Updated Sidebar

By the way, I recently updated the sidebar for the blog. I got re-organized stuff, got rid of sites I never use and added a bunch that I use everyday. Check 'em out (the one's on top seem the most broadly applicable) and I hope you can find some use for them. By the way, if you find anything out there that seems worthy of having up here for a while, but not inbedded in a post, shoot me an email and I'll put it under "More Insightless-ness."

P.S. I find this extremely ironic. I just spell checked this thing and it wanted to change the word "blog". This is a site hosted by Blogger.com. Come on fellas, that should be a no-brainer.

Hate from the pulpit in London & a worthwhile solution

The Christian Science Monitor has a very good article on Islamic radicals and their preachings. It's paints a scary picture:

Young, independent, and streetwise, they are preaching in urban slang outside the confines of Britain's mosques. They are helping teens and 20-somethings beat drugs and alcohol. And they are inspiring a new pool of impressionable young Muslims to consider killing their fellow Britons.

But tempers it with this:

These radical bands constitute a small fraction of London's 1 million Muslims. But their freewheeling ideology - hardened in the jihadi echo chambers of cliques like Abu Osama's - is creating a new subculture within Britain's Islamic community. So far, the growing influence of these informal, maverick groups has gone largely undetected - and unchecked.

Also, see this section that describes the behind the scenes action from the reporters.

As they observed the street sermon and spoke with those in the crowd, they found the comments chilling. "In the Middle East, you often hear a lot of bravado about jihad from young Muslims," John says. "But these men were older. The Iraqi talked about his children. Another wondered if his father's work visa contractually obligated him to protect Britain. There was a specificity about their discussion about striking at Britain or Iraq that was particularly worrying."

Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis has a solution (inspired by a Tom Friedman editorial in the NYT). Let's shine the spotlight those who spew ideas that attempt to inspire hate and murder or make excuses for such things, and show them for what they are. Here's Friedman's take:

Sunlight is more important than you think. Those who spread hate do not like to be exposed, noted Yigal Carmon, the founder of Memri, which monitors the Arab-Muslim media. The hate spreaders assume that they are talking only to their own, in their own language, and can get away with murder. When their words are spotlighted, they often feel pressure to retract, defend or explain them.

"Whenever they are exposed, they react the next day," Mr. Carmon said. "No one wants to be exposed in the West as a preacher of hate."

We also need to spotlight the "excuse makers," the former State Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. When you live in an open society like London, where anyone with a grievance can publish an article, run for office or start a political movement, the notion that blowing up a busload of innocent civilians in response to Iraq is somehow "understandable" is outrageous. "It erases the distinction between legitimate dissent and terrorism," Mr. Rubin said, "and an open society needs to maintain a clear wall between them."

There is no political justification for 9/11, 7/7 or 7/21. As the Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen put it: "These terrorists are what they do." And what they do is murder.

Jarvis has a variation on this idea; use bloggers to take on this task:

A fine idea. But I don't think the State Department is who should do this.

Bloggers should. News organizations should follow. And I'd be delighted to see religious leaders join in.

This seems like a fine project for Global Voices or such a group.

Why not create the Digg of terrorism: We all get to nominate examples in each of Friedman's categories and we all get to vote them up to the home page.

We all link to the worst of the worst to turn the spotlight on it.

Those who can volunteer to translate the offending material.

We convince news organizations to get RSS feeds of terrorism Diggs and report on those who are inciting and supporting the terrorists.

We pepper those associated with these inciters and excusers -- their governments, their religious leaders, their media outlets -- with protests:
The whole world is watching.

The point is not to stop the speech. The point is to expose the speakers. And why rely on a government body, especially the U.S. State Department, to do this. Rely instead on the civilized citizens of the world.

Why, it even comes with cute slogans suitable for T-shirts: Digg out terrorism! Digg terrorism a grave! Digg dirt!

I couldn't agree more.

*Nerd alert

I warned you. I just read this kick ass interview with Bruce Campbell at Ain't it Cool News. I highly reccomend you do to.

Not to beat a dead horse, but...

