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Sunday Night Heidi Weimaraner Puppy Update: 16½ Weeks Old.

Top Ten Interesting Questions/Comments About Heidi:

1. "Is that a 'weimenheimer' dog?" [variations: "heimenmariner," "weimerman," and "rammar.. uh... weimer," just to name a few]

2. "Is that a black lab, or a brown one?" [variation: "what kind of lab is that?"]

3. "Is he albino?"

4. "Are those contacts in his eyes?" [variation: "Where did you get those colored contacts for your dog?"]

5. [young son to father] "Can I have that dog?"
[father to young son] "No, that's a silly weiner dog."
[young son, grabbing Heidi] "WEENULL DOLG!"

6. "Did you know that Hitler gave Weimaraners their blue eyes?"

7. "Was her growth stunted?" [variations: "she's not very big for a Weimaraner," "oh, I didn't realize she was a puppy," and "why is she so small?"]

8. "Does she know how to bark?"

9. "Have you bred her yet?"

10. "What did you do with her tail? ... I would have framed it." [variations: "What did her tail get caught in?" ; "Did you cut her tail off because it was always in the way?" (<--- little kid) ; "Did you use regular scissors, or garden shears, to clip her tail?"]

These are all actual questions I have been asked about Heidi.

There were tons of great Heidi pictures this week, due, in part, to the neat skies we had. I narrowed it down to these five:

As you can see, she got a new collar.

It matches her tongue, a little bit.

She loves the trail more than just about anything.

And luxuriating in the sun.

Occasionally, she even gets tired.

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Last week's update.

Posted by Will Franklin · 30 April 2006 07:09 PM · Comments (6)

Pundit Roundtable

Hello everyone! Welcome the PUNDIT ROUNDTABLE, our irregular (of late) expounding on the issues. I am your host, Ken McCracken. Here are our topics for this week:

Topic 1: How did we get into this mess of high gas prices? What is the solution? Give us your plan for getting gasoline to under $2 a gallon.

Topic 2: You have the power of life or death over any two figures from history. You may condemn one to an early death, and save one from their fated demise. Who do you choose and why?

I am pleased to introduce our new guest to the Roundtable, David Anderson of In Search of Utopia. What are your thoughts on this, David?

" I don't claim to be an expert on this one, but I believe there are several factors having an impact on prices at the pump, one is high taxes, from what I understand, taxes represent somewhere around 20 percent of the overall cost of a gallon of gas. I don't know how effectively those tax dollars are being spent, but it needs to be looked at, since government is notorious for wasting our money. Next, I believe the war in Iraq, threats of war with Iran and general instability in the Middle East are also contributing to the problem. Our issues with the Strongman in Chief in Venezuela are also an issue, since the petrol reserves there could go a long way to alleviating the problem. I don't really have a solution other than to suggest our government needs to focus more on long term solutions and energy independence. I tend to be a bit more libertarian when it comes to free market issues. Americans need to learn to conserve more, or not whine about the price. According to the statistics I have read, Oil Companies are making about 4.5% profit on each gallon of gas sold. Looking at it in those terms, I would say that the true gouging going on is from Government. Topic 2: There are so many easy choices in answering this question. Who could argue against Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao or any number of other sociopath leaders for the early check out. On the other side, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, yada yada, are also easy choices. My first inclination is to choose Hitler for an early death, but despite the atrocities of his regime, many advances in science may have been delayed if not for the Nazi regime. The Space program and all it begot, can be traced back to German experiments in Rocketry for example. In looking at others like Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot, they have no such legacy. I would go with Stalin simply because the barbarism of his regime matched that of the Third Reich, and the effects of Stalinism lasted much longer. Again, it was a hard choice. As for who I would save, again my first inclination would be Martin Luther King, whom I knew as a child and who did the most for African Americans, but I will go with JFK. I believe that Kennedy was a visionary, someone who had a vision for a greater America, and had he lived and won a second term, I am convinced that this country would have benefited tremendously. We were on the verge of an extraordinary period of political enlightenment in this country, and since Kennedy we have not had a single President, except for Reagan who could inspire us the way JFK did. While my memories of JFK are more than likely somewhat jaded by his legend, I know enough of his Presidency and his vision for America, to believe that if it succeeded, we would have become a greater nation as a result.

Now let's welcome back Roundtable stalwart Jay Tea of Wizbang. Jay Tea?

"It's a simple matter of applied economics, the laws of supply and demand.Demand has increased dramatically in the last few years, while supply has pretty much stagnated. Refinery capacity is nearly maxed, and capacity has not changed in some time. Also, legislative "tweaking" with gasoline formulations, creating various requirements for different blends (I think there are seventeen different formulations for gasoline around the nation) has led to synthetic shortfalls, as producers simply can't shuffle stocksaround the nation to balance out variable demand. And let us never forget that China and India are increasing their demand for oil at an incredible rate, buying up more and more oil. I don't see a short-term solution to high gas prices. I wonder if there is a mid-term solution. And I fear if we have the national will and resolve to find a long-term solution. Topic 2: I have read a lot of science fiction and speculative fiction, and time travel is a very common theme. And I'm a big believer in "The Butterfly Effect," despite what Ashton Kutcher's movie did to the notion. In the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" episode "The Wish," one character wishes that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale. The result is horrific, with the town being overrun with vampires and several of the main characters dead or made into vampires. In the climactic fight, we see the surviving heroes die valiantly, one by one, until one attempts to smash the artifact that granted the wish, to undo it. The wish-granter challenges him, asking "what makes you so sure the other reality is any better?" He answers, "Because it has to be," and shatters it, undoing the wish. I don't think that is the case here. I don't think the world is so bad that altering a single aspect of our past would guarantee an improvement. The world today is the sum of all our history, for good or ill, and I would be loath to tamper with it. The classical example is Adolf Hitler. Let's get rid of him. How might that make things worse today? With no Hitler, Germany continues to limp along through the depression, still burdened by the crippling results of the Treaty of Versailles. And the Soviet Union, feeling expansionist, starts slowly swallowing up Eastern Europe. In the Pacific, without Germany drawing the West's attention, Japan's aggression is more keenly watched -- and checked short of war. Since England, France, and the rest of western Europe are not threatened on her doorstop, they far more rigorously protect their colonies and interests. Pearl Harbor is averted. And without Pearl Harbor to kick the United States into a global war, the depression putters along as FDR's programs still continue, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Eventually, the threat of the Soviet Union will be too great for the West to ignore. However, by this time, there has been no massive mobilization of military might from America. We never built "the arsenal of democracy" that won World War II and, eventually, the Cold War. And without Einstein and several other refugees that fled Nazi Germany, along with the imminent threat of a Nazi bomb, we never developed nuclear weapons. The United States never becomes a superpower, and never amasses the might to check the march of Communism. By 1950, much of Europe is Communist. The Soviets are looking at Asia and the Middle East. Even Latin America is not off-limits. The United States is finally starting to militarize, but there is no Pearl Harbor, no triggering event that brings war to reality to all Americans. Indeed, some even want to welcome Communism, seeing in it some possible relief to the economic woes that are still troubling us. So, in a nutshell, I would not tamper in the least with history. I do not believe that things today are so bad that they cannot be made worse -- and I have no interest at all in being proven right.

