The Opinionated Bastard

So I'm a hard core Mac guy.

Apple's announcement that they're switching to Intel can only mean one thing: IBM totally screwed the pooch, forcing them to Intel. For all the claim that Apple is only 3% of their PowerPC business, IBM is talking through their hat: if Apple is only 3%, how come they were unable to make enough chips for them?

However, here's a prediction you won't see anywhere else:

I expect the high-end machines of 2006 and 2007 will be Pentiums, but dual-core, dual-processor machines. I suspect that was why Apple had to switch to Intel is because IBM had no plan to make dual-core versions of the PowerPC. I also predict a rocky year for Apple's computer sales.

Apple will still be able to compete against Windows, because Longhorn is going to suck on multiple-core machines. By that time Leopard is going to rock on “four-processor” machines because Apple will be able to build on all the improvements already in Tiger. Microsoft on the other hand, will still be patching an outdated, outmoded operating system. Technologies like CoreImage and CoreAudio are going to continue to leverage all that latent power in the video card.

Is it acceptable for me to admit that if I walk into a Bar-B-Que Joint and the people behind the counter are black I start drooling?

Ditto with Fry Bread made by grey-haired Navajo ladies...

Mmmmm... Sushi made by Japanese people...

A Jewish Deli...

An Arab Shish-Ke-Bab joint...

Now mind you, I don't think it has anything to do with genes, I think it has to do with culture. If you come from a culture that has a distinctive food, you're going to be one up on someone from some other culture when you make that food. Even KFC, as homogenized as it is, tastes better in the south.

When will be be able to celebrate our differences instead of downplaying them?

Though come to think of it, I think Jewish delis are better not so much because of some delicatessen culture in Judaism, but because of the kosher rules. Also the best cheeseburgers in Santa Clara used to be found in this Teriyaki joint run by Japanese.

But as a general rule, black people know good Bar-B-Que.

I know, I know, its supposed to be the reverse.

But they sent me the necessary paperwork to me for any sort of health care directive thing, with all their decisions spelled out.

I know it was hard for them, because it seems less remote then it does to me. But they did it.

I know, I know, its supposed to be the reverse.

But they sent me the necessary paperwork to me for any sort of health care directive thing, with all their decisions spelled out.

I know it was hard for them, because it seems less remote then it does to me. But they did it.

So I said the other day:

The Arab world proves that no matter how poor and downtrodden you are, some guy in a turban can make it worse.

My wife claimed that was terribly racist. I countered back that I heard Arab guys use that all the time to refer to their religious leaders. She said it was ok for them to say that, but not for me to say that. It was ok to say:

The Arab world proves that no matter how poor and downtrodden you are, some guy in a funny hat can make it worse.

Personally, I don't think it has the same punch.

But the article on Mahmood was still pretty funny, even if he did refer to one of their religious leader as “a turbanned guy”.

From Bookslut today:

Wal-Mart's PR flack for Arizona and Southern California has resigned after his office approved an ad comparing Arizona zoning proponents to book-burning Nazis. The store also evidently fired the firm that created the ad. Original Article

This is why I hate the media.  I live in the town in question, saw the ad, and it compared the zoning to book-burners, yes, but not specifically Nazis. 

It turned out that the picture in question was taking from a Nazi book-burning, but the poor shlub who used the picture just Googled for a picture of book-burning. The picture itself didn't have any obvious Nazi connotations, most people who saw it assumed it was a Southern book-burning.   The Pro-Proposition-100 forces in town recognized the photo, and tried to create this backlash against the anti-prop-100 people, but it was all a tempest in a teapot. 

But it illustrates for me how stuff gets blown out of proportion in the media. Our local paper, which ran the ad in question, loved calling it the “Nazi ad”, when it would have been easy to print the ad alongside the article so people could judge for themselves. 

But then it wouldn't have been a story.

But the way I read it is that some guy, on a deadline on Friday, did a Google search for an image, found one, and slapped it into the layout.

So some working joe loses his job because our local bourgeois revolutionaries don't like Walmart?

And by the way, the Proposition lost, so I guess the ad worked.

One of the sites I recommended awhile back was BAGnewsnotes, which I found interesting in his analysis of news photos.

Someone commented back that he was a flaming liberal, which is somewhat true, I just had been ignoring that, because his photo analysis was interesting.

But today he writes:

If anything, this discussion we've been having about the Mahmudiya photo on the “Orange” post points up to me just how fundamentally out of touch we are with the situation in Iraq, and just how cumbersome it is for the journalists there -- as talented as they are -- to deliver a bigger picture. 

