perfidy

Despite the Boston Globe's ongoing love affair with John Kerry, I just can't bring myself to like him.

A portion of those similarly displeased with Kerry take issue with his post-war shenanigans. His brief career as a hippy is enough to turn that portion off. Others are suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his decorations, earned under fire (so the stories go), yet thrown away in a fit of highly visible faux disgust a short time later. Except they weren't his, as we know, and the real ones are now resting comfortably carefully framed and displayed in his office. I consider these parts of Kerry history as poor form, but they're not enough not to vote for him, 30 years on.

There are many more substantive reasons that I would be reluctant to vote for the man.
As a resident of a perpetually impoverished region of Massachusetts, I am intimately familiar with the utter lack of effort on the part of Kerry and his mistress, Ted Kennedy, to improve this part of the world. Now, if you live here it can be kinda funny how self-centered Bostonians can be- the punchline of course is that the state is so ridiculously small. But it's not that funny when the people who run the place actually live that way. Matter of fact, alot of people on Beacon Hill aren't even clear where New York starts; Ted even believes that the NY border runs near Springfield (heard him say it with my own ears). So those of us in western MA, who have seen little real growth here in my lifetime, would ask Mr. Kerry how, if he can't improve an economy on the scale of western Massachusetts, and he's been on the job for about 22 years, how he can claim to have an effective policy for improving the national economy within 4 years? That might sound good on TV, but here we know better.

The economy, though, is not a major concern of mine and does not influence my voting decision. Unlike Ross, I am convinced that I will never have the $$ I think I deserve, regardless of who's President. I'll just continue to work 2-3 jobs until I die, and that's that.

More to follow.

I will not be posting until after the weekend (cue weepy violins; the wails of millions), as I am travelling South. Friday night is the Partial Perfidous Caucus on Evil, Malfeasance, and Spawn Admiration at the Buckethead residence: drinks provided. Then family stuff, and then an excruciating marathon drive from Richmond to Boston on Sunday. If I don't make it back, remember me well.

From the comments section of this post from Jane Galt, we find this fascinating article from the July, 1926 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

The chaos that ensued is a bit of a cautionary tale. (And yes, I am aware of the differences between the Soviet Union of the mid twenties and our current utopian paradise in America.) Read the whole thing, as they say. Some of the consequences of Communist efforts to make the New Soviet Man (and Woman) prefigure the results of the introduction of the Pill and the Sexual Revolution.

I also found interesting this bit from Jane's post:

And people who were cheering the various court decisions, and are now screaming about this, need a consistency check. Yes, we all support gay marriage -- but a majority of your fellow citizens don't. You thought you'd found a way to end run the tedious process of cultural change by getting judges or officials who lean your way to read rights you're in favor of into the constitution. You can hardly scream "foul" when they try to get legislators who don't lean your way to write those rights right back out again.

This gets to some of what I was saying - that from the conservative point of view, liberal judicial activism leaves them no recourse but quixotic attempts to pass constitutional amendments because no matter how many legislative battles they win, liberals can always find an agreeable judge.

Since nobody gets my quantum cat box gay marriage riff, I'll explain something else.

Poor and middle class people in this country have been told that we need to give a large tax cut to the wealthiest 1% of people in this country. The reason, we are told, is that this will produce expansion in the economy. This, in turn, will create more jobs, raise the incomes of everyone, and just generally make everything turn out super.

Yesterday a one of my colleagues asked a question about taxes. We pulled out a spreadsheet and calculated roughly how much he's paid in social security taxes over his career of seven years (he's not yet thirty). We calculated that he has paid roughly $78,000 in social security taxes in that time. Seems like quite a lot, doesn't it? We are including, of course, both sides of the social security puzzle -- employer paid and employee paid taxes. If the employer was not paying these taxes, they could (and would) be given to the employee as wages.

At this point is is useful to note that the tax cuts for the wealthy are being financed by removing money from the social security surplus. Very large parts of my everyone's social security payments are diverted into the general fund. The general fund is operating at a huge deficit.

Is my colleague better off holding a promise to pay social security from the federal government, approximately valued at $0 and a promise by the GOP that the improving economy will help him out? Or would he be better off with his $78,000?

Any potential benefit to the poor and middle class derived from ephemeral supply-side effects is dwarfed by the tax theft this country is currently engaged in.

The social security taxes apply massive pressure against poor and middle class income mobility. Without being able to save this money and develop some capital of their own, they are forever trapped in a paycheck to paycheck existence, and forced to be wage earners.

When we give massive tax cuts to the wealthy, we do tremendous damage to the hopes and dreams of the other 99% of Americans, who can't save enough to make changes in their lives.

A corporation runs a pension plan for twenty years, and manages the assets in the trust fund. The workers have contributed 15% of their paychecks to this fund, on the understanding that it will be used for their retirements. The officers of the company "borrow" money from the trust and use it to finance general operations of the company and give themselves massive pay increases. They leave an IOU, signed and stamped and gold-starred.

In the private world, we would prosecute. We would call this theft. Or at least we would have, before the GOP congress of 1998 got its hands on the IRS, prevented them from investigating corporate fraud, and told them to go after earned income tax errors instead, so they can extract dozens of dollars from maids who make $6,000 a year.

Okay, it’s a cheesy headline. But I have been expecting a couple of the military oriented bloggers to jump in on this, and I haven’t really seen anything substantive. The RAH-66 Comanche is (or was) intended to be the next generation, double-plus lethal, stealthy/sneaky reconnaissance/attack helicopter for the Army. We have already spent $8 billion on the development, and will have to spend an additional $2 billion in contract termination fees if the project actually goes south. The rationale for canceling the project is that the money saved by not building the Comanche will be used to buy almost 800 more UH-60 Blackhawk utility transport helicopters, upgrade and modernize 1,400 helicopters already in the fleet, and invest more heavily in a variety of unmanned aircraft, such as the existing Hunter and the new Raven.

Unlike the earlier decision to cancel the Crusader artillery system (which also was very expensive) I have mixed feelings about this one. The Crusader was to be a highly advanced, highly mobile artillery system. It would have given the army a precision stand off artillery system that could keep up with the turbine powered M1 Abrams tank on the battlefield. Its computerized and networked fire control system would be integrated into the army’s battlefield tactical networks. It would be able to put massive firepower anywhere the army wanted, quickly, efficiently and accurately.