I am also pleased to announce another Roundtable newcomer, Jay of Accidental Verbosity. Welcome, what do you think?

"People like simple, knee jerk, catch phrase explanations for things, so that is what we hear a lot of on the dramatic recent gas price increases. Pick the right one and you might even win some votes, but that doesn't make you less wrong, or at least unrealistically pat. The current price behavior is an unfortunate, yet perhaps overdue, confluence of many factors. There's geopolitical forces. It's oil; there's always geopolitical forces. There's the economic growth and therefore increased demand in places like China, but do we really want to go backward and lose the other benefits? There are the forces of environmentalism, NIMBY and regulation. Thus the lack of refining capacity, lack of new nuclear power in the overall mix - none of this exists in a vacuum, lack of new drilling in this country - for what that's worth, given the fungibile nature of oil, seasonal and other blend requirements that make production more expensive and disrupt already tight refining capacity, and fundamental, seasonally variable supply and demand. The best thing anyone could do for gas prices is to get out of the way. Let economics work. High prices give incentive to develop new sources of oil, as well as alternatives that might reduce the extent to which we depend on same. People will act to conserve, or if they don't then the price isn't so excessive after all. Companies will act to chase revenue and profits available at these prices that might not be at lower prices, and in so doing are likely to make the cost of alternatives or more efficient extraction methods fall. There seems to be a high income punditry class trumpeting how low gas prices are in historical terms, and they are right. However, your average person has trouble appreciating that long term trend when the price rockets up so quickly. It's as if milk went up another 75 cents in the course of a few months; of course we'd all complain. This is "milk" we buy five, ten, twenty, thirty gallons a week, as opposed to a gallon or two. It really does hurt. The mistake is rushing to do something political about that pain. We'll adjust. We'll pursue ways to save - or not - and the signals from that will ripple through the economy to reflect in prices and availability. To the extent that we can have an influence given the politicization and regulation of oil, and energy generally. Where the spike toward $3 was rapid, any fallback to $2 and under will be slow. How long to get that many people driving higher mileage cars? How long to slay the NIMBY Monster and build more refineries? How long to persuade congresscritters to encourage new nuclear, encourage new drilling, etc.- or at least back off of preventing or slowing same. My plan? Get out of the way and let the economy work. Ultimately this works even if we do nothing to change the nutjob governments in key oil producing countries. Fungibility: Know it, love it. Topic 2: This is tougher than it sounds, and one of my answers sums that up in one person. My knee jerk thought on who to condemn, partly on the idea so many people would find it a controversial choice, was Lincoln. I rapidly changed my mind and decided Lincoln was the most logical choice off the top of my head for saving, on the idea he'd done all the harm he was going to do, but was killed before he could do all the followup good we needed. His life may have been about the Civil War, expansion of federal power, and a near dictatorial Presidency, but the founders made that conflict almost inevitable, under someone, by what they had to do and gloss over to make the Constitution happen at all. Even if the muddy status of slavery couldn't be handled, was it really a show stopper to leave the right of states to leave the union implicit rather than explicit? Some tell me it absolutely was. After the war, things went awry due to the loss of Lincoln, so taking the war we had instead of the war we might imagine could have happened (or not), keep Lincoln alive for the cleanup. That probably makes for a smoother reconstruction and integration of former slaves, and blacks in general, into ordinary society. Imagine no segregation in the 20th century, no need for the civil rights movement, and arguably no need for programs like affirmative action to keep the races disparate. LBJ is on my short list of kill targets, but if we spare Lincoln, perhaps we lose some of the damage of LBJ's war on poverty. So perhaps LBJ can live, if Lincoln does. The ripples go far. The toughest question of all is who to kill, because there are just too many. Do I go with someone obvious, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Jimmy Carter? Maybe whoever is responsible for giving up Cuba? (Who is that, anyway? Help me, history buffs, you're my only hope.) LBJ? Not if Lincoln lives. John Maynard Keynes? Imagine, no famed "we're all Keynesians now" quote from Ronald Reagan (who is decidedly not on my short list). As I write this, I lean strongly in JMK's direction, but if we're gunning for "economists," why not Marx? Heck, that's like taking a scythe to multiple follow-ons at once. I could suggest an early demise for Jesus Christ and make the Christians feel persecuted. Oh wait, they already do! Plus if we're being mean enough to suggest that, why not that Paul dude who got it past the mere cult stage. Or I could invite a denial of service attack by suggesting a certain crazy Arab before he can impose his hallucinations on the world. FDR? But like Lincoln, he is a mixed bag of deepest evil and decisive good, and unlike Lincoln he got to live to do the best of the good. Augh! Can't. Make. Up. My. Mind. Aw, what the heck. It's obvious, but let's go with Karl Marx. Let the folks with dictatorial impulses find another ostensible muse to justify themselves rather than merely being what they are. Imagine a twentieth century without Marx looming over it like the father of nightmares.

The Host's Last Word: We have a stark and difficult choice when it comes to fuel prices: we can either have heightened tensions in the middle east and troops posted in Iraq, or we can have cheap oil prices.

We can't have both.

The ongoing insurgency in Iraq, and the defiant Iranian mullahs have done more to put fear into the markets than anything else, driving up the price of oil. Alternative fuels, fuel taxes, refining capacity and so on are issues that only come into sharp focus when oil prices spike.

Thus, the best way to reduce oil costs is to appease Iran. Let their nuclear program become a fait accompli and blame Russian and Chinese intransigence for failing to impose sanctions or military action.

The question is, will there be a higher cost to pay down the road if this is the route we take? As an American, would you be comfortable with this?

As for Topic 2, I would recommend going back in time and erasing the greatest mass-murderer of all time, Mao Zedong. This superheavyweight champion of death killed some 60 million of his own people during the Chinese Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and all the other dark chapters of history he authored.

Would killing Stalin solve the Mao Zedong problem also? Clever! Probably! Except, if there is no Stalin, who stops Hitler? The Man of Steel did stop the Wehrmacht, give him credit for that.

As for extending a lifetime, perhaps Alexander The Great would be the most interesting choice. He died in his thirties after conquering an empire stretching from Greece to the Indus River, and it fell apart nearly immediately after his death. Perhaps a long-lived Alexander could have consolidated and even expanded his gains, resulting in a Pax Hellenica and a vastly different history for Asia and the Near East.

That's it! Enjoy what's left of the weekend, and come back again next week for PUNDIT ROUNDTABLE!

Posted by Ken McCracken · 30 April 2006 12:49 PM · Comments (17)

Quotational Therapy: Part 94 -- Teddy Roosevelt, On Immigration.

Immigration + Assimilation

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American.

"If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American.

"We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul [sic] loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people."

-Teddy Roosevelt; January 3, 1919 (.pdf).

I tend to think that we need to allow much more, not less, immigration to this country. Simultaneously, I agree with Teddy Roosevelt. Those immigrants must become Americans. Not hyphenated-Americans. Not Americans second.

The American empire is an empire of ideas and values. As we promote those values abroad, we must enforce them at home, as well. The best immigration plan would be the plan that offers all the economic and political opportunity America has to offer in exchange for-- simply-- buying demonstrably and wholeheartedly into the economic and political values of America.

