WILLisms.com: May 2006 Archives

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German Jihadi Tries To Blow Up Her Own Child

I can scarcely believe this is true:

SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that German intelligence agencies have prevented three German women from travelling to Iraq in recent weeks. The women, who have close contacts to the Islamist scene in Germany and at least one whom has converted to Islam, came to the attention of intelligence agencies after one of them had announced on an Internet site that she intended to blow herself and her child up in Iraq.

I kinda hope this turns out to be yet another bogus MSM story. Unfortunately I think it will be proven true. And then there is this:

The Berlin woman's child was taken away from her and she has been put in a psychiatric clinic.

Heh, now what could have prompted the authorities to do that, do you think?


"Have a nice day, infidels!"

P.S. Der Spiegel also interviewed Mahmoud AhMADinejad about his holocaust denial. Bet that went over real well in Germany. Too bad he didn't give the interview in Austria - he could share a cozy cell with David Irving. I bet they would have lots to talk about.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 31 May 2006 01:32 AM · Comments (95)

Um, Did You Know There Are Widespread Riots In Iran?

It seems only Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has been reporting the stories of ongoing riots and demonstrations in Iran. He has some great posts:

This Time Protesters Riot in Iran Over a Cockroach Cartoon!
Iranian University Students Protest Against the Mullacracy
Tehran Universities Erupt in Violence Overnight!
Ethnic Rage Swells in Iran, Revolts Break Out, Deaths Reported
Iran: U.S. Will Fail to Provoke Ethnic Strife... Oh, Really?!!
Regime Commandos & Hezbollah Thugs Pound Iranian Protesters

There does indeed seem to be a media blackout on these very serious threats to the mullahs power in Iran - I regularly scour Google News and Reuters and other news agencies, and have yet to find a single story about this. Not saying they aren't there, it just seems that this is not getting nearly the prominence it deserves.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 30 May 2006 09:13 PM · Comments (44)

Henry M. Paulson, Jr. To Be New Treasury Secretary


Henry M. Paulson, Jr.

President Bush has selected Henry M. Paulson to head up the Treasury Department.

"The selection of Mr. Paulson, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, is a significant departure from Mr. Bush's initial reluctance to bring prominent Wall Street executives into his administration. And it was a rare break from Mr. Bush's tendency to select his most senior aides from within an inner circle of trusted advisers."

Paulson replaces John W. Snow, who had been criticized for not trumpeting the Bush economy sufficiently, and for not pressing China to revalue its currency.

Press Secretary Tony Snow refused to confirm speculation that John Snow had been forced out, as part of Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten's ongoing personnel shakeups.

Joshua Bolten, like Paulson, had worked for Goldman Sachs.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 30 May 2006 07:10 PM · Comments (0)

Burqa Beach Babe

Woah. Maybe I had this burqa thing all wrong. Maybe there is something to leaving a bit to the imagination.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 27 May 2006 08:35 PM · Comments (47)

Lies, Damned Lies, And Al Gore

Wow, hurricanes are caused by pollution!

That's right, hurricanes are not some natural phenomenon that have regularly occured year in and year out for eons - no, they are strictly a creation of American capitalism. And if we all pay ten dollars to hear Al Gore's message, we can rid the world of hurricanes!

That right there is a damnable piece of liberal propaganda, advocating the dubious proposition that we turn our society and economy upside down in order to try and defy mother nature - a losing proposition if there ever was one. Sadly, enough people have been, and will be, taken in by this speciousness that we have to take the time and resources to fend it off. These are the new flat-earthers of the age.

Will anyone ask Al Gore the direct question - are hurricanes caused by man? Only a liberal interviewer could ask such a question, because no one else could blurt it out with a straight face.

Some might retort that this poster merely implies that some hurricanes are caused by pollution.

Oh? Which ones did you have in mind?

Andrew? Katrina? Hugo?

Please tell us by which criteria you seperate the natural hurricanes from the artificial ones. Do the artificial ones come with a Made In USA signature somewhere?

This is not science, it is self-loathing. It is simply another chapter in that long novel called America: The Source Of All Evil. Even if it is false that man can create hurricanes or global warming, that is not the point. We all know pollution is bad, and any alarmist exaggeration that overstates the damage is justified. Al Gore has already said as much. The real agenda is to rein in rapacious capitalism, in order to construct a world in which good-hearted commisars will order us all to ride bicycles.

Or at least make sure that our economy is so reduced to an ecologically-friendly shambles that bicycles are the only alternative anyway.

Maybe the real spokesman for this nonsense should be Tyler Durden - "In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

P.S. Tyler Durden is wrong by the way - Chicago neither has kudzu nor car pool lanes. Just had to get that off my chest.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 27 May 2006 07:04 AM · Comments (48)

Da Jihadi Code

There is a little internet thriller developing at Little Green Footballs.

A Muslim extremist named Inayat Bunglawala posts an article at the Guardian Unlimited, which allows comments, about the Da Vinci Code.

An LGF commenter debunks it, leaving a comment.

Someone follows the link back to LGF, then emails Charles Johnson this pleasant little message:

I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut....

Charles then traces this email:

This particular death threat is a bit different from the run of the mill hate mail we get around here, because an IP lookup on the sender reveals that he/she/it was using an account at none other than Reuters News: RIPE Whois Database: 192.165.213.18.

Well, isn't that special. Reuters is employing a jihadist.

What is odder is that the emailer seems to be from Sweden. Yet get this, a reply comment from Bunglawala himself -

Nick223: No, neither applied nor implemented. I am a little worried about your reference to the LGF website though. Many on that site seem to be to be clearly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. As for ‘jetting to and forth between London and Stockholm’ - no, it is an illusion created by the way the CiF site tracks the posters. When I post from work it comes up as Sweden for some reason, when I do so from home, it correctly lists London. I have never been to Sweden unfortunately.

How interesting, the whereis lookup for the hate emailer's location comes up as . . . London.

Could it be Inayat Bunglawala himself?

Well, in the past Bunglawala has claimed that the British press is 'zionist controlled', he called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman "courageous" just after the bombing of the World Trade Center, and that Rahman had probably only been arrested because he was "calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere", and he called Osama bin Laden a 'freedom fighter', among other things.