This system would have been perfect for destroying large armored opponents like the Red Army. Sadly, the Red Army no longer exists, and the Crusader was not exactly what a lighter, more deployable Army needed. So I could see the logic in canceling it. It didn’t fit the army’s new idiom of freewheeling, fast and decentralized, precision netcentric warfare.

But the Comanche does fit that idiom. It is fast, stealthy, and lethal. Our mobility is crucial to our new mode of warfare. And the Comanche is a highly mobile weapons and reconnaissance platform. Our current flock of attack helicopters is aging, and no matter how many weapons, sensor and avionics upgrades they receive, there are some capabilities they will never provide, and the Comanche was intended to address those shortfalls.
The Comanche’s stealth and noise suppression technology would have allowed it to penetrate enemy or contested airspace with much greater ease than the current models. Its greater range means easier logistical support and greater strike radius. And the fact that all the modern avionics are designed in from the start means easier maintenance and greater effectiveness. Even if we had not gone ahead with the initial plan to purchase thousands of Comanches, several hundred would increase the effectiveness of units equipped with both Comanches and older attack and reconnaissance helicopters.

To be sure, the Comanche is expensive – over $50 million each. But cost is not the only consideration when deciding whether to continue with a weapons program. These are expensive projects, whether we cancel them or not. Does the system increase the lethality of our forces? Will its presence on the battlefield reduce the likelihood of American casualties? What threat is the program meant to address? We have to think carefully about what we cancel. As the vastly increased operational tempo of our military eats into funding, we have to ensure that R&D, training and procurement budgets are not savaged as we fight the war on terror. I think, from what I have read, that the Comanche would be a worthwhile addition to our armamentarium. It will increase our ability to fight enemies on any battlefield, regardless of their technological sophistication. And that will save lives.

Other military projects are potentially on the block, waiting for the ax. The Air Force’s F-22 Raptor has narrowly averted execution several times, as has the Marine V-22 Osprey. We need to look at these and other programs in the same way.

• The Crusader designed to deal with heavy armored forces, is no longer relevant, and it made sense to cancel it.
• The F-22 is an incredible fighter – it is stealthy, agile, heavily armed and can cruise at supersonic speeds. There is no fighter in any Air Force that could defeat it. But that is also true of the fighters we already have. It would only be an incremental increase in our effectiveness against any likely opponent, who are unlikely to be any serious threat to our air superiority. Build a squadron for when it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight, and spend the money on the much cheaper (but still better than anything except the F-22) F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Which also has a real ground attack capability.
• The V-22 Osprey, the tilt-rotor troop transport, is a great idea. The Osprey takes off like a helicopter, and then its twin rotors rotate forward, allowing it to fly like an airplane. Thus, it combines the helicopter's ability to land and takeoff anywhere, with the airplane's speed, payload capacity and range. There have been four crashes in ten years, raising concerns about its safety, but many have argued that this is to be expected in a completely new type of aircraft. If accepted, the Osprey would allow the Marines to deploy faster and further than ever before, and ease logistical support as well. Adding this capability makes sense. Thumbs up.

Its all a matter of looking at where the project in question would fit into the battlefield, and determining whether its worth the money. (Including the opportunity cost - could we develop some other weapons system that is even more effective with the money?)

A long time ago in a universe far, far away, a man named Erwin Schroedinger gave us the story of a cat. Schroedinger's Cat is a haunting tale of death and loss and, in particular, the nature of uncertainty. It's so sad, really. You see, there's this cat, who's alive and well. He's happy and well-fed. Life isn't too bad. Then he changes owners. The new owner is a bad man, and the bad man thinks he doesn't really need food, or water, or anything of the things that regular cats need to live and love and do more than survive.

The bad man puts the cat in a box. It's an iron box, heavy lid, no way to look inside. In fact, this box is never designed to be opened, ever...you can't see what's going on in there. Before the lid was shut, though, the bad man had a pang in his stomach. At first he thought it was a crappy egg, but it turned out to be his heart, maybe two sizes too small.

Still being a bad man, though, he gathered up another cat and threw it in the box with the first one, tightly shut the lid, and found the nasty pang departed. Then he welded the lid shut, put a padlock on it, wrapped the box in plastic, and bricked it into cubby hole behind a wall in his guest house, smoothing out the plaster in a pleasing manner. He centered a cross on the wall, and decided the cat's name was Fortunato. The other cat could be Fortunato 2.

After some time went by, Fortunato asked Fortunato 2 to marry him.

In a fit of macabre quantum pique, the immoral collapsing probability wavefront reached out into the universe and....

Did nothing, because nobody saw it; it never existed.

A panel of Federal judges have ruled that the Massachusetts legislature must redraw the tortuous and insane boundaries of certain Boston-area voting districts.

A panel of federal judges ordered Massachusetts House leaders yesterday to redraw the Boston legislative map, determining that the plan crafted by House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and his lieutenants was designed to protect their own political futures at the expense of black voters' constitutional rights. . . .

During the trial last fall, Finneran, a Mattapan Democrat, insisted that the redistricting plan did not unfairly divide minority neighborhoods, but he conceded that his aides tried to ensure that sitting representatives were not harmed by shifting demographics revealed by a new census.

When the lines were redrawn, [House leader Tom] Finneran's district shed three overwhelmingly minority neighborhoods and took on three that were at least 95 percent white, including areas of Milton. Even as Boston for the first time emerged as a "majority-minority" city in the 2000 federal census, Finneran's district went from 74 percent minority to 61 percent minority.

"The House was comfortable with manipulating district lines," the court ruled. "This sad fact speaks to the totality of the circumstances."

More of this, please!

The Left's Anti-Semitic Chic?. Backed up by nothing in the article, of course. I wonder if Will actually wrote the headline. Onward:

Here the term intellectual is used loosely, to denote not only people who think about ideas -- about thinking -- but also people who think they do. The term anti-Semitism is used to denote people who dislike Jews. These people include those who say: We do not dislike Jews, we only dislike Zionists -- although to live in Israel is to endorse the Zionist enterprise, and all Jews are implicated, as sympathizers, in the crime that is Israel.

Today's release of Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" has catalyzed fears of resurgent anti-Semitism. Some critics say the movie portrays the governor of Judea -- Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect responsible for the crucifixion -- as more benign and less in control than he actually was, and ascribes too much power and malignity to Jerusalem's Jewish elite.