He's talking about a discussion on his site here between a photojournalist in Iraq and bagnews's readers. While that discussion is interesting, what I find more interesting is that even someone who is fervently against the war is starting to complain about the press coverage...

So I guess Howard Dean came through town and I missed it.

Here's a picture of him having anal sex with Dean Bonzani. (not really, Dean #2 is just a bit close, personally, and has a maniacal grin)

Anyways, I think Howard Dean is the wrong choice for DNC chairman, as most Republicans I know put it when they heard Dean was the new chairman: “Well, I guess we'll win 2008 too”. The Democratic party did a great job of firing up their “base” in 2004, but their “base” keeps getting smaller...

So I nominate Steve Jobs. He's as much of an asshole as Howard Dean, but he might do something interesting with the Democratic Party. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple he said:

Shut up about Microsoft, already. What is Apple doing that’s great?

That’s how he turned Apple around, by making sure Apple was doing cool stuff.

So Howard, shut up about the Republicans, what are the Democrats doing that’s great? If the Democrats want to lead, they have to fucking lead, not whine about how mean the Republicans are. For the slow:

Shut up about Bush, what are the Democrats doing that's great?

So I took this political test, which not surprisingly labeled me “Libertarian”, given that I'm socially-liberal, economically-conservative. Though only mildly so, as I believe that the world is a little more complex then their questions imply.

Big surprise there...that's with a small-L in my case, I can't stand the Libertarian party.

Hat tip to cleverzenmonkey. I've taken these tests before, but this one is pretty well done.

I'd go around saying I was a moderate again...but I've talked to enough people on the left to know that if they're the left, I'm way over on the right...you know, the people who think NPR is too conservative...previous entry on this topic

Newly inspired by the various liberals who have been commenting on my blog lately, and my recent labeling as a “moderate” by that political test, I've decided to debunk some Iraq Myths by both the right and the left. For those of you who've been reading blogs for awhile, you might find my take on the history leading up to the Iraq war interesting.

If you're new to blogs, this will cover many of the standard issues that have been discussed to death in the blogosphere. This is actually a blatant attempt by me to add a little more nuance to the comments section: I'm getting sick of arguing with all the people who have been fed distortions by the mainstream media about the Iraq war. I'm hoping that with some more context, perhaps we can all come to a more reasonable level of discussion.

It's long, so you'll have to follow the link below.

Ok, so after writing my post debunking some of the cherished myths about Iraq of both the right and the left, I found out about a new moonbat theory floating around. This theory is that the US invasion of Iraq was in order to prop up the dollar, because in November 2000, Saddam insisted he was going to only sell his oil in Euros.

The theory goes something like this: US dollars function as an interchange currency for the world. In addition, there is a large amount of US currency floating around called Eurodollars or “Petrodollars”. If the world suddenly shifted to Euros, no one would want dollars anymore and this would suddenly be a terrible catastrophe for the US both economically and politically because only the US has the ability to “print” dollars. Therefore, we needed to invade Iraq.

Since I work in the financial industry, I suppose I should comment on this. Its just that this is just so wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to begin.

First off, a strong dollar is NOT good for the US economically. It makes imports cheap and our exports expensive. After World War II, the US agreed to go on the gold standard as part of the Bretton Woods agreement specifically in order to subsidize the rebuilding of Europe. That single agreement provided more aid to Europe then all other acts of Congress combined. So the idea that somehow a strong dollar is “good” for the US economically is silly. This argument was best refuted by Adam Smith in 1776, so I refer people who stubbornly want to cling to this belief to The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith was a giant, most lefties associate him too much with laissez-faire capitalism to realize that he was one of the first liberals: It was Adam Smith who said 'everyone can be rich' and that the wealth of nations was not tied up in gold, but in the labour of its people. So if you're one of those people whose proud to call themselves a moonbat, go read Adam Smith.

Now its not all doom and gloom for the US. The strong dollar does make it easier for us to borrow money (things are rarely just bad or good in economics, they just cost more). So to some extent, a strong dollar supports the overly large Federal government we've all grown accustomed to. If the dollar weakened quite a bit, perhaps all those social programs the lefties like so much would face the chopping block.