Bunglawala is the media secretary for the Muslim Council of Britain, "one of seven 'conveners' for a Home Office task force with responsibilities for tackling extremism among young Muslims."

Kinda like having a fox in charge of the hen house.

P.S. As an aside, the odious George Galloway has said that the assassination of Tony Blair would be justified.

Update: Charles Johnson informs us, at an update at the first link above, that a Reuters employee - we don't know who - has been suspended over this.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 25 May 2006 08:51 PM · Comments (22)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 337 -- GDP Growth 5.3%.

Way Awesome-

Thanks to tax relief, the economy is booming (.pdf):

-click for larger version-

Policies matter. Elections matter. Majorities matter.

For more raw data, visit the BEA's website.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Woman: Woah, Man.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 May 2006 10:34 AM · Comments (3)

Read...

...This.

Posted by Will Franklin · 24 May 2006 05:48 PM · Comments (3)

Wednesday Caption Contest: Part 57.

This week's WILLisms.com Caption Contest photograph:

The actual caption:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, left, looks at President Bush as he speaks to the media during a joint news conference in the East Room at the White House, Tuesday, May 23, 2006 in Washington. The White House urged the visiting prime minister to reach out to the moderate Palestinian president, a step the new Israeli leader has been reluctant to take. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Surely there's a better caption for this photograph.

Entries will remain open until 11:59 PM, Central Standard Time, Tuesday, May 30. Submit your captions in the comments section, or email at WILLisms@gmail.com.

Last week's photo:

Winners from last week:

Eric:

Guess who I am... Wrong! It was Earl Hindman. My turn again!

Rodney Dill:

Obviously the Numero Uno way to know you've made it is to be in Forbe's Who's Who of Kings, Queens, and Dictators, but what are the other nine ways.
10. You've Slept with Paris Hilton at the Paris Hilton
9. You really do have more money than even Forbes thinks you have.
8. Other Dictators avoid wearing Military Khaki's so they won't appear with the same clothing as you.
7. Whenever you say "OIL" the world price per barrel jumps
6. Your country has universal health care, (and the people have no freedom to complain about the service)
5. Whenever you say the word 'NUCLEAR' the world gets the hiccups
4. You have your picture in your Wallet, (On your currency)
3. You put a price on the head of your detractors (and you mean it, and can make good on it)
2. Donald Trump calls you up for advice

KipEsquire:

Look, everyone, I'm going to be a contestant on "Survivor: Despot"!

Honorable Mention #1

bullwinkle:

Fidel auditions for the part of Wilson in the recently announced Home Improvement: The Movie so he can add even more money to his offshore bank accounts.

Honorable Mention #2

SgtFluffy:

How could I be wealthy? Have you seen my country lately?

Honorable Mention #3

Rob B.:

I know that the magazine is muffling your audio feeds, but seriouly I just had a anchovy pizza with onions and a load of garlic. Ok?... By the way, steer clear of the "little Dictators room" too. I had asparagus last night.

Captioning is the nectar of life.

Enter today!

Posted by Will Franklin · 24 May 2006 01:12 PM · Comments (18)

All My Favorite Villains

I know this type of thing has been done elsewhere, but I thought I might do my own take on it. Pretty much in order of awesomeness here:

	=	Hans Gruber - Die Hard Playing a convincing, interesting villain is perhaps the most difficult acting task there is. Hans Gruber has no supernatural powers or extradordinary talents - just grasping greed, natural malevolence and charisma.
		Darth Vader - Star Wars Self-explanatory.
		Saruman - Lord of the Rings They actually paid someone to cast this part? Putting Christopher Lee into this role was a stroke of obviousness.
		Hannibal Lecter - Silence of the Lambs Two words: "Hello, Clarice . . . " This guy is so good, you are almost rooting for him at the end.
		Tyler Durden - Fight Club This guy is a nightmare. Literally, in a way.
		Riff Raff - Rocky Horror Picture Show It helps to really look the part.
		Antonio Salieri - Amadeus I just love Machiavellian intrigue in my villains. This guy was better at that than composing symphonies. In all fairness, the real Antonio Salieri actually supported Mozart, and had The Magic Flute extended after its first short run.
		Vizzini - The Princess Bride An evil genius, mostly in his own mind. He gets off some great quips, which more than makes up for his ineffectiveness as a villain.
		Dathan - The Ten Commandments Okay okay, so technically this guy was more of a 'schmuck' than a 'villain' - I put him here for another bit of levity, and to point out what was perhaps the all-time greatest unintentional stroke of casting genius.
		Amon Göth - Schindler's List The scariest villain of all, because the guy actually did all that stuff in real life, and worse.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 24 May 2006 11:23 AM · Comments (39)

Abdurrahman Wahid: 'Liberal' Muslim

In an opinion piece published in yesterday's WaPo, Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid debunks a few myths (held by both many Muslims and many westerners) about Islamic law, such as that it proscribes death as a penalty for conversion away from Islam, and that 'infidels' are forbidden to enter Mecca and Medina. (Via RealClearPolitics)

He is a humanitarian Muslim:

People of goodwill of every faith and nation must unite to ensure the triumph of religious freedom and of the "right" understanding of Islam, to avert global catastrophe and spare millions of others the fate of Sudan's great religious and political leader, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, who was executed on a false charge of apostasy. The millions of victims of "jihadist" violence in Sudan -- whose numbers continue to rise every day -- would have been spared if Taha's vision of Islam had triumphed instead of that of the extremists.
The greatest challenge facing the contemporary Muslim world is to bring our limited, human understanding of Islamic law into harmony with its divine spirit -- in order to reflect God's mercy and compassion, and to bring the blessings of peace, justice and tolerance to a suffering world.


Abdurrahman Wahid

'Gus Dur' as he is affectionately known, is quite an interesting character. Former president of Indonesia, he was a nemesis of Suharto, and is an apostle of liberal Islam.

That's right, an apostle of liberal Islam. Gus Dur is an advisor to the LibForAll Foundation, an organization that promotes a pop "musical fatwa" against Jihadism, among other things. It also promotes Sufism, which are often some of the most peaceloving and mystical sects to be found among any religion anywhere. This should come as no surprise - Indonesia is generally known for its very liberal and tolerant interpretations of Islam, and there is a lot of activism against the inroads of Wahabism going on there.