David Adesnik from Oxblog discusses the Wilson/Rover deal in an excellent post here. The information he links to, is quite compelling and makes a point similar to Andrew's.

Actually all of the posts from Oxblog today are pretty damn good. These guys are on it when they put stuff up there. Hmmm. Well this was this one made me laugh, perhaps wrongly (I haven't decided yet). Hee:

"DUMBLEDORE APPOINTED TO SUPREME COURT OF WIZARDRY: More than one reader (two, in fact) e-mailed to express their disappointment/anger at my inconsiderate revelation that Hermione is pregnant and that Voldemort may be the father.

Of course, I completely made up the whole thing. I assumed that my little joke was so ridiculous that no one would assume that this is what actually happens in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Then again, JK Rowling keeps telling us that her series will become progressively darker as it approaches its climax, so perhaps it isn't so unreasonable to believe that Voldemort would impregnate Hermione.

Actually, come to think of it, given some of the bizarre Freudian imagery in the earliest works from the Rowling opus, perhaps teenage pregnancy isn't all that far-fetched.

But come on folks, we're talking about Hermione here -- one of the most talented wizards of her generation. Surely as part of her studies of Defense Against the Dark Arts she has perfected the incantation of spells such as Putonsome Latexia, Ingesta Pillium, or (if worst comes to worst) Withdrawum Prematurum."

E-paper

You know how pictures in the Harry Potter books, mostly from newspapers, move around? Well they can do that kind of thing for real now.

Rove

I’ve held off blogging about the whole Rove/Plame affair until now because despite all the breathless proclamations by the democrats and the press that Cooper’s revelation proved Wilson’s allegations of illegal character assassination; that charge just never made sense because:

1.) Rove is arguably the most crafty political machine ever to work in the White House. Why, after 2 years of knowing that it would be publicly disclosed that he talked to Cooper and Novak would he simply just sit there and take it quietly from the Democrats and Media as he did this week? Do you think maybe the press should have been just the slightest bit suspicious the White House wasn’t fighting back? Haven’t they been burned many, many times before?
2.) The last 2 years has revealed that Wilson is about as familiar with the concept of honesty as the typical Frenchman is to deodorant (Happy Bastille Day!). He lied about how he got to Niger, what he found there and about how his report was received (Top 10 Lies).
3.) Everyone who knew Wilson and Plame – coworkers, friends, neighbors -- already knew Plame worked for the CIA for the last 5 years. This common knowledge that Valerie Plame was an agent at the CIA was all that Novak revealed in his infamous editorial. It wasn’t until 2 days later that liberal hack David Corn was the first to suggest that Valerie Plame was a NOC or spy after interviewing Wilson.
4.) Plus his haircut just makes him look like a total douche bag.

Despite having access to these facts for nearly 2 years, the press still responded to Cooper’s revelation like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Disdain for conservatives clearly took precedence over occam’s razor. Morning edition gleefully edited together contentious press conferences with Scott McClellan with those from the Nixon era and the NYTimes called for Rove to be fired. The only conclusion one can draw is that yet again, the Washington press corps spared no effort in pursuing their dream scenario which would end with Rove being frog marched out of the White House rather than the most likely and obvious – that Wilson is a fatuous buffoon whose desire to appear important ultimately blew the cover of his wife.

This John Tierney editorial in the NYTimes best sums up the most likely outcome of this whole Plame nonsense.

Karl Rove's version of events now looks less like a smear and more like the truth: Mr. Wilson's investigation, far from being requested and then suppressed by a White House afraid of its contents, was a low-level report of not much interest to anyone outside the Wilson household….
… it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.
It would be logical to name it the Not-a-gate scandal, but I prefer a bilingual variation. It may someday make a good trivia question:
What do you call a scandal that's not scandalous?
Nadagate.
The only real thing in doubt now is if Rove will show mercy on the MSM which so overzealously clamored for his demise. Probably not.

UPDATE: Here's a perfect example of the unbiased coverage Karl inspires (Listen for the "thats Bullsh_t").

UPDATE: BizzyBlog thinks "Nadagate" may be the beginning of the end for the Times.

