Balancing the Budget

Andrew Sullivan has some pretty good ideas about what to do about the budget. Since they are good ideas they'll never be acted upon by congress, but they should be, or at least most of them should be:

Kevin Drum has challenged me to detail how I'd balance budgets while keeping Bush's tax cuts. (A small clarification: I'd keep the estate tax as it once was; and I'd add a buck to the gas tax pronto.) I'd prefer experts like Brian Riedl or Veronique de Rugy to propose detailed cuts. But my back-of-the-envelope wish-list is that I'd repeal the Medicare drug entitlement, abolish ear-marks, institute a line-item veto, pass a balanced budget amendment, means-test social security benefits, index them to prices rather than wages, extend the retirement age to 72 (and have it regularly extended as life-spans lengthen), abolish agricultural subsidies, end corporate welfare, legalize marijuana and tax it, and eliminate all tax loopholes and deductions, including the mortgage deduction, (I'd keep the charitable deduction).

For good measure, I'd get rid of the NEA and the Education Department. I'm not an economist, so I do not know whether this would do the trick entirely, and I'm open to debate on any of the particulars. But you get my drift. Maybe someone out there could do the math. I'm also fascinated by Charles Murray's new proposal to abolish the entire welfare state and replace it with with cash grants to individuals. I look forward to conservatives continuing to insist I'm a lefty. I also look forward to ferocious opposition from the left. But the bottom line is that the middle class and the prosperous elderly are far too pampered by government in this country. They need to get rid of their debilitating and unaffordable dependency.

The gas tax might not be such a good idea since it'd be highly inflationary, raising the cost of everything we buy, and the estate tax is unjust should be largely done away with. Other than that, Sullivan's proposals sound very attractive. The NEA and Education Departments are as useless as they are costly, and it is simply insane that the president doesn't have a line-item veto.

In any event, these ideas have as much chance of going anywhere as Dick Cheney has of winning the Democratic party's nomination in 2008.

Legacy in the Balance

Like a flock of disoriented geese, President Bush's approval numbers have been heading south this spring, but the Democrats shouldn't take too much solace from the fact. The primary reason for his drop into the mid-thirties is disaffection among Republicans and other conservatives fed up with a White House that refuses to cut spending or stop the flood of illegals pouring across our borders. Republican outrage at the Dubai port deal was really a consequence of the frustration many feel at Bush's apparent insoucience concerning secure borders. The failure of Republicans to get behind his Social Security reforms last year was the fruit of having been pressured against their better judgment to earlier support the administration's profligate medicare bill.

Fiscal conservatives are not pleased that Bush is passing out money as though it were beads at Mardi Gras, and they want it stopped. Neither are they pleased that Mexicans continue to breach our borders like tourists pouring through the turnstiles when Disney World opens for the day.

So why isn't this necessarily good news for Democrats? Two reasons: First is that conservative voters are not likely to hold their legislators responsible for Bush's perceived shortcomings in the November election. Republicans are not going to punish their congressmen because of their pique with Bush. Congressional candidates who run on fiscally and socially conservative principles will get plenty of support from the base.

The second reason is the Harriet Miers syndrome. Conservatives were outraged when Bush nominated Miers to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, but all was quickly forgiven when he recovered his balance with Samuel Alito. Republicans want to like George Bush. If he changes course and adds to his sterling record on tax cuts, judgeships, and the GWOT, by kicking the immigration and spending monkeys off his back, his numbers will bounce right back up to the mid- to upper-forties.

This is a very big "if," however, and it's doubtful that Bush has any inclination to reform. His legacy hangs in the balance, though, so we'll see.

Islamic Tolerance

The spirit of the Taliban still lives in Afghanistan:

An Afghan man who recently admitted he converted to Christianity faces the death penalty under the country's strict Islamic legal system. The trial is a critical test of Afghanistan's new constitution and democratic government. The case is attracting widespread attention in Afghanistan, where local media are closely monitoring the landmark proceedings.

Abdul Rahman, 40, was arrested last month, accused of converting to Christianity.

Under Afghanistan's new constitution, minority religious rights are protected but Muslims are still subject to strict Islamic laws. And so, officially, Muslim-born Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and not for practicing Christianity.

Appearing in court earlier this week Rahman insisted he should not be considered an infidel, but admitted he is a Christian. He says he still believes in the almighty Allah, but cannot say for sure who God really is. "I am," he says, "a Christian and I believe in Jesus Christ."

