Free kibbles

Supreme Court packed for D.C. gun ban case.

Cheney explains the link between Saddam and al Qaeda through Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Liberals hate to face the facts. Contrary to the initial mainstream media reports, the study of Iraq's documents shows extensive links between Saddam and al Qaeda affilitates as well as Saddam's much broader material support for other jihadists than previously understood. Other documents validated after this study show a personal meeting between Osama bin Laden and an Iraqi Intelligence director.

Bombs in Baghdad as Cheney and McCain tour. The Iraq war costs $12 billion a month. Poll of Iraqis shows confusion. How can 7 out of 10 want us to leave if 4 out of 10 want us to be more involved? The fact of the matter is, we want our troops home and Iraqis want out troops home, but neither Iraqis nor Americans are willing to pay the price of losing the war to bring them home.

Montreal set to break all-time snow record. Now this is something to note. For all the talk about global warming, the planet never got hotter than it was during the 30s (and that's only because so many temperature stations are placed inappropriately). But this winter is one for the record books.

Supermarket security breech exposes credit and debit card numbers of costumers.

Increasing productivity may offset the economic crises of a demographic winter. But the US has had both increasing productivity and an increasing population for centuries. Productivity increases must accelerate to retain the same standard of living with a declining population. It's all about wealth generation, which is the product of the number of workers and the productivity of the workers.

Article describes why the Democrats cannot have a rational debate on how to deal with Iraq. While this article deals with Obama, the same can be said of Clinton. This is one reason the Democrats will lose the election in Nov. The American people understand the consequences of losing in Iraq, and they won't stand for it. Even if the Democrat changes positions, they can't compete with McCain on the issue.

Michigan Democrat redo vote unlikely. Florida Democrat redo vote scrapped. This will hurt the Democrats in those states.

Obama's big speech on race is an attempt to put the controversy over his pastor behind him. He's trying to distance himself from the comments but not the man. I doubt it will work for him. I think it's fair to say that the country is stained by the original sin of slavery. I have no problem with that comment. The same is true with women's rights. The problem is that Democrats want to keep the country trapped in a racial and gender divide by constantly exploiting, exaggerating and beating up the people over them. We won't be able to move beyond those divisions until Democrats stop exploiting them for the sake of political power and let them go. 56% of poll takers said they were less likely to vote for Obama because of his pastor's comments. The other 44% must not have heard the comments.

How the founding fathers got religious freedom right.

Christopher Hitchens defends the invasion of Iraq.

Ann Applebaum thinks the Tibetan riots hint at the end of the Chinese empire.

Cato thinks the Fed bailout of Bear Stearns was a good choice to stop the collapse of the financial markets. I think there weren't any good options, and this was probably the least bad. But this article hints at another root cause of the subprime problem I hadn't realized before - poor incentives for making good loans. When the mortgage company sells the loan, the buyer has no way to access the risk, and the mortgage company has no incentive to care about risk because it plans to sell the loan anyway. Yikes. I guess my question is why would anybody buy a loan if they couldn't access the risk?

Cato suggests a very different lesson from Iraq - that counterinsurgency is hard and often unsuccessful. That's the because the class of cultures undermines almost every aspect of counterinsurgency. And the US does not have the national temperament for long, drawn out wars. Counterinsurgency is even harder if you don't perform it for 4 years while the insurgency grows.

Cato states the obvious when it calls for a review of our post Soviet policy toward Russia. Cato thinks we should negotiate accommodation with Russia in order to advance our core foreign policy goals. I think our core foreign policy goal should be to end Russia and China's new Cold War of Terror.

Cato fears a dramatic Fed rate cut and points out most of our financial problems were caused by bad government policy to begin with, and more bad government policy will just bring about another, worse, crisis in the future.

Here's a microcosm of how stupid government is flaming the illegal immigration fires. Instead of paying enough money to hire English speaking firefighters for safety, the government hired a bunch of illegal aliens that passed a law that all supervisors must speak the languages of his group. So Americans won't take the job because it pays too little, and American supervisors are being demoted because they aren't bilingual. Government is not working in the interest of Americans.

It sounds like Hillary Clinton is trying to bypass Obama and take on McCain in an attempt to fool voters into thinking she's the leading Democrat. Declaring that the Iraq was is lost might help her with the MoveOn.org, far left power brokers who control the Democrat party. And that's who she's trying to win over - the superdelegates. But it will cost her in the general election if she wins. You can bet Bush will announce another significant troop reduction in the fall, shortly before the election.

Bob Barr is unhappy that Georgia is considering a law that will allow police to seize cars loaned to illegal aliens. The comments actually provide more info on the law than the essay. Still, this is a draconian penalty, imo. Once a car is seized by the police, getting it back will be an expensive nightmare, whether that's what legislators intend or not. Police love lording their power of regular people.

Obama calls himself "an imperfect vessel for your hopes and dreams." He bought his own hype long before he tried selling it to us, imo. I have to give him credit for an outstanding rhetorical flourish. He sounds like he's trying to mimic Christ, by masking his messianic ego in humility. This guy really thinks his personality will unite Americans. He really thinks he's so blessed, so superior to everybody else, that he can put his racist preacher on his campaign, and Americans will love him just because he's associated with Obama. This might be a new level of narcissism even for Washington. But that's how it goes. Election after election, because we continue to empower the same 2 anti-American parties of government aristocrats, the they become more narcissist, more corrupt, and less like regular Americans.

This article is too funny. Somebody found an old article from 1922 about arctic warming, glaciers melting, seals disappearing, etc. One observer talks about the Arctic climate warming from 1868 to 1917. If you contemplate the conditions when this was written during the warming that culminated in the dust bowl, and compare it to what we've seen since the climate started warming up again in the 70s, you can tell it's just a normal cycle of minor climate change.

Placing nets under bridges to catch falling concrete. Do you get the feeling that government sucks? Have you ever heard of Ford or IBM or Walmart having to place nets to catch concrete falling off their buildings? Of course not. It's our own fault that we vote for these people who try to provide instant gratification while our infrastructure crumbles around us.

Recycling airplanes into homes.