LAST UPDATE: Excellent column by Christopher Hitchens.

News I live for…

Every so often when combing through news and blogs I find an article which so reinforces my prejudices it makes me giddy.

After leading the silence for the London bombings at an Élysée Palace garden party, M Chirac was asked about France’s losing streak and what is seen as Britain’s triumphant prosperity under Tony Blair.
He said: “I have a lot of esteem for the British people and for Tony Blair. But I do not think the British model is one that we should envy.
“Certainly, their unemployment is lower than ours. But if you take the big elements in society — health policy, the fight against poverty, . . . spending involving the future — you notice that we are much, much better placed than the English.”

The fall of the Soviet Empire destroyed the left’s hope that capitalism could ever be usurped. The immanent (within 10 years) economic collapse of France -- the standard-bearer of the European nanny state -- will permanently discredit socialism’s half-breed descendant: progressivism. After old Europe’s fall what will be the left’s model state? China? With such an execrable track record, how can leftist intellectuals continue to push policy based on such an obviously flawed ideology? You can only distance so many f’d up relatives as “black sheep”.
In 1980, France, Germany and the US had a per-capita income that was roughly equal with the UK trailing far behind. Since then Thatcher and Reagan have left old Europe in the dust.

UPDATE: God's piling on.

Re-do. Sorta.

So, I realize after looking at this again, I wasn't very clear. I meant to seperate the serious thinkers, i.e., the Wolfowitz's and Cohen's, from the idolaters. I didn't do that by any stretch. In a rush to get the thought out of my head, I lumped some men whom I've come to admire, with fools whom I don't.

Really, my rant should have had little to do with the fools who act as little more than an echo chamber, and more to do with what I take to be thoughtful critique.

Here's a few quotes that explicate the gist of what I was feeling. All of the following I take as valuable information on the current administration that doesn't follow the usuall call and response from the White House to pudit. I hope to expand on this, but for now I have homework calling me. Belgravia Dispatch took from this article by Bill Kristol and Gary Schmitt:
"And there is no question that American forces are stretched thin. Having rejected any idea of significantly expanding the size of American ground forces, the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon is on the verge of breaking the backs of the National Guard and the active duty Army. Moreover, there is no question that the U.S. is ill prepared for another serious crisis that might require the use of American military forces.

But the cost of reducing troop levels in Iraq or Afghanistan will be high. Neither Iraq's nor Afghanistan's militaries will be ready to take on the burden of fighting their respective insurgencies in the time frame Secretary Rumsfeld is pushing for. Creating new and effective institutions like an Iraqi or Afghan army takes time, as does fighting an insurgency. Neither task here is at all impossible but, if rushed, we do risk ultimate failure for lack of patience.

Secretary Rumsfeld has time and again said that he defers to his generals in Iraq about the number of troops needed. No one vaguely familiar with how decisions are made in this Pentagon believes that to be the case. And, indeed, as visiting members of Congress and military reporters have repeatedly reported from Iraq, the military officers there know quite well that more troops are needed, not less.

The British memo notes that, while Pentagon officials favor "a relatively bold reduction," the battlefield commanders "approach is more cautious." That is one way to put it. Another would be to say that Secretary Rumsfeld is putting the president's strategic vision at risk, while those soldiering in Iraq are trying to save a policy in the face of inadequate resources."

From Eliot Cohen's article in the Washinton Post (linked above):
"You supported the Iraq war when it was launched in 2003. If you had known then what you know now, would you still have been in favorof it?

As I watched President Bush give his speech at Fort Bragg to rally support for the war the other week, I contemplated this question from a different vantage than my usual professorial perch. Our oldest son now dresses like the impassive soldiers who served as stage props for that event; he too wears crossed rifles, jump wings and a Ranger tab. Before long he will fight in the war that I advocated, and that the president was defending.

So it is not an academic matter when I say that what I took to be the basic rationale for the war still strikes me as sound. Iraq was a policy problem that we could evade in words but not escape in reality. But what I did not know then that I do know now is just how incompetent we would be at carrying out that task. And that's what prevents me from answering this question with an unhesitating yes...