A few things come to mind. First, anti-semites are people who dislike Jews for being Jews. And yes, small-minded one, you can dislike Zionists without being an anti-semite. Unless you believe that all Jews are Zionists, which they're not.

Will then raises Gibson's "The Passion". Why he provides this as bolstering material in an article accusing the entire left of being anti-semitic is beyond me. He might want to do a little exit polling at theaters, where he might rapidly discover that (shocker) religious Christian types are the main audience for this film. Say, which way do the religious Christian types in this country lean, anyway?

Oh...I forgot. It's a movie, which means it is inherently part of the left wing conspiracy.

Via blogcritics, I see that Alton Brown, my favorite celebrity chef-type-person will be part of a series of "Iron Chef America" specials filming soon to air on the Food Network.

SWEET.

Do be aware that this new version of Iron Chef is the real deal, including Masaharu Morimoto and Hiroyuki Sakai from the original series versus such American high-profile chefs as Bobby Flay (winner of the infamous Spiny Lobster battle), Wolfgang Puck, and Mario Batali. As such, it has NOTHING to do with the disastrous UPN version of Iron Chef which featured second-rank celeb chefs like Todd English (nothing wrong with his food... he's just no Chen Kenichi) and William Shatner as the Chairman.

A jewish Rabbi writing in the National Review is making three predictions about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ:

• It will make a butload of money. [I'm paraphrasing]
• The Passion will will be the most serious and substantive Biblical movie ever.
• It will be a harbinger of a third Great Awakening.

Johno knows more about the first religious awakenings in this country than I do. But it seems to me that this is an interesting prediction, as we're long overdue for one. The secular movement has been ascendent in American cultural life for decades now, and there is always a reaction to any culturally dominant movement. It would be interesting to speculate on what effect a great awakening would have on 21st Century American politics, foriegn policy and culture.

It's also an interesting article in that it analyses the efforts of Jewish groups to attack Gibson and his movie:

"Those Jewish organizations that have squandered both time and money futilely protesting The Passion, ostensibly in order to prevent pogroms in Pittsburgh, can hardly be proud of their performance. They failed at everything they attempted. They were hoping to ruin Gibson rather than enrich him. They were hoping to suppress The Passion rather than promote it. Finally, they were hoping to help Jews rather than harm them.

In this, they have failed miserably. By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity in a positive light, these critics have triggered anger, hurt, and resentment."

"Many Christians who, with good reason, have considered themselves to be Jews' best (and perhaps only) friends also feel resentment toward Jews who believe that The Passion reveals startling new information about the Crucifixion. They are incredulous at Jews who think that exposure to the Gospels in visual form will instantly transform the most philo-Semitic gentiles in history into snarling, Jew-hating predators.

Christians are baffled by Jews who don't understand that President George Washington, who knew and revered every word of the Gospels, was still able to write that oft-quoted, beautiful letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, offering friendship and full participation in America to the Jewish community."

"It is strange that Jewish organizations, purporting to protect Jews, think that insulting allies is the preferred way to carry out that mandate.

Indeed. It seems that much of the opposition to this movie has been overwrought, and coming from people who have not seen the movie.

A recent article describes research that may allow doctors to literally hear disease.

Preliminary research indicates that living cells, with proper care and feeding, pulsate. That pulsation can be expressed as sound. Initial study of yeast cells reveals that they pulse "about a C-sharp to D above middle C in terms of music". Dead or mutated cells actually sound different than healthy ones. Interestingly, sprinkling alcohol on yeast cells- the preferred method of killing them, apparently- raises the pitch of those cells. I don't know if I sing higher after I've been sprinkled with alcohol, but I definitely sing LOUDER.

Nevertheless, with more research and refinement, this sort of nano-sonic listening could yield an entire new set of diagnostic tools. Like really, really sick headphones for starters.

Who inherits the FMA? The youth of this country. Overwhelmingly, younger citizens have indicated that they DO NOT CARE about sexual preference and gay marriage. What we have here is a last putrid outgassing from corpse of morality in this White House. The stench will linger over OUR generation, once these fools are gone.

The Rove Republicans will sell out the gay population and the youth of this country to retain power, by appealing to discrimination...by finding a way to redirect anger and frustration into an old, familiar pattern to blame and hatred...

Of all the... SecEd Rod Paige referred to the kneecappers at the National Education Association as "terrorists" on Monday. Seriously.

Either the word has lost all meaning, or Mr. Paige has lost his mind. Alternatively, both conditions may apply.

I propose a new Law to complement Godwin's Corollary and the Perfidy-coined "Judson's Law". What shall we call what happens when people refer to others as "terrorists" despite the absence of actual terrorist acts like suicide-bombing, planes in buildings, hijackings, etc.? Let's make it real stupid-sounding!

Green bears?

Two polar bears at the Singapore Zoo have turned into giant chia pets. A harmless algae has grown in the hollow shafts of the bear's hair, leading to the jungle camouflage color scheme. Hydrogen peroxide has been used to bleach the fur of the mother bear back to its normal arctic white, and the son will get his dye job in a couple weeks.

Yes, it's time for reality vs. Bush, Episode MXVCVIIIMCII.

Speaking on his tax cuts for the top bracket, El Bush pontificates thusly (if mangled words can be considered such):

"If you're worried about job growth, it seems like it makes sense to give a little fuel to those who create jobs, the small-business sector," Bush told a gathering of the nation's governors at the White House. "So I'll vigorously defend the permanency of the tax cuts, not only for the sake of the economy, but for the sake of the entrepreneurial spirit."

Internal Revenue Service statistics cited by a Democratic senator this month show that the vast majority of small businesses do not earn nearly enough money to fall into the highest income tax bracket. According to IRS data from the 2001 tax year, 3.8 percent of the 18.2 million business tax returns filed that year reported taxable income of $200,000 or more. The top tax bracket last year kicked in at $311,950 of taxable income.

So -- yeah, the estate tax helps farmers, except nobody can identify a single farm that's been saved. And the top bracket tax cut helps small business, except according to the IRS data, it doesn't.

Exactly how much more of this bullshit are the reasonable people in this country going to put up with?

If the man's judgement is this badly impaired (either by lack of capacity or poor information delivery), why exactly do many "conservative" people in this country think he's so damn qualified to prosecute the war against terrorism?

Bush is a walking misjudgement.