The more you investigate Islam, the more it surprises you in a great many ways.

Update: Publius Pundit knows him, and backs up the claim that he is a great guy.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 24 May 2006 05:58 AM · Comments (0)

Newsflash: Left Lies About Iraq

The left and Iraq Veterans Against The War have been pimping a video of "U.S. Army Ranger" Jessie MacBeth, in which he says the Rangers were told that the rules of war don't apply in Iraq, and to kill as many Iraqis as possible in order to intimidate them.

Predictably, it is all a lie, and MacBeth is clearly not a Ranger, and there is doubt that he is was even a member of the U.S. military at all.

Yet again, the left is caught lying while attempting to smear our military. We are learning the lesson that every single negative statement about the war in Iraq and our vets should be presumed false, scrutinized thoroughly, and proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt before you should even begin to believe it.

Lying about our veterans and the War on Terror has become a full-blown industry among the left, Democrats and the media. There should be a huge political price to pay for garbage like this.

Update: Oh man, you just gotta go here. An instant classic.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 22 May 2006 11:18 PM · Comments (0)

Quotational Therapy: Part 100 -- Social Security Benefits For Illegals.

Pat Leahy, On Social Security Benefits For Illegal Aliens

"We should not steal their funds or empty their Social Security accounts," he said. "That is not fair. It does not reward their hard work or their financial contributions. It violates the trust that underlies the Social Security Trust Fund."

Social Security accounts, Pat? The ones 90+% of your party's elected officials oppose?

Every time Pat Leahy opens his mouth, it becomes crystal clear why our Vice President said what he said to the Senator.

Previous Quotational Therapy Session:

George Washington, On Immigration

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

Posted by Will Franklin · 22 May 2006 10:49 AM · Comments (3)

No Wonder Nagin Won

Drudge is reporting that Howard Dean and the DNC sent operatives to torpedo Ray Nagin's campaign for reelection as mayor of New Orleans.

If the race were closer, sending Kos would have certainly put Nagin over the top.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 22 May 2006 01:19 AM · Comments (0)

Sunday Night Heidi Weimaraner Puppy Update: 19½ Weeks Old.

Neat clouds this week:

For more pictures of Heidi, click the "Read More »" extended entry button below.

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Last week's update.
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Posted by Will Franklin · 21 May 2006 11:09 PM · Comments (0)

Tony Snow v. Helen Thomas, Part II

Please oh please feel free to copy this!

My previous comic here.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 21 May 2006 07:33 PM · Comments (47)

Pundit Roundtable

Welcome! Thanks for coming back to the PUNDIT ROUNDTABLE. I am your host, Ken McCracken. Here are our topics for this week:

Topic 1: What is your pet political topic, and why? What issue gets you most excited or vexed?

Topic 2: Who is the most famous person you have ever met?

I am pleased to introduce a newcomer to the Roundtable, Andrew Olmsted of his eponymous blog. Andrew?

"My pet political topic is the systems of government and politics that provide most of the unfortunate results we see coming out of Congress. As frustrated as I often get with the poor performance of the American government, I like to delve into the underlying causes of that performance, and that generally leads me into the structure and systems we use that render poor results the norm rather than the exception. For example, while I have great respect for NZ Bear, Glenn Reynolds, and the other bloggers behind the Porkbusters project, I have not bothered to join that crusade because it is almost certain to fail. Pork has been an integral part of our political system for decades, and the voters have endorsed it in the only place it counts: the ballot box. Because we've built a tax system that makes the money government takes automatic, only the very rich and the self-employed really feel the bite of taxes. For the average worker, his paycheck is what he brings home every week and the taxes are routine; annoying at first, but they quickly slip into the background noise of the paystub. Pork projects, therefore, appear like free money to the vast majority of citizens, and they reward politicians who bring them in by sending them back to Congress for more. Porkbusters has brought a lot of sunlight into that process, and in the short term it will probably trim pork expenditures a little. But the only way it can be successful in the long term is if the Congressmen who continue to ladle pork into spending bills pay for those actions at the ballot box, and that's extremely unlikely. Once a few porkhounds like Byrd and Stevens win reelection, that will be the signal to the rest of Congress that they can return to their old habits with no worries about retribution. Porkbusters will slow things down for a little while, but it's just not possible for it to do more than that because the American people have been sending Congress their approval of the pork process for years. It's unfortunate, but the inertia in the system makes it incredibly difficult to change.

If there's one thing that will set me off more quickly than anything else, it's the assumption made by so many people that people on the opposite side of an argument are not only wrong, but willfully wrong. On both sides of the aisle there seems to be a belief that everyone knows what the right answers are, and so those people who are espousing something other than what that speaker believes is not doing so out of an honest belief that the facts point in a particular direction, but because they have some kind of evil ulterior motives. Therefore we hear Democrats screaming about how Republicans are all racists who use code words to slip their racist message past an insipid press while Republicans counter with claims that Democrats are anti-American terrorist sympathizers who are secretly rooting for the enemies of the United States. It's next to impossible to have a rational discussion with someone who assumes that your disagreement connotes not just an error in judgement, but a moral failing of some kind. While I'm not naive enough to believe that this phenomon is new, I do believe that it has gotten worse over the past decades, and I believe the two reasons for that are the growth of the federal government, making so many issues into national problems and therefore raising the stakes on all sides, and the urbanization of America, which has made it so much more difficult to avoid the intrusions of government. When most issues were left at the lowest possible level, at least if you lost the argument you didn't have to go far to find someplace more amenable to your point of view, and up until about 100 years ago, you could still light out for places where government really didn't get involved in anything at all. Today that's just not possible.

Topic 2: I was about five feet away from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar once in the Salt Lake City airport, but I didn't introduce myself, so I don't think that really counts. Therefore the answer has to be Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style. A few years ago I had to go to Fort Polk to support the 116th Brigade Combat Team's JRTC rotation prior to their Iraq deployment. The trip would require me and a friend to drive from Fort Bliss, Texas to Fort Polk, and the shortest route took us through Dallas, Postrel's home. Because Postrel was the first big blogger to take note of my work and because I'm a big fan of her work, the chance to actually meet her in the flesh was too good to pass up. So I sent her an email asking if I could possibly meet her for coffee, time permitting. She went one step further and agreed to have dinner with me, even though her mother was visiting at the time. So I got to spend an evening with Virginia, her husband, and her mother, three very intelligent people who were incredibly gracious and pleasant. It was a great experience, marred only by my failure to pick up the check, a failure which embarasses me to this day. Ah, well.