...But a pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat "Phase IV" -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the "real" war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs...

...A variety of emotions wash over me as I reflect on our Iraq war: Disbelief at the length of time it took to call an insurgency by its name. Alarm at our continuing failure to promote at wartime speed the colonels and generals who have a talent for fighting it, while also failing to sweep aside those who do not. Incredulity at seeing decorations pinned on the chests and promotions on the shoulders of senior leaders -- both civilians and military -- who had the helm when things went badly wrong. Disdain for the general who thinks Job One is simply whacking the bad guys and who, ever conscious of public relations, cannot admit that American soldiers have tortured prisoners or, in panic, killed innocent civilians. Contempt for the ghoulish glee of some who think they were right in opposing the war, and for the blithe disregard of the bungles by some who think they were right in favoring it. A desire -- barely controlled -- to slap the highly educated fool who, having no soldier friends or family, once explained to me that mistakes happen in all wars, and that the casualties are not really all that high and that I really shouldn't get exercised about them."

From Seeker Blogs compilation of exit interviews with Paul Wolfowitz:
"What is it like - i.e., decision-making in the real world, and the least-worst-choice problem?

MB: "But how certain do you feel that you are right?"

PW: "I think someone once said that decision-making is usually trying to choose the least crappy of the various alternatives. It does seem to me that so many things we have to decide are fifty-five—forty-five decisions, or sixty—forty decisions. Arrogance is one of the worst failings in a senior decision-maker. I really admire people like President Bush and Harry Truman, who were good at it. Dean Acheson said about Truman that he was free of that most crippling of emotions, regret. Once he made a decision, he moved on. And I think that’s what characterizes really good decision-makers. I think this president is one. He accepts the fact that if he’s batting six hundred, he’s doing pretty well. I was in the Oval Office the day he signed the executive order to invade Iraq, and I know how painful that was. He actually went out in the Rose Garden just to be alone for a little while. It’s hard to imagine how hard that was. And of course you can’t be sure, maybe ten years from now or five years from now, how it will look. We still don’t know how it will turn out, so you can’t possibly be sure you were right.

PW: "I still think it was right. I’d advise it all over again if I had to. There is this sort of intellectual notion that there is such a thing as perfect knowledge, and you wait to get perfect knowledge before you make a decision. In the first place, even if there were perfect knowledge, it would be too late by the time you got it. And secondly, there is no such thing. Accepting the imperfection of knowledge is a very important part of being a great decision-maker. I’m not. I understand the process intellectually, less so emotionally. I feel a lot more comfortable about any decision I make if I feel like I have thought through all the arguments—even if at the end of the day there is not a mathematical formula that tells you which one is right. But at least you won’t discover a factor you hadn’t even considered."

Legit gripes on Iraq

I saw this article featured prominently on Belgravia Dispatch and was floored by it. It got me thinkin. The hard-core punditry from the right has collectively reflected the President's tendency to admit no wrong. While I can understand the political expediency of those decisions from Bush's perspective, it makes those pundits look like a bunch of chump, kiss-asses.

Their reasons become rationalizations and bad ideas are allowed to fester, divide, and multiply. Bad ideas should be allowed to fail in the hope that good ideas will flourish and take their place. The failure to be critical is a prime incubator for bad ideas. Now this isn't all of those on the right, just those who kowtow. Those for whom, every idea unleashed by the Republican Party is a good one. They know who they are.

Even granting that the Administration is to be lauded for enacting bold policy in the face of terrorism, bad ideas on this stage are unacceptable. Why are those who have checked off on bad ideas continuing to do so? They should be canned - forthwith! Instead they've been given medals. (By the way, most of the above also follows for the left, but they have had a dearth of compelling ideas lately, so they don't get to lead discussion)

These posts on Eliot Cohen and Paul Wolfowitz show men who are very serious thinkers, who advocated for the War in Iraq and who now have reservations about how it has unfolded. In particular, Wolfowitz comes off not as the weird, comb licking zealot he's been made out to be, but as a smart, though somewhat aloof, cookie. It is my hope that their critiques shake things up a bit and get us on the right track.