Pretty much though the economic argument is just bunk and more bunk. Even the part about our ability to borrow versus our savings rate and such is nonsense. There was a good debunking of the whole deficit thing in Foreign Affairs a couple of months back, I refer you to that for the details. One tidbit though:

Quote: Capital gains on equities, 401(k) plans, and home values are excluded from measurements of personal saving; when they are added, total U.S. domestic saving is around 20 percent of GDP--about the same rate as in other developed economies.

So again, the moonbats have twisted the facts to suit their theories, or they didn't understand what the statistics they're citing were measuring.

The other problem with the argument is that the dollar somehow became the exchange currency because OPEC chose it as such. The reality is that OPEC chose it because it was already the exchange currency. Though two of the letters are correct, its not OPEC that makes the dollar “stable” is the SEC, that is our well-regulated financial markets are what make the dollar stable.

The political power argument is based on several mistaken assumptions. What bankers call “Eurodollars” have very little to do with oil. Interest rates are more powerful then oil.

What exactly are Eurodollars? Well, because the dollar functions as an “exchange” currency many banks in Europe started keeping some percentage of their deposits in dollars, and paying interest in dollars. This started in 1966 with a London bank. After awhile they noticed a curious thing: Bank loans made in dollars weren't regulated by their home countries, only loans made in their native currency. Economists started calling this money “Eurodollars” because neither the US or any other government's central bank really had any control over that money.

Which brings me to the second misconception that only the US government has the ability to “print” dollars. That's just not true. In reality, most dollars in the United States are actually electrons these days. One of the methods that the Federal Reserve has to control the US economy is by controlling the M1 money supply, which is really a multiplier. Banks are allowed to lend out more money then they actually have in assets, and the Federal Reserve controls the ratio of lent out money to actual money.

In essence, its not the government that prints money, its the banks that print money (or rather electrons), the government just gets to control how fast they can run them. By changing that number, the government changes the amount of money in the US Economy. They can also affect the amount of money by adjusting the interest rate, which is the number you always see on the news. Here's a brief intro.

But the Federal Reserve only controls the US Economy, they don't control Eurodollars, but those banks aren't going to move to the Euro. The “Eurodollar” is attractive to those countries precisely because it is unregulated. If it was held in euros, it would become regulated, and the banks could no longer play those shenanigans. The only thing that prevents the European banks from “overprinting” US dollars is pretty much the threat of bankruptcy, and the fact that if they abuse the “Eurodollar loophole” too much, the various governments of the world will quickly close it.

So again, if you understand what “Eurodollars” really are, you can see how ridiculous this argument is.

One last thing to clean up. The articles talking about the Euro versus the dollar love to quote the exchange rate of the moment, somehow showing Saddam to be this big genius. That's nonsense. Currency traders are the Evil Knivels of the investment world. Here's a chart to look at. Here's another one showing the Euro vs. the Dollar and versus the stock market over the last two years. If you cherry pick the right point on that graph, you can make Saddam look like an idiot too...

Update: The Europeans are wondering if the Euro will even survive

The American Expatriate has a cool post debunking some anti US rhetoric he sees in the London newspapers.

I found the fact that Americans give $34 billion in foreign aid privately to be pretty interesting. That means that about 2/3rds of all our foreign aid doesn't show up on official statistics.

So not only are we the largest donor in terms of raw dollar amount, but if you look at it as a percentage of GNP, we go from next to last to about the top third of the pack.

So if you live in France, Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, the UK, Finland, Germany, Canada, Spain, Australia, Austria, Greece, New Zealand, Japan or Italy, you can't complain that the “US is stingy”. Though private giving doesn't show up on their official statistics either, its a well known quirk of Americans that we don't trust the government with foreign aid dollars.

Of course, this whole aid issue is very complex, some people argue that aid money hurts more then it helps.

I mostly view the TSA (Transportation Safety Authority) as a placebo, designed to reassure air travelers that its safe to fly. So people who criticize how they're doing security are missing the point: its supposed to be obnoxious.

In other words, TSA is a huge-ass subsidy to the airlines. Given that the 9/11 hijackers only got on with box cutters, the whole airline security thing seems ludicrous to me.

Here's my solution: Allow passengers to go armed, if they've been given the equivalent of the screening we do for Top Secret clearance.

I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But think about if from the hijackers point of view. Most of the rest of the world thinks of Americans as crazy cowboys anyways, and now, if you hijack a plane, there might be an American on the plan who was crazy enough to volunteer to do all that screening just so he can carry a gun on a plane. (Or at least be able to breeze through airport security.)