Now I'd like to introduce the tag team of Eric and Dave from Greensickle. First up is Eric, what do you say?

"I'd have to say almost anything dealing with military strategy, or issues directly effecting our military. I love when liberals try to school me on what our men and women in uniform are thinking and how they behave. Now, I'm no military strategist or psychologist. I do know, however, how things in our military are supposed to work and the general consensus of what our men and women are thinking (in most cases). Besides, I still have a lot of sources to give me their perspectives and dirt on current military events.

Topic 2: I met Joe Montana in Sacramento once. I can't remember for what, as it happened years ago. Nothing spectacular comes to mind beyond that.

And now we have Dave from Greensickle. Dave what do you think?

"1. My pet political issue is currently the middle east and relations between the US and Arab, Persian, and Jewish states there. It's infuriating to meet people who have strong opinions but at the same time do not bother to crack a single book or even read the paper to find out what's really going on there.

Topic 2: The most famous person I have ever met is Francis Cardinal Arinze.

Cardinal Arinze, recently on the short list to become next pope! Cool. I thought Arinze would have been the wisest choice, all things considered, but I am a lapsed Unitarian so what do I know?

The Host's Last Word: my pet topic is anti-leftism. The twentieth century proved that the radical ideas of socialism, communism and other leftist pathologies not only do not work and ruin economies, but devolve quickly into genocidal mania. It is sheer madness. And yet, many folks who refuse to learn the lessons of the past insist on putting forth leftist ideas as a viable path. It just boggles the mind that such discredited concepts refuse to die, but there it is, and we must continue to fight them. The War on Terror has not diminished their threat, as many on the left are now in open allegiance with the terrorists. They never fail to pick the wrong side, do they.

I got to meet Eddie Van Halen in a bar in Aspen, Colorado. It was like an episode of Cheers - Eddie came sauntering into the bar by himself, and everyone went "Eddie!" I stood around with my brother and a friend from college, watching him play pool. I finally got the nerve to approach him, and asked him for a cigarette. He saw the cigar in my shirt pocket and said "hey man, you already got a smoke." I said, "but I want one of yours . . . " He declined to give me one of his last Merit Ultralights.

My brush with greatness.

Actually, I had more in-depth encounters with Abbie Hoffman, whom I debated at Boston University, as well as Samuel Huntington and Walt Rostow. I also had a little flap with, ugh, Noam Chomsky. Howard Zinn was my student advisor at BU, but Howard however is a great guy, really a lot of fun.

I also had a little tour of Vietnam with this guy:


Tim Page

No, not Dennis Hopper (or his lifelike action figure), but Tim Page, the guy that Hopper's character in Apocalypse Now was based upon. He isn't all that well-known I suppose, but he has his own Wikipedia article, and made a much larger impression on me than anyone else noted above. He really did walk around with two cameras around his neck. Page told me about getting 200 shrapnel injuries when his boat was attacked by friendly American air power. He talked about having his entire head reconstructed, and how it started to fall apart when he was in Rome, and had to have more surgeries. He talked a lot about the Tet Offensive, and he showed us where the Marines were set up when they finished off the Viet Cong in the Citadel at Hue.

That's all for now! Come back next week, for more adventures in punditry with PUNDIT ROUNDTABLE!

Posted by Ken McCracken · 21 May 2006 01:59 PM · Comments (49)

No Badges For Jews After All?

Chris Wattie, the writer of the original National Post story highlighting a supposed new law requiring Jews to wear badges in Iran, is backpedaling from the story.

And Iranian officials deny the story:

Hormoz Ghahremani, a spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa, said in an e-mail to the Post yesterday that, “We wish to categorically reject the news item.

“These kinds of slanderous accusations are part of a smear campaign against Iran by vested interests, which needs to be denounced at every step.”

With all due respect, this story was disturbingly easy to believe.

AllahPundit has an extensive rundown of the unravelling of this story, and the debate over whether it is untrue.

Very interesting, in my opinion. I think it is a credit to the new media that if this story is wrong, it can be corrected pretty much in real time. The complete damage to the Iranian reputation cannot be undone here (har har), but unlike the old days, we don't need to wait for days and days and several news cycles to happen before the corrections come.

In fact, the corrections and the errors surrounding this story becomes a topic unto itself, and that is a healthy thing.

Update: this story blew up big when Drudge posted it as a headline. Now . . . it has been removed and there is no mention anywhere of the story, a correction or retraction. Hmm, doesn't do much for the ol' credibility of the DrudgeReport in my opinion.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 19 May 2006 08:46 PM · Comments (530)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 336 -- Woman.

Woah, Man-

Myth & Reality, about women in Europe and the United States:

According to a paper published by the International Labor Organization this past June, women account for 45 percent of high-level decision makers in America, including legislators, senior officials and managers across all types of businesses. In the U.K., women hold 33 percent of those jobs. In Sweden—supposedly the very model of global gender equality—they hold 29 percent.
Germany comes in at just under 27 percent, and Italian women hold a pathetic 18 percent of power jobs. These sad statistics say as much about Europe's labor markets, lingering welfare-state policies and corporate leadership as they do about its attitudes toward women. It's not that European women are stuck in the house. (After all, 57 percent of women in the EU 15 work, less than the U.S. rate of 65 percent, but not dramatically so.) The real problem is that Europe has been consistently unable to tap the highest potential of its female workers, who represent half of college graduates in most countries. Women, it seems, can have a job—but not a high-powered career.

Typical Europe.

Meanwhile, some encouraging news here in the U.S. about women and the glass ceiling:

A 2001 survey of business owners with M.B.A.s conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology found that money was the primary motivator for only 29% of women, versus 76% of men. Women prioritized flexibility, fulfillment, autonomy and safety.
....