Breaking American laws precludes citizenship and economic opportunity. Playing by the rules fast-tracks citizenship and access to the mainstream (rather than underground) American economy.

Sure, that plan is not exactly practical or clear-cut or specific, but it's got to be better than what we have today-- and much better than what some are proposing (amnesty, shutting down the borders, and just about everything in between).

It also seems like a plan Teddy Roosevelt might have endorsed.

Previous Quotational Therapy Session:

Property Taxes Are Marxist

The right quote can be therapeutic, so tune in to WILLisms.com for quotational therapy on Monday and Friday.

Posted by Will Franklin · 28 April 2006 11:59 PM · Comments (4)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 321 -- Three Cheers For The American Economy.

GOP GDP-

First quarter "real" GDP growth in the United States hit a two and a half year high:

4.8%.

That's not half bad, and while it's not likely that we'll sustain that sort of growth throughout the entire year, let's just compare 4.8% to the recent growth in "comparable nations" comment-sniper Michael Tam prefers (Australia, UK, Canada, France, and Germany), as well as a few others (Italy, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and the European Union).

Using the latest data from the CIA World Factbook, here's the comparison:

Of course, just for reference, Angola grew at a 19.1% pace in 2005, China grew 9.3%, India grew 7.6%, Hong Kong grew 6.9%, and Singapore grew 5.7%. Zimbabwe, meanwhile, contracted to the tune of 7%.

But let's get back to that 4.8% "real" GDP growth in the United States. That "real" number, which is pegged to 2000 dollars for the sake of consistency and comparability, is fantastic, but in current dollars, the annual growth rate was actually 8.2%. In three months, the American economy added 254.8 BILLION dollars to its annual economic output. In twelve months, the American economy added 822.1 BILLION dollars to its annual economic output.

Let's think about what those $254.8 billion and $822.1 billion numbers mean.

254.8 billion dollars compares closely to the entire economy of Hong Kong-- or of Switzerland. It's also greater than the respective economies of Vietnam, Malaysia, Greece, Portugal, Norway, the Czech Republic, Chile, Denmark, Venezuela, Israel, and Ireland, just to name a handful.

In the first quarter of 2006 alone, the American economy added what amounts to the entirety of the island economies of Singapore, New Zealand, Bahrain, and Iceland, combined.

That's not insignificant at all.

Of course, it's even more fun to play with the 822.1 billion dollar figure. You can add the entire economies of Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Lebanon, Honduras, Croatia, and Kuwait, with room to spare.

Then, again, if you want to use the "real" dollar gains, rather than current dollar ones, in the first quarter, it's only an addition of 133.1 billion dollars. In that case, the United States only added a Nigeria's worth of economy in those three months.

Still not insignificant, at all.

When the largest economy in the world grows at a 4.8% annual "real" rate, and 8.2% annual current-dollar rate, it ought to be the top news story, everywhere, all weekend long. We've added several countries-worth of economy to our own in just the past three months. That's HUGE news. The consequences of such economic growth are rife-- and profound. For one, our national debt burden seems a little more manageable. Our ability to project power and influence in the world (as well as take care of things at home) increases substantially.

Incidentally, Reuters is underselling America's economy by roughly 15%:

Economists generally consider the long-term sustainable growth rate for America's $11-trillion economy to be around 3.5 percent.

Hello, Reuters, and welcome to 2003; the rest of us have since moved beyond an $11 trillion economy to more than $13 trillion. Two trillion dollars might not seem like a lot to the moneybags working over at Reuters, but, dad gum it, two trillion still means something on this blog.

Of course, the Reuters explanation would be that they are using the "2000-chained dollars" (11,381,400,000,000) figure instead of "current dollars" ($13,020,900,000,000).

Either way, come on, Reuters, stop living 3 years (if we're talking about current dollars) or 6 years ago (if "real" dollars are the way to go), and stop, in so many other subtle and not-so-subtle ways, underplaying the amazing American economy already.

"Real" (2000-pegged) dollars are great for comparing growth rates across time. It keeps things nice and even. But describing the actual size of the American economy in 2000 terms makes little sense.

So, let's hear it: three cheers for the American economy.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce: "Gross Domestic Product, First Quarter 2006 (Advance)" (.pdf).

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Energy.

Posted by Will Franklin · 28 April 2006 02:11 PM · Comments (3)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 320 -- Energy Intensity.

The American Economy Depends Less On Oil Than Before-

This week, consumer confidence jumped to its highest point since May 2002:

Isn't it weird that consumer confidence could rise to a post-Katrina high with all the talk of record gas prices?

It's actually not that weird.

The economy is storming ahead, and people know it.

Moreover, the economy isn't as dependent on energy as it once was. Our cars, despite the SUV craze, guzzle less gas than they once did. Our doors and windows insulate better than they once did. Our refrigerators, washing machines, and other appliances use less energy than they did in the roaring seventies. Offices and homes and stadiums and theaters and restaurants and airports are all far more energy efficient than they once were.

Greater energy efficiency means that energy spending as a percentage of overall consumer spending remains well below where it was a quarter of a century ago, despite a slight rise over the past few years:

High energy costs once forced Americans to change energy consumption patterns. We became more efficient as a result. The artificially low energy prices of the late 1990s produced the opposite result (in vehicles, at least).

Some of the proposals out there today (sending 100 dollars to each American, gouging "big oil" with higher taxes and more regulations) are just. plain. stupid.

Supply and demand drive energy prices upward today. Changing supply and demand is the only way to drive energy prices back downward. American politicians can do little, if anything, of meaning to change international demand, as the developing world (China, for example) is-- well-- developing and consuming energy like never before. It's also difficult for American politicians to do anything substantive when some of the world's worst tyrants and organized criminals and fanatics control the supply at the state level, outside of normal market forces (.pdf):

Does that mean American politicians should give up and accept the world as it is?

Heck no. It just means they should stop treating the American people like we are idiots. We need solutions, not slogans. We need drilling, not demagoguery. We need creativity, not bribery. Most of all, we need a little bit of information and honesty from our elites in politics and the media, rather than partisan platitudes and dumbed-down mumbling and grumbling.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Tax Freedom Day.

Posted by Will Franklin · 27 April 2006 11:58 PM · Comments (6)

Social Security Reform Thursday: Week Fifty-Four -- It Could Almost Work Out, Or It Could Be Far Worse Than Predicted.

Thursdays are good days for reform, because they fall between Wednesdays and Fridays. Just because the status quo'ers got their way in 2005 does not mean the problem has gone away. Indeed, it's getting worse with each passing day. Thus, Reform Thursday continues.

That's why WILLisms.com offers a chart or graph, every Thursday, pertinent to Social Security reform.

This week's topic:

Roll The Dice.

One of the more frustrating parts of the Social Security debate last year was the lack of a common language. Liberals spoke of the program's goals glowingly, as if Social Security-- and only Social Security-- could alleviate poverty among retirees. They also often used creative math to show that the crisis was really just a small accounting blip that could be solved with a few minor tax hikes on "the rich."