Even if there were only 100 of these nuts over the whole country, you'd never know as a terrorist if the plane you were on might have one.

And if it let you breeze through security, I bet you could get 10,000 Americans to sign up for this. Meanwhile, we could step all the airport screening way down, because basically, there would be 10,000 unpaid air marshalls flying around. That would save billions a year...

Just an idea. Wacky, I know. But I'm from Arizona, a state that has a town called “Tombstone”.

Saw a halfway decent lefty bumper sticker:

When are we going to stop killing people that kill people in order to teach them not to kill people?

While I disagree with where they're going (we generally kill people that kill people in order to make them stop killing people), at least that particular lefty realizes that the people we've been killing lately aren't innocent flowers in the meadow...

From one commenter:

if the holcaust happend and you go by the american version of WW2 the nazi-sozis were very evil.

but as a huge doubter of this history i can not see anything wrong with them. history is filled with lies and WW2 is so complex. i can not fathom that my people “the germans” did this great evil to the jews. it personally can not see evough evidance to deny that the holocaust did not happen or prove to my self that it did happen. there is little proof eather way. i can see both sides of the coin and am left blind to it. i just refuse to believe it.

i have see jews in action socially, i have heard accounts by people i trust and they are not a nice people and yes often they do harbor anomosity to non-jews, not that i believe the protocals of the elders of zion but many do dispise us in many ways. but hate is something left for those i used to love.

dislike? well all the ones i have met i could not say were out to get me but if they were in total control of a country i could see wanting rid of them. the germans were starving and screwed after WW one, so they blaimed the jews cause they did supposedly had a major control of germany. i can see that they were not simply a scapegoat, sorry but the history says some pretty nasty things about german life and well it seems that that way.

From another:

I saw an excellent show on Reagan one time, and I distinctly recall that Ron was gungho to get in the office and call the shots. He was surprised to find that he didn't get to do that. He was informed in no uncertain terms that this wasn't his function. Buzzkill, for sure. So he wrote lots of speeches instead. Look it up, and you'll see how it went for the Gipper.

It's no different for George. The genuine power is behind him somewhere, and will function with or without him. That is the nature of such things.

I'm sorry, I can't really see any difference between these two. They're both friggin' nuts. Its just that the Holocaust denier, he's politically incorrect these days, while the “corporations are controlling the President behind the scenes” guy is politically correct.

Now that you lefties are all indignant at being compared to a Holocaust denier, remember that the Germans at the time were politically correct too. Politically Correct is not the same thing as actually being correct. Many of them really did believe that the Jews and Communists were secretly running their country. That was politically correct at the time too, it just happened to be wrong.

So while I grant any lefty that the “Business of American is Business”, so that corporations often can get away literally with murder, its not that simple. There are a lot of interests in this country besides business, and most of the economy is still small businesses. So while I often look at things the government does and think “jeez louise” to myself, I'm just as likely to think that about left-wing stuff as right-wing stuff.

So take off the tin-foil hats guys. SNAFU is the real state of the world, and I've worked for enough corporations to know that if they were really running the world, things wouldn't be any better or worse, just different...

But I just don't believe it, because there would be very little profit in running the world. Influencing yes, running no.

Mark Steyn nails the Gitmo issue:

 Where the anti-Gitmo crowd went wrong was in expanding its objections from the legal status of the prisoners to the treatment they're receiving.

Yeah, Gitmo worries me, but the protesters against it are trying too hard. If this blog stands against anything, its against Rhetorical Inflation. Anyways, read the whole thing if you want a laugh. Gitmo is a serious issue, but I wish sometimes the media would cover the serious objectors, not the nut jobs.

In other words, I realize that there are some very serious people who object to Gitmo on very serious grounds, but the people who are calling it a Gulag are over the top. The media covers the nutjobs of course, because they're saying more extreme things.

It's the “thin edge of the wedge”, and the “pointless thumbing of the nose at decency for little useful intelligence” arguments that sway me about Gitmo. On the other hand, putting some of these guys in a very deep hole is probably a good idea...if they were given a fair trial first.

Speaking of deep holes, I hope that guy who molested 36,000 kids gets put in one as well. Along with the judges on the 9th Circus who helped release him.

Un-spun reporting from Iraq. Always interesting, always real.