...what happens when women make the same lucrative decisions typically made by men? The good news--for women, at least: Women actually earn more. For example, when a male and a female civil engineer both stay with their respective companies for ten years, travel and relocate equally and take the same career risks, the woman ends up making more. And among workers who have never been married and never had children, women earn 117% of what men do.

Cool.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Immigration.

Posted by Will Franklin · 19 May 2006 10:58 AM · Comments (3)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 335 -- Immigration.

Immigration-

Here's your Thursday Trivia Tidbit, belated:

In 2005, illegal migrants accounted for about 5% of the civilian labor force, or 7.2 million workers out of a labor force of 148 million. Approximately 19% of illegal workers were employed in construction jobs, 15% in production, installation and repair, and 4% in farming. The Pew report also shows that illegal immigrants comprise 24% of all workers in farming, 17% in cleaning, 14% in construction and 12% in food preparation. Within those categories, unauthorized migrants tend to be concentrated in specific jobs: They represent 36% of all insulation workers, 29% of all roofers and drywall installers, and 27% of all butchers and other food-processing workers.

Source: Knowledge@Wharton: "The Immigration Debate: Its Impact on Workers, Wages and Employers."

An interesting read for those interested in toning down the immigration discussion a bit.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Immigration.

Posted by Will Franklin · 19 May 2006 09:51 AM · Comments (1)

Iran: Badges For Jews

No, this is not Nazi-inspired:

Chris Wattie, National Post, Published: Friday, May 19, 2006 - Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

. . . because the Nazis got the idea for badging Jews and other groups from Muslims. Funny (or not) how these ugly ideas get passed around and recycled like this. According to David Frum:

The first world leader to require Jews to wear distinctive badges (a yellow belt and a yellow conical "dunce" cap) was Haroun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph, who ruled in Baghdad in the era of Charlemagne, the late 700s and early 800s.

Haroun's idea was later copied by the popes, but long after it vanished from the Christian world it endured in Islamic countries. Even in our own time, one of the final acts of the Taliban in Afghanistan was to attempt to enforce a distinctive badge on that country's Hindu minority.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he wants to "wipe Israel off the map", rants and babbles like Hitler, denies the Holocaust, and now this?

How big does the writing on the wall have to be, folks?

Posted by Ken McCracken · 19 May 2006 05:37 AM · Comments (2)

Pic Of The Day

Now, we all know that leftist protestors are a bit creepy and weird, but this takes the cake:

Wait a minute, my astute Sarcasm Detector is going off . . .

Thanks to FreeRepublicans.com via SayAnything.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 19 May 2006 02:35 AM · Comments (2)

Social Security Reform Thursday: Week Fifty-Seven -- Personal Accounts Are Awesome.

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:

Of All The Solutions, Personal Accounts Are The Only Win-Win-Win Scenario.

Reading Don Luskin's blog, I came across this graphic from The New York Times:

Behold, compound interest. Working. Over time. Just like Social Security personal accounts would work.

The Times' story explains how a provision allowing Americans, in 2010, to roll over their traditional tax-deferred retirement accounts into Roth IRAs, where investment gains can be withdrawn regularly, tax-free, will "cost" billions to the government.

WRONG.

It will save billions from government misuse. It will prevent billions from falling into the hands of pork-and-entitlement-loving fools. It will keep billions in the free enterprise system, in the hands of actual American human beings.

And, ultimately, a portion of all that wonderful wealth generated by the tax relief would find its way back into government coffers. A 10 trillion dollar economy with a generic 10% tax rate produces more tax revenue than a 7 trillion dollar economy with a generic 14% tax rate.

Tax cuts, the more I examine the historical evidence, do indeed pay for themselves-- and then some.

But that's not the point.

The point is that personal retirement accounts via Social Security would be remarkably similar to the account shown in the graph above. Hundreds of millions of Americans, of all income levels, could be busy accumulating many trillions of dollars of wealth, with minimal effort and LESS expense than under the current Social Security regime.

Personal accounts are the best solution to Social Security's woes. They are clearly better than cosmetic, temporary fixes, such as raising the retirement age, raising the tax rate and/or cap, cutting benefits, delaying benefits, and so on.

Herman Cain explains what needs to happen:

If members of Congress are serious about preserving the Social Security program without needlessly increasing payroll taxes or reducing benefits, they must immediately take the following three steps.
First, members of Congress must stop denying Social Security faces a solvency crisis. To deny the solvency crisis is literally akin to denying that the sun rises in the east.

Second, all members of Congress must end the raid on the surplus and pass the DeMint amendment.

Third, Congress must pass HR 1776, “The Ryan-Sununu Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act.” HR 1776 would allow workers to divert a portion of their forced payroll tax contributions to a personal retirement account they own and control. In 75 years the entire system would be solvent, without having to reduce benefits or raise taxes.

Want to give "the base" a reason or two to show up this November?
Want to grow the Republican party, especially among young people?
Want to fundamentally fix the single largest current government expenditure?
Want to boost the national savings rate above what is effectively zero?
Want to pare down the national debt?
Want to boost the fuel injector of our free enterprise system, a.k.a. the stock market?
Want to make American workers more competitive in the global economy?
Want to make the United States less socialist?
Want an enduring "legacy making" accomplishment?

Then reform Social Security. Do it now. There are trillions of good reasons for reform. Let's get on it.

The clock is still 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).
-Week Fifty-Four (Potential Crisis Size).
-Week Fifty-Five (The Crisis Moves Closer).
-Week Fifty-Six (Big Brother Social Security).

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

Posted by Will Franklin · 18 May 2006 08:44 AM · Comments (4)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 334 -- Immigration.

The Mexican Economy & Inmigración-

Courtesy of The Heritage Foundation, we have this chart showing the national origin of America's illegal immigrants:

Indeed, Mexico is responsible for a large proportion of illegal immigration to the United States:

One-third of all foreign-born persons in the U.S. are Mexican. Overall, the number of Mexicans in the U.S. has increased from 760,000 in 1970 to 10.6 million in 2004. Nine percent of all Mexicans now reside in the U.S. Over half of all Mexicans in the U.S. are illegal immigrants, and in the last decade 80 to 85 percent of the inflow of Mexicans into the U.S. has been illegal.