The rest of us reviewed their numbers and rhetoric and were baffled and bewildered by the blatant distortions and mischaracterizations. Moreover, even official organizations muddied the debate: the CBO reached slightly different conclusions from the Social Security Trustees, who reached different conclusions from some pro-reform groups, which reached different conclusions from left-wing socialist Democrat-affiliated groups.

The establishment media usually sided with the liberal interest groups, unfortunately. The establishment media still set the agenda for the country, like it or not (except when the GOP musters its campaign resources to get directly to the people).

Thus, because these reactionary socialists wanted to maintain the broken staus quo, no reform. That's how it works, folks. The blogosphere (which has plenty of very far-left sites, if you hadn't noticed) and talk radio (which cares more about entertainment than policy reform) and Fox News (which too often follows the establishment media groupthink) are still a blip compared to the rest of the left-leaning media in this country.

It may very well have taken the resources of an entire presidential campaign, complete with nationally-televised convention, an army of paid and unpaid workers spread out across the country, a frantic stump speech schedule, a series of live debates, and two clearly defined choices, to go over the heads of the establishment media on the Social Security issue.

One point of contention was (and still is) the schedule for meltdown, not to mention how bad the meltdown will be. The anti-reform crowd had two basic policy arguments:

1. It's a small problem, not a crisis.
2. The small problem is half a century away.

Well, it could turn out to be a smaller problem than predicted, particularly if the economy consistently grows faster than historical averages. For example, if Social Security tax revenues exceed expectations and benefit payments are much lower than expected, we may only be faced with a marginal crisis, rather than a full blown one:

Notice that the crisis could end up right where we expect it to, it could end up being a minor crisis, or it could end up being a far worse crisis than expected. Not a particularly inspiring group of options.

Also notice that the problem never retreats. It just continues to get worse ad infinitum. On the other hand, reform solutions that would also increase the national rate of savings, boost the economy to the tune of trillions more in GDP growth, and empower hundreds of millions of individuals and their families, do exist. It's just a matter of how painful we want the reform to be. Do it now, it's easy. Do it later, not as much.

If you were a gambler, would you look at the projections in this graph and assert, with authority, that there is no crisis? At best, we'll barely be able to afford to pay for those trillions of dollars in Social Security benefits, with only hundreds of billions in borrowing added to annual federal budget ledgers.

Not a great bet, any way you slice it, unless the payoff is truly astronomical. So, what is the purse that inspires liberals to deny Social Security reform? What on earth could be so special that they are willing to stake the very financial health of the future U.S. economy on there only being a small crisis?

Two possibilities:

1. Old-fashioned political gain. Social Security is called the third rail of politics for good reason. Liberals (including some Republicans) obstructed just long enough to let Bush zap himself on it.

2. Defending Marxism. Social Security, each year, takes hundreds of billions of dollars (that would otherwise earn compound interest) out of the free enterprise system, helps fund big government projects elsewhere, and otherwise maintains dependence on the government. The lack of reform, manifested in 10-12 years, will almost certainly necessitate higher taxes to pay for the escalating costs. And higher taxes are always good, according to Marxists.

So, to recap, it's a long-shot, but we could end up with an almost-non-crisis, slightly later than expected. Or, if we follow the trend lines, we could end up with a more intense crisis, much earlier. Why even take a chance on doing nothing when the crisis is so evident-- and reform has so many peripheral advantages?

It's time for reform.

The clock is ticking:

--------------------------------

Previous Reform Thursday graphics can be seen here:

-Week One (Costs Exceed Revenues).
-Week Two (Social Security Can't Pay Promised Benefits).
-Week Three (Americans Getting Older).
-Week Three, bonus (The Templeton Curve).
-Week Four (Fewer Workers, More Retirees).
-Week Five (History of Payroll Tax Base Increases).
-Week Six (Seniors Living Longer).
-Week Six, bonus (Less Workers, More Beneficiaries).
-Week Seven (History of Payroll Tax Increases).
-Week Seven, bonus (Personal Accounts Do Achieve Solvency).
-Week Eight (Forty Year Trend Of Increasing Mandatory Spending).
-Week Nine (Diminishing Benefits Sans Reform).
-Week Ten (Elderly Dependence On Social Security).
-Week Eleven (Entitlement Spending Eating The Budget).
-Week Twelve (Benefit Comparison, Bush's Plan versus No Plan).
-Week Thirteen (Younger Americans and Lifecycle Funds).
-Week Fourteen (The Thrift Savings Plan).
-Week Fifteen (Understanding Progressive Indexing).
-Week Sixteen (The Graying of America).
-Week Seventeen (Debunking Myths).
-Week Eighteen (Debunking Myths).
-Week Nineteen (Reform Needed Sooner Rather Than Later).
-Week Twenty (Global Success With Personal Accounts).
-Week Twenty-One (GROW Accounts: Stopping The Raid).
-Week Twenty-Two (Millions of Lockboxes).
-Week Twenty-Three (Support for Ryan-DeMint).
-Week Twenty-Four (KidSave Accounts).
-Week Twenty-Five (Latinos and Social Security).
-Week Twenty-Six (AmeriSave).
-Week Twenty-Seven (Cost Of Doing Nothing).
-Week Twenty-Eight (Chile).
-Week Twenty-Nine (Entitlement Spending Out Of Control).
-Week Thirty (Reform Better Deal Than Status Quo).
-Week Thirty-One (Social Security As A Labor Cost).
-Week Thirty-Two (Social Security And Dependence On Government).
-Week Thirty-Three (Social Security, Currently A Bad Deal For African-Americans).
-Week Thirty-Four (Longer Life Expectancies Straining Social Security).
-Week Thirty-Five (Howard Dean & Salami).
-Week Thirty-Six (Growing Numbers of Beneficiaries Draining Social Security).
-Week Thirty-Seven (The Crisis Is Now).
-Week Thirty-Eight (Disability Benefits).
-Week Thirty-Nine (Broken Benefit Calculation Formula).
-Week Forty (German Social Security Disaster).
-Week Forty-One (Crumbling Pyramid Scheme).
-Week Forty-Two (Overpromising, Globally).
-Week Forty-Three (Demographic Wave).
-Week Forty-Four (The Jerk Store).
-Week Forty-Five (Defined Benefit Plans).
-Week Forty-Six (Even The Empty Promises Are A Bad Deal).
-Week Forty-Seven (Our Aging Population).
-Week Forty-Eight (The Tax Increases Required To Cover Social Security's Costs).
-Week Forty-Nine (Much Longer To Get Your Money Back From Social Security).
-Week Fifty (A Vote, At Last).
-Week Fifty-One (We Can Do Better).
-Week Fifty-Two (Socialist Security).
-Week Fifty-Three (China Has The Same Problem, Only Worse).

Tune into WILLisms.com each Thursday for more important graphical data supporting Social Security reform.

Posted by Will Franklin · 27 April 2006 02:46 PM · Comments (3)

Larry Johnson, Pro-Leaks 'Patriot'

There is a group of ex-CIA employees called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) who are calling for more leaks from the intelligence services. We are likely to hear more from these folks as this leaks issue progresses, so keep your eyes open.

The press is spilling a lot of ink over VIPS member Larry Johnson regarding the Mary McCarthy leaks case, who naturally comes rushing to her defense, and his membership in VIPS is never mentioned. Johnson is probably most famous for his pronouncements that Americans were "bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism" and that "terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States" - just two months before before 911.