Damn, that better be a word. It's frickin' late, I've just put in a 15 hour day, and I'm wiped. I get a free one here. Little blinky lights everywhere are telling me to pay attention to the outside world. Maybe they're floaty spots.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: Since the tax cut thing didn't work out and all it did was make a bunch of GOP political donors even more ridiculously wealthy, can we have the money back?

Right. And when we put the tax rates back after November, they'll bitch, bitch, bitch about the fact that the rich are being singled out for a tax hike.

The Post has given us an essential timeline on the Bush "tax cuts", the effects that were promised at the time, and what we've seen.

Bush and his "economic team" perform about as well as psychics at a county fair.

Before you raise the chorus of terrorism, war, and recession, keep in mind that these predictions were made after those things happened.

Here are some helpful mathematic elements for your consideration:

Today's debt as % of GDP : ~40%.
Historical high debt as % of GDP: ~50%.
Bush Debt as % of GDP: 6%/year.

Dick Cheney tells us that worldwide oil consumption is increasing at 3% a year, and reserves are decreasing by 2% a year. He should know.

Taxes lost to cheaters, every year: ~$300 Billion ($1000 for every man, woman and child in the country).

Odds of being audited if your income is less than 15k/year: 1 in 47.
Odds of being audited if your income is more than 100k/year: 1 in 66.

Amount stolen from working class people's social security fund to give tax cuts to the wealthiest, since 1983: $1.7 Trillion.

Ratio of Americans who pay more in social security taxes than they do in federal income taxes: 3/4.

Income rise in constant dollars since 1972, bottom 99%: 4%.
Income rise in constant dollars since 1972, top 1%: 500%.

Amount of income working class Americans can save, tax-free, per year: about $12,000.
Amount a public corporation officer can save, due to a loophole in the law: Unlimited, as deferred income.

Number of penalties assessed against American corporations for cheating on taxes in 1993: 2,400.
Number of penalties assessed against American corporations for cheating on taxes in 2002: 22.

Number of offshore credit cards issued to American citizens: somewhere between 1 and 2 million. Estimated tax cheating: around $70 Billion loss.

US trade deficit, 2003: $489 Billion.

Number of farms lost in the last 20 years to estate taxes: 0.

Purchase price of a data series from the IRS, so a concerned taxpayer can do his OWN analysis of the tax system: $3300, for one copied CD-ROM.

Murdoc has a post up on the possible fate of the Shuttle. He links to a Jeffrey Bell article that argues that after the CAIB, there is really no way that the shuttle can return to service, given the high (40%, according to Bell) likelihood that we'd lose another shuttle just doing the limited ISS-maintenance flights that are currently imagined.

The shuttle has long been everything but what NASA has claimed it to be. It is expensive, inefficient, has impossibly long turn around times, and most important, it's lethal to its crews. The fact that we will almost certainly lose Hubble due to the problems with the shuttle is an unfortunate, though predictable fact. We have not been even remotely sensible about space travel in almost a half century. (And yes, I am aware of how old the space age is.)

It's a sad fact that China and Russia - using forty year old technology - have a more robust and capable manned space flight capability than we do with our thirty year old technology. There have been no significant advances in space transportation since the shuttle flew back in '81, and that wasn't much of an advance, as Murdoc has pointed out. There are three things we need for a decent space transportation infrastructure, and we have only one of them.

We have disposable launchers that can reliably put satellites and other moderate sized, unmanned payloads into orbit, for a fairly reasonable price. The other two things are a safe and reasonably priced manned vehicle, and a heavy lift vehicle. We have known almost from the beginning of the shuttle era that despite the smoke NASA's been blowing, the shuttle is none of these things.

I simply can't believe that with all we (and the Russkies) have learned since 1961, Lockheed or Boeing could not design a simple manned capsule, even one that could do a glider reentry - in a weekend. The design studies have been done. We have better computers, materials, and everything you need to design and build space vehicles than when we did it the first time over forty years ago. A minishuttle/X24 lookalike should not take half a decade to build. And once built, there is no reason that we couldn't launch it on one of our disposable rockets.

Similarly, for a heavy lift vehicle, we already have everything we need. If you consider that the entire mass of the shuttle orbiter is in fact payload reaching orbit, why not just get rid of the orbiter and replace it with a cargo shell with shuttle main engines at the bottom? All the components have been tested, and again the design studies already completed. If we really wanted to, we could have a full-fledged, reliable, flexible and robust space transportation system in little more than a year. And we could easily save Hubble, as we could easily have saved Skylab back in '79 had we not foolishly thrown all our eggs into the shuttle basket.

And despite much thinking about it, I really have no idea why it isn't being done - aside from a few more or less paranoid conspiracy theories I'm not confortable with. It seems impossible to me that NASA could be so completely lacking even the dimmest vision of how we can get into space, especially as all the pieces are right out in full view.

More and more, I think the only answer is an end to civilian government sponsored spaceflight. Let the military develop what they need - they have a far better track record than NASA. And let private industry meet all the other needs. If we are moderately careful about how we do it, we could have an amazing change in space travel in a very short time. To be sure, government provides money that has given us what we have so far, but I think the stultifying effects of bureaucracy and central planning has done far more harm than good. Imagine what kind of computers we'd have now if NASA had been designing them.

BTD links to the annual Gallup international beauty contest. The judges are the American public and according to them, Great Britain, Canada and Australia are dead sexy. Japan is looking pretty cute; and if we drink enough beer, even France and Germany might verge on doable.

The double bagger contingent is headed up by incurable hag North Korea, followed closely by the Palestinian Authority, Iran and Iraq. This snap judgement conceals the fact that Iraq was once last in our affections, but a little makeup and strategic plastic surgery has made her four times cuter than last year.

The Chinese have announced that next time, they're going to launch two chinkonauts into orbit. [I know I said I wouldn't use that word anymore. I lied. It makes me giggle.] The next mission, sometime in 2005, is expected to last seven to ten days. The ChiComs also reaffirmed their plans to follow up their initial manned missions with the construction of an orbital base. Which they will undoubtedly use for nefarious and inscrutable purposes. Depending on when the launch actually happens, we may or may not have a manned spaceflight program of our own.