P.S. If you need any more to piss you off, check this out.

I feel like expressing some thoughts today. If Karl Rove really is the source of the Valerie whats-her-name leak, and he really did it as a political tit-for-tat against Joe Wilson, he should go to jail.

National Geographic has made a documentary version of Jared Diamond's Pullitzer Prize winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Theoretically speaking, I think it is one of the sources of Jeff Sachs's book. (the theory being that geography, climate, geology, and biology have determined the fate of societies, not culture).

I'm glad to be back in Indiana. Chicago treated me pretty well, but I like having open space and accessible parking. I've often said that modern technology is lessening the advantages that big cities have over small towns. I got satellite, the internet, netflix, libraries (which I suppose are low-tech)....I can get all the culture I need. Also, since Bloomington is a university town, I can also get lots of good ethnic food and hear some good live bands....and gawk at attractive women.

The Iraq war....I guess the thing that bothers me the most is that the insurgency seems to have taken our leaders by surprise...they act like "nobody could've known this would happen," which is total B.S. People in my college, undergrads who don't know anything, DID predict this type of situation. I cannot believe that nobody in the foreign policy establishment did the same thing. I tentatively agree with the Bush policy (get out when Iraqis can fight the insurgency), but I also agree with Rashid Khalidi from Columbia...the insurgency will not stop or abate until we're gone. We aren't going to beat these people militarily.

Conservative Perspective of African Foreign Aid

Here’s an interesting counterpoint to Sachs/Geldof/Bono argument that ever greater amounts of aid to Africa is the surest path to it’s salvation.

Those of us who love Africa almost never recognize it in the press (Michael Wines of the New York Times, based in Cape Town, is a refreshing exception), or the movies (typically portraying "natural" Africans suffering an unfair destiny of drought, famine, disease, and colonialism). The racist stereotypes of Africans are so deeply ingrained in the guilt-driven worldview of Western elites that it is almost impossible to get to the truth. Even many Africans, who in my experience are generally the most clear-eyed people on earth about their own circumstances, have bought into the conventional wisdom of a continent doomed to starvation and disease, for whom the only hope is first-world largesse.

The truth is precisely the opposite, as the young Kenyan economist James Shikwati told Germany’s Der Spiegel on the Fourth of July, on the eve of the G8 Summit. The Spiegel interviewer spoke enthusiastically about the steps the G8 countries were about to take (forgiving debt, increasing aid, etc.) and Shikwati erupted, "for God’s sake, just stop." He went on: The good intentions of the West were terribly damaging to Africans.

Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
Quite right. Because most of the aid goes either directly into the pockets of corrupt "leaders," or indirectly to sponsor their tribes and political parties (usually one and the same). Shikwati gives a great example: Famine hits Kenya, so Kenya goes to the U.N. and begs. So corn is shipped to Kenya. Whereupon:

“A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN’s World Food Program.”

And if there were another famine next year, the Kenyan farmers, having been wiped out by the U.N.’s aid program, wouldn’t be able to help. A fine mess. Shikwati quotes the legendary "emperor" of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa: "The French Government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it."

Legit gripes on Iraq

I saw this article featured prominently on Belgravia Dispatch and was floored by it. It got me thinkin. The hard-core punditry from the right has collectively reflected the President's tendency to admit no wrong. While I can understand the political expediency of those decisions from Bush's perspective, it makes those pundits look like a bunch of chump, kiss-asses.

Their reasons become rationalizations and bad ideas are allowed to fester, divide, and multiply. Bad ideas should be allowed to fail in the hope that good ideas will flourish and take their place. The failure to be critical is a prime incubator for bad ideas. Now this isn't all of those on the right, just those who kowtow. Those for whom, every idea unleashed by the Republican Party is a good one. They know who they are.