The press would like us to believe that Johnson is a cool and collected retired CIA agent with no axe to grind, rather than the hotheaded, grandstanding leftist shill that he is. Johnson's blog packages up the whole leftist vacuity on this subject just perfectly: self-righteous pronouncements of fealty to higher purposes, weakening-national-security-is-really-patriotism hypocrisy, endless unsupported assertions, ad hominem attacks (Johnson's SCREAMING BOLD TYPE ADDITIONS TO SOME OF THE COMMENTS are really pretty funny, and in a disturbing way. This guy used to work for the CIA? We are so screwed if they are hiring clowns like this) - the whole thing is a veritable Woodstock of liberal dimthink. No wonder Stephen Spruiell says "it’s this kind of analytical prowess that led Larry Johnson to get the pre-9/11 terrorist threat so unbelievably wrong."

Tom Maquire of JustOneMinute points us to the comments at this particular blog post at Johnson's blog, and here Tom responds to one of Johnson's assertions about the Plame case:

Patrick Fitzgerald has sworn before the U.S. District Court on multiple occasions in the last nine months that Valerie Wilson was a person covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. [emphasis added] END EXCERPT I try to learn something new every day, so could we please see even one solid cite to support this?

It would be huge news if Fitzgerald swore that Wilson was covered by the IIPA, and either Johnson is scooping the press here, or . . . he is full of something. Johnson has yet to come forth with any proof, so you decide.

So there you have it. The left just makes stuff up, the press repeats it and amplifies it, the leftist brain-donors fawn and genuflect, and our national security goes down the tubes. Thanks Larry Johnson, for being the true patriot you are.

P.S. - not this Larry Johnson by the way.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 27 April 2006 11:08 AM · Comments (7)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 319 -- Tax Freedom Day.

Freedom From Taxes-

If you are an average American, today was a good day for you. It marked the final day of the year you worked to pay the government. Assuming you've been paying every penny you have earned since January 1 to Uncle Sam and his little nephews (California, Texas, New York, etc.), from here on out, for the rest of the year, what you earn is yours to keep.

Yes, because today is Tax Freedom Day:

Again, if you are the average American, you worked three additional days this year to quench the thirst of the ole big government leviathan.

Awesome.

Compare this to 100 years ago (.pdf):

I'm lovin' it.

There's much, much more information about taxes, with explanations, at The Tax Foundation website. Go check it out. There are many ways to calculate a Tax Freedom Day (and The Tax Foundation's methods have some flaws, to be sure), but this is still one of the better ways to conceptualize the cost of government.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: OIL!.

Posted by Will Franklin · 26 April 2006 09:47 PM · Comments (3)

Wednesday Caption Contest: Part 53.

This week's WILLisms.com Caption Contest photograph:

The actual caption:

Former Vice President Al Gore makes talks to the media as he walks into a screening of the documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' in Boston Tuesday, April 25, 2006. The film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, documents Gore's passionate quest to present the issue of global warming as 'our planetary emergency.' (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Surely there's a better caption for this photograph.

Entries will remain open until 11:59 PM, Central Standard Time, Tuesday, May 2. Submit your captions in the comments section, or email at WILLisms@gmail.com.

Last week's photo:

Winners from last week:

1.

Zsa Zsa:

Mia Hamm Denies Steroid Use in Women's Soccer

2.

Hoodlumman:

Ronaldinho formed the goal posts for Perez in the semi-final match of paper futbol.

3.

Adjustah:

Despised Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best describes the length of his career.

Honorable Mention #1

DaveD:

After talking it over, Ronaldinho's one hand would be sure to know what the other was doing.

Honorable Mention #2

Cox:

An excited Ronaldo prances back to his teammates to share the details of his "unintentional" brush with David Beckham.

Honorable Mention #3

Ironman:

Two-time World Paper Footballer of the Year Ronaldinho believes Brazil can live up to their billing as World Cup favourites and defend the trophy at this summer's table-top finals in Germany.

Honorable Mention #4

Rodney Dill:

"Truth be told, Andrew Sullivan is not a long hitter, if ya know what I mean."

Captioning doesn't grow on trees, you know.

Enter today!

Posted by Will Franklin · 26 April 2006 04:51 PM · Comments (28)

Tony Snow: All But A Done Deal

Tony Snow

I just want to express how pleased I am that Tony Snow has all but been announced to be the new White House Press Secretary.

I always liked this guy. He has a disarming wit, a level head, and does not suffer fools, but does so in the nicest way possible.

He is also quick on his toes, and if he does not get nervous and succumb to flop sweat, he could really terrorize the White House press corps, and make them wish McClellan never left (I am sure they miss him already).

I just hope he has fun skewering the barrage of dumb questions coming his way. Should be fun.

Update: apparently it is now a done deal. Johsua Bolten seems very interested in pressing for personnel moves since his own promotion(like getting rid of Scott McClellan, for example), I wonder if he was instrumental in getting Snow on board also.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 25 April 2006 11:13 PM · Comments (5)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 318 -- Black Gold, Texas Tea.

Oil, That Is-

Speaking of gasoline prices and boutique fuels and whatnot, here are some important facts on energy prices:

During the seventeen years between 1986 and 2002, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil averaged $20.53/bbl. In 2003, the average price for oil reached $31.14/bbl., in 2004 it was $41.44/bbl., in 2005 it was $56.47/bbl., and during the first three months of 2006 the price has averaged $63.35/bbl. On Friday, the price rose above $75/bbl., an all-time high in nominal terms....

After adjusting for inflation, the price of oil is still below its peak of $85/bbl. in the second quarter of 1980. Yes, energy prices are rising rapidly, and consumers are spending $244 billion more on energy per year today than they did in 2001. However, total after-tax incomes are running $1.7 trillion higher. In other words, consumers have $1.48 trillion more to spend today - even after subtracting energy costs - than they did in 2001.

Here's a quick visual of those changes from 2001 to now:

The black circle is additional after-tax income Americans have added since 2001. The yellow circle is how much of that is eaten away by rising energy costs. Almost shockingly (shockingly, if we buy into the "record" gas price hysteria), inflation in the U.S., including energy prices, has been relatively tame, at or below most long-term historical averages. Take out energy prices, and inflation has been well below normal.

This makes the anecdotal stories of folks pawning off their possessions to pay for gas all that much more ridiculous.

Indeed, if anything, gas prices were deflated far too much, for far too long. Think back when crude hovered around 10 bucks a barrel in the late 1990s, with the price at the pump accordingly low. Funny how that time coincided with other unsustainable ridiculousness (dot com bubble, naivete about Islamic terror, etcetera). Looking at the big picture, over the course of more than two decades, gasoline is just now catching up to increases elsewhere:

So, while certain members of Congress are busy feigning outrage about Lee Raymond's retirement package, and complaining about $36.1 billion in profits, and railing about the fact that ExxonMobil is #1 on the Fortune 500 list, and posturing about all the terrible price gouging by the big, bad oil companies, the truth is that gas prices just aren't up that much relative to other products and services.