Rahman reportedly converted more than 16 years ago after spending time working in Germany. Officials say his family, who remain observant Muslims, turned him over to the authorities.

On Thursday the prosecution told the court Rahman has rejected numerous offers to embrace Islam. Prosecuting attorney Abdul Wasi told the judge that the punishment should fit the crime.

He says Rahman is a traitor to Islam and is like a cancer inside Afghanistan. Under Islamic law and under the Afghan constitution, he says, the defendant should be executed. The court has ordered a delay in the proceedings to give Rahman time to hire an attorney.

Under Afghan law, once a verdict is given, the case can be appealed twice to higher courts. This is the first case in which the defendant has admitted to converting and is refusing to back down, even while facing the death penalty.

If convicted, the case could ultimately force President Hamid Karzai's direct intervention. The president would have to sign the papers authorizing Rahman's execution, a move that could jeopardize Mr. Karzai's standing with human rights groups and Western governments.

So far, President Karzai has not commented on the case. But political analysts here in Kabul say he will be under significant pressure from the country's hard-line religious groups to make an example of Rahman.

What kind of religion is it that has to threaten people with death if they leave it? It reminds us of the old East Germany of the 1960s and 1970s whose soldiers would shoot fellow citizens who sought to flee across the Berlin wall to the West. East Germany was a sick, dysfunctional society. A religion that kills those who seek to flee to other faiths is equally sick and dysfunctional.

Michelle Malkin has links and phone numbers for the Afghanistan embassy for those who wish to call on behalf of Abdul Rahman. We urge all our readers to call and entreat the Afghan government to spare this man's life and, for heaven's sake, set him free.

Taking a Bite Out of Crime

How to reduce criminal recidivism:

A man who was attacked by would-be robbers at the upscale Village of Cross Keys shopping center in North Baltimore Friday afternoon grabbed his own gun and fatally shot one of the assailants in a parking lot, city police said.

Investigators believe that the man who opened fire just before 2 p.m. might have been on his way to a bank when he was attacked by three men who jumped out of a white car in front of a Williams-Sonoma store.

During the brawl, the man who had been attacked was able to pull away to retrieve a handgun concealed inside his Honda Accord, and then he fatally shot one of the attackers, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman.

Bullets shattered windows of his car. The other two assailants hopped back inside their car and sped off with a fourth man driving, Moses said. The four men did not appear to be armed, police said.

Police did not release the name of the man who was attacked. But several employees at the center and a high-ranking police official with knowledge of the investigation described him as a gas station owner in his 50s who regularly makes deposits at the Columbia Bank and who might have been targeted.

The shooting victim, whom police had not identified Friday night, was taken to Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Moses said. Within 30 minutes of the shooting, Moses said, police had found the white vehicle used by the attackers, abandoned at Cold Spring Lane and Greenspring Avenue. The men were being sought Friday night.

Moses said the man who was attacked had a permit for the gun and would probably not face criminal charges. The city state's attorney's office reviews fatal shootings.

There's not much doubt that the gas station owner has insured that at least one thug won't be let back out onto the streets to bludgeon another business owner. There's more on this story at the link.

Why the Fizzle?

If it's true that the war's popularity has plummeted along with Bush's approval ratings then why did the anti-war protests marking the third anniversary of the war's onset pretty much fizzle in the U.S. and Europe Saturday?

There are several possible answers, among which three seem most likely:

1) Americans are not being killed, maimed, or personally inconvenienced at rates that would generate deep and serious opposition to the war.

2) The war's opponents offer no credible alternatives to continuing the effort to build a democracy in Iraq.

3) There's no draft.

All three of these are no doubt important factors, but perhaps the most important is that the premise in the first sentence above is simply incorrect. Americans will back the war as long as they think there's a chance it'll succeed, and although they'll tell pollsters that they're tired of the war and that it's time to bring our troops home, it's doubtful that most Americans will really feel strongly about that until it becomes clear that Iraq is a lost cause. The media is trying to portray it that way, of course, and the Democrats are telling us it is every chance they get, but it appears that the majority of American people are not yet convinced of it.

This is remarkable, actually, because the administration's efforts at winning the American people's support for their undertaking in Iraq has been little better than absolutely pathetic. Indeed, were this the late sixties or early seventies Washington would be brimful with protestors, but for the reasons mentioned above, it's not.