Even granting that the Administration is to be lauded for enacting bold policy in the face of terrorism, bad ideas on this stage are unacceptable. Why are those who have checked off on bad ideas continuing to do so? They should be canned - forthwith! Instead they've been given medals. (By the way, most of the above also follows for the left, but they have had a dearth of compelling ideas lately, so they don't get to lead discussion)

These posts on Eliot Cohen and http://seekerblog.com/archives/20050705/wolfowitz-the-exit-interviews/ show men who are very serious thinkers, who advocated for the War in Iraq and who now have reservations about how it has unfolded. In particular, Wolfowitz comes off not as the weird, comb licking zealot he's been made out to be, but as a smart, though somewhat aloof, cookie. It is my hope that their critiques shake things up a bit and get us on the right track.

P.S. If you need any more to piss you off, check this out.

Bombings in London

Instapundit and Jeff Jarvis have some usefull roundups on this mornings attacks on the London transit system.

Sufjan does Arkansas

Sufjan Stevens has fast become one of my favorite musicians. He just released "Come on feel the Illinoise", the second state he has transformed into song (he plans to do all 50!). Sufjan just recorded a song for NPR called "The Lord God Bird" about Brinkley, AR and their ivory-billed woodpecker. Check it out...

a not-too-bad article on development aid

From Nicholas Kristof of the NYT, one of the few public voices consistently addressing international poverty. He correctly praises President Bush in comparison to Clinton on aid to Africa. Not bad.

Wierd and Scary

The Christian Science Monitor reports that suspected terrorists (or rather terrorist enablers) are using profits from stolen baby formula to finance their operations.

"The rings I identified dealing in stolen infant formula are operated mostly by Middle Easterners," says Charles Miller, a loss-prevention consultant and author of the report [from the National Retail Federation]. They typically organize the rings, pay the shoplifters (who are mostly from Latin America), repackage the formula, and resell it. Out of $30 billion in annual retail theft, about $7 billion of infant formula is stolen and resold for a tidy profit, Mr. Miller estimates.

bye bye abortion

I see absolutely no reason why George Bush would nominate a moderate to the Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. In light of the recent "nuclear option" hubub, I see absolutely no way for democrats to block Bush's nominee. If I'm right on these two points, I see absolutely no way for Roe V. Wade to stand.

As I disagree with the Roe V. Wade decision, I'm not too sorry about this. However, I am concerned about other cultural issues, i.e., gay marriage, church/state, censorship, and privacy rights.

A new topic to rant on

Since I’ve pretty well beaten the topics of media and academic bias to death, I’m going to toss out another one that’s near and dear; public education reform.

I think this recent editorial in the NYTimes demonstrates just how messed up the current system is. Essentially the article laments the fact that 20 percent of teachers must work summer jobs the authors feel are beneath “similarly educated professionals” to make ends meet. Naturally the author’s solution for this inhumanity is to raise teacher salaries across the board.

The salient fact this editorial is missing is that there are no other remaining fields outside of government where “similarly educated professionals” belong to unions. Since the only real value of unions was to protect the largely interchangeable and disposable unskilled pool of immigrant human capital from declining working conditions it should come as no surprise that teachers are now valued by the economy as if they are interchangeable and disposable. Without exposing individual educators to the same risk/reward forces of accountability which are daily realities to “similarly educated professionals” in the private sector, there can be no real societal or economic justification for the kind of across the board pay raises the editorial proposes.

Teaching is an enormously important career and requires highly specialized skills and education and I feel it’s to the detriment of society that an anachronistic barrier in the form of teacher unions stand in the way of being able to justly reward teachers that are performing at a high level(and fire those that are not).

Interesting Documentary

Here's an interesting online video documentary about Academic bias:

http://academicbias.com/bw101-mov.html

I particularly like the economics professor in the beginning talking about "cutting edge feminist Marxism".

Bush Mind Control

For the last few years I thought Andrew Sullivan’s contention that Bush had mind control and used it to drive his adversaries mad was pretty funny, but now I’m beginning to believe it’s true:

Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War
In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.
They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.
The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes -- and that a British memo on "fixed" intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides' entreaties to end the session.

The best part, however was the following:

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic." Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer." At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.

UPDATE: Here’s an actual sound clip of the event