If the Mexican economy had been booming over the past few decades, how many of those 5.9 million illegal aliens from Mexico would have stayed in Mexico? What about the illegals from elsewhere?

We'd likely still have some illegals in America, but it's hard to imagine so many. Mexico certainly has the resources for the kind of economic growth that would keep people content enough not to sneak into the United States.

How is the Mexican economy doing these days, anyway?

Not great by American standards, but it's getting better:

...from 2000 to 2005:
* Mexico’s annual inflation declined by two-thirds;
* The public deficit dropped to zero;
* Foreign investment grew 74 percent.
* Mexico’s non-oil exports increased 60 percent over the last decade;
* Tourism is up 40 percent;
* Investment in roads and highways has grown 144 percent since the last administration;
* Six million scholarships now help keep poor children in class through high school;
* Real wages rose 7 percent;
* Nearly 577,000 new jobs were created [annually]; and
* The number of Mexicans living under one poverty index dropped 23 percent.

Still, nearly a million youths enter the Mexican labor force each year. A half million new jobs per year are simply not enough. Mexico’s minimum wage is US$4.50 per day, far below the minimum US$5.15 per hour stateside. While more Mexican children are attending school, the system is still heavily centralized under an inefficient national ministry and subject to nationwide strikes. Rural facilities and attendance are poor.

So, it's hit or miss. A lot of hits, though.

Unfortunately, socialists are gaining momentum in all of Latin America, even Mexico. What Mexican Marxism would mean for immigration, who really knows. But I doubt it could be much of a good thing.

Interestingly, one of the arguments against illegal (and sometimes legal) immigration is that poor immigrants come to America and go on welfare, drain educational resources, waste prison space, and so on. So here are the numbers on welfare use:

Interesting. There is a very real need for immigration reform in this country. The President's plan may be our last, best opportunity for substantive reform, including serious border security, before it's too late.

And isn't this post what an immigration debate should look like? [As opposed to this.]

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: The Internets.

Posted by Will Franklin · 17 May 2006 04:12 PM · Comments (3)

Wednesday Caption Contest: Part 56.

This week's WILLisms.com Caption Contest photograph:

The actual caption:

Cuban President Fidel Castro displays a copy of Forbes magazine which had ranked him as the seventh wealthiest ruler in the world, during a live television broadcast in Havana, May 15, 2006. Castro furiously denied on Monday the story in Forbes magazine that he was worth $900 million and said he would step down if the magazine could prove the assertion. REUTERS/Ismael Francisco-Prensa Latina

Surely there's a better caption for this photograph.

Entries will remain open until 11:59 PM, Central Standard Time, Tuesday, May 23. Submit your captions in the comments section, or email at WILLisms@gmail.com.

Last week's photo:

Winners from last week:

Rodney Dill:

Buddharazzi

Giacomo:

Hey, Wang! What's with the pictures?
It's a parking lot! Come on.

jody:

Inspired by Canon's invasion and assimilation of Tibet, China is currently exploring new options for irritating Richard Gere beyond coating gerbils with tabasco sauce.

Honorable Mention #1

SgtFluffy:

Meanwhile, at the Democratic fundraiser, The Buddhist delegation attempted to photograph the elusive Manbearpig.....

Honorable Mention #2

Hoodlumman:

There was nothing in their vows of abstinence that said the monks couldn't fill their walls with pictures of Scarlett Johannson.

Honorable Mention #3

Rob B.:

Thailand's "Girls Gone Wild" crew claim that Buddhist girls are just as crazy when you get them sauced and yell "Free the spheres of life!"

Captioning is for winners. Are you a winner?

Enter today!

Posted by Will Franklin · 17 May 2006 12:08 AM · Comments (18)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 333 -- Google, YouTube, & The Internets.

Googly McGoogleton-

Google is winning the internet search engine wars:

Or are they?

In some ways, Google may already be too big for its britches.

Indeed, there was that whole censoring themselves for China thing. Also, that whole digitized book fiasco.

...just to name a couple of the more high profile google controversies.

Google's peripheral products are hit or miss. Gmail is awesome, for example. Google News was good for a while, before it allowed so many weirdo blog sites to appear in its lineup (incidentally, they've rejected WILLisms.com two or three times, even while including some very questionable sites).

Google Video, meanwhile, is just dreadfully terrible.

Last summer, when investigating the Iranian presidential election taking place on American soil, I uploaded the video to Google Video. It took weeks for the video to appear, ready to show. I guess it had to pass through the Google censors. And then, even though it was far too late to use the video, there was no way to embed the video within a blog post.

Irritating.

More recently, I tried uploading this video, showing Democrats applauding their own ridiculousness on Social Security at the 2006 State of the Union (as seen in this post) to the Google video service.

After several days of limbo, it was finally rejected, presumably because of the Fox News logo in the corner of the video.

Now, I understand copyright concerns, but the clip clearly falls under fair use rules. It is a short clip from a lengthy public event carried by several networks. The purpose of the clip is political speech, including criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research (all fair use purposes). Moreover, the brief clip does no harm to Fox News. If anything, it promotes the watching of Fox News.

Anyway, after the belated rejection from Google Video, I turned to YouTube.com instead.

YouTube.com is so much better, it's not even funny.

And its awesomeness has helped it eclipse the vile Google Video, in terms of traffic, in an extremely short period of time. YouTube.com, after just a few months of existence, now has more than 4 times the traffic that Google Video has. And while Alexa doesn't allow you to filter out video.google.com from the main google.com regime, let's use the master of blog traffic, Instapundit.com and some other well-known websites as vehicles for comparison:

YouTube is a perfect example of why competition is so important. Google is great for a lot of things, but it doesn't own the internet. Nor should it.

Indeed, using YouTube.com, it took me 14 seconds to find this video of the Walker, Texas Ranger theme song and embed it into this post:

And that right there is what makes America-- and the internet-- great.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Inflation Is Awesomely Awesome.

Posted by Will Franklin · 16 May 2006 05:05 PM · Comments (13)

Tony Snow Takes The Gloves Off

Tony Snow squares off against Helen Thomas in his first press briefing.

The decision?

Snow wins via a TKO in the first round.

Helen Thomas let down her guard pretty badly, stating that "millions of Americans have been wiretapped" according to the recent USA Today story about phone data collection by the NSA.