There is one other way things are different today: In 1970 there was no alternative media. Once the big three television networks and the major newspapers turned against the Vietnam war, the government had few resources with which to make the case for sticking it out. Today, talk radio and the blogosphere are potent alternatives to the miasma of defeatism that pervades liberalism and the Democratic party. Because of the influence of talk radio and the internet, the prophets of doom, defeat, and dissimulation are gaining very little traction, and, in fact, are more likely to look like fools and buffoons than like oracles. Witness, in this regard, the fate of lefties such as Dan Rather, Michael Moore, and Cindy Sheehan.

The American people being what they are, this could all change in a trice, but as of now it just doesn't look like the left has the muscle, either political or intellectual, to force us out of Iraq. Nineteen seventy, after all, was a long time ago.

The Yale Taliban

The fireworks over Yale's acceptance of a former Taliban official into its student body continue unabated, as well they should. John Fund brings us up to date on the latest details.

When one considers all that the Taliban stands for in terms of political and religious oppression and mass murder, the tyrannization of women, the extermination of homosexuals, and its hostility to every other allegedly liberal value, we cannot imagine why Yale would accept onto their campus an unrepentant representative of that worldview. The Taliban Yalie, by the way, possesses no more than a fourth grade education. To make room for this cretin, Yale had to deny some far more deserving student a slot.

We wonder why all those who were so incensed about the U.A.E. buying a toe-hold in the U.S. through the ports deal are not equally incensed over Yale's perfidious behavior. Perhaps Yale alumni all across the country will be sufficiently outraged at their alma mater's incomprehensible stupidity to withhold future financial support from this once great institution.

Starboard Side Lunacy

Evidently the lunatic fringe is a big tent. Even some erstwhile respectable commentators on the right have wandered under its canopy. Here, for example, is former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former contributing editor at National Review Paul Craig Roberts waxing delusional about how George Bush will fabricate a pretext to attack Iran with nuclear weapons:

[A] low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out from a U.S. port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time, thanks to Bush's illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American people to Bush, and the U.S. media will not report the rest of the world's doubts of the explanation.

There's more evidence of Roberts' slide into nuttery at the link. It's very sad.

Nelson v. Sarkar

Intelligent Design advocate Paul Nelson discusses his recent debate with Sahotra Sarkar on the merits of ID at UT-Austin here. Sounds like they had fun.

Sexual Anarchy

In one of the earliest posts in our nearly two year history here at Viewpoint we argued that gay marriage was greasing the tracks for polygamous marriage and that group marriages would follow hard after. Now comes this report in Newsweek:

Marlyne Hammon, who's involved in a polygamous relationship, is a founding member of the Centennial Park Action Committee, a group that lobbies for decriminalization of the practice. She's among a new wave of polygamy activists emerging in the wake of the gay-marriage movement-just as a federal lawsuit challenging anti-polygamy laws makes its way through the courts and a new show about polygamy debuts on HBO. "Polygamy rights is the next civil-rights battle," says Mark Henkel, who, as founder of the Christian evangelical polygamy organization TruthBearer.org, is at the forefront of the movement. His argument: if Heather can have two mommies, she should also be able to have two mommies and a daddy. Henkel and Hammon have been joined by other activist groups like Principle Voices, a Utah-based group run by wives from polygamous marriages. Activists point to Canada, where, in January, a report commissioned by the Justice Department recommended decriminalizing polygamy.

As we observed in that post almost two years ago, if our courts and legislatures allow efforts like these to go forward there will soon be no place to draw a line, even if anyone should want to. Once the gender of those entering into marriage no longer matters neither will their number. When neither gender nor number matters there will be no logical rationale for proscribing any form of union whatsoever, certainly there will be no compelling argument against group or incestuous marriage nor will there be much stomach for fighting to preserve laws prohibiting sexual relationships between adults and consenting minors.

We are on the cusp of a societal revolution that will usher in a kind of sexual anarchy, and it's doubtful that marriage as it has been known throughout our history will survive the turbulence.

Bush's selection of John Roberts and Samuel Alito is looking better all the time, but, of course, we're sure Al Gore or John Kerry would have made equally wise choices for the bench.

Thought For Today

I got an email from a friend this week and thought I would pass it on to our readers.