It appears that the situation in Haiti is quickly descending into sadly typical chaos. The United States is sending fifty Marines from the Fleet Anti-Terrorist Security Team to Port-au-Prince to help guard the US Embassy there, but there is no sign that the United States has any plans for large scale intervention. US Forces have libervated Haiti several times in the over 200 years since Haiti won its independence from France. The recent rebellion follows a pattern that is a hallowed tradition in Haitian politics. The rich Haitians get tired of the current government, and hire rebels to overthrow it. The rebels get money, loot and the opportunity for youthful hijinks. The former president and cronies move away to a comfortable retirement. The rich Haitians make some windfall profits, and one fo their number is elevated to the presidency. Then, he begins his year and a half to ten years of kleptocracy - until the cycle repeats itself.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when our propensity to invade other countries was higher than currently, periods of American occupation were the only relief that Haitans had from this regular cycle of theft and violence. Later, the Duvalier regime managed to avoid the cycle through brutal repression of potential rebels. For all the hopes many had for Aristide, he seems to be more than anything a throwback to the typical Haitian leaders of the past - and the current rebellion is the traditional response.

Anyone interested in the history of America's long history of military interventions and the generally positive results thereof, I highly recommend Max Boot's excellent history, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.

Except for the President Gore bit, this is extraordinarily cool. Just read the damn thing. Discuss in the comments.

Actually, that is sadly untrue. Weekly World News founder and editor Eddie Clontz died recently, and the world is a less entertaining place for it.

Somewhere, the BatBoy is crying his giant, preternaturally sensive eyes out, the King has bowed his pomaded head in mourning, and Ed Anger is blaming it all on the Jews, the environmentalists, and the queers who are kidnapping our pets.

Thrill to exciting Trek combat music! Participate in epic battle! Subsume your identity into that of your favorite Trek captain!

Joe Bob says check it out!

Various news services are reporting today (here's the NY Times) that a new study by cosmologists suggests the improbable: that "dark energy" really is one of the shaping forces of the Universe.

"Dark energy" has until recently been considered little more than an update of "ether" "phlogiston" or "life essence," a convenient anomaly conjured to explain why the universe's numbers don't fit our projections. Basically, it's what keeps the weak force of gravity from sucking the universe back together again. Ever since it was discovered that the universe is expanding faster and faster over time, rather than slowing under the influence of gravity, another force has been needed to explain this. Hence, dark energy. A universal fudge of sorts.

Even stranger, the strength of the dark energy seems to conform to Einstein's most famous fudge, the "cosmological constant." Later derided by him as his biggest mistake, it was Einstein's efforts to tally his theories with the work of later physicists and cosmologists. But it seems he was right.

Nutty, nutty, nutty.

This research also bolsters the arguments of string-theory advocates, whose models predict that otherwise barren stretches of space contain massive amounts of energy vibrating in eleven dimen...

Ok. Ok. Ok. I've recently been taking mostly good-natured potshots at organized religion, since I myself am not a particulary pious person. Also, God gets used as an excuse a lot. But I ask you: what is the weirder story:

Some super-being made the Universe as humanity's playground and birthright, and two thousand years ago his son got nailed to a tree for saying how good it would be to be nice to each other for a change (with apologies to Douglas Adams). Now, that super-being and his son watch us all from another dimension, and when we die our deeds will be measured against their teachings and the good apples get a gold star.

Or: The three-dimensional physical universe sprang into being randomly as a mere manifestation of a larger host of dimensions numbering eleven in total (or maybe sixteen), and through a staggeringly improbable set of coincidences, physics, chemistry and chance combined to produce a universe neither too hot nor too cold, with just the right number of unfolded dimensions, neither too big nor too small, with juuuust the right amount of energy that some of it can lump together into stars and galaxies and yappy bichon dogs. Oh, and the numbers don't add up like they should.

I guess it's all a matter of what you choose to put your faith in.

Kathy Kinsley has found a story about a store in New York that's selling replicas of the nails used to crucify Jesus in that Mel Gibson movie that I keep hearing so much about. Her comment? "People are strange."

Indeed. I wonder who it is who's doing the buying? Is it Christians? Hipsters? Fashionistas? Punk rock refugees on a day-trip up from St. Mark's Place?

When I was in high school there were two disturbing trends in t-shirts. First was the Garth Brooks concert T, usually in size XXL with a giant airbrushed Garth on the front, tucked in and bloused, and worn with sausage-skin-tight acidwash jeans.

That was bad enough. But the ones that really made my day were the "Lord's Gym" T-Shirts, worn by students who belonged to certain evangelical and millenarian Protestant sects. Ever seen those shirts? With a dramatic side-lit image of a muscular Jesus, blood streaming from his scalp where the thorns have dug in, his face drawn in a rictus of agony and supreme effort as he attempts a push-up under the weight of the giant cross on his back? What the fuck? Celebrating, even exulting in, the suffering of Jesus? I mean, that's sort of part of Christian theology, since Jesus suffered and died for everyone and all that, but... what the fuck? I thought that was a matter for solemn pondering.

Then again, I totally don't get modern "Christian" music, either.

I wonder if the same people who wear the Lord's Gym shirts are the same people that buy a fake Jesus-hanger.

As an addendum to my previous post, you just have to read this excerpt from the Reason article I referenced, on the antics of our sentinels of the sky, the air marshals:

The TSA has proven inept in the air as well as on the ground. It was determined to expand the number of air marshals quickly from a few hundred to more than 6,000. When most of the applicants failed the marksmanship test, the agency solved that problem by dropping the marksmanship test for new applicants. (The ability to shoot accurately in a plane cabin is widely considered a crucial part of a marshal’s job.) Some would-be marshals were hired even after they repeatedly shot flight attendants in mock hijack response exercises.

USA Today’s Blake Morrison noted a report that "one marshal was suspended after he left his gun in a lavatory aboard a United Airlines flight from Washington to Las Vegas in December. A passenger discovered the weapon." Another air marshal left his pistol on a Northwest flight from Detroit to Indianapolis; a cleaning crew discovered the weapon. Morrison noted: "At least 250 federal air marshals have left the top-secret program, and documents obtained by USA Today suggest officials are struggling to handle what two managers call a flood of resignations."

The Transportation Department responded to the USA Today exposé by sending Secretary Norman Mineta to an air marshal training facility, where he witnessed a training exercise in which marshals shot a would-be hijacker. Afterward Mineta commented, "I not only saw a remarkable demonstration of skill and marksmanship, but a degree of professionalism we are instilling throughout our aviation security system."