Phebe Marr reviews the Larry Diamond and David Phillips books and concludes:

The willingness of Diamond and Phillips to have the United States assume the burden of nation building indicates that even these keen observers have not yet learned the main lesson of the Iraq experience. Rebuilding a foreign nation is an extremely difficult and costly endeavor, likely to generate severe -- and often lethal -- reactions. Formulating a policy for the reconstruction of Iraq was never about choosing a good option over a bad one, but about selecting the least offensive of many unpalatable alternatives. Trying to mend a state as broken-and as culturally different from the United States -- as Iraq was doomed to be a tricky endeavor for Washington.

Given such daunting difficulties, the best advice to draw from these books may be this: if you cannot garner adequate resources -- and public opinion at home and abroad -- to rebuild a nation, do not start. Rather than ponder the dos and don'ts of nation building, as Diamond and Phillips do, perhaps it would be wiser to weigh the whys and why nots of engaging in it in the first place. If the U.S. experience in Iraq holds any lesson for the future, it may be that Washington should exercise extreme caution before launching another such operation. In the meantime, it should look harder for ways to shore up or bring change to failing states before they warrant intervention at all.

Which I find to be a perfectly reasonable conclusion. I don't think the Bush administration did a perfect job in Iraq, but that's not entirely their fault. They did plan, but many of the things they planned for never happened. So while they deserve some criticism, there's a lot of things they planned well. As occupying a foreign country and turning it into a democracy goes, they're not doing too bad.

You can follow these links to get the two books:

Squandered Victory : The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq

Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco

Meanwhile, here is an article by the President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The reason I'm always pushing Foreign Affairs is because I find it the best antidote for both wingnuttery and moonbattery. Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations, in other words, its published by the people who actually do secretly control the world. There's none of this handwringing about whether the US should control the world or not in Foreign Affairs, instead its all about how the US should control the world.

Which is why I find it such a good antidote. You only have to read about 3 issues to realize that the world is the way it is because even the people in charge aren't sure what to do. Any assumption that there is some vast conspiracy controlling the world assumes that someone somewhere knows exactly what needs to be done. After reading a couple of issues, you'll come to find out that no one knows what should be done. Richard Haass' article is very much in that vein, it clearly lays out our alternatives for dealing with Iran and North Korea.

So I wrote this piece Goose-Stepping Hippies which was about hypocrisy and how the left can be as dangerous to freedom as the right.

I got a lot of feedback on it, especially the part where I pointed out that the Nazis had “Socialist” in their name.

Now Volokh has piece about Mussolini's famous quote:

Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

Except, according to Volokh:

The problem is that a 'corporate' in Italian of the period is not a business organization. A corporate is a production planning board made up of workers, owners, and others involved in production advocated by the syndicalist school of socialism. Their beloved quote is actually Mussolini (or maybe Mussolini's ghost writer) making a connection between fascism and socialism . . .

So there you go, fascism is what happens when socialism goes bad. (Just kidding)

Interview with a Gitmo Interrogator Pretty interesting. Confirms some things, denys others.

Hat Tip: Matt Margolis

Talking with a frequent commenter over email about President Bush, I ended up writing this long piece I've decided to share.

It's long, so I moved it to its own page.

First off, we will win because there is nothing the insurgents can do to the Iraqi people that is worse then what Saddam has done.

Second, we will win because the insurgents are a small fraction of the Iraqis and in order to win, they must defeat the other 90% of Iraqis. That isn't going to happen. The insurgents gets smaller and weaker every day.

Third, we will win because every day, our American Soldiers prove to the Iraqis that Americans aren't the boogeyman they've been led to believe. Our young men and women in Iraq are the most convincing ambassadors we have.

Fourth, every cell phone, ever satellite dish is an agent in the war. The more access Iraqis have to information, the more they begin to think for themselves, to questions their leaders, to say been there, did that, got the t-shirt at my cousin's execution. We will win, because in order for us to win, the Iraqis don't have to like us, they just have to be a democracy. In the game of nations, always bet on democracy. Through the long path of history, the human race has been marching steadily towards more freedom for all.

Fifth, every day our soldiers get smarter.

Sixth, we've made a lot of progress.

Seventh, we've already won!

Here's a link

So most of the right-wing blogs accepted the Downing Street memos at face value, though post Ra^thergate, a few questioned.

Which makes this interesting because in the process of investigating, they caught a newspaper faking a photograph. Long live blogs! Keep those newspaper guys on their toes!