At the same time, energy industry profit margins aren't even up that much, relative to other industries:

Yet, we have far too many politicians in Washington who believe the solutions to higher energy prices are: 1) to prevent domestic exploration and production (ANWR), 2) block near-shore terminals for more efficient importation of liquefied natural gas, 3) implement windfall profits taxes on top of already-exorbitant energy industry taxes, and 4) otherwise demagogue the issue. Even governmental efforts to support renewable sources of energy are often just pork-fests that do little or nothing to lower the price at the pump in the short-run or long-run.

Meanwhile, let's just be thankful that we don't pay European (or even Asian) prices for gas:

That being said, paying roughly 40 cents per gallon in taxes isn't chump change, either. What's even more scandalous than gasoline taxes paid by consumers is how much energy companies have paid in taxes over the years:

...over the past 25 years, oil companies directly paid or remitted more than $2.2 trillion in taxes, after adjusting for inflation, to federal and state governments—including excise taxes, royalty payments and state and federal corporate income taxes. That amounts to more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. Department of Energy.

Yikes. Just who is price gouging whom, here?

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Awesome Religion Maps.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 April 2006 04:34 PM · Comments (17)

Boutique Fuel Nonsense

President George W. Bush gave an excellent and comprehensive speech before the Renewable Fuels Association this morning about the fuel cost problems we are having today. He suspended purchases for the strategic oil reserves, and rightly noted that our oil addiction is a national security problem.

Another problem he addressed is the irrational requirements for different fuel blends to be sold in various regions of the country, and he stated that he is easing some of these restrictions.

These blends are known as 'boutique fuels', and they also add to the cost of fuel. Bush addressed this issue succinctly:

When you have an uncoordinated, overly complex set of fuel rules, it tends to cause the price to go up.

Federal law requires reformulated gasoline in the following nine metropolitan areas in order to reduce ozone smog: Baltimore, Chicago, Hartford, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, and San Diego. These varying requirements make it difficult for our limited refining capacity (another issue Bush addressed) to efficiently utilize what oil we get, making regions susceptible to unnecessary shortages and expenses. One refinery fire, for example, can spike the price in one region for weeks before refineries are able to plug the gap.

A GAO report released last year lays out the boutique fuels problems:

"The proliferation of special gasoline blends has made it more complicated to supply gasoline and has raised costs, significantly affecting operations at refineries, pipelines, and storage terminals. At refineries, making these blends can require additional investment such as installing new processing equipment and the use of larger amounts of valuable components in the blending process—making it more costly to produce special gasoline blends. Once produced, different blends of gasoline must be kept separate throughout the shipping and delivery process, and the increased number of gasoline blends has reduced the capacity of pipelines and storage terminal facilities, which were originally designed to handle fewer products. For example, several pipeline companies reported that the capacity of their systems has been reduced because they have had to slow the speed of products through the pipelines in order to off-load special blends at specific locations, which raises the average cost of shipping gasoline. Similarly, storage terminals have not been able to fully utilize the volume of their storage tanks because the tanks were designed to handle fewer types of fuel and are often larger in size and fewer in number than necessary for handling smaller batches of special gasoline blends. Further, the proliferation of special blends has, according to several buyers from these wholesale markets, limited the number of suppliers of some of these fuels, posing challenges when traditional supplies are disrupted, such as during a refinery outage or pipeline delay. In the past, local supply disruptions could be addressed relatively quickly by bringing fuel from nearby locations; now, however, additional supplies of special gasoline blends may be hundreds of miles away."

Thanks to Knowledge Problem for this quote, and for this map showing the crazy patchwork of fuel requirements:

Source: Exxon-Mobil

Boutique fuels: a dumb idea that needs to go.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 25 April 2006 11:22 AM · Comments (6)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 317 -- Religion Maps.

Neato-

You really have to go check out some of the most neato and interesting maps I have seen in a long time, and I am a map connoisseur, so that's saying something.

Percentage of people who are religious (in an organized way):

Which religious denominations dominate which regions:

Then you can break it down into specific denominations.

Methodist:

Catholic:

And much. much more, including Baptist, Lutheran, Jewish, Pentecostal, Mormon, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, Muslim, Unitarian, and so on.

Seriously, go check the larger versions out. Neat stuff. Incidentally, you can tell a lot about a religion or denomination by cross-referencing religion, race, age, geography, party strength locally, income, and so on, but that's for a future post.

Hat tip on this one to Marginal Revolution.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: National Debt.

Posted by Will Franklin · 24 April 2006 05:43 PM · Comments (4)

Quotational Therapy: Part 93 -- Marx's First Commandment.

Communist Property Taxes

You may be familiar with the Communist Manifesto already, but here is a refresher on the ten things Marx believed would be generally applicable in any advanced country adopting socialism:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

Let's focus on that first one. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

Private property. It's under attack in this country. There's the Kelo angle, for one. Then there's the matter of exorbitant property taxes in many states and locales.

Let's think about those for a second. Property taxes above a certain reasonable threshold, in my estimation, amount to a sort of soft feudalism, a system under which you can never truly own property at all.

Let's say you own a 100,000 dollar home, mortgage paid in full. You are retired. You have no serious income. You owe the government, each and every year, a few thousand dollars.

Now, let's say that, many years after you retire, your 100,000 dollar home becomes a 500,000 dollar home, due to a booming housing market in your region. Wham, though you're not suddenly rich, you are suddenly paying the property taxes of a wealthy individual. Tens of thousands of dollars worth. Over the course of a decade, one may end up paying nearly half (or more) of the home's value (at the time of purchase) in property taxes.

It's insane. When property taxes are high, you cannot truly own property. It's just that simple.

Paying for the right to keep something you already own. What 'e' word does that sound like?

Unfortunately, I searched high and low for a quotation or aphorism or speech on the subject, but there's very little on property taxes.

I am guessing the lack of great quotes about property taxes has to do with who traditionally paid property taxes.

Rich people.

But today, as record numbers of Americans own their own homes, property taxes are not just a rich people thing. When property taxes are high, you are really just renting your home from the government. That rent is going toward public purposes.

Marxism.

Now, a good chunk of property taxes wherever you go, around the country, goes toward funding public schools. Many people really like public schools. They are gladly willing to pay thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in property taxes for those public schools.

Then there's all the folks with no kids in public schools, still paying the thousands of dollars into the system.

Think about how scandalous that ought to be. So very much property tax (rent) money, pumped into public school systems around the country, with such patchy (and often sub-par) results.

Why not cut out the middle man?

Why not allow all of those millions of individuals to choose where their education dollars go, in a competitive market for education? Why are so many people willing to put up with Marxist feudalism (high property taxes) and uncompetitive, unionized, dysfunctional schools (see Marx's 10th Commandment), simultaneously?

Property owners and people with children in public schools (a lot of overlap, there) all deserve better.

Anyway. Wisdom teeth out today. Fun times. Rant over.

Previous Quotational Therapy Session:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The right quote can be therapeutic, so tune in to WILLisms.com for quotational therapy on Monday and Friday.

Posted by Will Franklin · 24 April 2006 05:12 PM · Comments (2)

Ted Kennedy Is A Classy Guy . . .

. . . when he wants to be.