Eight days later, on August 31, 2002, Delta Flight 442 was proceeding from Atlanta to Philadelphia with 183 people on board when a disheveled passenger began rummaging in the overhead bin. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the trouble began when the man "made inappropriate comments to a female passenger a few rows behind him." Two plainclothes air marshals jumped up and tackled the guy, shoving him first to the back of the plane and then dragging him to the first class area.

Then the trip got interesting. One of the marshals returned to the front of the coach section, drew his Glock semiautomatic pistol, and started screaming and pointing his gun at passengers. Philadelphia Judge James Lineberger, a passenger on the flight, later told the Associated Press, "I assumed at that moment that there was going to be some sort of gun battle....There were individuals looking to see what they were pointing at, and [the air marshals] were yelling, ‘Get down, get out -- get your head out of the aisle.’" In a formal complaint to the TSA, Lineberger declared that "there was no apparent reason for holding all the passengers of the plane at gunpoint, and no explanation was given."

Lineberger was sitting diagonally across from the initial target of the marshals, yet did not notice any problem on the flight until the marshals went ballistic. Susan Johnson, a social worker from Mobile, Alabama, was also unaware of any disturbance until the air marshals seized the man. "It never made sense," she told the Inquirer. "This guy was not any physical threat that we could see. Maybe he said some things to them that made them concerned. He just appeared to us unstable, emotionally." According to Becky Johnson, a reporter who wrote a column about the episode for her Waynesville, North Carolina, newspaper, "They never, ever said who they were, that they were air marshals or whoever."

After the flight landed, the marshals nailed another terrorist suspect: a physician and retired U.S. Army major named Robert Rajcoomar. He was handcuffed and taken into custody because, as TSA spokesman David Steigman later explained it, he "had been observing too closely."

First they came for the caffeine-freaks. Then they came for the rubberneckers. How soon til they come for you?

Now the Transportation Safety Administration is fining airline passengers for getting lippy.

What kind of bureaucratic hellhole are we building ourselves? I already don't fly anywhere because of the cost and aggravation involved. And now we have to be unfailing polite to government workers who just broke our suitcase zipper as well?

Reason has a big story up this month about the TSA's repeated embarassments and failures. It's a terrible situation. Did you know that the name "Osama bin Laden" doesn't appear on the much-vaunted and secretive Passenger Watch List? Did you know that the names of some Catholic nuns do? Did you know that Air Marshals tend to be guys who couldn't cut it at the police academy? Did you know that the motto above the entrance to the TSA's air marshal training facility reads "Dominate. Intimidate. Control"?

Yeesh. Come home, Amtrak. All is forgiven.

That's what space.com is reporting, cautiously.

Opportunity rover sent back new images from Mars showing that small spheres previously found on the surface also exist below, in a trench the rover dug. Hints of salty water were also found in the trench, but much more analysis is needed to learn the true composition.

Meanwhile Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit, is about to dig a trench of its own in order to investigate soil that sticks to its wheels, suggesting the fine-grained material might be moist.
In a press conference today, officials said the soil at both locations could contain small amounts of water mixed with salt in a brine that can exist in liquid form at very low temperatures.

The scientists stressed that only miniscule amounts of water would be needed to create the brine.

Just like a penguin in bondage, boing! (Oh yeah, oh yeah!)
Over there on the wet side of the bed.

Kathy Kinsley points us to this amazing story from Europe: "Police free German bondage 'penguin.'" Fan-tastick.

A German bondage fetishist got so chained up he had to call police to remove his cuffs after he was reduced to waddling around helplessly like a "penguin".
Officers sent to his rescue in the Western city of Aachen told him he should use a specialised establishment rather than practice at home. . . .
On entering, they were confronted by the sight of a heavily-chained man shuffling towards them on his knees with his head bowed, dressed only in shiny black leather and white socks.

And while I'm at it, let me take the time to recommend "Roxy and Elsewhere" by Frank Zappa-- one of my top five favorite Zappa records (out of a total of close to 80), and the record on which the magesterial and stunning "Penguin in Bondage" appears.

Randy Barnett of the Volokh Conspiracy is writing about my personal favorite Amendment, the 9th (tied with the 10th). There seems to be a debate swirling among webloggers about its meaning and applicability to issues like hummasexashul marriage.

To refresh you, the Ninth reads:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Donald Sensing has an interesting solution to the "marriage problem" that just might make everybody happy. Except for the radicals on both sides, of course.

It's just about 2:30 in the morning and I've just wrapped up another 16 hour work day. That's typical in the world of small companies, these days. Cash is hard to come by; I can tell you that my personal productivity factor is way up (rising productivity means GDP gains without additional employment).

Naturally I need to be pissed about politics before I go to sleep, so here's the thought of the night:

Lower tax rates are given to capital gains income because (supposedly) the money saved is re-invested into the economy, creating more jobs and more wealth. When we lower capital tax rates, we raise taxes elsewhere to compensate; these higher taxes are applied to the working class, which is pretty much everyone making under $250,000 or so.

We have seen a dramatic rise in direct investment; the GOP trumpet continuously about the ever-growing number of shareholders.

So if everyday folks are getting into the investment game, which should we be raising their taxes and handing that money to the very richest amongst us? If Joe Everyman is investing, like he apparently is, I really don't see why we don't just let him keep a little more of his money. He's going to invest it anyways, just like Thaddeus Q. Gatesfeller the IIIrd. And I'll tell you another thing: Joe Everyman isn't going to cheat on his taxes, or spend huge sums on legal fees just trying to avoid paying taxes.

Seems to me that the tax cuts for the rich come at additional cost to everyone else. And they aren't designed to increase investment; that would have happened anyway, with direct investing and 401k plans. Because he has to pay higher taxes to subsidize the truly wealthy, our Joe just doesn't have much of a chance of ever developing much wealth on his own. After all, his real income has only risen by 4% in constant dollars since 1972. Thaddeus has seen his wealth rise in that time frame by over 500%. Yes, that's five hundred percent. Trickle-down is working for someone...

So why are we screwing over the finances of this country and most people who live in it?