An interesting if long post from someone who linked to my Myths about Iraq piece. He talks about Abortion, War, Cloning, Stem Cells, Terri Schiavo but manages to tie it all into being really about Life and Death

It seems that the EU may be getting its head on straight:

One vision of Europe has been passing away. It is the politically united Europe with strong central institutions modeled on the French state, and with social guarantees which lie in the continental tradition. That Europe, which was to stand up against America as at least an equal, would have had its president, ambassadors, army, and tax regime. It will never happen.

The new vision of Europe which is replacing it is less of a political force, but with a stronger, more vibrant economy. It is a Europe which can prosper in a world which includes China and India among its economic drivers. It will do so by reducing its taxes, subsidies and regulations, and by trading more openly and honestly. It will recognize the part which incentives and motivation play in economic expansion. adamsmith.org

I was never worried about the EU before, because frankly, having the French and Germans run things via a bureaucracy located in Brussels wasn't something I would wish on my worst enemy. For all the newspaper nonsense about the EU being able to challenge the US, I thought to myself “they're putting the French in charge? Bwa Ha Ha Ha!”

But now? If they give up on having any sort of military (which frankly they've been doing for years, NATO troops have been a joke for the last 20 years), and they stop being socialist? That might be scary, because their economy wouldn't have to lug this big military around the world in order to keep everyone honest like we have to.

Then again, if we can fix the Middle East, that only leaves Africa, and they have less money, which strangely makes the problem easier. So maybe in 20 years we can stand down our military as well.

That would be cool. Maybe we can spend that money on space exploration instead!

Having the Saudi's as our allies in the Middle East is like making a deal with your cellmate Bruno that as long as he gets to anally rape you, he won't let the rest of the cell block rape you.

Here's an article from Jihad Watch that says the same thing, only more politely

This is my attempt to write like Bill Whittle, who you should go read if you never have.

It's long (took me about a week to write), so it has its own page.

One of the reasons I started blogging was because I subscribed to the State Department mailing list that sends you the transcripts of the daily briefing.

I was stunned by two things:

1. The Reporters asks the stupidest questions imaginable.

2. The news as reported didn't match the briefing.

That was before the war. The coverage of the war itself has been abysmal, because basically, all the reporters hide in their hotel rooms and make up shit. Want to see how bad? Mudville Gazette has some great pieces

So Karl Rove supposedly said some mean things about Liberals.

Except, if you read the full context he didn't really, he said mean things about MoveOn. Hat Tip: Red State

I mean, I can say mean things about MoveOn as well, because frankly, George Soros is the enemy of all that is good and pure in the world. This is a man who became a Billionaire, with a B, by stealing money from the third world.

You think Cheney is bad? Cheney is a piker compared to George Soros.

But he tosses more money then Cheney has made in his life at some hippies to fund MoveOn, and suddenly, he can do no wrong?

Meanwhile, even Instapundit is crediting Karl Rove with mystical powers. Somehow he knew that:

1. The Liberals would be dumb enough to jump all over him, thereby letting everyone trot out all those stupid things various people said post 9/11.

2. Whatever he said would be picked up immediately, unlike Durbin, so the timing would be perfect.

I don't buy it. Rove was saying that stuff at a meeting of the Conservative Party of New York. Of course he was going to trash the liberals at a fund raiser! I'm going to share a joke I've heard at both Democratic and Republican party fundraisers:

So those of you who are on the left can froth at the mouth if you want, and those of you on the right can think “Gee, Rove is so wily. Look at those Democrats go! The fools!”. Personally, I think you should relax. Nobody ever says “Those other guys aren't so bad” at a fundraiser. If Karl Rove was really that wily, we would have heard of him long before he became Bush's political advisor...for creating peace in the Middle East or something...

The Brookings Institute has the numbers.

But I've gone through it and extracted the things I found most useful.

My feeling is that these next few months are going to be a turning/tipping point. Things will either start dramatically improving, or get dramatically worse.

Now various soldiers that are currently in Iraq have been commenting that they feel a tipping point is coming, and I think it might be true, though its not apparent from the numbers yet. What is apparent is that the insurgents have become terrorists. They are no longer attacking coalition forces or even oil facilities. Instead, they are pointlessly killing civilians.

I suspect the civilians have noticed, and that's why the populace has started turning against them in increasing numbers.

Anyways, look at the graphs and reach your own conclusions.

Right or left, you have to realize that the news coverage of the war in Iraq sucks.

A journalist on the scene explains why.

The title of this post is a very old military proverb.

During the election, Bush's opponents argued that Bush went into Iraq without a plan. This was untrue, Bush went into Iraq with the wrong plan. That is, the administration planned for a lot of things that never happened, and they didn't plan for the things that did happen.