Subject: ARE YOU JESUS?

A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night's dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.

ALL BUT ONE !!!

He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.

He was glad he did. The 16 year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight. The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display.

As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?" She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, "I hope we didn't spoil your day too badly."

As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister...." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?"

He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?"

Do people mistake you for Jesus? That's our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace. If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church. It's actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.

You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.

Let us live like we are worth the price He paid.

Tough Line of Work

How stupid are these knuckleheads? They're probably asking themselves that same question right now. With all the cruise ships and freighters out there just waiting to be pirated they decide to tangle with two U.S. warships. Dumb, dumb, dumb -- but gratifying:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (March 18) - Two U.S. Navy warships exchanged gunfire with suspected pirates Saturday off the coast of Somalia, and one suspect was killed and five others were wounded, the navy said. Seven other suspects were taken into custody after the early-morning shootout, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

No sailors were wounded in the battle, which occurred at about 5:40 a.m. local time, approximately 25 nautical miles off the Somali coast in international waters.

The battle started after the USS Cape St. George and USS Gonzalez, which were patrolling as part of a Dutch-led task force, spotted a 30-foot fishing boat towing smaller skiffs and prepared to board and inspect the vessels.

The suspected pirates were holding what appeared to be rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the navy said. When the suspects began shooting, naval gunners returned fire with mounted machine guns, killing one man and igniting a fire on the vessel.

Three suspects were seriously wounded and being treated on one of the Navy ships, Brown told The Associated Press. A Dutch Navy medical team was en route. The suspects' nationalities were unknown.

The Navy boarding teams confiscated an RPG launcher and automatic weapons, the statement said.

The Cape St. George, a guided-missile cruiser, and Gonzalez, a guided-missile destroyer, were conducting maritime security operations in the area. They are based in Norfolk, Va.

The International Maritime Organization has warned ships to stay away from the Somali coast because of pirate attacks, which surged to 35 last year from two in 2004.

On March 15, the U.N. Security Council encouraged naval forces operating off Somalia to take action against suspected piracy. Pirate attacks against aid ships have hindered U.N. efforts to provide relief to the victims of a severe drought in the area.

The pirate raids are part of the anarchy wracking Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1991, when warlords ousted a dictatorship and then turned on each other.

Looks like piracy suddenly got to be a tough business. We expect that the "surge" mentioned three paragraphs above will dramatically reverse direction in 2006.

The Instantaneous Universe

Physicists have discovered the first solid evidence of what's called "cosmic inflation":

Physicists say they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

Think about that for a moment. The universe, in less time than we can possibly imagine, went from essentially nothing to the size of a marble, and then, in a trillionth, trillionth of a second, it grew at a speed far faster than the speed of light to a size larger than what we can observe today. In other words, before a billionth of a second had passed in the creation of the universe, all of its forces, laws, parameters, and constants had been fixed. All the matter that would eventually precipitate out from the primordial energy existed potentially.

There were no stars or galaxies yet, of course, but these are relatively minor details in the creation narrative. All the foundational necessities, all the heavy lifting, was done in far less than an instant. The rest was just the pretty colors of a fireworks rocket. The real work was building the rocket. And this was done ... instantly. If a human had been around to see it happen it would have looked as if the essentials of the universe all came into existence instantaneously.

It would seem as if God said, "Let there be a cosmos," and there was a cosmos.

Nebular "DNA"

Click on this link and look at the photo. If you like awe-inspiring astronomical phenomena you're sure to like this.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

Horserace in PA

Here's some remarkable political news:

The latest poll of Pennsylvania voters shows that Republican Lynn Swann is tied with incumbent Democatic Gov. Ed Rendell.

Strategic Vision, LLC, an Atlanta-headquartered public relations and public affairs agency announced the results of a three-day poll of 1,200 likely voters in Pennsylvania on various political issues. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

In a match-up between Governor Rendell and Republican Lynn Swann, the results were Rendell 44 percent; Swann 44 percent; and 2 percent went to "other candidate," with 10 percent undecided.

Just a few short weeks ago Swann was trailing Rendell by about twenty points. If Swann pulls this off, if a conservative, black Republican beats a white, liberal, Democrat incumbent, it could portend a mass exodus of blacks from the Democrat party, at least in Pennsylvania. Or is that just wishful thinking?