The story said no such thing.

Now, is Helen Thomas, *acclaimed journalist*, incapable of reading a news story? Or does she not comprehend what she reads?

Or is she a dishonest hack who willingly lies about events in the news to serve her partisan purposes?

I hope American was watching, because the chronic dishonesty of the media was in its glory today, and got punctured immediately by that old smoothie Tony Snow. I hope this is a portent of more things to come.

In the video linked above, Snow also gets pucker-face when asked indirectly about his cancer. Man, it must take, um, nerve to stand up in front of the world like that and start tearing up.

Clearly he is the man for the job.

(h/t to Dean Esmay for the link, and for the boxing analogies.)

Also: It's Tuesday, where is that Rove indictment, anyway? You don't think maybe the press lied yet again do you?

Update: Verizon is stating that it didn't provide data to the feds and wasn't even asked to. BellSouth Corp. said the same thing. (h/t Rob Port.)

Another fabricated story, designed to embarass George W. Bush, just simply made up out of whole cloth?

Impossible!

Or maybe . . . not so impossible.

Posted by Ken McCracken · 16 May 2006 03:33 PM · Comments (6)

Quotational Therapy: Part 99 -- President George W., On Immigration.

Our First President

Immigration + assimilation:

Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has the right to concentrate your affections. The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

-Read George Washington's Farewell Address in its entirety here.

Incidentally, I thought President Bush's immigration speech tonight was excellent.

But, then again, I 1) still like Bush and 2) am not all hot and bothered my immigration, so what do I know?

Previous Quotational Therapy Session:

Howard Dean, Confused & Confusing On Gay Rights.

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

Posted by Will Franklin · 15 May 2006 09:02 PM · Comments (3)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 332 -- Inflation Out Of Control.

If These Are "Record" Energy Prices, How Is It That Inflation Is So Low?-

The average annual inflation rate from 2001 to 2005 was 2.56%. Indeed, despite "record" energy prices, inflation remains tame:

Compare the recent numbers to the average annual rate of inflation from 1993 to 2000: 2.6125%.

Or 1977-1980: 9.725%.

Even with "record" energy prices, a housing boom, and GDP growth well above modern historical averages (let's go back 35 years), inflation is just plain under control:

Now, of all the economic indicators out there, inflation is one of the harder ones to tie to an administration's economic policies. Nevertheless, inflation (along with job creation and the stock market) is one of the primary shortcuts Americans use to judge the health of the economy.

Although inflation is low today, the overwhelming media hype about gas prices has likely contributed to a false sense that we once again have 1970s-style runaway inflation.

Thus, even though inflation is low, and American presidents usually (and, usually unfairly) get credit or blame for inflation, President Bush is likely getting credit/blame for high inflation.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Tax Cuts Worked, Majorities Matter.

Posted by Will Franklin · 15 May 2006 02:03 PM · Comments (2)

The Ninth Mainstream Melee -- The Tax Cut Boom.

It's a non-blog adventure.

The Wall Street Journal: "The Tax Cut Record"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Tax cuts produced the economic boom we have today.

Super Succinct Snippet-

If ever there was a market test of economic policy, the last three years have been it. The stock market has recovered from its implosion in Bill Clinton's last year in office, unemployment is down to 4.7%, and growth has averaged 3.9% in the three years since those tax cuts passed--well above the post-World War II average and more than twice the growth rate in Euroland.
....

Over the past 40 years, the U.S. has had three great experiments in tax-cutting, and each one has worked even better than advertised: The Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s, the Reagan cuts of 1981, and now the Bush tax cuts of 2003. The political tragedy is that the first of those two were bipartisan, while the Bush tax cuts have had little Democratic support.

During the Cold War, Democrats often went out of their way to avoid looking like socialists. Today, all but a few Democrats have shed all pretense of support for free enterprise. They're here, they're Marxists, get used to it.

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

II.

National Review: "How the Boom Began"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Bush deserves a little (a lot) of credit for the economic boom.

Super Succinct Snippet-

If you find a turtle on top of a fence post, Bill Clinton used to say, it means someone put it there. It was his folksy way to explain why anything good that happened was no accident, and he should get credit.

It's hard to get credit, when the media hype gas prices more than 30:1 over brief mentions of good economic news.

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

III.

Forbes: "Are Women Earning More Than Men? "

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Women who prioritize family usually make less than men. Women who prioritize career often make more than men.

Super Succinct Snippet-

...women entrepreneurs earn 50% less than their male counterparts.
....

...money was the primary motivator for only 29% of women, versus 76% of men. Women prioritized flexibility, fulfillment, autonomy and safety.

....

...among workers who have never been married and never had children, women earn 117% of what men do.

....

I want my daughters to know that working 44 versus 34 hours per week leads to more than twice the pay.

Knowledge is power.

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

IV.

The Washington Times: "How gas price controls sparked '70s shortages"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Want to make a tiny problem a huge one? Go socialist on the problem.

Super Succinct Snippet-

The public -- as it does today -- wanted low prices. But the artificially depressed pump prices imposed during the oil crisis of 1973 -- which stayed in place in various iterations through 1980 -- brought about lines at gas stations and an artificial shortage of gas....
Increased production around the world drove down the price of oil and caused the tax to generate less revenue than expected. By the time it expired in 1988, the tax had generated $40 billion in revenue instead of the $175 billion estimated by the Treasury. After oil prices collapsed in 1986, the tax produced no revenue at all.

And yet, if Democrats take back Congress, this is precisely the kind of thing they would rush to pass.

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

Bloomberg: "Texas Economy Surges on Gains From Katrina Rebuilding, Energy"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

The Texas economy is roaring.

Super Succinct Snippet-

Texas, the second-largest U.S. state by population, added 274,000 jobs in the year ended March 31, according to the state Workforce Commission. The pace was the fastest since 2000. The state estimated that its budget surplus will almost double to $8.2 billion, second only to California's, for the two years ending in August 2007.
....

Texas recovered more slowly than the rest of the country after the U.S. economy cooled in 2001-02. Sales-tax collections slumped in 2003, and state lawmakers cut spending by $10 billion to balance a two-year budget at $117 billion.