You need not believe me of course, you can read the plan yourself here.

Hat Tip: Matt Margolis

As for it being the wrong plan, you can jump down Bush's throat if you like, but the real issue is that we have too many computers and not enough spies in the CIA. That is, we have the best SIGINT in the world, and the worst HUMINT.

I think we only have like 120 field agents or something in the whole world believe it or not. That's why the President has to watch CNN to find out what's going on.

So if you don't like what's happened in Iraq, be sure to write your congressmen asking him why the CIA doesn't have more spies.

Qando has some excerpts from the downing street memos, as well as links to the complete memos.

It's very interesting reading the larger excerpts, much more interesting then reading the word “fixed”.

I've got some of the excerpt after the link if you're interested, with my own commentary.

In my frustration with the press coverage in Iraq, I read a certain amount of military blogs.

Now, so can you. Whether you support the war or not, its important to read what the soldiers who have been there are saying about it.

Hat Tip: Blackfive.

So the Supreme Court ruled that Grokster could be sued. Whether they'll win or lose in court is another issue.

Personally, I think this will be good for file sharing in the long term. In all the history of this sort of thing, its become immediately obvious that people actually want to be legal.

Despite the ability to copy tapes most people buy so overall, VCRs generate millions for the Studios every year.

iTunes is now a huge percentage of the online music both free and paid.

When they started encrypting satellite broadcasts, sales of big satellite dishes actually exploded, because you could now watch legally.

I was going to write this up as a business plan someday and try to get VC money, but here goes, this is how you completely change the music, movie and TV business for the better:

Start by adding some digital rights information to existing files, and build into the playback software someplace you can easily license the file. Now, and here's the kicker, kick back some percentage of the revenue ($.02 as an example) to the source of the file.

Think podcasts are big? What if you could extract all the digital rights info from a podcast and buy the song right then? Or buy a song right off of one of the satellite radios? Or listen to a song/album review and then buy the song? For podcasts it would be really easy, just make a rule that if more then 50% of the content is something other then the current file that you can listen to that portion of the content for free. So for a podcast with 3 songs plus commentary, each song would be 33% or less of the total size, enabling free play.

You've now leveraged all the people who are willing to share their music as salesmen, and compensated them in some small way. So by doing that, you can now lower prices, because at that point, the digital right you're selling is pure profit.

So if all the file sharing networks moved to this model, I think they would explode as people would feel OK both about sharing, and they would be compensated for it.

Michael Yon has posted an update (he's a freelance war reporter who doesn't hide in his hotel room, see my blogroll).

But he sent an email to Instapundit:

It's apparent that the insurgents are getting better and better at what they do. It's becoming a race between getting the ISF/government on its own steam faster than the insurgents are able to improve. It's imperative to keep people at home from running out and leaving unfinished business. Otherwise, we will simply be teaching terrorists that terrorism pays.

That's discouraging.

An aside to a frequent commenter: Yes ernie, I know, you've been telling me that we were going to lose the war for 3 weeks now. But you seem to get all your information from either the New York Times or liberal ranting, so forgive me if I don't consider you an expert on something going on 3,000 miles away. This guy is actually there observing, something the New York Times or the Associated Press don't seem to be able to do.

Plus you seem to want us to lose, which makes me discount what you say...

Michael Yon's latest report is here but if you haven't checked him out before, its worth the review.

Over on Winds of Change

Plenty of ammo for those of you who don't like Bush, but remember, hindsight is always 20/20.

So the webmaster for the 2004 Bush Campaign reviews the Democratic National Committee's website here.

Hisssss... Phfft... Yowl....

It's a catfight!

Only 16 days and 14 hours until the release of the next Harry Potter book as I write this.

Lately, I've been way too serious about the Iraq war. I've talked about how we basically needed to invade Iraq because its the bullseye of the Middle East. I've debunked some myths about the war. I've talked about the Euro. I've looked at the numbers to try to see if Iraq is getting worse or better. I've looked at the Downing Street memos.

Enough! It's time to take a break, and be a little silly.

I'm going to talk about the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix while I wait for the next one, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The plot of the book is that despite a child getting killed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Voldemort, the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge refuses to believe that Voldemort has come back. So he sets out to discredit Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter with the help of the Daily Prophet. The Daily Prophet begins printing stories about how Dumbledore has gone senile, and how Harry Potter has been driven mad.