Templeton Prize Winner

This year's winner of the Templeton Prize, an award worth about $1.4 million, has been given to astronomer John Barrow whose work on the Anthropic Principle has done so much to convince people that the universe is not merely a grand accident. The Prize was founded in 1972 by philanthropist and global financial pioneer Sir John Templeton and is given annually to a living person to encourage and honor the advancement of knowledge in spiritual matters. It's the world's best known religion prize and the largest annual monetary prize of any kind given to an individual.

In establishing the prize's monetary value, Sir John stipulated that it always be worth more than the Nobel Prizes as a way to underscore his belief that research and advances in spiritual discoveries can be quantifiably more significant than work done in the disciplines recognized by the Nobels.

For more on Barrow and the Templeton go here.

Our Government At Work

That's probably an oxymoron. Kind of like "non-essential government workers" but I digress.

From the link

The Senate voted Thursday to allow the national debt to swell to nearly $9 trillion, preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes.

The bill passed by a 52-48 vote. The increase to $9 trillion represents about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. The bill now goes to President Bush for his signature.

There are several notable observations here.

As for the $781 billion increase in the debt limit, Grassley said: "It is necessary to preserve the full faith and credit of the federal government."

Hah! What faith and credit? The debt is already more than can ever be paid unless the government inflates our currency into oblivion to pay it off with even more worthless dollars. More on this thought in a moment. Maybe that's one reason the rest of the world is looking to alternatives to the U.S. dollar like the Euro.

And...

Before approving the bill, Republicans rejected by a 55-44 vote an amendment by Max Baucus, D-Mont., to mandate a Treasury study on the economic consequences of foreigners holding an increasing portion of the U.S. debt.

These macaroons don't even care what the consequences are of foreign countries holding ever increasing amounts of U.S. debt. What's with that?

And here's a good one...

Treasury Secretary John Snow authorized the government to use the $15 billion available in the exchange stabilization fund on March 3 and issued a ``debt issuance suspension period'' to temporarily stop investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. The Treasury also redeemed some of the fund's current investments.

In other words the government raided the retirement accounts of the government workers and replaced it with IOUs just like they did with Social Security. Those accounts belonged to the employees of the government but they have just been hijacked.

This brings up an interesting thought. The government has demonstrated time and again that it will raid accounts for funds wherever it can find them and replace them with meaningless IOUs. Social Security, and now government employee retirement accounts do not appear to be off limits. I wonder when they will set their sights on IRAs.

There are only two ways any government debt can be paid back. The traditional way is for the GDP of the country to raise creating wealth to meet the obligation. The other way is to monetize the debt simply by printing currency to cover it. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Fed's plan to discontinue reporting M3 later this month.

Given the current state of affairs regarding the U.S. economy the first option isn't likely. The national debt crossed the $1 trillion mark in 1981 under President Ronald Reagan and grew to $3.2 trillion during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. During the administration of Bill Clinton, it hit $5.5 trillion, but government surpluses enabled Congress to pay down some of the debt. Since President George W. Bush has been in office, the figure has climbed from $5.6 trillion to the new $9 trillion mark.

Here's the take home message dear reader. Since 1981 our economy has obviously not grown sufficiently to cover its borrowing. If it had, we wouldn't be looking at a $9 trillion deficit. Why would any thinking person believe the trend is going to change now?

The debt is going parabolic and the only recourse will be to print the fiat dollars to pay it down. The result will be a U.S. dollar that is essentially worthless and given the rate at which the debt is accelerating, it won't be long before this happens.

There's only one way Americans can protect themselves from incompetent government bureaurocrats determined to destroy America...

Got gold?

Claude Allen

Ann Coulter skewers the New York Times for racial gerrymandering -- in the articles it chooses to run on its front page. Although she shines a light on the Times' own racial and ideological quirks, the real point of her piece is to sympathetically highlight the character of Claude Allen:

I guess the only way we'll ever find out how many blacks have worked in the Bush administration is to wait for them to get in trouble someday so we can read the breathless, triumphant stories on the front page of the New York Times about a black Republican scofflaw. It's amazing that anyone has ever heard of Condoleezza Rice -- she's never even been arrested for jaywalking.

Claude Allen, whom I first heard of this week, was a top adviser to President Bush for more than 4 1/2 years. Soon after Bush was elected in 2000, he made Allen the No. 2 official at the Department of Health and Human Services. Allen later became Bush's domestic policy adviser, meeting with the president several times a week.