Ted Kennedy told Larry King on CNN he was with Laura Bush on September 11, 2001, and had this to say:

"the phone rang in my office. It was my wife calling. The first plane had crashed ... I thought this is unusual, distressing, bizarre.

"And then the second plane crashed and we obviously knew it was something and tried to get a hold of Mrs. Bush and she was already in the building, in the Russell Building."

"And I remember going out to the door and seeing her walk down the corridor and probably the Secret Service had known just at this time but she was walking down. She was probably 50, 75 yards down the corridor walking in front of her Secret Service . . . [s]he came into our office. Senator Gregg from New Hampshire was there ...

"We sat down in that office at this time and she was enormously elegant, dignified, a woman of great composure, strength.”

[they] "didn't have a real idea of the grasp of the situation, the depth of it, but nonetheless she had her own sort of thoughts and you can imagine her thinking, her husband and children.”[emphasis added]

I found this to be genuinely touching. Good on you, Senator.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 23 April 2006 11:33 PM · Comments (10)

Sunday Night Heidi Weimaraner Puppy Update: 15½ Weeks Old.

Heidi is getting close to 4 months old, which means she'll start losing her baby teeth over the next two or three months.

She has a Snoopy kind of thing happening in this one:

She's a great little gal.

She's also a great little pal.

UPDATE: Just weighed her, and she's about 26 and a half pounds or so, although that number seems to fluctuate, hour by hour, day by day, up and down. She will end up at least twice as large as she is now. One vet said that you can take the weight at four months, double it, and add ten pounds to find the approximate early adult weight (before many dogs get old and fat).

-------------------------------------------------- Last week's update.

Posted by Will Franklin · 23 April 2006 06:51 PM · Comments (6)

A Vast Leftwing Conspiracy?

What may have motivated Mary O. McCarthy to leak classified information about 'secret prisons' in Europe to the press? (Secret prisons that Rick Moran tells us nobody can seem to find. Wow, is the CIA good or what? Was it a sting operation against McCarthy? If the CIA is that good, we will never know.)

It could be that she is a rabid Democratic partisan, anxious to do damage to her boss, President George W. Bush. The proof? Lots of money donated to Democrats:

 

Let's give her credit for realizing Ohio was a critical battleground state.

She also rubs elbows with lots of Democratic enemies of the Bush administration, including Sandy Berger, convicted smuggler of secret documents, who appointed her Special Assistant to the President in 1998. She has also done work at the Center For Strategic And International Studies (CSIS), which has Wesley Clark and Anthony Zinni as senior advisers. Don't bother looking looking for her profile there, it has been stuffed down the memory hole. There is a cached version here.

McCarthy worked with General Zinni, who was commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, and Richard Clarke, who was first national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counter-terrorism, on issues related to terrorist camps in Afghanistan, and a supposed nerve gas factory in Sudan. McCarthy was skeptical of the intelligence leading to the bombing of that factory, according to the 911 Commission report.

She also worked on the National Security Council with a chap named Joe Wilson. Tom Maguire reminds us: "Let's duly note her overlap with Joe Wilson on the National Security Council from June 1997 to July 1998."

So noted.

Joe Wilson and Mary McCarthy are both West Africa experts, Wilson having served as Ambassador to Gabon, and McCarthy having written a book Social Change and the Growth of British Power in the Gold Coast (University Press of America, 1983). I am sure they had much to discuss, including Niger yellowcake possibly . . . some are wondering if McCarthy sent Wilson on his trip to Niger.

 

What other motives might she have for trashing the President? How about covering her own backside - she was on watch against terrorist threats during the Clinton years, the 'golden age' of terrorism (Khobar Towers, USS Cole, Tanzania, Kenya, etc.), and needless to say the performance of that bunch was catastrophic. McCarthy made this statement before the 911 Commission decrying the lack of a terrorist warning system. I wonder if she knows the mirror looks back at her.

Not to mention she had been demoted from her post of influence when the Bush administration took over.

So, does this all point to some kind of conspiracy? All things being equal, never assume conspiracy when stupidity will suffice. These folks seem to have a visceral dislike for the President, and access to secrets and the press that can be used to embarrass him. They don't need to coordinate their efforts to decide what to do however, they probably all share the congenital impulse to break and/or bend the law for partisan purposes.

After all, never forget, the left serves higher purposes than a mere constitution. They don't need to discuss it, it is assumed.

P.S. - As for the CIA's investigation, "This is just the beginning."

Update: Thank you SA commenter Bat One for pointing us to this from Thomas Joscelyn, regarding McCarthy's questioning of the intel leading to the bombing of Sudan -

"But as Daniel Benjamin, another former NSC staffer, wrote in October of 2004, McCarthy had changed her tune by April 2000:

The report of the 9/11 Commission notes that the National Security staff reviewed the intelligence in April 2000 and concluded that the CIA's assessment of its intelligence on bin Laden and al-Shifa had been valid; the memo to Clinton on this was cosigned by Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy, the NSC senior director for intelligence programs, who opposed the bombing of al-Shifa in 1998. The report also notes that in their testimony before the commission, Al Gore, Sandy Berger, George Tenet, and Richard Clarke all stood by the decision to bomb al-Shifa.

Now, of course, Clarke and Benjamin argue that: (a) the decision to strike al-Shifa was justified because (b) the intelligence connecting Iraqi chemical weapons experts to al Qaeda's chemical weapons efforts was sound, but (c) this doesn't mean that Iraq and al Qaeda had a significant relationship because (d) somehow this collaboration occurred without either party realizing that it was working with the other! Sound bizarre? It is.

Oh no, it is not bizarre at all when you are on Planet Moonbat, where logic and facts serve partisan interests rather than the other way around. Remember, al-Qaeda and Saddam never cooperated on anything, and the survival of the Democratic party pretty much depends on this 'fact'.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 23 April 2006 05:00 AM · Comments (4)

Half A Million Visitors. Or More?

Since March of 2005, WILLisms.com has accumulated 500,000 visitors, according to Site Meter.

But my server, mediatemple.net, shows different stats, going back to January 18, 2005, when I made my first real post here:

So, yeah, that's obviously a lot more sessions and pageviews and hits than Site Meter is indicating.

Just for reference, some highlights of the top 100 referrals:

~60% of WILLisms.com sessions have had no referral. People have just typed in the address or used a bookmark on their web browser and gone to the site. Roughly 9.5% have come from google image searches. Nearly 3% have come from regular google searches. If you add up all the separate foreign google referrals, it would add up to a few percent or so. Same with the various yahoo searches.

Roughly 1.5% have come from Instapundit. Roughly .75% have come from Michelle Malkin. Neal Boortz is responsible for .32% of WILLisms.com sessions, and Wizbang isn't that far behind, at .26%.

File It Under has contributed .04% of the sessions, just under the .05% both Gateway Pundit and Wunderkraut have contributed, and well behind the .10% Viking Pundit has sent my way.

File It Under is, however, ahead of GOPinion, PoliPundit, Patrick Ruffini, Outside The Beltway, and Little Green Footballs.

Beyond that, we're outside the top 100 referrals.