Several interesting space tidbits:

• MSNBC is reporting that the shuttle will be grounded until at least 2005. This is both bad news and a potential opportunity. First, it means that space station personnel will need to use the Russian Soyuz to get to and from the station; and there will be no manned missions to do things like save the Hubble, or for anything else. The opportunity, which will almost certainly be passed up, is for NASA to move past the shuttle entirely, and begin a crash program to develop an efficient means of manned space flight, along several tracks:

  One, a stop gap, cheap but reliable capsule to be launched atop a disposable launcher like the Atlas - along the lines of OSP ideas. Two, restart the DCX program with exactly the same management philosophy as the original program. Build early, build often is the surest way to success. This could result in a real SSTO in a few years. And three, long range research into propulsion materials, and other technologies for new launchers in the future. Shuttle technology should be immediately converted to unmanned cargo uses, along the lines of the shuttle-c or other ideas outlined here. In my dreams.

• Also on MSNBC, this report that there's lots of debris floating around the ISS. And a good chunk of that debris might be parts of the space station. Who'd they get to build that thing anyway, Ryan homes?
• And finally, space.com informs us that the Russians are considering building a Soyuz 2.0. The new version would have twice the passenger capacity of the current, decades old design; and the crew section would be reusable. The Russian rocket company Energiya would need to design a new launcher, as the current Soyuz rocket would be insufficient to put the twice as heavy capsule into orbit. But hey, at least somebody's thinking ahead.

InstaPundit pre-interprets Kerry's 1971 testimony on the war; he listens to it so we don't have to!

Of course, maybe it's a good idea to just read the damn thing yourself, and form your own opinions. Note that Hewitt and Reynolds don't pull out any quotes or disagree with what Kerry said; they're crying little weasels because they don't like how he said it.

If someone can tell me who has more of a right to speak his mind about a conflict and the politics that drove it than a recently returned, wounded soldier, please speak up. If the GOP wants to make an issue out of this, they can contrast this heartfelt testimony with Bush's activities at that time: Vigorously not even bothering to show up for a flight physical, which disqualified him from flying, made him ineligible for deployment, and conveniently allowed him to sit out service.

I don't expect to hear anything from Bush about Viet Nam. He'll let the party hacks do the talking.

So this soldier packed up and moved his family to Canada because he was going to be sent in harm's way. Again. He had already completed a tour in Afghanistan, and was about to be sent to Iraq. His conscience would not allow him be a tool of American oppression (or something), so he ran to Canada. His story is that he enlisted for the college money and to "make a difference", and not so much for the fighting and the icky bits.

Here's the problem: he was in the 82nd. He went to jump school. The article doesn't specify whether or not he was an infantryman, but regardless you don't put yourself through the rigorous training and land a posting in a prestigious airborne unit unless you want to be there. If you are unfamiliar with the 82nd's history of close combat, relentless aggression, and cultivation of the warrior spirit, you're stupid. If you just need a hug, you're in the wrong place.

Furthermore, he decided he was a conscientious objector. That claim would carry alot more weight if he had claimed he was a CO when the recruiter first asked him, early on in the process. Or later, when he signed a document that again asked him whether he was a CO (among other stuff, like if you've ever tried to overthrow the governemnt, that sort of thing). So he wasn't then I guess.

The article quoted him at length discussing how he was unwilling to risk his life for a mission he did not believe in (in Iraq, that is). Again, this kid is a little dense, and missing the fundamentals: it's not up to soldiers to decide which missions they will accept or which they will not. It's the soldier's job to execute them. Yes, there is an ethical dimension, in that all soldiers are sworn to obey the lawful orders of the officers posted over them. If your commander orders you to execute a prisoner, you would not have to obey and indeed would be criminally liable if you did. Getting an order to deploy to Iraq is a lawful order, and Congressional authorization for the conflict is what counts, not the goddamn UN, not Mother Theresa, not Greenpeace, and damn sure not you. There's no conscientiously objecting your way around that.

Finally, if the kid really "wanted to make a difference", as he claims, why not the Peace Corps or Teach for America or Commies for Christ or some such? No, nothing says "I'm here to help" like parachutes and body armor.

Oh, and double-finally: Canada should extradite him, since desertion is a crime there as well as here. He's not so much cowardly, as just dumb.

With any luck I'll have the time to write a long post on the subject. When it comes to running a civil society, much of it boils down to how we handle taxes. We'd all pretty much agree that some level of taxation is necessary...and we'd all agree that paying less is a good thing, and having government do less is a good thing.

I've been studying taxation and incomes. There are some pretty astonishing facts that you rapidly become aware of:

- three quarters of American families pay more in social security taxes than they do in income tax
- the total tax paid must be taken into account (income, medicaid/medicare, social security), and that's federal stuff
- inflation-adjusted income since 1970 has risen only 4% for the bottom 99%
- inflation-adjusted income since 1970 for the bottom 80% of earners has actually fallen slightly
- inflation-adjusted income since 1970 for the top 0.01% of earners has risen by over 400%
- tax burdens as a percentage of income are roughly equal, at all income levels; the rich do NOT pay more taxes as a percentage of income
- tax cuts for the rich are financed with social security revenues, which are exclusively collected from the poor and middle class
- repeals of inheritance tax were pitched as "save the farm"; there has not been one documented instance in the last 20 years of a farm being lost due to the inheritance tax.
- AMT is going to be a huge problem in a few years, because its formulas are not adjusted for inflation. AMT works by denying deductions; you cannot take a deduction for having a child, for example. The basic AMT deductions haven't increased; as such dramatically more people are subject to it. Bush could have used tax cuts to free middle class families from AMT, but he didn't...

Until you're in the top 1% of earners in the country, you haven't seen any real income increase in 1970 dollars.

How do the rising deficit, deficits as a percentage of GDP, and revenue projections all factor into this? Very badly, of course.

But not if you're at the very top...everything is fabulous. You've gotten the best tax legislation money can buy...

Dennis Powell has an interesting idea. Sell or give the Hubble Space telescope to a private foundation, and let them raise the money for a rescue mission. He argues that it would remove pressure from NASA at this awkward stage, and be a useful test case for more general space privatization. And hey, it might save Hubble. And that would be a good thing.

I see on Fark that Disney has bought the Muppets. Dammit!

I know and understand perfectly that the Muppet franchise just hasn't been the same since Jim died, but this is a final insult I'd rather not see. Disney is well known for rapaciously exploiting its trademarks, sometimes illegally (see Pooh, Winnie The), and although I doubt the Muppets can sink any lower than doing a Pizza Hut commercial with that woodenheaded twit with boobs they call Jessica Simpson I'm sure I will continue to be surprised by the depths Disney can achieve.