Now, the 9.9 million-person workforce in the state is expanding at about 3.1 percent a year, more than twice as fast as the rest of the U.S.

....

Production of goods and services in 2004 totaled $881 billion, the third-most of any state and more than neighboring Mexico, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Last year, single-family housing starts jumped 15 percent to 205,462, Fed data show.

Texas's economic growth may outpace the nation's for a second year. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn this month raised her growth forecasts to 4.9 percent in 2006 and to 4.7 percent for 2007.

This year's estimate exceeds the 3.4 percent median for U.S. growth in a Bloomberg survey of economists, done April 28 to May 8. The Texas economy expanded 5.2 percent last year, when the U.S. grew 3.5 percent.

....

State taxes on oil and gas production are forecast to jump $2.5 billion, or 77.5 percent, in the current two-year budget, according to Strayhorn. Those taxes now account for about 2.4 percent of state tax revenue.

Imagine how much greater (and more widespread) these already great numbers would be if we hadn't been discouraging domestic energy exploration and production for all of these years.

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The previous Mainstream Melee.

WILLisms.com and many other blogs sometimes focus too much on our fellow bloggers, while excluding well-done professional journalism from our posts.

The Mainstream Melee is a quick survey of five non-blog sources, coming atchya at completely random intervals. The stories are either underreported, particularly well-written, interesting, or otherwise important to the big picture. But generally there will be a theme of some kind in the choices.

Posted by Will Franklin · 15 May 2006 11:17 AM · Comments (4)

Sunday Night Heidi Weimaraner Puppy Update: 18½ Weeks Old.

Heidi has been basking in her fame all week long:

Good grief.

For more pictures of Heidi, click the "Read More »" extended entry button below.

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Last week's update.
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Posted by Will Franklin · 14 May 2006 06:09 PM · Comments (4)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 331 -- Majorities Matter.

Or, Why The GOP Should Learn To Start Worrying & Stop Loving Lincoln Chafee-

When former Republican Jim Jeffords switched parties shortly after President Bush took office in 2001, effectively handing control of the Senate to Tom Daschle and the Democrats, many in the GOP were furious.

"How dare he?!"

"Where is the loyalty!?"

And so on.

And indeed, although moderate tax relief packages wound up making their way to the President's desk in his first two years in office, "THE BUSH TAX CUTS" were not possible until after Republicans took a majority in the Senate in November of 2002. Indeed, it was not until 2003 that the American people finally got their big, important tax relief.

And what a relief it's been:

In some ways, the departure of Jim Jeffords from the GOP was a blessing for the Republican Party. Over the short-term, however, from 2001 to 2002, the Jeffords defection meant that major tax relief had to be delayed, denied, and deferred, until Republicans could once again win a majority in the Senate.

Shedding such dead weight (Jeffords) allowed the Republican coalition to better stand for something. No longer having to constantly compromise for the sake of Jim Jeffords, the party's legislative agenda was injected with focus and purpose. Without Jeffords, it was much easier to energize "the base" we hear so much about. Grassroots money flooded in. The 2002 and 2004 elections were stunningly successful in their own unique ways. Giving up one RINO (Republican In Name Only) in exchange for several true conservatives was-- ultimately-- great for the Republican legislative agenda.

But, Jim Jeffords was not the only problematic member of the GOP coalition. Several remain. Several are uniquely infuriating, and distinctly terrible. One among those several stands out, however.

It's Lincoln Chafee. He's awful. Even worse than the others who shall remain nameless in this post.

Chafee, for example, joined a couple of Republicans and nearly all Democrats in voting against tax relief this week. If you glance through his interest group ratings, you'll notice that voting for higher taxes fit his modus operandi perfectly.

And yet, the NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) prominently supported liberal Chafee against a conservative primary opponent.

Is it any wonder that the NRSC is the only one of the major Republican organizations lagging in the fundraising department:

Let's get real, here. The slide in support for Congressional Republicans from "the base" is all about folks like Lincoln Chafee. Conservatives are not rejecting conservatism. They (we) are rejecting Republicans who are insufficiently conservative.

For all intents and purposes, Chafee has defected from the GOP just as much as Jim Jeffords defected in 2001. Chafee has declared war on the Republican legislative agenda. If Democrats so much as sniff a majority, Chafee's as good as gone. Unfortunately, some GOP higher-ups have misinterpreted (mangled?) the concept of having a "big tent" party. So, instead of telling Chafee to take a hike, or letting Chafee take a hike on his own, the leadership has accomodated him, coddled him, protected him, and otherwise supported him.

What the Republican Party needs most of all right now-- and is likely least of all willing to do right now due to low poll numbers-- is shed some dead weight.

Congressional Republicans ought to understand, believe in, and defend graphs (and accompanying commentary) like this (.pdf):

...it is important to note that up to 40 percent of federal income tax filers cannot receive further tax relief because these taxpayers do not in effect pay federal income taxes. Millions of families, many in the bottom fifth, have either zero tax liability or receive a net transfer from the government due to the refundable portion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and/or the Child Tax Credit (CTC).
....

...the average tax liability for returns reporting income under $20,000 was negative for tax year 2003. While reliance on averages alone can be misleading, the data suggest that tens of millions of tax returns actually reported either zero or negative federal income tax liability.

Chafee might understand it. He does not believe in it. And he'd never be caught dead defending it.

Or, take this Donald Luskin piece on the post-tax cut economy versus the pre-tax cut economy (with dazzling graphs added for elucidation!):

In the 17 months from November 2001 (NBER’s official recession end-date) to April 2003 (my proposed recession end-date), real GDP grew 3.2 percent. But in the 36 months from April 2003 to now, real GDP has grown much more: 11.3 percent.

From November 2001 to April 2003 the unemployment rate actually went up — from 5.5 percent to 6 percent. And 1 million payroll jobs were destroyed. Talk about a jobless recovery! But from April 2003 to now, the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.7 percent and 5.1 million payroll jobs have been created.

From November 2001 to April 2003 the S&P 500 fell 18 percent. Some bull market! But from April 2003 to now, it is up 51 percent. Now that’s a bull market.

From November 2001 to April 2003 corporate earnings grew a paltry 7 percent. But from April 2003 to present they’ve