is becoming less stable. Senior Beijing officials now face the dilemma of all reforming authoritarians: economic success endangers their continued control. As Harvard's Samuel Huntington has noted, sustained modernization is the enemy of one-party systems. Revolutions occur under many conditions, but especially when political institutions do not keep up with the social forces unleashed by economic change. And as history shows us, nothing irritates a rising social class like inflexible political institutions. The most interesting trend about protests in recent years is not that they are becoming more frequent, getting much larger, or growing more violent. The most interesting trend is that we are now seeing middle-class Chinese, the beneficiaries of the last quarter century of progress, taking to the streets.
Beijing's policies seem designed to widen the gap between the people and their government, thereby ensuring greater instability for the foreseeable future. Today there's unimaginable societal change at unheard of speed thanks in large part to government-sponsored economic growth and social engineering. Yet at the same time the Communist Party stands in the way of meaningful political change.
Because senior officials don't allow political change of substance, the authorities must resort to force to stop the spread of unrest. But the use of the coercive power of the state is only a short-term solution-force just makes protests even harder to control next time. The leadership will not, or cannot, come to terms with the causes of unrest.
Ultimately, the one-party system will be replaced by democratic institutions. The transition won't be easy, however. China will probably experience years of uncertainty, instability, and turbulence.
Swell. And the Democtrats will be doing all they can to insure that they are in charge during such a dangerous time. Let us pray.
The Daily Mail has this story:
A woman who was fined �200 after she was caught on camera applying make-up while driving at 32mph has defended her actions, saying she was preparing for a date. Donna Maddock, 22, from Mold in north Wales, was pictured on police video cameras with both hands off the steering wheel putting on her eye make-up.
She had wanted to look her best for a date with a man who has a girlfriend and child. She added that she couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
Oh. She was going on a date with a guy. Well, then, that's different. Ms Maddock is justifiably indignant that the British motor vehicle code does not exempt drivers from penalty who place other motorists at hazard when the offender has a sufficiently good reason - like putting on one's makeup in preparation for a date with a Lothario.
What's wrong with those Brits, anyway?
"Upon returning home from a year-long research trip to the Galapagos Islands, the esteemed English zoologist Dr. D. Richard finds his wife undergoing a process that looks remarkably similar to childbirth. Calling upon his maid for an explanation, the woman tells him that "Yer wife, sir, is hav'en a baby." Dr. Richard pauses to contemplate the possibility before deciding that the notion is preposterous. Examining the evidence inductively -- he is impotent, infertile, and has been away for over nine months -- the professor determines that while his wife may have the appearance of being pregnant it is impossible that she could be with child."
The naive Dr. Richard shares a lot in common with many contemporary critics of Intelligent Design. To understand why read the rest of the story at Evangelical Outpost.