Meanwhile, Voldemort is up to no good. Without the support of the Ministry of Magic, the fight against Voldemort is driven into the shadows; the Order of the Phoenix is the organization Dumbledore creates to fight Voldemort and his followers.

With Dumbledore basically in hiding, the Ministry of Magic appoints a new headmaster, Dolores Umbridge, to oversee Hogwarts. She proceeds to undermine the entire Defense against the Dark Arts curriculum, as well as harass Harry for his claim that Voldemort is back. This forces the students to turn to Harry for instruction, which ends up working quite well given Harry's extensive experience.

The wizarding world goes along with this, because really, Voldemort is so scary a topic that no one really wants to believe he has really come back.

The book ends when Voldemort attacks the Ministry of Magic, forcing even the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge to recognize that he's baaack.

That's the plot. But what is really going on? Glad you asked...

This book series is an allegory of the War on Terror.

Voldemort represents both Saddam Hussien and Osama Bin Laden, that is, the threat of terrorism against the West. Dumbledore represents Uncle Sam as personified by George Bush, and Harry Potter represents Britian, specifically Tony Blair. The first 4 books are sort of a history of terrorism in that Voldemort makes a few attacks here and there, but only Harry and Dumbledore really realize the danger. So the various attacks against the US and UK by Al Queda are will represented. The 4th book ends with Voldemort killing a child this represents 9/11; it should be the wake up call for the entire wizarding world that Voldemort/Terrorism is a problem they need immediately gear up to fight, they have killed the innocent.

Wizards, like all humans, don't want to believe that. Enter Cornelius Fudge and the press, which would rather believe that Dumbledore (George Bush) is crazy/senile. This of course closely parallels world opinion of US and UK actions in the War on Terror. The Ministry of Magic is a bureaucracy, and so represents the interests in London, Washington, and the UN who would prefer to just refer terrorism to a committee.

Enter Dolores Humbridge (Hans Blix) the classic bureaucrat. She not only denies all possibility that Voldemort could be back, she actively seeks to undermine Harry, Dumbledore, and any ability of the students to defends themselves.

Dumbledore and Harry are forced to go it alone, and so Dumbledore (Bush) creates the coalition Order of the Phoenix. Rowling's choice is interesting here, because Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard (as Bush is the most powerful man), but Harry (again, Britain) has the most experience in fighting Voldemort/Terrorism. Even though Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard, the only wizard Voldemort truly fears, we all know that it will be Harry (Britain) that saves the day. In fact, there are rumors the Dumbledore dies in the 6th book; perhaps Rowling expected Bush to lose the election?

At any rate, despite the obstacles put up by Dumbledore's secrecy, the bureaucracy's maneuverings, and the tide of public opinion the evil of Voldemort leads him to another attack directly on the Ministry of Magic, much like Al Queda has begun attacking other Arab nations. So finally, world opinion public opinion swings the other direction, and Europe the wizarding world signs up for the War on Terror War against Voldemort.

I wonder what will happen in Iraq the next book.

Huzzah to the Irish:

Ireland's advice is very simple: Make high school and college education free; make your corporate taxes low, simple and transparent; actively seek out global companies; open your economy to competition; speak English; keep your fiscal house in order; and build a consensus around the whole package with labor and management - then hang in there, because there will be bumps in the road - and you, too, can become one of the richest countries in Europe.

Where do I sign up for this platform?

I've often said that Hussien was linked to terror, not Al Queda, and that's what pisses me off about the media when they confuse the many (Terrorism) with the one (Al Queda). There are some who feel that we should make the War on Terror a War on Al Queda, but that's just, well, dumb.

Here's a site with all the links: Hussien and Terror

Looks like Bill Clinton is now a kookoo fundamentalist too.

I've leafed through this guy's book The Pentagon's New Map in an airport bookstore. I didn't buy it simply because I didn't want to carry it but he's a really good thinker. He has this funny rant about oil where he says that Middle Eastern countries are lucky they have oil. If they didn't, we wouldn't care about them the same way we don't really care about much of South America and Africa.

You can get a preview of his thoughts here. He also has a blog. The best part is this map:

Which shows that the troubled regions of the world are the ones whose countries are least integrated with the others. That is, people don't shit where they eat, and if you're doing business with a country, you don't want to threaten it.

The recent elections in Iran, the bungled election in Washington State, plus my own research into paperless vs. “paper trail” balloting has gotten me thinking.

Is is possible to build an election system where it would be impossible to cheat?