In 2003, Bush nominated Allen to a federal judgeship on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- which nomination was then blocked by the party that wouldn't exist without black votes. Deploying their usual strategy against black Republicans, Democrats raised questions about Allen's "legal credentials": Democrat-ese for "He's black, so he's probably not very smart." Allen went to Duke Law School, where he was remembered fondly by law professor Walter Dellinger, later Clinton's solicitor general.

During the entire time this talented, intelligent, magnificently conservative black man held high positions in the Bush administration, he was mentioned in only 11 articles in The New York Times. (A small part of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller dies every time the paper is forced to mention any black top officials in the Bush administration. It might remind people that the most highly placed black in the Clinton administration was his secretary, Betty Currie.)

It's worth reading the rest of it.

As GM Goes...

so goes America. If GM was a horse it would be shot to put it out of its misery.

From the link:

General Motors Corp. shares sank more than 3 percent Friday after the world's largest automaker increased its previously-reported loss for 2005 by $2 billion to reflect fresh estimates of the costs of bailing out its former parts-making unit and revamping its loss-riddled North American operations.

How in the world can any U.S. company compete when burdened with such buffoonery as this? The answer is simple. It can't and it won't.

The only question I have is why anyone would continue to own shares in a company who's future has no future. And sadly, GM's future is a foreshadowing of America's future.

Wake up America! The term globalization is synonymous with the destruction of America. Our government is not only allowing it to happen, they are making it happen.

Barren Future

Liberalism has no future. This article in USA Today explains why:

Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.

Today, fertility correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural and religious attitudes. In the USA, for example, 47% of people who attend church weekly say their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, 27% of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.

In Utah, where more than two-thirds of residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 92 children are born each year for every 1,000 women, the highest fertility rate in the nation. By contrast Vermont - the first to embrace gay unions - has the nation's lowest rate, producing 51 children per 1,000 women.

Similarly, in Europe today, the people least likely to have children are those most likely to hold progressive views of the world. For instance, do you distrust the army and other institutions and are you prone to demonstrate against them? Then, according to polling data assembled by demographers Ron Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn, you are less likely to be married and have kids or ever to get married and have kids. Do you find soft drugs, homosexuality and euthanasia acceptable? Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? Europeans who answer affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live alone or be in childless, cohabiting unions than are those who answer negatively.

This correlation between secularism, individualism and low fertility portends a vast change in modern societies. In the USA, for example, nearly 20% of women born in the late 1950s are reaching the end of their reproductive lives without having children. The greatly expanded childless segment of contemporary society, whose members are drawn disproportionately from the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and '70s, will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of people who did raise children.

Meanwhile, single-child families are prone to extinction. A single child replaces one of his or her parents, but not both. Consequently, a segment of society in which single-child families are the norm will decline in population by at least 50% per generation and quite quickly disappear. In the USA, the 17.4% of baby boomer women who had one child account for a mere 9.2% of kids produced by their generation. But among children of the baby boom, nearly a quarter descend from the mere 10% of baby boomer women who had four or more kids.

This dynamic helps explain the gradual drift of American culture toward religious fundamentalism and social conservatism. Among states that voted for President Bush in 2004, the average fertility rate is more than 11% higher than the rate of states for Sen. John Kerry.

So, liberal families are no more fecund than liberal ideas. How fitting. There's much more interesting information on the consequences of the lack of fruitfulness among liberals at the link.

World War III

Haim Harari gave a speech in 2004 on the current conflict with Islamism that is one of the best analyses of this struggle I've seen. He states that the battle, contrary to what many people think, is not about Israel:

Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.

The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel.

The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.

The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.

Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of Israel.

Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel.

Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.

The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel.

The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.

The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel had joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine had existed for 100 years.

Harari goes on to elaborate upon the dysfunctionality of the Arab world:

The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion.

They have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe.

These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone.

Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers.

The social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago.

Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission.

According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates.

The total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis.

Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline.

And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world.

It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves.

Hariri argues that we are in the midst of World War III and that much of the world, especially Europe (and the American left, we might add), seems unaware of the fact.

There are four pillars supporting and sustaining this war against civilization, each of which Hariri explains in considerable and engrossing detail: Suicide murder, lies, money, and utter lawlessness. The article is a little long but well worth the time it takes to read.