What would Statler and Waldorf say?

I have taken the liberty of adding John and Belle have a blog to the blogroll at right.

As an introduction, here is an excellent post on This whole conservatives in academia thing.

[wik] Speaking of conservatives: Via Volokh, I see that Kieran of Crooked Timber has discovered that David Horowitz has drifted deep, deep into moonbat territory never to return. Jeez. Back away slowly.

Bruce Schneier is a very well-respect cryptographer and writer on security policy in general. He's got a short essay here on security trade-offs which is well worth reading. I've read his book on the subject as well.

The point is, we can give new powers to our federal agencies with ease...but what are we really getting in return? We need to look very closely at freedoms that are lost, and at the potential for abuse that we introduce into the system.

For each of these powers, we need to look at the checks and balances. If someone goes "bad", what kind of abuse can this new power generate? If history teaches us anything, it's that the answer cannot be that we simply must trust those in positions of authority. The whole structure of government in this country is designed to eliminate single points of failure.

The first season of Chapelle's Show will be available on DVD 24 Feb 04. Run, don't walk. Amazon has it for cheap if you pre-order. Which means to order before you order I guess.

"Mad Real World" had me in tears, as did the crackhead doing the D.A.R.E appearance at the elementary school.

Buckethead noted this weekend that Canadians were outraged by the antics of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog during Conan O'Brien's recent Canada trip.

Oh, please. I love Canada and Canadians. I really do. I'd fit in there. But the nation has a little bit of an inferiority thing. Any time a Canadian of any stature comes up in conversation, whether it's Mike Meyers, Neil Young, or Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray, any Canadian present in the conversation is required by law to say, "Ya know, they're Canadian."

Yes, we know. And they're probably funnier and play better guitar than Americans, too. And yes, we know about Smarties and how great fries are with gravy and cheese, and of course the Maple Leaves, the Rough Riders, and the Rough Riders are the greatest sports teams in the history of sport.

But please, Canada, grow a pair. Check out what Triumph said to Quebecois last week that caused all the fureur:

"So you're French and Canadian, yes? You're obnoxious and dull."

"I can tell you're French, you know. You have that proud expression, that superior look, and I can smell your crotch from here."

Now that's comedy. I have to say, my reaction is summed up best by Toronto Star columnist Vinay Menon: "I can't believe this country was successfully baited by a damn hand puppet."

Me neither.

The Telegraph says this is the woman who will derail the Kerry candicacy: 

Bill Clinton spoke in Qatar recently; I think you'll find the speech well worth reading. What he says resonates with me.

No, really.

Triumph the Insult Dog was seen in Quebec replaing street signs with ones that read, "Quebecqueer Street" and "Rue des Pussies."

Alexa McDonough, a legislator for the left-leaning New Democrats, described the program as "racist filth" and "utterly vile" and demanded the government seek the return of the C$1 million subsidy.

"There may be those who would say, 'Isn't this interfering with freedom of expression?' It's not interfering to say we will not publicly fund this kind of vile, vicious hatemongering," McDonough told reporters.

Since I'm always late with this, I'm going to do it ahead of time. Even though I don't have a link yet. I'm guessing, that on Sunday, if you click this, it will take you to the Sunday Comics over at BTD. If not, just click here, and hunt for it. It'll be good for you.

Jonah Goldberg links to this treasure trove of classic 80s games, transmogrified to be playable on the interweb.

We all know how fun web translators can be.

Lately I've been copying quotes from movies, translating them into other languages via Lycos, then translating THAT back into engrish. I dunno, it just doesn't get old to me. It hasn't yet today anyway.

Consider this favorite exchange from "Pulp Fiction", rendered into french and then back:

Vincent: I have a threshold, Jules, I have a threshold for the abuse which I will take and in this moment I am a racecar, man, and obtained you to me in the red. I am stating right, I am STATING right which it is to kiss dangerous to have a racecar in the red foutu, which is all. I could blow.

Jules: Ah, you ready to blow? Well I am a motherfucker depose, motherfucker. Each time my brain of contact of fingers I am Superfly TNT, I am the guns of Navarone. IN FACT, that kisses it am me making in the back? You motherfucker should be it on the detail of brain. Us foutue commutation, I wash the windows and you gathering to the top of this cranium.

Apparently, an indefatigable British geneologist and historian, Dr Michael Jones, has determined that the rightful king of England is some guy named Mike who lives in New South Wales and works on a sheep station. It seems that the father of King Edward IV was not, in fact, Richard the Duke of York. Rather, his mother Lady Cicely Neville was making nasty with a commoner French archer named Blaybourne while Richard was off fighting his cuckolder's countrymen. And as a result, Edward's younger brother Clarence and his offspring should by right be the royal line. It might be a good thing to get a Plantagenet back on the throne, as I think the Hanoverian line has gotten a little, dare I say, inbred and weak.

Unfortunately, King Michael Abney-Hastings has no desire to leave Oz and take up his duties as King of England, Defender of the Faith, etc.

"When they told me I was surprised all right. But I don't think it will worry us too much. Titles don't mean much out here and I have no intention of leaving Jerilderie.

"Why would you want to be king anyway? They can't do anything without someone on their back. This thing will all blow over in a couple of weeks and life will go back to normal."

He does have two sons, though...

[wik] Coincidently, I almost bought this the other day: The Perfect Prince: The Mystery of Perkin Warbeck and His Quest for the Throne of England. This incident happened a little after the incident of bastardry described above, and involved a young man called Perkin Warbeck claimed to be one of the sons of Edward IV, consigned as boys to the Tower of London and supposedly murdered by order of their uncle, Richard III. Invading England with support from both commoners and princes, Warbeck challenged the legitimacy of the first Tudor king, Henry VII.

I'm adding three new blogs to the blogroll. Every single one of these people is depressingly well-informed, ego-crushingly intelligent, and have mad writing skillz. The links below each lead to a particularly fine, recent vintage post.

• Porphyrogenitus, on liberals,
• Wretchard of the Belmont Club on proliferation, and
• Dan Darling's Regnum Crucis on immigration.

Also, I've added another category, for useful resources. The first two entries are StrategyPage and GlobalSecurity.org, both invaluable sources for information on war, weapons, intelligence and strategy. Lots of good reading to keep you busy.