And speaking of referrals, just a skim of the list of countries indicates that North Korea may very well be the only country on the entire planet not represented. The top countries after the United States:

1. Mexico
2. Canada
3. Malaysia
4. Germany
5. Saudi Arabia
6. Netherlands
7. Italy
8. United Kingdom
9. France
10. Australia

I am not entirely sure how meaningful the country stats are, though. It seems as if only a relatively small number are actually registered.

Oh, and here's some interesting and weird search terms:

Beyond those, it's a lot of combinations of the same. Oprah and Tom Cruise. Kanye and Bush. Etc. But there's also lots of encouraging search terms, like, "why+taxes+are+bad" and "social+security+ponzi" and "reggie+bush+overrated" and so on.

The most requested individual posts (by other computers), beyond the main index and monthly archives, are:

1. June 7, 2005: Carnival Of Classiness.
2. June 9, 2005: Social Security Reform Thursday.
3. June 8, 2005: Make Or Break Moment For John McCain.
4. January 20, 2005: 62,041,268.
5. March 29, 2005: Johnny Cochran Has Passed Away.
6. April 25, 2005: Carnival Of The Capitalists.
7. January 22, 2005: Roe v. Wade Turns 32.
8. March 21, 2005: More On The Babe Theory of Political Movements.
9. June 25, 2005: Rabid Donkeys On The Loose.
10. June 2, 2005: Jacques Chirac, Fin.

Not necessarily my best 10 posts there throughout the top 10, but definitely some good ones in there.

Anyway, yeah, half a million. Up a hundred grand from February 21.

Posted by Will Franklin · 22 April 2006 07:19 PM · Comments (8)

Quotational Therapy: Part 92 -- Socialists.

Self Worth & Success

Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless.

-Kenneth Baker, July 13, 1986.

Previous Quotational Therapy Session:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The right quote can be therapeutic, so tune in to WILLisms.com for quotational therapy on Monday and Friday.

Posted by Will Franklin · 21 April 2006 11:35 PM · Comments (1)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 316 -- National Debt.

Record Highs, Or Not? Both, Sort Of-

$8,349,277,698,254.18

That's our public debt, courtesy of the Bureau of the Public Debt. Yes, a governmental bureau with that name actually exists.

And surely you've seen or heard about the National Debt Clock in New York City. Ticking away, frantically. Retired briefly. Then out of retirement again.

Debt clocks are nice and all, but you might want to check out the Best Debt Clock In The USA, by the Skeptical Optimist.

It shows more than debt. It includes America's GDP for reference. Otherwise, it's just a number. The Skeptical Optimist's version also includes the Debt-to-GDP ratio, which, unsurprisingly, doesn't frantically increase every few seconds.

And you may want to also take a gander at the history of America's public debt as a percentage of our economy (.pdf):

So, public debt isn't exactly at an all time high? Or is it?

That depends whether we are making a political point, or whether we are being intellectual honest. I tend to believe our national debt is too high right now, but I also like to keep things in perspective.

Not that we ought to compare ourselves to the fiscal mess that is Europe, but the U.S. ranks 35th in the world in terms of public indebtedness, which means we have a lower Debt-to-GDP ratio than Italy, France, Germany, Singapore, Israel, Belgium, India, Japan, and a panoply of other countries.

Let's also think about what comprises our debt, who holds our debt, and so on.

I own some of the debt, personally. I have some bonds I could cash whenever I please, in exchange for money. I tend not to be that worried about that particular portion of the National Debt. Public debt isn't that awful when you think about those millions of private individuals out there who own a little piece of it, earning small bits of reliable interest over time.

$4,828,395,378,375.03 of the National Debt is debt held by the public.

$3,520,882,319,879.15, meanwhile, is intragovernmental debt, which includes money for government trust funds, pensions, and Social Security.

Remember those hundreds of billions in IOUs the government owes itself on Social Security? Yeah, that's going into the National Debt.

That Social Security portion (also called the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund) is by far the largest individual portion of intragovernmental debt, as well as the fastest growing individual portion (.pdf) (see page 30, Table FD-3).

In other words, it all goes back to entitlement spending.

This is the same entitlement spending, so gargantuan already, that is also growing so rapidly. An unpleasant thought.

There's also been a lot of attention paid to foreign ownership of the debt, the implication being that China owns the United States now.

Well, here's how foreign ownership of U.S. public debt breaks down:

Of debt held by the public (as opposed to that intragovernmental debt discussed before), roughly 50% is owned by foreign investors, foreign governments.

Governments such as (.pdf):

So China owns what amounts to 3% of America's National Debt. You can be the judge on just how egregious or not egregious that is.

Not all of that is held by foreign governments, either. About 2/5 of foreign-owned debt is held by private foreign investors, rather than central governmental banks (.pdf):

What seems to get overlooked in these discussions is this: people and other entities are buying American debt because they ultimately believe in the strength and stability of America's economy.

Furthermore, the National Debt has increased primarily during a period of ridiculously low interest rates. So, essentially, these foreign investors (including governments) are loaning the U.S. government money at grotesquely cheap rates.

Two things:

1. We're just not hovering near any sort of scary or unprecedented debt breaking point, as many want us to believe.

2. It is not fair to pin responsibility for recent National Debt increases on President Bush or even a pork barrel loving GOP Congress. Look where the largest increases in spending have come over the last few years. It's not from bridges to nowhere; it is overwhelmingly from entitlement programs.

My suggestions:

1. Reform entitlement programs. Drastically.
2. Put a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending, as well, or at least index it to inflation.
3. Major tax reform to supercharge the economy.

Do those things and the Debt-to-GDP ratio will shrink faster than the National Debt Clock can roll the numbers backward.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Index Of Leading Economic Indicators.

Posted by Will Franklin · 21 April 2006 05:57 PM · Comments (11)

Social Security Reform Thursday: Fifty-Three -- Chinese Pay-As-You-Go Failure.

Thursdays are good days for reform, because they fall between Wednesdays and Fridays. Just because the status quo'ers got their way in 2005 does not mean the problem has gone away. Indeed, it's getting worse with each passing day. Thus, Reform Thursday continues.

That's why WILLisms.com offers a chart or graph, every Thursday, pertinent to Social Security reform.

This week's topic:

China's Demographic Crisis.

This week in the U.S., the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics released data showing that the annual number of American deaths dropped by nearly 50,000 in 2004— the sharpest decline in nearly 70 years:

Meanwhile, life expectancy crept upward yet again:

Awesome news.

It's a testament to science, medicine, and technology. The 25 year trend is also a testament to economic progress.

This is also terrible news for the long-term solvency of Social Security and other unreformed entitlement programs.

Pay-as-you-go funding systems, the pyramid schemes that they are, are doomed to fail. Everywhere. Always.

Unless you can somehow guarantee a combination of immigration, birthrates, and economic growth that indefinitely outpace medicine's ability to keep us alive longer, pay-as-you-go systems will fail. Period.

As The Economist points out, even China is learning this fact:

Over the next 10-15 years, the rapid ageing of the population will increasingly make itself felt. As the labour force begins to shrink, the current pay-as-you-go pension system will become unsustainable. Life expectancy in China is high by the standards of developing countries and is likely to go on rising…

The government has been trying to develop a new pension system, including elements of both pay-as-you-go and funding, whereby it invests on beha